tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post8029887029326581895..comments2024-03-28T16:08:29.578-04:00Comments on Sardonicky: The Best of All Possible EvilsKaren Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-2820183727288964342014-06-18T23:44:02.470-04:002014-06-18T23:44:02.470-04:00@James--
Good night, James, and thank you.@James--<br /><br />Good night, James, and thank you.Zeenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-11759089582460724322014-06-18T22:21:32.601-04:002014-06-18T22:21:32.601-04:00Good. And as to your 'place', it is as res...Good. And as to your 'place', it is as respected member of this motley crew.James F Traynornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-29214929973060618982014-06-18T22:13:54.415-04:002014-06-18T22:13:54.415-04:00@James--
OK, ya got me. I'm totally confused...@James--<br /><br />OK, ya got me. I'm totally confused.Zeenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-56828357988895352222014-06-18T21:42:54.733-04:002014-06-18T21:42:54.733-04:00That wasn't the jeremiad part.That wasn't the jeremiad part.James F Traynornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-51909237292537542132014-06-18T18:41:55.393-04:002014-06-18T18:41:55.393-04:00@James--
With all due respect, Under the Gun: W...@James--<br /><br />With all due respect, <i> Under the Gun: Weapons, Crime and Violence in America</i> hardly represents a pro-gun, or pro-gun- owner "jeremiad." <br /><br />It is a scholarly, carefully researched and highly referenced and annotated volume written by <i> sociologists, </i> not a hysterical journalist <i> cum </i> plagiarist, and it pretty much represented the state-of-the-art in the understanding of, well, <i> Weapons, Crime and Violence in America </i> at the time, 1983.<br /><br />The book is still available, much to my surprise, and you can obtain further information about both its contents and the qualifications of the authors at this site:<br /><br />http://www.amazon.com/Under-Gun-Weapons-Violence-America/dp/0202303063<br /><br />Hell, if you think that the book represents some kind of jeremiad rather than a scholarly tract, you could even buy the book and do some homework of your own in order to put me in my place.Zeenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-70991895926100054722014-06-18T18:03:30.319-04:002014-06-18T18:03:30.319-04:00Jeremiad vs jeremiad. Hardly illuminating. I will,...Jeremiad vs jeremiad. Hardly illuminating. I will, at present, accede to 'pompous' and possibly 'arrogant'. But neither are terribly unusual among the members of the fourth estate. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-49847658521107114632014-06-18T15:17:55.227-04:002014-06-18T15:17:55.227-04:00@James--
(Places that Chris Hedges is factually w...@James--<br /><br />(Places that Chris Hedges is factually wrong, Part II)<br /><br />The book is 30 years old, of course, so perhaps the state of knowledge regarding the psychology of the typical American gun owner has changed since then, but I haven't seen anyone citing such new work: only recycling myths, just as Hedges appears to me to do in the articles that I've listed above.<br /><br />Now, Wright <i> et al. </i> devote an entire chapter to the “characteristics of private weapons owners," <br />which I am obviously not going to transcribe here. (Though I could scan it into a pdf file and e-mail it to Karen.) The chapter is thick with citations, and closes with these remarks:<br /><br /><i> “In sum, 'there was no evidence...that the average gun owner exhibits atypical personality characteristics'... <br /><br />Most private weaponry is possesses for reasons of sport and recreaction' sport guns apparently outnumber defensive guns by roughly three to one. The uses of weaponry for sport are correlated with city size, but not perfectly; large numbers of sport uses can be found in even the largest central cities. Relative to nonowners, gun owners are disproportionately rural, Southern, male, Protestant, affluent and middle class. Most adult weapons owners were socialized into the ownership and use of weaponry spanning virtually the whole of their lives. <b> There is no evidence suggesting them to be an especially unstable or violent or maladapted lot; their 'personality profiles' are largely indistinct from the rest of the population.</b>”</i>—Wright <i> et al. </i> (1983) (My bold emphasis.)<br /><br />So until I see more current evidence to the contrary, the results of Wright and Rossi (then Professors of Sociology, U. Mass, Amherst), and Daly (Dept. of Sociology, Yale University) I think that Hedges is not only wrong in his characterization of American gun owners, but malevolently so.<br /><br />Contained in the second article by Hedges for which I provided a link above, <i> Vigilante Nation, </i> is another gem of an incorrect fact:<br /><br /><i> “We are not a people with a revolutionary tradition. The War of Independence, while it borrowed the rhetoric of revolution, merely replaced a foreign oligarchy with a native, slave-holding oligarchy.” </i>--Chris Hedges<br /><br />Huh? <i> No revolutionary tradition? </i> Does Hedges think that the British merely submitted to our “rhetoric of revolution,” peacefully stepped aside and allowed the Founders to install themselves as the new oligarchy under a slightly different form of oppressive government? <br /><br /> Even Howard Zinn acknowledges that the United States was founded by force of arms, with the help of armed private citizens. In the interest of brevity, I will oversimplify Zinn's interpretation here, but according to Zinn:<br /><br /><i> “The American victory over the British army was made possible by existence of an already-armed people. Just about every white male had a gun and could shoot...