These are great places to meet the idle rich, but not-so-great places to meet people with real character.

Golf is a particularly red flag; it's not just that a golf course is astonishingly destructive because of the huge amounts of chemicals and water needed to create the artificially smooth surfaces, not just that for example the South Pacific islands are all being devastated by endless golf courses; it's that for, whatever reason, it tends to attracts lawyers, investment bankers, real estate brokers, the same sort of people who generally produce little of value for the people but take huge sums of money for doing so. And did I mention "very white"?

Yes, I know this is a generalization, and thus only partly true - but hang out on golf courses for a few weeks and tell me it isn't true. Sailing clubs are almost as bad though you will meet a somewhat more interesting crowd (but no less white).

This is Salon. So why not get politically involved? The next six months will be some of the most exciting times in the history of American politics; there are many men involved;

you'll meet people who care enough about the world to get off their asses to change it; it'll be a shared emotional experience; and win or lose, you'll have the satisfaction of having fought the good fight.

"But to hold the foot soldier accountable for the tragedy he or she is caught up in is not only disingenuous, it's a bad tactic."

You can't just pass the buck on war crimes that way.

In particular, how can we forgive people for their crimes until they repent? And if we forgive them for free, what incentive is there not to do it again?

If they admit what they have done and seek forgiveness, that's one thing. If they continue to commit murder and are not held accountable, that's quite another.

No forgiveness without repentance; no absolution without an admission of guilt.

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And SHAME SHAME SHAME on you ignorant, ignorant people who can't tell one "Arab" from another. Do you have any idea how stupid you look? It's like believing there were Eskimos at the Alamo.

You disgust me. I'm starting to believe that Iraq was destroyed by the United States simply because the US were too stupid to tell one foreign country from another. A million deaths because of your proud, willful ignorance; it's sickening, you're such awful people.

He's not talking about not vaccinating; he's talking about vaccinating along a slower schedule than usual.

And good for him. Only someone who hasn't read history would skip vaccinating their child; only someone who doesn't read the papers would be unskeptical about Big Pharm. This is a nice middle way.

It's always risky when "those people," cartoonists, reproduce; as we all know, Dick Cheney was the product of an act of sodomy between Charles Adams and Gahan Wilson. At least Keef is doing the right thing!

However, correlation is possible evidence of causality.

Because we can't run experiments back in time, of necessity ANY statement involving the past is going to involve correlative statements; yet some of these statements are false, some true and some unknown.

Instead of using some generic patter you don't fully understand, "Parson Jim", why not try to actually refute the specific argument?

Lots of ways to do so: for example, you could find another feature that's even more heavily correlated with the result.

People are literally dying in the streets in Russia from simple privation: poor food, dreadful housing, water, social services, and the like. The underlying reason is that the money was all taken by organized crime, including people like these parasites in this article.

Hey, Clare Foges, this is Salon, remember? The words "social responsibility" have some meaning here? You can't just write a piece fawning all over these people without mentioning that they got that way by being massive criminals!

I believe the term "house nigger" was used by Harry Belafonte about Colin Powell, referring to Powell's role in selling the Iraq war, a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars to date.

Belafonte had every right to use that word; Powell earned all the derision we can heap on him and a lot more.

Similar, the dislike we have for Clarence Thomas, Condoleeza Rice and others has nothing whatsoever to do with their blackness or lack thereof but their personal corruption and their support for a genocidal war.

Mr. Belafonte had a perfect right to use the term house nigger or any other he saw or sees fit to in order to chastise Mr. Powell for his participation in war crimes that lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

By saying so I am hardly condoning racist or abusive statements in general.

I'd add that both individuals are people of colour; Anglo myself, I'd expect a good beating if I said anything like that myself, and justifiably.

It's unfortunate that there's no good term of abuse for "the honest-looking face in front of the great lie".

Perhaps we can adopt the term powell for this in the same way that quisling has entered the language.

I had the same experience as you had, getting a free game on my first ball; however, when I went back to a pinball game of my youth, I realized that later games have been made easier and flashier.

Mind you, I sorta like 'em easier and flashier :-D but my sense of achievement is somewhat damaged...