And again I have to wonder...

What does any non-paid or non-politician person get from defending corruption like this?

I suspect "joe" is a paid shill.

Why wouldn't the right-wing plant someone? They've paid lots of sources who'd never make it on their advertising income. Comments here are freely published.

Consider his positions. They're never in-depth, just the sort of surface obfuscation that's used to skim off people who aren't interested in delving but will listen to something that "sounds" plausible. Meanwhile, they're also basically lockstep RNC. No admittance of his past. Add to that the standard sneering childish insults, and you've got a formula rather than a personality.

Consider his handle. "Average" joe, not even capitalized, a standard right-wing gimmick, pretending to be a regular kind of guy - while also utterly anonymous.

Consider his persistence. This guy posts a lot, and over a long period of time - but rarely deviates from his obvious subject and script. He's probably got a list of comment areas and forums to browse and spin over each workday.

What all these projections have in common is that the "surge" is planning on staying for as long as anybody is making concrete plans - i.e., the foreseeable future. The variance from person to person is just how far in advance that particular person either (A) plans or (B) thinks Americans will remember.

Transfat (short for trans-substantiated fat) does NOT occur naturally. -- skyeman

Yes, it does, albeit in relatively small concentrations. Read the article - or practically any other. But please stop spewing ignorance around, it's disgraceful.

Everybody (well, every campaign official) knows what happened to McCain in the 2000-election primaries. Rovian smear tactics are going to be the order of this day.

...we understand that just because you sleep with someone else doesn't mean that you are ready to end your current relationship.

Of course not - otherwise you'd end the relationship first, like a decent human being. It's when your partner sleeps with someone else that it's probably time to go...

I don't understand...

why some people think that adultery is not a criterion for instantly ending a relationship. -- T-Hobbes

That's easy. It's because some people are cheaters, and some cheaters post letters on Salon.

I think it's narcissism.

It's so easy to level a charge of narcissism against any and every person who writes a letter to an advice columnist asking about their problems. "Ohmygod, they're concerned about themself and their problems!" Duh. Same to those of you who complain that she doesn't write praise for her boyfriend.

Have all the vitriolic name-callers here never acted like selfish brats in their adult lives?

They're doing that right now.

The idea of "reckless growth" in China is simply false. It's conventional wisdom that's simply wrong.

In what way? Are you contesting that they're growing, or that they're reckless, both, or something else? And on what basis?

So a US court can properly ask CMS Nomeco to give that property to Af-Cap.

We're talking about property that never leaves Congo. I don't see how CMS Nomeco can give that property to Af-Cap, whether they agree to or not (assuming, of course, that Congo continues to refuse to recognize the debt). Instead, as I understand it, Af-Cap is not asking for Congo's property/oil, but rather CMS Nomeco's money. Not Congo's money, which they cannot get at, but CMS Nomeco's. If CMS Nomeco could recoup that money by canceling their own debts (the way it works inside the U.S.), fine, but they cannot.

But that can't rightly be something for the US court to worry about.

I don't see why not. Jurisdiction is a standard component of judicial proceedings. If the U.S. court does not have the authority to exonerate CMS Nomeco's debt to Congo, then taking their money and giving it to AF-Cap can't be justified on that basis.

I'm not a legal expert, but that simply doesn't make any sense to me.

Since none of these are controlled studies (and in practice such a thing would be difficult if not impossible to conduct), the correlation does not prove causation. I'm particularly suspicious of the link with autism; autistic spectrum disorders are already linked to parental personality traits which may, in general, delay parenthood. (Of course, that link, too, may be muddled in the same way - perhaps IT is a result of delayed parenthood rather than a genetic predisposition.) Simply telling people to have kids younger may not ameliorate that condition (or the others) at all.

Study found that men don't actually like women who MAKE jokes, finding them a little threatening, apparently.

My experience has been that women who make jokes disproportionately make their spouses the butt of them - and not in a nice way.

"...and not a Democratic senator, governor or electoral vote (since 1992) among them."

This statement is false. Alabama had a democrat governor during this time period - Don Siegleman.

The inaccuracy here is your reading comprehension. The "since 1992" parenthetical is clearly limited to the electoral vote.

It may not be possible to change what turns you on. That's embedded very deeply. It may, however, be easier change to your reaction to that. It's okay to enjoy consensual submissiveness in sex - in fact, it's not even all that abnormal. Getting upset about it afterwards, however, is not healthy. I think you might have more luck confronting that thought process; it's a sort of rational-side irrationality.