Valhalla, yes you can copyright a store concept. Taco Cabana has done it and has successfully sued people based on it.

Believe me, I'm highly sceptical of what I read and hear. Yes, I certainly understand that the politics of the speaker/writer matter. And there are some people like Rush Limbaugh who I wouldn't believe if they said 2 + 2 = 4. But both left and right purvey their own mythologies. Pretty much everyone out there seems to be promoting something and only a few are so intellectually honest as to be totally trustworthy, i.e. needing no corroboration. What that means for all of us is that we need to develop reading and listening strategies which allow us to sort out the wheat from the chaff. The idea that you can just say "Oh so and so works for AEI, so nothing he/she says can be believed." is both ineffective and naive.

Entine did several things that make me credit most of his piece. First, as I said before, he cited a great number of instances in which Roddick and TBS plainly lied. Their words were contradicted by their actions. Those things are easily verifiable and Entine did so. When TBS claimed in writing that it gave large sums to charity but in fact gave absolutely nothing, that is not subject to spin. It's a fact. Second, he quotes verbatim a variety of people and uses their names. Those people say things that would be clearly actionable if untrue. If false, they clearly constitute slander, libel, defamation and tortious interference with business relations at the very least. No journalist quotes people and no person agrees to be quoted saying things like that unless they're absolutely certain of their facts. Third, although we don't know the outcome of the FTC investigation, we do know the outcomes of the EPA and FDA matters. TBS routinely placed on the market tainted products and dumped toxic waste into public waterways. Fourth, Entine cites sources like Consumer Reports that don't seem to be politically allied with anyone. Fifth, Entine quotes many employees and former employees who began their relations with TBS as unqualified enthusiasts. These are people whose dream it was to work for a company they believed to be all the things Roddick represented and who could conceive of no better job than one with TBS. These are not professional malcontents, they're people who saw what TBS was all about and changed their minds. Sixth, nowhere does Entine rely on confidential sources. Everyone he quotes he names.

All of that makes Entine's piece credible to me, whatever his personal political bent. I'd be interested in others' views.

is Alissa Rubin's piece today in the NYT that informs us that Iraqis view Gen. Petraeus's report as fundamentally accurate and that they think US troops should remain in their country. How does she know all this? Interviews done with "over 20" Iraqis, that's how. Of course late last week, we learned of a study done by a Japanese news organization, the BBC and ABC in the US which canvassed over 2200 Iraqis and concluded the exact opposite of Rubin's "over 20 Iraqis." Needless to say, Rubin neglects to mention the study, preferring the results of her interviews.

Amazing. If this were Sociology 101, Rubin would get an F, but since it's only manufacturing consent for elite policies by a highly influential newspaper with millions of readers, her utterly unreliable methodology and ignorance of pertinent information get a pass from those watchful Times editors.

begins her piece by telling us that the "good news" is that women will be "kicking ass...physically" on TV this fall. In other words, violence against men is a good thing. She then goes on to bemoan the gender politics of many of the new shows. So I'm confused; how can the incredibly misandric stuff she describes be good news?

Apart from that, this is not news at all. For years, men and women alike have noticed the unspeakable misandry in popular culture. I'm glad Salon.com has gotten around to noticing it too albeit in a backhanded way. But we've been getting the messages "men are stupid, men are crude, men don't deserve what they get, men think of nothing but sex, men don't like children, men are sexual cheats, it's ok to hit, shoot, stab, etc. men for any perceived shortcoming, men are liars, etc, etc, etc. for many years. Maybe this season it's worse, but women kicking men in the crotch for saying something they didn't like was commonplace in TV comedies years ago, so I can't tell.

Does Salon really oppose this stuff or not?

The ladies didn't like the life of being kept by a high-earning man because of all the things Betty Friedan cited. Foremost, if he dies or divorces you, you're in trouble. You have no skills and no job experience and that means a precipitous drop in your life style. Second, who wants to live that way? Uninvolved, unstimulated and dependent. Doesn't sound like any fun at all. Occasionally I read posts to the effect that a man wants to be kept by a wealthy woman. No sane person, man or woman, wants that.

while pondering the collapse of the Soviet Union, it occurred to me that political/military elites would have to find a viable substitute enemy with which to strike the requisite fear into Americans and keep the gears of the military-industrial complex spinning. The only thing I could come up with was terrorism, but I immediately discounted that. "Not a big enough threat," I told my friends. No one would ever believe that we had to have such an enormous defense budget just to protect us from Islamic terrorists. Well, I should have been right, but wasn't. The people Glenn refers to are working assiduously to convince all and sundry of exactly that. There's a big market for what they're selling, so rest assured, it'll continue.