Random Thoughts (Political Edition)

nsx_23 said:
Probably because it doesn't sell enough newspapers. It'll probably be in the middle of the paper even if it gets published.

Sad, I know. I miss the old Hong Kong.
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Me too, though I would have thought that this would sell fast considering how much potential it has for sensationalism.
 
Hong Kong journalism is lolz. Just look at the amount of gossip magazines on any news-stand.
 
May I present the idiocy of one of the people at my school.

http://img695.imageshack.**/img695/3274/unled1bxe.jpg

nsx_23 said:
Hong Kong journalism is lolz. Just look at the amount of gossip magazines on any news-stand.
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Teh, touche
 
That souns like eugenics. Or anarchy. Or nihilism.

Either way he's a unique type of idiot.
 
LeMans GTR said:
May I present the idiocy of one of the people at my school.

http://img695.imageshack.**/img695/3274/unled1bxe.jpg
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facepalm.jpg


PaperBiro said:
That souns like eugenics. Or anarchy. Or nihilism.

Either way he's a unique type of idiot.
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Indeed. Takes a special type to write something like that.
 
calvinhobbes said:
The Americans that I know in person paint a far better picture of the country than all those jingoistic freaks you read about on the web. I like to think about it as "America vs. Uhmuricuh" where a polite and diverse majority is sometimes overshadowed by a very vocal and uniformly clueless minority. It's a generalisation, but not the worst one of those.
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Hey, I'm and American.... and I'm on the Internet..

Hey!
 
A cop on a power trip:




Cop threatens to execute driver over concealed weapon permit

?Among the pressures facing police officiers working the streets of America is the rising number of people legally carrying concealed guns. But when one such licensee was pulled over in Canton, Ohio, an officer threatened to shoot him on the spot. Here's the chilling video.

The arrest took place in early June, but the video only came to light today from a group called Ohioans for Concealed Carry. They had been working on behalf of the driver of the Pontiac Grand Prix, known so far only as William, who was arrested and charged in the stop.

As the 17-minute dashcam video shows, the two Canton police officers see the car pulled over in a neighborhood and detain a male passenger and a woman standing outside, whom the officers quickly identify as a prostitute. After telling the driver to stay put, they detain the male passenger and search the back of the car for a few minutes.

Only after that search does Officer Daniel Harless start questioning William, some seven minutes into the video ? who then admits, when he can get a word in, that he has a concealed weapon, and tries to show Harless his permit. When he discovers William's gun in his belt, Harless instead becomes enraged: "You are supposed to say that right off the goddamned bat!"


Right now, the shit that you just pulled, I could blast you right in the mouth...I am so close to caving in you're goddamn head...you're just a stupid human being...People like you don't deserve to move throughout public. Stupid idiot."

After searching the car, getting worked up with his partner, and hearing from police dispatch that William does indeed have a legal permit to carry a concealed weapon, Harless comes back to the cruiser where William has been detained:


I swear to God man this little bull crap you just pulled right now has got me so hot. You know what I should have done? I'll tell you what I should have done. As soon as I saw your gun, I should have taken two steps back, pulled my Glock 40 and just put ten bullets in your ass and let you drop. And I wouldn'tve lost any sleep. And he would have been a nice witness as I executed you because you're stupid.

William was charged with two misdemeanor counts; one for stopping in the roadway, and another for failing to inform officers of his weapons.

After the video surfaced, the Canton police announced that Harless had been put on indefinite suspension last month, and the case forwarded to Internal Affairs. Ohio gun activists are raising money for William's defense. And the rest of us get to hope the next misunderstanding ends more amicably, rather than less.
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Debt talks break down in acrimony
By Matt Spetalnick and Andy Sullivan
WASHINGTON | Fri Jul 22, 2011 10:23pm EDT

(Reuters) - Negotiations on a sweeping deficit-reduction deal collapsed in acrimony on Friday as House Speaker John Boehner pulled out of talks with President Barack Obama, dealing a blow to efforts to avert a looming debt default.

With the deadline just 11 days away for raising the federal government's borrowing limit, a stern-faced Obama expressed deep frustration with Boehner for walking away and demanded that he and other congressional leaders meet him at the White House on Saturday.

Boehner said he could not overcome disputes with Obama over taxes and entitlement spending and said he would now try to hammer out a deal with the Democratic-controlled Senate to increase the country's $14.3 trillion debt limit by August 2.

"We have run out of time," Obama said at a hastily called news conference, saying it was "hard to understand why Speaker Boehner would walk away from this kind of deal."

A deep divide over tax revenue derailed the latest negotiations, ending an ambitious bid to craft a $3 trillion deficit-cutting plan that now seems beyond reach.

The world's biggest economy will run out of money to pay its bills without a deal by the August deadline. Failure to act could push the United States back into recession and unleash global financial chaos.

"If not reversed within the next few days through crisis negotiations, this breakdown will be highly detrimental to the already fragile health of both the U.S. and global economies," Mohamed El-Erian, co-chief investment officer at Pacific Investment Management Co, which oversees $1.2 trillion in assets, told Reuters.

Boehner said he would begin talks with Senate leaders "in an effort to find a path forward". An aide said a deal needs to be set by Monday.

A senior White House official warned the United States now faces the "very real prospect" that its top-notch credit rating will be downgraded.

Wall Street has spent weeks betting Washington will raise the debt ceiling in time. But with dwindling options for the type of long-term deficit-reduction plan that could appease the ratings agencies, markets could become unnerved quickly.

