I wish the author had gotten more into the Defense Planning Guidance, also known at various times as the National Security Strategy, or the Project For a New American Century. Authorship has alternately been attributed to Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz - it's basically the neocon scriptures.

Besides saying the US has to "contain" any potential rivals, it spells out how. By conquering the Middle East through a series of wars. We need to do this, DPG posits, both because of the strategic location near Russia, China, India, Europe, and of course because of that lovely, lovely oil - not just so we can use the oil, but so China or whoever else can't.

DPG goes on to say that the American people would be unlikely to support the series of wars neccesary to carry out their plan unless there were " a Pearl Harbor-like event" to mobilize public opinion.

Lo and behold, the DPG's author's get into power, 9 month later a Pearl Harbor-like event occurs which the federal government takes no action to stop, even though our Air Force certainly could have reacted in the hour between WTC and the Pentagon being hit. And then we go to war with Afghanistan, and then Iraq, and next Iran, even though only one of those three countries was involved in the Pearl Harbor-like event, and only tangentially at that.

The great irony of all this is that Cheney's master plan to "contain" the Chinese involved us going trillions in debt to... the Chinese. Basically insuring that China will be the world's next superpower and the US will be bankrupt has-beens.

Not only are the mandating Rosie's hairstyle, they seem to have forced Elisabeth Hasselbeck to change her name to Debbie.

Did anyone see the "Motherboy" episode of Arrested Development? It featured an almost-as-creepy mother/son dance. (made creepier by the son being a 30-something shut-in who still lived with his mother) But this is yet another case where reality is miles ahead of satire.

was simply believing in the rule of law. As a lifelong public servant, I don't think Gore could accept that the GOP would stoop to the depths that they did to steal that election, and therefore wasn't prepared to fight back as fiercely as he needed to. I'm not sure why, having lived through eight years of nonstop assault on Clinton, anyone would still think there's a line the Republicans wouldn't cross. But I don't understand why 31% still think Bush is doing a heckuva job either.

The interesting thing about Feministing's top 10 list vs. the original one in GQ, and the one posted by a fellow letter-writer, is that when a liberal makes this kind of joke, it's generally A) funny, and B) based on things that actually happen in the actual real world.

has a great bit about being in a 'debate' with conservative comedians whose jokes were all stuff like, "if you've ever blamed a famine in Africa on tax cuts... you might be a liberal!" Now, never mind that, to a comedian, ripping off someone else's bit is right up there with burning down an orphanage. Has any actual person ever blamed a famine in Africa on tax cuts? Of course not. Likewise:

> 4) In the middle of it, they whisper in your ear about how you are perpetuating some sort of stereotype.

Of course! I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me! Don't you just hate that, guys? Am I right? Am I?

These conservative's "jokes" tend to pretty thinly veil their utter contempt for women (and any man who has the smallest amount of respect for women). I mean...

> they have no problem getting an abortion if you knock them up.

Wow. The ladies must be lining up for this guy.

Please - a public official's marital problems and private life are no one's business. Unless it's a Democrat, in which case, if there's no news to report, we'll happily invent some. Damn you, liberal media!!!

> you have to have that for a few months to stabilize the situation so the Iraqi government can get organized, can get security in place and get the structure going

Isn't that basically what Bush did when he took power? Overthrew the legitimate leader (Al Gore), suspended civil liberties "temporarily" to get us through a crisis (the neverending War on Terror), long enough to get security in place (a Berlin Wall along the border and an NSA agent on the other end of every phone conversation).

Someone wrote in earlier that it's not surprising 8% of people in the former Mongol Empire (most of Asia) is related to Genghis, because DNA spreads out so much over time, etc. In fact, 8% are directly descended, meaning they're his son's son's son's son's.... son. An astonishingly high number (I don't have the figure handy, but it's well more than half) of people living in that area (again, most of Asia) have Genghis somewhere in their family tree.

The reasons are historical, not biological. Genghis Khan is thought to have fathered more children than any man in human history. When the Mongols invaded a city, they tended to kill the most powerful men (mayors, governors, generals, etc.,) and send their wives and daughters back to Genghis to be part of his harem. As a result, he's thought to have sired over a thousand children, spread out over a vast geograhpic distance. Throw in his brothers, who each ruled over parts of the empire and had similar sexual histories, if not on quite the same scale, and Khan family DNA (yes, I know that was his title, not his name) is pretty much everywhere.