...but I can see why people hate him.

For the record, money is how sex is accomplished for most people. Small towns like the one Keillor idolizes are major centers for meth labs. Those home-baked cookies handed out at Halloween are full of glass shards. And life is short because the rich and powerful are working hard to make our lives short.

Here's a hint, pal. Shop used. I have the sturdiest computer desk in the world, made with real wood, which I bought from a hospital thrift store. (Some people contribute really good furniture to such places. And it's sold cheap, with the money going to help people who can't afford to pay medical bills.)

Ikea sounds as bad as the particle board shelves I bought at Target. Had to have it quick, so slapped them together. I'm now seeing sagging shelves. If I'd gone to a lumber yard, bought some pine boards and glued/nailed together a case myself, it would have lasted forever and been sturdy.

What's worse is that it appeals to you pretentious yuppie clowns who think you're getting style and class with your credit card. You don't get that with money. Sometimes you don't get it at all. But it doesn't come with going into debt to a hack merchant.

Obama is afraid to take the steps to end it - namely, bringing back government work programs - and so is Congress. So I'm looking forward to the riots.

I want to see the unemployed and the hopeless finally get angry and start killing people. And I hope the first to die are the Republican letter-writing stooges like Old Poor Richard and Elephantman, sitting in their cubicles at RNC headquarters, filling places like Salon with Boss Limbaugh's talking points.

But then, I want the CEO's facing angry mobs with the firearms they though were only going to NRA members who would never use them against the rich.

Let's face it. Politics has failed. It's time for blood. And yes, I fully expect some of that blood to be mine, because I'm white and not young and can't run fast. But as long as a bunch of the evil rich get killed as well, I'll take that sacrifice.

You notice how they both repeat talking points? How they never offer any personal information or life experiences? How they are always snarling like Limbaugh or Beck or McCain or any other soulless Republican? If they are not the same person, they might as well be.

Cabdriver, you choose not to believe that these comments aren't funded and published by the rich and powerful, the ones who want to turn America into a plutocracy. You aren't paying attention.

As for you, Anonymous, I honestly hope you are not killed by some crack addict from your neighborhood, or by Elephantman or OPR, or by their bosses who want to deny you health care, education, clean water and air and an education. You have a hard, treacherous road ahead of you. As a white male with some small skills and a shattered heart, I have problems too, but I recognize your road is rougher and more perilous than mine.

My only advice; beware of people like Cabdriver who show you pictures of puppies and kittens and tell you that the good guys always win. You will have to win this on your own. Good luck and stay aware.

...this is what happens when your bosses, the Republicans and the rich, run an education system. You don't want people to be educated, as such. You want them stupid, so you can elect your boss - whether that's Cheney or Limbaugh now isn't important - to further make America a plutocracy. So you cut funding and demand scores based on pointless tests.

I feel sorry for Anonymous. She is brilliant. She understands what's going on. She is courageous. And she will be dead within six months, when some psycho kid lets loose a spray of semi-auto fire in her direction. That's the semi-auto fire that you and your associates at the NRA want to keep legal. And the only objection you have to that fire, Elephantman, is that you wish it was you killing the black girl, instead of a black boy.

Dexter, of which I have not and will never see an episode, appears to be Saw made into a series. An important portion of the American people are sadistic bastards who enjoy violence-porn. It simply took one deceitful producer to put together a hack-em-up program and give it a surface rationale to make it "acceptable" to the public.

And you're right. Just like the similar people who make Grand Theft Auto dance and sing about how their game does not glorify killing the hooker who just serviced you, and does not glorify crime and murder, people who produce gore stuff claim they are not affecting people. (I won't claim "harming our children," the traditional statement about offensive material. There are plenty of adults with the underdeveloped minds of children, many of them in public life.)

So no, Dexter is not a commentary on Abu Gareb, dragging chained-up gays to death behind a pickup truck, poisoning your children and yourself on a trip to Disney World or any of those popular American entertainments. It isn't a commentary at all. It's part and parcel with them.

He didn't write a college dissertation, bringing in fifty pages of the Congressional Record, quotes from the last forty-eight hours of cable news commentators, and the climactic scene of Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light. He wrote something short and to the point.

Unfortunately, it won't last. I bet he's writing several "updates" to bring this column up to its usual overblown length right now.