Meanwhile, most models Motorola cell phones have had power issues for the past 10 years, and you hardly hear word one about it.
What power issues? I've had Motorola phones of one type or another going all the way back to the analog AMPS network and I've only ever had a problem with one of them. Got a crappy battery. Replaced it and never thought about it again.
Keith Olbermann attacks the strong and powerful. Those who can defend themselves.
And that makes him less of a self-righteous closed minded asshole how exactly? I've watched his interviews with Conservative guests -- he cuts them off and always seems to manage to interject his own opinions and/or commentary. In this respect he is little better than O'Reilly.
Do you honestly think that Olbermann is any less of a partisan hack than O'Reilly? The main differences I see between them is that Olbermann doesn't seem to have as big of chip on his shoulder whereas I think Bill O'Reilly was born angry and pissed off at the world ("Fuck it! We'll do it live!").
Eh, NAFTA doesn't bother me that much. Granted, I'm not one of those who were adversely affected by it but I can see the value of promoting free trade right here in the Americas as opposed to doing business with these assholes.
It's a mystery to me why we aren't making more of an effort to expand our trade with Latin and South America. For all the faults of that part of the World most of those countries are actual Democracies. Instead we do the bulk of our business with a Communist directorship that engages in censorship, forced sterilizations, etc, etc.
The funniest thing that Limbaugh ever did was call for harsher penalties for drug users then get himself busted for being an oxycodon addict.
What's scary is that little episode didn't really cost him many viewers or respect. I guess Republicans only care about hypocrisy if it's the gay kind....
That being said, his least contentious/biggest softball interview? Lynn Chaney, by far.
Eh, I actually think that was appropriate on his part. Lynn Cheney doesn't set policy. I don't see the point of beating up on someones wife just because you disagree with his policies.
Is it legal for you to shoot a cop that was doing something that you thought was wrong
Depends on what he is doing wrong, now doesn't it? If you came across a cop that was in the process of raping and murdering someone you could make a pretty good case for shooting him and getting away with it.
Is that why Iraq has been such a cakewalk for us the last few years? Or why Finland was such a cakewalk for the Soviet Union during the Winter War?
Don't underestimate what a handful of well motivated people can achieve with firearms and whatever homemade weapons they can scrape together. Hell, you can disable (destroy in some cases) a tank with Molotov cocktails if nothing else is available.
The Supreme Court of the United States, the 50 State Legislatures that have ratified amendments and every Federal official/elected office holder that swears an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States?
At some point we're all going to have invoke a little realpolitik here. As far as Russia is concerned, Georgia as a whole has long been a client state, and as far as the regions with Russian populations, well maybe they'll allow the fiction of independent states, but for all intents and purposes they're part of Russia.
Well if they want to start playing the game like that again then we can respond in kind. There's a little piss ant country about 90 miles off the coast of Florida that used to be an American client state as I recall. Or if we want to go after something with ramifications for the global energy markets (Georgia has the only pipeline in that region not controlled by Moscow) we could look further to the South.
Since no one really can go after Russia in any meaningful way
That depends on what you consider "meaningful". If Russia is hell bent on bringing Georgia back into her orbit we probably can't stop them (is Georgia worth WW3?), but we don't have to let them stay in the G-8 or get into the WTO either. Sooner or later Putin will have to decide what's more important -- further economic integration with the World or ruling over the Slavs?
This isn't just about Georgia or oil pipelines. It's about sending a message to the Western Slavs that whatever their current technical affiliations, their independence is very much at the whim of the Kremlin (as I said before, it's been this way for centuries)
Didn't Hitler try the same thing with German populations not under the rule of Berlin? Shouldn't that have taught us a lesson about trying to redraw the map based on ethic distributions? Or did I miss the part of the UN charter that says all Slavs have to be ruled from Moscow?
