Hope you decide to stay around. I was disappointed by this as well. We have to judge people by their politics and actions, not their physical appearance.

“…a stringy gray ponytail and a face like a peeled potato. And D-cup man-boobs. And a seemingly endless supply of eye-punishing Hawaiian shirts.”

Yeah, I was more than a bit disappointed to read that bit. Apparently we’re judging folks by their looks now?

If that’s the case I guess I don’t need to be hanging out around here any longer. Wouldn’t want to offend anyone.

The unseen hand-job. Also known as Adam Smith’s invisible reach-around.

-GSD

Theory in practice is theoretical.

Anti-competition semi-monopolies abound. Price fixing does too.

Adam Smith never met the great corporate wheeler-dealers who came after him. They boggle the mind.

Ed*ard Teller @ 230

Well, they’re two distinct sets of records. I’m learning fast. You take notes on a note pad. You distill them into a blog entry on a computer. I suppose later, somebody says or does something. If I can still read my earlier pad note, maybe I can figure out the context.

Sometimes I write my music out longhand on manuscript, use it for ideas or modification when I re-enter it in a computer notational program. So, I’m used to parts of this double entry process.

ET- are you allowed to take a tape recorder into courtroom? Question of mine comes not from being able to record the testimony, but as a way for you to record your own thoughts and comments.

I don’t think a judge would like someone mumbling in the courtroom. It would very distracting to the court proceedings.

Hayden says that some say torture doesn’t work. He disagrees. Torture does work. Errr, but I thought we didn’t torture.

Well like the concept of “torture”…it all depends on what “works” means.

If it means getting a person to confess to things that they may never have done, expose as collaborators innocent people, getting a subject to agree with just about anything an interrogator wants… sure, it “works”.

Plus since these “interrogation” can be treated as issues of National Security…only fragments of them are likely to be revealed in court…thus any denials or obviously deranged statements made while in great pain can be deleted from the transcript.

Has anyone ever considered that the real rationale for watering down the definition of “torture” is to allow the use of these coerced confessions as evidence in courts. Once that wall is down for “illegal combatants” there is no wall that would prevent its expansion to the general population. It’s simply “hard interrogation”…not torture. Anyone could be subjected to it.

Hayden now says that fewer people have been “renditioned” since 2001 than in the 1990s.

He knows that he has to pull that line up…since the film “Rendition” is gonna hit hard!

I wonder if he is referring to all those Iraqi soldiers “renditioned” in 1991 after capture in Kuwait back to Iraq?????

That’s hardly the same as what the US is doing NOW!

Madmommy, one day I picked my sprout up from preschool. He was about 4. He gave a deeply satisfied sigh as he settled back into his car seat and said “Mom, I really like my p*nis. I wish I had two of them.”

LOL!!! That would be something that should have been on Art Linkletter’s “Kids Say the Darndest Things” but would never have gotten through the censors!

peanutbutter @ 100

After I had been in CA for a year, I got on a plane heading for the midwest. The guy next to me asked where I was from and I told him. Whereupon he announced:
… after which he launched into a tirade against our “socialized parks system.”

Instituted by that well known follower of Karl Marx, Teddy Roosevelt!

Don’t be overly fooled by this; we’re gerrymandered up the wazoo. Take a look at Sanchez’s district’s shape sometime. They scootched all the Dems into it to safeguard all the rest of the districts. Still and all: yes, there will eventually be more cracks in that as time goes on. It will not happen quickly. Campbell, Miller, Rohrbach, et al, all admirably carry on good ol’ Bob’s work.

And don’t forget Issa, Lewis, Hunter and Bilbray…but I bet that a lot of these guys districts are suddenly facing a little bit of what the people of New Orleans confronted. Tens of thousands of their constituents will be dependent on government aid, both in fighting the fires, but also in dealing with their aftermath.

And many of the same recriminations about things like the National Guard and lack of local resources will be raised in these Congressional Districts. ASFIK Bush hasn’t said a word about the fires…and Issa cronies appear to suggest that Darrell is more involved in his plots to turn California into a Giuliani State.

The timing couldn’t have been better if one wanted to conceal an item….http://www.sacbee.com/102/story/447954.html