JKane

It's blocks from the damn site, "Ground Zero Mosque" is nothing but inflammatory right wing BS! What about the (by this SAME definition) "ground zero strip club"??? Fucking Harry Reed and his total lack of balls. For Mohamed's sake it's not even a fucking mosque!

That's pretty unique! Are they each trying to do the same stylized series of specific moves or did I imagine similarities?

Where does all the money for Syphilis PR / outreach come from and why? I've noticed campaigns several times now in WeHo/etc. Just seems odd since I can't recall anything similar for other curable STDs.

Because the people we are talking about believe it to be the literal word of George Lucas God. But on the other hand, magical zombie Jesus isn't all that much more believable either... At least the Mormons know the provenance and edit history of that part of their fairytale holy book.

First, do you understand what the Mormons fundamentally believe? Insane may be a given! But I think they may be quietly trying to distance themselves from this one. Second, I very much doubt the supreme court would ever make such a broad ruling. The court we all learned about in school, all those major decisions, that idealism, it's hard to imagine again in my lifetime. The question is Prop. 8 in California, which it may be possible for 5 justices to agree is wrong. There is no way they would blow that up into anything larger and if they did they'd not get the 5 votes. Now there's certainly another fight to be had on DOMA and the idea of a marriage in one state not being honored in another, but they'll do their best not to get dragged into that, and if they do I doubt we'd like the result.

This sentiment in the Pat Tillman thread got me thinking about this issue again, and going in circles about it again. So I wanted to see what others thought and if I could be persuaded in a more definitive direction. On one hand, I've mostly been of the position that it is the duty of every nation to respond to humanitarian crisis to the utmost of their ability, even if others won't and the UN stands impotent. In this line of thinking we should've been in Afghanistan much sooner, and belonged in Somalia, Bosnia, etc. But on the other hand, it is starting to feel like that 'youthful idealism' is dieing in me for two reasons: I've seen such intervention incompetently done too many times, and it seems to me like several of these crises were directly caused by previous US intervention in the country/region (Cambodia, Afghanistan). And I'm not sure I really like where either option leads. The US's military budget is well beyond reason, with us working on an 11th supercarrier while no other country effectively operates one. Yet the nature of the UN seems to prevent it from ever acting decisively even as millions of people die, and for the UN to truly have the strength to do so would require a wholesale change in the way the US supports it. Then the cynic(/realist?) in me says even debating the issue is nothing but masturbation, that economic/corporate interests will always drive the size of our military and where we intervene (i.e. the middle-east instead of Africa).

Yeah, they've been talking about those kinds of things for a while now, and the color changing shirts are available now, I believe. The problem is most of these ideas tend to stop working after a certain number of washes. When you're talking underwear (as you'd have to be for the medical monitoring functions) would you want them to be dry clean only? Even then, only so many trips through the chemical bath I bet.

Damn, I suppose you're right. My assumption that 'free and democratic' countries weren't doing this was probably very naive! They either have an NSA/Mi5 (and/or a backdoor into the telcos) or are very worried about citizens carrying around instant encrypted communicators at all times. Of course they could also probably be more subtle and shut them down in specific areas for certain emergencies/threats, as I'm sure would happen here... and most would assume the network was overloaded. It's like it's a good thing the BB network's gone down several times and ATT is crap in general, sure works for them! Did the protests in Iran with the dead woman and all the green kickstart this?

But did they really *need* that data to convict if she had to look it up and was dumb enough to do it from her home computer? Where they may've also been able to find the same info in the browser history? Criminals and smart people can just use anonymous proxies. Google's "don't be evil" moniker is getting to be about as worthwhile as Fox News's "Fair and Balanced"!

Or, if this gets any closer to being like the Great Depression we could follow your advice in the other direction! Fuck the worthless fat-cat middlemen siphoning off this money--let their 'invisible hand' decide THEIR fate for once! RE-establish public works and have the government directly hire people or SMALL subcontractors to build things we need anyway like solar power plants and wind farms, plus road improvements and help the army core of engineers put levies and such in places in Sacramento and Louisiana, among others. Gov't hired census workers had an impact in unemployment, let's hire at least a similar number a bit longer term to do the other things that need to be done! Gov't isn't as bad at these things as the 'right' would have us believe, just compare Medicare's overhead to private insurances and then consider who each is insuring!

Wow, that's pretty damn evil, but it was my understanding that this was pretty much the default practice of the banks at the time. Think Suze Orman mentioned it months or a year ago. I'd occasionally dip into my overdraft protection line of credit (which I knew I was signed up for and didn't incur an overdraft charge) but not more than once every couple of months. Once I really looked at the fees for even that I said screw it and simply started keeping more money in checking. I do still like the overdraft protection being attached though, it's fees are far less than a dishonored check's would be. I did notice the debit card having a hard limit around when they did it. Kinda annoying when you pull up to an Arco or Coscto Gas with the gas idiot light on and the only method of payment they accept doesn't work!

