Rudy and the Flat Tax: How does the link support a flat tax? It says that Steve Forbes thinks Rudy is a supply-sider. Barring a tax increase for the lower and middle, the only way to have both is for the GOP, once again, to lower taxes on the top brackets. Surprise! "Flat tax" is code for "Rudy is Bush". The idea that Giuliani would end corporate welfare is ... ha ha funny joke-man.
DOJ and Pedophilia: Tip of the iceberg on this abuse issue. See also Stop Prison Rape, three year study from HRW, and the personal story of one, T.J. Parsell.
Neural Marketing: "In Forbes, [neural marketing] is lightly described what happens in the brains during a purchasing process." It now appears that, not only did Marx underestimate the joys of material ownership, but that capitalists have new ways of stimulating them. Separately, "Ricard explains that happiness is a skill that can be self-taught, as he did by 10,000 hours of meditation." Huxley explains that, in the future, happiness is a pill that can be bought.
Cheney in Defeat: Never too early or too often, eh?
Newsweeklies and America: And Bush wanted a civilian corps? Has "politics" been outsourced by Americans or is this the plain-sight view of the perpetual threat to Republics at their peak: laziness and self-reference?
McCain in Iraq: A senior moment? McCain and condoms was far funnier comic-tragic.
"Pure Evil": This is a fine needle to thread. Whatever the ontology, I think it would be just fine to suggest that some people can be quite nearly consumed by evil. How that applies exactly to al-qaeda types is more difficult. Some atrocities are staged for maximum impact. Within their own personal lives, some jihadis exhibt (like the Mamluks?) a great capacity for both an aesthetic magnanimity and post-verbal brutality. Even bin-Laden's "peace" is corruptible on its own terms, which is the "practical significance" that I find in the abundant stories of jihadi-for-hire, the recent one about them pressing the kids into service, and blackmailing people into 'martyrdom'. I find recent the phenomenon of 'doped-up for jihad', although it may not be completely (I believe it was a CCN report I saw that drugs are being used in Iraq to desensitize would-be jihadi operatives).
