NoCalMike

The thing I never understood about MTV, is that they are so anal about hiding the rampant marijuana use by Real Worlders which many, (including Jamie from San Diego and Cara from Chicago) delve into, when in reality, it is very common among late teens and older and really barely even considered a crime in the more civilized parts of the country, yet they have no problem filming teenagers obtaining fake IDs and sneaking into bars, downing mass quanities of alcohol, getting drunk, hungover etc......The way product placement is so sneaky these days, I wouldn't be suprised to hear Busch(the beermaker not the president) is paying MTV to show a "culture of alcohol" going on, to help promote it as "fun" to youngsters. Now of course this is not to say young people didn't drink before MTV, OF COURSE THEY DID, but the power of television can definately up the ante.

Maybe people decided not to watch the Grammys because they didn't like it the first time they watched it when it was called "The Billboard Music awards" I haven't even looked into Blockbuster's new "No Late Fees" policy. Anyone care to explain, and let me in on the catch?

If Dreamer is allowed to book the ECW PPV, you can be assured there will be enough phone calls to Heyman to at least put his stamp of approval all over it. I mean didn't Heyman said he had little to do with the production of the ECW DVD, yet he liked how it turned out, and by the positive feedback, so do the fans.

I don't think it is fair to say the solider was taking the "pussy way out" Quite frankly, he was told by our leadership a pile of bullshit for why we were dropping bombs and shooting in the first place, and even more bullshit on what to expect out of the Iraqi people when they get over there. And you expect him and others not to be fucked in the head upon their return?

In fact, when my dad was in basic training, he said three people in his group bashed their kneecaps in to get out.

I am waiting for Oliver North to call him a "pussy" Or for Hannity to have Coulter come on his show to say this story is totally made up because all the military loves Bush and knows they are in Iraq to keep America free.

they just used the same photo.........LOL. Exhibit A: http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/02/1...s.ap/index.html (Seems CNN has caught on to this fuckup, and changed the N. Korea pic to a pic of Kim Jong, but rest assured this was the original link) Exhibit B: http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/02...iran/index.html Note to CNN: Zooming in ever so slightly on a picture does not make it a different picture, from a different location in the world.

I eagerly await watching these movies at 3am on Showtime Extreme, 3 months from now.

Sacramento is pretty diverse, and the truth of the matter is that racial jokes/language/satire etc....is thrown around so loosely by ALL RACES, that is is hard most of the time to tell who is just kidding, and who might be a legit racist, unless you personally know the people.

Well forget about the movie then, instead how about addressing the point of the latter half of this thread. We are incapable of destroying the planet. That is a fact. We have no clue what damage we may --- or, equally likely, may NOT --- be doing to the environment. That is a fact. Bush isn't championing the pumping of nuclear waste into the ground, so this is all a red herring. -=Mike Well that latter half of the thread was quick to dismiss "destroying the world" theories faster then you usually do. I was referring to the fact that you seem to want to refute that pollution, excess garbage, toxins etc...being released into the water and air has no effect on the enviornment and/or people's health in general. People breathing highly polluted air and eating fish from lakes/rives full of water that contain dangerous levils of toxin, regardless of enviornmental effects, you can't honestly say this isn't bad for HUMAN CONSUMPTION.

Well forget about the movie then, instead how about addressing the point of the latter half of this thread.

Too long for me to read at work, but it seems well worth the read once I get home.

We are NOTHING to this planet. Nothing. Volcanoes spew more pollutants in one eruption than we have --- in our history --- combined. -=Mike It has been proven that humans can put enough toxins into the environment to create serious health risks for ourselves. Volcanoes didn't create the smog over Los Angeles, the raditiation in the American southwest, or the sewage in the Missouri River. Humans did. Do humans have the power to destroy the ecosystem forever? Perhaps not. Do humans have the power to poison the environment so that people's health is seriously at risk? Absolutely. Well At least someone gets it!!!

Rome's emailers are funny usually. Hell, I have had a few of mine read before. His new show on ESPN starts today right before ATH.

