oh! no wonder i had such a bad experience with this!!

must've been one of those knock-off brands, i got suckered into.

i ordered a Nitti Pot!

Karaidl, you savy investor, you. I am a bit puzzled about the art you purchased since the majority of the ones we’re discussing are 5” x 5”. The recess from the back is only 1 ¾" X 1 ¾” with a depth of 1 ¼”. That must be a rather miniature putty tat. What rare breed is your wee feline?

Then again, maybe you’ve purchased a “knock-off” of my work?!?

jerry springer knock off! fox is so creative

Upvote for the usual PLUS funny movie references PLUS Christian Slater crappy knock-off reference, PLUS actually seeing what he looks like.

Sweet.

Always check your discarded posts. I knocked off one of them, but you knew that already. Don't know what to tell you.

In reply to this comment by kulpims:
i don't get it - seems like one of my unsifted posts simply vanished in the last two hours. anyone else had problems like that today?

In reply to this comment by arsenault185:
Its not full anymore! SIFT! SIFT AWAY!

What do I need to prove... I mean it fits right in to the Ghostbusters plot line. Stay Puft attacks New York, knocks off statue of liberty's head...Duh. It is freaking obvious.

Thanks - I hadn't done "playlist maintenance" in a while, the 'saved' have been removed.

In reply to this comment by my15minutes:
and another to knock off your savelist!

In reply to this comment by Krupo:
*save *Canada

and another to knock off your savelist!

In reply to this comment by Krupo:
*save *Canada

mm lager, a blue moon knock off sounds awesome, I love white ale.

My husband is a hobby brewer. He makes a great Blue Moon knock off. He makes only ales, but since we live in a cold place now...I wonder if he can try a lager?

Buy the chinese knock-off and watch it break before your eyes. I wonder how many will be executed from poor QC?

and Gorgonheap, I'd really like to understand how you get from "laws prohibiting personal action" to "freedom" - seems to me that the former takes away from the latter.
-smibbo

I'll give an example. Lets take a dramatic example i.e. homicide. If there is no law against it some psycho could freely knock off whomever they wanted. That grants them a lot of personal freedom, at least one would think that. But then again what about the family of the victims? They would want retribution for the murders but would have no through the law, because there isn't any.

So their protection is taken way, security of doing what they want to do is restricted by a man who's willing to kill at a moments notice. If they take matters in their own hands and go after the killer then the killer has nothing to protect him. So everyone lives in fear and there is no insurance against violations of human rights.

Ask a felon. They have freedoms restricted. Why? Because they chose not to obey laws enacted to provide people with protection and safety. it's the safety that gives people freedom to do what they want. It works like this Obedience to laws = more freedom to act within those tolerances. Disobedience to laws = restriction of former liberties.

On August 28th 2007 it was announced that 10 people were arrested in connection to her murder:

"Controversy arose because the prosecutor, Yuri Y. Chaika, suggested that the motive for killing had not been to silence Ms. Politkovskaya, whose efforts to uncover corruption and brutality under President Vladimir V. Putin had brought her international acclaim but scorn from officials here.

Rather, the prosecutor said, the killing was intended to discredit the Kremlin, by raising suspicions that it had been involved, and ultimately to destabilize the Russian state. That now-official theory is markedly different from one broadly accepted by her peers, who have said she was killed in retaliation for her work or to prevent additional articles from being published.

Among those arrested, the prosecutor said, were a police major and three former police officers, who were working with a criminal gang led by a Chechen. Also arrested, he said, was a former officer in the F.S.B., the principal successor to the K.G.B.

Mr. Chaika added that the killing had been ordered from abroad, although he refused to identify the man suspected of being the mastermind or disclose his whereabouts, and provided no evidence to support the claim. The prosecutor would not release the names of any of the suspects.

His description of the motive aligned neatly with Mr. Putin's first public statements about the killing last year and with a pattern of government contentions that foreigners were trying to undermine Russia and the Kremlin, and to tarnish their reputations."

- NYT

It was standard Soviet practice to blame any problems that occur within its borders on foreign influences in the past. The press brief went on to state the murders were designed to destabilize the political situation in Russia and blame the Kremlin for it. This is totally ridiculous considering that the only people to benefit from her death was the Kremlin and specifically Putin himself.

