silver: forgot to comment on the current state of america. things just keep getting more and more ridiculous, honestly. each protest movement is even more incredible than the last. obama has continued and even expanded most of the old bush/cheney policies while simultaneously managing to convince a lot of people that he is not doing so. the media is, as ever, completely subservient to the administration, and it refuses to do any investigative journalism. anyone who dares to do real reporting is immediately vilified and possibly even charged with material support of terrorism, etc. you've got to think things are going to come to a head eventually, but i don't know how or in what form (and no RON PAUL 2012 is not the answer, especially because it's never going to happen). i personally don't care that much about politics until i'm personally affected, but it might really get that bad, to say nothing of the issues that already do matter to me, like internet regulation. tl;dr america is a circus and it's going to get worse before it gets better.