I think people are missing the point that Eric and the article I posted are trying to make. This isn't about "OMG THE WORLD IS DYING BECAUSE OF SMOG" This is about local regions, and how waste pollution is hurting small ecosystems. I am not arguing that we are killing the world, but corporations refuse to follow enviornmental laws that directly lead to killing off life in Chesapeake Bay surely leads to a worse time for humans. There is absolutely no argument to be made that exess waste being dumped into the bay, doesn't effect anything, or is A-ok for the fish and other aquatic life in the region. Whether Pollution, Excess garbage, waste, carbon dioxide etc....are going to destroy "Earth" is very much besides the point. The Point IS that all that stuff undoubtingly hurts PEOPLE. If the air in my city is bad, it might not destroy the earth, but it is still bad for the people in this city to be breathing, and can lead to accelerated rates of cancer and other disease. I fully agree that the enviornmentalist movement is focusing too much on the "doomsday" end of the world scenarios, and less time on local and regional problems/solutions to local enviornmental issues.

Duke@Maryland tomorrow evening at 6pm. I can't wait~! Go Terps.

I love the wording on this. Very loophole friendly. As in (not actual quotes): "I said we BELIEVE he had them, not that he actually had them." or "Depends on what your definition of 'reconstituted' is." Exactamundo. That was just a small sample of the loose language and vague statements made that definately fed into the "politics of fear" tactic, that led the drum beat to war, that and the fact that the media did a piss poor job questioning, refuting or even asking for any proof to backup these claims.

If you read the article though, it points out misleading statements by Bush, where he was specifically sent memos from the CIA regarding statements he was preparing to make in the SOTU speech regarding Iraq trying to buy necessary things to make a nuke. They sent him a couple of memos saying not to say it because it wasn't true, and he went ahead and said it anyway to try and convince us Saddam was on the verge of having Nukes.

U.S. Scientists Say They Are Told to Alter Findings More than 200 Fish and Wildlife researchers cite cases where conclusions were reversed to weaken protections and favor business, a survey finds. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...=la-home-nation By Julie Cart, Times Staff Writer More than 200 scientists employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say they have been directed to alter official findings to lessen protections for plants and animals, a survey released Wednesday says. The survey of the agency's scientific staff of 1,400 had a 30% response rate and was conducted jointly by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. A division of the Department of the Interior, the Fish and Wildlife Service is charged with determining which animals and plants should be placed on the endangered species list and designating areas where such species need to be protected. More than half of the biologists and other researchers who responded to the survey said they knew of cases in which commercial interests, including timber, grazing, development and energy companies, had applied political pressure to reverse scientific conclusions deemed harmful to their business. Bush administration officials, including Craig Manson, an assistant secretary of the Interior who oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service, have been critical of the 1973 Endangered Species Act, contending that its implementation has imposed hardships on developers and others while failing to restore healthy populations of wildlife. Along with Republican leaders in Congress, the administration is pushing to revamp the act. The president's proposed budget calls for a $3-million reduction in funding of Fish and Wildlife's endangered species programs. "The pressure to alter scientific reports for political reasons has become pervasive at Fish and Wildlife offices around the country," said Lexi Shultz of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Mitch Snow, a spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency had no comment on the survey, except to say "some of the basic premises just aren't so." The two groups that circulated the survey also made available memos from Fish and Wildlife officials that instructed employees not to respond to the survey, even if they did so on their own time. Snow said that agency employees could not use work time to respond to outside surveys. Fish and Wildlife scientists in 90 national offices were asked 42 questions and given space to respond in essay form in the mail-in survey sent in November. One scientist working in the Pacific region, which includes California, wrote: "I have been through the reversal of two listing decisions due to political pressure. Science was ignored — and worse, manipulated, to build a bogus rationale for reversal of these listing decisions." More than 20% of survey responders reported they had been "directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information." However, 69% said they had never been given such a directive. And, although more than half of the respondents said they had been ordered to alter findings to lessen protection of species, nearly 40% said they had never been required to do so. Sally Stefferud, a biologist who retired in 2002 after 20 years with the agency, said Wednesday she was not surprised by the survey results, saying she had been ordered to change a finding on a biological opinion. "Political pressures influence the outcome of almost all the cases," she said. "As a scientist, I would probably say you really can't trust the science coming out of the agency." A biologist in Alaska wrote in response to the survey: "It is one thing for the department to dismiss our recommendations, it is quite another to be forced (under veiled threat of removal) to say something that is counter to our best professional judgment." Don Lindburg, head of the office of giant panda conservation at the Zoological Society of San Diego, said it was unrealistic to expect federal scientists to be exempt from politics or pressure. "I've not stood in the shoes of any of those scientists," he said. "But it is not difficult for me to believe that there are pressures from those who are not happy with conservation objectives, and here I am referring to development interest and others. "But when it comes to altering data, that is a serious matter. I am really sorry to hear that scientists working for the service feel they have to do that. Changing facts to fit the politics — that is a very unhealthy thing. If I were a scientist in that position I would just refuse to do it." The Union of Concerned Scientists and the public employee group provided copies of the survey and excerpts from essay-style responses. One biologist based in California, who responded to the survey, said in an interview with The Times that the Fish and Wildlife Service was not interested in adding any species to the endangered species list. "For biologists who do endangered species analysis, my experience is that the majority of them are ordered to reverse their conclusions [if they favor listing]. There are other biologists who will do it if you won't," said the biologist, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Legit? Or are you just HOPING they make something like that?

