"In "Wanted and Desired," Zenovich casts Polanski, whose face repeatedly fills the screen with a Byronic luminosity, as a tragic figure, a child survivor of the Holocaust haunted by the murder of his wife, the actress Sharon Tate, at the hands of the Manson family. "

Hollywood people don't believe that crime exists, just rambunctious behavior caused by the evil nature of western society. This is their excuse for the noble street thug, and the same excuse they make to defend their own.

"Give me a reason why I shouldn't just quit paying my mortgage now and get on the hind teat Obama has put out there?"

If a substantial number of people think it through, and then come to this same conclusion, we will have the next big problem after the mess we have now.

Those of us who have fought the energy wars and the biology wars are well aware that true believers will remain dedicated to their Flying Green Spaghetti Monster, despite any amount of scientific evidence. The best we can do is strip these angry Druids of their ability to game the legal system to hold up progress. We need to write anti-Luddite provisions into all relevant parts of the stimulus, if this spending is not going to be wasted in a time of economic emergency.

"The CA proposition takes the passage of complicated legislation out of the hands of out of of elected officials who were voted by the majority and put these decisions into the hand of the public who know very little about what they are voting on."

I'm proud to have been one of the voters who lived in California in 1978 and voted Yes on 13. Had we had been a little more prescient at the time, we would have voted a corresponding cap on how much that giant metastasizing tumor in Sacramento could steal. Hell, I might still be living there myself.

If you want California to be solvent again in your lifetime, it's time for a brace of new voter initiatives. Slash that kudzu tangle of worthless regulations that chains down every aspect of your life. Chuck out the illegal aliens and welfare breeders. Cut prison costs by putting away carjackers, not pot smokers. Start allowing California to generate its own energy once again, by all means that might actually yield power. This will take a Trial Lawyers Can Go Screw Themselves proposition, but one needs to be passed right away. Start encouraging industry instead of driving it out of state, and you may even have jobs again.

"One of the hangups imho in getting hi=speed rail going between SoCal and NoCal is that the established train routes are along the coast where people want to live too... there seems to be some resistance to moving the train routes more east in less habitated regions. "

So why not follow the route of I-5? This would drastically reduce land acquisition costs because the freeway's vast median could, for most of its length, have a train run through it without affecting the existing roadbed and bridges. And because the route runs through the San Joaquin Valley, a whole new freight market opens up to supplement passenger traffic. Imagine delicate specialty produce appearing in San Francisco markets the same day as it's picked.

Sorry about the name, but it was given to me a full year before that liberal phony with the cheesy PowerPoint presentations.

"Bueller...Bueller...Bueller..."

He's off pitching that sure-fire winning political formula, creationism and tax increases. In case you haven't noticed, overpriced real estate is no longer a problem except in Manhattan. What homeowners need now is visibility on their existing homes just no longer on track to becoming worthless.

"A maglev train from Boston to Atlanta would make good business sense or a transcontinental line would be great but southwest airlines will fly you from S.F. to the east coast for 99 bucks now - you think the trainride is going to be cheaper than airfare?"

Air travel may be the only way to go for continental distances, but there are some congested corridor routes where high speed rail would make sense. This LAX-LAS route has been discussed and studied so intensively that it's the closest thing we have to a shovel-ready proof of technology for high-speed rail.

But: any appropriation for this needs to have a "git 'r' done" clause that gets construction started immediately over the inevitable opposition of a host of carping NIMBYs with various forms of the old stone-age religious agenda against building anything, public or private. The same thing goes for the large amount of new electrical capacity we're going to need to run these things.

"I can't understand having trouble using your iPhone on t-Mobile's system"

You can 'jailbreak' an iPhone, but if you don't sign up for two years with AT & T first the cost of the phone is exorbitant.

...the $50 billion in nuclear loan guarantees.

" Liberalism tends more toward the intellectual, so I don't think liberal talk radio will work. Conservatives are not limited by facts or logic, and thus talk radio works much better for them."

This attitude perfectly exemplifies Paglia's comment about talk radio. To demolish a liberal, all you have to do is give him a public microphone and let him speak.

"This piece just drips contempt for its subject"

Which is exactly what the Salon audience wants.