I understand completely what Mr. Keillor is talking about here. Before moving, I spent the first 26 years of my life in Colorado's 4th Congressional district, full of genuine, down to earth and hardworking individuals who are generous and charitable.

That being said, the 4th District is also one of the most conservative districts in America. It's current Representative- the atrocious embarrassment Marilyn Musgrave- was the indivudual who introduced the "Defense of Marriage Act" to Congress. In fact, her platform for election and re-election in 2004 (shudder) was little but a open homophobic attack. She has been utterly ineffective as a legislator, but pushed all of the right red-herring social issues enough to get two terms. (A great article in the current issue of Rolling Stone focuses directly on this).

So it is certainly hard to reconcile. I knew kind, sweet people who would give you the shirt off their back, but who also considered gays an utter abomination and thought that we should all just "shut up and go back into the closet"- or worse. The attack on Matthew Shephard happened less than an hour away from where I went to college.

And as a earlier poster said, there is vicious mean streak a mile wide that runs just under the surface of red state politics.

But- I am hopeful- and I think it is changing. The economy and the war (with all of its costs) are hitting people much closer to home than they did in 2004. Social issues are still evolving (though, as a gay man it feels like a snail's pace some days). So the "3 G's" aren't drawing the votes like they used to.

And as to the article, rural citizens might be hardy, but I think living in a large metropolis makes you pretty hardy too.

My closest friend works as a funeral director in a western state, and the amount of suicides and suspected suicide cases they get has been on a sharp upturn for the past few months. He suspects that many of these deaths have an economic tie.

I wish that these marauding fat cats would realize that it's not just dollars at stake here, but LIVES and livelihoods. This is what Joe Biden means when he speaks about the dignity people have when they are working, and the sense of dignity that a job gives to working people.

When you pull the rug out from under an entire segment of our society, this results in higher stress, decreased sense of self worth (not just monetary, obviously) and a bleak sense of the future. How are people in their sixties expected to start over once their retirement funds have been depleted due to Wall Street wheeling and dealing?

These rich bastards at the top have the blood of thousands on their hands- literally.

Everything Mr. Conason has touched upon in this article is true. The "War on Drugs" has been a costly failure. Rather than solving the drug problem, it exacerbated it.

We spend billions every year combating drugs the wrong way- in the words of Ani DiFranco we "criminalize the symptoms while we spread the disease".

We put more drug officers on the streets, who must be payed. We build more prisons for the offenders who are subjected to absurdly draconian laws and sentences. We must then house these offenders in prisons, rather than rehabilitating them. They return to the streets- not as recovered and reformed addicts, but as hardened ex-convicts.

And yet, everywhere in America it is easy to find so-called illegal drugs. Pot itself is so prevalent it may as well be legal. The War on Drugs has been a costly failure. This nation's attitude toward drugs, and methods of keeping dangerous drugs out of our society requires a complete overhaul.

But politicians have been beholden to this behemoth of an ideology since the Reagan years. The suggestion by any candidate that the "War on Drugs" could use changing would cost them their election for being "soft on crime" - despite its glaring necessity.

and a firm mind.

Fuck the GOP for always pandering to the most base and negative aspects of human behavior in order to scare people into voting for them.

They should all be ashamed of themselves.

I'm so enraged over this I'm at a loss.

Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime.

Whatever brainless slug brayed this nonsense at the local Palin/McCain hate fest should be detained and questioned by the Secret Service. Threatening the life of a presidential candidate cannot be legal.

Imagine what would have happened had someone dared spout this tripe at one of "The Decider's" rallies- they would have been arrested, detained and shipped off to a black site where Blackwater thugs pulled out their toenails out as the "liberal media" decried such an outburst.

So, pray tell, where is the response here? Where is the questioning? Where is the outcry in the mainstream media? Better yet- Why are McCain and Palin not denouncing this as soon as it happens?

similar in respect to what Jung said- that we have a distinct emotional investment in believing that there is a benevolent, technologically superior extraterrestrial race which will save us from our self destructive behavior.

The threat of nuclear war is a real and pressing threat that has been with us for over sixty years. We have the capacity as human beings to annihilate ourselves and a great deal of the life on this planet.

Ultimately, however, the solution to this problem resides with us. We have the capacity to decide, individually and collectively, that large scale nuclear destruction is the worst possible outcome for the human race. Equally, we cannot trust that there will be a benevolent force from above- either extraterrestrial or spiritual- which will save us from that destruction.