Andy9o8

Yeah, just show all tandem students This video before they jump (but after they've already paid! ) "Zis is vat ve do to shtudents who try to do zat!" Problem nipped in the bud.

I get "enemy" requests fairly often. It's really quite touching.

On the bright side, they'll need a military, and that opens up a whole new market for all the surplus M-14s, M-16s and MRAPS the US has on hand, now that giving it to local cops has - how shall I say? - lost its panache. Och, anyhow, remember one saving grace: in a democracy, people get the government they deserve.

Did G W Bush attend the funeral(s) of any service member while he was in office? I do not know. However, I do think it should be part of this type of discussion. JerryBaumchen He did. Fail. Just admit it.

when you have enough school shootings to define an "average", something is VERY wrong The saddest commentary is that your point is not intuitive to 50% of Americans.

Did G W Bush attend the funeral(s) of any service member while he was in office? I do not know. However, I do think it should be part of this type of discussion. JerryBaumchen He did. Whose? My Google-fu (which is hardly perfect) hasn't turned up any. It did, however, turn up this reference (in several links) to a 2006 Stars & Stripes interview in which he acknowledged & explained why, to that date he had not attended any such funerals: Seems quite reasonable. For balance sake, here's a rare positive-spin article in 2009 from the uber-conservative Washington Times about touching personal letters of condolences Pres. Obama has written to the families of fallen servicemembers: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/17/obama-pens-real-notes-to-fallen-troops-families/?page=all We all have so much POLICY to debate about. All this ad-hominem mud-slinging makes everyone look disgraceful.

It might also be said that a person who spent his formative years in an environment where violence is the first level of dispute settlement might be too quick to employ the use of physical force, or too high a level of physical force. That aside, serious question: Are students/recruits who grew up fist-fighting, but have had no formal, professional martial arts instruction, more "trainable" by professional martial arts instructors? Shouldn't a good instructor be able to train any student from scratch?

OK. I'll play your bullshit game. How about everyone that died serving their country instead of 100 Million dollar vacations in Africa. What the fuck kinda question is that? You trying to deflect that the highest ranking officer of this war shouldn't have had its Commander-in-Chief present instead of staying on vacation?!?!?!? Bullshit. Leadership FAIL Barry sure managed to get some dignitaries to the Michael Brown funeral. You libs keep trying to pick up this turd of a president by the clean end. And you first-class geniuses can't even be bothered to do research beyond the viral wing-nut blogosphere, or you'd know that THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE attended General Greene's funeral. Sorry that the Cabinet Secretary to whom the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff co-reports is too low-ranking for you. I see literally thousands of viral posts comparing the Michael Brown funeral with the General Greene funeral. What a bunch of stupid assholes, marching in lockstep to repeat the mantras they've been programmed to repeat. Stupid, stupid assholes. You guys really need to pull your heads out of it and stop embarrassing yourselves with such desperation tactics. http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/greene.asp The other bullshit in the OP are debunked in the above link, too.

I can't think of any reason, so, no.

It made no difference after Hotmail's transition to Outlook last year. Email sent to hotmail addresses are still received by the new Outlook account, and for a lot of people, that's just plain easier. Even if it's no longer, you know, stylish.

Oh, I expect most presidents to be perjurious. But I draw the line at criminally stupid.

Hmm - which is better, A lie by intent, or a lie by ignorance? Which one does immoral character define?? I suppose it all depends on where Darth Cheneys hand is at while trying to make the dummies lips move So adult. Shut up, poopie-breath.

Obama doesn't always mean what he says. Bush, on the other hand, meant what he said, but he didn't understand it.

We discussed this about a month ago in this thread: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4663096#4663096 As if there's an obligation to reply to the shit that flies around in the viral right-wing nutbag blogosphere. I don't think so.

And I think you're way under-estimating just how rapidly that sampling is going mainstream, thanks in large part to Ferguson. "Militarization of police" has entered the popular lexicon, heightened sensitivity of that issue will soon be the norm, and that genie's not going back into the bottle. As far as "those you never really had in the first place", my experience from 3 decades in the system is that that cohort has historically been comprised of those living in poor, mostly black and Hispanic neighborhoods, where the police both act like and are perceived as an army of occupation. Thanks to the mainstreaming of the issue I refer to above, that compartmentalization you refer to is becoming a thing of the past. By the way, your use of the term "a small, but very vocal group we never really "had" in the first place" reeks of "us vs. them". Maybe that's not how you intended it, but that's how it comes across.

