I didn't love it quite as much as the writer - but I liked it, and I appreciated it more thanks to the review.

Keep up the good work! I subscribe for the politics, not the film reviews, but perhaps I'm wrong-thinking...

(I correct myself - rape is always a woman's issue, and will continue to be even if we fix the horrors of the jail system.)

...using "rape" in these contexts doesn't bother me particularly - people do the same with "murder", right?

In fact, it elevates the concept into "the ultimate badness" (within the context of "hyperbole"). I've heard people use "genocided" in the same context.

What bugs me is the word "gay" used as meaning "lame" in 20-somethings - even, I might add, by people who've spent some large portion of their lives gay-oriented. They always get a "Socratic lecture" as follows.

"That outfit is gay? Does that mean it's stylish?"

"I don't get it, all the gay men I know dress very well?"

"It's just a figure of speech? Cool! Can I say the outfit is really nigger, then?"

(Or if needs be, "People have been killed over that word. You sound like a Republican.")

Unfortunately, a sad fact of life is that rape isn't a woman's issue in America any more - because many (even most?) rapes are in jail, with men as the target.

(I say "even most" because even though it seems pretty clear that more individual women than men are raped overall, the rate of repeat rape is much higher behind bars.)

Some schlub beats his wife and goes to jail - as he should!

But when government officials actually torture men to death, suddenly enforcing the law is "settling political scores".

Mr. Keillor, there are hundreds of thousands dead in Iraq because the Bush administration tortured men in horrible ways, killing quite a lot of them, in order to fabricate evidence against Iraq.

Notice how the criminals in charge get bolder and bolder with their actions over time. Why? Because they can count on quislings like you to make sure that they are always and forever above the law, no matter how horrible their crimes, because they're *special*, *exalted* people. If I punched one person in the face, I'd go to jail, but they can torture people to death in prison camps and never lose a night's sleep because enforcing the laws against murder is just "settling political scores" against these *important* people.

So here's yet another massively pro-military President, determined to expand the war in Afghanistan, sending missile strikes into Pakistan... and yet everyone gives him an A on foreign policy? Unreal!

Well over 40,000 Americans die in cars every year.

In many (most?) places, seatbelts are the law.

*You're being irresponsible by not seatbelting your kid.*

And also not getting the kid to wear a helmet, for that matter.

Adults do these things - wear helmets and seatbelts - why shouldn't kids? What are they learning? "My parents don't care if I'm injured or killed." "Taking pointless risks is acceptable."

I very much feel that kids today are overprotected and should be allowed to take risks like walking to school, using powertools and the like - because these are risks they will learn from.

Being irresponsible teaches them nothing.

Let's start with a system where the current securities laws are enforced. Is that, RFT, so very hard for you to envision?

The fact is that the managers of AIG and many other companies looted their own business, leaving it worth far far less than zero, and pocketed the money.

There are numerous laws against this sort of activity. These are felonies; and the SEC is perfectly capable of jailing anyone they like for this sort of thing - they do it all the time.

Now, what about "capitalism", RFT? You might not have heard of this, RFT, but in fact in "capitalism" when a company becomes less than zero, it goes out of business. Certainly, if I lost all my money, no government would bail me out. Why, then, are we giving trillions of dollars to people who grossly mismanaged their businesses into the ground?

The reasoning is that the people currently in these businesses are threatening to deliberately destroy the world economy if we do this (and I'm not exaggerating - read AIG's own press releases).

At this point, the government has every legal, moral and fiduciary right to seize these dangerous, criminal, failed businesses and systematically unwind their portfolios. Please don't tell me this couldn't happen - this happens all the time, this even happened to a company I'd worked for (Drexel Burham Lambert, a company I'd written option models for for years).

And everything above I've written doesn't require the slightest change to the current laws - instead, it requires enforcement of those self-same laws.

Why, RFT, is this so hard for you to conceive of, a country where today's law is actually enforced on rich and poor alike? Perhaps you believe, like many others, that the powerful are today's natural aristocracy and deserve special treatment. If so, RFT, there are plenty of dictatorships that you could move to, and you'd probably be quite welcome there.

You must already be dropping things on the floor, despite your very best efforts. So, (after your review) lower your hours somewhat (don't let them see you do it but do). Things will start to drop on the floor - don't take it personally, they simply need to hire someone else.

Be as apologetic as ever, but say, "I simply think it's humanly impossible for me to not to drop things on the floor - there are just too many tasks."

Detach, relax, don't worry if you drop a few eggs, because they are throwing too many at you.

Don't ACT detached or relaxed - to "them" - but be that way in your head.