Yes actually, though I don't remember the details now I read a couple stories about it and heard an interview or two with locals. My recollection is that she left the city in a lot of debt and services had to be cut. Her half-term as Governor didn't seem so disastrous, but that's because of all the regulation and near socialization of all oil companies working in Alaska... you know, which she doesn't want anywhere else to have. The answer to the BP spill is LESS REGULATION remember! But in Wasilla she seemed much like Bush (in Texas and the US). It's the republican way: Cut taxes, but only ever substantially on the rich, then cut back services for the middle class and the poor. Then sell yourself to those same people as a populist--helping them keep their money. Tell that to any Californian that's had to pay a bill for UC system tuition in the last several years! That said, I'd say hate isn't a strong enough word. Loathe is closer. She has no ideas, no convictions. She wants power and will vacantly recite whatever talking points she thinks will get it for her, regardless of if it includes fomenting civil war beside the nuttiest tea-baggers. It's tragic that people like her and Newt can start class warfare of the poor/middle against the poor! A friend of mine had a great point about the argument that it's critical to extend the Bush tax cuts to save the economy... if those cuts are so great for the economy how the fuck is it in the toilet after so many years of them already?

What are everybody's ideas on the best way to book flights for the best price? I've played with several itineraries on AA.com that seemed like pretty good deals, but had trouble setting up something similar at other sites. (On AA.com it's fairly easy to set it up so you can stay several days or weeks in cities you have to fly through anyway, they call it multi-city.)

India?? Granted, they have some strife, but this really surprises me.

You know, as many problems as many of us have had with Daddy, some of the things he links on his main page really are profound. Thank you for your call.

Maybe I got the wrong idea from the original story I read, but I really don't like something about this... It's like somebody is saying Oh yeah? Well what if we surround you with evil fags? And it's doubly insulting if it's nothing but a right-wing political ploy with no chance of happening. How did we become somebody's attack dogs?

Yep, he's officially a press whore. But he'd probably do a better job than Sarah!

Ok, how do we put up Youtube videos again? Ah: use the page address, not the embed code!

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value=" name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src=" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

There's further information that he recently lost his dad to ALS and is losing his mother to cancer. He should have been on leave... dealing with New York passengers on top of that was really just too much for anybody!

Yeah, this one incident in pretty much the history of flying where a flight attendant under stress did something rash that didn't endanger anybody... In fact this was about the least destructive he could've done in that emotional state... I would've grabbed a portable O2 bottle and bludgeoned the person to death after they hit me in the head with a suitcase they had no business getting out. Ideally he would've just gone to the back, called the flight deck and asked them to have police meet the plane, then announced to the cabin that due to the actions of that passenger and the assault on the FA's person there would be a delay at the gate while we await police to take that person into custody. Interfering with/disobeying flight crew is a real crime. Not sure the unintentional assault is a criminal matter, but if he claimed double vision and neck pain it sure could be a civil one! It's a pitty that instead he ended his career--which he did, not just with Jet Blue... I'm sure most top-tier airlines have flight attendants go through those psyc questionnaires, and since even during a boom time there's more applicants than positions they drop anybody who doesn't 'pass'. Dozens (more like hundreds) of FAs have been maimed or killed performing their primary duty--seeing to the safety of the passengers in an emergency, yet I recall no incident of them endangering/destroying a plane. Other airline employees and even a couple pilots have, (but hey, the pilots get firearms in the cockpit if they want now!). But let us have this single event on a slow news day shit all over those facts... So, do we need a whole new bureaucracy to handle your screenings or maybe just add it to the plate of the sages at TSA, since now that they've taken care of the snow globe menace they have plenty of extra time?

I didn't say it'd be a *good* movie. I do hope Airbender finally put an end to his career. But I've hoped that after his previous flops too.

The problem there is most people don't know what the hell they're talking about when they label themselves a conservative! When you ask people about issues the large majority are actually progressive. Things like abortion rights, social safety net, progressive income tax, access to health care, equal rights, etc., etc. Conservatives crowing about these kind of polls smacks of 'The American Independent Party' claiming to be the third largest party. But it shows again how the conservatives dominate the language and therefor the debate almost totally.

That's the most gorgeous batch yet! I like the variety it shows, because it's not that hard to get sexy young latinos in Los Angeles for fairly reasonable prices...

BBC World News, Our World: Brazil's Child Prostitutes Just watched the show, no mention of the saunas or men. They showed 2 underage boys selling themselves as transvestites. Other that that it was all about shamefully young girls, and the European men (?) that exploit them. Didn't hear mention of Americans once. According to this somewhat histrionic show (I'd have thought that unusual for the BBC), now that asia is cracking down Brazil is becoming (or already is) the new capital for underage prostitution. The situation didn't look quite as bad as a documentary I saw on asia, in Brazil the girls were at least teens and some were doing it to feed drug habits (at 13), not just to live. Still pretty grim of course, and likely to attract a lot more attention as things heat up for the World Cup then Olympics...