but, but, but, Mr/Ms Ondelette, the great and powerful knower of all things climate related, The Heru-Ur, linked to a cite on the internet that says it's all hooey. So it must be hooey, dontchya know. And gosh darn it he's so positively absolutely crapstactacularly certain that he can go around the internets bashing people and proving it from memory based on his limitless understanding of science and data sets and published peer reviewed papers and the note from his dear old maternal granny that says it was so much warmer on the Iberian peninsula back in 1902 that she didn't have to wear her shawl when she attended the bullfights and now she does thereby establishing definitively that it's all a giant hoax cooked up by Al Gore and those foolish Nobel folks who gave one of those meaningless awards to consumate hacks like Friedman (I agree), Krugman (disagree).

No sense in exploring it further or trying to err on the safe side because great mother earth can absorb everything we can dump into her and then some. Besides we always have I-Max video to remind us of what beautiful creatures polar bears and apes and hippos et al were when they roamed the planet. It's not like anybody is missing the dinosaurs so why should anyone care.

good point--going down this path is pointless.

Friedman just post another inane I/P conflict missive which is drawing excellent suppressing fire from his commenters which I always enjoy.

Don't know if things will ever change with regard to I/P but I think Americans are waking up to Glen's larger point that our unequivocal support is part of the problem and our inability to wade through the tremendous amounts of propoganda foisted on Americans over the last 65 years.

We've got enough fricking messes of our own right now that we better focus on before we're burning old shoes for heat.

I will not tolerate any euphemism, inapposite anthropomorphic comparisons, similes, metaphors, or whathaveyous that cast ducks in a negative light.

Any and all aspersions directed at Trojans, Huskies, Beavers, Bruins, Bears, Sun Devils, Cougars, Cardinal, or Wildcats will have my full and unequivocal support. I don't have one of those high brow Ivy league edumacations which is quite obvious. Because God knows the only intellectual rigor being exercised in the world is in the Ivy league.

Now what was GG saying about military defense spending? Oh yeah, it's way way way too high. I couldn't agree more. And I couldn't agree more that the MSM is largely to blame for perpetuating the false irrational fear based narrative that we actually need such an incredibly wasteful endeavor as part of the American experience. Why is it that we even allow military advertising? Didn't I see that the Navy awarded advertising contracts worth $6 billion last year. Shameful. Then again gotta get the word out that there's a government entity that will send you to Bangkok Thailand on a giant floating city built to kill (dumping its waste into the ocean and burning up copious amounts of fuel along the way) for a little R&R sexcapade on the taxpayer dime.

Bloody Romans . . . I mean Americans ! ! !

here's the simple truth--many many politically uncomfortable truths would be revealed about how much money we pointlessly waste attempting to "ensure security" that is largely unachievable in the face of a low tech random well executed one off criminal conspiracy when the perpetrators are willing to sacrifice their own lives to succeed.

The organizers and funders will also never be revealed because to do so would uncover many many politically uncomfortable truths about whose in bed with whom financially and that just would not do for the "people running the show".

As far as whether or not missiles blew it up, or internally placed explosives, or Rudy's store of diesel or whathaveyou, it is largely irrelevant because even if the data was there to support an "inside" job it has since been destroyed and anyone claiming to be able to "prove" what happened would be destroyed in every conceivable way including possibly killed.

That's the truth. So to sit around and try and discern the "truth" is almost as pointless as wasting time to figure out "who really killed Kennedy" or "whether or not the moon landings were really a hoax".

The 9/11 commission was a political whitewash because to address the issues honestly would result in a revolution regardless of the causal truth behind the actual events. Or at least every last sitting member of either party being voted into political and economic oblivion. And that from their perspective just would not do.