Polanski and his apologists like to talk about how he was 'seduced' or 'she looked 18' or 'her mother threw he daughter at him' and current refrain 'the judge did something wrong'. All of these things may be true. And you know what, there is a venue where Polanski is free to argue them and vindicate himself.

Its called the Courts. He is more than welcome to appeal his original conviction if he felt the Judge did something wrong. He is more than welcome to argue for a new trail.

All he had to do was come back to America and use his considerable wealth and connections to hire a legal team and fight it out in court. Hell, if everything he's claiming now is true, he might even have won.

Instead of doing that HE RAN AWAY!!! He made the choice to flee America. He made the CHOICE not to appeal or pursue options legally. He ran. Period. He's had 32 YEARS to make his case in a court of law. He has refused to do so.

Here's to Switzerland for standing up for the concepts of due process and the law which Polanski and his apologists spit all over while trying to claim the moral high ground.

I don't know who green-lit GE's current corporate campaign, but whoever it was needs help. The commercials make GE look silly, especially the one where the workers are singing about building plane engines. I don't know about the rest of you but I want the guys who built the engines on my plane focused on building engines, not tyring to sound like Micheal Bolton.

Brad Bird (Iron Giant, The Incredibles) was actively involved with the Simpsons from its inception on the Tracy Ulman Show through the mid-90s when he left to write and direct the Iron Giant and then moved to Pizar. I personally mark his departure as the point when the Simpsons went from consitent goodness to hit-and-miss (there have still been some good episodes over the last 10 years).

It also marks the point (as others have pointed out) where the tone started to shift. A sort or mean-spiritness entered the show. The sweetness that marked so many great episodes of the Simpsons disappeared. The dysfuntional elements of the family dynamic were played up and the redeeming love between the characters started getting played down. Homer's stupidity went from simple good-natured buffonery to a sort of deliberate I-don't-care-about-anybody-else attitue.

That being said, The Simpsons does still put out good episodes. They are fewer and farther between than the frist 5-7 seasons but they can still be found. And when it hits its better than almost anything else on the air.

Oh, and Futurama rocked.

Letterman is not exactly poor. He's a deep pocket if someone was feeling hurt or vindictive. The fact, that at least thus far, none of the women he's had relations with have gone public, filed lawuits and the lack of tabloid trash over over the last few years does say something (at least partialy). Granted we don't know (at least not yet) about any 'in-house' complaints that were paid off. Perhaps that will change now that the matter is public. But at least so far we don't have any of the women coming forward to attack Letterman. We don't have sweeping lawsuits being filed and there is not one hint that anything illegal took place.

At least thus far it looks like Letterman hooked up with some women and then the relationships. As stated consenting adults engaging in consensual activitivies.

As an added note, despite many jokes on the subject, Lettermna does not ever try to pass himself off as being morally superior to anybody else. Nor has he tried to tell other people how to live their lives. He has never preached how everybody be monogamous or anyone having sex out of wedlock is evil.

In other words he's not a thriced divorced cheating dick, dedicated John or gambling addictleturing the rest of us on our lack of morals.

Germany issued massive loans to its automotive sector. Bumped spending elsewhere. As did France, England and most of Europe. China initiated huge spending increases on public infrastructure, direct payments and other projects. Very few European or Asian countries cut taxes during this period or even made a significant move to try and cut taxes. In other words the rest of world followed Keynes pretty closely.

The big difference was most of Europe and Asia made moves to truly stabilize their banking sectocs, not simply dump huge gobs of money at them to bail them out of their mistakes.

The second diffence was their stimiluses were direct and the money went out fairly quickly. In the US just over half the stimulus was in the form of tax breaks that won't be seen by most people until next year at the earliest and were poorly targeted (like the first time home-buyers credit). The rest of the stimulus has been very slow to trickle out to states.