</i>--<i> A People's History of the United States</i><br /><br />According to Wikipedia, <br /><br /><i> “More than 25,000 American Revolutionaries died during active military service. About 8,000 of these deaths were in battle; the other 17,000 recorded deaths were from disease, including about 8,000–12,000 who died of starvation or disease brought on by deplorable conditions while prisoners of war... most in rotting British prison ships in New York. This tally of deaths from disease is undoubtedly too low, however; 2,500 Americans died while encamped at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777–78 alone. The number of Revolutionaries seriously wounded or disabled by the war has been estimated from 8,500 to 25,000. The total American military casualty figure was therefore as high as 50,000.” </i> <br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War#Casualties<br /><br />No “revolutionary tradition” in America? Hedges is not only wrong here, he's a blithering idiot.<br /><br />So, yes, James, I think that Hedges has not only been factually wrong in at least a couple of places, but malevolently and hysterically wrong, to boot.Zeenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-72239943252987998082014-06-18T15:14:08.808-04:002014-06-18T15:14:08.808-04:00@James--
(Places that Chris Hedges is factually w...@James--<br /><br />(Places that Chris Hedges is factually wrong, Part I)<br /><br />I believe that Hedges is factually wrong in a number of instances. For the sake of discussion, I'm going to talk about Hedges' utterly incorrect, indeed, vicious, portrayal of the personality of American gun owners. I'm doing this because it is a topic that I have studied—as a matter of intellectual self-defense—and not because I want to precipitate another long discussion on the Second Amendment, gun ownership in general or for self-defense, <i> &etc. </i><br /><br />One does not have to read much Hedges to know that he views American gun owners as racist, violent vigilantes, who “revel in a demented hypermasculinity.” According to Hedges, we gun owners are a bunch of very sick indidivuals, indeed.<br /><br />http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/23208-the-rhetoric-of-violence<br /><br />http://thewalrus.ca/vigilante-nation/<br /><br /><i> “America’s vigilante violence, rather than a protection from tyranny, is an expression of the fear by white people, especially white men, of the black underclass. This underclass has been enslaved, lynched, imprisoned and impoverished for centuries. The white vigilantes do not acknowledge the reality of this oppression, but at the same time they are deeply worried about retribution directed against whites. Guns, for this reason, are easily available to white people while gun ownership is largely criminalized for blacks. The hatred expressed by vigilante groups for people of color, along with Jews and Muslims, is matched by their hatred for the college-educated elite, who did not decry the steady impoverishment of the working class. People of color, along with those who espouse the liberal social values of the college-educated elites, including gun control, are seen by the vigilantes as contaminants to society that must be removed to restore the nation to health.” </i>--Chris Hedges<br /><br />The trouble is, as nearly as I can tell there is not a single scholarly psychological, psychiatric or sociological study to support this crap. Hedges merely feeds into an accepted part of the Progressive myth about gun owners that is never questioned because, well...guns are evil, so gun owners <i> must </i> be crazy to want to own them in the first place, mustn't they? So why bother to disturb the myth with mere facts?<br /><br />Now, if anyone in this forum can produce a few scholarly studies from respectable sources that show us gun owners to be the rabid, demented bunch that Hedges says we are, well, I'll rethink my assertion that he's at least occasionally wrong. But here's what some other scholars seem to think of the character and personality of American gun owners, which seems to make a liar of Hedges:<br /><br /><i> “Although there is a rather extensive speculative literature on the personality characteristics of private weapons owners...virtually nothing of empirical substance is known about this topic. The themes of the speculative literature are well known and, with few exceptions, condemnatory and derogatory. In one view (the psychoanalytic), weapns are phallic symbols representing male dominance and masculine power. A related theme concerns the presumed need for power and virility. Fear, psychological insecurity, authoritarianism, a tendency to violence, gernealized pessimism, and so on, are also commonly advanced as personality abnormalities to explain weapons ownership.<br /><br />Contrasting these themes, <b> such evidence that exists suggests no sharp or distinctive personality differerences between gun owners and nonowners. </b> </i> (My bold emphasis.)<br /><br />Wright, J.D., Rossi, P.H., and Daly, K. (1983) <i> Under the Gun: Weapons, Crime and Violence in America.</i> Aldine de Gruyter, New York, 342pp.<br /><br />(To be continued...)Zeenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-83949105675758784152014-06-18T09:40:16.682-04:002014-06-18T09:40:16.682-04:00Zee says "I find him pompous, arrogant, and, ...Zee says "I find him pompous, arrogant, and, well, often wrong..."<br /><br />"Aye, there's the rub"! <br />Shakespeare <br /><br /> annenigmanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-54189011774858362372014-06-18T09:37:13.167-04:002014-06-18T09:37:13.167-04:00Denis,
