Not content with transforming relatively functional (if admittedly slow)  forum interface into a lumbering travesty that makes it impossible even to track ones own posts back more than a few days, the stalwarts at TOM Central, apparently, have imposed a "moderation" delay.

Hint to Josh:Hire more moderators, or drop the program.

I do note with some satisfaction that we no longer are treated to responses to this sort of complaint; the sensation of smoke passing up the anus is always disquieting.

Appologies in advance for typos--there is, of course, no more "preview" function.

Are you kidding me?  In this version of the movie (Oliver Stone, pick up the phone...) everyone gets clean away.

Freedom's on th' march fer sure...What kind of government is susceptible to this sort of evidence of  open irrelevance?  

Someone who knows Sarah Cheyes, please ask her what's up, because it is evident that the writ of Kabul runs about five hundred yards away from the Presidential palace, and no further.

"Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai who is president of Kandahar's provincial council, said... ''all'' the prisoners escaped, ''There is no one left,''

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghan-Prison-Attack.html?hp

*"We are the laughing stock of Europe because we keep [gasoline] taxes so cheap," notes Matthew Simmons, chairman of a Houston-based investment bank for the energy industry, Simmons & Co. International




A modest proposal:

Jumping off from a suggestion broached by (!) Charles Krauthammer (noted radical...) that the gas tax be raised $2.00/gallon and the resulting income be used to lower the payroll tax burden (clearly a non-starter), in the interest of saving the planet, let us propose the only gas tax increase with a prayer of success.

Pay the resulting funds directly to the wealthiest 400 Americans.

I know, I know--they don't need it.  But it's the only way we'll get the market based outcome that is needed to force conservation.  This particular redistribution of income will sail through congress and be signed by G-dub before the cherry blossoms fall from the trees in D.C.

*http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0502/p25s01-wmgn.html

Am astonishing yawn has greeted the *first death of American soldiers by rocket fire in the Green Zone on Sunday.

Not the insinuation into general commerce of a stealthy suicide bomber, not the furtive emplacement of a booby trap (IED), but direct hostile fire from Sadr City.

This is, I submit, the crossing of a significant threshold, albeit predicted by last month's Embassy directive that hardened sleeping quarters were to replace trailers, and full body armor to be the fashionable day wear for excursions WITHIN THE ZONE!!

When 140,000 soldiers can't buy you a few safe square miles in downtown Baghdad you ain't shit.

I believe Barack will jack Petraeus up about this in a few hours.

*Disclaimer: Cursory research; correction solicited

If we wanted any better proof that the great right wing conspiracy is a caravan of clowns, consider this:

Assuming (<i>arguendo,/i>) the truth of the story crediting Republican bad boy Roger Stone with letting the dogs out, so to speak, and bringing down Elliot S., as an incidental and (presumably) unintended consequence of which cosmic get over, the son of Basil Paterson, a cool brother who doesn't have to pay for it, and still gets plenty, who is way to the left of that asshole Spitzer, is now Governor of a great (if dimming) state.

This denoument, mind you, accrues to the exclusion of *Stone holding Spitzer for perpetual ransom, extracting the odd favor here and there as Spitzer rises higher.

What a putz!

*(What would Machiavelli do?)

Geraldine Ferraro 's appreciation of Obama's DNA was merited, if misplaced:  Daddy was a Harvard PhD.(economics--yeah, it was news to ME too) and, of course, Editor in Chief, Harvard Law Review is a famous affirmative action slot...

Which is offered in support of Michelle Obama's wry remark that the American people don't get a shot at president's as smart as her man very often, and this was their only chance at Obama.

Since there really is no doubt (is there?...) that he is way brighter than Hillary (who is whip smart herself), let's get this bumper sticker out before the general election, because otherwise McCain's toadies will claim it's a low blow at St. John Scrambledeggsforbrains