"'...very warm, loving person, but a conservative Republican...'

I call bullshit. Mutually exclusive."

First, your prejudices are showing. There are many who identify themselves as conservatives and Republicans who are sincere and warm and caring and honest people. Second, the reason this can be so and is not bullshit is that they see the world completely differently than you or I, and they don't at all see their ideas as being hurtful or misguided or misinformed. They see themselves as holders of a rational view of the world, and they see liberals and leftists as either malevolent or crazy. I know...I grew up in such a family and once held those beliefs.

Of course, part of the problem is their lack of real information about the world beyond their bubble; they operate according to a view of the world that is mythical and that bears only scant relationship to the facts as they are. Second, those of them who are honest, generous and caring do not see that many in their party leadership are not at all any of those things, but rapacious power mongers. For that matter, there are certainly those who decried behavior by the Bush administration who now fail to admonish Obama for the same or similar behavior; instead, they do as sincere Republicans do when their party acts contrary to our purported "American" values, or as Christians do when they support domestic and foreign policies that are nothing if not unChristian: they rationalize. They tell themselves stories to explain away the cognitive dissonance of a "law and order" Republican breaking the law, or of a "hope and change" "progressive," black President continuing or attempting to expand on some of Bush's more dismaying policies.

It does no one any good and does not auger well for any hope of open dialogue with one's political opponents to see them all as one undifferentiated mass of caricaturish ogres.

Liquid Love: it's you.

London Lad: Chomsky is not suggesting any possible question as to whether use of torture is valid; he's simply describing the nature of the debate about torture as it is currently taking place among the chattering classes.

It's clear that the Furious Cheneys, the top tag team of torture lovers, (and others who concur with them), argue their position not because there exists any credible doubt that America could or should try accused terrorists domestically, to be either imprisoned here if convicted or freed if acquitted, but simply as a cover for Pere Cheney's complicity in war crimes. This is not about our safety but about Dick Cheney's continued justification for the domestic tyranny he helped manifest in this country, (not that it was wholly new with the Bush/Cheney administration), and to help insure he does not end up in a latter day Nuremberg courtroom.

I am not shocked by the dishonest propaganda that continues to issue from the Cheneys and their comrades; I am shocked at the eagerness of our mainstream media to pay them uncritical attention, to provide them a national pulpit to spew their lies. There is no greater indictment of the intellectual and ethical and professional bankruptcy of our national media than their adamant refusal (not failure) to dissect and demolish the pure self-serving fictions of the Cheneys.

Tomreedtoon said: "It would take all the unemployed and starving auto workers in Michigan to go on a killing spree to surpass what goes on regularly in New York. Stop kidding the rest of the nation. We were this far from officially renaming that place 'Thanotopolis.'"

I've lived in NYC since 1981, and the city has undergone a significant and noticeable transformation in that time. NYC in the 80s looked pretty much like the NYC of the 70s, at least as seen in films such as the original PELHAM 123, and it was a time of high crime and crack crack crack. NYC today is cleaner, safer, and considerably more middle-America friendly.

That said, even in the 80s I traveled by subway around the city at all hours of the day or night, (I worked a night job and I also used to frequent the rock clubs), and I never really felt endangered. Obviously, one knew to avoid certain areas of the city, but the dangers facing New Yorkers going about their business, day or night, was alway greatly exaggerated by the media, and especially so in movie portrayals of an out of control urban jungle. To say that "what goes on regularly in New York" is still (or was ever) as deadly as would be a "killing spree" by all the unemployed auto workers in Michigan is ridiculous, a paranoid fantasy.

Yep, I've heard that some of America's other large cities were always more dangerous than NYC was purported to be.

I will add a second thought to my first post: I'm fortunate to have lived in a fairly decent part of NYC since I moved here, although it was certainly a bit rougher in the 80s than today, but for those who reside in the city's slums, now or in years past, the city certainly was and is a more dangerous place than it has been for me, and one must feel empathy for those who have no choice but to grow up on such mean streets. However, let's be real: most of those consigned to such areas of NY's five boroughs are largely minority populations who have always been underserved by the police while suffering higher victimization by the criminal element in their own communities. What is false is the Hollywood portrayal of white (i.e., affluent or middle-class) protagonists besieged by rampant crime in their own neighborhoods. The white, middle-class movie-going American public may have shivered in fear at the presentation of urban boogeymen assaulting innocents (i.e, those like themselves: white and middle-class) in their homes and streets, but one wonders if they felt any slightest concern for the minorities and the poor or working-class who actually had to live in such crime-ridden environments.