How will you pay for health care?

Normally, I think that Democrats are hopelessly inept at politics, but this ad - from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee - is pretty clever.

Sure, when Republicans propose to end Medicare, that would seem to be a slam-dunk. But they've given Democrats such opportunities before - notably last fall, with their insistence that they'd only support tax cuts for the middle class if the wealthy got income and estate tax cuts - which the Democrats completely blew.

Of course, the real problem won't be coming up with the money to pay for health insurance. The problem will be that insurance companies won't want to insure the elderly. How can they make any money that way? The elderly all have a pre-existing condition: they're old.

After all, it's not the young who use health care, or not much. It's the elderly. In fact, a huge amount of our health care dollars go to care in the last year of a person's life. Insurance companies know that they can't raise premiums for the elderly high enough to make up for that.

And that's exactly why we have Medicare. We support Medicare for the elderly so that we'll have that same benefit when we get old. This is what civilized societies do. But unfortunately, there's a great debate in America about whether or not we want to be civilized.

PS. I liked Paul Krugman's comment about this: "Oh, and for all those older Americans who voted GOP last year because those nasty Democrats were going to cut Medicare, I have just one word: suckers!"

Creationist parenting

(Calamities of Nature)

Check out the rest of the comic here.

The untold story of the hamster

(De Agostini / Getty Images)

Ever wonder where hamsters came from? It's a fascinating story, all described in this Smithsonian article:

In the spring of 1930, Aharoni staged an expedition to the hills of Syria, near Aleppo, one of the oldest cities in the world. His quest was simple: he wanted to catch the rare golden mammal whose Arabic name translates roughly as “mister saddlebags.” On finding the animal he would either ally it with its Hebrew name in the Torah or, as seemed more likely, name it himself. But there was another motive. One of Aharoni’s colleagues, Saul Adler, thought that the animal might be similar enough to humans to serve as a lab animal in medical research, particularly for the study of the parasitic disease leishmaniasis, which was and still is common in the region.

Yeah, in 1930, the hamster was rare and little-known. And it still is, in the wild. Every tame hamster on Earth - and there must be millions of them by now - are all descended from a brother and sister pair captured by Israel Aharoni.

This article describes his adventures in hilarious detail, complete with hamsters eating each other and chewing their way to freedom. And even now, according to this account, we know very little about wild hamsters. They remain rare and relatively unstudied.

It really is a fascinating article.

Sharing the pain

(Tom Toles)

Maybe you should bring the judge an apple

From The Economist:

A paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describes how Shai Danziger of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and his colleagues followed eight Israeli judges for ten months as they ruled on over 1,000 applications made by prisoners to parole boards. The plaintiffs were asking either to be allowed out on parole or to have the conditions of their incarceration changed. The team found that, at the start of the day, the judges granted around two-thirds of the applications before them. As the hours passed, that number fell sharply (see chart), eventually reaching zero. But clemency returned after each of two daily breaks, during which the judges retired for food. The approval rate shot back up to near its original value, before falling again as the day wore on. ...

The researchers offer two hypotheses for this rise in grumpiness. One is that blood-sugar level is the crucial variable. This, though, predicts that the precise amount of time since the judge last ate will be what matters. In fact, it is the number of cases he has heard since his last break, not the number of hours he has been sitting, which best matches the data. That is consistent with a second theory, familiar from other studies, that decision making is mentally taxing and that, if forced to keep deciding things, people get tired and start looking for easy answers. In this case, the easy answer is to maintain the status quo by denying the prisoner’s request.

Disturbing, don't you think? We like to think our system of justice is fairer than this. Yeah, you may not worry much about criminals. But it'll be too late to worry about fairness if you ever find yourself in this situation.

Our legal system needs to be fair to everyone, no matter who they are, because otherwise, it will be fair to no one.

Nothing more to talk about

This is a great video, but I'm not sure I agree with it.

Oh, I agree with the points she makes, absolutely. But when it comes to family, "nothing more to talk about" sounds rather... final.

And it's just not true, at least in most families. OK, I've never had this experience, with parents who just can't let it alone, parents who just can't accept that their child thinks differently than they do. But can't you find other things to talk about, besides religion?

If your parents will not respect your religious (or political) views, don't discuss religion (or politics) with them. Maybe that will be hard sometimes. Maybe, in some families, it can be impossible. If that's the case, I'm really sorry to hear it. But... I still can't advise shutting them out of your life completely.

