For those advocating staying. Who exactly will be be supporting? The evidence of widespread systemic voter fraud carried out by Karzi and the current government of Afghanistan is, at this point, overwhelming. If the elections commitee certifies Karzi as the winner a large chunk of the population will view it as a stolen election and many international observers will back them.

We could be looking at a very real civil war. How does the US distinquish between the Taliban, Al Queda, resistance fighters and rebels? We can barely keep up with the differing factions now (and many would say we're not keeping up now).

So what would be protecting at that point? A sitting government that we installed and is now viewed as illegitimate by much of the population? A government with a long record of corruption and brutality against its own citizens. How well did defending such a government work out for us in Vietnam?

So if we beleive Karzi cheated his way into power does the US then kick him out of office and start all over with a new government. We tried that approach in Vietnam as well (and the Soviets tried in Afghansitan in 80s). How well did that work out again?

let's spend the next two weeks talking about Joe Wilson. I said Wednsday night that media meme would be all about Joe Wilson and not about Obama's actual speech or anything remotely related to the substance of healthcare. Good going House Dems, lets keep the discussion as far away from anything actually important as we can.

Idiots.

Let's be honest folks. Swift's was a by the numbers 'story' video where the images mirrored the song and that was it. Nothing original, nothing that hadn't been done a thousand times before.

Beyonce video was a fairly basic 'hot chicks dancing' video. The chicks were hot but really, how is this video any different or better than all of Beyonce's other, 'hot chicks dancing' videos? It's not.

If these are the 'best' MTV has to offer its no wonder they no longer play videos.

The truth is, many of the people the current crop of 'conservatives' applaud would never be accepted in the modern Republican party.

Lincoln, favored federal rights over state's rights, Eisenhower derided the 'military industrial complex', Nixon passed pro-environment laws, favored treatment over punishment in the 'War on Drugs' (at least initially) and negotiated with our enemy (at the time) China, Buckley by the end of his life soundly rejected the Neocon worldview and even conservative demi-god Reagan raised taxes in 1986/87 not to mention for all his 'tough talk' against the Soviets was more than willing to sit down for summits with their leadership on a fairly regular basis.

No republican (including those who supported it in the past (McCain)) will vote for cap-and-trade. Trying to molify them is utterly useless. The sole goal of Republicans in congress is to make Obama's life miserable. Even more so than when Clinton was President because the 'moderate' republicans from the 90s are gone. They've all become Blue-Dog Democrats.

At this point passing a bill with 55 Democratic votes is about the same, ideologically speaking, as picking up 7-10 republican votes would have been 15-20 years ago.

When are Democrats and the MSM going to realize there are no 'moderate' republicans left on capital hill.

I've attended Comic-Con 4 time now (2005-06-07-09) and the male/female ratio didn't seem all that different to me this year than it did in 2005. As for Twilight 'dominating' that's just crap. Yes they had a panel in the the Hall H (the largest, 5,000 seat, venue) and it was full. So was every other panel at Hall H. Hall H is ALWAYS full. That's why there is a 2+ hour line to get in. Every major studio does panels there and you can see and learn about the year or so worth of genre releases.

From many of the informal conservations I had while standing in line for other panels or on the tram riding in it seemed to me that District 9 generated a lot more buzz among the attendees and Johnny Depp's appearance got a lot of attention. Then of course there was the other 100,000 attendees that didn't care about any of that stuff.

Comic-Con has over 120,000 attendees every year and covers everything from comics to big movies to medieval role-playing. It is functionally impossible for any one fandom to dominate.