Madopol and Ringomon, here I thought I was talking about rude, dangerous, and illegal behavior, but now I see how wrong I was. Thanks to your explanations, I now see that bicyclists are so far above us poor pathetic four-wheeled wretches that they are free to ignore any law that doesn't make sense to them. Please forgive me, Your Two-Wheeled Beneficences. From now on when a bicyclist swerves in front of my car, blasts through a red light, or tries to run me over as a pedestrian, I will bite my tongue and remember that such as I cannot possibly question thy works and thy ways.

...

Melthough, you're right, of course, that cars are inherently much more dangerous than bikes -- after a decade or so as an EMT, I'm not likely to forget it! But here's the thing: most drivers do their level best to avoid hitting anyone. When bicyclists do dumb things, drivers often have to swerve or slam on my brakes to avoid running them over, which of course greatly increases the chances that someone else will get hit, with potentially fatal consequences. Basically anything that creates a disruption in normal traffic patterns is dangerous, and whether the person causing the disruption is driving, riding, or walking, the effect on people not involved in the original disruption at all may be just as severe.

The GOP in its present form is trying to turn the US into a tyrannical corporate medieval nation state. Why do some idiots think we should just allow them to do so is a mystery.

No one here thinks we should allow them to get away with it. But outlawing an entire political party really won't help. This is the price we pay for being the good guys: we cannot defend freedom by taking others' freedom away, even if that's what they want to do to us. And if you can't see this, then sorry, you're not one of the good guys any more.

Buuuuutttt, I thought driving a fuel efficient vehicle was a sign of sexual inadequacy.

Back when I was in the Air Force, I served with a guy who was your stereotypical Texan. Now, I was born in Texas (though my family was moved away when I was a small child) an I've known plenty of Texans who were just normal folks, but this guy was every Texas cliche you've ever heard of: swaggering, drawling, loud, expansive, and everything had to be Big. House? Big. Belt buckle? Big. Waistline? Getting Bigger all the time.

But the Biggest thing of all, the thing in which this Big (actually, fairly short) Texan took the Biggest pride, was his Big Truck. Actually, since this was in the 90s, the age of ever-expanding trucks, whatever Truck he had was never Big enough, so every year he bought a new one. Whatever the Biggest Truck on the market was that year, there he was.

So one day he came in bragging about his newest Big Truck (I think it was one of those Dodge Ram monstrosities with the front end made to look like a semi). He couldn't stop talking about how Big it was. "Hey, y'all, you gotta come see my Big Truck! It's really really Big!" Etc.

I'd had enough. I stood up and said, "Well, you know what they say ..."

"What's that?" he challenged.

"Big car, small dick."

He stopped dead in the middle of his Big rant. "Yeah, well what do you drive?"

I grabbed my crotch and growled, "Geo Storm."

Under Saddam Hussein, Iraqi women had responsible public jobs. Since the invasion, their situation has become as repressive as anywhere in the Arab world (and that's saying a lot.) The pseudo-feminist neocons who screamed about the "rape rooms" and the Hussein brats' unsavory sexual practices should consider the fact that those atrocities, as horrible as they were, directly affected a very small fraction of Iraqi women. The imposition of sharia law affects every woman in the country.

Everything you were taught in Econ 101 was wrong.

Hope that clears things up.

... take a look at some pictures of McCain when he was Clark's age. McCain was already looking pasty and puffy. Clark is clearly a lot healthier than McCain, and I'd be willing to bet he'll still be pretty healthy in 2016.

For that matter, assume eight years of Obama followed by eight years of Clark (at which point we might have actually made some progress in repairing the damage eight years of Bush have done to this country ...) At that point, Clark would be eighty. Old? Yes, but Stevens, one of the greatest Supreme Court justices we've ever had, is eighty-eight, for God's sake, and still running rings around many of his younger colleagues.

Obama/Clark '08 sounds pretty damn good to me.

Bullshit. I live in Colorado too, and I get around fine all year 'round (yes, even up in the mountains) in my little Toyota Corolla. That car got me through two winters in Minnesota, too.

Back when I was in the Air Force, stationed in Minot, North Dakota, I used to take my even smaller Geo Storm back and forth between town and base all the time. In the winter (and I guarantee you, a North Dakota winter makes a Colorado winter look like a day at the beach in Hawaii) the ditches by the side of the road were just littered with pickup trucks and SUVs driven by morons who thought their rolling penis substitutes made them invulnerable. It's not the vehicle that determines whether you'll get through a harsh winter storm. It's the driver.