Din't you mean to say 'mobster?'...for Don, Zippy Pinheadino??

>> ^ipfreely:

Shark fin soup, brought to you by same people who eat Tiger testicles.
@dannym3141, You don't know what you are talking about. This is how Chinese people behave. They are not nice people in general.
It's their culture to fuck you over. Ever dealt with Chinese business people?
http://videosift.com/video/Fake-Eggs-and-Grapes-Being-Sold-In-China
They will fuck you over because even if you complain, there are others who you can fuck over.


Yeah, all 1.4 billion chinese people act exactly the same. Just like all americans are fat, all brits are snooty and all italians are mobsters.

That was an example of a generalisation. Generalisations aren't helpful. It's much better instead to look at an individual and judge them by their words and actions. That way, I can read your posts and safely decide you're a moron.

It's the mindset of "It's just business." If someone does it because they want to do it and act like he does on TV they are deranged. However if that person gets paid for it, business-men like themselves can see their motives (Money).

I mean can't you understand that they are getting 7 digit salaries to act like a complete asshole? Wouldn't you do that if were offered that kind of money? Why can't people understand it's business, it doesn't reflect his TRUE beliefs, morality, etc etc etc.

And they just keep telling themselves that until someone gets tired of them harping at them one too many times and pretending like they didn't just insult them for cash. Somehow they are supposed to keep their "Im a human too" card, but get to behave however they want.

If he didn't have people to take care of shit for him in a semi-anonymous fashion with lawyers to back them up if something gets squirrely...I think Beck would have a hard time operating on a daily basis when he's likely offended/insulted every other person out there. Would you like spit in that coffee?

As for the wife, she married, stayed married and had a kid with this guy.....no one in their right mind can say that she doesn't know what her husband does on a daily basis like he's some kind of secretive mobster.

Daughter......perhaps she is so far removed from reality through his money that she thinks it's normal, but I still find that hard to believe. It'd be pretty hard not to see your father on TV crying, ranting, drawing weird circular chalk diagrams plus doing gold investment commercials and not get a pretty good idea of what he does. So, either she has the "it's just business" mindset down, or she's a nut too.

And the boyfriend? Dunno if his daughter is hot, but hey girl with a rich family......he probably has the "I do it for the money, not because I agree with it." mindset down.

But, I think he just uses a played up version of events to make him look "right". I mean he doesn't mention his security at all. And if he has security, he knows there's the potential for people to decide his face needs a few more lumps.

The Academy didn't get it wrong. American media has a heavy stake in propagating the mafia mystique and the Academy is really just a big advertising firm for Hollywood. American filmmakers brought us "The Godfather" trilogy, "Goodfellas", "The Sopranos", and the like. True, these are stories about American criminals as opposed to Italian, but the propaganda is the same: mobsters may be cruel, but they're people, too, just like you and me, if not more interesting people. So again, the Academy didn't get it wrong. They know where their bread is buttered and it's not in deconstructing the mafia hero myth.

I don't think a Keynesian economic structure has much to do with it. When you put mobsters in control of anything they're still going to rob you blind. "The Legitimate Businessman's Club" of America has turned it into an art form.

The problem is that we've allowed a handful of people to rig the system to suit their needs at the expense of ours. The Fed is a problem, in as much as it is controlled and owned by these people. The Stock Market is the mirror image of that problem, in as much as the needs of stock holders trump the needs of everybody else. Our government is the third rail of the problem, in as much as it is controlled by the two (one?) entities mentioned above.

I don't think that there is a solution to the dilemma we're in. I wish there were. I don't see things getting better, ever, in my lifetime.

I do see one basic right, and one thread of our safety net, being snipped away slowly year after year until we do nothing but work all of our lives and wallow in a sea of inextricable debt.

...know a dude in Pensacola with an oral history goes back ...know a dude in Pensacola with an oral history pased down to him from his grandad who drank nothing but anoxic water from a sinkhole in the backyard says, that theres a real funky swampland burial ground over some ancient lobster hutches..er..patient mobster clutches... "Baker's Hamster Crutches, come in thres sizes too small for all your fuzzy little limpster needs!"

9:55 is ROFLCOPTER, if you make it that far. Love the narrative and the fine acting skills by the 'mobsters'

Prostitution is a victimless crime. Anytime you outlaw something it tends to create a dangerous market where victims are aplenty. Look at alcohol prohibition. Did that stop people from drinking? No. But it did create a terrible criminal market driven by violent mobsters.

Free the market and the crime will disappear. Put a stranglehold on the market and you'll manufacture crime time and time again.

The more I think about it, the more that I think a union in almost every labor market would benefit us all collectively. And I mean everyone from the pizza delivery people, to the waitresses, to the girls who polish brass poles with their inner thighs--and everybody in between.

Yes, there has to be a balance between what's good for the company and what's good for the employees, but in the long-term, bigger sense of the word, the two goals are actually one.

The greater system invariably grinds to a halt when people don't have enough money to spend, and we're seeing the glaring reality of that today.

