Rex Kickass

QUOTE(GoSox05 @ Feb 26, 2008 -> 10:46 AM) Both Clinton and Obama are against same sex marriage Clinton voted for the Iraq war. I haven't heard Clinton or Obama talk about cuting the insane military budget. They both are pro-choice. Although Obama is against "same sex marriage," he also supports equal rights and responsibilities on a federal level for committed same sex couples. Obama supports same sex marriage in every sense but the name.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 26, 2008 -> 02:41 PM) I'm not counting her out right now. But if Obama wins Texas and Ohio, I think its over. If each take one state, Clinton can limp along, but she may elect not to. The only way Clinton has more than a sliver of hope is if she can win both. She can't just win both and do what she needs to do in a delegate situation. She has to win both convincingly, 10 point margins. Unfortunately, Clinton's campaign is all machine, Obama's ground game is amazing. I think he wins Texas by 10 points or so, Ohio goes either way, Vermont goes Obama by 35 points and Rhode Island goes Clinton by 20.

No big shock. I start moving again, I start losing the weight I gained. Lost 3 of the 5 pounds I gained in the last two weeks already.

Or Time has a different editor on its website. Or Time stopped changing wire copy headlines.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Feb 25, 2008 -> 11:38 AM) Post 1564 in this thread, Balta posted a link to a story about just that. Except the story doesn't say that at all. It says that Drudge and The New Republic were reporting on the unreported story and why the NY Times hadn't published it. I remember the Drudge headline from December or January. And the TNR story was about the Times' coverage about this story, not the story itself. So where again did you get the sense that the gray lady was getting scooped?

QUOTE(Cknolls @ Feb 25, 2008 -> 11:43 AM) You are going to compare the McCain NEWS piece to an OP-ED by a DEM candidates wife in the state of NEW JERSEY? This state would elect a Dem if there was no Dem in the election. Sorry, but they are not comparable. Why did Keller change his mind?........ Like Christie Todd Whitman? I worked on the Corzine campaign... that seemed a much closer election than it turned out when that Op/Ed smear piece went to press.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Feb 25, 2008 -> 09:58 AM) Exactly. The only reason they ran the article now, is because someone else was going to beat them to it. Otherwise they were self-admittedly going to sit on it. Perhaps you could tell me where the "rush to publication" happened? It certainly wasn't mentioned in the Public Editor/Ombudsman's piece. So I'm just curious as to how you know all about the inner workings of the New York Times editorial board.

Why would the hand grenade be thrown 8 months too early? A newspaper article in February isn't remembered in November.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Feb 24, 2008 -> 02:41 PM) Not if they thought a Democrat would have an easier time beating McCain than anyone else. You yourself said the only reason they ran the story was because another paper was about to run it. Have you asked yourself exactly what they were waiting for to run the story? Could it be later in the election cycle when the candidates have already been picked, and it would have a maximum damage effect on McCain for the general election? I never said that. I said that since the story's publication, other news organizations have produced evidence to back up a good chunk of what the Times story alleges. My bet is had McCain not countered by attacking the media instead of the story itself, these other news organizations would not have sought to back up this story. If this was to have maximum damage effect on McCain for the general election, the story would not have blown up in February. It would blow up in October. If they are so left leaning, why wouldn't they blow up McCain, easily the most electable candidate, just before South Carolina or Florida? This way a much weaker Romney or Huckabee could have gotten the GOP nod.

I wonder how much of his ballot petitions will be funded by the Republican party again this year. Nader's so irrelevant, he won't even get significant support from the Green Party in 2008.

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Feb 24, 2008 -> 11:07 AM) No way, like I said before, they run way more GOP hit jobs in their news pages and editorials. Just because you can name one time they ran a negative story on a Dem is in no way proof they do not have a political bias. By your theory, if Bill O'reilly says one bad thing about a republican then 100 about democrats he is totally non biased because of the one, discounting the 100. I would suggest that no matter who won the GOP nomination, a political hit job was going to be on page one about that candidate. I'm sure they had Huckabee, Thompson, Guiliani, and Romney hit pieces ready to roll. Here's what I'm asking that you fail to mention - if they have such a huge liberal bias, why wouldn't they have ran this story at a time that would have made a difference? Do you think anybody is going to remember what the New York Times said about John McCain in February? And what the public editor (ombudsman) of the New York Times said, was that the problem of the story had more to do with the fact that it insinuated an affair that the Times had no proof of. Its hides the point of the story, which was that Senator John "Take on the Special Interests" McCain had a special relationship with lobbyists who were working on behalf of John Paxson - who was trying to clear regulatory hurdles to buy a TV station. This is something that the Senator now denies but did admit to during a 2002 deposition. So he's either lying now about some or all of the article, or committed perjury. Either or. The New York Times story was pretty poorly written, however there are other reports which have come out recently that back parts of the story up. Notably from Newsweek as well as the conservative leaning UK paper, The Times and the liberal leaning UK paper, The Guardian.

