bmags

I don't know where I stand on this. I had a good mom, and she bought me GTA for playstation 2 when it came out. I don't think she really knew what was all in that game. Nowadays, I don't really play video games and have no desire to get this game. I completely agree that this is disgustingly sexist, grossly violent, all that. Grew out of it I suppose, had parents that gave me first hand experience how to treat people. However, I worry about bringing back that the rule of censorship that the work will be based on how it would affect young or unstable minds.

QUOTE (jackie hayes @ May 5, 2008 -> 12:48 AM) the Medicare drug benefit. thassa big one.

You know, I thought people would be gullible for this gas tax holiday but talking to numerous people, it turns out many understand why gas isn't going down and know this tax holiday is garbage town.

I'd rather just enjoy the players while they are here instead of constantly looking ahead to see when they won't.

our pitching has been great this year but last year we were somehow winning games without scoring more than 3 runs.

on saturday when I was watching him I was so impressed. When he came up to the plate with two men on, i felt so confident, and he hits a double to deep left center. Man, he has some power. .435 OBP, gosh darn.

per the uber-awesome magazine mother jones in their torture issue in march: Editors' Note By Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery February 22, 2008 what is america? It is a chunk of land; it is a racial and cultural kaleidoscope; it is a market. But more important and essential than any of these definitions, and the basis for them all, America is a legal and moral framework. It is the expression of those self-evident rights of man that Jefferson wrote about in 1776, and the fitful strides toward real equality we've been making ever since. And central to our rather arrogant notion of American exceptionalism has always been that our journey toward justice for all is not just America's journey, but a path for the rest of the world to follow. So what example are we setting for the world, and for Americans coming of age in this time of terror and torture? In many respects we have devolved to a pre-Enlightenment state. Take waterboarding, a practice recognized as torture since the time of Torquemada and, as such, banned in most European countries by the early 1800s. An American officer, Major Edwin Glenn, was court-martialed and punished for using the method on a Filipino "insurgent" during the SpanishAmerican War. The practice was officially banned by the U.S. Army after World War II, because of pow protections spelled out in the Geneva Conventions, but also because Allied soldiers had been subjected to waterboarding by German and Japanese soldiers—several of whom were sentenced to decades of hard labor, and even life, by war-crimes tribunals. This prohibition did not mean that Americans never used waterboarding: In 1968, the Washington Post published a front-page photo showing a GI holding down a North Vietnamese prisoner as South Vietnamese soldiers waterboarded him. But the soldier was immediately drummed out of the Army. And when Texas sheriff James "Humpy" Parker and three of his deputies repeatedly used the technique on accused thieves—some of whom gave false confessions to escape further abuse—the federal government investigated, a jury of a dozen Texans voted to convict, and in 1983 the men were sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. The point is that while torture still happened, when incidents became public, they were condemned, not condoned. But not only has the Bush administration stridently defended the use of "harsh interrogation techniques," the American public has signed off on such euphemisms. When the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, pundits predicted it might mean an end to the war, or, at the very least, a national conversation on just how far America was willing to depart from its core values to fight terrorism. Yet, four years after the photos of naked, debased detainees first emerged, the debate over torture has dissipated. The highest-ranking officer charged in the scandal got off with a slap on the wrist in August, but you could be forgiven for not knowing—we were the only publication to send a reporter to cover the full court-martial ("The Final Act of Abu Ghraib"). There are three federal investigations into the cia's destruction of videotapes of agents waterboarding Al Qaeda travel agent Abu Zubaydah—but none into waterboarding itself. When it was revealed that administration officials and congressional leaders of both parties knew all along that waterboarding was being used on prisoners, the nation let out a collective yawn. The only criminal investigation into the cia's extraordinary rendition program has come courtesy of an Italian prosecutor ("The Body Snatchers"). Each week, Fox's 24 codifies the ticking-time-bomb justification for torture, while its reality TV show Solitary ("Voluntary Confinement") pits isolated contestants against each other to see who can withstand the most torment. And then there are the other assaults being perpetrated against the Constitution. These days American citizens are being entrapped into participating in fake plots and locked up for simply thinking anti-American thoughts ("Department of Pre-Crime"). What does our ambivalence toward our founding legal values mean in the long term? Social scientists note that most people—not just "a few bad apples"—are capable of committing torture. That they do so when encouraged by authority figures and joined by their peers, when the victims are dehumanized and the group's inhibitions fall away. Once such cruelty is deemed acceptable under exceptional circumstances, its use often becomes institutionalized: The exception becomes the norm. The only remedy is true accountability, a real reckoning with what was allowed to happen and how we can get our moral compass back. We owe that much to soldiers like Ben Allbright, who's caught between a community that hails him like a hero and the torment he feels over the abuse he doled out in Iraq ("Am I a Torturer?" ). If we allow fear itself to rule, if we justify methods used by Spanish Inquisitors and roll back legal protections enshrined as far back as the 13th century, we lose everything we claim to be fighting so hard to protect. That's why we must be vigilant against the creep of torture. Not just because it produces questionable results. Not just because condoning its use might increase the odds that it will be used on our own soldiers and citizens. But simply because it is un-American.

I have a hard time believing the federal gov't couldn't convict someone of plotting terrorism unless their claims we're pretty weak. And when they are paintballing ninjas.

yeah it's a hilarious strategy that works so well.

