It's a fallacy that the pinkie has no function to the hand. 80% of a the strength of a typical person's hand is powered by the ring and pinkie fingers. The "big" fingers - index and social fingers - are for fine movements like picking one's nose or flipping the bird. I was surprised at how much losing the seemingly useless ring finger changed the entire dynamics of how I use my hand to grip, etc.

Just an aside.... now back to the screaming....

has OBVIOUSLY started drinking again.

Bathtub gin made in a lead soldiered radiator, from the look of things.

tsk tsk

Please... please, please, please DO NOT allow the hateful, racist pigs distort your hard earned sense of belonging and hope. They are a minority... remember the voices that are now screeching their haggard hatred so loudly LOST the election, and by a significant margin. There are LOTS more of "us" - be we black, white, yellow, red, or friggin' PURPLE, for that matter - than there are of them.

Together, we did and TOGETHER we can.

It's just never easy. But, rest easy, we have each other's backs in this.

Anyone who insists that the problems the profiteering health care industry has caused in this country are due to malpractice claims and trail lawyers is operating in an information vacuum filled by lies from right wing radio screamers. It only takes a few clicks of the mouse button to find that the largest honest right wing estimate (oxymoron alert!) for the impact of malpractice on overall health care costs is right around 10%. The left says 1%. Fairly neutral analysts peg it somewhere in the murky middle.

So spare us further uninformed jaw ratcheting about how all we need is an end to the practice of being able to take gross medical malpractice claims to court. As if protecting the death merchants of the health care insurance industry and bloated big pharma from having to compensate for their often intentional "mistakes" will solve anything.

See: Pfizer, fine

Hey... I'm a red hued socialist who loves seeing a right wing Republican and complete hypocrite in trouble for stuff like this.....

BUT....

I really would like to see the prying into personal lives and, in particular, the sexual peccadilloes of our elected leaders slip back into the pages of the Tattler and off the front pages of what used to be our respected news sources. Let's not think specifically of this case, with its muddying hints of financial impropriety, but of holding up the personal failings of our all-too-human political class as an excuse for political posturing and gain. Most of the time it REALLY IS none of our friggin' business, any more that it would be our business who the plumber is hosing in his down time.

It was ridiculous for the insanely rabid right wing to attempt to get rid of Clinton because he consensually diddled the help. Sanford's soul mate problems are really between him, his wife, and the other woman. Just as Clinton's were. Are any of the fundies who elected him unhappy with how he's governed? He's still just as much a right winger as he ever was, politically.

Feeding the meaningless sex scandal machine works both ways.

Look at dubya... he apparently never screwed an intern, but he sure screwed the entire country.

Keep our eyes on the prize, I'd say. Let the philanderers deal with their own marital carnage in whatever sort of peace they can find.

You're surely aware of Oregon's "End of Life" provisions. The same WERE in the original Obamacare bill when Palin made the original statement. Right or wrong? Are those virtual "Death Panels" or aren't they? "Doctor"?

-- OnTheBeat

I've lived in Oregon nearly my entire life. There are NO "death panels" whatsoever in the Death with Dignity law that Oregonians wisely passed. It's entirely voluntary and patient controlled. It is also fairly rare.

An honest person would inform themselves about FACTS before spreading obvious lies. It is fairly obvious that you are not an honest person.

I'm a 60 year old grandfather who is still becoming FAR more leftist radical with every year.

Maybe that's because I was the primary caregiver for all three of my children and now my grandson.

Enough of the sexist stereotyping. It's unacceptable to brand women that way and it's equally unacceptable to do the same to men. To hell with clap trap like this.

The majority of Americans are against the government-run public option

Tell that to the legions on Medicare, using the VA, or writing these laws; all of whom are extremely protective of their "government run" public option.

Maybe you need to get out of Ohio once in a while. Or your basement.

I was born in 1950.

We walked everywhere as kids. There was a huge park with a briar patch surrounded lake in the middle of it. The boys would play down there for hours after school, completely unsupervised and alone.

I smoked my first cigarette at 10 in those briar patches - supplied by a friend who had filched it from his dad.

I saw my first playboy centerfold down in there at 11 - proudly displayed by a precocious peer.

But, at nearly 60 I don't smoke and I never became a porn addict.

Kids do things you probably wouldn't approve of when you're not around to monitor them. That's the whole idea. That's why they call it growing up.

Having raised three kids to moderately successful, fulfilling lives, I do think the best thing you can do for them is a grounding in street smarts and a centered, reliable core of morals, however you define that. Then give them all the freedom they can handle.

Yes... I agree... this new letters format is HORRIBLE....

Who decided to ruin the letters section and why?

Limpballs is claiming that the crowd was bigger than Obama's inauguration, as well.