Shouldn't boys preserve their flower for their wedding night? Should mothers have chastity balls with their sons, and shouldn't society put a lot of pressure on boys to never have sex?

I find the absurdity of a lot of these gender issues becomes apparent if you simply switch the genders.

At least boys are typically given a consistent message about sex, even though it's hardly an emotionally sophisticated one (have as much sex as possible!) There really is no way to explain the disparity in messages without using the word "sexism", is there?

"I like how commercial media reps ignore the most stunningly successful policies of our time: neo liberalism."

^ The implication here being that everyone was going swimmingly in the Clinton years, and that the Republicans managed to conjure up the conditions for the current economic situation in a scant 8 years.

Sure.

Bush started his presidency with a surplus and ended it with a massive deficit.

He started his presidency with a healthy economy and now it's in tatters.

He started his presidency with a nation that had international respect and ended it with the only true "rogue nation" on the planet.

The wars in Iraq and Afganistan? He started them, and they cost a lot of money.

The collapse of Wall Street? Caused by the absolute lack of oversight of the trading practices on Wall Street, as well as the banking industry which went punch drunk with absurd real estate loans.

And what's with "only eight years"? That's more than enough time to screw up a nation. I have to wonder - where have you been all decade?

Next bidder?

Perhaps if more people had read The Man in the Iron Mask as children, they would be less willing to lock people up indefinitely without due process.

It still boggles the mind how many people are free and loose with the accusation of terrorism. And it would be amusing how much "tough talk" consists of expressing abject terror. That is, it would be amusing if it were not so toxic to the nation's soul.

Pretty women are de facto stupid, sexually promiscuous and low-class.

This is an unfair thing to say about Letterman. As a rule, he treats women with class.

Is it possible that Sarah Palin, as an individual, could be considered "stupid", "sexually promiscuous" or "low-class"?

Why does feminism require "don't say anything negative about any woman, ever?" That hardly seems like a reasonable stance to take.

* Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3

* French Connection

* Mean Streets - Harvey Keitel, DeNiro

* Taxi Driver

* Serpico

* Dog Day Afternoon

* Marathon Man

* Midnight Cowboy (1969 - almost counts)

* The Warriors

Three Days of the Condor?

Chinatown?

A letter filled with questions is a poor substitute for actually making a point.

(But thanks for the insinuations - charming.)

But the more we try to package and label these characters in order to understand them better, the more they slip out of our grasp.

Why are you bothering to "package" and "label" the characters?

What does packaging and classification have to do with morality anyway?

People in Afganistan know that they are being bombed. They don't need to see it on TV to get angry at the American planed bombing them.

Similarly, everybody in the Middle East knew that Americans were torturing prisoners.

So why are the pictures being hidden? It's not to keep public opinion in the Middle East under control. It's to keep public opinion domestically under control.

Obama has clearly decided that he's not going to take on either the military or the CIA on any issue. Perhaps he feels that appeasing these powerful interests will allow him to coast to re-election? Or perhaps he sincerely believes that appeasement is the correct thing to do. Given some of his statements during the campaign last year, it's hard to take the second position seriously.

As often happens in DC, the conventional wisdom about any issue is based almost entirely on one incident that happened over a decade ago. Because Clinton was ambushed by the faux "gays in the military" outrage in 1993, Obama has decided that he's not going to give any political opponents any military-related analogue to attack him with this year.

The fact of the abuses at Gitmo serves as a recruiting tool. The images themselves may exacerbate the situation, but their suppression has less to do with adhering to a policy of not pissing off Arabs (since we are regularly engaged in bombing, detaining, torturing, etc.), but rather in sanitizing the process so Americans don't have to think about it.

A lot of Americans have the attitude of Barbara Bush, that Americans should be allowed to inflict violence on other people without being confronted with the results of their actions.

You can't bitch about white wackos in the military without including black or latino gang members. I'm guessing their numbers are actually larger.

Gang membership is usually the path to prison, not to the military. Yes, there are a lot of blacks and latinos in the military, but why would you think they are "gang members"?

It doesn't seem like a natural pathway to me.

Wow.

So former Senator John Edwards is not doing as much to help the poor as he might have done had he actually won the election.

How many other private citizens are held to this standard?

Is anybody on the conservative side of the aisle held to this standard?

John Edwards holds no public office, nor has he shown any intent to run for public office again. He has a sick wife and children to attend to.

Leave him alone.

And, FWIW, writing four paragraphs of text and citing seven? Weak.