CatBus

SilverWook said:

Does a pardon wipe a record clean?

No, a pardon counts as an admission of guilt (which apparently came as a surprise to Arpaio). So all the stuff you can’t do for having engaged in such-and-such an activity, you still can’t do, because you admitted to doing it in order to get the pardon. A lot of people believe this “admission of guilt” factor is why Don Siegelman never got a pardon.

Mrebo said:

CatBus said:

Freaking out != destruction of evidence.

Yes…I think we’ve established that. And that he served his prison sentence for that act.

His 12 month sentence was for mishandling classified information. Prosecutors were seeking a longer sentence due to the aggravating factors. So no, he really didn’t serve any time at all for destruction of evidence.

I’m a big believer in second chances.

So’s everyone who didn’t seek the death penalty on this case.

Freaking out != destruction of evidence.

SilverWook said:

How dumb do you have to be to take photos in a classified area and then try to destroy evidence you’ve done so?

Like the joke about outrunning the bear… it’s okay to be stupid, you just have to be smarter than the guy who handles the pardons.

This is pretty classic. Backstory not necessarily covered in the article: the guy gets investigated for mishandling classified info, probably on the pretty minor end of the scale, nothing at all akin to Snowden. Instead of allowing the investigation to reach this natural conclusion, however, he goes out and destroys his camera and computer’s hard drive immediately after he’s interviewed by the FBI. Suddenly this minor case got very serious, and he was charged and convicted after the FBI recovered bits of hard drive in the woods outside his house.

So he and his lawyers concoct a strategy to get him a pardon. Say “This is just like Hillary! Double standard! So unfair!” (focusing on the pretty low-level mishandling that started the investigation, not really mentioning the hard drive smashing incident at all) and get on FOX News so that they get some exclusive and uninterrupted Executive Time with the President.

Crazy plan? Stupid plan? It worked. He has now been pardoned. Lesson? Don’t fuck with the FBI, but the President can be played like a cheap fiddle by complete amateurs.

Dangit. The joke was that people would actually transcode their low-bitrate MP3’s to FLAC and think it would improve their quality.

Well if you ever find it… let me know too 😉

TV’s Frink said:

CatBus said:

TV’s Frink said:

All we ever get from Mrebo is lip service.

Wrong thread.

Could you please direct me to the right one?

Curse my metal body, I was too abstruse. It’s the one with Sexy Sugar on it. Cause there’s a certain kind of joke in there.

JEDIT: Page 666.

How come Frink gets all the cool stuff?

TV’s Frink said:

All we ever get from Mrebo is lip service.

Wrong thread.

Your thoughts on politics are strangely hypnotic.

ChainsawAsh said:

Neglify said:

ChainsawAsh said:

Yeah, the movie is about actors making a war movie in a jungle in Asia and accidentally getting mixed up in a real conflict.

RDJ plays a white, blond, blue-eyed, Australian method actor who was cast as a black character. As a method actor, he stays in character the entire duration of the shoot, so he’s always in blackface, acting as his character. Early in the movie there’s a montage of his other roles, so the audience and all the characters are fully aware that he’s a white Australian in blackface going overboard with his method acting.

In the movie he says he doesn’t drop character until after the DVD commentary. I’m the commentary for Tropic Thunder, RDJ is in character the whole time.

This is why Tropic Thunder and This Is Spinal Tap are two of the best DVD commentaries of all time. (For reference, the Spinal Tap one is all in-characrer, too.)

Big Trouble in Little China. I’m pretty sure you can hear them cracking open a couple beers at the beginning, and sometimes their conversation veers in the direction of what’s happening in the film.

SilverWook said:

Yikes.

Anyway, this reeks of a sucker play to buy time.

Maybe I’m cynical, but this looks like a Reagan-era back channel buy-off mutual face saver to me. North Korea survives off of threats and concessions – they consider this “tribute”. You pay them their tribute and they’re quiet for a few years. Then they come back later and demand more. From our point of view they’re irrational but it works every time, and from their point of view it demonstrates their greatness.

So all you have to do if you’re a person who doesn’t like to seem like they’re making concessions is have someone else pay the tribute secretly on your behalf. Some nation with access to huge amounts of international shady money connections and back channels that could get it (or equivalent goods) into North Korea, but who has also been very close to Trump for a long time. Trump walks into the room, pees on the rug, and the North Korean negotiators immediately give up all demands and agree to suspend nuclear developments (until after the nest round of elections, at the minimum). The pundits go wild over the hidden genius of the wet rug doctrine, but it’s just a simple payoff exactly like every other time.

