"But the idea that... government will have no role, the federal government has no role in this, that in a moment when only the federal government is big enough to actually do stuff -- to just ignore all that and just say 'government is the problem, corruption, earmarks, wasteful spending,' it's just a form of nihilism."

The main problem I see with the GOP message is that it begs the question, "well, if you think government is the problem and shouldn't do anything, why do you want to be part of it?" I mean, if they really believe that government should do nothing and private industry is the answer, why aren't they all out there using the millions of dollars they spend running for office to start new businesses?

My investment advisor says that stocks are the only thing that people won't buy when they go on sale!

Just add me to the list of people who say: who cares what an old, washed-up comedian says? Why is anyone wasting electrons on this? Are we going to go around the country hunting down everyone who has used a racial slur about the president and blogging about them? Is this really a good use of time and energy?

... are supposed to be spent on projects that will create jobs, not pay down debt. So he wants the stimulus funds, but only to use for something that won't actually stimulate!

It's hard to think that $165 million is not a lot of money. But it's less than one-tenth of one percent of the $167 BILLION in bailout funds AIG will be getting. When you look at it that way, all this fuss about getting back our money is kind of silly.

Yes, it's infuriating that the very people who screwed the economy are profiting off it once again, but in practical terms, it's hardly worth going to extreme, possibily illegal, measures to get back an amount of money that is barely a drop in the bucket. Unfortunately, what these bonuses have done is allow politicians of all stripes to grandstand and make pandering symbolic gestures while at the same time distracting attention from what's being done with the billions or even trillions of dollars being spent to revive the economy.

If you think the taxpayer is being screwed by the .1 percent of the AIG bailout being spent on bonuses, what you really should be doing is holding our representatives' feet to the fire to make sure the other 99.9 percent -- which is being spent on who knows what -- is being spent properly!

The numbers make a difference not in how mad we get, but in how much time and energy we devote to the issue. The president, the Treasure Department, the Congress and the media have all been obsessing about this for days now when frankly, there are issues that are more important but less emotional hot-buttons they could have spent those resources on. In fact, it's a classic exercise in scapegoating, which is now extending not only to the people who got the bonuses, but to investigations of "who knew and when did they know it."

Maybe it makes people feel better to have a focus for all the fear and anxiety they have about the economy, but from a practical standpoint, it's ridiculously wasteful to spend so much time, energy and money niggling about a sum that is less than one-tenth of one percent of the total federal funds being devoted to bailing out AIG.

Patti is great because she says what everyone is thinking without any sugar coating. She cuts to the chase and doesn't pretend that a man will love a woman for her mind, at least not if he isn't hooked by the exterior package long enough to get to know her mind.

I also love that she while she encourages women to do their best to get a guy's attention, after they've got that attention, she doesn't encourage them to pursue a relationship that doesn't feel right, just for the sake of hooking up with a rich guy (and presumably making Patti money). She's not a pimp, encouraging women to sell themselves -- just a proponent of the old saying that it's as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one.

What's more upsetting to me was the description of Kim Kardashian in the linked article as "zaftig" -- which is defined variously as "plump," "slightly fat" and "full-figured." I was going to say, "In what universe is Kim Kardashian zaftig," but then I realized it was in our own sick, flesh-hating universe. How depressing.

Just when I think the right wing media can't get any more delusional, another double-speaker raises his ugly head. But it's okay with me, because the more obvious the lunacy of some of their paranoid delusions becomes, the more it casts doubt on their more reasonable-sounding rhetoric. What's even more delusional than the rhetoric itself is that they haven't realized how crazy they look and have refused to listen to sympathetic allies who try to point out how nuts they are sounding. More, please!

Not the contestants. The producers. Looking at their photos, I think we should be grateful that their impulse to exploit, humiliate and otherwise cause people pain and suffering has been channeled into reality TV. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure they would have ended up serial killers. That Darnell dude is particularly scary, in a Manson-ish kind of way.