"Does anyone really give a damn what is done to those who would happily decapitate/disembowel/incinerate anyone with whom they disagree?"

You swallow the prejudice that "they" want nothing but to kill you, so it's ok to kill them.

That's stupid. You don't know anything about these people want or want to do, you just swallow whatever B.S. your leaders tell you about what these people want to do to you.

OOOOGA BOOOGA!!! ( Hunthorse cowers under bed and cries: "save me, George Bush!!!" )

The only ones I know who are happy to decapitate/disembowel/incinerate people are guys like you.

Is it possible that America looks different if you work in D.C. and are surrounded by the flying monkeys whose chattering drowns out everything else? If you or I were subjected to the 24/7 chatter, might not we start looking at America a bit more like the monkeys do?

And it's also possible that we're wrong about America.

I mean, if Hillary's triangulation was such a bad idea, then how could Bush have squeaked back in in 2004? Isn't it possible that, despite the growth of strong anti-war sentiment, that the bulk of America is still under the sway of war rhetoric?

All the online "liberal" blogs I read strongly object to Hillary's "centrism," and rightly so. But the online "liberal" community is hardly representative of the bulk of America.

"Sartre himself said atheism is an extremely cruel affair."

Truth is also an extremely cruel affair.

It's always hard for believers to comprehend living without belief, which is why so many call atheism "just another belief."

It's not the pot calling the kettle black, but the pot calling the china black because black is the only color it knows.

For a good explanation of the Fed, watch "Money as Debt." ( free download, 45 minutes. )

It's a bit conspiratorial at times, but the explanation of money creation matches exactly what I learned in macro econ, except that the official phrase for "creates new money" is "intermediation." Macro econ does not harp on the perspective of banks making money out of thin air.

The trouble with a gold standard or any fixed money supply system is that without strict controls on wealth accumulation, there will result a money shortage among the not-rich, leading to a very sluggish economy and more poverty then before.

Creating money in a debt arrangement let's the economy grow quickly, meaning people get active. That's got an upside. The movie uses the word "debt" like a talisman of evil. The problem is not debt, but that the banks and the Fed hold most all of it .

There is no simple fix to the problems of debt-based money. Simply returning to the gold standard is just an expression of frustration and blind faith in the old ways. Actually devising a better system will take brilliant minds and will be a really tough sell. We already know how truly brilliant people are dismissed in America. Getting rich quick is our religion.

And getting rich quick with a gold standard would be much, much harder. How many Americans would get behind that?

"The anthrax mailer is still on the loose"

I've made this point from time to time. Only Democrats and a few press mavericks received the dusty gift. The anthrax was the finest kind, only made by the United States in top secret circumstances. The matter has fallen down the MSM memory hole.

Interesting, no? Coincidences? Of course they are.

The word "conspire" has morphed from meaning people doing things in secret to meaning ridiculous or outrageous phenomena seen only in movies, T.V. and third world governments. To talk of such things is to be crazy by default.

"Later on, we'll conspire,
As we dream by the fire
To face unafraid,
The plans that we've made,
Walking in a winter wonderland."

- Winter Wonderland, p 1934

A government where some people would plot to send poison to their opponents to frighten them? Or some sympathetic insiders taking the initiative and being left alone by federal law enforcement as a reward? Any and all real Americans could never imagine in their wildest dreams of anything happening in America like that. It just can't happen here.

So fuggedabout it. The Dems are voting this way because they're..... uh.... corrupt and unprincipled. Yeah, that's the ticket. Corrupt, unprincipled, devious, backstabbing traitors.

That's what's really happening.

I love Sondheim in general and "Sweeney Todd" in particular, and Tim Burton is the wrong guy to do it. I would expect Burton to weight it down with excessive visual nonsense and in general ridicule the subtlety of Sondheim's characters. Burton has little use for subtlety in general. His "Batman" was gauche and laughable. Ugh.

That said, I'll probably watch it just because it is "Sweeney Todd."

The review is not very helpful, for reasons well stated already.

Which is the problem that Bolling constantly faces.

Perhaps he needs a cute animal character with sarcastic wit.

Nah.

Whatever happened to the paperless office?

or the flying car in every garage?

Dick Tracy watches, anyone?

New stuff gets added to the old, the old doesn't go away.

Steve is just another techno-huckster.

< training to be more be-bop-o >

Salon should require all columnists to respond at least 3 times to the letters section, the way Greenwald does.

That Salon will buy a Shapiro article and print it without any requirement that he justify his smarm is not being accountable to it's readers.

In this new inter-connected world, even hack writer must reckon up.

viagra sounds really unnatural and weird.

Try this instead, sleep well, exercise, take vitamin E and use vitamin E lotion on your parts.

It won't leave you feeling like some mega-pharma-corp has you by the jewels. Literally.

And cdevon's post was great.