Controlled Chaos

QUOTE(YASNY @ Mar 30, 2006 -> 05:41 AM) Must have been a republican cop. Nope...just a white racist cop harrassing her cause she's black. She clearly had every right to defend herself in this situation.

QUOTE(Cknolls @ Mar 29, 2006 -> 02:57 PM) You got to love Thomas Sowell. Speaking of Sowell Guests or gate crashers Mar 28, 2006 by Thomas Sowell ( bio | archive | contact ) Immigration is yet another issue which we seem unable to discuss rationally -- in part because words have been twisted beyond recognition in political rhetoric. We can't even call illegal immigrants "illegal immigrants." The politically correct evasion is "undocumented workers." Do American citizens go around carrying documents with them when they work or apply for work? Most Americans are undocumented workers but they are not illegal immigrants. There is a difference. The Bush administration is pushing a program to legalize "guest workers." But what is a guest? Someone you have invited. People who force their way into your home without your permission are called gate crashers. If truth-in-packaging laws applied to politics, the Bush guest worker program would have to be called a "gate-crasher worker" program. The President's proposal would solve the problem of illegal immigration by legalizing it after the fact. We could solve the problem of all illegal activity anywhere by legalizing it. Why use this approach only with immigration? Why should any of us pay a speeding ticket if immigration scofflaws are legalized after the fact for committing a federal crime? Most of the arguments for not enforcing our immigration laws are exercises in frivolous rhetoric and slippery sophistry, rather than serious arguments that will stand up under scrutiny. How often have we heard that illegal immigrants "take jobs that Americans will not do"? What is missing in this argument is what is crucial in any economic argument: price. Americans will not take many jobs at their current pay levels -- and those pay levels will not rise so long as poverty-stricken immigrants are willing to take those jobs. If Mexican journalists were flooding into the United States and taking jobs as reporters and editors at half the pay being earned by American reporters and editors, maybe people in the media would understand why the argument about "taking jobs that Americans don't want" is such nonsense. Another variation on the same theme is that we "need" the millions of illegal aliens already in the United States. "Need" is another word that blithely ignores prices. If jet planes were on sale for a thousand dollars each, I would probably "need" a couple of them -- an extra one to fly when the first one needed repair or maintenance. But since these planes cost millions of dollars, I don't even "need" one. There is no fixed amount of "need," independently of prices, whether with planes or workers. None of the rhetoric and sophistry that we hear about immigration deals with the plain and ugly reality: Politicians are afraid of losing the Hispanic vote and businesses want cheap labor. What millions of other Americans want has been brushed aside, as if they don't count, and they have been soothed with pious words. But now the voters are getting fed up, which is why there are immigration bills in Congress. The old inevitability ploy is often trotted out in immigration debates: It is not possible to either keep out illegal immigrants or to expel the ones already here. If you mean stopping every single illegal immigrant from getting in or expelling every single illegal immigrant who is already here, that may well be true. But does the fact that we cannot prevent every single murder cause us to stop enforcing the laws against murder? Since existing immigration laws are not being enforced, how can anyone say that it would not do any good to try? People who get caught illegally crossing the border into the United States pay no penalty whatever. They are sent back home and can try again. What if bank robbers who were caught were simply told to give the money back and not do it again? What if murderers who were caught were turned loose and warned not to kill again? Would that be proof that it is futile to take action, when no action was taken? Let's hope the immigration bills before Congress can at least get an honest debate, instead of the word games we have been hearing for too long. Guests or gate crashers? Part II Mar 29, 2006 by Thomas Sowell ( bio | archive | contact ) Bogus arguments are a tip-off that you wouldn't buy the real reasons for what someone is doing. Phony arguments and phony words are the norm in discussions of immigration policy. It starts with a refusal to call illegal aliens "illegal aliens" and ends with asking for "guest worker" status for people who are not guests but gate crashers. As for the substantive arguments, they are as phony as the verbal evasions. What about all those illegal workers that we "need"? Many of the illegals are working in agriculture, producing crops that have been in chronic surplus for decades. These surplus crops are costing the American taxpayers billions of dollars in government storage costs and in the inflated prices created by deliberately keeping much of this agricultural output off the market. Do we "need" illegal workers to produce bigger surpluses? In California, surplus crops grown and harvested by illegal immigrants are often also subsidized by federal water projects which charge the farmers in dry California valleys far less than the cost to the government of providing that water -- and a fraction of what people in Los Angeles or San Francisco pay for the same amount of water. Surplus crops grown with water supplied at the taxpayers' expense and raised by illegal workers can be grown elsewhere with water provided free of charge from the clouds and raised by American workers paid American wages. Naturally, when the real costs of those crops have to be paid by the farmers who raise them, less will be grown -- that is, there will not be as much of a surplus going to waste in government-rented storage bins. With some crops, we don't really "need" any of it. If the United States had not produced a single grain of sugar in the past 50 years, Americans could have gotten all the sugar they wanted and at lower prices, simply by buying it on the world market for half or less of what domestic sugar costs. Sugar has been in chronic surplus on the world market for generations. It can be grown in the tropics far cheaper than it can be grown in the United States. All the land, labor, and capital that has been spent growing sugar here has been one huge waste. We don't "need" to grow sugar, with or without illegal workers. Many people are understandably sympathetic toward Mexican workers who come across the border illegally, not only because of the poverty which drives them from their homelands but also because their willingness to work makes them in demand. When you see beggars on the street, they are usually white or black, but almost never Mexican. But American immigration laws and policies are not about whether you like or don't like Mexicans, though some demagogues try to play the race card. For too long, we have bought the argument that being unfortunate entitles you to break the law. The consequence has been disastrous, whether the people allowed to get away with breaking the law are Americans or foreigners. Legalizing illegal actions is the easy way out, so it is hardly surprising that politicians go for that. One of the ways of legalizing illegal acts is by the automatic conferring of American citizenship on babies born to illegal aliens in the United States. The law that made all people born here American citizens made sense when people crossed an ocean and made a commitment to become Americans. Today, it is just another way of essentially legalizing illegal acts by making it harder to deport those who broke the law. One of the most bogus of all the bogus arguments for a "guest worker" program is that it is impossible to find all the millions of illegal aliens in the country, so it is impossible to deport them. If tomorrow someone came up with some brilliant way to identify every illegal alien in the country, it would not make the slightest difference. Right now, those who are identified as illegal, whether at the border, in prisons, at traffic stops or in any of our institutions, face no penalty whatsoever. Identification is not the problem. Doing nothing is the problem.