Your Enron story was quite on point in ligh...Denis,<br />Your Enron story was quite on point in light of this in a blog post yesterday:<br />And in trade, as in business competition, it’s far from clear that the big rewards go to those who trash the past and invent new stuff. What’s the most remarkable export success story out there? Surely it’s Germany, which manages to be an export powerhouse despite very high labor costs. How do the Germans do it? Not by constantly coming out with revolutionary new products, but by producing very high quality goods for which people are willing to pay premium prices.<br /><br />So here’s a revolutionary thought: maybe we need to do less disruption and put more effort into doing whatever we do well.<br /><br />Krugman is good at editing his past. That's how you keep your conscience of a liberal clear.Katnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-45624728475555736662014-06-18T08:55:58.432-04:002014-06-18T08:55:58.432-04:00Often wrong about what? Facts or interpretation?Often wrong about what? Facts or interpretation?James F Traynornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-79431555604632514812014-06-18T00:43:41.546-04:002014-06-18T00:43:41.546-04:00@Will--
Not much of a "defense," IMHO.
...@Will--<br /><br />Not much of a "defense," IMHO.<br /><br />Still, as something of a spectator rather than a Hedges "partisan" or "critic,"<br /><br />(OK, OK, I admit that I'm not much of a Chris Hedges "fan," as I find him pompous, arrogant, and, well, often wrong...)<br /><br />I guess I'll have to await something resembling an independent journalistic judgement. <br /><br />If there really is such a thing in this day and internet age.Zeenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-76431958345746050902014-06-17T23:31:23.849-04:002014-06-17T23:31:23.849-04:00Update: Chris Hedges' response to plagiarism a...Update: Chris Hedges' response to plagiarism accusations<br /><br />http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118212/chris-hedges-responds-accusations-plagiarismWillnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-49787876603167298622014-06-17T09:34:18.390-04:002014-06-17T09:34:18.390-04:00Back in the late '70s and dragooned by my wife...Back in the late '70s and dragooned by my wife into 'Doing something about our retirement' I was forced to look toward investing our relatively meager savings. It was from this vantage point that I viewed the coming of Obama with relief.<br /><br />But what did he do? He appointed the very people who aided and abetted in what had turned out to be a global financial disaster.<br /><br />Now Krugman. It must be something in the Princeton and U. Chi' air that is infectious, a sort of airborne prion that turns the brain to mush.James F Traynornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-81553216102410722642014-06-17T09:17:19.843-04:002014-06-17T09:17:19.843-04:00Another Dr. Pangloss alert !!!
H/T Naked Capitali...Another Dr. Pangloss alert !!!<br /><br />H/T Naked Capitalism: “Krugman claims that there are no policy disagreements within the party, and that Obama did as well as he possibly could have. Oh, and of course the United Democrats are fully behind Hillary.”<br /><br />http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/15/disciplined-democrats/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0<br /><br />“If he had had an easy time, the party might be divided between those wanting more radical action and those not in a hurry; if he had failed utterly, the party might be divided (as it was for much of the past three decades) between a liberal faction and a Republican-lite faction. As it is, however, Obama has managed to achieve a lot of what Democrats have sought for generations, but only with great difficulty against scorched-earth opposition. This means that the conflict between “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” — exemplified these days by Elizabeth Warren — and the more pro-big-business wing is relatively muted: the liberal wing knows that Obama has gotten most of what could be gotten, and the actual policies haven’t been the kind that would scare off the less liberal wing…<br /><br />“Obama implemented Clinton’s health plan (remember how he was against mandates?), and Clinton, if elected, will continue Obama’s legacy. The party is willing to rally around an individual because it’s unified on policy, not the other way around.”<br /><br />Obama has managed to achieve a lot of what Democrats have sought for generations???!!!!<br /><br />Hillary Clinton, if elected, will continue Obama’s legacy!!!