JKane

I'm proudly a bed-wetting liberal! Wait, I don't have to say bed-wetting? I'd say by far the biggest achievement (maybe the only one, dubious as it is) that the conservatives have had in 20 years is masterful control of the language, shaping the argument to remove facts and insert wedges. What they've managed to do to the debate of critically important issues with brilliant labels like 'death tax' and 'partial-birth abortion' makes my blood boil. (I still giggle at how childish they sound with 'democrat party' though.) And it's no accident. They've put an amazing amount of effort, money and research into it, over generations really, until their think-tanks produced their kwisatz haderach: Karl Rove. I'm fine with progressive until we let them take that away from us too...

Maybe if somebody spiked his coffee with Viagra then secretly recorded what he does with his first erection in 50 years...

Yeah, we've gone from "Holy Shit, are two of their only relevant candidates really a lobbyist who slept through his term in the senate and a guy in magic underwear?" to "Christ I hope they pick that Mormon over the batshit-crazy militant christian beauty-queen communications major with half a term as governor as her only qualification!" God, they're actually making Bush look good by comparison! Still we seem destined for a two party system, so if Republicans make themselves irrelevant enough maybe an actually liberal/progressive party can arise on the left to challenge the Democrats.

I also wanted to add my appreciation for Maddow and to encourage people to not automatically paint her with Olbermann's brush. Olbermann is the equal and opposite of O'Reilly, by design. He's more honest but he can manage to be obnoxiously partisan while pretending to be non-partisan--exactly like Bill! Still, I think Keith did a lot of good by being one of the very few voices calling the Bush administration on a great number of things. Maddow, on the other hand, really does try to cover the facts evenly and get both sides of things. She seems a lot more Murrow-like in her reporting than Keith--despite all his affectations. I mean a guy from the John Birch Society thanked Rachel for her coverage of them! I only catch her once or twice a week, but I would encourage people to give her a second chance. And I can't imagine there's anybody anywhere else in America covering gay issues and rights better, or more openly. That crybaby with the mind of an Ostrich (Beck) has no place being compared to anybody above, even Bill O'Reilly. He's nothing but empty-headed theatrics designed for the soul purpose of self promotion/enrichment (ok, MAYBE Bill O'Reilly...), Beck's just like Ann Coulter... i.e. the world could instantly be a better place if either of them choked to death on their own bile. The thing that gets me is that it was *CNN* that introduced that wortless fuck Beck the world! Why is it that when a story I want to hear more about is breaking the *last* place I can get any info is on Headline News or CNN? Shouldn't at least one of them have a fucking live newsdesk at all times? That bomb that went off in Times Square a couple months ago... fucking Larry King rerun--TALKING TO SNOOP DOG on one and Joy Behar on the other... FOR FUCK'S SAKE!

Thanks! I've been in touch with Drey but am still vacillating. I really want to, and want to do it right, but it adds up to a whole lot of expense while I won't have any income, what with paying my rent still, flights aren't bad, but hotels plus meals plus saunas plus boys... And drinks and touristy stuff... Even my roughest estimate (leaving out plenty) it comes to at least one fourth of my savings... at the START of an indefinite furlough. I'd be much closer to pulling the trigger IF they'd give me a definite start-back date at work, which may be coming... They'll either tell me the day after I've missed out on reasonable fares or the day after I've booked everything to extend two weeks after the day they need me back!! I'm also a bit mindful of a poster from the Hooville days, also showed up at an LA dinner or two, who went down there and kinda lost himself from what I'd heard. Rapaz or something like that? What ever happened to him?

I don't think they were on the tracks. They were walking hand-in-hand old is my recollection.

I was not prepared to believe it'd been 10 years! But I was just thinking we needed to have one again too! Hopefully at least 2 weeks or so from now, once I'm off my diet... The Rentboy things at Hamburger Mary's were fun (I take it those died out when Brandon moved on?), Mary's seems an OK venue, if not quite as apropos as Numbers. But even if we can only manage a couple of us at Tomcal's "Cafe Twat" it'd still be great! By the way I was walking around the area and went up to Numbers a couple weeks ago, there was a notice posted about the liquor license, so maybe somebody's buying it... I still haven't hired Kristian, but always meant to. He sure was gorgeous that night and fun to talk to! (Yes, I actually talked!)