Alexander Litvinenko, the ex-FSB Lt.Col and dissident accused Vladimir Putin of personally ordering the assassination of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. He himself was poisoned on November 1st of 2006, via lethal dose of polonium-210. As of 26 January 2007, British officials said police had solved the murder of Litvinenko. They discovered "a 'hot' teapot at London's Millennium Hotel with an off-the-charts reading for polonium-210, the radioactive material used in the killing." In addition, a senior official said investigators had concluded the murder of Litvinenko was "a 'state-sponsored' assassination orchestrated by Russian security services.

"The Kremlin press pool is a handpicked group of reporters, most of whom work for the state and the rest selected for their fidelity to the Kremlin's rules of the game. Helpful questions are often planted. Unwelcome questions are not allowed. And anyone who gets out of line can get out of the pool.

The Kremlin press pool is like so many institutions in Russia that have the trappings of a Western-style pluralistic society but operate under a different set of understandings, part of what analyst Lilia Shevtsova of the Carnegie Moscow Center calls "the illusion of democracy." Television channels air newscasts with fancy graphics but follow scripts approved by the Kremlin. Elections are held, but candidates out of favor with the Kremlin are often knocked off the ballot. Courts conduct trials, but the state almost never loses. Parliament meets but only to rubber-stamp Kremlin legislation.

Putin offered an example of that at the news conference when defending his decision last fall to abolish elections of regional governors. "The leaders of the regions of the Russian Federation will not be appointed by the president," he said. They will be approved by "regional parliaments, which are directly chosen by secret ballot." Putin compared this to the Electoral College, which selects U.S. presidents. "It is not considered undemocratic, is it?"

In fact, under the new system, Putin will appoint governors. His selections have to be ratified by regional legislatures, but if such a legislature rejects his choice twice, it will be dissolved. As for secret ballots, Russian regional leaders have proved adept at generating the outcomes they wish.

Anna Politkovskaya was just one of the dozens of reporters to meet their end during the reign of Putin, yet the press which is 80% state controlled dare not question the official line from Kremlin. She was murdered on October 7th 2006, which also happened to be Putin's birthday.

"Russia is yet another country where a free press is upheld in the language of the constitution, but the reality is one of state control of expression, concentration of media in the hands of the very few and very rich, and violence against journalists who report on crime and corruption.

Vladimir Putin's tenure has been marked by firm and incremental moves by the state against press freedom and independence. In some cases, the Putin government's strategies are relatively direct, such as strict controls on reporting in Chechnya. Other approaches -- such as the targeting of journalists with politically-motivated libel suits, or hostile takeovers of key media outlets by businessmen with close ties to Putin himself -- are more subtle, yet consistent and effective strategies for ensuring that the state influence permeates the media at all levels.

The strategy has resulted in the takeover of a prominent and outspoken, independent, national television station and the consolidation of newspaper and magazine ownership under a handful of powerful oligarchs. While an independent press does exist in Russia, the overall effect has been to stifle criticism of Putin and his regime on key issues like government corruption and abuses in Chechnya. Media support for the Putin government was particularly evident in the parliamentary elections in spring of 2004, during which Russian press groups complained of state-dominated television's promotion of the pro-Kremlin parties.

The right to free expression is more flagrantly violated at the local level, where journalists who report on corrupt politicians and organized crime are routinely harassed, attacked, and sometimes murdered, with generally only a perfunctory and thoroughly flawed prosecution to follow. A noteworthy case is the murder of the editor-in-chief of an independent newspaper in Togliatti, an industrial city in the Volga River region, in October of 2003. It was the second murder of the editor of the very same publication in less than two years. The following investigation has been denounced as a sham."

- Source http://www.pbs.org/

I watched the main prosecutors briefing on PTP Planet in Russian that morning. The rhetoric, method of presentation, hostile opposition to any questions by the press left no doubt in my mind that it was simply a political ploy to ease criticism of the Putin government with regards to the murders. Suddenly after years of inaction not one, but several murders are explained away neatly, however neither actual motives, names of other suspects nor any concrete evidence backing up the claims were presented.

For more on Russian subversion of democracy I recommend you check out my sift - http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Rise-of-Pro-Putin-Youth

I'll try to redo my monkey humping glitch later...

Anyway... check out the 500 pound superplex... there is so much hate there, its insane... that and also I found out that I got knocked off the Top 15 again...

looks like mommy wanted to knock off her 2 kids.