DuracellEnergizer said:

dahmage said:

The Invisible Thread is uncool.

Needs more Stinky-Dinkins.

This has now been established as a scientific fact.

yhwx said:

I had a brilliant solution to the whole problem. I’m selling the rights, so if anyone’s interested, PM me. I’ll be sure to publicize it two days later.

You can double your money by offering redaction for a nominal fee.

Chewtobacca said:

CatBus said:
From the Empire Strikes Back novelization:

And to add to his misery, a high-pitched whistle blared into the cubicle, tormenting his keen sense of hearing.

It’s a bit like playing captainsolo a low-bitrate MP3.

Thank goodness I transcoded all my low-bitrate MP3’s to FLAC 😉

They’re not even real puppies. They’re just crisis badgers.

Fake puppies.

Just to get out ahead of this, every single post I made on the subject of Superman was a penis joke.

He still comes around from time to time. IIRC he expressed an interest in maybe giving his six-channel mixes another go at some point, but it was tempered with his other obligations in real life. Not a firm commitment or anything, and no sign any work on it’s been done.

On a different note, there’s this: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/us-holocaust-museum-aung-san-suu-kyi_us_5aa022f4e4b0d4f5b66cd500

An important object lesson that democracy and human rights can be two very, very different things, and support for one does not imply support for the other. There’s an old Soviet joke: “Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting about what’s for dinner.” It’s actually a pretty apt description of democracy divorced from any sense of human rights.

Mrebo said:

DominicCobb said:

Mrebo said:

DominicCobb said:

Mrebo said:

DominicCobb said:

Are we comparing Trump to Ted Kennedy now?

I guess we could. I’m just asking if anyone wants to see that movie. This is still a general politics thread I believe 😉

Probably shouldn’t, considering we’re talking about how this sort of thing used to keep people from being president.

As for the movie, I like Jason Clarke and it’s a compelling story so… possibly.

Maybe it’s just me but that kind of thing should have kept him out of politics altogether. Not the debate I was looking for but many presidents carried on dalliances (Roosevelt and Kennedy leap to mind) and the media didn’t report on it. Many things have changed.

I tend to agree, it’s just mostly funny in this instance to see Trump supporters (who normally jump at the possibility to take down Dems for the same behavior) bend over backwards to defend him.

Them’s the breaks in politics. If Obama had called for tariffs on steel and aluminum or had talked about sidestepping due process in order to take people’s guns…heads would have exploded on the Right.

And when Obama was reportedly deporting illegal immigrants in record numbers and doing nothing to reform immigration year-after-year…the Left was pretty quiet.

The Left was noisy, but there’s no Left media to amplify that for anyone else to hear. The media was still trying to push the story that there was some sort of illegal immigration crisis in the US (which effectively excused Obama’s actions), and the media’s attempt to fabricate that crisis both pre- and post-dates the Obama Presidency.

The pushback on Obama’s use of drones was also muted.

Muddled more than muted. Lots of people were mad about how the drones were being used, but that got conflated into a larger and louder group of people who didn’t like the concept of drones at all.

Mrebo said:

CatBus said:

I personally never thought “based on a true story” added anything at all to the appeal of a movie, because 1) you’re going to have to take some liberties just to get the story into two hours, if nothing else, and 2) if there’s a way you can tweak the story for no other purpose other than to make it more interesting, you’re either revisionist for doing it, or bland for not doing it.

Some stories are interesting to me, some are not, and whether or not they’re fictional really doesn’t enter into it. And a story about a fictional politician following the Ted Kennedy arc wouldn’t really appeal to me. But then what do I know, I liked Cabin Boy.

Well this film is not a fictional politician following the arc, it is a story about Ted Kennedy. As for creative license on these things, agree it’s a double edged sword.

What I’m saying (perhaps not well) is that my interest in any true story is the same as my interest in the equivalent fictional story. So since the fictional story wouldn’t appeal to me, the “based on a true story” version doesn’t either.

I personally never thought “based on a true story” added anything at all to the appeal of a movie, because 1) you’re going to have to take some liberties just to get the story into two hours, if nothing else, and 2) if there’s a way you can tweak the story for no other purpose other than to make it more interesting, you’re either revisionist for doing it, or bland for not doing it.

Some stories are interesting to me, some are not, and whether or not they’re fictional really doesn’t enter into it. And a story about a fictional politician following the Ted Kennedy arc wouldn’t really appeal to me. But then what do I know, I liked Cabin Boy.

To be fair, I blew off Gary Hart too. No, wait…

Danfun128 said:

please, delete this post.