"The longer they draw this out and closer we get to the eleventh hour, the more possibility there is that there will be a signal from the bond market in the form of yields rising as people become more and more concerned it doesn't get through," said Scott Carmack, assistant portfolio manager at Leader Capital in Portland, Oregon.

Ratings agencies want major deficit controls and have threatened to downgrade U.S. bonds even if clearance is given to raise the debt ceiling.

As Friday's dramatic turn of events unfolded, Obama insisted he made an "extraordinarily fair" offer to Boehner but when the Republican stopped returning his calls on Friday it became clear that he would not accept it.

"Where is the leadership?" Obama asked angrily.

Obama, who is trying to appeal to moderate independent voters he needs to win re-election in 2012, summoned Democratic and Republican leaders to the White House on Saturday in an effort to find a way to raise the debt limit. Boehner said he would attend.

"I expect them to have an answer in terms of how they intend to get this thing done over the course of the next week," Obama said.

Republicans and many Democrats are refusing to raise the debt limit unless it is accompanied by steep spending cuts to tackle rising budget deficits.

Putting the onus on Obama, Boehner said: "The president is emphatic that taxes have to be raised. As a former small businessman, I know tax increases destroy jobs."

Many Republicans have refused to accept a debt limit deal if it includes revenue increases, which Democrats insist must be part of a broad deficit reduction package.

Boehner said he was confident Congress would act next week to raise the debt limit but to do so will require overcoming resistance from Tea Party conservatives in his own party.

But Boehner could run into problems with some of his fellow Republicans for having signaled a willingness to give ground on revenue increases in closed-door talks at the White House.

Administration officials said they had been close to a package of spending cuts, healthcare reform and revenue boosting changes in the tax code to cut the deficit by $3.5 trillion to $4 trillion over 10 year when Boehner pulled out.

A key sticking point was how much revenue would be raised via tax reform, with Obama seeking $1.2 trillion over 10 years compared to $800 billion put on the table by Boehner.

Options for moving forward on a debt-ceiling deal remain limited. Until the Obama-Boehner talks hit full stride, there had been talk of a convoluted plan put forth by Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell.

Originally intended as a fallback option if all else failed, it would call for Obama to get the authority and the blame for raising the debt ceiling in three phases before the November 2012 election when he is running for re-election.

But it was unclear whether that idea was still viable, even with revisions to meet Democrats' demands.

(Additional reporting by Andy Sullivan, Thomas Ferraro, Donna Smith, Richard Cowan, Steve Holland, Alister Bull, Laura MacInnis and Rachelle Younglai, and by Jennifer Ablan and Daniel Bases in New York; Writing by Matt Spetalnick and Kristin Roberts; Editing by John O'Callaghan)
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/23/us-usa-debt-idUSTRE7646S620110723
 
The McConnell plan would likely be political suicide for Obama. That's one thing for sure.
 
I am about ready to go to the federal building with a sign that says "TAX the RICH" on one side and "OR GET VOTED OUT" on the other.
 
Vette Boss said:
You can't blame him for thinking that way, look at what their news presenters feed him. They don't show Americans being regular people, they show the extremes of society. Same with what we get fed over here, never the normal stuff, only the radicals.
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I honestly believe that agencies like CNN must have some sort of daily quota for "inbred hillbilly redneck neanderthal" type people that they have to use for each story.

When ever you see a story that includes something like "The average American persons reaction to this foreign (fill in the blank)" on one of those channels I swear its from the same 6-7 different yokels they have locked up in a box somewhere.

The type of people who when you hear what they're saying, you just want to cover your face in shame and say: "We're not all like that!"
 
That American Girl said:
I honestly believe that agencies like CNN must have some sort of daily quota for "inbred hillbilly redneck neanderthal" type people that they have to use for each story.

When ever you see a story that includes something like "The average American persons reaction to this foreign (fill in the blank)" on one of those channels I swear its from the same 6-7 different yokels they have locked up in a box somewhere.

The type of people who when you hear what they're saying, you just want to cover your face in shame and say: "We're not all like that!"
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i have the same response when US news shows bring out brits to comment on UK stories, they almost always have really bad teeth and manage to work cricket into just about every sentence.
 
If they get someone from Norway to comment, they get somone who's Swedish and talks about Stockholm.

:)
 
Blind_Io said:
Hey, I'm and American.... and I'm on the Internet..

Hey!
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...but you're not a jingoistic freak. ;-) I arrived here after leaving another forum where those had become a jeering and oppressive majority, they were true Beckolytes (Glenn Beck acolytes). Any views to the left of "urll dem Mewslims ur turrrsts", "dem f***en immurgrunts ur steelin ur jerbs" and the like got you attacked, smeared and eventually banned.

It is a shame that these people get so much media attention; in fact it's one of the reasons why I'm so thankful for this place. It allows me to interact with normal Americans.
 
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What I don't understand is how Kerry could have lied his way to decorations for his actions in Vietnam?
 
nomix said:
What I don't understand is how Kerry could have lied his way to decorations for his actions in Vietnam?
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The medals are usually awarded based on after action reports written by participants in the action. John Kerry wrote the after action report that got him a bronze star himself. Many veterans were angry at him for various reason. He left front line duty after a third qualifying wound, a rule that other members of the Navy did not take advantage ff. In addition once he left the service he became an outspoken antiwar activist.
 
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