Show up at noon.

PROFIT

I was reading about the drug turn in thing.I'm not going to deny that prescription abuse is a problem but this is about the silliest way of dealing with it that I can think of

I'd be on board more to get people to get rid of antibiotics they haven't used.

Pain pills otoh, need to be hoarded for when you actually need them ldo.

lol so a transformer bot is really racist? yeah that "concept" is beyond me. if they made a couple bots that talked like a couple of cholos should i be offended and call Michael Bay a racist?

What does Jar Jar say about Lucas incidentally?

That he is racist against people who like good movies.

Yes the crows in Dumbo weren't racist either.

Tthey certainly represent stereotypes that i can understand offending people and i wouldnt strongly argue against them being racist. Its not like Fly is the first to make the comparison which includes several professional critics for big papers. There is a reason Bay himself took the decision to drop them from Trans3.

Bay said the characters developed from the voice actors and there is no way this guy who voiced one of them naturally defaults to a ghetto uneducated illiterate ******-bot:


It doesnt help that they dont do anything. They just act ******ed, play up on clear stereotypes and then disappear when any fighting happens. Oh and they transformed into ape like human form robots. I wouldnt have been shocked if they transformed into blackfaced minstrels.

Jar Jar id say is less racist because it clearly isnt a black guy, its a tall goofy alien. But its stupid and represents how **** and overrated Lucas is as a creative mind.

What more do you want him to do? He basically adopted a plan written by the Heartland Institute. The only way his health care plan could have been more to the right would be to include federal funding of leeches.

What would closing Gitmo accomplish besides fulfilling a campaign promise? Let em all go is that what you're advocating? If not seems to me that what's been proposed at a Supermax type facility is nothing more than solitary confinement. IIRC polling data shows that majority of voters favor keeping Gitmo open. It's an issue that his left wing base believe is a big deal but in reality not keeping that promise has probably helped Obama politically. Not even detainees want to have Gitmo closed according to reports like this:

Guantánamo suspects want to stay, say officials

The detainees' diet is exclusively Middle Eastern and halal, in observance of regional and religious sensitivities. Dates, olive oil and honey are provided daily and pita bread is baked on the premises. They drink the same bottled water as the prison's staff and have the same access as other prisoners to 16,000 books and 1,600 magazines held at the library.

An escorted tour of Guantánamo by the Daily Telegraph revealed that Camp 7's requested reading included Gardens of the World by Mick Hales, Fine Art Flower Photography by Tony Sweet and a copy of Birds and Blooms magazine, material in keeping with nature-bound leisure pursuits approved by conservative Islam. Two volumes of the Tales of the Arabian Nights were also in the pile. Tomes on Islamic theory are in plentiful supply and demand, said library staff.

At the low security Camp 4, detainees could be seen sitting in the yard chatting and hanging up their laundry. A new gravel football field was recently completed.

At Florence, Colorado, prisoners would also spend 22 ½ hours a day in a 9ft by 9ft cell with the only natural light coming from a skylight outside.

FYP

It would demonstrate a respect for basic civil liberties, human rights, and rule of law. There are a lot of additional things which the US government does which are less visible (extraordinary rendition, extrajudicial killings).

The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a symbol of those things and of the attack on habeas corpus in general. My interest in closing Guantanamo Bay isn't to relocate the prison to Bagram, or even to Colorado. It's to end a culture of militarization of justice and change the fundamental attitudes of American leadership.

*

I'm not going to bother responding to the rest of the propaganda about how great the detainees have it there. ("A better life than they had before!")

Mitt Romney=Che Guevara, obv.

lol that's not what he was saying at all. He is saying Gitmo is way better than the alternative, sending them to some federal hellhole prison or to a black hole like Bagram. And lol at you if you ever thought "closing Gitmo" would mean "charging the prisoners or releasing them".

I am sorry that you hate freedom so much that you cannot conceive of a world in which the US government doesn't indefinitely detail individuals without demonstrating cause to the civilian courts.

I don't support the government's actions. I'm just saying you were delusional for thinking that Obama ever intended to set things right.

Ideally I would have liked to see comprehensive reform that would deal with the fundamental problems of the system. What we got is a collection of patches to try and make our current, largely broken system function more like other systems that are more effective.

I'm disappointed every time you post and fail to make a coherent contribution to the conversation.

In the same way, I can be disappointed in Obama for not fulfilling a campaign pledge. Or for endorsing extrajudicial killings of citizens.

Neither situation requires me to be surprised, let alone "delusional".

You should be embarrassed by posting that link in defense of keeping Gitmo open. Ignoring for a moment the human rights and due process issues, that article couldn't have been more disingenuous. The whole article, but especially the Orwellian-doublespeak title and quotes you excerpted, is straight out of the US officialdom propaganda machine. Listening to the people running the prison tell us all how great it is there, and how much the people there want to stay, because they're given olives and pita bread is laughable.

The article is mostly flowery propaganda attempting to obfuscate the reality of this quote: "Given the choice of being sentenced forever in Guantánamo or moved to supermax, it is 'no, can I stay in Gitmo?'. Here they can be outside, they can smell the sea."

Great choice. Would you rather I set you on fire or pull off your fingernails?
OMG YOU WANT ME TO PULL OUT YOUR FINGERNAILS! If you want it, can't be bad at all.

And, of course, there are the numerous suicides. Trying to kill oneself is not exactly supportive of the, "they want to be there" claim. That is, of course, if you believe that all of the suicides were actual suicides, and not murders, as has been claimed by some.

But never mind that stuff, they love their seaside paradise, where they can eat dates, watch their drying laundry flutter on the clothesline all afternoon, and play on their football field all day. And we've always been at war with Eastasia.



Cliffs: What Sholar said

But what people who think closing Gitmo is important fail to realize is that closing Gitmo will make things worse, not better. There is no intention to release any prisoners, nor to charge them. If Gitmo is closed they will disapear; at least at Gitmo they have some legal status and protections. If they disappear into the CIA black sites they will lose whatever protections they currently have.

Or, the best case scenario they get transferred to a federal supermax hellhole with the same legal status as they have at Gitmo. But much worse conditions.

Relevant:

The Administration absolutely has bee releasing prisoners, partially for housecleaning in anticipation of closing Gitmo.

The best case scenario is that the remaining prisoners will be granted additional protections once they are brought stateside. The legal case for treating detainees differently from other prisoners is that Constitutional protections don't apply in Cuba. That may change if they are brought stateside and this is one of the major arguments for those seeking to keep Gitmo open.

Gitmo is a terrible stain on this country and it's important symbolically that the thing get closed eventually.

But on an anecdotal basis, I'll relate reports I've heard -- from lawyers representing former Gitmo detainees - that the treatment of detainees there in recent years is probably better than what goes on at most federal prisons now.

Overly literal thinking.

It's worse than this, of course, because people have already posted enough to help you overcome that disability.

The Bush administration continuously released prisoners as well.

No, it is exactly because Gitmo is a symbol for American atrocities that it is necessary to take a cynical view of the Obama administration closing it. The atrocities will continue unchecked while the visible symbol of them has vanished.