But their name always makes me think Walkoverya! Then again, that'd make them the one honest bank!

I loved Austin when I visited, only place I can imagine I'd want to live in Texas (never been to San Antonio). Other than Seattle and DC, I was surprised how little interest the rest of the list held for me. Wouldn't want anything to do with Salt Lake City, as cute as those repressed Mormon boys are. I like college towns too, one of my favorites was Ann Arbor, Michigan.

There is a school of thought that purports to account for growing old together/young on train tracks... I did notice two sets of actors for the children in the credits, but they looked the same and in the same clothes, to me. Will have to see again soon. Also, there's this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY69-AgUmDQ&feature=player_embedded

Yeah, I kinda wish they worked! (And the minus signs.)

I've never understood their popularity. In California I prefer Fatburger by far. But I'd also usually take a Wendy's burger over In and Out. I googled In and Out's secret menu though and saw one or two things I'd like to try.

Credit unions are great, I belong to three! They are ideal for loans and credit. Seem to bend over backwards for customers fairly often. But they are a bit inconvenient for some general banking duties. Other than the incident I relate above, I've been surprised by how well things have gone with my huge bank. I never would've chose them, but they've done a good job so far. ATMs everywhere, branches all over the world. I didn't know USAA was also a bank, I've heard great things about their insurance. I don't qualify, but it sounds like anybody who does should try them out. It's interesting to hear somebody having a problem with Wells Fargo, I thought maybe they'd be the new WaMu everybody seemed to love. The bank I've by far heard the most complain about, mostly for general incompetence--even before the banks screwed the economy--is Bank of America. I've had several people tell me of incidents where they go to a branch and can't do what they need because their account was opened in another state, hilarious given the bank's fucking name. To me BofA = Bunch of Assholes; wouldn't go near them on a dare.

I also eventually got merged into a huge bank, and had this experience once so far. It was about 8 months ago, just trying to deposit and get some cash, the teller starts looking in accounts unrelated to the transaction, commenting on my balances and trying to sell me CDs and such. Financial advice through a fucking bulletproof barrier from one of the banks BIG on the govt. bailout list!! WITH people waiting behind me, after I had to wait for them pull the same on the person in front of me (who didn't understand at all what they were even talking about). I was livid! When I got back to the office I emailed customer service and faxed the branch a very angry letter. I have used a teller there once or twice since, hasn't happened again (though it's hard to believe my disgust with their actions could make a change in such a big company). But I am serious in my threat to yank ALL my accounts from them if they ever do such a thing to me again. Wouldn't affect them at all, and would be a PITA for me, but it's the principal!

Mine too, but it feels a little better when I see an actual Reaganite explaining to 'the party of Reagan' that if we went back to the tax rates under their beloved mascot the deficit would be solved overnight. And as true as it is for the nation, it's triply true here in California. Instead the Republican party plays lip-service to Reagan while transparently striving to do nothing more reasoned than to cut their *own* taxes as much as possible, with NO regard to any other consideration, just hastily made up justifications. Watch any one of them, worth tens of millions of dollars or more, rail against the dreaded 'death tax' to a group of people lucky to be able to save up the very minimum they need to retire. And yet they buy it! Isn't there some famous quote from antiquity, along the lines of 'No society survives its' voters discovering they can vote down their own taxes.'?

I saw the 'daddy' graphic on a local roto-rooter type of company's truck the other day! Wherever Daddy's avatar is originally from, they stole it too.

BGP! Welcome to the renaissance! I was fervently hoping you'd pop back up and help us make it last!