<br /><br />Krugman yearns to return to Clintonomics of the Clinton-era:<br /><br />"At the beginning of the new millennium, then, it seemed that the United States was blessed with mature, skillful economic leaders … What happened to the good years? How did we get here? How did the American political system, which produced such reasonable economic leadership during the 1990s, lead us into our current morass of dishonesty and irresponsibility?" - Paul Krugman, The Great Unravelling<br /><br />“A fossil sentiment in artificial rock.” - Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary<br /><br />Paul Krugman, the tireless booster of neoliberalism.<br /><br />Surely all will be well in the world! <br /><br />When things go wrong, don't go wrong with them. The worst of all deceptions is self-deception.Denis Nevillenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-61395994500865454402014-06-17T05:05:14.237-04:002014-06-17T05:05:14.237-04:00Paul Krugman as Dr. Pangloss…
In The Great Unrave...Paul Krugman as Dr. Pangloss…<br /><br />In The Great Unravelling, Krugman wrote, “I’m not part of the gang. I work from central New Jersey, and continue to live the life of a college professor - so I never bought into the shared assumptions. I don’t need to be in the good graces of top officials, so I also have no need to display the deference that characterizes many journalists.”<br /><br />Krugman writes, “Oh, and financial reform, although it’s much weaker than it should have been, is real,” ignoring the fact that the banksters have never gone to jail after fleecing America and cratering the economy.<br /><br />In 1999, "The Ascent of E-Man R.I.P.: The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit,” Krugman wrote:<br /><br />“The retreat of business bureaucracy in the face of the market was brought home to me recently when I joined the advisory board at Enron … the company's pride and joy is a room filled with hundreds of casually dressed men and women staring at computer screens and barking into telephones, where cubic feet and megawatts are traded and packaged as if they were financial derivatives… <br /><br />What we have in a growing number of markets - phones, gas, electricity today - is a combination of deregulation that lets new companies enter and ‘common carrier’ regulation that prevents middlemen playing favorites, making freewheeling markets possible.”<br /><br />http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1999/05/24/260257/index.htm<br /><br />Hello, Dr. Pangloss!!!<br /><br />Yes, that Enron, the “energy company that morphed into a trading company involved in hedge funds and derivatives and took on substantial risk, created secret off-the-books partnerships and, in effect, cooked the books under the nose of accountants and investors.” - U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), Senate hearing where PGE workers testified about their 401(k) losses<br /><br />Robin Blackburn wrote, “Enron’s demise was significant not just because of its size … but because it had represented the cutting-edge of neoliberal corporate strategy, living proof that financialization and deregulation were the wave of the future. It was this that made a tireless booster of neoliberalism such as Paul Krugman so proud to be on the company’s payroll.”<br /><br />http://newleftreview.org/II/14/robin-blackburn-the-enron-debacle-and-the-pension-crisis<br /><br />[“Me and Enron,” Paul Krugman defends himself @ http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/enron.html ]Denis Nevillenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-37337918368373088172014-06-17T01:43:22.167-04:002014-06-17T01:43:22.167-04:00Perfect, Karen.
As usual.
I'm almost an ex-N...Perfect, Karen.<br /><br />As usual.<br /><br />I'm almost an ex-NYT'er now.<br /><br />Krugman was my last hope there and I really didn't think he'd wimp out so easily. Must have been a lot of pressure applied is my guess, but we won't know for a long time as the after-Obama world looks quite dangerous, witness the actions of those who had earlier thought they might cause "some" change.<br /><br />The future does not look bright now.<br /><br />Unless we're counting the bomb blasts.<br /><br />The scenario ongoing in Iraq and Syria seems to have been in the making since Cheney/Bush lied us into Iraq. Right on schedule.<br /><br />What happened to our representatives to the left of Obama?<br /><br />Are they in hiding?<br /><br />Or disappeared.<br /><br />Seems we are left with Greenwald and Snowden as our protectors.<br /><br />Brrrr.<br /><br />Keep up the great work!Cirzehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07070125217972397204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-264940393242043692014-06-17T00:29:39.722-04:002014-06-17T00:29:39.722-04:00On Obama’s environmental (in-)action, these two ge...On Obama’s environmental (in-)action, these two gems of exasperation from within a long article in July’s “Harper’s Magazine” entitled “Promises, Promises: Can Obama Redeem His Environmental Failures?”<br /><br />(1) “He’s been like a weak radio signal,” Said James Gustave Sperth, who chaired the presidential Council on Environmental Quality in the 1970’s…. “You hear it for brief intervals and think maybe it’ll be an interesting show … and then it fades away.”<br /><br />(2) "Senator Sheldon Whitehouse expressed similar frustration. As the most outspoken member of Congress on the topic, the Rhode Island Democrat has delivered a climate-change-related speech on the floor of the Senate almost every single week the chamber has been in session since April 2012. I asked Whitehouse whether there had been any presidential reaction to his speeches, which numbered fifty-two by the time of our interview. 'Yeah,' he said. ‘We got a tweet out of the administration when I did the fiftieth one.’”Jay–Ottawahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10360356126450612113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-36412614953680934382014-06-17T00:23:08.308-04:002014-06-17T00:23:08.308-04:00@ Denis
