Art Sandusky

Illegal immigration, pro-lifers, terrorists, people trying to wage the WAR ON CHRISTMAS~, whoever it may be, those looking to manipulate and rule with an iron fist will create scapegoats at will. It was way easier when they could use communism.

Probably the only couple of things I agree with this party about are getting rid of guns and having a balanced budget. One of their "core principles" is the equality of cultures and races, but they devote a page to how black people statistically commit more crimes than white people. Can't argue with numbers, but they're just there with no "we like this" or "we dislike this" other than noting over and over again how white people are apparently harmless.

Dude, Melina's hot as fuck. Crackheads.

Sure it can. It involves pirates.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/15/tor...bill/index.html Beyond pathetic that we'd even have to discuss making a compromise on TORTURE, but I'm glad the United States of America has finally come out and said "torturing people is bad." Not like torture being a bad thing was ever implied or anything... If this is going to be real and have some teeth, we need to be very explicit in the guidelines of interrogation, or else it's going to be stretched beyond its boundaries (which is what got us into this mess in the first place).

So the election looks like it went off without a hitch. Good for them, really. I think the place is still doomed to civil war as soon as we leave, but hey, gotta break a few eggs, or so the attitude will be at that time. I still think we coulda gotten a democracy off the ground there without invading the place, but whatever. It wouldn't have been the first time we helped a country kick out their asshole leader without invading. We saw the place, militarily, was a shell compared to its 1991 form. What was in place was working. Shit, by now we might have been talking about an Iraqi revolution. Short-term thinking will always bite you in the ass. Sure, progress is being made, tons of it, and I'll be the first to say that I'm extremely happy to see all of this working out so far, but there's still a LOT of stuff that needs to be done over there just to make daily life normal again. Forcing the transition into a democracy still might not have been the best idea. Ah well, it's already been done, so whatever. What sort of nation will Iraq be now that it'll be effectively legitimate with a permanent government? As long as they're somewhere between being our puppet state or developing into an extremist theocracy, it's all good to me. EDIT: http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/12/15/...ured/index.html Forgot about this. ^^^ I totally sympathize with the guys that let him go. I've yet to see a picture of the dude where he looks the same as he does in another.

They should be. It's a friggin' box, who cares.

"South Park did it!"

9 out of 10 people who spend their lives sitting atop poles or other stick-like objects agree: I suck! The second you come up with something that isn't just flawed talking points someone already made up without real basis, then I'll act like I care.

Why is there so much opposition to this every time it comes up, anyway?

Okay, I'm an asshole too then. When I drink, it's all done in one rush of booze. I don't spend an evening drinking, more like fifteen minutes of drinking followed by an evening of being drunk.

Which really doesn't unscramble it all that much. I still have no idea what it means.

I think it can be a success with wrestling involved, I'd never say to get rid of that aspect. I'm certainly not the one to write about it (not in the "proper" way anyway), but it should still be a large part of the place. And what I'm proposing isn't "what we did before and it didn't work then," it's what's called a pretty normal format. It still allows for plenty of flexibility and oodles of quality, just as we had before. I attribute its failing to what I said in an earlier post, that being no one filling the holes created in the site's subject matter. If something wasn't done anymore, there was no real effort to find a replacement or it was just looked at as "eh, oh well." All the while we were told that there were plenty of writers and no new talent was needed while the site itself was left to die on the vine because... tada! It only had a few writers left! Am I the only person who doesn't want an instant solution? Persistence and quality are all we really need. Bring all the doom and gloom you want, but it's really the only safe route to take. Comments and blogs and all that dumb bullshit might be immediately successful, but that kind of stuff would be prone to burn out quickly because we aren't looking at a real expansion in audience size and origin for a good month or two. Probably for the best, as we'll still be working out formats and getting a general "feel" for the kind of place it's going to be. Then we can try and push outside the established audience. Ratings and comments and blogs might be acceptable at that point, but one step at a time. All of this hemmin' and hawin' doesn't mean shit until we move past the planning stage and into actual execution, of course.

Weren't those terror plots down there that got busted a few weeks ago kind of shaky in their credibility?

A simple "talk about this in the forums" link at the end of each column or something is what many sites do, and it's perfectly fine. Only the people who are writing for the wrong reasons would care about comments on their article pages. Call it a lack of direct feedback, but I don't see people get up in arms when there's no such option in print media. If people want to respond to a piece of work or offer suggestions, the appropriate thread in the forums would suffice. If it's such a bitch for certain people, the majority won't have a problem with a couple of extra clicks to get to the article's feedback thread. Again, a fairly large pool of writers would work to fill holes created when these other people decide they don't like to write because no one's paying attention to them immediately. This won't be an overnight thing, it'll need a solid month to re-establish itself in the consciousness of the boards. Anyone who would write would be made well aware of the lack of initial feedback if they aren't aware of it already.

You're from Minnesota, the total opposite of tha durty. So "what the fuck ever."

