Crap Throwing Monkey

Well...actually, I'm subbed to someone else on the contract, so the government probably pays more like $200/hr for my time. And then specifically tells me "We don't have any work for you to do this week...so why don't you just come in and bill for the hours anyway?" $8k a week to do what I'm told to do: nothing.

What do you want me to say? "No...just the French"?

I'm a government contractor. I play at work.

Europe.

Yep, just finished a game. Pretty good...more complex, but maintains the same sort of feel of the last three. The government/civic choices are more richly complex with religions explicitly folded into it (rather than implicitly), combat's changed a little bit, development's changed significantly ("Whadda ya mean, my railroads don't increase production now? No income for roads?") The research tree seems, if anything, somewhat dumbed-down. Overall, it's a creditable successor. III's still my favorite, though.

The Pakistanis trained and funded him, you moron. Read a !@#$ing newspaper.

And states that are the size of a postage stamp. Funding that would build a new highway clear across Delaware wouldn't do jack sh-- in Alaska.

It's probably true. When you have a certain amount of money (a certain large amount), you usually have pros managing it and don't necessarily have immediate first-hand knowledge of what your holdings are. Just like Frist owning shares in HCA. Bush and Cheney probably have some very odd holdings in their blind trusts they know nothing about.

What are you going to do for the remaining 23 hours and 58 minutes?

Technically correct...but a BS call in that that kind of contact happens multiple times in every game and never gets called.

But that was after they kidnapped the Secretary of State to broadcast his execution over the internet so they could use the 'net traffic to mask their takeover of every single nuclear reactor in the country to distract from their stealing the nuclear warhead they mounted on the missile, for which they hijacked a stealth fighter to shoot down Air Force One in order to get the codes to enable the warhead. Only THEN did they get around to launching the missile. In 24 hours. And halfway through that, my wife turns to me and says "This show is so unrealistic...no one ever goes to the bathroom!"

Probably not. Carriers are the ultimate power-projection naval platform for the forseeable future. Missiles cannot park their asses off a coastline and conduct operations over a significant length of time.

No taste. You probably worship Tedy Bruschi (We're not worthy!), too.

Does calling someone a reptilian shape-shifter generally count as libel?

I never did until Monday morning. And even then, it was only Joe Theisman, who's so !@#$ing brain-damaged already I don't think it counts...

And just think...all those poor, misunderstood machine-gun toting postal workers didn't snap, they were simply optimists totally in control of the situation...

Actually, Melody wanted you to come ("He hasn't spent ANY time with grandma.") I, as a gesture of kindness towards you, tried everything in my power to keep that invite from going out. It just struck me, too, how very like ESBN's Bruschi (We're not worthy!) coverage March of the Penguins was. "After seven months starving and freezing their feathered little fat asses off on the ice, the heroic little penguins return to the ocean. Even the sea lions are rooting for them."

I'm not sure what you mean. People don't help others on this board? Or people don't hide their illiteracy on this board?

That chick's a tease...

A movie so !@#$ing bad, it made me want to watch "Gigli".

My grandmother: "Oooooh...penguins are so cute!" My wife: "Ooooh...penguins are so cute! And you haven't spent enough time with your grandmother today." The answer to your question: emotional blackmail.

Did you hear? Eddie Murphy's making Daddy Day Care II. You must be wetting yourself with joy.

And the fundamentalist Christian right are hardly a majority here, either...but you've already said in this thread that they've taken over the country. So a 7-9% Islamic minority can't take over a country...but a 5-10% Christian minority can? Nice, consistent argument there...

I'd settle for simply eliminating the 10% of the loopholes and deductions that give the worst ROI. I mean, as complex as the tax code is, there's got to be a certain number of loopholes and deductions that are so little-used and error-prone that they amount to damned little returned to the taxpayer but incur significant cost to the government via auditing and enforcement. Identify and eliminate that BS, and you'll spend less to collect more without adversely impacting the average American.

Yeah...because 50 SEALs and a bastardized Ohio can wrest control of the Straits of Taiwan from a Chinese navy that has spent the past 15 years evolving from a brown-water defense force to a blue-water navy capable of real, if limited, power projection and true amphibious capacity. Unless you're suggesting, contrary to all precedent and common sense, that contesting the invasion of an island does not require contesting control of the approaches to said island.