There are many religious and political views I don't respect. But I still might respect the person who holds them. (I certainly respect any person's right to hold them.) I might even love the person who holds them.

Sometimes, in extreme circumstances, people must cut their family ties. I know that. But the vast majority of us don't face such extreme circumstances. So your family is annoying. Big deal. They're still family.

You don't have to spend a lot of time with people who make you crazy (and who can make you crazier than family?). But "nothing more to talk about"? That's rarely - very rarely - the case.

My suggestion is to keep to neutral topics, as much as possible. If they won't, even when you keep changing the subject, then keep the talk short. But don't stop talking entirely. You may disagree on virtually everything, but there are still things to talk about. Heck, comment on the weather. That's usually pretty safe.

I feel sorry for people who face this situation. I guess that's why this video gets to me. I won't pretend to have all the answers, but I don't like the idea of giving up on family unless there's really no other way. In most cases - not all, I know - that's just not true.

Fox News spins another one

These are great videos, since they make the bias at Fox "News" so easy to see. This anchor - one of the interchangeable blondes at Fox - misstates the law and then nods along with the right-wing loon they've invited to comment.

Well, you can see it here. But most of this stuff is too subtle for the average Fox viewer, I'm sure. The goal of Fox is to push their right-wing ideology, and one way they do that is to convince their viewers that everyone, except a few real leftists (from San Francisco, if they can work that in), agrees with them.

The "fair and balanced" Fox is horribly unfair and terribly unbalanced - er, imbalanced, I meant to say - and that's deliberate. Fox is not a news network. It's a propaganda mill masquerading as a news network.

I like the end of this:  "Which was more partisan: the decision of the 9th Circuit or the reporting of Fox News?" The answer is obvious, don't you think?

"1635: The Dreeson Incident" by Eric Flint and Virginia DeMarce

(cover image from Science Fiction Books Australia)

1635: The Dreeson Incident is another in Eric Flint's 1632 series, this time with co-author Virginia DeMarce. It was first published in 2008, but I'd skipped this one previously. (Chronologically, therefore - and by publication date - it comes before the other two books I've reviewed in this series.)

The thing is, Eric Flint has a website where he posts snippets of upcoming books, and when I started to read this one there, I gave up in disgust. It was full of minor characters who were very hard to keep straight. It was, in fact, a lot like the other two books DeMarce co-authored with him, only even more so.

But I'm a big fan of the series, and I figured I probably should read it, especially after seeing the comments from Alex Champion following my review of 1635: The Eastern Front. So I picked up a very nice hardcover copy, used.

Well,... there are a lot of characters in this book. Most of them have shown up previously (particularly in short stories, I think), but it's very hard to keep these minor characters straight. And although the whole series is just chock full of great characters, these aren't really the most interesting (or the most admirable) of them.

And there's a lot of repetition, as Champion noted in his comments:

She spends too much time in the minutia. I recall in Dreeson Incident when Stoner's middle boy's Jenkins flame asked her mother about their family history and the mother summed up the same bits of info listed on the previous page. Aggravating.

There's a lot of depth that, upon rereading, really enriches the story but perhaps not enough to justify it. "Oh this character made this remark when at the same date in this other book she wrote another character sent the letter to...oooooh. Wow" happens quite a bit. I still prefer her to some of the Gazette contributors.

But he also says this:

The only thing that sustained me through Dreeson was that it finally addressed the problems that other authors generally ignored--what are the effects of all these adventures of war and intrigue doing to this small Appalachian town?

The reactions of Gretchen's youngest children and Rebecca's Sephie, especially since she arrives with a baby girl and an adopted toddler boy, to these strangers who are supposedly their mothers are priceless. Funny and tragic at the same time. Sephie is raised by Opa Abrabanel and visited every month or so by her dad. I'm a sucker for the child's perspective (the princess' take on her father's diplomacy as she's shuttled to Magdeburg is a favorite) but these moments illustrate the personal toll.

I like that kind of thing, myself. And those bits were great. But they were tiny bits in a huge mass of rather boring text. Oh, it wasn't that bad. It was certainly better reading it in book form than just a snippet every two days on Flint's website. But for two-thirds of the book, or more, there was nothing much to grab me. And I know Flint can do a lot better than that.

