Well, I heard ...

that Hasan had an Al Qaeda membership and ID card on him when he was taken into custody. Because his member number was 93785, this suggests that there are at least 10,000 sleeper agents loose in the United States.

That's just about the most trasparent attempt at bullshit yet. Why the hell would Al Qaeda members carry ID cards?

No Al Qaeda member with two working brain cells would trust an ID card to identfy other members, so the damn thing would be pretty much useless. OTOH, it would be a continual liability to it's carrier.

What paladin22 said contained a serious flaw.

An honorable motive does not mean that an action was honorable.

You're not paying attention. paladin22 did NOT say that the Ft. Hood shooting was an honorable act, nor did he suggest that it might have been.

paladin22 was posing a question about how a hypothetical attact by an Iranian against Revolutionary Guards would have been reported in the American media, and he suggested that our media might well have deemed it an honorable act.

paladin22's post says everything that has to be said about Salon's viewpoints

Good work: Cherry-pick the "soundbite" that seems to support your own narrow point of view, and ignore what paladin22 actually said.

What is it with these fucking psychotic Muslims?

Well, Muslims are even more puritanical than American fundamentalists. Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned here.

Infotainment

I'll agree only if "infotainment" means "entertainment disguised as information".

Mass-media news reporting is intended to be entertaining, not informative.

... is that people are denying the science of climate change because they want to continue getting the maximum enjoyment out of things science has given them.

And it wasn't particularly surprising that Beck, like some of his ideological allies, would say the defeat was really a win.

I've seen that kind of logic before... Oh yeah:

"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

If you increase the taxes on the wealthy (or the super wealthy as you call it) they will stop spending their money on creating jobs. In fact, they will lay more people off.

Wealthy people creating jobs? What planet do you live on?

On my planet, which we call "Earth", the super-wealthy have been sending jobs overseas for decades so that they could become super-wealthier. First it was manufacturing jobs, but now it's every job that doesn't require physical presence on American soil. They cut the economic heart out of this country so they could get wealthier faster. Now we have millions of people out of work and more losing their jobs every day.

Maybe the wealthy helped to create jobs in India, China, and other countries, but I don't see why U.S. tax policy should be structured to reward them for this. I always figured that the U.S. government should look out for its own citizens first.

All we need to do is just drill and develop our many reserves and we will energy independant again.

The United States consumes about 25% of the world's oil production, but only has about 3% of the world's oil reserves. Do the math: If we try to satisfy our present oil needs entirely from domestic supplies, we will exhaust our reserves ten times as quickly as the rest of the world. Then what?

Envy is an emotion that occurs when...

What is your definition of "greed"?

... but what they'll do to get the profits probably is.

Oh no, not again...

Petunia Bowles

It sounds like you're actually out of the whole left/right D/R thing...

Not entirely. I tend to prefer liberals because they at least fight with each other, whereas contemporary conservatism in this country seems like a rigid dogmatic religion that requires all of its members march in lockstep

As the Obama administration and its fascist liberal agenda continues to be brought to light ...

What "fascist liberal agenda"? Exactly what has Obama done that is both (1) liberal, and (2) actually significant?

IMO, all of Obama's "liberal" actions have been minor B.S. that won't have any significant effect on our lives, and he's mostly continued Bush's policies on the important stuff. Did Bush's "patriotic conservative" policies somehow become "fascist liberal" policies when Obama continued them?

Is your Senator on board?

I doubt it. Both of "my" senators are dirtbags.

Well, it doesn't really matter which side one votes for when it comes to the important stuff. Both sides are pretty much guaranteed to screw us on the really significant issues.

I tend to lean toward the liberal side on the "sideshow" issues, but that doesn't mean any liberal can get my vote and any conservative can't. I voted for Corzine in New Jersey the first time he ran, but not this time. I voted for George Bush 43 the first time he ran, but I developed an intense dislike for him long before he ran for re-election.

I dislike hardline ideologues of either flavor. I particularly dislike politicians who harp on sideshow issues to try to fire up their "base".

I'll try again.

I don't think that the problems were caused by either liberals or conservatives alone, or that the "liberal" or "conservative" labels have anything to do with the problems. That's why I reject your apparent thesis that replacing liberals with conservatives would help.

I think this whole liberal/conservative thing is a just sideshow to distract us from the real cause of the problem: Politicians who suck up to special interests. This is done by both alleged liberal politicians and alleged conservative politicians. They both give the lobbyists what they want, then they blame each other for the inevitable bad consequences.

Sometimes the consequences are bad enough to change the faction that holds congressional majorities. The special interests don't care because they own both sides.