Actually, the "intelligent design" crowd as typified by the Discovery Institute are very careful to claim that their work does not depend on religion. It's a lie, of course, but it's a superficially believable one, and has been a very successful part of the "wedge strategy" designed to get creationist thinking into public schools since Edwards v. Aguillard made it clear that the straightforward kind wasn't going to work. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the climate change denialists have a similar hidden religious agenda.

They'll say nothing at all, of course. Or perhaps Fox News will identify him as a former AG from the Bill Clinton administration; since they like misidentifying Republicans who get into legal trouble as Democrats, doing the same thing to their lawyers is a logical step.

Don't forget the other armed guard, to keep an eye on the first one. You know, just in case. I'm sure Blackwater will be happy to provide this service.

-- but he had the perfect right to say what he did. Think how much better off we'd be if a few Democrats had had the guts to shout "You lie!" during the Bush years, preferably right in Shrub's face. We need to get over this whole quasi-monarchical "respect for the President" idea and realize that Presidents, like all people, deserve respect only insofar as they earn it. The problem, unfortunately, is that if this happens, it will only apply when a Democrat is in the White House ...

"Could it be because most fashion designers are Gay men?"

I know two men and two women who work full-time in the fashion industry. Both the men are straight, and one of the women is a lesbian.

And from my male perspective, most of the pressure on women to be unhealthily thin comes from ... other (mostly straight) women, not from men of any sexual persuasion.

IOW, you hear this stereotype and the facile explanation that goes along with it an awful lot, but I'm deeply skeptical, as well as annoyed at the latent homophobia.

... in the "age of 'Goggle'" [sic] it's pretty easy to find charts of broad economic indicators like GDP and unemployment over specified periods -- say, twenty years -- and they all tell the same story. The economy improved under Clinton and collapsed under Bush. It's too early to know yet what effect Obama's policies will have and you damn well know it, but looking at fifty-year histories shows a remarkably consistent trend: about a year after a Democrat follows a Republican into the White House, the economy improves, and about a year after a Republican follows a Democrat, it deteriorates. So if you "seem to recall that ... Bush went on to lead the country through years of solid growth until 2007," sorry, your memory is faulty.

Here's a hint: try google.com instead of goggle.com, you'll get better results.

... why should pharma oppose the public option? They'll get paid either way.

In a better world, we'd have cost controls (i.e., Medicare/Medicaid/public option bargaining over drug prices) and a public option; in a still better world, we'd have single payer (simply put, removing age restrictions on Medicare) and the only arguments would be about the details. But taking a divide and conquer approach to get pharma on board while cutting out insurance seems like a reasonable approach. And it's sure as hell one the American people have the political will for, if their elected "representatives" would just pay attention. At least pharma does something useful.

A majority of Americans oppose the version of health care reform that seems likely to emerge from Senate Finance, yes, because they see it correctly as a muddled mess. On the other other hand, poll after poll has shown strong majority support for a public option. For example, pollingreport.com gives the results of a CBS News/New York Times poll conducted September 19-23:

"Would you favor or oppose the government offering everyone a government-administered health insurance plan -- something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get -- that would compete with private health insurance plans?" The answers to this question are 65% in favor, 26% opposed, 9% unsure.

"What if changes to the health care system do not include the option of a government-administered health insurance plan? In that case, would you favor or oppose the changes under consideration?" Here we get 38% in favor, 40% opposed, 22% unsure -- which not coincidentally are almost a mirror image of the Rasmussen numbers.

In short, the American people support health care reform and do not support health care reform without a public option. There is of course a certain hard core that is always going to be opposed to any health care reform -- because it's "socialist," or because they see it as Obama's idea and they hate Obama, or whatever. But the majority who oppose the Senate Finance version, which unfortunately is the one getting all the press, oppose it because they know that without a public option it's worthless. There's no contradiction here.

... your image is a bit too skinhead for mainstream America.

Oh, wait, do I get to discriminate against Nazis?

Conistently, without exception, for decades, Democrats have done a better job than Republicans in taking care of veterans and active-duty personnel. Maybe in your slap-a-support-the-troops-magnet-on-your-SUV fantasy world, it's the other way around, but as a veteran who served under three Presidents (Reagan, Bush the elder, and Clinton) and who still has a lot of friends in the service or recently discharged after service in Iraq and Afghanistan, I can tell you that the reality is that conservatives don't give a good goddamn about the people they so loudly "support."

Yeah, "partisan" indeed. Thanks for pointing it out. Honestly, I'm not even sure why I bother arguing with these trolls; mainly I think it's that their smug chickenhawk-ness is one of my hot buttons.