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Bullcrap. Am I to take it that you think torture is morally justified? So I guess you'll be boiling babies at the next gathering of your church then. These are not crimes of passion where you seek to extract information from a person with the clock ticking; the torture described in the report occurred over many months and even years as sadists exerted their power to inflict pain long after any information was obtained. It was unjustified, ineffective and inhuman ... which is just the kind of perversity that I have come to expect from those whose belief is centered on the not

I understand your point, stradial. ... I think your last post was one of those long ones where a simple 'nuke-em' would probably have done. My response is that you confuse war with sadism. There were those in the clandestine service who were appalled, there were those in the FBI who witnessed this who were astounded and there were the sickos who took pleasure. One of the things we do know, you know like one-quarter to one-third of those whom we send to battle in war come away with PTSD ... is that there is a percentage who actually do relish and take joy in dishing out pain to others.

My comments are not directed at you mei lan ... seriously. In fact I really like your statement that the biggest problem with building a fence is that there is always a better ladder. Indeed, the notion that we should have to fight a political war to stop such a farce - I mean fence - is almost as absurd as failing to account for the lost opportunity costs of building one. pubby

I chose to just present the above in its generic form. It was an interesting piece that I happened to run across because of a remix that used the comments to stir conspiracies of a new world order dominated by the world's hidden economic interests. One of my key takeaways was that the world is changing and Wolfensohn's putting percentages to the change, brought it home. His prediction was that instead of 80 percent of the world's wealth concentrated in the G-7 countries - a fact that was true from 1945 through about 2000, is rapidly changing (It is now 72-28) and is projected to be in th

Unbelieveable. The folks in Milwaulkee don't know the race of the shooters ... but the 'crackers' here in Georgia a ready to lych some black guy for the shooting in Wisconsin. The OP's first notice was that the neighborhood was 'black' ... when it was 'working class' ... and given that working class in a UNION state (or what used to be a union station) was a pretty good living this image is of a relatively nice neighborhood where the grandfather had lived in that house for 40 years. Because they didn't give the exact address ... just a street name ... this is just the first address th

Well, like I predicted ... google is still giving its folks the red-flag ... and I expect that to last at least a week. That I've done my job to clear it out doesn't make any difference. They are a bureaucracy ... and like every bureaucracy (it really isn't private vs. public but big, centralized and bureaucratic vs. small and service oriented.) But of course you'll call that propaganda too. pubby

When you realize that the stress levels of folks are being manipulated by the mass media you begin to look at some of these 'stories' in a different light. It is especially relevant when you also recognize that stress is related to compulsive shopping and eating behaviors. You know, the sky is falling, you're going to die, How about a big mac before you go. Behaviors such as voting are also impacted by stress levels. Here is a bit that demonstrates that stress levels have been artificially manufactured: And let me say this, I'm about as trustful of people in Texas as to assume that the guy

Meet Georgia Democrats’ Candidate for State School Superintendent – Valarie Wilson “Valarie Wilson is hands-down the most qualified person for the job of State School Superintendent,” says DPG Chairman DuBose Porter. “Her experience and ability to reach across the aisle will make her one of the most effective statewide officials to ever serve Georgia.” At recent debate, Valarie clearly outshined her opponent. Here are just a few statements detailing what she stands for. “I’ve spent my career working across partisan lines to ensure that our children are provided with the best quality

Either that or you didn't understand the answer. This is a war and like every war it is more in the minds of the protagonists than over territory. Because it involves religion, it is also cultural. Strategically, one of the approaches one takes to win any war is to divide and conquer. Islam itsself is divided and that, I think, is one of the things that the American right - which is motivated by religion and hate between religions - refuses to see. Further, I think that ISIS/ISIL is an amazingly wedge capable of dividing that religion and turning it against itself. To wi

I think it is unfair but the person in your video should decline to give his name as stated and then mention that if the officer wants, they can call him George Mason or perhaps James Madison. They might say, "I'm not required to give my name but for the purposes of discussion, you can call me George Mason. You know George Mason? He was the neighbor of George Washington who was at the Constitutional Convention and fought the adoption of the Constitution because the convention originally rejected including the bill of rights, which he had written and proposed. When adoption of the consti

Marteen-J: The plain fact is that in national communities, you may not know the person even if you know their name. In my opinion in hyperlocal communities there are many good reasons to allow 'handles' instead of requiring given names. Among those reasons is that even in casual discussion, a third party unknown to the individual would know, for instance, that a person and their family went to the beach for the weekend opening their home to burglary. That the burglar would have the individuals name ... simplifies their nefarious intentions whereas if a simple handle is commonly used,

The presence of marijuana might explain his weight (too many twinkies) but short of being pushed to the extremes of paranoia (Is it really paranoia if the man points a gun at you?), marijuana use is usually associated with being more sedate and relaxed. pubby PS: I think Rand Paul is also out there in favor of legalization of pot (and probably most other drugs.).

