"he's basically correct that there are some Zionist types in the Obama administration who would strongly advise against his meeting with Wright. Rahm Emmanuel, for instance, who as Chief of Staff would have a role in that decision, and who has devoted much of his energy to supporting pro-Israel policy in the Democratic party."

You're factually accurate but your inferences are off. Obama is the President today because he distanced himself from Wright. Perhaps there are Jews and Zionists who have advised Obama to distance himself from Wright. But there were plenty of non-Jews and non-Zionists providing similar advice. When it became clear that Obama had an association with Wright and that Wright had fairly extreme views in a variety of areas, Obama's candidacy was seriously threatened. At the time, polling indicated most Americans found several of his statements outrageous and offensive. Obama was wise to distance himself from Wright at the time. He is wise to distance himself from Wright now.

I'm not one to throw around the "anti-semite" label as frequently as it is weilded on the Salon comment pages and elsewhere. I would just say that pointing out that Rahm Emmanuel is Jewish and a Zionist seems irrelevant here. We do not know that he is the one guiding Obama on his relationship with Wright. And if he is telling Obama to continue to avoid contact with his former pastor, it's hard to say that this isn't the same advice Obama would get from any decent advisor, Jewish, Zionist or otherwise.

You state: "More importantly, I'm willing to make my own health decisions in consultation with my doctor, and choose what's right for me from the available options."

I agree with your approach but the issue here might be that your information (and your doctor's) will be heavily influenced by the information, data, attractive representatives, marketing muscle, promotional materials, flashy commercials and other propaganda utilized by the pharmaceutical industry. To assume that we can sit down and have informed conversations with our doctors absent the influence of the pharmaceutical company in question is naive.

What bothers me most is that this drug barely works even by Pfizer's trials. It reduces pain on a subjective 1-10 scale by 2. I guess 20% is a lot but the placebo reduces pain by 1 point. The world spends $2 billion annually on a drug that may have dangerous known and unknown side effects, increases an already unsustainable percentage of GDP to pay for healthcare costs, and enriches a pharmaceutical company for what is, at most, 1 point on the 1-10 scale.

I'm a left a little deflated from the Bruno stunt on MTV and the other promotional clips I've seen for the movie. I found Bruno to be the most entertaining and provocative (in a thoughtful way) character on Da Ali G Show. In addition to being incredibly funny, Bruno humor was about far more than making heterosexuals uncomfortable. In fact his take downs of the fashion and celebrity industries offered much needed critiques of people who would say just about anything to get on TV. (Particularly memorable was a backstage interview at a fashion show where the fashion insider agreed that the show was both "heavy" and "light" just moments apart in order to concur with Bruno's line of "questioning" and another talking head who reversed his opinion of Paris Hilton in a second take in order to align his "views" with those of the shows "sponsor.") I hope that the movie includes a little more of this and a little less of the nudity humor that's being promoted. I wish Sasha Baron Cohen didn't need to target the least common denominator.

@Agile Cyborg, thank you for your comment. Much more thoughtful than most of what we get in the posts and comments on broadsheet.

Our economy is largely service oriented and we export relatively little. We are dependent on our own population to drive demand. As long as the economy is shedding jobs (no matter how "few") we will continue to see weakening demand for our products and the downturn will continue to feed on itself. I will not feel an confidence in a turnaround until we see positive job growth. Until that point we are merely witnessing fluctuations in the rate of decline and should not be encouraged.

Without knowing anything about the code underlying iTunes, I have a hard time believing that Rubenstein is using any inside knowledge about iTunes to make this happen. iTunes has been updated/patched many times since he left Apple. What we're seeing here is more a case of chutzpah than insider information. Once Palm decided to go this route it was probably up to the engineers to find a way to implement it rather relying on some code Rubenstein downloaded to his thumb drive on the way out the door from Apple. If this is the case, it's likely that anything Apple does to "block" the Pre will be answered by another workaround from Palm. That said, I agree that Apple should try to block the Pre and it should do so immediately. The PR hit for Apple would be much milder if the Pre "never" works with iTunes than if the Pre "sometimes" works with iTunes.