Open Thread
Sunday Funnies:
Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington from their Guinness World Record-winning podcasts. Get ready, HBO is animating the entire series for a new program debuting in February:
Ricky Gervais is getting animated for HBO.
The British comic will star in his own comedy cartoon series starting Friday, Feb. 19, at 9/8c on HBO, followed by the second-season premiere of another animated comedy, The Life and Times of Tim.
The Ricky Gervais Show will mark Gervais' third collaboration with HBO, following the Emmy-winning Extras and his 2008 special, Ricky Gervais: Out of England — Stand-Up Special. The animated series will also reteam Gervais, 48, with Stephen Merchant. The two created the original BBC version of The Office as well as Extras.
The Ricky Gervais Show is based on Gervais, Merchant and comic Karl Pilkington's breakout podcasts — the most downloaded ever, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Gervais, Merchant and Pilkington will voice the show, which will animate past podcasts on everything from philosophy and philanthropy to excerpts from Pilkington's journal.
Open thread below...
"We want a public option to do basically three things: Create more choice for insurers, create more competition for insurance companies, and to contain costs. So if we can come up with a process by which these three things can be done, then I'm all for it. Whether or not we label it a public option or not is of no consequence."
See they can't even think outside the "Corporate Box" . . Unless something is "Corporate" it never occurs to these guys that life can exist.
www.the350project.net
your name's Lebowski, Lebowski... and your wife is Bunny
Charley Brown became a politician?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Just went to see Avatar in 3D.
I can't see how anyone can say one bad word against that movie unless they were born bastards.
Simple story? Suck it. The same people that are dissing Avatar thought that The Dark Knight and Gladiator were great!
Cheesy dialogue? Please, again, suck it.
"Dances with Wolves in Space"? Keep sucking. Everything is derivative. EVERYTHING!!! In this story the good guys win!
It's a movie for all progressives. It shouts our core values.
It's a movie for all racist nazi anti-environmental **********s...maybe they will realize what is important in life!
I didn't like Dark Knight or Gladiator.
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=6zNcKo2j...
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
and said to my son, "I've seen it three times and it's pure propaganda dude!"
When I saw the trailer I wondered who Cameron would consider "the winner" to be at the end? Humans who want the resources from another planet or those whose planet is being invaded in order to seize their resources?
I'll be seeing it this week.
I watched "District 9" last night. Now I know why the ex kept saying, "Just stick with it until the end. You'll love it."
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
it propoganda?
From the reviews I've seen I imagine it's long and it would piss off Fox viewers (which makes it o.k. by me).
that this Avatar movie the cons and Faux News viewer are disliking in goose-step masse, is released by Murdoch's fox.
Except for the 3-D polarizing glasses-induced major headache, I enjoyed the movie.
Whatever you construe from this movie, which is made by wealthy white guys in order to increase their wealth and their estimation of their own artistic self worth thus having more fun than they would by being banker come kleptocrats, though they would make more there, remember:
The Europeans who came to these shores committed genocide against the native people and the world to this day hardly noticed.
The Spanish are sometimes noted and criticized for their cruelty but the English were much worse.
Anyway, it is a fantasy not to be, we are not getting off this rock. The fossil fuel party will come and go and we will sorely miss those natives we slaughtered because they might have told us how to live.
If we had only known the correct questions to ask.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
It reminds me of a Calvn & Hobbes joke.
Calvin is watching TV and saying this programming would insult a six year old.
Hobbes says, "But your six."
Calvin responds, "Than I should know."
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Avatar,...based on a true story, right?
i guess we'll see in the following months and years...
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
From online:
"In Hinduism, Avatar or Avatara (अवतार, IAST ), often translated into English as incarnation, literally means descent (avatarati) and usually implies a deliberate descent from higher spiritual realms to lower realms of existence for special purposes."
Essentially that's like a messiah. It's like when they would argue whether Krisnha was the incarnation of Brahma or Vishnu, or Brahma and Vishnu are Krishna's manifestations.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
I beg to differ. The Judeo-Christian definition of messiah is "one of the Davidic line, who has been ordained by God to lead the people of Israel". Under that definition, one could say that David, Solomon, Saul and other annointed kings of Israel were all messiahs.
