allow me to introduce you to another fellow coward, Caliph Mike.

If you ask, they would publicly agree the bailout was 'bad for America' and posit a stern look. Privately however, they're conflicted just like myself. I'm not so sure I could stomach broad scale financial ruin for big and small firms alike, knowing that investors big & small would take a hit on nest eggs, retirements, etc.

Like you give a good goddamn about small investors and their mythical nest eggs.

Guys like you--like Caliph Mike--are utterly repulsive. You sing the praises of capitalism and the supposed free market when there's a buck to be made, then wail and moan that the Feds should come in and care for your tender backsides when there's a spanking in the offing.

And you've got the gall to call yourself conservative.

Christ, what a bunch of cowards. Just like those assholes on WallStreet. Peas in a pod.

casual_observer & timothy ... Oh please,please enlighten me about snark.

Believe it or not, I was directing my comment to casual observer and not to thee. I've done my level best to avoid ridiculing you in the spirit of good, decent humanity.

But if you wanna be a jerk, well--you know me--it takes very little for me to reveal my pettiness (a daily battle but one that I typically lose).

I don't want to be a bad guy, bernbart. Why goad me?

a life without snark is probably not worth living, so wtf is a person to do.

Snark is fun, you're right, and if the other guy doesn't get it, well, that's kinda fun too.

Many is the time I've missed something that was clever, incisive, snarky, fun, and had to 'fess up to it. But that also was amusing--even if I was the butt of the joke.

PI--very nice of you to write what you wrote regarding that conservative person (who's screen-name I can't even recall at the moment).

There is scant evidence of Alexander the Greats sexuluality at all...and certainly not any actual evidence that he was gay. We certainly know that he was married (to women) twice.

I would say about this that there was a good deal more fluidity in antiquity, regarding sexuality, than in our post-Christian world.

And I say "post-Christian" because, despite how it might seem, it is the present.

I find it interesting--and I mentioned earlier the Spartans (who also married, had children, and so on)--that sexuality has become so narrowly defined in our own time; that someone is either one or the other.

Clearly, this is not so in the ancient world--and, thus, is probably not the case in pre-Christian human history. People were far more comfortable with their sexuality until, say, 2,000 years ago.

Enlarging the issue, what is it about the human mind that permitted this limitation? Why did people suddenly reject what was historically acceptable? What was that mechanism that allowed the narrowing of sexual expression?

Mysterious questions to me.

He (Byrd) informed us, with many ornate flourishes, that there had been a terrible problem in ancient Rome with young military boys turned into sex slaves.

Here's a bit of irony: Spartan boys, when they entered the Agoge (or, military training), are thought to have had a sexual relationship with the older Spartan who was, essentially, their guide/patron/teacher, what have you.

And these were the fiercest fighters in antiquity--brutal, merciless, determined; the opposite of what, apparently, our military "braintrust" thinks of as gay.

Employees of private businesses can always quit if they don't feel they are getting a big enough slice of the pie.

There was someone a few days ago who, arguing against a single-payer system/public option, that an individual had the "freedom" to quit his/her health plan--as if that was a genuine, legitimate choice.

I laughed then, I laugh now, and on neither occasion was/is it humorous. Repetitive as I am, these people disgust me so deeply--bone deep--that I can hardly stand it.

I'll take the land of corporate interests and the purist goal of profit over the make believe land of 'how it should be' and societal resource redistribution any day.

This statement is utterly meaningless. What "societal resource distribution"? If employees are underpaid and non-benefited, is that not also a form of redistribution--in the employer's favor?

At least in 'profit land' you know what the protagonists' goal is, and should not be surprised it's the dollar. Nothing is so pure as profit motivated greed.

What "protagonists"? These people are feeding on the flesh and blood of their employees. Do you not know that? And "profit motivated greed"? You write that as if it's a worthy thing--it isn't; it's a big chunk of the problem. Well, given your screen-name, you probably just don't care (even while at church or Bible study).

Frankly, I could easily kick your ass on general principles.

Executives from places like Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank Americas, American Express, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley can't exactly be expected to do the wave when the president says "there are some in the financial industry" who are ignoring "the lessons of ... the crisis from which we're still recovering" and says he's proposing "the most ambitious overhaul of the financial regulatory system since the Great Depression."

God forbid we have some sort--just a bit--of regulation. That's socialism, the "argument" goes, in this latter day 21st century.

This is how pathetic we are--we let these fucks, these Wall St. whores/pimps, what have you, determine for the rest of us what is and is not acceptable.

I sit here, laughing in the non-humorous sense, at the idiocy of the general public. To think--we actually let these thieves determine whether or not they're thieves. Dare I cite the "fox guarding the henhouse" cliche?