I was listening to the soundtrack to "Judgment Night", and wondered if anyone in the early 90s ever thought we would be nostalgic for gangsta rap some day.

I have that album. Never saw the movie, but definitely enjoy the soundtrack.

Judgement night has the beauty of gangsta rap mixed with metal though. It has double the awesome!

Yup. And, whatever. If they want to, then they're going to. Although I always want to ask them, "Do you like ANYTHING??? AT ALL???" But it's not worth engaging them.

I have a theory I've been playing with. I think the reason some people hate everything is because it's easier and makes them feel like they won't be fooled by crooked politicians. They're too smart to hope for something they've decided will never happen so they don't have to look like foolish dreamers or something. I'm starting to thing cynicism is a cheap and easy way to make yourself feel better than everyone else.

OK - here is another general refutation [link]

Here are some specific refutations by a NASA scientists.

[link]

[link]

Note that Willis's data is what is cited by Easterbrook.

I knew the world was a weird place when I looked back on George Herbert Walker Bush and thought, "I miss him."

Really, except for the way he got roped into supporting the Republican party's stand on taxes WRT the deficit (remember how he was the one who coined the term "Voodoo Economics" in the debates before he became Reagan's VP?) I thought President Bush Sr. was eminently respectable. He may have been out of touch with the price of groceries, but I never doubted that he understood his responsibilities to the American people and intended to do his best to fulfil them honorably. Also, perhaps because he served in the Navy during WWII, I got the distinct sense that he regarded the use of military force as a last resort rather than first (or a game to be played with living tin soldiers).

So, some woman just came for my old magazines, and is going to send them to soldiers! I heart that! I know people have bad experiences trying to get rid of stuff on craigslist (and a lot of my stuff just got no bites at all), but I have done surprisingly well, and easily.

It has double the awesome!

Exactly!

But then, I find it funny that many of my Republican family/friends think he's so lefty. IMO, he's pretty centrist, really. He's certainly not as lefty as I am.

This was one of the things I found most annoying during the primary, honestly - that Obama's undeniable cool factor was almost universally misinterpreted as his being an extreme liberal. (Both from the young, hip left-wing supporters AND the craxxy-as-hell right-wing attack dogs.)

The left/center thing is funny right now with one of the people running for Ted Kennedy's seat -- my parents' congressman, also their former mayor any my father's former boss. Anyway, in the greater Boston area, he's fairly conservative, and definitely had that kind of reputation. When he got to Washington, he realized he's a raging liberal in the rest of the country, and is now running for Senate as the "real liberal." Good times.

I have to admit that it softened me a wee, tiny bit toward GHWB to find out that (a) he was actually named for the poet Herbert Walker, and (b) he's at least vaguely familiar with Walker's work. Not quite enough for me to forgive him all his horrid offspring, but just a wee, tiny bit.

I'm pretty sure he was named for his mother's father, George Herbert Walker. [link]

That was Dubya.

I know. I was riffing on HIS lack of foreign policy.

Another fan of the Judgment Day soundtrack here.