"In rare cases, you may encounter the Heavy Metal clunker, whose political leanings can be quite hard to discern."

But it really doesn't matter - they are probably the LEAST likely to actually vote.

"The Mountain West in an uninhabitable wasteland, enormously expensive to get to, and impossible to survive in for long periods without costly, regular support deliveries from the Industrialized East."

That's always been "true", and always been a lame excuse. Yes, in a colonization effort LOTS of people fail - ask the Roanoake colony. But someone will succeed, and MAKE the "wasteland" into a paradise.

You can choose to stay in the tenement - if someone offers me 50 acres, I'm taking it!

That's like saying that the western US shouldn't have been colonized until mobile homes were developed. If we wait until it is easy, it will never be easy enough.

How is cutting the defense budget down to the levels other first world nations invest in their militaries "withdrawing from the world"?

Because a very large portion of our defense spending is used in providing defense for those other 1st world nations. The reason Europe and Japan don't have huge armies is that the US does it for the, with bases all over the world, populated by US personnel. If the US were to pull out of Europe and Japan (which I wholeheartedly endorse, btw), our budget would shrink - and their budgets would skyrocket. And then the bleating about the US not "living up to it's global responsibilities" would start anew.

Fox East in Mt. Penn?

I was thinking more "Viking Funeral" with explosions and flames and all it's worldly possessions.

Then I remembered that staying stil and dying a slow cold death really IS the form of a Viking funeral on Mars.

You are still assuming that the main goal is to get the $400k. But if the idea is simply to make a fuss, they don't need to "point" to anything except Universal's greed.

Perhaps when challenged they will point to other court cases where Universal has taken the position that "damages" have nothing to do with actual work/losses.

"So now I can look forward to being aggressively proselytized on the web as well as by obnoxious yokels in the real world. Wonderful."

Really? As far as I can tell, Roman Catholic priests are the least likely to proselytize, at least in the 7th Day/Mormon Missionary sense. For that matter, there is extremely little RC "televangelism".

Do you have any particular instance in mind?

"Will we come to our senses already, or will it take soaring food prices and flooded cities and islands first?"

What I find most ironic is that the measures taken by the "sensible" have ALREADY caused the prices of food to go up. From that viewpoint, why NOT delay the pain?

"Obama made the promise, Congress is failing to uphold it. I don't see a problem here."

While that is technically true, it's far too facile. Before one can claim that someone else is responsible for a broken promise, one must make at least SOME effort to fulfill it. Where Congress is concerned, he hasn't even tried.

Publish text of bills pror to the vote? Sorry, it's too "urgent".

Veto bills with earmarks? Sorry, "last year's business".

Televise negotiations? Sorry, too "sensitive".

Obama has let the Congressional leadership do whatever they want without even token protest. I don't like his politics, but I had held some "hope" that he'd have the balls to apply "change" to his own party. Turns out whatever balls he had are firmly ensconced in Pelosi's handbag.

You don't need to bribe Neelie - just her underlings that filter the data that gets to her.

"maybe eu approved the deal because they got annoyed by monty"

More likely that Oracle's check finally cleared.

People only use letters and numbers because when they thing "word" it implies some meaning or coherence. We all understand what letters and numbers stand for or "mean". Non-alphanumerics? Hell, we can't even decide what to call "#" - is it "hash" or "pound?"
Is "." "dot" or "point?" For that matter, I still associate "$" with "string" in Fortran.

Start calling them security codes, pass codes, mystery keys, whatever.

You are comparing outliers with averages, and the results of centuries of breeding with an undomesticated species. I have the feeling that an auroch herd bull might be a *bit* more substantial than the average cow.