Phi for All

Maybe they accidentally drank the blood of someone who was on drugs! Poor, misunderstood little vampires.

MUCH better, I really like it. Thanks for going out of your way to please a few picky people who have nothing better to do than criticize others... ...you bastard!

Alicia... now there's a pretty face, great bod and absolutely charming smile. What has she done for us lately?

I'm busy now!Can I ignore you some other time?

Clinton had a much better foreign policy and a sounder grasp on domestic economics than the present administration, but in many ways, like most Democrats (including Kerry), he was more Republican than some Rebublicans. I'm not going to get into a DEM/REP battle here because I think both major parties listen to big business these days (some are just more overt about how they cuddle up to them). Mega-corps PAY to be in their offices every day, they help the pols with their humanitarian projects in exchange for tax breaks and gov contracts and a thousand other little things. The voters don't have the time or the inclination to do the same so it's no wonder the pols listen to the most vocal. I still think it sucks. Especially when we are handed the same malarkey about needing to spend more on intelligence and military to defend the rights of oppressed people everywhere. When my 5-year-old daughter asks me for help, the first thing I try to assess is whether or not she can help herself. Doing everything for her is a knee-jerk parental pitfall I have to try hard to avoid. It doesn't make her strong to have me solve her problems. And it doesn't make other countries strong when the US rushes to their aid with money. It just makes them dependent. We are being asked to take steps to protect ourselves personally from people who want to make sensational, press-grabbing statements about their religious and political beliefs. They don't have our resources, but they don't need to defend, they only need to find the chinks in our armor to exploit. And I say there is no armor good enough to keep them out totally. Better to spend our resources diplomatically trying to find out where their funding is coming from, and trying to figure out why some of our so-called buddies are still giving the terrorists money to hurt us.

As far as I'm concerned, terrorism is successful when people and governments respond exactly the way the US and the UK are responding. It's virtually impossible to defend against small cells of people willing to die because they believe it insures their place in the afterlife. But we have almost a dozen different intelligence gathering agencies spending billions in resources already on the lookout. The terrorists get their funding from places that are less and less willing to leave money trails for fear of reprisal. When we start panicking about duct-tape and flashlight batteries, we help the terrorist's financing go a lot farther. I think the CIA is used as a scapegoat for failure because we've somehow gotten used to hearing about their mistakes, and we somehow don't blame the administration they work under, perhaps because of their clandestine, secretive nature. We've been about as vigilant as we can get for the last three years, and the rest of the terror tactics have been from our own government who seems to like it when we huddle in fear and don't question them.

You are the blueprint for building an idiot!

You're very down-to-earth. But I wish you were deeper.

I believe in reincarnation. No one could be as stupid as you in one lifetime!

Let me ask you this, Cap'n. In the two years of 1997-98 (I believe those were the two), we actually knew the CIA had $52 billion to work with. Prior to that and after that, it's been secret due to national security how much money they had appropriated. If you, you personally, had that much money to work with and were in charge of what the CIA does, do you think you could have kept things a bit more secretive and efficient than they have? I think atinymonkey said it in a different thread, that if an intelligence community is doing it's job right, you won't know very much about their activities. Yet all we hear about the CIA is how many goofs and errors they've made. No one is saying it's a piece of cake job, but don't you get tired of being handed billion dollar excuses that we're supposed to not only suck up, but give even further funding to? If you or I did our jobs in such a manner, no one would hire us again, let alone keep us in the job and give us even more money. Which leads me right back to Bush... Always glad to give bloodhound yet another opportunity to make a gay joke. I'd get help, were I him.

Mold growing between MolecularMan14 and his chair. It's green!

Or Kwai Chang Caine?

Here is the link for GRID.org, powered by United Devices (UD Agent). It works in conjunction with Oxford for cancer research, etc. I've been running it for a few months and it's logged the equivalent of 44 full days of research. It runs a screen saver when I'm not using the comp (mostly at night when I'm asleep) and has never interfered with my work or play. I think they have over 2 million comps in the grid.

Both. And with real reason. I think the only way Bush can win is if he paints himself further as the "tough on terrorism" guy. Which is laughable considering he's done so little to redress 9/11. Which is hilarious because he's turned so much of the world against us in a way it has never been before. Which is scary because so many people over here think he IS effective.

Maybe he means insurance companies. Bloodsuckers are real.

WARNING! SYLLABLE VIOLATION IN PROGRESS! SEIZE VIOLATOR!

I disagree completely. Love from physical beauty alone? We're obviously talking about famous women from various countries, otherwise how would we all know about them? The drive that makes people famous or well-known is NOT necessarily a loveable trait. I've heard many stories about some famous women that make them sound like despicable people. Athletes are extremely competitive. Actors can often be vain. Politicians can be morally corrupt in their quest for power. There are many women I love to look at but wouldn't even care to share a cup of coffee with. True beauty is in the character of the individual, not their physical appearance. In my opinion.

Bar fight? Before you'd had a pint?

From what Dave tells me, for the UK, Gerblimpenbooben would translate out roughly to Jordan.

Lord Acton said that to Bishop Creighton?!

Das Gerblimpenbooben ist verboten!

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." --Lord Acton

Just Data Miners? That's all I ever get now (Mal-ware gone for good!)