Western Europe would be better advised to not worry so much about the expansion of the EU and NATO, but in finding some way of getting away from dependence on the Russian Empire's oil and gas
I would agree with this. For all the griping Americans do about being owned by "foreign oil" the Europeans have it much worse. At least we can obtain a good portion of ours from friendly (Canada and Mexico) countries.
accepting the fact that all this post-Wilsonian and post-Cold War self-determination talk, while certainly a lovely sentiment, just ain't gonna be
So which countries do you propose we abandon? Georgia? The Baltic States? Ukraine? Where do you draw the line? The Baltic States are members of the EU. If the EU is willing to let them be absorbed by Moscow what does that say about them? What about countries without Slavic populations that Moscow has long sought to dominate? Will you also abandon Finland and Poland? Both of them are members of the EU and one (Poland) is a NATO member.
New Orleans has its charms, but in Europe we have the rich regional cultures of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Troy. Ruins get better with age.
Umm, it sounds to me like you are talking about more about archeology/history and less about culture. Unless you can enjoy Marti Gras or take in a Broadway show in Pompeii;)
Don't get me wrong. Not trying to downplay the significance of the places you mentioned. I actually got a chance to see some Etruscan ruins when I was in Italy -- pretty amazing to see something that old.
If you ask most people what cuisine America is most famous for, the answer will probably be "fast food" or "junk food" (actual answers may also include supersize me-burgers, american pizza, fried chicken and so on). France isn't all about cheese and wine, Germany beer and sausages, Italy pizza, Japan sushi and so on but in the game of cuisine stereotypes America is pretty much bottom of the barrel
Well if you want to compare stereotypes then there probably isn't much point in having this discussion. We are stereotyped as arrogant and lazy. The French are stereotyped as being quick to surrender. The Germans are stereotyped as genocidal nutjobs.
If you want to compare actual foods then I would again ask how one can claim that the cuisine in Europe is "better". Cuisine is a highly subjective subject and depending upon the taste of the individual that you are talking to you will get twenty different answers as to what's "better". I would argue that American cuisine is as rich and diverse as European cuisine. I won't try to claim that one is "better" than the other.
And from my slim anecdotal experience the US reputation is not entirely undeserved...
At least you admit that you have no idea what you are talking about. Have you ever been to the United States? Because I've actually been in Europe. I didn't like all of it (French cooking has never sat well with my stomach) but European cuisine is so varied that sooner or later you are bound to find something that you'll fall in love with. I suspect that if you came to the United States with an open mind the same would apply.
The average non-American is familiar with exactly two brands of American beer: Budweiser (which sounds very, very German) and Duff
Eh, then familiarize yourself with more before you make a blanket statement that all American beer sucks. I wouldn't presume to think that all European beer sucks just because Heineken tastes like skunky piss water.
but we don't see an awful lot of Californian wine over a decade old on the shelves here
Well, for starters California doesn't have a monopoly on American wine. Most American states produce small amounts of wine and at least three of them (New York, Oregon and Washington) have well developed wine industries that compete favorably with anything that comes out of California.
Besides that, I've been to Europe. Most of the liquor stores that I visited had a rather depressing selection of American wine. I actually saw a bottle of Sutter Homes white zin in Florence that was going for around 40 Euros. Here in the states that would sell for $4-$5 a bottle and would be considered the budweiser of the wine world. It made me wonder if all the European wines that I see on my liquor store shelves also represent the bottom of the barrel;)
The burgers, hot dogs and pizza (and the fries with that) aren't even American by origin.
America is a nation of immigrants from different cultures and countries. Each of them have brought a unique piece of their own culture to this country. Eventually those different cultures assimilate into something that's uniquely American. Hamburgers and hot dogs weren't invented here but does anybody really think of them as German any longer?
And to add a little content, if you ask people in Kosovo what they think of us bombing the Serbs, they are very happy
As with most things it's a matter of perspective. I honestly don't know enough about the Caucuses to form an opinion as to who "started it". My gut tells me that the people placing 100% of the blame on Georgia aren't telling the whole story though.
To make that entire scene awesome, all they would have to do is redub the dialogue with Anakin being enraged by the deaths of some of the other pilots and going postal, with the implication that the Dark Side is guiding his actions.
