SuperJerk
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Posts posted by SuperJerk
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That's impressive, but I'd be REALLY impressed if those girls were Jewish.
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According to IMDB, the girl who plays Stephanie turns 18 next month.
Just sayin'.
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TSM has gone from being a message board to a message bored.
Thank YOU! I'll be here all week. Try the veal.
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Matt, I'm accusing you of clocking in late, stealing from the register, and taking 20 minute breaks instead of the 15 minutes everyone else gets.
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That's still pretty generous, though.
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I agree with Battlenuts 100%
It also amazes me that people are bitching because they're trying to keep it a private board. Real life organizations are private. Moose lodges, Elks lodges, etc. I think it sucks they won't let you in, but calling them elitist because they won't do so is pushing it.The metaphor I was thinking of was it was more like a high school clique where the members were picked based on popularity.
These are the folks who had a tournament to get people kicked off of TSM for fuck's sake.
(Before someone calls me a hypocrite for my attitude towards MikeSC a few years ago, let me point out that I long ago changed my mind about that and admitted I was wrong. Yes, there are circumstances under which people should be banned, but posting opinions--even bigoted ones--is not, inmy opinion.)
Leena, despite his/her whining and hypocrisy, was right about one thing: too regularly a poster would get ganged up on because they refused to back down from an unpopular opinion and the majority's response was to throw insults at that person at every opportunity.
That's an unfortunate by product of free speech and I can live with it, but then giving the majority the power to exclude the people they disagree with from the discussion will inevitably lead to a homogenous board where the highest priority is to conform. Once I found out they were keeping the board private, I lost interest and never applied.
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A former FBI Agent wants to clear the record on how effective our interogation techniques (the ones people who are pro-torture claimed were not working) were before the CIA and the Bush Administration's Justice Department decided to get creative.
There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.Defenders of these techniques have claimed that they got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This is false. The information that led to Mr. Shibh’s capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods. As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don’t add up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr. Padilla had been arrested that May.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/opinion/...tml?ref=opinion
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Dear Congressman Barton,
The only person "puzzled" in this clip is you, because you cannot comprehend plate tectonics. It is a scientific concept taught to children as early as elementary schools, or apparently the origin of fossil fuels as being the remains of fossils (hint: it's in the name). In other words, you are an ignorant moron.
Signed,
Planet Earth
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Eat it, fuckwads.
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Yeah...it was the Ultimates/Squadron Supreme crossover mini-series.
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Anyone still care about box office numbers?1 17 Again $ 24,070,000 3,255 1 $ 7,395 $ 24,070,000 Warner Bros.
Was this as dumb as it looked?
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The show is horrible, and yet the internet has been abuzz with how hillarious Andy Samburg's digital shorts, Weekend Update, and the run of Sarah Palin skits have been this year.
For a show that hasn't been funny since (fill in favorite year here), it sure seems to keep churning out stars and memorable characters.
Hell, they did a best of Amy Poehler show last night, an actress who was constantly derided for most of her years on the show, and it was great.
Do I think the show consistently comes up with enough funny material to fill a 90 minute episode every single week? No. However, it is rare that a episode completely lacks anything amusing.
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I was thinking of Floyd as well when I saw the post.Yeah, but the Lionel Ritchie song has cheezy goodness.
The 17 guests were most likely alkeiper, marvin, bob barron and every other crybaby who had to take their ball and go home.I just wasted 10 minutes trying to find clips from The Rock's speech on the June 17, 2002 episode of "RAW."
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Though its not much of a secret the times either party is most concerned with the deficit is when they are out of power, there are people out there who genuinely believe that Obama has doubled the national debt in the 2 months he's been president because of the blizzard of out-of-context numbers thrown at them by Hannity, Limbaugh, et. al. I remember Bill Clinton shutting a lot of people up when, as a president in his first term, told everyone the budget would already be balanced if they didn't have to pay interest on the debt run up under Reagan and Bush. Obama might want to use a similar line.
Here's an article about the Tea Parties that explains the rationale behind them quite reasonably.
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By the way...Do you have "Ultimate Power"?
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^I was gonna say that.^
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Here's what I've kind of been thinking about the protest...
A lot of the people in the crowd were obviously misinformed about a lot of things. And there were also, like at EVERY protest march (no matter what the issue), a lot of lunacy. Somewhere in there, there was probably a small contingent of well-informed people with a legitimate point to make. These are people who might be aware that Obama isn't planning any major tax increases now, the effects of deficit spending from both the Bush bail-out and his stimulus package will add a substantial amount to the national debt. And these people are worried about what effect that debt will have on future generations of tax-payers, long term effects deficit spending might have on the economy, and are concerned that an unplanned tax increase may become necessary very soon. This group of people were not represented at all by the conspiracy-theorists and office-holding demagogues that we saw on TV, or the inflammatory rhetoric of the yellow journalists at Fox News.