The problem now isn't even getting the R rated cut, it is the fact that R rated movies are being chopped down to PG-13 all in the name of money. If anything why not release both versions in theaters, or throw the R-cut in the indy theaters and let them bear the fruits of releasing the CORRECT version.

I am just pissed because I have already seen the american version, and that alone will ruin ENOUGH of the plot for me, plus on AMC's Top 100 moments in scary movies or whatever it was called, they picked the conclusion to the original Vanishing. Needless to say, I still want to see it as I hear it is a great piece of suspense.

It is better to attack a country BEFORE they have WMD than it is to try and attack them afterwards. Yes, of course. You're 100% right on this point. However, I thought when we went into Iraq we thought Iraq DID already have them. Bush argued that Saddam DIDN'T have nuclear weaponry yet and we couldn't afford to wait for him to get them. The concern was not him using them, but him selling them. No offense, but I seem to recall that differently. I'll look into this before commenting further on Iraq. Well, if you can provide proof of him saying otherwise, I'll sit here and say "RobotJerk is right". I don't do that often, ya know. -=Mike Are you we talking exclusively about nukes here, or just WMD period, because I am looking at a speech right now from Bush that says Iraq possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons, which right there is not true. And just for further reference.... Bush’s WMD Flimflams by James Bovard, September 2003 http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0309d.asp The Bush administration’s rush to war against Iraq was justified largely by the danger that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction supposedly posed to the United States and to U.S. allies. In his January 28, 2003, state of the Union address, Bush denounced Saddam as “the dictator who is assembling the world’s most dangerous weapons” and listed vast quantities of biological and chemical weapons that few independent experts believed Saddam possessed. Bush concluded, “A future lived at the mercy of terrible threats is no peace at all.” In his March 17 “ultimatum address,” after listing Saddam’s alleged WMDs, Bush declaimed, “And this very fact underscores the reason we cannot live under the threat of blackmail.” In that same speech, Bush declared that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised…. Under [uN] Resolutions 678 and 687 — both still in effect — the United States and our allies are authorized to use force in ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. Bush warned, In one year, or five years, the power of Iraq to inflict harm on all free nations would be multiplied many times over. But there was no evidence that the Iraq “threat” had increased in recent years and no reason to expect it to “multiply many times over” in the following 12 months — especially since UN weapons inspectors were busily ferreting in Iraq at that moment. At a time when the allegations of Iraqi WMDs are unraveling, it is important to recognize the extent of the frauds that preceded the war. The Bush team waved nuke after alleged Iraqi nuke over Americans’ heads in the run-up to the war. On August 26, 2002, Vice President Cheney, speaking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, warned that Saddam could have nuclear weapons “fairly soon.” Two weeks later, President Bush told reporters, I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied, finally denied access, a report came out of the Atomic — the IAEA [international Atomic Energy Agency] — that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need. On March 16, 2003, Cheney announced on NBC’s Meet the Press that “we believe [saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” But the Bush administration never presented any evidence to support these assertions. The IAEA — the UN organization that was conducting inspections for nuclear weapons in Iraq — never produced the report Bush “reminded” reporters of in September. Mohamed ElBaradei, IAEA’s director general, informed the UN Security Council that “there is no indication of resumed nuclear activities” in Iraq. And although Cheney and Bush repeatedly invoked some aluminum tubes that Iraq sought to purchase as key steps toward making a nuke, UN experts investigated and concluded that the tubes were not intended for use in nuclear weapons production. Perhaps the most decisive piece of evidence offered by the Bush administration was the fact that Iraq sought to buy 500 tons of uranium oxide for use in nuclear weapons from uranium mines in Niger. CIA chief George Tenet gave a classified briefing to congressmen on this and other charges in September 2002, a few weeks before Congress voted to endorse war with Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell also informed a closed hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee two days later of the Iraq attempt to secure the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon. The revelation sent shock waves through Capitol Hill and helped squelch resistance to going to war. In his January 28 state of the Union address, Bush declared, The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. The forgeries In early March, the IAEA announced that the documents detailing the attempted purchases of uranium were frauds. One senior IAEA official told the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh, These documents are so bad that I cannot imagine that they came from a serious intelligence agency. It depresses me, given the low quality of the