Jesus, while a messiah, was also (according to Christian beliefs)an incarnation of God Himself on Earth. So Jesus was an avatar of God and a messiah.
In Hinduism, an avatar could manifest itself in the form of a human, animal or an object and would come to Earth to perform a specific task, often to warn mankind of impending danger, but not necessarily to lead.
In Judeo-Christian mythos, the Burning Bush would be an avatar.
In Islaam, Isa(Jesus), is considered a messiah, but like Judaism, he is not considered a physical representation of God on Earth, thus not an avatar.
it would be a lot happier time in Memphis if the city weren't using stimulus funding to bulldoze Elvis's Favorite Rollercoaster, the Zippin Pippin, second oldest continually operating wooden rollercoaster in America, if not the world...
http://savethepippin.com/
strange days indeed...
Bulldoze the Old ..
Put up the New ..
Progress!
Democracy is too important to be entrusted to politicians.
Rise Up!
Protest!
"I can't see how anyone can say one bad word against that movie unless they were born bastards."
You're supporting a CG anti-war movie from an organization which helped promote the war in the first place, thus legitimizing the commodification of any progressive POV into a cynical cash-grab? [The whole thing reminds me of that MADTV sketch with the Titanic Happy Meal.]
So will the people behind the "disappeared" in Argentina finally be held accountable? The NRA wishes you a Merry X-mas this year. Nestle lied about the sugar content in its drinks. McCain helping another Dem to jump ship? Over 200,000 Haitian children forced to work as slaves. Kerry's wife is fighting breast cancer.
A couple of close friends and I put together our own radio show very recently; in fact, it was just uploaded today! We only play music by YouTube artists like Pomplamoose.
I know, I know - crass self-promotion, right? I only mention it because we were inspired more or less entirely by Ricky Gervais' own show, and the odds of it premiering on the same day as Crooks and Liars covers Gervais' programme were too great to ignore!
In any event, here is the link to part one (of eight):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vqEGXJq_zU
The host, Oliver, has his own fanastic web series called In a Handful of Minutes (a review show that reviews subjects you'll never or rarely hear discussed otherwise!), from which this Christmas special's title happens to be derived. But who knows? If people enjoy the special enough, it could easily become a regular thing.
I don't think I'm violating the "Terms of Service" by posting this in an open thread, especially since we don't make money with what we do. I also won't be mentioning the show here again, so I hope that people will dismiss the aforementioned crass and self-serving nature of this comment!
Oh, and thanks in advance to anyone who decides to give the show a listen-see!
all my friends here at C&L....
I was surprised to see this article in today's Los Angeles Times OP-ED!!!
"That joint? Hey, it's just research: Writing isn't all done at a keyboard. And if your protagonist grows pot, well...:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-...
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
Six Palestinians shot dead in bloody Gaza anniversary
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Gazans still angry one year on
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Israel accepts outline deal on Gaza ceasefire
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Israeli boy, 13, killed by axe-wielding Palestinian in West Bank
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Israeli soldiers admit shooting dead civilians during Gaza war
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Leading Gaza militant killed in Israeli air strike, threatening to reignite tensions in region
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Israeli warplane bombs Gaza tunnels as US envoy George Mitchell warns over ceasefire
Some stuff you can't make up!
has an opinion (he-he)
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/...
Let's have look inside Obama's Brain, shall we?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r9mr29aLgA
I suggest the talking heads stop freaking out over the guy on the plane with explosives until we actually know all the facts. They make us look like a country of scared children. Especially Fox, their people are just yanking details out of their lower area with not one fact to back any of it up. We should have a moment of silence so everyone could take a deep breath.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
And another thing. Roger Kressi (sp?) was on tv this morning on morning joe. He said just because the govt is warned about a person by one other person, doesn't mean that person is placed on a watch list or a do not fly list. Instead a file is opened on that person and left idle until they have more information on them. Otherwise you or I could decide our neighbor was a "bad guy", report it to the govt. and that person would be banned from flying and watched for terrorist activities even if they were innocent as hell.