They might've won round one and two, but keep on fightin' the good fight! http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/24/us/24mia...6YSlwC+e2sIDpHw Six Suspects Will Be Tried a Third Time in Sears Plot By CARMEN GENTILE Published: April 24, 2008 MIAMI — Federal prosecutors said Wednesday that they would try for a third time to convict six men accused of conspiring to destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago and join the ranks of Al Qaeda. Judge Joan A. Lenard said the next trial would proceed in “the late fall or early winter.” In the previous trials, government lawyers contended that the men — Narseal Batiste, Patrick Abraham, Burson Augustine, Rotschild Augustine, Naudimar Herrera and Stanley G. Phanor — wanted to wage a “ground war” against American citizens and had pledged their loyalty for Islamic extremism to F.B.I. informants posing as members of Al Qaeda. Defense lawyers asserted that their clients had been goaded into making radical remarks and vows of allegiance by the informants. Testimony in the trials revealed that an F.B.I. search of the group’s headquarters in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami yielded no weapons or evidence of preparation for a large-scale attack. In his appeal for a third trial, the prosecutor Richard Gregorie recalled how Mr. Batiste had been heard in taped conversations saying he “wanted to kill all the devils,” a reference to Americans, prosecutors say. “The United States has decided it is necessary to proceed one more time,” Mr. Gregorie said. At the first trial, which ended in December 2007, a seventh defendant, Lyglenson Lemorin, was acquitted, and the jury was unable to come to a unanimous decision about the remaining six. A second trial ended last week with jurors again unable to decide. On Tuesday, Mr. Herrera was released on $50,000 bond. Rotschild Augustine, an illegal immigrant, was denied bond. The other four had not filed applications for bond. Prof. Jonathan Turley of George Washington Law School, a critic of the Bush administration’s handling of terrorism-related cases, said that by seeking a new trial the government was hoping to justify “previous headlines” about evidence — including wiretaps and informant reports — presented by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales after the suspects’ arrest in June 2006. “These are the types of prosecutors Las Vegas is built on,” Mr. Turley said. “They keep returning to the table with the same losing hand.”

still, i think 8 points will stick. I'm so sick of this dem. race.

white sox in lead "WERE GREAT" White sox lose lead "pathetic team right now" i wonder if anyone has watched baseball before in game threads.

wish this was yesterdays game!

big piece in the nytimes...anyone care to discuss it?

I was at the bar last night, crowded, TVs not really watched, when thome's highlight came on, half the bar goes, holy ****

some interesting comments from trib's swamp blog, after more Ayer's talk: " Hey, guess what, the world is not divided into terrorists and non-terrorists. Bill Ayers is a fantastic person to know. He is first of all, not a professor of English, but of Education, and secondly, at the University of Illinois at Chicago, not U of C. I'd proudly serve on a board with him, no matter what his past. His dedication and caring to helping teachers learn how to best value and teach children who get routinely shut out and left behind should be applauded, not ignored. Posted by: Melissa W | April 17, 2008 10:00 AM If anyone is actually bothering to read the comments on this non-issue, I figure I’d offer an opposing viewpoint to the shamelessly biased comments below. For the record, I’m not an Obama supporter, and I do not consider Mr. Ayers anything more than an acquaintance. But, I am a former CPS teacher who had Mr. Ayers speak in my classroom. Twice. Not because I support his actions with the Weather Underground, but because one of my coworkers knew him, he is very accessible and approachable, and he speaks with remarkable candor in discussing that time period. At least to my students, he absolutely admitted regret at the poor judgment he and his cohorts used in the WU. "

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 15, 2008 -> 04:47 PM) Didn't someone say in one of the other threads that this election would prove once and for all which side the media is on, or something like that? oh no they didn't, Doughnuts?

QUOTE (Texsox @ Apr 14, 2008 -> 05:19 AM) Wasn't the use of torture one of the reasons we had to stop Hussein? It's easy to make that statement, but it then places us squarely with the rogue nations. I think I would rather be among the ethical nations that do not use torture. Does that also mean you would not complain when those same techniques were used on American soldiers? Since it would mean the US is rejecting the Geneva Conventions, changing US Laws, and most International Laws. And if it meant US forces were forced to shift through hundreds or thousands of false leads, that wouldn't be an issue? I agree.

So Warren Buffet doesn't give to charity then? Should I take that notion seriously? Because Al Gore hasn't given enough, all liberals don't give to charity?

I didn't know his dad played for the cubs.

Do they honestly think this "poor Hillary, look how she's misstreated" strategy is appealing? Americans hate whiners.

for my 2 cents, this is a bit ridiculous. Athomeboy's posts are obviously one sided that clinton sucks, but at least he's posting real, legitimate articles from legitimate sources. He isn't posting "Clinton is such a b****" or ridiculous articles about how she's a lesbian cokehead. It hasn't been ahb's posts that have started negative towns in this forum, so I can't imagine why we should tell him to cool it. Every poster has their gimmick, his is posting negative Clinton articles.

still, a ticket of a first time senator and a mayor of a city just one shot away from president would have the silly people still thinking experience is an issue worried even more.

well, after reading that I change my mind. This could be the greatest comedy of the last 15 years.

I have always felt Richardson would be great for his foreign policy skills and Hispanic pull. Others have brought to my attention maybe it would be wise to inquire on Bloomberg and hammer the heck out of the economy. I still think having someone so experienced like Richardson may quell some fears of Obama inexperience, even though I question how much it matters in reality.