GOP: Can't trust them with a vote, can't trust them with a child.

Comparing the 80s pop groups of Britain (Smiths, Cure, etc.) to the US underground bands of the same period is unfair and totally misses the point.

Anyone in Britain could have turned on pop radio and heard a song by Echo & the Bunnymen. In the US, however, Husker Du and Black Flag dominated a momentary corner of college radio.

A fairer comparison would be to stack the Brit-pop bands of the period to the US-pop bands that dominated the airwaves (Van Halen, etc.).

Suddenly, Brit-pop sounds radical and dynamic.

In truth,The only thing really more sophisticated about British popular music is that the freaky sounds of the underground have a place at the table of mass popular culture.

America may have the most dynamic unpopular pop on the planet, but we're not really listening right now. Or ever.

A great many of the American and European left-wing intelligentsia showered Stalin and Mao with undeserved praise, back in the day. The shame of this is, apparently, insufficient. Now the left must also bear the burden of Hitler and Mussolini. Thanks for that addition to the argument.

I remember back in the eighties when punk rock bands would tar Reagan (or John Wayne) with a big Hitler brush. Looks like the Conservatives have finally gotten their own punk rock.

The US has been through this before and will again. Upton Sinclair's novel "The Jungle" shocked the nation with its depictions of the conditions in meat packing plants.

To me, the problem has always been that the food industry turns its intellect towards making food cheaper, rather than BETTER.

These animals would be better off if they were devoured by wolves.

We are really crappy predators.

I identify with Atheists, although I may not be one. According to my personal religion, it's not for me to determine.

I think that a human race without religion or mythology is a waste of consciousness. Factory-made people suitable for a Brave New World.

I understand the hyperbole flying out of the mouths of so-called "New Atheists". In America, it's easy for an Atheist to feel that their back is against the wall, that they are a voice of reason in a sea of ignorance.

But Atheists must not let this hyperbole hijack our public identity and send us into meaningless skirmishes with religion. If we do not speak up, these "New Atheists" will speak for us.

Sort of like how Jack Chick speaks for the Christians.

I watched TV pretty consistently when I was a child. Around about fifth grade, our TV set died. We weren't rich and, sensibly, my mother said "well, I'm not buying a new one."

The very next day I started drawing, writing and living an artistic life. This sudden change in fortune has stayed with me for the rest of my life.

I'm not so concerned with babies watching TV as I am with children and teenagers watching TV. They won't all suddenly find self-expression and happiness without TV, but I suspect that there is a great deal of human potential wasted by the box.

I watch TV pretty frequently as an adult, but if I don't get time to work on art projects, I get pretty irritable and depressed. It's an addiction I can live with.

I was born in '64, so I'm too young to have "been there" but old enough to remember the aftermath.

Sure, hippies seem pretty stupid now. But get a load of the conventional wisdom of "The Establishment" back then:

Women should be barefoot and pregnant, black people are inferior, the Vietnam War is a noble cause, the US Government deserves your undying loyalty, marijuana will drive you insane, the Police are here to help, etc., etc. I could go on and on.

The simple fact is: "The Establishment" of the period didn't have the intellectual firepower of a stoned hippy endlessly banging the chords to "Wild Thing" on a battered acoustic guitar.

It is unsurprising that many of the fine folks from "The Establishment" of the 60s are still "Establishment" today. And they still haven't learned a goddamn thing.

Seattle hosts the Dalai Lama and San Francisco hosts the Chinese Government.

Everything you know about San Francisco is now wrong.

It seems that human embryos could be modified in this fashion as well. We could grow lactating females that could produce a variety of useful drugs. The "factory females" would have to be kept in laboratory conditions for their lifetimes in order for this project to be successful.

For those who find the idea distasteful: The embryos could easily be modified so as to never achieve an intelligence above that of a radish. Presto! No human suffering, no ethical dilemmas.

Of course, there will be a few crybabies whining about how these scientifically designed, created and marketed beings are entitled to some sort of existence. Let them all die horribly of cancer.

In trying to understand what possible motivation the Democrats could have for passing this FISA bill as it is, I have disappeared down the following rabbit hole:

The last time a president was busted for illegal wiretaps, he was spying on the Democrat party.

Due to the years of spying by the Bush administration, every phone call and email ever made by Nancy Pelosi and the Entire Democratic Party organization are somewhere in a NSA database.

Even though the current administration routinely refers to members of the Democrat party as "appeasers", or, more to the point, "traitors", I'm sure they wouldn't dream of using this information for political gain.

I sure would enjoy someone dissecting the above in a measured fashion. It seems cynical and paranoid to me.