I'd add one thing to that image. Cut away from the battle scene once or twice to Palpatine. He's sitting alone somewhere on Coruscant and gets a really satisfied look on his face as Anakin begins to "go postal". Maybe play the radio chatter from the battle in the background at a really low volume.
So the Finns, Estonians, and Poles were engaged in ethic cleansing and genocide when Stalin decided to try and conquer them?
I don't pretend to have all the answers for the Balkans but I think trying to compare Bosnia and Kosovo with Finland and the Baltic States is a bit of a stretch. Do you even remember what the Serbs were up to back in those days? The images of people in camps starving to death?
Or like better beer, a rich regional culture and history, better cuisine, better wine.
The United States doesn't have rich regional cultures? I guess you've never been to New York City or New Orleans?
And the rest of those are purely subjective. Most of the mass market European beers (Heineken comes to mind) are just as crappy as the mass market American beers. Start talking about microbrews though I think you'll find a few American beers that stack up favorably. American wine came of age a long time ago and competes successfully on the world stage. And 'better cuisine'? Cuisine varies so much between regions (even within small countries -- ever traveled across Italy?) that I'm really interested to hear how you define "better".
The only fix I see that includes Russia, is to have a Russian on board the station at all times. That way, if they refuse to help in the direst circumstances, they are letting their own countryman die
Because if there is anything that Russia is known for it's having a great respect for the value of human life;)
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Communist countries generally don't have a Starbucks and an American company exploiting the workers on every corner.
They have government run cafÃf©s and companies exploiting workers on every corner
The difference is that Starbucks has never tried to tell me how many kids I can have or what I can say about my Government.
Meanwhile, most models Motorola cell phones have had power issues for the past 10 years, and you hardly hear word one about it.
What power issues? I've had Motorola phones of one type or another going all the way back to the analog AMPS network and I've only ever had a problem with one of them. Got a crappy battery. Replaced it and never thought about it again.
Keith Olbermann attacks the strong and powerful. Those who can defend themselves.
And that makes him less of a self-righteous closed minded asshole how exactly? I've watched his interviews with Conservative guests -- he cuts them off and always seems to manage to interject his own opinions and/or commentary. In this respect he is little better than O'Reilly.
Do you honestly think that Olbermann is any less of a partisan hack than O'Reilly? The main differences I see between them is that Olbermann doesn't seem to have as big of chip on his shoulder whereas I think Bill O'Reilly was born angry and pissed off at the world ("Fuck it! We'll do it live!").
There are hypocrites on every side
Did I ever say that there weren't?
Eh, NAFTA doesn't bother me that much. Granted, I'm not one of those who were adversely affected by it but I can see the value of promoting free trade right here in the Americas as opposed to doing business with these assholes.
It's a mystery to me why we aren't making more of an effort to expand our trade with Latin and South America. For all the faults of that part of the World most of those countries are actual Democracies. Instead we do the bulk of our business with a Communist directorship that engages in censorship, forced sterilizations, etc, etc.
Yeah, that's logical.
The funniest thing that Limbaugh ever did was call for harsher penalties for drug users then get himself busted for being an oxycodon addict.
What's scary is that little episode didn't really cost him many viewers or respect. I guess Republicans only care about hypocrisy if it's the gay kind....
For whatever reason... one sides' success.... The Daily Show, Limbaugh, pick your example... just doesn't seem to translate well to the other side
I don't know.... Olbermann seems to be doing a pretty good knock-off of Bill O'Reilly, complete with selective hearing and manufactured outrage.
Mind you, I can't stand either one of them.
Now, humor is somewhat subjective, and Limbaugh has a mean streak that comes out at odd times and spoils the party
You mean like the time where he called a 13 year girl a "dog"?
Sorry, that guy is a fucking asshole. End of story.
That being said, his least contentious/biggest softball interview? Lynn Chaney, by far.
Eh, I actually think that was appropriate on his part. Lynn Cheney doesn't set policy. I don't see the point of beating up on someones wife just because you disagree with his policies.