h/t@ Denis<br /><br />h/tJay–Ottawahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10360356126450612113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-17535144067616861582014-06-16T23:16:03.979-04:002014-06-16T23:16:03.979-04:00Just in case Denis is reading this - I have missed...Just in case Denis is reading this - I have missed you and was delighted to see your name on the last comment thread.<br /><br />Karen - One of your best essays!<br /><br />Sadly, Paul Krugman has gone the way of other journalists at the Times. I knew it for sure when he minimalized the destructive potential of the TPP. Krugman plays it too safe. Easy to criticise policies that are already in place and obviously not working. How about heading off a train-wreck before it happens, Paul?<br /><br />I think the only really good soul at the Times was Bob Herbert - and he left.<br /><br />Valerie Long Tweedienoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-86382264635107244192014-06-16T20:21:54.525-04:002014-06-16T20:21:54.525-04:00I just knew that Karen was going to weigh in on th...I just knew that Karen was going to weigh in on this strange column by Krugman, I knew that after reading it in my print edition with breakfast. Then my internet was gone for the rest of the day - no real explanation from Comcast - was it my comments recently about Saudi Arabia funding the ISIS militants - who knows? Was it because I plugged Robert Fisk a couple of times, and asked why he was still in exile from the US press? <br /><br />This really seemed like Krugman trying to hold up a sagging Obama from the pounding he's taken on all sides. <br /><br />Still had time for that sunny side trip though, didn't he?<br /><br />Karen, where did you get that edition of Candide, with the Rockwell Kent artwork? I was stunned by it; it had to be from the 1920's or 1930's no, if not a little earlier? Kent is an interesting guy and I have to catch up with his formal biography someday. William Neilnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-47930632360721041822014-06-16T15:47:51.945-04:002014-06-16T15:47:51.945-04:00@Voice-in-the-Wilderness--
You ask, "Do we ...@Voice-in-the-Wilderness--<br /><br />You ask, <i> "Do we know where he keeps that Peace Prize stored?" </i><br /><br />I'm sure that very same question keeps the <i> Norwegian Nobel Committee </i> awake at night, too.<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/<br />Norwegian_Nobel_Committee<br /><br />My guess? <br /><br />Maybe Fort Knox, where <i> no one </i> is going to lay a hand on it, no matter how undeserved it was. Or is.<br /><br />I don't have the benefit of a liberal-arts education, but was the trigger-happy awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to BHO <i> sans </i> a single accomplishment, an example of <i> Panglossian über-optimism? </i>Zeenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-33399139600751534462014-06-16T15:27:27.347-04:002014-06-16T15:27:27.347-04:00I had just read Krugman's column before checki...I had just read Krugman's column before checking in on your blog. I had essentially the same reactions, but you are much more complete and articulate.<br /><br />I'd only add my view that whatever Obama does or doesn't do domestically, will be overshadowed by his amazing record as a war monger. Do we know where he keeps that Peace Prize stored?<br />Voice-in-Wildernessnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-80829067359746446342014-06-16T15:00:14.441-04:002014-06-16T15:00:14.441-04:00I just received an e-mail from the Democratic Nati...I just received an e-mail from the Democratic National Committee asking me to choose which cities they listed I would vote for having the 2016 Democratic National Convention in. Had they left an open choice I would have recommended Baghdad.Pearlnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-14998497949485510972014-06-16T14:58:37.970-04:002014-06-16T14:58:37.970-04:00@annenigma--
Plagiarism? Naaah! Just like Chri...@annenigma--<br /><br />Plagiarism? <i> Naaah! </i> Just like Chris Hedges, you changed a word and that makes everything all right!<br /><br />(Just joking, of course. Your infraction seems slight, at best.)<br /><br />Much as I hate punsters and plays on words, I regretfully have to give you high marks for your <i>pun-</i>ishment of Josh Earnest in your last comment.<br /><br />If puns and plays on words are your cup of tea, you may appreciate this video segment.<br /><br />http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pun-intended-wordplay-at-the-o-henry-pun-off/<br /><br />They are indeed a sick bunch!Zeenoreply@blogger.com