mcb1025 writes, Just as you push forward for eliminating prejudice amongst certain ethnicities, races, and sexes due to certain stereotypes, you should stand opposed of prejudice against conservatives for this stereotyping.

If I understand you correctly, at the very same time you beseech us to set our prejudices aside on your behalf, you do that so you can continue to advance your own prejudicial stereotypes without the inconvenient charge of hypocrisy? No. See, that's the double-bind premise of the cartoon. The Right continually uses our own best attributes against us. You want us NOT to paint the whole of the Republican/Conservative party with Larry Craig (and, a few other bad apples), at the very same time you blast away at the 'immorality' of a basic biological difference which science supports, and the Bible can only be cherry-picked to refute.

It makes no rational sense for the Republican Party to continue to advance their inherently homophobic agenda as a political party plank. It's killing conservatism. Other attributes of conservatism are fundamentally sound, defensible, and worth defending. But the demonization of homosexuality is not one of them. As much as many (most?) of us would sympathize with you, your pleas would be better targeted to your own party members.

I believe you are suggesting the manifestation of the mere threat of withdrawal symptoms for these folks is going to be its own phenomena in '08. If so, to be honest, I'm not looking forward to it.

psyberdawg and sysprog, is saintlucid a "concern troll?" I wasn't sure I'd ever encountered it when I first read the definition, but perhaps it fits in this case?

I'm with you Gary Owen. I remember vividly the guys returning from VietNam. You never really knew how a date would turn out. A civilian could never hope to understand. Jamie's silence is no surprise; how on earth to explain. Out of tribe, yes I suppose that must have been true. Thank you for your comments, Gary Owen. Helps me grasp this tragedy a little better. And, I'm sadder, and more anguished for that understanding - but, that's valid and important.

It's Garry Owen. My bad. Apologies. Memo to self: Must learn to use the composer function on the browser!

Well, dang those immigrants. Not only did they take those manufacturing and construction jobs, they had the temerity to walk off with them.

Ah, yes. An intolerance for ambiguity. Thanks for recalling that for me, Susan. It's an argument I'd used in the past to try an explain the Christianists, or Professional Christians, (as I've oft heard the happy hard core referred) to those who successfully practice their respective faiths in the secular milieu (Stanley Fish and his arguments aside). An inability to tolerate ambiguity also characterizes children. Piaget promoted a notion of developmental stages that were initially viewed as ironclad. Educational Psychologists have since decided there is no specific age at which an individual should be expected to grasp, for example, the concept of the conservation of matter. Some, simply never do.

sysprog (which I 'de-code' to systems programmer), you're actually a little spooky - but in a nice way.

I wonder if nabalzbbfr (aka: anonymoose) managed to watch HBO's Alive Day Memories.

Interesting set of parallels. I too have been closely following these simultaneous meltdowns. Your analysis resonates for me. The element I look to for these simultaneous failures (and, would add to yours)is regulation. For the mortgage industry, at the most basic level, where were the underwriters? The regulatory failures in the Bush administration are legion; strewn from the DoJ all the way to Congress. In both cases, it seems to me, that the watch-dogs were either not watching, or severely compromised. Yours is a helpful observation. Thanks for taking the time to put it up here.

And, if next week Fallon suddenly "retires," then we know what that means, too.

I think MoveOn's ad was pretty clever. And, the appropriateness of the ad has already been hashed over to death by other liberal bloggers. Glenn's point about the amount of angst the ad has generated by Teh Right is a valid one. The Right prefers to reserve some tactics for itself, and gets very upset when those tactics are turned on them. Turn-about being fair play, and all. The Right is also very adept at slipping into victim-mode when it suits their purpose. If the Right turned a deaf ear to the ad, and ignored it, it would better suit their purpose. They only give it legs when they don't.

@ Wabanatta_3

Yeah, sysprog seems to have an extra-uncanny ability to dig up stuff. And, I thought my search skills were good? Nah, not by sysprog's standards.

@Kitt

Limp_shooter? I routinely leave this place laughing out loud at the permutations Glenn's commenters can come up with for "shooter," "nose_picker," and "elephant_dung."

Y'all are too much! Takes guts to troll here.

Well said. I'll only add a hearty, Amen!