joekicker

Pretty isolated, the Solomons - from the real world, I mean. .

No proof required, eh? I'm sure this statement will substitute for facts, logic and reason. In your mind, anyhow. I wonder if jacko kind of nailed it and you could benefit from a little holiday. Seriously - it's the effing INTERNET! Beating up on your keyboard doesn't actually impress. You could beat up on me, but so far, not even a girly slap has landed. .

Heh. Speaking of untruth. I swear I had totally forgotten your silly post equating the police and Testicle Searchers of America (TSA) when I ran across this item in an entirely different context (for me). It shows what happens when police try to search citizens who are doing nothing: On Oct. 6, 2008, Jerry Corliss, a law-abiding citizen who then lived in Allentown, was carrying a Glock handgun in a holster when he visited the Home Depot store just off Lehigh Street. It appears that somebody there became hysterical over the idea that anyone not in government might exercise his or her right to bear arms. Soon, according to court documents, Dale Stokes, an Allentown police officer, stormed into the store, detained Corliss for doing absolutely nothing illegal, searched him without a warrant and seized his pistol. Corliss was not charged and the weapon was returned, but those actions clashed with both the Bill of Rights and the Pennsylvania Constitution, which will cost the city, or its insurance carrier, $23,500 to settle a federal lawsuit brought by Corliss, who now lives in Lebanon. Full report from the Allentown fish wrapper Um. Er. Yes. That was my point. You didn't care, even enough to comment. Still don't, apparently. Tell you what. This time, if you can make your fingers bring themselves to do it, tell me that US police can stop you and search you for no reason, exactly as happens at the airport by NON-police. Because that's a definite statement that can be proved wrong. And then I'll prove you're wrong. If you don't want to say this, why are you arguing with me at all about it? .

Joe wrote: It is illegal for the police in the USA to stop you in the first place, let alone to search you while walking peacefully through the mall. I don't find anything in your cut-and-paste that contradicts that. And there is definitely nothing in your cites that police can stop you AND search you for doing nothing at all - as MUST happen at the airport under all circumstances, all the time, for doing nothing at all. Tell you what. This time, if you can make your fingers bring themselves to do it, tell me that US police can stop you and search you for no reason, exactly as happens at the airport by NON-police. Because that's a definite statement that can be proved wrong. And then I'll prove you're wrong. If you don't want to say this, why are you arguing with me at all about it? I "accused" you of nothing. I wrote that *I* don't get why you don't care about massive escalation of searches of your person. And I don't get it. Godwin's Law. You lose. .

It is illegal for the police in the USA to stop you in the first place, let alone to search you while walking peacefully through the mall -- in the manner that it is MANDATORY for rent-a-cops hired from pizza-box ads to detain you, restrain you if "necessary" and to search you no matter how peacefully you are walking along the airport concourse in the legal conduct of your life. You get the contrast or (it seems) you don't. I'm sure it's me, but I don't grasp why you don't grasp a major escalation of infringing on your rights. These know-nothing theatre workers bussed to the airport and kitted up in dark blue MUST do things that highly trained career lawn forcement people have been forbidden to do for centuries. They MUST do it on behalf of the government or lose their minimum wage position and chance at promotion to supervising abuser. I just hope you are consistent about your government violating human rights. I hope you weren't one of those hyprocrites whining about how George Bush was listening illegally to your phone calls a few years ago, or whinging about the terrible human rights violations at Guantanamo. Where the HELL did all those protectors of human rights go when the focus of government intrusion and invasion switched from several hundred foreign terrorists to 300 million citizens? I don't get it. The only consistency I can find is the ACLU ferpetesake. The New York Times and fellow travellers think it is horrible to wiretap terrorists' phone calls but wonderful for strangers to grope children. .

I picture this post from you soon: Last night, the police stopped me. They put me up against the wall and gave me a full-body frisk and I was on my way in less than half a minute. What's the problem? The weird part is that in the United States it is ILLEGAL for the police to frisk you. But rent-a-cops can get you to bend over and spread 'em, just because they feel like it. IN NO WAY do either of these make you safer, so the fuss is, why should authority figures have such invasive authority? .