America will be very difficult to unionize on a large scale because the word "union" is automatically linked with mobsters and laziness, regardless of the facts.

I also think that the "threat" of a union is, in and of itself, enough to help the working class.

But I also think that to be a laborer in a capitalist system affords you only the illusion of freedom, and the real freedom exists beyond the purview of a Wall Street speculator.

It is not okay for one man to be as wealthy as 100,000 other men.

Our beliefs to the contrary are the shackles that bind us to this modern-day serfdom.

In reply to this comment by laura:
hey, like, when are you going to come over and hang out w/ us?

I've been thinking about it. And I'm glad you're back!

Trying to sell the house and biting my nails to the nub. Apparently nobody can get a freaking loan in this town and everybody wants me to finance them. No can do.

I'm still reading "Fuck Yes!" and I'm to the point where Bruno is trying to talk Wing out of running the restaurant for the mobsters. It's a good book. I'm savoring it.

Things okay up there in silver country? Hope so.

Social Conservatism is turning people away from Fiscal Conservatism. People aren't going to follow an economic policy that is linked to religious lunacy.

Clever media manipulation may make it seem like a majority of Americans want religion eradicated, but since 90% of Americans believe in some kind of higher power, it just ain't so.

People are gravitating to the party that is pushing for protection of personal freedom rather than restriction of rights, but the same party comes with a lot of people who are in favor of large government spending (though to be fair, both sides have been pushing for extra spending lately).

As we've seen over the last 60 years, large government harms one of the most basic freedoms: to make a living and keep most of the fruits of one's labor. The paradox is we can't have a ginormous government that protects rights without encroaching on freedom. No matter how gentle he may seem or how slowly he moves, the 900lb. gorilla in the room sits wherever he wants.

Where is the party for fiscal conservatives that hate social conservatism?

There is no room for 'hatred' of anything except tyranny, by minority or government mobsters. Libertarianism has the real answers, but it has yet to achieve fusion..indeed it may never, because of the egos of politicians and the far-too-many now living for "free" off the State in one way or another.

Expose AIPAC, and that will set many of our wrongs, right.

No more mobsters buying off our government.

From the makers of Whack-a-Mobster and Bury Him in the Desert!

You mentioned hired killers and mobsters, but those transactions involve money. Sometimes money is an incentive, and is thus a catalyst for murder.

And if society really does hate him for telling the kids to do his bidding, that is a telling sign of a backward and misguided society. How can you hate somebody for simply telling people to do something? Charlie Manson could have told me to kill people, but I'm smarter than that. I know my morality is strong, and I wouldn't kill for him. So who is really to blame for the murders of seven people? Not the guy who ordered them, but the people who committed them. At any moment they could have told him they wouldn't do it. But they didn't, because they wanted to kill those people. I think they would have done it without Charlie Manson guiding them.

>> ^Crosswords:

Society hates Charles Manson because he told a bunch of drugged-out hippies to kill people and they actually did it. What's more frightening and dangerous someone who kills people or someone who has a bunch of other people who'll kill for them? It's not like Manson being in jail for life for that is an exception, its the rule. Someone hires a hitman to kill somebody, the hitman isn't the only one charged with murder. Same for Gotti and the other Mafia heads, they want them because they're the ones ordering all the hits. People who get their lovers to kill their spouses are charged with murder, though they never laid a finger on the person. In the military who do they most want to kill, the leaders of the other side.
Also I can't say I'm particularly impressed by someone who takes in the disenfranchised and lost, tells them what they want to hear and proceeds to use them for their own devices. BTW, that includes the military, religions, corporations, cults, and half the other shit going on, on the planet.

I'm going to make my list more difficult (or maybe easier, depending on your point of view) by limiting myself to current, contemporary, living persons. This removes obvious picks like Kubrick, Welles, Kurosawa and Hitchcock who would otherwise be at the top. Here's my list, in no particular order:

1) The Coens - plural I know, but you can't have one without the other. These brothers have produced masterpieces in every genre they've attempted. Crime, drama, comedy, mobsters, whatever. Always entertaining and very deserving of their recent Oscar.
2) Paul Thomas Anderson. A not terribly prolific director, but a thoughtful one. One of the few whose movies you must attend in the theatre simply because HE made it!
3) Wes Anderson- You can count on Wes for taking you to a place you've never been before, and no matter how fucked up your family may seem to you, the families portrayed in a Wes Anderson film are more disturbed and dysfunctional. Not to say that they're not loving and well-intentioned, just misguided.
4) Clint Eastwood- He has become a master of his craft. Few others will take the time to luxuriate in a scene like Eastwood. His long cuts and deliberate pacing show a respect for the intelligence and attention span of his audience.
5) Martin Scorsese- of all the great Directors born in the new Golden Age of Hollywood in the 1970s, only Scorsese remains at the top of his game. Others such as Spielberg, Lucas (ugh), Coppola, Friedkin etcetera have left their best work in the distant past.