Too bad there isn't a video of the incident. My understanding is that while the Ferguson Police have an armored vehicle, they haven't installed video in their cars. Some departments have gone to the point of putting personal video recorders on officers. The details of the incident are such - an unarmed man is shot six times and killed - that the public ought to be concerned about how the incident went down. I don't think we want cops shooting unarmed people without proper justification. Whether or not this is a justified shooting or not is simply not known but what is known is that

I agree ... I think if you read my comments, there was an "if" ... before the shot him in the back with his hands up. I understood he was across from his house and there were other witnesses. Beyond that, your suggestion of the 'mentality of the community' should also include something approaching a lily-white police force in a majority black community (94% white) ... which sounds fishy. Hell, when I was growing up in the Mississippi Delta in the mid-1960s during the height of the civil rights strife, the police chief in my community was smart enough to have two black cops on the force

I don't think anyone would disagree with you on the cop. I've actually been doing some research on the militarization of the police - a trend that has gone on with little public discussion and funded in part by 'free goodies' from the DOD - that is a bit more chilling. For instance, in 1980, when SWAT teams were new 'things' ... they were deployed, it was estimated, about 3000 times. The latest estimates range from 60,000 SWAT missions to 90,000. Of course typically cops on SWAT missions are in full body armor, typically dressed in black (night-time camo) and armed not with a billy c

Because of your source TP, I decided to look further and what I found was: If I were doing one of those b-s-ometer thingies - I'd give this an 7 meaning partially true and add that your genes are probably more determinate of the political position you male child will take and you ought not, in the first weeks of pregnancy, pay someone to kidnap and terrorize your wife in the belief it will make your son conservative. Instead, if bio-engineering with scare tactics has an impact, it is to make your daughter a skittish little mouse and likely a victim. (Of course some conservativ

You get what you pay for, don't you markdavd. pubby

I think they could do that without suggesting, as my forebears did, that we secede from the Union and form our own country. pubby

Complaints about money in politics and the electoral system in general are legion. Our laws are why they are that way today and why they have been this way for a long time. One of the biggest complaints about the system when I was growing up was there was no difference between the political parties as both had both liberal and conservative members. Among the changes that occurred in the time frame of 1964-to-present with 1980 being the watershed year was the move to the right of the GOP. Even against the advice of folks like Lee "Big Tent" Atwater, one of the authors of 'wedge-issu

As if there are not enough things to scare hell out of us these guys conjure up this kind of fear to make a sale. pubby

And notably the guilt for the lack of nobility doesn't lie with the grunt in the field. Rather the deployments are at the behest of masters of the universe who conjure up these adventures for fun and profit. And if you put that statement into the context of the flow of the topic proceeding it, you'd see - in fact you can see it didn't direct the busting down of doors, shooting or torturing people or bombing them from above with drones on the US Military but on "America" - You, me, Barry and Dubya and everyone else. If I'd said soldiers I'd have mean soldiers ... but I mean us, a

cmorg: After terrorizing the Iraqi people - busting down doors, shooting people, torturing people, bombing them from above with drones - the relationship had gone pretty much down hill to nothing by the time we exited. The Shiites were in control (Maliki) and they were happy to have us out of the way so they could continue their interest in whacking the Sunni's that had whacked them the complete time that Saddam - a Sunni - was their dictator. Besides that, they could still maintain relationships and with out interference or leaks from Americans, they had true freedom to steal, plunde

It used to be cmorg, that you aligned with the group that did the best job of administering the government and its programs. Administrators were supposed to be good administrators and the notions of how well things ran and how effectively the groups could come together to solve the problems. Now, one of the few times I stuck a camera in the face of Tom Graves, he's said that he doesn't believe in compromise. I just happen to be of the opinion that a country that is as diverse as the United States of America cannot be governed without compromise. Indeed, the idea that there are thousa

following are a couple of reports of a large Pew survey of over 10,000 folks - about ten-times the size of the typical political survey - that says that the polarization in politics is expanding to encompass even broader elements of our social lives. Key to this is the political divides that began when the political parties; rather than seeking to gain support from the broad middle and compete on which group would deliver government most effectively and efficiently, instead changed course to follow an ideological path. Because Pew Research has been doing this kind of broad-based study

Personally I don't remember it. If I were looking for the story, though, I would go into the covert condescension forum as it may have been moved there. BTW: I'm going to do a very simple edit to your opening post that I think will be cool. I'm going to click the mark next to the tagged content that says Use first tag as prefix. It is little radio box that you click on that will display "mattress lawsuit' on the topics page. pubby