QUOTE(kyyle23 @ Mar 29, 2006 -> 07:52 AM) "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of the evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and goodwill, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper, and....................dam hold up....yo b****, you mind gettin up off of me so I can finish this here passage.....

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Mar 29, 2006 -> 07:05 AM) Is anyone else incredibly bored by this season? Yeah these people are talented, as a group probably more so than any other year, but it seems like the same episode over and over again. Chris sings the same type of rock song Kellie saids something stupid and sings a twangy country song Mandisa sings a big sounding soul/gospel song Ace sings something that ends with him making that stupid face to the audience Paris sings something showtuneish with tons of range Taylor sings a jazzy tune Bucky sings a crappy country song To be honest the only chances I ever see taken are by Katharine, Elliot (more than anyone) and Lisa (who is gone this week anyway. I miss the years past when their "theme" weeks meant that someone was going to be unconfortable. Now their themes are all so broad that no one ever has to take any risk. You could watch the first week or the fifth and it would be the exact samething. I can't believe I am saying this but give me a country week or a broadway showtunes week... something, anything to make people do something different. I agree with ya 100%!!! and Ace with that fricken stare...I'm waiting for one of the judges to be like cut it out dude...you look like a stroke. Then he was shaking his arm at the end.... trying to be passionate...I guess. How can you be so passionate that you tremble when you are singing someone elses words? It's a cover song. His act is really wearing thin on me. I also think Lisa is gone. She just can't seem to sing a song from the last 20 years.

Dude...The hard 6!!! You got a about 7 months on me old man . Happy Birthday!!!!!!

QUOTE(spataro51 @ Mar 28, 2006 -> 01:44 PM) can't wait to get their nice and early, for both days. does anyone know what time both ceremonies start? That's the question I need an answer to as well. We're gonna start our pre game bash at like 2:00, but what time do we head to the park for the ceremony or will it just be game time.

It does not say he did it IN CHURCH and actually the link you gave says nothing about flipping the bird or making an obscene gesture. It says a hand gesture. Did you change their text or did they get their story straight and change their article since you pasted it. Either way, I had heard he gestured under his chin which basically means leave me the hell alone. I don't see a big deal.... This gesture, often called the "chin flick," is widely used among Italians and persons of Italian ancestry. It is a gesture of contempt, somewhat less rude than giving a person "the finger." When used in the United States, it usually means "Bug off, I've had enough of you." Not a polite gesture, but not a particularly hostile one, either.

