I actually harbored the irrational notion that Bernanke's "bold move" today was going to be not giving Wall Street what it wanted, that the FOMC would hold rates steady at least, as a hedge against inflation and a rapidly devaluing dollar.

That would have been the thing a civil servant looking out for the interests of the American consumer would have done. Heck, it's what anyone who actually believed in the "wisdom" of "markets" would have done.

The interests of Lehman Bros are apparently more important to the Fed than are the interests of all the other brothers and sisters out there.

I think Alicia Silverstone was far more effective selling Aerosmith records than she will be selling Veganism.

Those of us who lived through Dianne Feinstein's mayoralty in San Francisco, when a city unique and progressive among all the great cities of the world was remade into yet one more outpost of rapacious, oppressive -- and boring -- corporatism, have long known her to be a shill for Republican values.

A Democrat in name only, perhaps even more egregious in her enabling of Chicago School neo-conservative public policy than even Joseph Lieberman (what IS it with these wealthy, conservative Jewish Democratic senators?), Feinstein's support for the policies of the Bush administration and her war profiteering and her utter lack of leadership on a single progressive issue of any consequence make her deserving of enmity and disdain from her constituents in perpetuity.

Why, that, that (spitting and popping here)... THAT sounds like communism!!

Turns out, I'm between jobs right now and I need someone to "gap me" as well. I'd be willing to do nothing for half of what Reichers got paid. I have a law degree, can do higher math, and know the difference between a rogue state and a sensitive trading partner. Can someone tell me where to send my resume?

Now, that's how an editor should write. Thank you for "finally," "belatedly" getting it.

If he had to choose, would Mozilo go out like Lay or like Ebbers? One can only hope it might come to that. Until we start putting the heads of people like them on pikes atop the steps of the capitol, the odds will always be at least 12,000 to 1 in favor of greed and rapacity.

I, too, kept asking myself if what I was reading had been written tongue-in-cheek, and I was astounded once again to note what little facility with the language one needs these days to get a book published.

Perhaps, as one commenter noted, the authors are better able to make their points about certain ineffective members of the environmentalist community in a more verbal forum such as the one they appeared in on NPR.

However, the sentence: But we have overcome starvation, disease, deprivation, oppression, and war. alone should have been enough to at least get their book's editor fired.

In the end, if one must choose to side with alarmist environmentalists or rapacious free marketeers, I think everyone would be better off siding with the biophiles.

For those who side with the it's-getting-better-all-the-time crowd will end up in as tiny a society as the Anasazi, Greenlanders, or Easter Islanders once humanity does finally wear out its welcome and Gaia goes on her 5 billion-more-merry-years way.

Traffic. That would have been a cooler show than Steely Dan.

The thought going through my head was, "I'm so glad my dad was nothing like Gary Kamiya."

I've had bones to pick with Mr. K here before, and I've read a piece or two by him that evidence an inquisitive mind working hard to figure it all out.

In the end, I guess I have to ask, what is the point of such an embarrassing exercise in self-flagellation G?

All the folks who take you to task about driving stoned: get a grip. If Zach was "white-knuckling it" on the way home it was because his dad's ego was spilling all over the front seat and the windshield of the car, not because either of them was in danger of getting in an intoxication-induced accident.

This country's attitudes and policies with respect to alcohol vs. marijuana are, if you'll excuse the pun, seriously fucked up.

And you law-and-order scolds, save it for Dick Cheney, willya?

No, Gary, the real fumble here wasn't going to see the Dan - they made some very excellent music, folks - it wasn't getting stoned in front of your 15 year-old kid, or driving home after taking two hits of pot.

It was splattering your ego all over him in the guise of being concerned about his experience with "the birds and the bees."

Jane down the thread has most excellent advice for boys about girls, and one item that could be modified to make pretty good advice for parents about kids: don't talk to your kids, listen to them.

Some of the presently wealthy and their descendants will not ultimately make the grade, and a few of the presently poor and theirs will actually find their way to the future.

In all likelihood, however, the gap between haves and have-nots will get steeper and wider, until the point a significant portion of people simply ceases to exist. War, Famine, Pestilence, Disease, take your pick.

And the bottom will be raised, and the "standard of living" will be better, and the whole cycle will start anew.

Trotsky was right about some things, particularly that about techno-man's bad taste.