it has changed.

The thing is that we no longer care who is sleeping with who. This is not because of the internet, but because nowadays we have much bigger fish to fry.

All the internet has done is revealed what people really care about. America was never really that puritan, nor that conservative, but because of the press putting forward the idea of a puritanical conservative America, it seemed that way.

Now with blogs, you have Americans speaking for themselves about what they think really matters, and that is revealing a far more complex and nuanced picture than the traditional lines about sex = bad, violence = good.

The same thing happened in the sixties. All the "sexual revolution" really was, was young people being open about sex and its real moral impact.

Of course, the media, which is mostly conservative owned and arts student run, tries to tell the story as if people weren't screwing around in the fifties, and the twenties never happened. To the media, it was all about sex suddenly becoming free. To the people who ran that revolution, it was about sex suddenly becoming less important.

Now a new revolution is happening, where morality is redefining itself around concepts as well as acts, where the moral grey areas that were always there are being more openly explored.

It is not a revolution of changed behaviour, or even changed beliefs in a real sense, but a revolution in revealing just what the real behaviour and beliefs actually are.

The ideas of the current cultural revolution are not new, nor were they ever really rare, but rather they are suddenly being revealed as the long silent denial of who we are is being overthrown in favour of the truth.

Just as a discussion point:

The women who act in pornography are doing so of their own will. Indeed I would venture to guess that the bulk of them are exhibitionists who are working for money.

That they work in a field traditionally and religiously maintained as being private, doesn't mean that they are all mal-adjusted victims.

That they strive to appeal to a base urge in human nature is no bar either, as the same could be said of actors in action movies.

Now obviously, there are women who are abused in the production of some porn. Indeed there are also Mexican migrants who are abused in the production of sweat shop goods.

So far as negative messages goes, I would hold back on the porn producers, who are at least targetting an adult market, and take a serious look at the pop, fashion and advertising industries, where anorexia is king and being "sexy" is everything.

Child porn is a totally seperate issue, as that has to do with the abuse of children, and those who purchase it, and produce it are engaged in encouraging the said abuse. Adult pornography on the other hand, is simply consenting adults doing something with minimal cultural impact.

Hey, I keep my bigotry down to bankers.

And evangelicals.

And people with differing opinions to me.

And people who agree with me too much.

...

America's economy has become a stripped down motorbike, every time the Republicans have gotten in they have taken out the safety features in order to try and make it run faster, until finally you have reached a point where the economy has no breaks, the steering is wonky, and America, which is supposed to be riding this thing, isn't wearing a helmet.

It is going to end in a mangled and horrible mess that may mean America as a whole either coming out crippled, or dead.

The Great Depression was bad, but America's government had a certain amount of money with which it could deal with it. That money has been spent, and America is currently reaching a level of debt where it won't be able to pay it back.

For what happens when countries go bankrupt, look at revolutionary France and the fall of the Soviet Union. Countries simply cease to exist in their current state when they go broke.

Whoever wins these elections will either go down as one of the worst presidents America has ever had, or one of the very best.

It will either be Hoover, or FDR in November.

Actually, you don't just "Redistribute the money."

That only results in staving off the current problem.

You take that 10% of the money you have freed up, and then spend it on boosting your infrastructure and paying off your debt, with improves employment and helps business by removing certain barriers to them getting goods to market.

You also improve funding towards the sciences, which helps business by upping the technological level of America, and helps boost employment by creating new products that the rest of the world hopefully wants.

Taxes are not there to "Play Robin Hood" they are there to pay the bills and improve what your country has.