QUOTE(RibbieRubarb @ Mar 27, 2006 -> 12:12 PM) Alright class, settle down and we'll get started... Tony was not having a dream, this was not a dream sequence. It was cogent and fluid, not choppy and random like the normal dreams on the show. Tony was in purgatory, or limbo. Tony stays on the 7th floor in an allusion to dante's seven levels of purgatory. This all traces back to the previous episode. The name Kevin Finnerty is an obvious allusion to in-finity. While in the hotel, you see the fires blazing in the woods (hell) and the shining beacon on the opposite side (heaven). When tony says that "it seems like a nice place to live", the bartender responds, "its dead around here", all pointing to the fact that he is in purgatory. Onto this episode: The monks represented the doctors, and their "heating problems" were the doctors problems controlling Tony's temperature. When tony finds out that he has alzheimers, it signifies eternal damnation. Tony should have died (lost his life). "My whole life was in that briefcase" (referring to the briefcase he lost). He was given a second briefcase (a second chance to live), which he refused to give up when told he needed to leave it behind in order to go to the house where "everyone was waiting". The major question remains: Was the house Heaven or Hell? Though it was near the beacon of light, it was not the beacon itself. That I think is important. It was the alluring nature of Hell, with the same mysterious woman in the doorway that was in Tony's "contractor dream" a couple season's back. The existential angle being played is just the tip of the iceberg in regards to the rampant symbolism in these last two episodes. Add to it the brilliant acting of Edie Falco and the power struggle occuring in "real life" and the show is actually reaching artistic levels well-above those of any other show on TV. My favorite piece if symbolism was not in Tony's mind but in the hospital involving Silvio. In the bathroom, you first see that he cannot handle the pressure of being in charge. It was ironic that this occured when he was on his "throne" making decisions. Finally...was there any signicigance to the tress and woods calling Tony back to Earth? Besides the obvious "Meadow" pararells.. "IN the midway of this our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray Gone from the path direct" Canto 1 Dante's Inferno I just think he couldn't handle the pressure of taking a s*** when people kept talking to him. Seriously though...what was the symbolism of that part?? Good analysis!!!

QUOTE(Steff @ Mar 27, 2006 -> 09:45 AM) Finally watched Wedding Crashers Saturday... so not as funny as everyone told me. Vince is weird. I pretty much laugh everytime Vince Vaughn talks. Watch it again!!

QUOTE(Flash Tizzle @ Mar 27, 2006 -> 01:09 AM) These are perhaps the most explosive accusations. Provoking confrontation with assassinations? Not the sort of information you hope is released--especially from the leader of a nation promoting Democracy across the world. Regardless of this report filtering through Liberal headquarters in the New York Times, I believe it. Difficult to allege conspiracy or suggest typical Democratic posturing when report after report after report questions our reasons for entering an Iraqi conflict. Military families--especially those who've lost loved ones--have to be growing VERY fed up. I, for one, am a Republican anticipating the departure of Bush from office. Every day it's something: if not a new report concerning pre-war intelligence, it's another White House scandal. If the next president is Republican, it will be the same thing.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Mar 24, 2006 -> 03:26 PM) It's nice to know that we have so many adult posters that have never gotten drunk in a bar. By the time I'm drunk I'm usually ON the bar!!!!!!

What constitutes being drunk? The .08?? If so that's kind of bulls***. People's reaction times may be slower behind the wheel, but if you're blowing a .08 you're probably not to the point were you swinging from chandeliers and s***. Is the law you can't be drunk in public? I always thought it had to do with some sort of drunken act. Whose to say these patrons weren't going to stick around and sober up before leaving??

QUOTE(juddling @ Mar 23, 2006 -> 03:24 PM) I think someone at AI mentioned to Pickler how 'successful' Jessica Simpson became with the dumb blonde routine and she's trying it as well. She IS pretty hot and that will carry her a ways. If she stays in her zone (country) she should be ok. It helped Carrie Underwood last year! I may be the only one, but I actually think she is that dumb. I don't think it's an act. Jessica you can tell had a few beers in her six pack, but this one... I don't even think she made it in the liquor store.

Four Laverne and Shirley, Blansky's Beauties, Mork and Mindy, and Joanie Loves Chachi What city and state does Weird Science take place in?

