You say: "How else do you convince the majority of Americans so consistently to vote against their own interests?"

I think you are right: propaganda plays a role. But that's only part of the equation. A lot of people imagine themselves on a road to a kind of success that will never really materialize. People vote their hopes, rather than rationally taking stock of probable outcomes. I don't want to soak the rich, because I'm going to be rich myself someday, and goddamn it if I'm going to let some nerdy bureaucrat in Washington hit me up after a lifetime of hard work! My retirement is in a 401K, so leave the regulators out of it! And so on.

It also seems to me that propaganda or no, there are a lot of truly gullible people out there - a lot of them are politicians. A lot of them are the MSM talking heads themselves. I don't think they are knowingly spewing propaganda, i think they truly believe the tripe they spew. Warner dismissing bloggers because they think the terrorist threat is overblown?! You know, any monkey with a wrench could derail a train tomorrow. If America is truly under siege, there should be trains flying off the tracks all over the place. We have deployed the greatest military force the world has ever known to combat what? A handful of backwards mountain dwelling hillbillies with box cutters, kalashnikovs and other left-over military surplus (a lot of it ours) and video recorders. I'm sure they would be derailing trains right now if they could get enough money for their donkeys to afford the trip over here. But I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

Are there people in the world who hate America? You bet. There always have been. There always will be. Are we really going to continue turning this country upside down, spending hundreds of billions of dollars in the process, year after year, to combat these "terrorists"? Dear god I surely hope not.

Is there a politician alive who could survive after saying such a thing? To me, that's the really interesting question. Dennis Kucinich has probably come closest. Look at how the electorate responds. Should we blame propaganda? Should we blame the media? Should we blame politicians? Or should we blame ourselves?

Why have a relationship that isn't mutually rewarding to both parties? This woman apparently wants the men in her life to sacrifice their own dreams and ambitions on the alter of her own desires - perhaps they are supposed to be proxies for the missing baby. I'm sure there are plenty of men out there who don't want babies; but I don't think I would recommend any of them date someone so empathetically challenged.

Don't blame this party or that party, blame yourself. As long as the citizens of this country continue to elect corporate stooges and moralizing windbags, we will continue to suffer the consequences: bad laws written to serve coffered interests. Mandatory minimum sentences for petty drug offenses. Perpetual copyrights. The patriot act. And of course our immigration laws.

Every time a new law is passed, a whole new class of criminal springs into existence. Your daughter becomes a "pirate". Your neighbor is deported. Your librarian starts reporting your reading habits. Your hard-working co-worker goes to jail. Maybe you are next.

Instead of the land of the free, we have the land of the incarcerated. It's no wonder this country's jail population is out-of-control: we've turned the country over to self-appointed ethicists who's self-interest trumps the greater good.

Enforce the laws, I say! Without exception. When the President's nieces are in jail, the former Vice President's son is in jail, when children (and adults) of privilege all over this country start suffering the consequences; then maybe, just maybe, the tide will start to turn. Of course, our privileged scions won't suffer like the hoi polloi, so don't hold your breath. We'll probably have to wait until our jail population reaches a voting majority (which shouldn't be too long now) before we seen any real change.

Personally, I think _all_ laws should have a sunset provision. It would be incumbent on our legislature to continuously review and renew those laws. That should keep them occupied enough that the only laws that remain on the books are the ones that really matter. Instead, we have a system whereby the number of laws, and thereby the number of criminals, increases forever.

As long as we continue to scoff at every non-mainstream candidate, we'll continue to get nothing but more of the same. We deserve what we get. Will we ever look in the mirror? Will we ever stop trying to circumscribe what's wrong with other people's behavior, and realize that we're all in this together?

If I continuously post under a pseudonym, I may very well at some point disclose enough information that anyone who cared to sift through my posts could figure out who I am. What if, at some point, however, there's something I'd like to say that I wouldn't like to associate with my name. It might be something that should be said, but which would cause me a great deal of personal grief if I were exposed. That wouldn't be good, would it?

Again, if you at Salon have the wherewithall to reveal an anonymous poster's identity to the authorities if something truly untoward occurs, then what specific benefit does eliminating anonymous posts confer?

Best regards.

OK, here's a topical news item produced by Fox News [1] about the online "gang" known as "anonymous". Scarrrrryyyyy!!!

Did you see those vans blow up!! Ban anonymous!

Does Salon want to make the same leaps of logic as Fox News? I hope not.

I picked this up on Slashdot [2], which Joan somewhat chidingly refers to in her post. Salon might learn a thing or two by reading Slashdot from time to time.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNO6G4ApJQY

[2] http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/07/28/1145204.shtml