The urge to brand is a human brand.

My Gibson your characterisation of Bin Laden as a 'logo' has excited graphic design urges inside of me. I now whant to see what such a graphic would look like.

The repranding of Islamists Terror starts here.

jaydee

what RobW said

Well, I held back, but I'm afraid I've got to call JA for the Trolls.

Shall we all stop feeding him now?

Gibson is absolutely adorable in that footage.
Don't you have some apple trees to plant Johnny.

Good idea Splitcoil.

That reminds me of the old gag the cronies in Wisconsin used to talk about pulling on their doctors.

When they have to take a urine sample to their appointment, they put some unfiltered apple juice in the glass jar instead. When the doc asks them for the specimen, they take out the glass, and say, "Oh it's looking a little cloudy doc, I'll give it another run through", and then they drink the contents.

That's slappin' your leg humor alright.

My father actually pulled off a good number when he was on jury duty once. There was a complaint about that a cheesemaker had spilled a small quantity of whey somewhere in the middle of winter. The key point was whether or not whey could be considered a noxious substance. At one point during the trial, they passed a vial of whey around. When it came to my father, he took off the lid and drank the contents.

The apple never falls far from the tree. :-)

Fata viam invenient

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Eric,

Virgil??

Oh. Must mean his chauffeur.

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They lost by 3 million this time. They have no one to blame but themselves.

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I know who I blame. The Americans.
Which isn't like Rudy Gulliani, who blames the troops.

and besides am i the only one who thinks The War On Terror, note the capital letters, sounds like a cynical branding exercise? The American Public will put everything they got on the line for it. Now that's brand loyalty.

The War On Drugs always puts me in mind of Steven Seagal. Particularly that scene in Hard To Kill when he wakes up to see Old G Herbert Walker B on the TV

I could swear I posted this already, but I can't find it anywhere.

It's pissing me off that it's being repeatedly said that the election was won on 'moral values'. Since when was enshrining discrimination in the law moral?

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Originally posted by stonebird:
The evangelical element of the election is an excellent diversion from the fact that hundreds of thousands of votes of mostly African American and minority precincts are being discarded.

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Proof?

[/QUOTE]Proof?[/QUOTE]

It's called spoilage. Ones persons vote is considered another persons garbage.

Why does this have to be an either/or thing?

Can't I serve the community AND increase my porn collection?

If I (hypothetically) do something socially useful like invent a better lice-killing shampoo or a faster-heating microwave, won't I get rewarded with MONEY?

This still doesn't explain Donald Trump, though.

quote:

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Originally posted by RobW:
Three million spoiled or provisional ballots all for Kerry nationwide? Doubt it. .

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To be fair Palast says that nearly 2 million will be thrown out nationwide the majority of which will be from black and minority citizens. You're right about incompetent electoral systems and malicious vote-suppression, I agree.

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Dayliner, Buttiglione wasn't democratically elected by anybody. He was appointed by the Italian government. That's the problem with the Commission - they're appointees. Members of the European Parliament are democratically elected so when the Parliament rolls the Commission, that's a triumph for democracy. If they do so to remove a guy with a stated opposition to the freedom of a large section of the European people, that's a triumph for freedom. QED.

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Think you missed what I said, guys. Here's what I said:

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Buttiglione was democratically elected by people who liked his views and put forward as a commissioner by others who were democratically elected and also liked his views.

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Buttiglione has been an elected member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies since 1994 and was first elected to the European Parliament in 1999. His views may not be yours, but they are the views of the people who elected him. Democracy is a sword that cuts both ways. Yes, he was appointed as a commissioner, but saying he wasn't elected is like saying an MP appointed to Cabinet wasn't elected. Putting the kibosh on his appointment isn't likely to make his constituents big fans of the EU Parliament, although polls show the EU has been falling out of favor with Italians for the last while anyway. But perhaps the EU doesn't need or want his constituents' support?
My own take on this is that it is more of a message to the new EU members whose thinking may be considered a bit primitive by the more enlightened members. After all, the biggest Catholic country in Europe just joined up. What better way to tell the Poles to keep their antiquated ideas at home than to very publically chastise someone whose views reflect the majority of Poles' as well?