400 pages into the book there's an interesting event that's over all too quickly. And then we go back to the same stuff that filled the first part of it. Only at the very end did I get interested, especially with the comparison of antisemitism to race-related murders in the American South, and the remedy for both. (One of the things I love about this series is how it shows our own history and our own culture in a different light.)

I've read all the other novels in this series (but not all of the anthologies of shorter fiction), but I'd skipped this one. And really, I'd have to say I hadn't missed much. If you love the series, and especially if you're a real completest, you'll want to read this book. I'm actually glad I finally did. But most people could just as well skip it, I think.

Of course, if you really like the little family stories and Thanksgiving with difficult relatives, that kind of thing - and if you don't mind checking the family trees at the start of the book to try to keep everyone straight - you might like this book more than I did. Different strokes for different folks.

PS. Alex Champion says that DeMarce is a better short story writer, and indeed, this kind of thing works much better in short stories than in novels, I'd say. I've enjoyed the family stuff and the personal minutia in the 1632 short stories I've read. But then, it's easier to keep people straight in a short story which focuses on just a few people at a time.

"Dragon's Ring" by Dave Freer

I'm mostly familiar with Dave Freer from his many collaborations with Eric Flint, my favorites probably being the funny, and very entertaining, Rats, Bats, and Vats and its sequel, The Rats, the Bats, and the Ugly, (which is probably even better than the first).

But Flint is one of my favorite authors, and you never really know how much a co-author is responsible for the final product.

A few years ago, I took a chance on Freer's A Mankind Witch, and I was quite impressed. But that's set in the Heirs of Alexandria series of historical fantasy, which he developed with Eric Flint and Mercedes Lackey. True, he was the sole author of this particular book, and the setting and the characters were mostly different, but I still had to wonder about this author coming up with something entirely on his own.

And frankly, Dragon's Ring didn't sound very good. I get pretty sick of the cliches in fantasy, so nothing with dragons sounds very appealing to me these days. And a ring? Really?

Still, I've learned to give a good author the benefit of the doubt. Just as you can't judge a book by its cover, you can't judge it by the title, either. And I've got to say I was very happy with Dragon's Ring.

Freer seems to have a real knack for writing appealing characters, and that's of critical importance for me, especially in fantasy. In this case, Meb - the unknowing mage, raised in a fishing village - is great. And the book starts out with a bang, as raiders attack her village. It caught my interest immediately and kept it throughout the book.

The dragons are also interesting, with understandable motives (including the reason behind their love of gold). And the "ring" isn't actually a piece of jewelry. I suspect that "Dragon's Ring" was meant to be... um, sardonic? To some extent, at least. Just a mild joke on the whole "ring of power" fantasy cliche. But since I was expecting a cliche, it actually made me less likely to buy the book in the first place.

There were a couple of things, in addition to the main character, I particularly liked about Dragon's Ring. Through most of the book, we know more than Meb does. But there are a number of things going on in the background that aren't clear to the reader, either. Those things come together later in the book.

Now, this can work great if the author can pull it off. And Freer did exactly that. I was very impressed. After all, I can see many ways that sort of maneuver could fail horribly. But Freer kept it interesting, kept those behind-the-scenes incidents short, and kept me from getting confused at what was going on. I was very impressed by that.

Another thing I liked - a minor issue, admittedly - is that Meb's stepbrothers behaved like brothers. As an infant, Meb was pulled from the sea, so she was the subject of some superstition even when no one knew she could work magic. So I was afraid I could see another cliche coming when she was reunited with her stepbrothers.

But to my mind, they acted exactly like brothers would act (or, perhaps, should act). Well, maybe it's just me, but I thought Freer got this exactly right.

I really enjoyed Dragon's Ring. If I have any qualms at all about the book, it's that the fantasy is somewhat generic. But I have that problem with almost all fantasy. Again, maybe it's just me. This book was very entertaining, but there wasn't much sense of wonder. It takes a really exceptional fantasy for that.

So I'd really like to see Dave Freer try his hand at science fiction. Yes, he wrote Slow Train to Arcturus with Eric Flint, but I'd like to see what he can do on his own. Still, I'll probably buy whatever he writes next, because I've definitely been well entertained so far.

Toemageddon 2011

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Toemageddon 2011 - This Little Piggy Went to Hell
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Just when you think you've seen the dumbest hysteria possible, the loons come out with something like this to top it. Can you believe it?