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Feb 22, 2008 -> 07:28 PM) Yes the bias charge works here. They rarely, if ever, run stories like this on Democrats. GOP hit jobs are a mainstay of the paper. They decided to run this article when they did because the New Republic was going to run the story. They weren't doing McCain any favors. They were probably going to wait until October to run it, when it would really 'hit' their political opponent. The article shouldn't have been printed at all, it's journalism at it's worst. It was a political attack ad masquerading as a story. But hey, keep defending it, even though it's obvious what this story was. I'm not defending the story at all. I'm just asking how valid a bias claim is when the article is allegedly withheld throughout the political process until it won't affect the nomination process. Wouldn't it make sense, if this was a bias hit piece to print it when it might actually have an effect on the process - say at convention time or a couple weeks before the general? And wasn't this the same New York Times that allowed Jon Corzine's ex-wife pen an Op-Ed piece the weekend before the election that basically said because he was a horrible husband, that he'd be a horrible governor? The truth is that there are plenty of hit pieces that run on Page 1 about the Dems in the NY Times too. It's just Democrats don't cry bias every time a bit of negative news hits their side.

What does a week of laying on your back which is all messed up get you? A big 5 pound gain!

Does the bias charge work so well here? Word on the street is that the NY Times held the story off throughout the early primary season and it didn't see the light of day until this week, when he had secured the nomination. The story is breaking 9 months before the next moment that matters for McCain, so it would hardly have a legitimate effect on the general election either, if the story amounts to nothing.

So... that tailbone being busted? Not really my tailbone. It's either a bulging disc or a fractured vertebrae. So I can't really do much but hurt right now.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Feb 19, 2008 -> 06:40 PM) If the U.S. and Cuba ever work this mess between them out, it might overnight become one of the top vacation destinations in the world. I'd expect billions of dollars to flow in to construct hotels and other associated facilities the day after it opened up. And, combined with the use of corn for ethanol...the end of that embargo might be enough to force the soft drink companies to resume using real sugar.... I have often thought about getting an EU passport for the sole purpose of legal travel in Cuba.

Again, they can still get the warrant up to 72 hours after the fact. A warrant is issued to check government power. To give that up is a precedent I'm not terribly comfortable with. What if the Democrats offered to split out the immunity provision in its own separate bill? This way immunity gets its own uperdown vote.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Feb 19, 2008 -> 01:00 PM) But they didn't break the law, until a couple of days ago at midnight... or did they? The thing is, Rex, no one knows what's happening, and why, and if the telecomms were told to intercept something that *could* have saved lives prior to the amended FISA law from last summer, then they DO deserve immunity because some assclown who was having phone sex with his girlfriend on the phone might choose to sue and help said trial lawyers who just FLOODED the Democrats with money - and wow, they all get paid nice and fat from those bogus lawsuits, now don't they) - even though the government or the telecomms don't even give a s***. (niee run on, eh?) The FISA law allows the federal government to get a warrant up to 72 hours after the act of a wiretap. If the federal government knew enough to wiretap someone before a call is made, why doesn't it know enough to get the warrant?

Because it can. And there won't be war. UN peacekeepers are in the way of that. The real reason the secession movement started in my opinion has everything to do with Milosevic's disrespect of all things not Serbian, including the Kosovar parliament's coup by the Serbian minority in 1989.

Because this legislation does nothing to save any lives. If the telcom companies didn't break the law, why is immunity so important?

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Feb 19, 2008 -> 09:23 AM) Not to totally hijack the thread, but kinda like a bunch of trial lawyers giving a bunch of money to Democrats to let FISA expire? Just sayin'. FISA didn't expire. Modifications to FISA that allow the Federal government to wiretap without a warrant expired. The FISA court still exists and the government can still call on the secret court to get the warrant up to 72 hours after the fact. What's worse? Democrats letting these "crucial" modifications expire because they think that if crimes were committed previous to this law being passed that they should be prosecutable? Or Republicans letting these "crucial" modifications expire because companies that give their party a lot of money should be immune from lawsuits for things they may have illegally done before the modifications took place? If this legislation supposedly will save thousands of lives, why should the lawsuits of a few companies hinge on the Republican party's obstruction of the bill?

Anti-Castro Cuban Americans make a lot of political donations. That's why.

Slav, Your analysis of Kosovo forgets that there was a Kosovo prior to World War II. And for much of the last 500 years, it was not a part of Serbia, but rather a completely different part of the Ottoman Empire. It did not become part of Serbia until the late 19th century, when the Ottoman Empire was finally falling apart. So there has been a definite Kosovar identity for centuries. Just because Kosovo was not a republic of the Yugoslav Federation after its creation doesn't mean that it never existed. In fact, when you talk about Tito, he never helped to create a republic there but did in fact basically give them enough autonomous power there that by the 1970's, Kosovo had enough of an administrative bureaucracy guaranteed in the 1974 constitution that it was a defacto republic. Enough that it had its own parliament which until 1989 was 70% ethnic Albanian. I personally wish that this had been handled better. I believe in a people's self-determination through political, peaceful means when necessary and I don't particularly feel that the Kosovo process is either.

His brother takes over. So, nothing really changes.

I hiked across the Arctic Circle for my 26th birthday.