bleeding heart

Perish the thought. Nor would lying morons (like the blogger in question) be used to buttress lying, moronic talking points.

Ha! Just so. To be fair, here in Fredericton we can't really tell...because we've had the same Mayor for a hundred and eighty years.

I agree with MG as well, and have had serious problems with that compass from the moment I started to take the test (and promptly gave up). To say it's better than the "left/right" perspective is sort of like saying that "Who's the Boss" was more sophisticated than "Full House." Sure, but so what?

Even if my throwaway snarkiness was unwarranted or unreasonable, the primary question remains begged. If I am, as you say, unwilling to cease "wallowing" (ie ongoing, multiple occasions) in this "alarmist echo chamber" that has you exercised, surely you can find some concrete examples of my doing so. Instead, you take issue with the fact that I take issue with the nominal: "clueless" (the only matter stated or implied in my post). You don't think this might lack some discrimination? That if I overstated in using "promiscuous" in your use of "clueless," that it might genuinely apply to whom you deem "alarmist"?

There have been a lot of complaints (I'm not talking about legal ones) from each part of the political rainbow regarding comments sections generally. I recal a kerfuffle between the lefty media watchdog group "Medialens", in which Guardian journalsitsa accused them of insufficiently moderating their comments section. In turn, the Medialens fellows pointed to the Guardian's own comments section...which was chock full of similar comments. The Medialens response was essentially: "If your staff at the Guardian cannot moderate to your stated standards, how do you expect the two of us to do it with ours?" etc. (A fair response, incidentally.) I've heard much the same elsewhere, too. I guess disallowing public comments is an option, but that sounds pretty chilling, and I think few want to go in that direction.

Not quite. My response to Waldo was a tacit agreement that your promiscuous use of "clueless" to describe your opponents--including Michael Hardner, not excluding him--suggests that merely disagreeing with TimG has, in and of itself, "consequences." In other words, it was all about your style, and not at all about any echo chamber. I have no doubt that you feel the same way about everyone who disagrees with you on any subject...AGW itself being quite incidental to the phenomenon.

Sure, "wallowing in the alarmist echo chamber"--meaning, I suppose, that you can cite, oh, let's say, two instances where I've done so...and I mean (being a generous sort) even by your own subjective standards of what constitutes said chamber. Alternatively, you could concede that you're making it up as you go along. Either way's good.

An Australian horror-comedy, filthy and violent, but with a lot of heart. Two brothers, Reg and Lindsay, run a fertilizer business, selling to local farmers. They've discovered that the potassium levels in human remains make for excellent product. The movie plays on the "city folk meet deranged rural madmen" theme, which we've seen in everything from Deliverance to Texas Chainsaw Massacre to The Hills Have Eyes....and about a thousand other movies ranging from the awful to the sublime. But as in most horror-comedies, it's ultimately about the characters....and as usual, in the battle between horror and comedy, the nihilism of the horror gives way to the warm heart of the comedy. The movie keeps upending what is expected, playing with the genre conventions. One of the would-be killers, it turns out (the younger, apparently weaker brother, Reg) turns out to be not such a bad guy, all his evil a result of his brother's influence and bullying. The three young people whom they kidnap form a love triangle: Sophie is the earnest and serious James' girlfriend, and he plans to ask her to marry him. But she's also sleeping with the bad boy of the group, heavy-partying Wesley. (Spoiler Alert) What's interesting about this dynamic is that it's not, as per convention, the wronged, husband-material James who becomes the hero....it is Sophie, his unfaithful girlfriend, who has the insight into the assailants' characters, and the raw courage, to save the day. Best one I've seen since Shaun of the Dead, and more than worth a Halloween movie-night.

It's not a particularly exclusive club, but one with respectable membership nonetheless.

For a man with whom I almost always disagree, August...I gotta say I think this an excellent post!

No, it's quite awful. It gives even disco a bad name. I don't care for Some Girls, either. But I wholeheartedly agree with you about the "Big 4." 1968-1972 was when the Stones shone the brightest. Especially those first two of the four. Influenced so many, from Aerosmith to Guns n Roses to the Rheostatics. (Incidentally, you can't even watch a Martin Scorcese movie without hearing "Gimme Shelter" played. )

?? He's the only leader who ever wanted to fix his own lousy Senate picks? Is there not a more proactive way to go about this, such as...well, you do the math.

You mean the program doesn't stop people from having unprotected sex? Well, a clear failure, then.

On the upside, my wife and I indulge in a feast of horror movies, good, bad and ugly, at this time every year. Stay tuned for Bleeding Heart's insightful horror movies reviews on the Arts and Culture thread!

I agree. One of the defenses of the taser, and I think a good one, is that nine times out of ten, you're better off being tased than hit with a club. Of course, tasers are used a lot more than clubs....but this means only that there has been a tendency to overuse the tasers...not that they're inherently a terrible weapon.

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Several million died as a result of the US invasion, too. And, as a predictable consequence, this helped precipitate much of the subsequent killing, too. Triumph of the hawks and their servile little acolytes.

OK, now here we agree.

OK, that's a very strong point. Maybe we have a tendency to see things as more permanent than they really are.

Fair enough, I stand corrected.

Why do I get the feeling that Kimmy is going to wonderfully clean your clock on this matter?

In the pedantic argument, in which "belief" is used to imply some sort of equality between every thing that any person can think about anything...yes, there is a circular logic to it. But since the argument is only ever used to defend religious faith, and not a single other unproven belief...we can dispense with it as not serious.

Yes, but there's an insane, indoctrinated lefty part of the country that doesn't know how to think: comprised of Democrats, minorities, young people, women, public schools, universities, the entertainment industry, artists, liberal Christians, atheists, agnostics, and some conservatives. You can't trust this fringe groups' opinion on anything.

Of course not. And it's perfectly understood that the guidelines aren't rock-solid for every moment you own a vehicle. They are rough, very rough, guidelines. Even if one questions their usefulness or their validity, I still can't see anything too draconian about them. Yes, if that were to happen, I'd agree with you.