Didn't China stop buying up U.S. Treasury bonds a few years back? I thought I read that somewhere.

(P.S.: "Intitating" is a cool typo.)

Stop the presses! Breaking news! People are using attractive women to sell stuff! Who'd've thought of that!?

"An event cannot be described as 'annual' until it has been held in at least two successive years. Do not use the term 'first annual.' Instead, note that sponsors plan to hold an event annually."

While I'm no authority on the subject, I do think that it is better to express something clearly in two words than clumsily in seven.

I know a guy who dumped his girlfriend while on vacation with her in Italy.

That being said, what's the difference between harm being done to one or both of them, or harm being done to any Iraqi citezen on a daily basis?

The point of protecting the family members of powerful politicians is to prevent the entire country from being held hostage to the fate of a single late-adolescent vacationer. In this case it failed, since our our president basically IS a late-adolescent vacationer, but the practice is solid in principle.

The real reason for the US dollar's decline is Bush's war and the lack of confidence in the radical Bush administration!

Bush's war was listed in the original set. In itself, however, it would not be sufficient to drop the dollar. Confidence in the radical Bush administration has been very low for quite some time, and if anything the clock is running out on that.

If we ran huge deficits sans Bush, we'd still eventually have a crash of the dollar; it IS a bubble, and has been for a long time. Conversely, if the deficits weren't in place but Bush was, the dollar would remain strong based on value, even if people found it distasteful. Your position is utterly uncompelling.

People are willing to pay absurd premiums to have a specific label on an otherwise identical piece of clothing. If it stopped serving as a status symbol for the wealthy and frivolous, high fashion would collapse overnight.

As may be, I just don't take very seriously any discussion of alternative energy sources that does not account for total energy costs of said energy sources.

Well, obviously you need to go there for a final solution, but I don't think it's wise to shut down any viable avenues for exploration based on not knowing for sure if they'll work out in the long run.

Back on the original topic, I think a lot of consumers are far more picky about what they put in their own bodies than about what they burn in their vehicle. Or maybe not, they smoke like crazy in Europe... Hmm.

I found the legal tactic to be interesting, too - it's like what Bush is doing with detention and torture. As long as they can keep adjusting they're legalese framework every so often, the courts can never actually catch up.

Sheesh... a sincere apology & some green for the black man is just too much for you, isn't it?

An apology is fine - and has been granted repeatedly - but money is not appropriate, and seeking it thus has made me lose respect for the hecklers.

Marry the nice guy. I know you won't. But, it would be a refreshing change.

As far as I'm concerned, the President of the United States, whether I like him or not, can eat what he likes and bone willing interns.

I certainly affirm the necessity for hard copies...

Then you're basically not arguing with anybody. Aside from a handful of wingnuts, that's all we're asking for. The report that spawned this discussion "condemns specifically those voting machines that leave no paper trail".

How hard can it be to follow the same practices for voting machines as we do for ATMs?

Not very, I reckon.

Banks would NEVER accept insecure, unreliable ATMs -- it just wouldn't happen.

It's worth noting that ATMs are not 100% reliable nor 100% secure - that's a cost of doing business. Heck, just a few weeks ago an ATM short-cashed me; thanks to various measures (like the paper trail) they were able to determine what happened and the bank was more than happy to credit my account. But our government is not the same as a bank and HAS accepted insecure, unreliable voting machines.

The mind boggles at the inability to address this simple observation.

Your simple observation is based on assumptions which are not only not necessarily correct, they are well known to be incorrect. I mean, your whole argument boils down to "some voting machines are made by the same companies that make some ATMs". That doesn't prove a damn thing.

--and you people think WE are the ones who are being unfair?!!

Any unfair actions on Bush's part (and there have been plenty) does not have any effect on whether or not Tim's blog entry was fair. I think this sort of article actually detracts weight from the more serious points being made.

I doubt many children would learn much from this review, and if they did, it would be the fault of abstinence-only education, i.e. a lack rather than an excess.

That being said, I'm more than a little amused at the idea that Salon used to shy away from such material. When was that, exactly? I've been reading this site since the last millenium, but I missed their puritan era.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/1999/11/16/oral_sex/index.html