@Tom:

avoid those men who want sexual relations without the use of a condom, avoid those men who want sexual relations outside the bonds of marriage, avoid those men who want monentary sexual bliss without a thought for 9 to 12 months into the future

Of course, no woman has ever wanted any of those things. Nuh-uh. Women are pure, holy, virginal creatures who have been tricked into having sex-without-pregnancy by thoughtless men. What all women really want is to get married and spend the rest of their lives getting pregnant every time they and their husbands have sex, in the missionary position with the lights off, the way God intended. And you're there to make sure everyone knows it.

choose a guy who is a Cubs fan and a chess player for your life companion

Apparently there's a chess-playing Cubs fan who isn't having much luck with the ladies.

@Anonymous:

I'm all for lifelong celibacy

How nice for you. Please keep that maintaining that attitude. The world is better off without you and your nonexistent kids. Now, could you please convince your fellow Puritanical wackos to practice what they preach and stop breeding?

Sex is overrated and mostly more trouble than its worth.

For you, that may be true. For most people, it isn't. Again, people who think that way are more than welcome to leave the world for the rest of us.

Most of our problems stem from bending every aspect of our lives around sex.

Let's see: right now we have war without end, a government that regards fundamental freedoms as an annoying inonvenience, a collapsing economy, and a planet that's turning into an oven ... and you think the #1 problem is that people try too hard to get laid?

The toys we play with are just as much a part of our culture, and do just as much to shape us as individuals, as the sports stars we watch or the musicians we listen to. Maybe more, since their influence starts earlier. I don't see anything wrong with celebrating and preserving the memory of the most important ones. I'd be willing to bet that there are more people who could instantly identify the Atari 2600 than, say, most of the late-70's/early-80's baseball players who have a plaque at Cooperstown.

In the years of Giuliani's term as Mayor, homicides all over the country were decreasing at about the same rate as they were in NYC. It was the boom economy of the Clinton years that helped New York put itself back together, not Benito's PR show.

Because conservative societies where sex is treated as taboo do so much better at preventing rape. Saudi Arabia? Sudan? Myanmar? Nope, no rape going on there. Cameron is a genius!

Fuck you, and fuck your fantasy world in which liberals are all high-toned elitists living in "the tonier sections of San Fran" and wearing "white spats" and getting their only knowledge of the mean streets from TV. A long time ago, I joined the service partly to get away from a growing gang war that had already killed one of my best friends and was threatening to do the same to a lot of others. Then I landed in the middle of a bunch bigger war between two gangs calling themselves America and Iraq. After I got out of that, I worked my way through college -- actually, I'm still doing it, doing work in grad school that someone like you probably couldn't even understand much less do, and like most right-wing fucktards you probably wouldn't want to know about it anyway because it's biological research that might contradict the sacred word of Gawww-ud. And I'm doing it for wages that I assure you don't qualify me for the country club crowd. So yeah, fuck your fantasy world, fuck your carefully cultivated attitude, and most of all, fuck you.

Kerry will point out, in his reasoned lawyerly way, that Pickens is changing the terms. Pickens will bluster and blather and play the good ol' boy, and Kerry, in disgust, will give up. The headlines will be something along the lines of "Kerry backs down from Pickens challenge" -- if the MSM deigns to notice the story at all.

Kerry had a chance to do something about these people back in 2004. Now it's far too late. Move on, John.