Greenspan is getting up there with Joe Lieberman and Andy Rooney on my list of guys I wish would just die already. I am also worried about the strength of the economy and would like to avoid any more colossally stupid moves in my retirement account, but Greenspan's the last place I'd turn to for advice. My recollection is he missed two major bubbles that greatly impacted our economy (tech bubble being the first). If fact, anybody relying on any kind of Ayn Rand-ian 'invisible hand' -- i.e. the only problem is too much regulation -- mode of 'thought' is immediately discounted as a imbecile interested only in their own short-term best interest in my book. Seriously, how many more times can those fucktards be proven wrong before people stop giving them microphones (or positions)?

I know I'd love to know more! While I've figured out how to pick up guys places like Santa Monica BLVD, I've never gotten anywhere with the 3 or so legitimate hitchhikers I've picked up in my life. Was never nearly brave enough to try hand on leg though!

You're welcome! I agree the suites have gotten way too heavy. I'd been using AVG (don't recommend) but now like Essentials which has very low performance impact. I've generally relied on the built-in Windows firewall (plus a NAT-ing router), but one of the more robust software firewalls that makes sure connections aren't going *out* of your computer without your knowledge makes sense for the extra security conscious. I worry that they bury many users in too many requests and become worthless as soon as the user just starts hitting 'allow' automatically though. I've never felt the need for a specialized registry cleaner, with so many of them being scams. Ad-aware has disappointed me the last couple times I tried to use it to clean up an infection, tried Spybot with mixed results, lately I've had pretty good success with Malwarebytes.

Wow, and so few realize this is even happening... Thanks for providing first-hand knowledge on it! Guess this is another reason to donate to the EFF!

I'd heard something about this when announced, I guess I don't understand why the BB would be singled out... because any smartphone can send and receive encrypted messages. I guess maybe it's because that's apparently the default for BBs, preventing those mideast governments from keeping their populations in check with casual spying by their secret police.

Something about movies, the ones that suck me in (which most do, when I see them the first time in-theater) can make me tear up amazingly easily. Doozies I can remember: Schindler's List of course, more recently Pixar's Up, and speaking of amazing animated movies, next time you're on Netflix add 'Grave of the Fireflies' to your list. It's a masterwork from studio Ghibli in Japan, Ebert has it as one of the best 100 movies of all time.

I would agree it's not *needed*... until one day it desperately is... For a long time there weren't enough Apple computers out there for people to target with the really malicious stuff. But given the increased marketshare plus the wealthier demographic it's likely to be a growing target for the criminal type of 'hacker', the ones who act for money (stealing account info or extorting money to give you back your data/function of your computer). Do not, however, mistake the lack of serious threat *so far* for Apple's OSX being any more secure. There've been a couple tests where hackers are challenged to break in to several brand new computers and in the latest rounds I believe Win7 usually lasted longer than OSX. Plus there's the way that MS gives free updates for pretty much the life of the hardware, often adding significant improvements and features in service packs--while Apple makes you spend $100 every year or two for any improvement to their OS, leaving a lot Macs running older, more vulnerable operating systems. One of these days something really nasty is bound to hit Macs, and since there won't be much established in the way of Antivirus software or urgent patching apparatus it may well spread like wildfire. So the short answer is that it would probably be a good idea to run some form of Antivirus, but I'm not sure there is even anything particularly good available, because the market is currently so complacent about it. At least keep your browser up to date, maybe look into some browser plugins that try to block websites from doing malicious stuff. Also run the Apple update, for what it's worth (they do provide some security fixes). Use a strong password and be careful with how you set any sharing settings--remember that if sharing is setup wrong it could give anybody on the same WiFi network access to your stuff.

I generally don't give a shit, Levi's cute enough but none too bright. Though I'm constantly amused by the hypocrisy of the champion of 'Christian Values' and abstinence-only education's daughter being knocked up. Maybe if Sarah hadn't prevented Bristol from learning about condoms in school Levi would've never gotten his 15 minutes of fame. That's an interesting thought, given his education and other prospects, would there maybe be a review or two for him on this site in that alternate universe? Hmm, makes me wonder who exactly we do have listed for Alaska... I did find this, at the end of the article you linked, absolutely hilarious: Asked if Palin and Johnston would stay together despite the latest drama, a rep for the Palins told RadarOnline.com "no official decision has been made."