"it took all Thomas' significant strength not to jump up out of his seat and throttle uncle Ted"

Right on, the strength of wanting the position so much that he would sit and put up with the horrible abuse of having his filthy mouth revealed on national television.

What a suckup. What a coward. But I bet you would have the balls to attack a U.S. Senator on national T.V.

"Anyone who buck's the trend get's (sic) my vote."

So you'll be voting for Dennis Kusinich. Right on again, brother!

The right way to look at Affirmative Action is after reading a dozen books about America's sickening history of slavery, Jim Crow laws, segregation and the K.K.K. It also helps to appreciate the difference between individual anecdotes and aggregate effects.

Giving a few less qualified blacks preference over somewhat more qualified whites is a small price for society to pay as recompense for 10 generations of abominable evil.

That's what makes anti-AA whites sound like whiners to me.

As it has always been. The Web has changed society in a deeply radical way, so deeply we won't be able to guess what's coming. It brings the power of publishing to anyone, supports thinly distributed subgroups and fringe groups, helps create new social associations that couldn't have happened previously.

Our ideas about information and freedom are changing. I imagine the wired world is very unsettling to some folks.

Let's replace all electric heaters with computers of equal power output. It all ends up as heat anyhow, and if the computers were connected to the Web they could be working on numerical tasks for science while keeping our pinkies warm.

When the primary concern is "electibility," what do we do? We try to guess what everyone else thinks.

What America thinks it knows about America comes from T.V.

We're being led again, a bunch of "playas" being played.

I'm voting for John Edwards.

don't prove that real conspiracies don't exist, they just show how most people aren't equipped with the critical thinking skills to analyze the world and the judgment and emotional detachment to know when to stop and admit ignorance.

Real Conspiratorial Organizations include: the Ku Klux Klan, the various mafias, all military organizations, political parties, and corporate boards, and it's probably true that some members of some secret societies conspire. If your definition of a conspiracy includes a requirement of "evil intent," then you're already in error, because "evil intent" is in the eye of the beholder, not an objective criteria. It's imperative to decouple your moral judgment from your institutional analysis.

Most conspiracy theories are ridiculous for the same reason that most folk music is awful.

Isn't it interesting how presidential races have all been so close recently, and the media seems to prefer it that way?

Also that the media anointed "front runners" happen to be the two candidates that until recently would have been considered ground breaking long shots?

Given the common understanding that the race should be an easy Democratic win, it seems likely that the media is playing the Democratic primary voters by manipulating their "electability" perceptions.

Edwards could win handily if these voters would think for themselves, rather then listening to the media and getting swept up in this transparent game.

Bill Gates is probably not who you, or me, or anyone else thinks he is.

You could put an army of saints on the board of a major corporation and it would still do bad things. It's the structure, not the people.

Criticize the Israeli government? You're a Nazi! A Jew Hater!

It's amazes me how many American hotheads know *everything* about the history of Israel. They will cite numbers and years, deaths and incidents so easily you might almost think they're all professional ME diplomats. I've caught several citing complete nonsense, now I just expect most of their "facts" to be crap.

What a lot of fools they are, willing to lie about a conflict that has no effect on their lives at all.

Here in America, the whole affair is a giant distraction, a circus, another irrelevant but absorbing topic to get wrapped up in.

So we won't have to mind our own damn business.

Keep it coming, Gary. Facts are hard for some people to swallow, especially after a diet of distracting lies.

The Liberal Media hates Republicans, they're always telling us terrible things about Republican leaders, like they've molested their kids or got caught looking for gay hookers, or some other stuff that must be lies because our Republican politicians must be good, they're conservative!

The Liberal Media only sucks up to the Democrats, like when they said that Al Gore invented the Internet, or when they said Howard Dean should be President because he's got such vocal presence. They're still helping the Democrats by keeping a sure loser like John Edwards out of the primary, and we know how unbeatable minority candidates are!!

DAMN THOSE LIBERALS WHO RUN THE MEDIA. THEY HATE REPUBLICANS!

Other then talk and spend my money on useless junk like SDI.

I'm sick of wing-nuts claiming that Ronnie "defeated the Soviet Union." It's a load of crap.

It the American right-wing hadn't been so damn belligerent, Krushev could have ended the Cold War in 59. The claim that Reagan's promiscuous spending brought down the USSR is like a cigarette smoker claiming he would have died sooner but for the smokes.

If anyone deserves credit, it's Gorbachev, not President Geritol.