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I can't argue with that logic.
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More torture memos released:
Bush-era interrogation memo: No torture without 'severe pain' intentStory Highlights
Memo: To violate torture law, must have intent to inflict severe suffering
Obama says releasing memos vital to maintaining transparency, accountability
Legal memos offered guidance to CIA on "enhanced interrogation"
No prosecution for actions consistent with memos, official says
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Interrogation tactics such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation and slapping did not violate laws against torture when there was no intent to cause severe pain, according to a Bush-era memo on the tactics released Thursday.
"To violate the statute, an individual must have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering," said an August 2002 memo from then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee to John Rizzo, who was acting general counsel for the CIA.
"Because specific intent is an element of the offense, the absence of specific intent negates the charge of torture. ... We have further found that if a defendant acts with the good faith belief that his actions will not cause such suffering, he has not acted with specific intent," Bybee wrote.
The Bybee opinion was sought on 10 interrogation tactics in the case of suspected al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah.
The memo authorized keeping Zubaydah in a dark, confined space small enough to restrict the individual's movement for no more than two hours at a time. In addition, putting a harmless insect into the box with Zubaydah, who "appears to have a fear of insects," and telling him it is a stinging insect would be allowed, as long as Zubaydah was informed the insect's sting would not be fatal or cause severe pain.
"If, however, you were to place the insect in the box without informing him that you are doing so ... you should not affirmatively lead him to believe that any insect is present which has a sting that could produce severe pain or suffering or even cause his death," the memo said.
Other memos allowed the use of such tactics as keeping a detainee naked and in some cases in a diaper, and putting detainees on a liquid diet.
On waterboarding, in which a person gets the sensation of drowning, the memo said, "although the waterboard constitutes a threat of imminent death, prolonged mental harm must nonetheless result" to violate the law.
Authorities also were allowed to slap a detainee's face "to induce shock, surprise or humiliation" and strike his abdomen with the back of the hand in order to disabuse a detainee's notion that he will not be touched, the memos said.
Bybee noted in the memo that the CIA agreed all tactics should be used under expert supervision. Other memos said waterboarding can be used only if the CIA has "credible intelligence that a terrorist attack is imminent" and if a detainee is believed to have information that could prevent, disrupt or delay an attack, and other methods fail to elicit the information.
Another memo to Rizzo, from Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Steven G. Bradbury on May 10, 2005, noted that nudity could be used as an interrogation technique.
"Detainees subject to sleep deprivation who are also subject to nudity as a separate interrogation technique will at times be nude and wearing a diaper," it said, noting that the diaper is "for sanitary and health purposes of the detainee; it is not used for the purpose of humiliating the detainee and it is not considered to be an interrogation technique."
"The detainee's skin condition is monitored, and diapers are changed as needed so that the detainee does not remain in a soiled diaper," the memo said.
Another Bradbury memo laid out techniques and when they should be used in a "prototypical interrogation."
"Several of the techniques used by the CIA may involve a degree of physical pain, as we have previously noted, including facial and abdominal slaps, walling, stress positions and water dousing," it said. "Nevertheless, none of these techniques would cause anything approaching severe physical pain."
All of the CIA techniques were adapted from military "survival evasion resistance escape" training, according to a May 30, 2005, memo from Bradbury to Rizzo.
"Although there are obvious differences between training exercises and actual interrogations, the fact that the United States uses similar techniques on its own troops for training purposes strongly suggests that these techniques are not categorically beyond the pale," the memo said.
The memo said waterboarding and other techniques were used on Zubaydah; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, believed to be the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and identified as "KSM" in the memo; and another suspected al Qaeda leader, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.
"The CIA believes that it would have been unable to obtain critical information from numerous detainees, including KSM and Abu Zubaydah, without these enhanced techniques," the memo said.
"These legal legal memoranda demonstrate in alarming detail exactly what the Bush administration authorized for 'high value detainees' in U.S. custody," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in a statement. "The techniques are chilling. This was not an 'abstract legal theory,' as some former Bush administration officials have characterized it. These were specific techniques authorized to be used on real people."
In releasing the memos in response to a public records request from the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups, the Obama administration informed CIA officials they will not be prosecuted for past waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics.