I don't think the whiny insecure ilk stick to one cause. If they stuck with something that would make them secure and less whiny. Unless I'm mixing up my definitoins of secure and insecure?? I think the insecure folk are the ones that jump from cause to cause. (taken from PCU) The CAUSE-HEADS They find a cause and stick with it -- for about a week. They are the Cause-Heads, a mob of liberal environmentalists concerned about everything, but doing little about it. Their leader is Moonbeam, a retro-flower-child of the 60's who loves trees and cows more than people. She keeps the group fired up in protest after protest, changing the cause to reflect changing concerns. My study.....which is based on postings from liberals on this board, finds most left leaning adults tend to b****, moan and whine more than a spoiled child with buck teeth and no friends. What you all were as children I don't know, but according to my study it doesn't really matter. As a liberal, you still cry like children now. This study should have about as much merit as the Block(head) study. Don't get defensive now and prove my point. Can you blow me where the pampers is?

What the hell is so hard about voting and counting votes? I voted yesterday with the electronic machine....a 5 year old could do it. In the past, I have used those scantron types and a 5 year old can do that. So why is there a f***in problem every time we vote? And what's the deal with couting the votes? They have years to test the machines and get everything right and the there's always f*** ups come election time. I just dont get it.

Congrats to you and Mrs eye!!!!!!!!!!!!!

QUOTE(whitesoxin' @ Mar 19, 2006 -> 04:57 PM) Why does every teenager drink or smoke pot? What's so great about it? Most teenagers try it, but I don't think most do it. Personally, pot never did it for me...kinda just made me tired. I'd much rather drink. Just say no...dude!!

Anybody else think AJ is on his way in to the family business??? Ribbie, those are some pretty interesting observations....

What does YOUR Daddy do? Little Kevin was in his 5th grade class when the teacher asked the children what their fathers did for a living. All the typical answers came up: fireman, policeman, salesman, etc. Kevin was being uncharacteristically quiet & so the teacher asked him about his father. "My father's an exotic dancer in a gay bar & takes off all his clothes in front of other men. Sometimes, if the offers really good, he'll go out to the alley with some guy & make love with him for money." The teacher, obviously shaken by this statement, hurriedly set the other children to work on some coloring, & took little Kevin aside to ask him, "Is that really true about your father?" "No," said Kevin, "He plays for the Cubs, but I was too embarrassed to say that in front of the other kids."

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Mar 20, 2006 -> 12:38 PM) Does anyone else completely get lost at that point in that piece? Yowza, now there's a jump. Nope.

