Listed up, tough guy. You're not any manlier than the guys in your platoon who got PTSD. You're just luckier.

Lucky, as in the IED goes off under the next truck in the convoy, instead of the one you're in. Lucky, as in the incoming mortar round lands in the middle of another fire team, not yours. Lucky, as in the guy next to you catches a bullet, instead of you.

Psychological injuries are exactly like physical injuries. No one knows in advance who's going to get them and who's not; no one can pick before the fight starts who's coming home without a scratch and who's coming home in the cargo hold in a plastic bag. It doesn't depend on how tough or manly you are. It's just what happens in a war, and it will happen to a certain number of soldiers on the line.

The men in your platoon who have PTSD are casualties every bit as much as the ones who got shrapnel in their lungs, or the ones who got their legs blown off, or the ones who got a bullet in the head. Every bit as much casualties, every bit as much soldiers, and every bit as much men.

And any vet who denies this is a scumbag traitor who broke faith with his brothers in arms.

You anonymized the soldier, but you identified his psychiatrist by name and mentioned specific appointments they had by month. If the Army really wants to figure out who this guy is and hassle him, they've got all the information they need. It would have been better to call the psychiatrist "Dr. Y" and talk in vague terms about times like "an appointment this summer."

Why on Earth would you think scallops don't suffer? They're animals. They have nervous systems. They are pulled out of their environment and killed so that we can eat them. Ergo, they suffer. If you have some evidence of the non-suffering of scallops, I'd love to see it, but I'm not holding my breath.

I'm a happy omnivore, but I don't kid myself. Every animal I eat dies a nasty death for my culinary pleasure -- yes, including the shellfish. This isn't going to keep my from eating meat, obviously, but you'd have to be a pretty lousy human being not to at least think about it from time to time.

Every time people like me -- descendants of those who barely escaped the Holocaust, now living comfortably in modern America with no fear that our neighbors will try to send us off to the ovens -- think that serious anti-Semitism is pretty much dead, people like you come along to remind us that it's alive and well. Um, thanks for the notification, I guess. I certainly won't forget it.

The only anti-Semitism I ever see on Salon is in the letters columns, not in the articles -- and it is invariably of the right-wing variety, either genuine Christianist/neo-Nazi insanity like Shootingsparks', or more commonly, straw man trolls like yours. There certainly is such a thing as left-wing anti-Semitism, but it's not on display here.

You write:

Can the haters at least wait 'til the body's cold before they start to piss on it?

The people you're lashing out against aren't "haters," just people who disagree with other people's assessment of Ballard's writing. You (and O'Hehir) think Ballard was a fine writer, and you have the right to your opinion. Others disagree, and they have a right to their opinions as well. The idea that when any public figure dies, there should be a mourning period in which the inevitable lionization passes unchallenged is absurd.

No, there isn't.

So Collins supports pandemic-preparedness funding generally, just not in the stimulus bill. So Bush asked Congress for such funding when he was in office. So Schumer opposed it.

So what? Republicans have successfully framed the debate for years in this country regardless of what the record says -- accusing Democrats of not doing enough to "support the troops" while denying VA funding to injured vets, etc. We don't have a political debate in this country, we have a war, and so far only one side seems to have realized it. Democrats need to take control of the spin on this one ASAP, which in this case means driving the message home that the GOP is responsible for every single flu death that occurs within the United States. And keep repeating it, over and over, until it becomes accepted as gospel.

There's no reason we can't do both.

Thank you for providing a shining example of the type of person we're dealing with.

To my fellow Dems: reallynow and his ilk are the true face of the Republican Party. Are you really naive enough to think that we can "rise above partisanship" when dealing with people like that? They have declared war on America, and we must fight them until they can no longer offer any threat. Once they have been driven completely from power, the time will come to talk of peace; not before.

... but it's hard to get past the sociobio / evopsych "alpha male" bullshit. I'm not sure there's any other bit of scientific jargon that has been so abused in recent years by people who have no understanding of what it means, except perhaps for the constant misuse of statistical terminology by the "Six Sigma" crowd. It is probably not a coincidence that the people who sling around mathematical terms they don't understand also love to label themselves "alpha males."

Here's a hint, kids: if you have a boss, you are by definition not an alpha.