And this time, it's not just Fox, either. Apparently, every network has decided to milk this laughable "controversy" for all they can. (At least, Jon specifically mentions NBC, ABC, CNN, and Fox. Maybe CBS kept its sanity?)

You know, I would have probably joined them when I was ten - and worried that they might make my little brother a "sissy." But by the time I was 12 or so, I think I'd grown up enough to understand just how stupid that fear was.

Hey, I had an excuse. I was just a child, myself. To see grown adults acting like ten-year-olds is just... well, it's really depressing, actually. A little boy painting his toenails - even neon pink - is not a transgender issue. Jeebus, I can't even believe I have to say that! How dumb can people get?

Jon Stewart is pretty good here. You can tell he's just as astonished - and disgusted - with this as I am. What's next? Really, what's next? And what's happened to us that we've become this stupid?

Donald Trump responds

This is even funnier when you realize they're using Trump's own words! Yes, it's pretty much like those Saturday Night Live sketches of Sarah Palin. Really, it's hard to invent any funnier speech for Republicans than what they actually say.

If you're wondering, here's an excerpt from Gail Collin's column in the New York Times, "Donald Trump Gets Weirder":

In a potential Republican field that includes Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, it’s hard to come up with a line of attack loopy enough to stand out from the pack. But darned if Trump didn’t manage to find one.

“If he wasn’t born in this country, it’s one of the greatest scams of all time,” Trump told Bill O’Reilly, who demurred: “I don’t think that’s the case.”

Vote for Donald Trump, the man who can make Bill O’Reilly look like the most sensible guy in the room. ...

Trump was one of the first people I interviewed when I came to New York as a reporter back in the ’80s when he was a developer-wunderkind who had started in the business with nothing but a smile, a dream and his father’s large holdings in real estate.

He’s still promoting, 24/7. Some people believe that his presidential flirtations are an attempt to draw viewers to his TV show, “Celebrity Apprentice.” In it, people who are alleged to be famous compete for money for their favorite charities and what one former contestant revealed was a salary of $16,000 apiece. That isn’t much for network TV work, but since one of this year’s celebrities, disgraced former steroid-using baseball player Jose Canseco, recently tried to make a $5,000 fee by sending his brother to impersonate him in an exhibition boxing match, you have to figure it comes in handy.

“Celebrity Apprentice” is widely regarded as terrible and cheesy programming, but, actually, it has its moments. I recently saw an episode in which a former top model had a serious discussion with a fellow competitor about whether this was the 20th century or the 21st. You can’t get stuff like that on “Mad Men.”

The series is a perfect reflection of Trump himself: an orgy of product-placement and personal aggrandizement. All the contestants, including the ones in their 70s, have to refer to their host as “Mr. Trump.” They all somberly devote themselves to making faux commercials about whatever enterprise has coughed up cash for a major mention that week. Then it’s off to the boardroom where people talk ceaselessly about their performance in order to stretch the whole enterprise into a low-cost, two-hour show.

When you think about it, “Celebrity Apprentice” has a lot in common with the current Republican presidential campaign. Endless blathering. Strange contenders who did something vaguely notable in 1986. And Donald Trump, looking extremely cheerful.

And here's the letter Trump sent in reply.

Or you can just listen to it in the video above.  :)

The meek shall inherit the Earth

(Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

Or, as Robert A. Heinlein once said, "Perhaps the meek shall inherit the Earth, but they'll do it in very small plots . . . about 6' by 3'."

Actually, "the meek shall inherit the Earth" and "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" seem to be phrases that wealthy and powerful people use to keep everyone else passive.

"Yeah, you'll get yours,... but only after you're dead. Trust me!" Heh, heh. Man, why would you believe that?

But then, check out this video clip if you wonder why people believe this stuff. No, you still won't learn why, since the caller never answers that question. But you certainly get an idea of his mindset. (Note that he's not unsympathetic, because I feel kind of sorry for him, but he's certainly not a good role model, either.)

Ryan's private savings

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Ryan's Private Savings - Path to Prosperity
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Why can't Democrats do this? You see how Jon Stewart takes Paul Ryan's graph and shows why we're facing such a tremendous debt burden? It's not because of too much spending. It's because of the Republicans' own insistence on cutting taxes for the very wealthiest among us.

Would returning tax rates to where they were before the recent, and completely disastrous, Bush administration eliminate all debt? No, but it clearly makes the problem more manageable.

