Pacificwhim that Mr. Jackson had better stuff to work with. Mr. Pullman is a great writer, but he's no J.R.R. Tolkien.

Haven't seen the movie yet (plan to this weekend). Have read all 3 of the books & in them the monkey avatar is definitely sentinent.

E.Z. up above excerpted a Pullman comment (you can go to his/her post to read said comment) and then said this about Mr. Pullman's quote: 'There is no way to read this as anything but a condemnation of the Catholic Church (and any other religious organizations).'

If you read Mr. Pullman's comment in that way, it must mean that you agree that his quote is a valid characterization of various religious organizations (Catholic church included).

I read it more as a condemnation of evil people who infest an organization & use/abuse the love & respect adherents to a particular faith have for the many good aspects of their faith to enrich themselves & persecute their enemies.

Surely, those honest and kind people in the Catholic church (and other religious organizations) cannot be included as participating in or applauding the documented crimes committed by the evil persons who have parasitized their organizations?

I think Mr. Pullman is lamenting the repeated failures of the Catholic church (and other religious organizations) to properly purge their bodies of the sick, twisted people who 'give religion a bad name'.

I have to agree with the poster up above who pointed out that Mr. Smith's guarantee was a little more measured than Mr. Namath's.

That said, he shouldn't have shot his mouth off. A team like the Patriots you want to be basting in their own hubris. You throw the guarantee into the mix & all of a sudden they're not focusing on how great they are & how many tickets they'll need for the Super Bowl, etc.

You had me LMAOing at your snarky post up above.

Wished I'd written it!

Hope you get a star.

Mr. Greenwald would have cleared this up by now, but I think Amity is correct in that if/when the loathsome Sen. from Tel Aviv decides to caucus with the Repubs. that would change the majority/minority situation (provided Sen. Sanders voted with Demos., I think Darth Cheney would be given a vote to break the tie).

I actually wouldn't put it past Lieberman to do that if it looks like nothing is going to happen on Iran (that he wants to happen). He knows that (God willing) after 2008 we should have enough cushion to tell him to suck ass & strip him of all seniority, etc.

for your prompt & courteous reply. Interesting article at Kos. If that is the way it is, I don't see why we kiss ass to Lieberman so much.

Now I'm OK with Sen. Clinton, think she would make a fine president (so, so much better than what we are plagued with now). However, I remember her years in the White House (as 1st spouse & one of Pres. Clinton's core advisors) & wonder how she wasn't able to suss out that Linda Tripp was an evil republican spy. IMO, it shouldn't have been that hard to figure out.

Now she's not the only one of his aides that I gig for that, but you would think she'd be very discriminating in her appraisals of any hold-overs who would be working in the White House (like Tripp).

posted this: 'Just last week some Israeli professor in the Ivy league pleaded guilty to beating his wife to death. He beat her to death while she was wrapping presents because he objected to her taking their daughter for a shopping trip.'

You know, you only have the self-serving 'confession' of the murderer to base your statement on. The other person in the 'argument' is not here to tell her side of the story.

You shouldn't take a convicted murderer's statement at face value.

The Browns are a cold weather team too. I've sat in Browns Stadium & it can get mighty cold when that wind comes howling off Lake Erie.

Makes our fans sorta surly.

because if Keyes (R - Crazytown) is in it, it makes him look quite reasonable & sane by comparision.

Actually compassionate, for a conservative (heh).

of 3.5 years (too short in my book) probably has something to do with it being up in Canada (IMO, they have sentencing guidelines that mirror those of Western European nations much more than they do ours).

Maybe some of our Canadian posters could chime in.

I don't think it was necessary for the judge to say what he said in open court (makes it sound like that was a mitigating factor or something in the 3.5 year sentence). He certainly could have verbally reamed her out in private about her lack of savvy.

Judas Guttenberg mentioned some up above: 'In our surveillance society it's difficult to buy (or even use Google to research) equipment for the discreet growing of marijuana (aka ganja, the chronic, kind buds, santa claus, etc.).'

Over the past weekend I learned another word for high quality marijuana: 'The droll'. Since we Salonites like to be on top of our current slang, I thought I'd pass it on..

who asked this up above: 'If so, how do we know that Babe Ruth didn't drink a lot of grapefruit juice, which might have gone unremarked-on at the time? If it were later discovered that Babe Ruth did drink a lot of grapefruit juice, which we now consider a performance enhancing substance, would we have to take away his home run record?'

I'm pretty sure that if the Babe drank alot of grapefruit juice, it was fortified with gin.

Ah, grapefruit juice. You can drink anything with grapefruit juice (and that's all you'll taste).