I thought I hated the "Princess" culture. This year we see that skank and whore are the popular costumes for little girls. When Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty are positive role models you know the inmates have taken over the asylum.

Under the circumstances anything that encourages girls to learn things, dare, do for themselves and cultivate interests outside the pop culture is to be applauded. If people take your advice it will indeed be irrelevant. But we should fight it every step of the way.

The fact that you don't even mention Kucinich and his (mis)treatment by the MSM shows that some of their dismissive hostility has sneaked past your normally Progressive convictions.

Every time the Little People get uppity and begin to change things the People Who Matter find us a war or direct the Fed to turn off the spigot. From Al Smith and William Jennings Bryan to Prescott Bush to union busting, NAFTA and the marginalization of Kucinich it's the same story. There are goodies for the wealthy. For the rest of us it's jam tomorrow and jam yesterday but never jam today and an income and wealth distribution that closely approximates Guatemala.

So instead they sent us cheap Walmart crap and demolished our industrial economy with the aid of Reagan, Clinton and House of Bush. We should have gone with the ten million hot Chinese women. Or as the late Robert Heinlein said in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress "Tell 'em to send us hoors, thousands and thousands of hoors! I marry 'em ya betcha!"

...specifically LBJ's "Daisy". Vote for Obama and we all die, especially the cute little White children featured in the piece.

Feh.

If I wanted to vote for a Republican scaremonger I'd vote for a real Republican scaremonger.

I worked in nursing for long enough to get thoroughly sick of the ravings of the bowel-obsessed. As long as they're moving reasonably regularly and without any problems don't worry about them. Get over it. Mommy is not going to praise you about how you made a good poop.

Your colon is not full of 25 pounds of "toxics" or half an acre of convoluted diverticulitis.

You don't have to go three times a day.

You don't need to have your bowel "cleansed".

You don't need to check the size and shape and weight and smell of each excretion unless something is seriously wrong.

What this obsession with untreated effluent does tell us is that we live in a time when people feel they have no control over their lives. The natural neurotic reaction is to try to take control of what one can. This often leads to eating disorders, health cults, an obsession with "purity" and, yes, a fixation on the toilet.

Deal with the underlying problem, anxiety about the uncertainties of the world. Stop making a religion out of every dump you take.

..."Ah jest cain't bring myself to vote for no nigra."

The Democratic leadership swallowed the pawn ticket for its tiny shriveled gonads in 2000 and hasn't dared to contradict its Republican Masters since. They've give Bush almost everything he wants and never ever filibustered or otherwise stopped a single bill when the Greedy Old Plutocrats demanded one. Now, after a few symbolic rounds they're about to give the "Good German" defense and warrantless wiretapping without cause the force of Law.

The first act of Speaker Pelosi was to say that impeachment was "off the table" because it would get in the way of accomplishing "important things". The Dems' accomplishments since becoming the majority Party have amounted to the thin end of nothing whittled down to a point. If they run away crying at the thought of defending the Constitution or carrying out their legal responsibilities for fear of "appearing weak" how can we ever expect them to lead?

We've had close to thirty years of demolishing all trade barriers and accelerating the destruction of US industry. We've seen median wages, lifespan, health, wealth and security fall. At the same time we've seen the rich get richer, the middle class shrink and our income distribution achieve the inequality of Guatemala and Paraguay. NAFTA has had the effect of lowering wages both in the US and Mexico. Every time there's been a field from engineering to nursing to trucking that enjoyed high wages the government has seen fit to "globalize" it through H1-B, L1 and H2 visas or the NAFTA trucking program which eliminates training, standards and maintenance requirements.

China, Japan, Vietnam and India are eager to protect their own industries and to pick clean the carcass of ours.

But we can't be protectionist because that would be "inefficient" or "backwards" and slow the reduction of labor to what economists call the Natural Wage. The Natural Wage is the bare minimum which will support a person's ability to work.

The government is supposed to look out for our interests, not the interests of the global cartels and the hundred families who own almost all of the country. Give me protectionism any day.