And of course, sex sells. Clinton's affair probably launched 100 comedians careers
I'm surprised Hillary didn't find a way to take credit for this and tout it as some sort of "job creation" ;)
Bill Clinton's policies were fine
Including the Communications Decency Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act?
fifty bucks says that The Man(tm) will not agree and that they'll call it 'obstruction of justice'.
How do they know it didn't just fall off your car somewhere?
Is it legal for you to shoot a cop that was doing something that you thought was wrong
Depends on what he is doing wrong, now doesn't it? If you came across a cop that was in the process of raping and murdering someone you could make a pretty good case for shooting him and getting away with it.
they're the ones with the tanks.
Is that why Iraq has been such a cakewalk for us the last few years? Or why Finland was such a cakewalk for the Soviet Union during the Winter War?
Don't underestimate what a handful of well motivated people can achieve with firearms and whatever homemade weapons they can scrape together. Hell, you can disable (destroy in some cases) a tank with Molotov cocktails if nothing else is available.
The Supreme Court of the United States, the 50 State Legislatures that have ratified amendments and every Federal official/elected office holder that swears an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States?
At some point we're all going to have invoke a little realpolitik here. As far as Russia is concerned, Georgia as a whole has long been a client state, and as far as the regions with Russian populations, well maybe they'll allow the fiction of independent states, but for all intents and purposes they're part of Russia.
Well if they want to start playing the game like that again then we can respond in kind. There's a little piss ant country about 90 miles off the coast of Florida that used to be an American client state as I recall. Or if we want to go after something with ramifications for the global energy markets (Georgia has the only pipeline in that region not controlled by Moscow) we could look further to the South.
Since no one really can go after Russia in any meaningful way
That depends on what you consider "meaningful". If Russia is hell bent on bringing Georgia back into her orbit we probably can't stop them (is Georgia worth WW3?), but we don't have to let them stay in the G-8 or get into the WTO either. Sooner or later Putin will have to decide what's more important -- further economic integration with the World or ruling over the Slavs?
This isn't just about Georgia or oil pipelines. It's about sending a message to the Western Slavs that whatever their current technical affiliations, their independence is very much at the whim of the Kremlin (as I said before, it's been this way for centuries)
Didn't Hitler try the same thing with German populations not under the rule of Berlin? Shouldn't that have taught us a lesson about trying to redraw the map based on ethic distributions? Or did I miss the part of the UN charter that says all Slavs have to be ruled from Moscow?
Western Europe would be better advised to not worry so much about the expansion of the EU and NATO, but in finding some way of getting away from dependence on the Russian Empire's oil and gas
I would agree with this. For all the griping Americans do about being owned by "foreign oil" the Europeans have it much worse. At least we can obtain a good portion of ours from friendly (Canada and Mexico) countries.
accepting the fact that all this post-Wilsonian and post-Cold War self-determination talk, while certainly a lovely sentiment, just ain't gonna be
So which countries do you propose we abandon? Georgia? The Baltic States? Ukraine? Where do you draw the line? The Baltic States are members of the EU. If the EU is willing to let them be absorbed by Moscow what does that say about them? What about countries without Slavic populations that Moscow has long sought to dominate? Will you also abandon Finland and Poland? Both of them are members of the EU and one (Poland) is a NATO member.
New Orleans has its charms, but in Europe we have the rich regional cultures of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Troy. Ruins get better with age.
Umm, it sounds to me like you are talking about more about archeology/history and less about culture. Unless you can enjoy Marti Gras or take in a Broadway show in Pompeii ;)
Don't get me wrong. Not trying to downplay the significance of the places you mentioned. I actually got a chance to see some Etruscan ruins when I was in Italy -- pretty amazing to see something that old.
If you ask most people what cuisine America is most famous for, the answer will probably be "fast food" or "junk food" (actual answers may also include supersize me-burgers, american pizza, fried chicken and so on). France isn't all about cheese and wine, Germany beer and sausages, Italy pizza, Japan sushi and so on but in the game of cuisine stereotypes America is pretty much bottom of the barrel
Well if you want to compare stereotypes then there probably isn't much point in having this discussion. We are stereotyped as arrogant and lazy. The French are stereotyped as being quick to surrender. The Germans are stereotyped as genocidal nutjobs.
