[Overpaid Slacker]

Well, we've exhausted paste's wit. I was referring to your being simultaneously insubstantial and noxious. The witless rejoinder, and moreso the compulsion to make one, implies an intellectual bluntness to metaphor.

Thom - perhaps you need reminding of the difference between a theocracy and a democracy. It is a distinction with a difference. Can a democracy be also a theocracy? Sure. Under, however, Islam... NFW.

If stability is what Tech wants, an all Islam world would be pretty darned stable. And I'd put "minimal" (where did pseuostatistic that come from? I guess it'd mean "acceptably few") internecine killings on the opposite side of the scale from "wholesale slaughter of minority groups", "rape rooms", "torture chambers", "use of BioChem weapons against adversaries" and "funding international terrorism".

Is it really about $? Not to me. If effective tax rates are down, I'm not sure I'd bytch. That dough that we're paying anyway would go to more bridges to nowhere, NEH grants (more art from feces, anyone?) enforcing the no-fly zone, etc. It's not like you'd have your pro-rata share of the $ back in your pocket. If this results in fewer government entitlement programs and less porkfat in the budget, then I'm all for it.

Really, I just liked Abu's comment...

JP