Attorney General Eric Holder promised in a separate statement that officials who used the controversial interrogation tactics were in the clear if their actions were consistent with the legal advice from the Justice Department under which they were operating at the time.
"My judgment on the content of these memos is a matter of record," President Obama said in a statement released from the White House.
Obama prohibited the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" such as waterboarding shortly after taking office in January. Such techniques "undermine our moral authority and do not make us safer," he said Thursday.
The president said that while United States must sometimes "protect information that is classified for purposes of national security," he decided to release the memos because he believes "strongly in transparency and accountability" and "exceptional circumstances surround these memos and require their release."
Obama argued that "withholding these memos would only serve to deny facts that have been in the public domain for some time."
"This could contribute to an inaccurate accounting of the past, and fuel erroneous and inflammatory assumptions about actions taken by the United States," he said.
He added that the officials involved in the questionable interrogations would not be subject to prosecution because the intelligence community must be provided "with the confidence" it needs to do its job.
The president pledged to work to ensure the actions described in the memos "never take place again."
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/16/us....ents/index.html
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/15...tests-expected/Chants like "Give me liberty, not debt" and "Our kids can't afford you" were heard across several U.S. cities Wednesday as anti-tax "tea party" protesters took to the streets to voice their opposition to big government spending.Thousands of protesters -- some dressed in colonial wigs with tea bags hanging from their eyeglasses -- showed up in states from California to Kentucky to Massachusetts, holding signs and reading speeches lambasting the Obama administration's tax-and-spend policies.
"I have two little kids and I know we are mortgaging their futures away," one protester at a rally in Austin, Texas told FOX News. "It makes me sick to my stomach."
The demonstrations are part of a larger grassroots movement against government spending called Taxed Enough Already, or TEA -- giving name to the Tax Day Tea Parties -- and come more than 235 years after the original Boston Tea Party revolt against taxes.
Protesters gathered in cities across the country.
Shouts rang out from Kentucky, which just passed tax increases on cigarettes and alcohol, to Salt Lake City, where many in the crowd booed Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman for accepting about $1.5 billion in stimulus money. Even in Alaska, where there is no statewide income tax or sales tax, hundreds of people held signs and chanted "No more spending."
"Frankly, I'm mad as hell," said businessman Doug Burnett at a rally at the Iowa Capitol, where many of the about 1,000 people wore red shirts declaring "revolution is brewing." Burnett added: "This country has been on a spending spree for decades, a spending spree we can't afford."
In Boston, a few hundred protesters gathered on the Boston Common -- a short distance from the original Tea Party -- some dressed in Revolutionary garb and carrying signs that said "Barney Frank, Bernie Madoff: And the Difference Is?" and "D.C.: District of Communism."
Texas Gov. Rick Perry fired up a tea party at Austin City Hall with his stance against the federal government, as some in his U.S. flag-waving audience shouted, "Secede!"
But unlike many events around the country, politicians were not allowed to speak at a separate rally in San Antonio.
"They are welcome to come and listen to us, for a change," organizers said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Obama seized the opportunity to defend his tax policy Wednesday, saying, "Make no mistake: this tax cut will reach 120 million families and put $120 billion directly into their pockets, and it includes the most American workers ever to get a tax cut. This will boost demand, and save or create over half a million jobs."
"I know that April 15 isn't exactly everyone's favorite date on the calendar. But it is an important opportunity for those of us in Washington to consider our responsibility to the people who sent us here and who pay the bills," he said.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs also defended the president's promise to cut taxes.
"If anybody involved looks at the facts, they'll find out that this president promised and this president delivered on putting more money back into the pockets of hardworking Americans, cut their taxes, made it more affordable to buy a home, made it more affordable to send their kids to go to college, provided tax incentives for businesses to create jobs through things like clean energy," Gibbs told reporters during an afternoon press conference.
"I'll let the organizers of whatever these are speak to their motivations," he said.
This report from Fox News states it is anti-tax, but other reports suggest it was anti-stimulus, anti-bailout, or anti-Obama.
I have not found an exact number yet, but the closest thing I've found (and its unverified) is over a quarter-million people showed up for these on Tuesday.
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I'm not going to deny the obvious...Her reaction to the Bush-Hitler wasn't necessarily condoning it, though the strength of her opposition to calling Obama a fascist makes it clear she liked one more than the other.
Every once in a while, someone on CNN slips their bias in, meanwhile MSNBC and Fox actually seem to encourage their people to be biased.
The Caption and Fantasy Soundbite Contest Thread
in Current Events
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The circle is now complete.