I like your icicle tales, GK, but you really don't have to go tall when talking about MN winters.

I left at 18 in part because I wanted to get away from the provincial attitudes, but mostly because of the frickin cold (pre-climate change). '64 was a snow-whopper, but the coldest colds, as I recall, were in the mid-late '70s. I remember going out once late at night with a -78 windchill (down jacket and jeans, no longies, natch) to run the cars for a while (no block heaters in those days unless you were well-off), and once braving -104 windchill to hit Burger King and a see a movie.

And I played hockey or skated until my feet were numb all the way to the heals more times than I could count. My toes swelled up in the winter for a good decade after I moved away. Ah, memories, just where they belong, in the past.

Now that I've lived on both coasts and in the South, I find the people in MN just swell, on average and by comparison (though there's a lot more 'tude there than there used to be), and in many ways Minneapolis is one of the nicest cities in the US, but I'll be damned if I'll ever live through another Minnesota winter.

Great character builder though.....

It seems that the righties have learned one lesson: repeat something until it spreads regardless of its validity. The above equivalence simply makes no sense. So I'll leave it.

The DJI at 14,000 was as unrealistically inflated as the asset bubble it reflected. It reminds me of the friend who bemoaned his stock portfolio going from "$500,000 to $100,000" during the tech bubble. What was his initial investment? $60,000. But he was convinced he lost $400,000.

I read glanced through a newspaper article from 1999 when unwrapping some things stored in it a couple of years ago because the headline jumped out: "Will Bill Gates be the world's first trillionaire?" This was back in the "the Dow will hit 40,000" days. Now, trillionaire gets a red underline....computers aren't so dumb after all.

And saltypappy, serafin, etc: why do you hate America so? Recheck the Constitution, it has "general welfare" in the preamble. The top 1% owning half our wealth while the bottom 90% have 5% of it is antithetical to that. I doubt you've just started trying to evade taxes, I'll bet it's in your blood, but it doesn't make you smarter, or better than those of us who believe life is about more than getting yours and "screw 'em all bar six."

You want to know why Rush has so much influence? Look in the mirror: we Americans have an unfortunate and long-standing inability to distinguish glibness from intelligence, smooth talk from truth, popularity from gravitas. For god sakes we put Reagan in power twice and he's still looked up to.

People who see through RL's bs have been forecasting his demise for 20 years--I mean, after all how could such propaganda survive for much longer?--but Hitler and Goebbels did their damage and Rush and his ilk had their mistakes to learn from.

He'll be influencing millions until the day he breathes his last, and will be canonized like Reagan after that.

Rush is Reich, but Mencken was right.

Equating Obama with Rush is just ignorant or disingenuous. I'll leave it to someone with more patience to explain that difference to you.

One or two such posts in 10 pages, BFD (though I agree it's very uncool to write such things, no matter how apt they may be).

If you're trying to make the point that we liberals are low-class, especially compared to righties, you've obviously never looked at a right-wing blog or website....maybe too busy trolling to do so.

The former requires the risible caveat: "Categorizing Jim Cramer's opinions can be a challenge, because he can change his opinions drastically from one day to the next;" as to the latter, it's arguably impossible to call her remarks "hurtful" unless you mean to her already--and fully deserved--deflating political career.

Nevertheless including them does indicate what percentage of the righties are morally bankrupt or just plain "out there" these days (at least Bachmann believes what she says).

Why not put Rush Limbaugh on the list too, perhaps with a caveat like "considering his tendency to reserve his most trenchant criticism for the far Left..."

I say we leverage our ownership to the hilt to squeeze them for as much as possible, and bankrupt them if possible. That will force temporary nationalization and the hoped for redistribution of some of their ill-gotten gains.

Not being an economist, I can't say whether that would work, but any comment I make about these quasi-criminal enterprises comes from a very gut-level premise FTB: fnck the banks....

You can go on all you want about the US being no better, or meddling in Iranian politics, or the "student protestors" doing it for summer vacation hijinks; note to GLR, you're neither as witty nor sane as you think you are. Go find some friends or a girlfriend or something.

I don't think the millions of Iranians who are putting their asses on the line because they're sick of their corrupt, authoritarian government oppressing them and making their ancient country an international pariah, give a flying f*ck about your concerns or accusations, so why don't you leave us adults alone and go back to screaming at the TV like you did before you learned to hook up to the internet!