By raising the fear level, media ratings rise (more web clicks, remote control clicks, etc) and so do the advertising related sales, but eventually it all comes crashing back to earth.

You can blame the media for spreading most of this ignorance. When people are afraid, they seek relief. In American life, this is assuaged by purchasing merchandise.

This is a well known (in some quarters, anyway) psychological phenomenon - some call it "retail therapy".

Of course, this does not work in the long run, and has many bad side effects.

Like, eating too much and dying from coronary disease, mortgaging your home to the hilt and losing it in foreclosure, stressing out over having what the Joneses have that you don't and going broke keeping up, fighting for position at work and feeling forever inadequate, and voting for whoever tells you what you want to hear so they can fuck you over after they are elected (see Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and McCain).

Does anyone else see the irony of political parties paying the media billions of dollars for advertising during an election cycle, and the electorate actually expecting truth from media reporting which benefits from the parties' largesse?

You can, of course, choose to receive information from more reliable sources, and enlighten yourself.

I feel sad for those people who are so "afraid" of Senator Obama.

For those afraid of Palin, not so much. She's ignorant like a fox....

guess you never saw a photo of the Kennedy family....

. . . but he didn't, and a $265 campaign contribution doesn't add up to a hill of beans.

Nobody seems to care that McCain's father in law was involved in organized crime, so why should this matter?

The father of McCain's wife, James Hensley, was convicted by a federal jury in U.S. District Court of Arizona in March 1948 on seven counts of filing false liquor records.

Hensley also was charged with conspiracy to hide from federal authorities the names of persons involved in a liquor industry racket.

The umbrella company, United Liquor, at that time held a monopoly in Arizona, and was organized and managed by Kemper Marley, who was accused of having mob ties.

In 1953, Hensley was again charged with falsifying records at Marley's liquor firms.

This time, Hensley was found not guilty after being defended by William Rehnquist, the future chief justice of the Supreme Court.

it's a freakin' comic strip. it's the freakin' internet - you know, a series of tubes?

sometimes things don't work as expected. do you beat your kids when they fuck up? probably...

it was a great strip, and a great ending. everyone else, get over it, OK?

that's a nightmare....!

may it never come true!

My dad, a lifelong Republican who voted for Goldwater and every GOP presidential candidate since, voted a split ticket in Virginia today: Obama for president and GOP for everyone else.

That does not bode well for McCain - My dad said he had the "personality of a block of wood"...

when can we read the column GK wrote in case McCain won...?

like I said, just curious...

this one is quite good!

http://www.schneier.com/

He's consistently advocated common sense transportation security solutions.

she will be quickly forgotten, if not indicted...

"Bite me!"

I'm sure the trolls won't like it though

then, because of their immunity from prosecution, pleading the fifth during hearings would be out of the question, and prosecution for perjury committed under oath would be likely....

either eating cockroaches, or locking someone into a Plexiglas coffin with her...

United Airlines Flight 93 was crashed by the passengers.

It makes a great story, and it was a rallying point after September 11th, but it may very well not be true.

The cockpit voice recorders have never been played for the public. There is a good reason why.

It is highly probable that a military aircraft intercepted and shot down United 93 - why was one of the engines found far from the debris field of the crash site if the aircraft was intact upon impact...?

The government knew that the public could not handle the truth - that the US military intervened to stop the 9/11 attacks by shooting down an unarmed passenger aircraft.

It's not a conspiracy theory - it's Occam's razor...

I can haz nooz now?

God wants you to go shopping!

so, maybe it affected her long term judgment. . .

Barack's "member" - up close and personal

Salon is jumping the shark, repeatedly...

binge pot smoking . . .

and speeding . . .

I used to keep my stash in my top dresser drawer. Unfortunately, my brother and my sister also smoked pot, and, unbeknownst to me, figured out where I kept mine.

To further complicate things, neither my brother nor my sister knew that the other knew about my hiding place.

You can see where this is going. A full ounce baggie was a volatile substance, reduced to a nickel bag within 24 hours, and I only had smoked a few bong hits with friends.

I had to start carrying it with me to keep it from being purloined. Around this time I had to have my wisdom teeth removed. This was done under sedation using nitrous oxide and sodium pentathol.

I don't know what happened while I was under, but when I was coming around, the dentist asked me if I used marijuana.

I denied everything through my cotton packed cheeks.

To paraphrase Art Linkletter, drugs do the darndest things!

and your enemies closer

and don't go fishing with Al Neri,

or hunting with Dick Cheney...

...men were victims of this instead of women.

The guys who wonder what all the fuss is about would have a different perspective if their crotch-shots were being photographed surreptitiously by homosexual men and posted on 'tinygaypenishots.com'...

Of course, a pissed off homophobe is more likely to punch your lights out.

Personally, I find the profusion of security surveillance cameras in general to be much more intrusive and threatening, but, hey, I'm a guy!