Dunno if you had Thai food or farang but that kind of barbecue is not a big deal in Thailand. HOWEVER, Thais use a lot of sugar/sweet stuff in their cooking. Thai food has four tastes - salty, sour, spicy, sweet. Most food has all four flavours, blended. And all that said, western barbecue sauce is packed with sugar. .

Oh, jacko, you cynic. Boeing would never outsource the engines to China. They only outsource the stabiliser and leading wing edges to China. I swear to Kahd almighty I could not make this stuff up. .

LATER: [T]he Obama administration's top transportation security official on Monday urged passengers angry over safety procedures not to boycott airport body scans. ... With the Thanksgiving travel rush less than 48 hours away, (John) Pistole implored passengers Monday not to take delaying actions or engage in boycotts of body scans, actions he said would only serve to "tie up people who want to go home and see their loved ones." (AP) Yeah, right. You stupid people, it's all YOUR fault, WE are going a bang-up job and YOU stupid airline passengers are just going to mess it up because you hate The Children ™. No wonder airlines need barf bags.

Rub a lamp, Al. You've got more chance of Jason taking you to the Super Bowl. The thing is that this huge group of mostly mental midgets and rejected Wal-Mart applicants is specifically set up, specifically trained... well, ordered NOT to think or have common sense, let alone use it. That is one of the primary errors. .

What is going on the US and on the news right now is the "new" full-body, fully revealing backstatter machines. BECAUSE they are full frontal nudity, there is quite an uproar, and in order to try to control the masses, the airport security idjits have mandated that if you refuse the x-ray, then you WILL be fully, humiliatingly groped including ... well, everything. On Wednesday US time, the busiest single day of the flying year in the US, there will be a show of civil disobedience called Opt Out Day where all participants will insist on the time-consuming groping, in an effort to bring the waiting security lines to a virtual halt. We'll see how that goes. Frankly, I hope it's a massive success and there are disruptions at every airport, and I only wish I could be flying in the US on that day to try to take part. There's no excuse for using these machines on the general public except as a high-spending, power-accumulating role for the bureaucracy. Nor is there any excuse at all for full-body groping of random passengers. First they came for my shoes, and I was silent because I wore flip-flops...... ... out of 7 billion with-a-"b" attempts. .

I'm going to complain at the airport. Every time. I'll take the full body grope. Of course not everyone is chosen - few are called, just 10 per cent I hear. Totally random. Why look for terrorists when you can employ tens of thousands of people in a huge bureaucracy with many chiefs and deputy chiefs all accumulating more power and benefits looking for weapons? Here, watch, I'm going to profile: That six-year-old kid dragging the Barbie bag is not a terrorist. Call me a racist, but she really, really isn't a hijacker. Six-year-old girls aren't strong enough to take over the cockpit, okay? There. I profiled. Sue me. This is a typical case of a government agency digging in and becoming irreplaceable by become bigger and more authoritarian. These humourless TSA alleged "people" hired from the back of a pizza box have never-- and I want to emphasise that -- HAVE NEVER caught a terrorist. Not one. Not ever. I understand there has to be a show at every airport so that Auntie Em will think she's safe. Fine. Maybe total nut cases are deterred from carrying their pet bottle of gasoline into the airport (or maybe not). Fine. But the airport security theatre got ridiculous years ago. Any luck, this will be the tipping point, although I tend to doubt that they'll turn down the heat on us frogs in the pot, frankly. You realise these things cost billions of dollars, right? And all they will do is maybe find the nail clippers the guy forgot to take out of his pocket, which the metal detectors and wands would find anyhow if they could find enough people for TSA able to be trained in using them. Tens of billions for machines to do what any semi-trainable monkey could do, really. EDIT I finally found the ACLU guide to US airports referenced in Martins post. This page here has some text and also some PDF booklet links. EDIT. Very cooL "My Ding-A-Ling" singalong .