I haven't seen it, but here's a take from the other side... V for vendetta, T for terrorist, and A for "that's a-okay" Mar 20, 2006 Review by Megan Basham I have seen the terrorist, and he is me. And you. And all of us. So says Evey (Natalie Portman), an acolyte of V (Hugh Weaving), the swashbuckling savior of future England who disguises himself as Guy Fawkes. But don’t worry, because being a terrorist is now a good thing. As we've been told by the media, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter…or masked superhero as the case may be. In fact, according to The New York Daily News' critic, Jaimi Bernard, even the term "suicide bombing" is now relative. "One person's idea of social liberation through symbolic fireworks is another person's suicide bombing," she insists in her review of V for Vendetta. So even though V threatens to detonate a load of explosives strapped to his chest, killing dozens of innocent people at the BBC (oh, excuse me, BFC) if they don't give him air-time, just think of him as Batman — a little overly-dramatic and conflicted perhaps, but also sexy and an undeniable force for good. Defending the REAL meaning of the Constitution This book provides the first ever clause-by-clause examination of the complete Constitution, revealing its real meaning according to the original intent of the Framers. Save 20% and support Townhall.com! I can see him this way because of all the Wachowski Brothers have taught me. My eyes have been opened, and I am no longer an automaton of the Right-wing religious-military-industrial complex. Thanks to this "parable about terrorism and totalitarianism" (Roger Ebert) I have been "prodded to think" (The San Francisco Chronicle). And I now think that the Bush administration blew up the twin towers and tried to blow up two other U.S. targets on 9/11 in order to scare Americans into giving them more power. I think that conservatives hate art, literature, and music—especially jazz music—and want to lock it all away because, well, they’re just mean like that. I think that Catholics are in league with Republicans, and that together it is they, and not radical Islamists, who would like to exterminate all homosexuals and execute anyone that produces material critical of the Church-State. I think it is Christians who persecute people for reading the Koran and not Muslims who persecute people for reading the Bible. I think that the West's military personnel are the ones who place hoods over innocent people's heads then mercilessly torture and kill them, and that broadcasts of Islamo-fascists doing so are so much laughable propaganda. But most of all, in true V style, I think that documents, like buildings, are only symbols, and that burning them can change the world. Therefore, I propose that we storm the National Archives and torch the Constitution—the document responsible for unleashing the Great Evil that is America. After all, that's what the Wachowskis want, isn't it? When [spoiler alert] the English masses gather and cheer as Parliament, that British symbol of representative government burns, aren't we too supposed to cheer? Aren't we supposed to want to run out of theater ready to don our Osama Bin Laden masks, ready to confront the world's biggest terrorist mastermind on the White House lawn? Oh, but wait, the movie is "dystopian" and therefore has nothing to do with current events. The "yellow-alerts" the vile dictator employs are a coincidence. The campy television show in which vaudevillian Al Qaeda operatives torture busty blondes, suggesting that the threat of terror is as fictional as it is ridiculous, means nothing. The balding talk show host with a pill-popping problem isn't intended to smear a real person. And the fact that the script takes glee in constantly referring to the "former United States of America" and "their war" that left them "the world’s leper colony?" Umm, okay, that's a little hard to explain…let's just call that comic justice. I could go into more detail, but really, there is no point. The fact the film's release had to be postponed when V’s final heroic act of loading explosives onto a subway car in the London underground proved too realistic illustrates how in-sync the Wachowski’s are with actual terrorists. Forget not being worth the price of admission, this ode to Al Zarqawi and his ilk certainly wasn’t worth the price of pretty Miss Portman’s flowing mane of chestnut hair. But the worst part of Vendetta isn't the anti-Bush/anti-Blair agenda it pushes so feverishly. It's the legions of film critics who have lavished that agenda with praise. To be fair, some admirers claim that it's only entertainment: "If you find a way to apply it to George Bush or Tony Blair, it’s only because the film's themes are so universal." (Cinema Blend) But most argue that the ideas it brings up are "important": "That it so cannily reflects specific concerns of this moment in history makes it an almost important movie." (Los Angeles Daily News) The hangdogs can't have it both ways. Either the movie has nothing to do with the War on Terror and it's awful, or it has everything to do with the War on Terror and it's appalling. Incidentally, after reading the script, creator of the V comic book, Alan Moore, insisted Warner Bros. remove his name from the project. He told MTV, "[My comic] has been turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country… [The film] is a thwarted and frustrated and largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values standing up against a state run by neo-conservatives — which is not what "V for Vendetta" [the comic] was about." Thankfully, cartoonish acting and a juvenilely self-reverential plot means no one except teenage boys (the ones in the row in front of me kept muttering, "Yeah, anarchy!" as London blazed) and crazed George Clooney disciples will take this movie's "important ideas" seriously. Those are the people who are this very moment wailing, "Free speech! Free speech! The Wachowskis have every right to promote their beliefs!" To them I say, yep, they sure do. And I have the right to unmask them for the ignorant, irresponsible, paranoid filmmakers that they are.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Mar 16, 2006 -> 03:19 PM) Its the kid from dumb and dumberer right? Or not another teen movie, I cant recall which one. He's also in not another teen movie.

If you're a golfer I HIGHLY recommend Arizona National. Beautiful course. We played in the afternoon Twilight rate is $85.00. Had a great time at City Limits Tuesday night. They have a band called Metalhead which plays all the music of the 80's big hair bands. Talk about flashbacks. It looks like they are there for like the next 4 Tuesdays. Beer was cheap and a good time was had by all. Also, for some reason everybody there thought we were ball players. Even when we told them we weren't they figured we were just saying that. If I was a single guy, I just might have used that to my advantage if ya know what I'm sayin. Anyway....Tucson was pretty dead cause it was spring break so I'm glad we found a place to party. The night before we went to Maloneys and O'Briens and there was a total of 8 people in both bars. It was looking pretty bleak. The waitress at City Grill(who also had the bartender ask us if we were baseball players) told us about City Limits and I'm glad she did...it was kind of the perfect crazy night out with the guys we were looking for. City Grill had a pretty dam good steak too. My one buddy got the pizza and said he loved it. All of us liked the food so I guess I would recommend that place as well.

QUOTE(SleepyWhiteSox @ Mar 10, 2006 -> 02:21 PM) stfu? You're obviously not even properly informed on the topic at hand so there's no use in discussing it if you're just going to turn it into an excuse to express your negative bias towards immigrants. Please inform me.