Finally, someone with knowledge and common sense speaks up.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
Both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate have drafted a Health Care Reform bill which demands that the uninsured purchase a product from a retailer, under penalty of law.
I would like to submit for your consideration, five ways in which it is, in fact, still an un-Constitutional mandate.
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1 - It violates a citizens' right to privacy.
Now as many GOP and neocon advocates were quick to point out during the advent of the Patriot Act, the US Constitution does not, in fact, explicitly declare that we have a "right to privacy" - however, it is most definitely implied by both the 4th and the 9th Amendments. A quick google search provides us with many links showcasing our founding fathers' beliefs that all citizens should be guaranteed a right to privacy, as well as many Supreme Court cases where it is declared that Americans do, in fact, have a basic right to privacy.
These cases include Union Pacific Railway Co. v. Botsford (1897), Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942), Griswald v. Connecticut (1965), Roe v. Wade (1973), and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). If you look closely at each of these cases, most of them involved government and/or private enterprise attempts to review (and even dictate) a patient's (read "citizen's") medical decisions.
If this mandate passes, when uninsured citizens declare they are uninsured there is a very strong argument that whatever treatment they received while uninsured will enter the public record, as their debts are entered into the public record.
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2 - It violates the citizens' 4th Amendment rights
The 4th Amendment protects us from unreasonable search and seizure. It will be un-Constitutional for a law enforcement agency to proactively review a citizen's personal effects or their banking records to determine whether or not that citizen has, in fact, purchased an HMO policy.
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3 - It violates the citizens' 5th Amendment rights
The 5th Amendment protects us from testifying against ourselves. If an uninsured citizen has a medical need and visits a hospital, they will be required to submit their HMO policy number to an intake specialist prior to receiving medical care.
This situation forces uninsured citizens to admit that they do not have an HMO policy in order to receive the medical care that they need, thus forcing the citizens to alert law enforcement that they have not complied with the law ... in other words, it creates a situation where a great number of uninsured citizens will be *FORCED* to testify against themselves in order to receive medical care (a basic human right).
Not only is this duress, its un-Constitutional.
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4 - It violates the States' 10th Amendment protections against being forced to enforce federal statutes.
The 10th Amendment asserts that "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." There are, of course, NO powers in the Constitution explicitly asserting that a law enforcement or military arm will review, detain, prosecute and imprison citizens who have chosen not to purchase a private HMO policy.
So either the Obama administration will need to create a new federal task force (something we *CANNOT* afford to do in this economy) or they will need to find some way to politically ensure that every state and local municipality create a uniform task force to enforce the mandate.
For the Congress to demand that state and local law enforcement investigate, arrest, prosecute and imprison citizens based on the Congress' federal health care mandate ... *GREATLY* oversteps the Congress' jurisdiction.
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5 - It violates the citizens' 16th Amendment protections against unregulated, non-uniform taxes.
The 16th Amendment is, in a nutshell, the reason we all have to pay taxes. However. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, asserts that taxes "shall be uniform throughout the United States." Further, the 16th Amendment orders the Congress not to raise taxes without a vote.
Let's not split hairs here. By ordering the citizens to purchase an HMO policy in order to ensure that all citizens are able to enjoy medical care, the Congress is, in fact, mandating another tax. Because of this, the mandate itself is very likely un-Constitutional. And should any citizens' HMO's raise their rates without doing so by a Congressional vote, the HMO's will enjoy the un-Constitutional privilege of raising their customers' "taxes" at their personal discretion.
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Finally - let's also not forget that no citizen can be punished for violating a law without pleading their case in court. So *EVERY* citizen who is deemed "guilty" of not purchasing a private HMO policy is already guaranteed the right to trial.
Clogging up the court systems with millions of "teabaggers" all declaring that they are not guilty (and you *KNOW* they will), to challenge the Constitutionality of this mandate, is going to prove incredibly costly. Unfortunately, denying the citizens' a right to trial if they are deemed "guilty" of failing to purchase a retail product is not only un-Constitutional, it spits in the face of the most basic foundations of our Constitution and our nation's principles.
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