The backscatter "full frontal nudity" scanners are quite new and only even arrived at Heathrow for tests in January of this year. I doubt you got in one "every time [you] went" (past tense) to work. I've never heard of an airport using them for employees, seems weird as all getout. They are still in short supply and pretty well dedicated to passengers at almost every airport they're currently deployed. .

Ooooh, it's an official website is it? Well, that IS impressive, not many of those to the kilo, eh? In that case, kindly inform the official website's official chief editor he has a lousy official writer and a lazy official sub-editor working for him/her. Officialy, I presume. Thanks in advance. .

Getting there. Drop the "largely", it's redundant. Also, it's unnecessary and not needed. But you do show why it was so important for me to say "Pattaya", which I did. You seem the only one writing about other regions, and you're not wrong about it, just lonely. .

Yes, like for example, if you're in Thailand, and your references are the Thai people and Thai statistics and the Thai Meteorological Department, then the rainy season in Pattaya doesn't start in March. It's just the way it is. Even though it sometimes rains more in April than in September in Central and/or East Thailand, April isn't the rainy season and September is. April is the hot season. Another example: It might snow a blizzard and hit 20 below zero in Maine in October, but it's still autumn, not winter. .

Yes, by that measure, you can't deny the greatness of Trent Dilfer or the awesomeness of Doug Williams. Both better than Marino. By that measure. .

You can buy good Boss International cards in most any Asian grocery, and in the last few months there are a lot of new cards you can tell by the all-Thai writing on the front of the card. They're all fine.. But I were you, I'd sign up for something like Rebtel.com or Thaitel.com, a service with very low rates, no extra costs beyond the actual call. .

Very good. Yes, and it may take a long time or forever for such people to get redemption, but in the meantime it sure makes it seem worthwhile to give such people their second chance -- because some people grasp it and truly, really "learn their lesson". These are very good examples of people who seem so far to have really changed their lives by, first of all, taking advantage of their real skills and cutting out "the crap" that got them notorious. These two have changed their ways on the field. And as a spectator, I'm the winner, too. .

Yep. There are all kinds of promotions and bargains at all times. Lack of communication at the 7-Eleven is inevitably going to cause problems, but the (sad?) fact is there is a lot more than one SIM card. .

I guess I phrased that badly. I meant for football, not for life. For what I saw, he made up his mind to "go straight" BEFORE he went to jail. What I meant was he thought through football while inside, decided he'd approach the game differently and "right". .

I know an awful lot of people who have been movie extras. Once. It's very stultifying, and after the first 40 seconds of excitement, it's not exciting any more. .

Does it give the right to demand the best looking female to grope you when you're going out? Or do you still have to do the full frontal nudity in front of the giggling TSA recruits from the back of the pizza box? I'm a little bitter about US airport security. I'm not running down this programme at all, though. .

I get the point, but this part is NOT true, and it kind of makes me wonder about all of it: Boeing received $726.4 million worth of intellectual property rights in free patents, industry secrets and data rights from NASA and the Pentagon for its large civil aircraft. NASA, the Pentagon and the entire US government cannot hold patents (or copyrights or trademarks). Anything that "belongs" to the US government automagically belongs to everyone. EVERY patent, every scrap of intellectual property and data of any kind produced or held by the US government is yours, mine and everyone's. That includes Airbus. And it includes Boeing, why not? The total value (to the government) of all patents, copyrights and trademarks of the US government and all its arms, departments and divisions, including the IP being used by Boeing, is $0.00. .

I actually wonder now if Vick sat in there and made up his mind to do better, do it right when he got out. I don't pay that much attention to him that I know him as a person, but he really has changed his style very much since the Iggles gave him Chance Two -- and I don't think a coach could do that much. I absolutely, totally believe everyone gets another chance after paying the debt in the Big House. You don't have to forgive Vick or anyone else for what they did, but I think you can't use it to try to bring him down once he's done his time and walks out. As you say, if society continues to punish him by denying him, then there's really only one way he could go. He sure has a wonderful second chance, looks like he's grabbing it. .