I was going to say "I'd pay for that," but I realized that it wouldn't be appropriate, given the context.

it's easy to make something sound bad by slapping a label on it

It's also easy to make something look good by employing silly blandishments.

"Protecting the environment" can mean anything from "keeping people from dumping toxic waste into the local lake" to "burning down car dealerships," depending on who's doing the "protecting." "Protecting your rights" often morphs into "hate speech laws" that have the perverse effect of infringing on First Amendment rights. "Fighting crime" is a completely meaningless term (I'd love someone to explain to me what a "root cause" is without resorting to worn-out racial tropes), and "protecting consumers..." is all too often a smokescreen for increased government intervention in the economy, which, as the housing crisis has amply proved, often has a hand in... crashing the economy.

I'm also rather shocked that you'd consider socialism merely an "economic system," when the very point of socialism is that the state assumes control of the economy. Any time the state is involved in anything whatsoever, politics becomes important.

What we're saying is that when Republicans do it, the criminals are protected and sheltered by the party. When Democrats do it, we eject them from the party and prosecute them.

Which of Obama's tax-cheating nominees have been "ejected from the party" and prosecuted? How about Dodd? Or Rangel?

I'm so tired of Democrats piously informing everyone else about just how "tough on their own" they really are. You're just as bad as the Republicans.

A pox on both your houses.

This would only be awesome if Stallman dressed as the GNUnja.

God, I can just see RMS doing that commercial. Only the commercial would be about 15 minutes long, and would contain multiple instances when he exclaimed "GNU stands for GNU's not UNIX! It's a HACK!!!"

You don't know anything about Openoffice, do you? It can open MS formats and save in them. Has done for years. I've set up a stack of disadvantaged students with Linux and OpenOffice and I have never had a complaint about OpenOffice. Ever.

I bought a used PowerBook from a friend a year or so ago, and it came with Office 2005 for Mac. I do most of my academic writing on that machine. My desktop machine at home is a Linux box, and I have OpenOffice on there.

I've noticed a lot of problems, mostly in formatting, when saving between the two. After I've worked on a document in OO and re-open it in Word, the footnotes are all screwed up (usually indented by a couple of tabs for no particular reason). Once, after saving in OO and re-opening in Word, all of my paragraph indents were missing. Tables are kind of dodgy at times.

Word is, overall, a nicer program. And that's not saying anything about some of the other software that's bundled with OO.org, almost none of which really hold a candle to their MS Office equivalents.

That's not to say I don't appreciate OO.org -- I do. It's wonderful having a full-functioned office suite that does what I need it to do most of the time and which I can use across multiple OS's free of charge.

But its not perfect and, given the choice between doing a project in OpenOffice and MS Office, I'll probably choose Microsoft's product.

That being said, I'm not ever likely to upgrade from the version of Office that came with my Powerbook. By contrast, I always keep up to date with what OpenOffice is doing and try out new versions whenever they're available.

I'd love to be able to switch 100%, but it's not quite there yet.

In other words, you want to teach a primary education that promotes anti-capitalism and bizarre conspiracy theories along with a healthy dose of paranoia and stereotypes?

And people wonder why I think the best way to secure peace is to get rid of the US...

One word for you, chum:

"Chechnya."

Oh hush. Your on-the-ground, first-hand knowledge is inconvenient for those with a vague, anti-imperialist axe to grind against the US.

The logic is simple, you see:

1) We give money to groups resisting the Soviet invasion.

2) ??

3) We deserved 9/11!

Interesting.

I'm not sure I'm enough of a phone user to justify switching over to an iPhone + plan, though. I barely use my current phone more than 30 minutes a month, and already balk at paying even $29.99 for my 200 minutes, or whatever they give me.

If I can't download an article from JSTOR (or wherever), then the thing is useless to me. I don't care about ebooks. I don't care about audio books. But I'd really love a portable way to be able to read PDFs in a more convenient way than on my Dell Axim.

Oh, and I've yet to meet a libertarian of any stripe who espouses "Social Darwinism".

2. It's one, frankly, that the libertarians embrace. Every single social program, taxation scheme, or other government initiative meant to level the playing field is vehemently despised by some members of the Libertarian Party.

There, fixed.

In any case, it's a mistake to equate "libertarians" as a group with the Libertarian Party.

Also, what's this about "leveling the playing field"? Are we worried about equality of opportunity or equality of outcome, here? Because usually when people start talking about "leveling the playing field," it's code for "equality of outcome," which is not a philosophy that is particularly compatible with liberty of any sort.

While your analysis of the origins of the financial crisis is shockingly novel and clearly well-researched, might I suggest doing a little more reading about banking industry regulations and effect government pressure has on distorting markets?

I'd also be interested in reading about which societies you have in mind that don't have a wealthy class and a poor class.

First, it's "Gilded Age".

Second, the notion that a free market has anything to do with "Social Darwinism" is an absurd caricature.

Third, how do you guarantee personal liberties without also giving a guarantee of economic liberties?