Thanks very much for the link to the online copy of "Infinite Debt". I think that article should be read by as many people as possible. Not only does it explain with remarkable clarity how the US got into its current sad state, but it's extremely readable.

One of the frequent flaws of articles which expose systemic corruption in the US is...well...a certain turgid (or perhaps I should say "turbid") style. Try to get the man in the street to read one of those articles, and he or she will just yawn and turn away. "Infinite Debt" surprised me with its clarity and readability.

As for the Dateline story, here's a link (although they don't deserve one): http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/29923501#29923501

I'm glad to see that he's a Republican. Why wasn't that mentioned in the story?

You can bet that if he were a Democrat, that would be a part of the lead on FOX News!

And if he loses at the Minnesota Supreme Court, Coleman will appeal to the Federal courts. And if he loses in Federal court, he'll appeal to the US Supreme Court. And if he loses in the US Supreme Court, Coleman will appeal to Jesus - and we all know which political party Jesus prefers.

Victory for Coleman!

The thing that makes me saddest about this is the many Democrats who screamed and hollered about these violations when Bush was in power, but who now suddenly think they're a-okay.

Obama, of course, must be counted among their number - to his everlasting shame, although he doesn't seem capable of recognizing that emotion.

I expected Republicans to be utterly two-faced and hypocritical; that's typical of the breed, these days. They really do seem to be insane (which may explain their "liberalism is a mental illness" meme; calling black "white" has been a major Republican theme for the past 20-odd years). It was no shock to watch Republicans flush their putative principles in obedience to their Dear Leader. But I hoped and believed that we Democrats would be true to the Constitution and our beliefs.

But a frightening number of Democrats, including many in Congress, have shown that they are just as hollow and hypocritical as the Republicans ever were. Which makes me feel even more alone than the long years of the Bush ascendancy did.

Anne Lamott, did you hijack Garrison's computer?

What will Democrats do with that magic bullet?

They'll do what they always do: form a circular firing squad and fire it into each other's heads. Or, to be less metaphorical, they will continue to feign utter helplessness to pass any legislation that contravenes the wishes of their corporate owners - and in particular the banking industry.

Lost civil rights will not be restored. The banking system will not be reformed. Warrantless wiretapping will continue unchecked. Government secrecy will remain absolute. The looming environmental collapse will be ignored with minor lip service. Torture will go unpunished and uninvestigated, with the possible exception of a few more low-level scapegoats.

Remember, you read it here first, folks!

Friends begged me to vote for Obama despite my outrage over his flip-flops on warrantless wiretapping and telecom amnesty. I thought long and hard, and gave him the benefit of the doubt.

I won't make that mistake again.

...or I would be, if this wasn't self-evident on the face of it.

Long ago I did an experiment playing Diablo 1 on Battle.net. I played a fighter with a male-sounding name in open games. Result: I got killed by hackers, over and over.

Then just for the hell of it I tried playing a Rogue (the only female character) with a female-sounding handle. I never said that I was female, never responded to questions on the subject at all. Result: I was given all sorts of powerful (albeit duped) magic items, and wasn't even killed once. A few horny teens did make some obscene requests, though.

I guess I should have written that experience up as a study and raked in some big government grant bucks.

...and he was hardly the only science fiction writer to predict the impact of industrial automation. He postulated a "negative income tax" (under various names), which was nothing more than a direct government payment to all unemployed citizens - and in his books, most people were unemployed.

You might want to look up his books. Some are a bit lowbrow; Reynolds took an unusually strong social/economic viewpoint in his writing, but he was a former soldier-of-fortune writing for money. A bit of soft-core porn wasn't beneath him. Nonetheless, he was seriously thinking about these issues back when most of us weren't even born.

As for those service-sector jobs that require warm bodies, Mr. Reich? You might want to consider the possibility that many of those, too, are likely to be replaced by automation. At my local supermarket, they've had self-check-out lines for years, now. Just lately, they've introduced scanners that let you scan each item literally as you put it into your cart.

Combine that with RFI technology, and supermarkets will be slashing their payrolls to near-nothing - except stockers and managers. And how long will it be before robotic stockers are developed?

The simple fact is that unless society collapses or is deliberately rejiggered to create fake make-work jobs, unemployment of the majority of the population is inevitable. Free-marketers don't have an answer to that issue, of course. But neither does anyone else. What will the effect be on society when MOST people are effectively on welfare, with nothing to do all day but watch TV or otherwise entertain themselves?