Like Henry, Billy Pilgrim (in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five) had "come unstuck in time". However, unlike Henry, Billy went to interesting places and did wacky things there. Henry just has to run around naked and score a pair of pants and a sweater. Big deal! By the way, anyone halfway sane person who is afflicted with this Streaker Syndrome should NOT live in Chicago!! I would recommend Honolulu, San Diego, or Miami. The chances of getting frostbite or hypothermia would be much reduced in those cities.

I had fairly high expectations for this movie, having ALMOST read the book a few years ago...I thought it was an interesting premise. However, Eric Bana's stoically humorless non-acting made the last half of the movie a chore through which to sit. Get the man a razor! To beard or not to beard, that is the question! No one wants to see some guy with a face looking like he just hopped out of a boxcar. Not only does it look shabby, but anyone who has to go cheek-to-cheek with him will be lucky to retain any facial skin, due to the abrasive quality of a perpetual two-day old set of whiskers.

As usual, Stephen Tobolowsky (Dr. David Kendrick)was brilliant and showed the good sense to shave off his Bana-beard early on. Only a top-notch actor like Stephen could go log almost 200 roles in 30+ years. Someone sign him up as a guest on the Colbert Report!

as long as 1)they are able to tell right from wrong and 2) they receive no funding, support, or privileges from the U.S. government. Neither condition seems to apply in present circumstances.

My perpetual question is: how has an average working schmuck like me, who is habitually casual and haphazard about reading news, managed to be so correct about the Vietnam and Iraq wars, while the professional "best and brightest" in Washington DC, having access to the best information our spy agencies can deliver, have been so tragically and profoundly wrong. When I posed it at a recent local Senior Center breakfast, one of my table mates suggested that my analysis had been correct because it had not been perverted by the profit motive, that is, I don't earn money making weapons nor try to bribe politicians into entering prolonged armed conflicts with an eye to a profitable business in delivering death to countries with more primitive technologies.

I've always thought the First Gulf War in particular was timed to use up some of those bombs and missiles that were starting to look a little superfluous as the Cold War wound down. That Saddam was deliberately led to think that the U.S. would not oppose his annexation of Kuwait as a reward for having engaged Iran in a bloody war of attrition at our behest has been pretty well established. When he took the bait and moved into Kuwait, we started depleting our arsenals on his soldiers, so the weapons manufacturers could breathe a bit easier about continuing their profitable businesses.

As long as America sees itself as a Empire that must maintain worldwide military hegemony, no matter what the cost, we will be continually bogged down in one conflict after another, largely to create a market for the arms manufacturers.

Friends, neighbors, acquaintances, and strangers are all talking about the medical insurance reform efforts now underway in Washington. It seems that everyone has a horror story of skyrocketing premiums, increasing deductibles, and reduced coverage. The local newspaper runs letters daily of people telling of tragic mind-numbingly cruel encounters with their insurance companies. I haven't met a person in this neck of the woods yet who is not at least for the "public option". Most want to go directly to single payer, feeling that the insurance companies have forfeited any ethical justification for being involved in the planning process and fully deserve to be put out of business.

I hear nothing but disgust about the astroturf nutjobs making fools of themselves at town-hall meetings. It seems that only the Mainstream Media thinks they represent anything but ignorant and stupid zombie shills for the insurance companies. Barney Frank was absolutely right in declining to engage in dialog with someone so deeply ignorant and confused as to think the efforts being made to increase the usefulness of medical insurance for the American people bears any resemblance to Nazi genocidal programs in the 1930s and '40s.

As a general rule, when meeting a stranger or raising a new issue with an old acquaintance, the best tactic is to employ tact and etiquette in order to elicit cooperation and defuse suspicion. However, it this initial approach is rebuffed, then one no longer has any ethical obligation and can enjoy little practical advantage by continuing to court favor with the hostile opponent. Mr. Obama has discharged his responsibilities to the insurance companies and to the opponents of his plan and could best proceed without them.

In my area, the Republican endorsed opposition to medical insurance reform has caused a serious erosion in the prestige of the Party. As long as they continue in a shrill, uncooperative, and threatening manner, the Party will shrink and decline.

Full disclosure: I'm a registered Republican who has been active in promoting a single-payer medical insurance program in the United States.