I said "clearly," and I mean it. Jon Stewart uses Ryan's own graph to clearly demonstrate his point. So why can't Democrats be this clear? I'm beginning to wonder how they ever get elected at all, as inept at politics as they seem to be.

But I'd like to point out something else about Ryan's graph, something that he's careful not to show very clearly. Ryan's plan - even using his own figures - shows the deficit going up. Then - eventually - it's supposed to go back down again.

This is because his own proposals would immediately increase the deficit, with continued large tax cuts for the rich. Later, far down the road, he assumes that "trickle-down" economics will actually work this time. And he assumes that more difficult decisions will be made in the future.

Yes, the pain is put off. Republicans get their tax cuts for the rich immediately. Then you just have to trust them that all these benefits, which will supposedly decrease the deficit, will actually happen. But current Republican politicians won't have to worry about that. If it doesn't happen, it will be someone else's problem by then (just as the current economic collapse is Obama's problem, not Bush's).

So what are the chances of it all working out like this? Come on, were you born yesterday? Throughout the Bush administration, Republicans also promised us that tax cuts for the rich would magically increase revenue and decrease the deficit. Remember "voodoo economics"? How did that actually work out? (They also promised us that the Iraq War would "pay for itself." How did that work out, then?)

That's the thing about political promises. Politicians will promise us anything in the future, in order to get what they want today. Well, why not? By then, it will be someone else's problem. And they know that Americans have hopelessly short memories, anyway. (Just the fact that Republicans are riding high again - with the same failed policies they embraced during the Bush years - is a clear demonstration of that.)

Again, why can't Democrats capitalize even on political slam-dunks? (I'm still mad at their behavior last fall, when given a similar slam-dunk.) Paul Ryan has proposed ending Medicare within ten years. Are Democrats so inept that they can't make that clear to the American people? Yes, I'm afraid they are.

Heck, Jon Stewart has just shown them how to take Ryan's own graph and use it as ammunition against him. Will they follow his lead? Don't bet on it. Democrats seem to be absolutely hopeless at politics - and in this respect, President Obama is a typical Democrat.

Yes, candidate Obama was a great politician. But President Obama has demonstrated that he's at least as hopeless a politician as most Democrats. Amazing, isn't it? His lack of leadership and his complete ineptitude at politics have been very, very disappointing.

I want candidate Obama back again. (Well, as long as I'm wishing, maybe I should wish for Democrats to develop a spine. Heh, heh. Dream on, huh?)

QOTD: The Rumsfeld caveat

Quote of the Day:

Victor Davis Hanson reviews Donald Rumsfeld's book:

A magnanimous Donald Rumsfeld seems determined to give away most of the money he made during a hectic three decades in private enterprise to a variety of admirable causes (he is donating all the profits from his memoir to veterans’ charities). He is as candid and unapologetic in retirement as he was in government and corporate service. “Take away the insurgency in Iraq,” an acquaintance once told me, “and Donald Rumsfeld would have been a sort of icon of postwar America.”

Right, if you imagine that the most important thing he did was a huge success rather than a huge failure, then he'd be remembered as a huge success. Not as a huge failure. Likewise, if Lee Harvey Oswald had killed someone who was about to assassinate President Kennedy, rather than assassinating President Kennedy himself, he'd go down in history as a hero. - Jonathan Chait

How really terrible ideas infect the mainstream

(This Modern World, via Indecision Forever)

Check out the rest of it here. Is this the next of Paul Ryan's "courageous" proposals, now that he's already suggested ending Medicare?

Will this be like the "birther" phenomenon, which will just keep gaining steam, no matter how ridiculous it is? Yeah, laugh now, but in a few years, when this is mainstream Republican thinking, who'll be laughing then?

Guess what Republicans aren't cutting?

From TPM:

House Republicans and Senate Democrats have posted details of the bipartisan spending agreement that staved off a shutdown, providing a first look at where the $39.9 billion of cuts come from on a program by program basis.

Republican priorities can be seen throughout the agreement, with reduced funding for enforcing environmental regulation, scientific research, health care, and education all leaping out. ...

Defense was not cut from current levels, instead increasing by $5 billion.

Think about that. Republican priorities are to cut environmental regulation, scientific research, health care, and education - pretty much everything America desperately needs more of, if we're to compete effectively, and thrive, in the 21st Century. (And, of course, these spending cuts are needed in order to give more tax cuts to the rich.)

