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Present some data on that and I'll believe it. The burden of proof is on you, dude. Because there's no way I can wrap my mind around that. You can rhetorically and hypothetically back that up to hell's end, but that doesn't make it any more true in real life.

There was a rift in the republican party? McCain won pretty much by a landslide. He didn't have to deal with an opponent with rather feverish supporters until he clinched. The only divide in the Democratic party are those fringe Clintonistas that are viciously opposed to Obama and the Democratic party for expediting the inevitable. I want Obama to win, but I do agree with McCain on some things. Free trade and health care, but those are pretty big things for me... and that's about it. Speaking of agreeing with McCain on free trade and health care, those two things came up in my class on globalization today. It's hard to be a conservative when it comes to those things when you're the only one. I pitched "people living in China today have better lives than they did in any time period because of the market economy." Turns out that's something everyone considers themselves an expert on in the bay area.

So, what was the point of that post right there? Moving on.

I believe that universal health care is socialism and bad, does that mean that I should vote for McCain now?

I thought Japan's notably high suicide rate, at least among youth, was related to the rigorous secondary-educational system and culture of shame. I know nothing about Japanese culture, unlike you, so help me out, but I wouldn't be surprised if alcoholism was an outgrowth of the aforementioned. As I understand it, the high school years are so intense that if you make it out alive (literally), college is sort of a letdown before settling into a career as a faceless bureaucrat. Kind of like what we have, but with less variation and to greater extents. That's definitely one of the contributors, no doubt about it. But the high school years are only 4 years long. It's kind of worse when people go into college, because college is supposed to be seen as a break between the rigorousness of high school and a lifetime of monotonous work afterwards. So there are a lot of alcohol-related deaths then, too. Japan's got social problems abound.

Oh, well it's obviously because the age limit is 21. "repressive, puritanical"? Right. WE'RE REPRESSING THE YOUTH BY NOT LETTING THEM GET SLOSHED AAAAGH SOMEONE CALL CHE GUEVARA. Would you rather have a drinking culture like Japan, where suicide rates have (by no coincidence) begun to skyrocket in the same way that alcoholism has begun to skyrocket? Where getting drunk is a nightly activity for salary men? Where on the 20th birthday holiday, there are widespread reports of alcohol poisoning deaths? I mean, fuck, I look like a 13 year old Swedish immigrant and I bought 4 handles of vodka from a bakery when I was there.

I'd believe the whole "illegality is one of the reasons people do things" if there was actual, quantified data to back that up, but there's not. It's a fallacious argument and an ace in the hole that rears its ugly head every time a pothead wants something to be legalized. We'd like our kids to be good decision makers and have plenty of experience, but, from personal experience and speaking from inside the slaughterhouse, those odds are wildly stacked against that possibility. There is a very large gap in maturity from the teen years to the early twenties. It doesn't matter if you know some 18 year old who's pretty mature for his age and some 21 year olds who aren't. As Czech said, our drinking culture is so irreparably damaged that the only choice is to keep the status quo and hope for the best. Tzar's also right, kids are gonna get fucked up legal or not, but it's rather irresponsible to make it legal for obviously inexperienced kids with a shitty sense of judgement to buy dangerous shit. As for the "learning lessons" argument, that's just fucking ridiculous. Learning a lesson comes in the form of arrests, car accidents, and injuries, not from throwing up a couple of times. I've said this before, but kids are pretty stupid. I've made dumb decisions that I regret, but not many teenagers have a good sense of right from wrong. That's just how it is, and lowering the drinking age would make that even worse. The only reason these colleges want to lower the age is so they don't have to deal with security all the time on the campus.

Swish.

All that woman is saying is that she's ashamed that a woman didn't get nominated, barring people, you know, disagreeing with her or not.

Yeah, I suppose if your consistently binge drinking with your parents at 16 its probably not a good idea. But I think, in general, kids are less likely to start drinking recklessly once they have the ability to do it if they have learned something about alcohol and drank it with parents, rather than the kid whose parents said "No booze until you're 18! Then you can do what you want and I don't care!" That's some pretty inverted logic right there.

I liked when she quoted the Seneca Falls Convention, which was a largely unsuccessful meeting that only about a hundred or so attended. But it really wasn't anything that I didn't expect from Clint-dog. Every speech she's ever given was about HOW HISTORICAL IT WAS THAT SHE WAS RUNNING.

Collarbone is broken. I'm in a sling, no meds or anything () My nurse was this old scottish lady who swore like a sailor. Awesome.

Pee Wee!

GUYS I JUST GOT SHOT

I think I broke my collarbone today. Went over the bars on my bike. I'm in excruciating pain. Even went to class afterwards for an hour and a half.

"If your cashier doesn't hand you a receipt, kill him."

You can't really look at the fact without the consequences. Otherwise, that's just being short-sighted. And if a 18 year old kid wants to get drunk in his room, that's fine with me, but that's another one of those in a perfect world scenarios. Most young kids are social drunks, and rarely, if ever, drink alone at home. That's when bad decisions get made, and that's why the law is in place.

I'm not a morning person, but I'm still getting your signals crossed here, VX. What do you mean by "anything, at all."?

Seriously. I'd get them all the time. Wow, what a world if they offered you churros. Taco Bell now has this delicious little strawberry fruit ice... thing. It's crushed ice and strawberry shit. I'm a fag for anything fruit drink, but this one is especially good. Try it out sometime.

Nah, it just proves that 9/11 was a conspiracy.

That would be nice in a perfect world, but we know that the reality is far from that.

Well, infant mortality is one of the ways that general health is measured, so yes.

So you'd just trust your kids not to drunk drive? The cops are there for a reason.

"Fuck corporate media!"

Maybe you don't want to, but most parents see a responsibility to, looking at the number of alcohol-related teenage deaths in the country.