If you want to compare actual foods then I would again ask how one can claim that the cuisine in Europe is "better". Cuisine is a highly subjective subject and depending upon the taste of the individual that you are talking to you will get twenty different answers as to what's "better". I would argue that American cuisine is as rich and diverse as European cuisine. I won't try to claim that one is "better" than the other.
And from my slim anecdotal experience the US reputation is not entirely undeserved...
At least you admit that you have no idea what you are talking about. Have you ever been to the United States? Because I've actually been in Europe. I didn't like all of it (French cooking has never sat well with my stomach) but European cuisine is so varied that sooner or later you are bound to find something that you'll fall in love with. I suspect that if you came to the United States with an open mind the same would apply.
The average non-American is familiar with exactly two brands of American beer: Budweiser (which sounds very, very German) and Duff
Eh, then familiarize yourself with more before you make a blanket statement that all American beer sucks. I wouldn't presume to think that all European beer sucks just because Heineken tastes like skunky piss water.
but we don't see an awful lot of Californian wine over a decade old on the shelves here
Well, for starters California doesn't have a monopoly on American wine. Most American states produce small amounts of wine and at least three of them (New York, Oregon and Washington) have well developed wine industries that compete favorably with anything that comes out of California.
Besides that, I've been to Europe. Most of the liquor stores that I visited had a rather depressing selection of American wine. I actually saw a bottle of Sutter Homes white zin in Florence that was going for around 40 Euros. Here in the states that would sell for $4-$5 a bottle and would be considered the budweiser of the wine world. It made me wonder if all the European wines that I see on my liquor store shelves also represent the bottom of the barrel ;)
The burgers, hot dogs and pizza (and the fries with that) aren't even American by origin.
America is a nation of immigrants from different cultures and countries. Each of them have brought a unique piece of their own culture to this country. Eventually those different cultures assimilate into something that's uniquely American. Hamburgers and hot dogs weren't invented here but does anybody really think of them as German any longer?
And to add a little content, if you ask people in Kosovo what they think of us bombing the Serbs, they are very happy
As with most things it's a matter of perspective. I honestly don't know enough about the Caucuses to form an opinion as to who "started it". My gut tells me that the people placing 100% of the blame on Georgia aren't telling the whole story though.
To make that entire scene awesome, all they would have to do is redub the dialogue with Anakin being enraged by the deaths of some of the other pilots and going postal, with the implication that the Dark Side is guiding his actions.
I'd add one thing to that image. Cut away from the battle scene once or twice to Palpatine. He's sitting alone somewhere on Coruscant and gets a really satisfied look on his face as Anakin begins to "go postal". Maybe play the radio chatter from the battle in the background at a really low volume.
So the Finns, Estonians, and Poles were engaged in ethic cleansing and genocide when Stalin decided to try and conquer them?
I don't pretend to have all the answers for the Balkans but I think trying to compare Bosnia and Kosovo with Finland and the Baltic States is a bit of a stretch. Do you even remember what the Serbs were up to back in those days? The images of people in camps starving to death?
Or like better beer, a rich regional culture and history, better cuisine, better wine.
The United States doesn't have rich regional cultures? I guess you've never been to New York City or New Orleans?
And the rest of those are purely subjective. Most of the mass market European beers (Heineken comes to mind) are just as crappy as the mass market American beers. Start talking about microbrews though I think you'll find a few American beers that stack up favorably. American wine came of age a long time ago and competes successfully on the world stage. And 'better cuisine'? Cuisine varies so much between regions (even within small countries -- ever traveled across Italy?) that I'm really interested to hear how you define "better".
The right of a people to choose their leadership should not be overlooked here.
Is that why the Russians are busy trying to undermine Saakashvili?
The only fix I see that includes Russia, is to have a Russian on board the station at all times. That way, if they refuse to help in the direst circumstances, they are letting their own countryman die
Because if there is anything that Russia is known for it's having a great respect for the value of human life ;)