Wow, what a stretch. If the best you have to offer is to invent words to put in someone's mouth, you're not ready to debate with the grown-ups.

The exam was too ruff?

Unfortunately, such training (along with insurance and protection) has become a rarity, as major news outlets increasingly use (and exploit) freelance journalists. Here's one example of several stories I've recently read discussing this. The Life of a War Correspondent Is Even Worse Than You Think

Defense: We are here for a suppression hearing your honor Judge: What are the facts Defense: My client was charged with possession of cocaine, we want to suppress the search Judge: Officer? Me: Your honor, the defendant (adult) was stopped walking on the highway with two juveniles who were intoxicated, he was not charged with giving them alcohol because he was cooperative and had outstanding warrants. After he was searched, but before he went into the jail he was asked if he had anything on him where I couldn't find it, because the jail will and it's an additional felony. The suspect then told me he had a baggie of cocaine in his rectum, he was searched by the jailers after being brought in, there was a baggie of cocaine in his rectum. Since he told me when asked, I did not charge him with the additional felony, just the possession. Welcome to my world, the attorney was actually pissed because it wasn't suppressed. I didn't know the attorney, but if anything is cut and dried, it was this. True Story #1 - One of the rare times I experienced a judge actually rejecting the credibility of a cop in a suppression motion. (I've actually experienced essentially this scenario many times, but usually the judge just rubber-stamps the cop's testimony and denies the suppression motion). Client (who is black), charged with possession of coke, to me, in private interview: I had a tiny bag of coke on me, hidden inside my underpants. I was walking to my friend Jesus's house to share it with him. It's a bad neighborhood, but all I was doing was walking. Shortly after I crossed into his [predominantly Hispanic] neighborhood, the cop rolled up on me and asked me what I was doing there. I said "just visiting a friend". He put me up against his car and searched me. He found the coke in my underwear, and arrested me. In Court, during evidence suppression hearing: Officer: Your Honor, it's a bad neighborhood, known for lots of drug traffic and other crime. It was nighttime. As the Defendant walked past my squad car, I could see he was holding something in his hand. He then held it up above his head and examined it in the light of the streetlight, where I could see it in plain view. I could see it was a clear glassine packet containing a white powdered substance. He then looked at me, dropped it on the ground, and walked away rapidly. I retrieved the packet from the ground and placed him in custody. [answering my questions on cross]: Yes, that neighborhood is almost exclusively Hispanic. Yes, I acknowledge that your client is a black man. Yes, it's a known drug area, and we execute numerous narcotics arrests on that street every night. Me, to judge, on oral argument: Your Honor, you've been doing this a long time, and you know how it goes down in the street. Do you really believe an adult black man, at night, out in the street in a high-drug, high-crime Hispanic neighborhood, would openly hold a packet of cocaine up above his head to the light, for all the world to see, in a neighborhood where if he actually did that, he'd almost certainly get robbed or arrested? Judge: Frankly, I have a real problem believing that. Motion to suppress granted. [Thus forcing the prosecution to drop the case for lack of admissible evidence.] -------------------------------- True story #2 (actually, this has happened more times than I can count): Me, interviewing client: You're charged with dealing drugs out of your apartment. It says here in the police report and evidence receipts that the police seized $1,800 cash from your apartment. Client: Yeah, right. Me: So that's not true? Client: Yeah, they found the money. It was closer to $12,000. I think you know what happened to the rest of it.

You're in good company!

See, that's the kind of cleverness that puts the rest of us to shame.

And, there's the answer to my question: you don't even try.

Do you even try? I asked for a solid source, and the right-wing descriptor was directed at the sites that reported this. You get pretty pissy wasting energy duking it out with people on a personal level here. That's your choice; but it's also our choice how seriously to take you. Or, not.

2 right wing agenda sites and a local Fox News outlet. Your sourcing is going to have to be a little more solid than that to do anything more than preach to your own choir. ps, I googled it myself - all the hits were either from right wing agenda sites or "Christian news" sites re-circulating the story among themselves. Sorry, but my fear isn't mongered.