Now, now, DrDick. They themselves aren't a terrorist organization. They're just an organization made up of admirers and cheerleaders and enablers of terrorism.

Thaumaturgist, you are mistaken. Saying "shit" is merely obscenity. Saying "holy cow-pies" is blasphemy, a much more serious matter for anyone seeking to keep the Ten Commandments.

Waaaaaay too real....

Okay, here is my input: torture is NEVER justifiable, period, paragraph, page, chapter, book. Put it on the shelf. Next question.

I remember the first time I heard a Christian complain of persecution. I was eighteen years old, and had questioned the plausibility of a worldwide flood.

Yes, the origins of the Yule tree have long been obscured, but my point is still valid, that the Yule tree is not inextricably Christian in the way that, say, the Sacred Heart of Jesus is. So it is foolish for Christians to try to claim the Yule tree as "theirs" and to object to calling it a "Holiday tree" or a "Hanukkah bush" or a "Solstice gnomon".

Jimi Hendrix opened for the Monkees.... I don't think I had ever heard of this song or this artist before. Thanks for the opportunity.

In recent years, as Christians have raised objections to the term "Holiday Tree", I have become quick to agree with them, and demand that it be called by its proper name: Yule Tree. I have only once in all my life seen a reference to anything to make the Yule Tree explicitly Christian, except for the interesting (and note, secretive) practice of the Christmas Nail: http://www.booksofthebible.com/p3140.html -- Dr. Psycho

I liked the part where he said that transitions in energy technology take decades -- therefore we shouldn't start doing it.

Wow, I love this! I grew up hearing my father playing Scottish war songs on his bagpipes, playing Spanish Civil War marching songs on his guitar, and if I were really lucky, a number out of his uncle's IWW Little Red Songbook. By coincidence, my wife and I are just now listening to The Little Red Box of Protest Songs (which she bought me for my birthday). I cherish the photocopy my father allowed me to make from my great-uncle's IWW songbook. And now I have this .pdf to print out tomorrow morning :{ )

"I'm so old I can remember when senators from Nevada and former governors of Alaska didn't tell religious organizations in New York where to build their buildings. Is it really too much to ask that we revert to those times" They say that you tend to become more conservative over time. I know that as the years go by, I wish more and more that this country would rediscover the wisdom of our ancestors on subjects such as religious liberty, graduated income tax and many other things, so I guess it's true.

"We should agree that, above some multiple, the marginal tax rate should be 100%." Oh, I wouldn't go quite that far. But how about if over $1million, it's 90%, and over $10M, it's 99%, and over $100M, it's 99.9%, and so on?

I have sometimes regretted that I wasn't an authentic red-diaper baby (my father having left the Party quite a few years before I was born). In my time I have been a Socialist, a Libertarian and an Anarchist. I seem to be a Democrat at the moment. The way I heard this business of a person who lacks either a heart or a brain does not identify "liberal" or "conservative", but said, "Anyone who is not a RADICAL at twenty". I am definitely less radical than I used to be. I was once a burn-it-down extremist. In my defense, that was when I was nine years old. These days, I have some idea of just how hard it is to make anything better, especially without side-effects that are worse than the problem you have solved. The kitty with a rifle is definitely what drew me here. I stayed for the posts and comments. I grew up in Oregon and have pretty much stayed here, except for some time in the Navy. I would definitely be interested in a Pacific Northwest ObWi gathering, and would be willing to travel to Portland, maybe Seattle in a pinch, but I'm lazy, so make it easy for me, people. I'm a Quaker, I think, except for that tricky believe-in-God part, but I know I want to be counted as at least a friend of Christ, and I have been gathered to the Light a time or two, whatever the experience really means. I've been married for 26 years (my wife was twice my age when we met, but I am catching up to her), have raised four children, and may yet begin raising a fifth. At fifty, I look back on my life and conclude that I have really gotten everything I could reasonably ask for, except a successful career, and I think I still have a few years left for that.

Oh, and re PTSD: Both men also said they had never really recovered from that day.

I will not soon forget the 24-hour period during which (in the course of my duties as a caregiver) I sat all night at the bedside of a Pearl Harbor survivor, and then discovered I was sitting across the breakfast table from a different one.

I always thought that Iron Man was one of the more ideologically clear characters, at least as originally conceived: Howard Hughes in powered armor. And I can't take seriously the claim that the movie's Tony Stark was derived from Orson Scott Card's precocious (and cancerous) thrill-seeker. He strikes me as being much more like the original character, and thank Ghu for that. But what I really can't forgive the film for is that it didn't have a proper place for the classic rock song (which, not actually being about Tony Stark, would not have threatened the fourth wall), since it worked so well in the first movie trailer.

Roni sat parked by the side of the road, too prudent to talk on the phone while driving. "You...did not just say that. I'll give you one chance to un-say that. All right, fine. Goodbye." Roni sighed with disgust and closed her phone. She'd known for days that she and Laura were headed for this kind of break, but Laura's gratuitously insulting comments were the last straw. Roni wanted to throw away the phone, but then she wouldn't have it, and the phone was not at fault, Laura was. So instead she upended her purse and dumped out its contents on the seat and sorted through it for anything of Laura's, flinging them out the car window as she came to them. Laura's can of mace -- Laura was such a paranoid. The key ring with duplicate keys to Laura's apartment and her cars -- Laura so often tried to use generosity in letting Roni use her things, to compensate for keeping Roni out of so many areas of her life. The Netflix DVDs she was always bringing over for them to watch together. Laura had used Roni's hairbrush -- it still had some of her long blonde hairs, and some hairs from Laura's nutria-skin coat, so Roni tossed that, too. Roni paused over Laura's grandmother's glass spoon. It was genuinely beautiful. But it was Laura's, so out it went. She hoped it would break. Only much later did Roni remember that Laura's Netflix account had been screwed up somehow, so she'd been renting movies on Laura's account. Crumb. But maybe some kind soul would find the disks. She could only hope.

Way cool. Wish I had more dreams like that one. I dreamed I met FDR once, that was kind of nifty. But the dream that comes closest to this one that I can recall was when I was in the Navy, walking across the base, and I COULD NOT get all of my buttons buttoned all at once, or my belt straight -- a military naked-dream.

I was most impressed with Season 2, specifically the way poor Frank Sobotka's life fell apart. By the time he died, he had lost everything: his union, his workplace, his son...everything. That kind of tragedy is rare enough in any kind of entertainment, but especially series television.

Nom, Senator Franken is getting bigger residuals than are any of the participants in, say, "American Carol". And now he's getting a bigger Senate paycheck than Norm Coleman :-D

On the one hand, I can admire the dedication that allows her to cultivate those nails. OTOH, all of the comments above (except the rude and pointless one about "skinny jeans"), plus I wonder about the mental state that allows someone to develop such an all-consuming obsession with something as pointless as ridiculous fingernails.

Ahistoricality, Republican goal posts are no longer even dirty on the bottom, because they never stay in one place long enough to be driven into the ground.

A change in terminology is just a change in terminology, but it's a start, anyway. After all, the words we use shape our thoughts. And really, with a heap of dung this big, we can start shoveling anywhere and be making progress.

>O>HUGX>KISS%>FOOTRUB<%

I'd love to see the Perjury Hall of Fame. It could serbve to honor the lesser lights of corruption who don't quite qualify to have their faces carved into Mount Flushmore alongside Nixon, Reagan and W.