Giuliani is right.

If Al Gore had been elected in 2000 and, (somehow) re-elected in 2004, we would still be trying to get a UN resolution passed to censure the Afghan Taliban government for their role in 9/11.

Conspiracy? Stupidity?

Who cares?

All I know is that, for the first time in 51 years, I have quit watching the NBA playoffs at all.

If it is entertaining to do it this way, why not have a broadcast of the commissioner telling us who should be champs, instead of televising the games?

(Not fom Phoenix)

Bush hasn't been impeached because, even if it is true that 39% of the public want to do so, they are limited to those with a hallucinogenic worldview and those weakminded enough to believe them.

Hard to expand that group into a majority.

Lomborg may or may not use selective data. I don't know.

However, Goodstein is telling flat untruths.

He says the EU is meeting its' Kyoto goals without economic damage. Actually, they are failing miserably except in the sense that they have shut down dirty (and money-losing) industrial relics in ex-Warsaw Pact places like the former East Germany. Even Germany's very modest additional efforts have raised electricity prices 50%.

They will eventually give up and buy fake CO2 reductions from places like China and Russia.

Seems to me that if you have a desire to do something no one is willing to pay you enough (in your opinion) to do (say, be an "activist"), you (or, indeed, Ms Taylor or Mr. Brook) shouldn't complain if you have to sacrifice financially to do it.

You definitely shouldn't demand that the state pay you more by taking money out of the pockets of people who are doing something others ARE willing to pay for, or saving, or investing, or taking risks in their own business. After all, some of those people probably regard your particular cause as undesirable.

"It justifies everything, explains everything, ends all argument." (Kamiya re 9/11)

I agree with the sentiment rather than Kamiya.

The reality is that there are religious zealots out there who want to kill us and our fellow citizens.

They want to kill us, regardless of how multiculturally sensitive we are toward Islam.

They want to kill us, even if we agree to sacrifice Israel or existing Arab regimes to them.

Regardless of Bush's virtues or faults, he at least understands this. The babbling class does not.

The first half of this century is going to be enormously more competitive than the second half of the last. This is because the half of the world population that disqualified itself from the world economy through wrong economic and ideological choices is now competing (India, China, Russia, the old Warsaw pact nations, others).

For decades, GM management let the UAW run the company and assumed we would buy their cars regardless of price and poor quality. (I once had an Oldsmobile that used seven water pumps during its' life.)

It was like the 1940s Clark Gable western where the thug selling protection tells the merchants to up the price of beans to cover his take. GM simply can't do pass the costs to us anymore. Likewise, the UAW probably can't get the rest of us ("the government") to pick up the tab. Jobs based on these dreams can no longer be guaranteed.

Katharine Mieszkowski seems to be one of those people who wants the government to compel everyone to live her preferred lifestyle: crammed into rabbit warren high rises and subway cars.

Personally, I fled New York City and financial limitations precisely to avoid that lifestyle.

I don't mind her living as she pleases, but would prefer it if she took a similar attitude toward me and the majority like me.

Laurel962 addressed this issue much better than my own post. She descibes the reasons why things are as they are, and why most people prefer them that way.

The two great constraints of most people, ignored by Ms. Mieszkowski and people like Phoenix Woman, are time and physical energy. Most folks would prefer to spend both doing things they need to or want to do, rather than conforming to others' imposed ideal form of urban or suburban architecture.

Calling someone who disagrees a "pig" as Phoenix Woman does, merely shows the outraged, intolerant bent of the utopian crowd. Perhaps they have too much time on their hands.

The nations of Western Europe have already moved into an anti-Israeli mode to further their commercial interests and, they think, avoid irritating Islamic terrorists.

The US left (see Salon) has moved into not only an anti-Israeli mode, but essentially a full scale belief in "Zionist" (they can't even SAY "Jewish") conspiracies. They appear poised to take over governance here.

Given this: Who else do you think the Israelis will elect?

Alternative question: Should the Holocaust Jews have been more conciliatory toward Hitler?

Kamiya's article is as pointless as the negotiations will be. "Peace" negotiations, however, seem to be a "check-the-box" requirement for every president.

What we have is one group whose desire, since childhood, is to exile or, preferably, kill everyone in a second group. The second group has been successful in preventing both.

What possible compromise exists?

You couldn't find a single pseudo-celebrity who thought a REPUBLICAN was a good choice.

People were generally poorer in the 1950s!!

Plus many had the beginnings of their careers delayed by the war.

Just as today, no one but the poor, the infirm and those who live in a downtown morass WANTS to use public transit.

A pointless discussion!

The economics of supply & demand will condition our response to peak oil. Three billion new people want to use that oil. They will not volunteer to stay poor to keep the planet a degree cooler in the year 2100.

They also want to use a lot of coal. We will have to learn to adjust to any climate change in this century, regardless of whether the doomsday models are correct or not.

Massive change will not happen in the way Mr. Romm desires.