But though we're spending seven times as much on military expenses as our next biggest rival, and this at a time when our only enemy is a rag-tag band of religious nuts, Republicans can't find one thin penny to cut there. Indeed, they've increased spending on defense.

Either the GOP is completely insane or I am. And I really don't think it's me.

QOTD: Good health is wicked

Quote of the Day:

The apocalypse is near. Americans must gird their loins and prepare to defend themselves against a terrible evil. Rick Santorum has a warning for us.

"Think about how they view you," he told the crowd of Republicans. "They view you no different than the drug dealer views the little kid in the school yard. They want to get you hooked, they want to get you dependent. They want to get you relying upon them for your wellbeing. And once they've satisfied you, giving them that drug, that narcotic, then you'll be reliant on them and, by the way, you'll also be less than what God created you to be."

Can you guess what quotidian horror Ricky is concerned about? It certainly sounds dreadful.

It's health care.

I know. Just let it sink in.

Rick Santorum and the Republicans are telling people that having access to doctors and medicines and being treated for your illnesses and being in good health is wicked, and that his hateful god intends you to suffer more.

And then…

The crowd thundered applause.

- PZ Myers

Pap smears at Walgreens

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
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Speaking of Fox & Friends, huh?

Sorry about all the videos. But I'm too busy for much else right now. I'm not even getting those "Quotes of the Day" done.

I'd like to say I've been doing nothing but work - and I have been working pretty hard in the afternoons - but I've also been re-playing Morrowind in the evenings. What can I say? All work and no play...

SNL's Fox & Friends

Heh, heh. Reverse anchor babies and other scary stuff!

Hmm,... I'm not sure I can tell this apart from the real Fox & Friends.

Burning half a million Korans

I don't know about this idea, since I don't think it will have any impact at all. It probably won't even get noticed. But in general, I agree with him.

I have no respect for Pastor Terry Jones, but he was well within his First Amendment rights to burn a Koran - or a Bible or an American flag, for that matter. A proper response to free speech is more free speech, not violence.

There is no excuse for the violence - the murders - which occurred in Afghanistan as a result of this. And Terry Jones, the religious nut in Florida, is not responsible for what the religious nuts over there did to people, not at all.

In general, I'm disappointed in the reaction to this in the West, especially among our leaders. It was the same way with the cartoon "controversy." The fact is, we should be standing up for freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion. We should make that very clear, no matter what.

Yes, I'm sorry if your feelings were hurt. Too bad. That happens sometimes, but get over it. In modern democracies, we have rights - rights which you enjoy, too. You can worship as you please and you can say what you want. Go ahead, bitch about something. You have that right. But killing people, especially innocent people? Sorry, we've learned better than that.

In the West, we've moved out of the Dark Ages. Maybe these lunatics should try it sometime. But, either way, we're not going to accomplish anything with appeasement. If violence gets terrorists what they want, they'll continue using it.

The fact is, religions don't have rights. People have rights, but they don't have the right not to get their feelings hurt. (Note that Muslims aren't the only ones pushing a contrary view. The Catholic Church is also trying to ban criticism.) People do have the right to peacefully express their views, no matter how crazy they might be - and no matter how much anyone else dislikes that expression.

We need to stand up for our own values. Do you think Muslims are too stupid to understand freedom of religion and freedom of speech? I don't, not if it's explained to them. (Of course, American Muslims generally understand it already.) Do you think Afghans are too stupid to understand these things? I don't believe that, either - not most of them.

Unfortunately, they live in a primitive Dark Age society. They're poorly educated, and they tend not to hear why we support individual freedoms. So the last thing we should do is back down from these freedoms ourselves. Yes, you can regret that their feelings were hurt, but we must stand firmly for our own rights.

It just doesn't make any difference that Pastor Jones is a complete loon himself. He has the right to do what he did, and he should have that right. After all, freedom of speech is designed to protect unpopular speech. That's the whole point, since popular speech doesn't need protecting. These murders weren't Jones' fault.

I really dislike the widespread bigotry against Muslims, but in this case, it was the Afghan rioters who were completely in the wrong. There's absolutely no doubt about that. There's just no excuse for that kind of behavior. Jones wasn't in the wrong, those Dark Age barbarians were.