But if Williams believes that anywhere from 8-10% of unemployment is under reported in official statistics (again, it's generally accepted at being .5-1.5%) then he's not just a bad statistician but perhaps crazy. Where's he stand on the gold standard and the Tri-Lateral Commission?

For example, Williams counts as unemployed those who want jobs but have given up looking for work. The Labor Department counts only those still actively looking for work among the unemployed. -- Scorpio69er

. . . put into mandatory service. I think a two year stint in the military, the Peace Corp, Americorp or a new version of the CCC is a great idea. National service helps build national cohesiveness and will give provincial yoot a chance to see other parts of the country or the world before their minds calcify.

. . . you wouldn't find ten people on either side of the aisle. Pelosi doesn't talk crazy, but I'm not sure how smart she is.

Sadly the framers, never anticipating Rep. Bachmann and others never thought to suggest that one had to have a functioning mind capable of simple logic and circumspection. -- LouFaber

Clinton also came into office with a mandate to fix healthcare and a faltering economy and he promised to do it in a bipartisan way. -- James65

Clinton was barely elected. In fact, had Perot not run, Bush the Elder would have won a second term. Clinton had no mandate of any kind, the health care situation in 1992 was much better than it is today, and the economy was in a mild, cyclical recession. While "It's the economy stupid" is the only memorable line from that election, the economy in 1992 was in much better shape than it had been a decade before when Reagan took office.

Mandatory Community Service is conscription. It's not volunteer work, because, well, it's mandatory. It undermines the value of freely giving of one's time and resources to a cause they you care about. -- VirginiaL

It should be mandatory and would need to be because most Americans aren't inclined to contribute any significant amount of time to bettering the nation. Most can't even be bothered to vote, yet love to bitch about the results afterward.

I keep asking myself if those so called reporters over at FOX actually believe the drivel they spew out every day or they are just cashing a check. Is it possible that there are that many people located in one company that are really that stupid? -- FASOULE

Murdoch is really the P.T. Barnum of print and television news. Look what he owns - FOX, the Sun, the NY Post (the Times of London is sort of an outlier). All Murdoch wants to do is make money. He doesn't have an agenda beyond this. He's found a pot of gold with FOX News. Hannity, Beck, O'Reily - it's all an act.

Murdock knows his audience well - poorly educated, bigoted at best. These folks truly love America though they don't or can't really see how it fits in with the rest of the world because they don't really care about the rest of the world. Obama is a black man with an odd name - doubly scary. That he is so well-spoken makes him a triple threat.

What's really sad is that a lot of good movie rental stores would probably be in business if Blockbuster hadn't pushed them over the edge finacially.

Until about two years ago, Blockbuster had "deeper" shelves and its inventory wasn't devoted only to movies that had been released in the last week. But even now, I've never seen a "mom and pop" video store that has even as much inventory as a Blockbuster. They might have more obscure and/or non-hit movies, but they'd still only have one copy of it, and it will be out when you want it.

As Netflix's catalog isn't that extensive it still is hard to rent what you want. -- ligedog

WTF? Unless you're looking for releases from Yugoslavia or N. Korea propaganda movies, I'd say that Netflix has about the most extensive collection of DVDs known to mankind, and you'll have whatever it is you want from that library in your mailbox in 48-hours.

. . . Salon readers are not particularly representative of America or American mass culture tastes.

Blockbuster just sucked the life out of the movie rental experince by playing up its worst, most soulless product and reducing it to the feeling of visiting a fast food joint and the consumption of empty calories. -- astroboy

I don't think Blockbuster is dying because it didn't serve the masses who had seen or intended to see the hit movies that became Blockbuster's focus.

Most movies (and television shows) are crap or at least not very interesting at best. But this is what most people see at the local multiplex and then, often, rent again six months later when they are released on DVD. Netflix has taken the lion's share of their business (they have all the crap movies too), but with it's much broader and deeper library, it get's the business of those people with more "elevated" tastes.

Netflix is the pizza/pasta/hamburger/Mexican/Chinese etc. joint serving everything pretty much everyone wants, and it delivers. Blockbuster is the White Castle's of DVD rental businesses. You have to drive there, it may be out of chocolate milkshakes and fries, charges too much, and you may have deal with staff that doesn't care or see the problem with this.

. . . the U.S. needs to restrict immigration, legal and illegal, to a trickle for a couple decades. The U.S. is rapidly becoming overpopulated, but particularly with new residents that bring nothing or too much to the mix.