documents, that it was not stopped. The British government had long refused to give the documents to the IAEA; when the Brits finally passed along the “smoking gun,” it took IAEA inspectors “only a few hours to determine that the documents were fake,” Hersh reported. The letters appeared to be a crude cut-and-paste operation with Niger government letterhead; however, the names of officials in power did not match the dates on the letter and the signature of Niger president Tandja Mamadou was an obvious forgery. A senior IAEA official observed that the flaws in the letters could have been “spotted by someone using Google on the Internet.” Hersh, who wrote a superb exposé on the scam, noted, Forged documents and false accusations have been an element in U.S. and British policy toward Iraq at least since the fall of 1997, after an impasse over U.N. inspections. Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W. Va.) requested that FBI chief Robert Mueller investigate the document fraud because “there is a possibility that the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq.” The FBI effectively brushed off Rockefeller’s request. Six weeks after Hersh’s piece appeared, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof reported that the vice president’s office began a much earlier investigation into the Iraq-Niger nuclear documents, sending a former U.S. ambassador to Niger. Kristof reported that in February 2002 that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged.... The envoy’s debunking of the forgery was passed around the administration and seemed to be accepted — except that President Bush and the State Department kept citing it anyway. A tardy admission After months of the story of the false Niger claims festering in the media, a senior Bush administration official — unnamed, of course — formally announced on July 7, 2003, Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq’s attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the state of the Union speech. This greatly belated admission by an unnamed official was taken by senior Republicans as the proper close of the entire episode. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, declared, Obviously, when you use foreign intelligence, you — we don’t have necessarily as much confidence or as much reliability as you do your own. It has since turned out to be, at least according to the reports that have been just released, not true. The president stepped forward and said so. I think that’s all you can expect. But it is ludicrous to assert that “the president stepped forward and said so.” Bush never conceded his statements were false; instead, he busied himself in late June denouncing “historical revisionists” who were examining the administration’s record on Iraq. The Bush administration did not even have the gumption to permit the “senior administration official” to be named — and yet Santorum believes Bush deserves a “that’s all you can expect” response. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) derided concerns over the administration’s confession that it had used false statements on the path to war: It’s very easy to pick one little flaw here or one little flaw there. The overall reason we went into Iraq was sound and morally sound. And it’s not just because somebody forged or a made a mistake on whether Saddam Hussein was looking for nuclear material from Niger or whatever. Whatever. Hundreds of American soldiers are dead and thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed. It is not a question of “one little flaw here or one little flaw there.” Instead, it is a question of plank after plank of the Bush administration’s justification for going to war being rotten to the core. And leaders like DeLay respond by rushing to attempt to close the subject and to portray any further curiosity as pettifogging — or worse. Bush White House aides sought to defend the president by blaming the CIA for failing to warn them that the Niger story was as bogus as a three-dollar bill. However, on July 22, Bush’s Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley and his chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, conceded that the CIA had sent two warnings to the White House in early October 2002 casting grave doubts on the Iraq-Niger uranium claims. The Washington Post noted the following day that yesterday’s disclosures indicate top White House officials knew that the CIA seriously disputed the claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium in Africa long before the claim was included in Bush’s January address to the nation. Most of the American media ignored the revelations amidst widespread exulting over the killing of Saddam’s sons by the U.S. military in Iraq. The Bush administration knew — at least as of early March — that the president’s statements in the state of the Union address on Iraq’s pursuing uranium in Africa were false and misleading. Yet the administration made no effort to correct its falsehoods until a British parliamentary inquiry had bludgeoned the Blair government on the same issue. There is no reason to presume that Bush was more deceptive and manipulative on the war on Iraq than he is on the war on terrorism or other subjects. The main difference is that the evidence of false claims on Iraq is now stark, especially after the U.S. invasion.

This is why you can't be taken seriously. You went from arguing points, to a cheap line of hate. This is Noam Chomsky we're talking about. I just hope that Chomsky has the decency to fucking die soon. why exactly?

This is why you can't be taken seriously. You went from arguing points, to a cheap line of hate.