I suppose insufficient people have a favorable view of subprime mortgages, shooter242? Are you really such a moron or are you just playacting here? I suppose having one's own reality requires a certain lack of ability to be embarrassed. -- macgupta

Moron? Tsk. I'm commenting at some other blogs where people are civil to each other, and am really stunned at what rudeness is commonplace from some of you folks. Intellectual (or lack thereof) inbreeding will do that.

But for others that may get some value added, the subprime mortgage crisis is a perfect case in point. Good economies and bubbles have upbeat expectations for the future in common, just in different measures. It works great until it doesn't and sentiment turns.

As a hypothetical, let's say that foreclosures have risen 100% in the last year. Horrors, let's close up shop and beat feet out of town! In actuality it may really mean that out of 100 mortgages 2 have been foreclosed upon rather than 1. Big whoop, but the willingness to trust other people with one's money is just that. Trust. That trust has been broken and now it's going to take years to renew. But essentially, the economic landscape hasn't changed that much, just the perception of it.

If you focus exclusively on what news commentators say to get your bloodpressure up, it's going to happen. Nothing is ever perfect in life, but the economy is still growing, farmers are making a ton of money as are exporters - and with poetic justice, CEO's of banks and brokerages have lost their jobs and billions in stock value.

But hey, if you want to feel crappy have at it, just don't blame anyone else for it.

Moron is not an uncivil word. It means a person with a certain low mental ability but better than idiot and imbecile. Facts are not uncivil except to people with magical thinking that are offended by them.

"In any case, what the anthrax attacks really did was raise the fear level across the country. Hijackers with knives are easy to thwart, but people with access to weaponized anthrax spores could launch a bio-Hiroshima if they had enough of the stuff."

No even with "enough of the stuff," there was no way - at that time - to weaponize/aerosolize anthrax for a massive attack. And guess what, Bruce Ivins KNEW that and he knew the purported threat of an anthrax attack coming from binladen/alqueda/Iraq was bunk.

Some info:

Anthrax will never be used successfully as a terrorist weapon, and probably never as a military weapon. It has to be converted to spores suspended in the air, which is technically very difficult; and the lethality is nowheres near the terror that it is made out to be.

To use anthrax as a weapon, it must be converted to a powder which can be inhaled. Only the US and Russian militaries have succeeded in doing that. Even Iraq uses anthrax in liquid form, which is totally ineffective.

Even in powder form, the spores would fall to the ground rapidly in the absence of wind. Anthrax is not adapted for airborne dissemination. It needs to stay on the ground until inhaled by livestock. So it would not stay in the air like mold spores but would fall out easily, about like flour. In the presence of wind, the spores would be carried away rapidly and would not stay in one place long enough for anyone to get more than a few inhaled.

Once the spores were on the ground, they would not affect humans significantly, because they would not come up from the ground in large enough quantities.

To use anthrax as a weapon, it must be converted to a powder which can be inhaled.

The contamination of various buildings by anthrax - including a postal facility in Connecticut - shows that the Amerithrax mailer(s) had that powdered anthrax.

the range of "choices" including the choice to say "no" was not easy.

Once again, my incomprehensible writing style has caused a major misunderstanding. I did not mean to imply that I ever received any answer but "no". Not only did the womens have no difficulty in saying it, they were able to combine its clear articulation with voluminous laughter and disparaging gestures.

Betrothal was, of course, no solution. Which do you think is more humiliating, an annulment after 18 years for non-consummation, or suicide? I await your answer, with baited breath. Not that I ever caught anything that way, either.

No, it's Shooter, no doubt who is our real Don Juan. I can only imagine the appeal his politics and world-view would have for women. They must besiege him with phone calls and text messages. I can hear them now "OOOh, he's so hot! Doesn't he seem like a combination of Rambo and Howard Roark?"

I would like to see a point out of you; but "don't worry, be happy?" Please!

Lordy. You must be Danny Downer at family gahterings. Confident optimism is not "don't worry, be happy." Brooding pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Oil prices are a problem, but I've made money in the market from oil going up, and currently with oil going down. If I went to each trade expecting to have the worst happen, it will.

So you say you're fed up with Republicans. Fine, it seems that the Dems will control all of government by the end of the year. Shouldn't that make you happy about something?

You don't really have to worry about your SS for instance, soon enough it will be turned into a welfare program supported by general revenues rather than the other way around. Happy yet?

As for the rest of it, I'll stick by my original thesis that we should shut down all the overseas bases, and bring the troops home. (Except for Iraq) It will let us pay off all debt, eliminate combat deaths, and the world will love us for staying out of the way in places like Georgia. Now that should make you really happy.

Oil prices are a problem, but I've made money in the market from oil going up, and currently with oil going down.

You wanna substantiate that? Didn't you tell us earlier you worked at Red Lobster? Dishwasher is, I know from experience, an honorable profession, but it doesn't usually leave much money for commodities speculation.

So your a rich investor, who chooses to spend his days, and nights, submitting sarcastic and inconsistent (your letters are archived, you know) letters to Salon, a place you hate and are contemptuous of? Sure, that makes perfect sense.

Or do you think the force of your rhetoric and your record of being correct speaks for itself.

And the flood of people writing in to agree with you is sure overwhelming, too.