Crap like that has me not even being able to watch Fox News for morbid entertainment. MSNBC's a step above Fox, but they have Rita Cosby and barely a few minutes of live TV on the weekends. They've got slant too, but towards the left and not as pronounced as Fox. I love CNN's advertising strategy of "real news," "facts, not fear," etc. They follow up on it too for the most part, and usually the only reason missing kids and newsmagazine crap is passed off as major news is when it's a very slow news day. Even then, they're capable of presenting it in the least sensational way possible. Sure they're liberal, but at least it's an intelligent kind of liberal. MSNBC just has Chris Matthews try to get intense. They're really not that bad. Each network has its own sort of personality that you can appreciate for what it is. Fox is the channel you watch if you really enjoy 20/20 or Dateline with world news being reported at the same time. If you sift out the blatantly slanted babble shows, it's at least a fairly informative channel with some smart people involved despite all the crap I give it. If it all wasn't so bush-league and had the presentation of local news (B.S. stories, plus the music they play, yikes), it'd be okay. It helps that, thanks to the growing fractures in the Republican party, they've been forced to report in more of a balanced manner. Still a bunch of assholes, but seeing their reporters rebel against their lords during the days after Katrina made me at least respect them. MSNBC is unfortunately like its broadcast brother, in that it always seems more interested all the big, glorious historical stuff that comes from big stories. Their focus is also all over the place, thanks to having a broadcast network and financial channel to cover so many different things. CNN doesn't have this problem, as CNNfi isn't nearly as well-known as CNBC. They fell into the crappy news pit that Fox is in this past summer. Their primetime lineup is Countdown (pretty good for a laugh, but it doesn't make much sense when your lead story is #5 on a list), Live and Direct with friggin' Rita Cosby (who always gets "the big story" and got the equivalent of a god push in wrestling when she debuted despite being brutal to watch), Scarborough Country (Bill O'Reilly knock-off although not as insane), and The Situation (which is improving with time, I feel). This isn't exactly a great one, not that the others have good primetime lineups either. CNN has experience on its side, having been around far longer than its competitors, to where we're getting to see the reporters of tomorrow with many of ones we're used to being retired now. Anderson Cooper 360 is pretty much where they have their B.S. kind of news, but at the same time it's at least pretty decent B.S. news. Think of a male Rita Cosby that has a better idea of what he's doing. I haven't the foggiest why Larry King is still on. I've never watched it, and I don't know anyone else who does either. Other than that, they simply feel a lot more impartial and professional, even if they really aren't the former. The Situation Room is the BOMB, and you know it's good when other networks try to utilize its format with multiple windows on your TV screen showing different things going on. Here's where I noticed the presentation gap between CNN and Fox. The Situation Room always seems so intense, like big shit's about to go down NOW, so you'd better be ready. Wolf Blitzer's comin' for ya. Fox has guitars and shit, fuck that. Give me plain' ol tense-ass news music. Lou Dobbs is also great, even though it seems like he won't talk about anything other than the war, immigration, and China. Plus: CNN calls it "Breaking News" when it's really warranted, unlike the others. They'll call a crap story "breaking news" just so they can have the little thing at the bottoms of their screen make people stop changing channels. ABC is probably the only broadcast network I can watch and just be informed, not hearing opinions. NBC's cool, but it feels like all they can report on effectively is military and historical stuff. CBS is nice too, but old people delivering somewhat liberal news shows is grating.

The theme wasn't heard anywhere in the trailer. No way it'll be good. It MUST have that theme. It'll probably end up being a normal big-budget movie that just happens to be called Miami Vice and has characters with the same names.

Or we could be practical and just write articles without comments to avoid such overcomplications.

Besides, it's awesome to be down to absolutely nothing and finish off the big, bad boss with your last person left alive.

Most Americans are right down the middle, but thanks to sensationalization of wedge issues, we're supposedly "more divided than ever." I think if we all started focusing on truly important issues again we'd chill out a lot. I'd much rather hear that there were protestors outside of, say, the Treasury Department following some huge economic development than I would seeing the same crowd outside of a nursing home in Florida attempting to shoehorn someone into martyrdom.

King Vitamin beats everyone down with his scepter until the Kaboom clown blows everyone else away with his cannon.

Yeah, but that takes all the fun out of it. Was I the only kid that actively shunned strategy guides and vowed to beat these games using hard-nosed determination and my own wits?

Oh, what the fuck ever.

Just the word "Blog" should never be mentioned during any discussion on writing real articles again. People want to make comments, shoot the writer an E-mail, you know, like any reputable place would do. And do you really want what Scotsmanality looked like? Sure, the pieces would be good, but then there'd be another 50% of page to go filled with gimmicks, people trying to use the forum to get over, and what the fuck ever else happening. Not having comments on articles would make the assertion that our writers are talented enough to stand on their own, and no comment is needed from others. Nothing prevents the writer of an article from having a little E-mail response, but having too much writer/reader interaction is called a messageboard. Fuck that, we've already got one of those.