Reagan's second inauguration, January 20th, 1985 occurred during one of the most dramatic cold snaps in Washington, D.C. history. You could see your breath in every room of the house. As a way to pass the time, my mother and i opened up an atlas and dreamed of plausible, warm places we could go. Italy seemed like our best bet. My mother was motivated by her divorce and the extreme cold, but she actually followed through and landed a gig working in Florence, Italy. Ultimately, there's nothing warmer about Florence than D.C. but by October 1, 1985 we moved into a house in Fiesole and became expatriates.

A lot of people talked about leaving the country if Reagan got re-elected, my mother and I did, but only because of the bitter cold on the day Reagan started his second term.

On October 8th, 1985 militant Palestinians under the leadership of Abu Nidal hijacked an Italian cruise ship, the , Achille Lauro and ultimately murdered Leon Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-bound American. On December 27, 1985 Abu Nidal claimed responsibility for simultaneous attacks in which Americans were targeted at airports in Rome and Vienna.

For a brief time, my classmates were escorted into shuttle vans from the bus stop to the American International School by several armed carabinieri. Americans had become the targets of Palestinian terrorists in Europe. But in April of 1986, Reagan launched an attack on Libya, on the grounds that Qaddafi welcomed Abu Nidal after being deemed too radical by Arab nations sympathetic to the PLO.

I suppose when you're being hustled into a van by armed men who are there to protect you as laser-guided bombs land on targets 500km away, it only makes sense that your perspective would be different than other Americans back home. Qaddafi had taken the lead as the State Department's tyrannical leader of a rogue state. By May, however the carabinieri were no longer protecting us, and talk shifted beck to the Soviet Union following Chernobyl.

Europe was no stranger to terrorism. Fron ETA, to the IRA and the Munich Olympics. But the Reagan Administration's attack on Libya in retaliation, seemed to me, an American overseas, a frightening escalation. Indeed, many Europeans feared that retaliation against Americans would certainly manifest as indiscriminate attacks on American tourists and expatriates. Security measured grew less visible and vigilant. In 1988, a Pan Am 747 blew apart over Scotland, and it seemed, America got serious about security, perhaps the cold war was to blame, but a German court blamed a "limited willingness" of the German and US governments to share intelligence on the movements of Abu Nidal and Libyan agents in the years preceding the Pan Am bombing.

Which sounds familiar...

I discovered a newfound admiration for humanity in the spring of 1986 when the final qualifying match for the World Cup finals in Mexico that summer was between Iran and Iraq. To this day I still marvel at the fact two nations at the height of a bitter conflict on the battlefield, would compete on a soccer field for the chance to compete in the largest sporting event in the world.

It's always cold in January in Washington, D.C. Who knows what the next four years will bring? I can say that one's perspective is determined by his or her vantage point. I think the next four years, if nothing else, will determine what kind of perspective cyberspace allows, and how raw data is processed, be it nodal points, pattern recognition or devine illumination within online communities.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: klik,

the lind quotes remind me of another quote, by swedish writer carsten palmær:

"the history of the 20th century clearly shows that the most popular and least effective way of getting a foreign people to change government is to throw explosives at them from the air."

and this was from when the iraq invasion was only a possibility. apparently it is still true.

Has anyone noticed that our esteemed Mr. Gibson hasn't been saying much on his own recently? He's posted some juicy quotes from other people in the last few days, but he hasn't been doing much else in the way of active participation. I mean, while he posts these fantastic quotes, that doesn't necessarily mean that he agrees with ALL of the content, does it? This is HIS blog, after all, not someone else's quote-factory. Where is YOUR head at, Mister Gibson?

All of the sudden, I'm beginning to feel a lot like a rat in a maze.

NightShadow wrote:"Where is YOUR head at, Mister Gibson?"

Dont know where Gibson's head is , but is easy to tell where yours is!