Whatever gets us away from the childish machismo of the Repugs is good with me. Hillary Clinton either feels the need to pander to the dumbass crowd, or she really is that hawkish. Either way, for me it's a real turnoff.

I like the fact that Barack Obama displays a thoughtful, sensitive side. I like that in John Edwards, too. Dennis Kucinich is definitely a "nurturing" candidate. For me, Obama's biggest drawback is that he lacks the passion of Kucinich and Edwards. C'mon Obama, show us some fire!

I disagree that white Americans like Obama because he's not an angry black man. Jesse Jackson led Dukakis in popular votes and over a quarter of the white vote, He was the first guy I ever voted for in a Presidential contest. Was Jackson considered "angry" back then? I think it was his passion for social justice that attracted many whites. I'm sure some people saw his passion as anger (didn't Howard Dean get that bad rap, too?), but that's bunk.

I don't want an angry Obama, I want a passionate Obama. But thoughtful will do just fine, especially after 8 years of moronic leadership.

You asked, "If Darwin was right, how does such religious idiocy survive? What is it fit for?"

For one thing, it helps the intelligent and sane among us choose other intelligent and sane individuals for their mates, leading, should they breed, to more intelligent and sane individuals...who will always be in the minority.

I would love to see an atheist give an opening homage to science and rationality.

"And sometimes I think, you know, if we had just not bothered to respond when they seceded, then there would be another third world country out there between us and Mexico."

Yeah, I like to daydream too, but remember, if we did let them secede, we'd now have a nuclear-armed theocracy on our border -- kind of like a Christian Pakistan.

Anyway, traditional Southern cuisine seems to be almost identical, in means if not in ends, to traditional soul food from around the world, by which I mean anyplace where poor people had to make do with what they had on hand. For example, my impoverished Russian ancestors turned offal into sweetmeats. Comfort food? Yes. Healthy? Maybe. Hell for their vegetarian descendants? Definitely.

Joss Whedon is an artist, so he's doing what he can do in that capacity. If he and his fellow artists can raise money to help women in need, why criticism him? That "Team America" crap was brought to you by two frat boy libertarians.

I agree about the silliness of the "continuum" argument, however. Stoning a young girl to death for some macho idiotic reason is absolutely different from depicting a woman in her underwear being menaced by a movie killer. The latter is make believe, while the former is deathly real.

Corsi is a liar and a rightwing loon. Why does Salon bother giving him even a punctuation in its pages.

Robert Franklin, you seem to be deliberately obtuse here. The issue Whedon is confronting is the honor killing of women. He didn't mention the stoning of a man in Iran because that was not the topic at hand. You make a giant assumption that because he avoided that subject, he ergo is indifferent to it. You have zero evidence for that.

There are a million bad things to confront in this world. I get criticism from dopes when I protest cruelty to animals. "What about people?!" they yell. Well, catch me at the next rally for, e.g., ending genocide in Darfur, although there I suppose I'll be criticized for ignoring historic preservation...

Honor killings, be it by stoning or burning or some other grotesque means, are a huge problem in too many countries, and among too many backwards cultures. (No, I have no regrets for calling such cultures "backwards"). Not coincidentally, honor killings occur in societies where women have minimal economic power. The human rights of women are demonstrably improved when they acquire greater financial resources and independence. That, plus true law enforcement against the barbarians who engage in honor killing, will end this disgusting practice.

These people you describe, from the unknown HIllary-Ann to that unlikely pundit Johan Goldberg, and all under, in-between, and over them on the Right, are NAZIS.

Does anyone here have any doubt that Hillary-Ann or Ann Coulter or Dick Cheney would have been on Hitler's side had they been Germans in the 1920's? (Jonah and his fellow Jewish neocons are problematic, but substitute "Muslims" for "Jews" and there you go) This is their mentality. They are brown shirts. They are fascists. They are authoritarian goose steppers.

It's the American way to put up even with Nazis in our midst, but we must always be ready to squash them. Today Iraq, tomorrow, if the Hillary-Anns have their way, America.

The issue is honor killing; the victims of honor killings are women. Just because a man somewhere is stoned to death does not therefore mean that his killing was an honor killing. Honor killings are a very particular kind of crime.

My example of cruelty to animals was exactly on point. Simply because a person is speaking out against Atrocity A, and not Atrocities B, C, and D, does not mean that they are indifferent to those latter atrocities.

No decent human being accepts the stoning of anyone, man or woman, or any other form of torture.

But you cannot muddy the waters here by criticizing Whedon for focusing on one particular category of crime, one which is particularly horrendous. Your logic falls flat in this regard.

I'm not flaming you, I hope you realize. I just disagree with your premise here.

So far it sounds too good to be true, but I'm remain cautiously optimistic.