Happy Face

Never seen or heard any of the game yet, but that's a pleasant surprise.

ANY player left at the club can be slapped down like a bitch because NO club wants them. Anyone that can be sold, has/will be. That's gotta be great for ridding the club of prima dona behaviour and getting everyone's head down to the task in hand. Leave Hughton to it I say. You don't need a big name to come in and rule the roost like you do in the Premier league.

The Horrors - I only Think of You Growing on me

Don't see why you can't slag off the trailer, just because it's not in 3D. That's like saying you can't slag off a colour trailer if it's in black and white. That's got nowt to do with it. If all it has is the gimmick of 3D then it most definitley WILL be shit. ....and the trailer was horrific.

Decka's going to stand behind a plinth with a mallet and give it... "who'll start the bidding at...£80m...doisee80?wheres80?comeonladiesandgents80millionforthisfineclubisasnipwhatabout75?doisee75?wheres75?anybody75?thatincludesSholaAmeobi!....OKcanihave70millionpounds?thatreallyisgivingitaway70million?....

Health Insurance company prices have grown about 6% the last few days, since the public option was deemed not critical... http://www.google.co.uk/finance?catid=us-52935503 They're now at almost a year long high (since Obama won basically). Obama's feeding the Horse.

follow-on

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/20...d-james-cameron http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/fi...3D-preview.html

He's like one of those twats who borrow a tenner and are always definitely going to pay it back next week.

Even better.... http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/08/17...t-com/#more-681

http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/08/20...f-the-woodwork/

Isn't that the norm though? Nah. The geeks spunk all over shite like Transformers, X-Men and Watchmen no matter how bad they are just because the effects are cool. The effects (not the cinematography) in this trailer look like they were done by Eidos in the 1990s. If they don't want it judged on a 3 inch 2d screen, they should only issue the trailer ahead of 3d movies on 30 foot screens. There's 15 minute snippets being screened in cinemas today, so we'll see what people think of that.

Did you see Xe (formerly Blackwater) were doing covert ops as a contractor for the CIA under Bush, and not just the basic transparent security (by which I mean the open slaughter of Iraqi citizens). Source

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7824731.stm Not the tens of thousands of (mostly gun related) homicides by Americans on Americans every year. Not the millions of people below the poverty line without access to medicine. Not the thousands of deaths and many more homeless from natural diasters like Katrina for which defences are still ill prepared for and which are encouraged by environmental policy. Not the trillions of tax payer dollars being handed over to private businesses in the hope of triggering a stimulus, rather than being used by the government ensuring work by providing municipal jobs. But the threat that apparently STILL lingers as a consequence of 3000 people being killed almost a decade ago despite throwing 2 to 3 trillion $ at the problem since. Fuck off Bush. What's absolutley terrifying is the fact that I'm sure Mr. Bush actually believes this to be true. He has no ulterior motives, he actually believes this. Almost 7.5 years later and he still thinks we're under constant threat by the evil terrorists. It's nice to think our leaders mistakes are made only with the best intentions, but.... In The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege...and How We Can Be Safe Again, out September 1, Tom Ridge (the first head of the 9/11-inspired Department of Homeland Security) tells how he was was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over. Source

Just because you've got a little dick...

I've been impressed with the money we've got for everyone we've sold so far to be fair.

....Leeds had a higher average thanm them that year. Sunderland were champions...Leeds came 14th.

Sunderland 2004/2005 Highest 47350 vs Stoke City(08/05/05) Lowest 22267 vs Rotherham(22/02/05) Average 28820

http://www.totalfilm.com/news/avatar-trailer-is-here

...and the nerds of the internets agree.... http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/306246/the...er_oh_dear.html

Oh dear. Looks like a bunch of giant Jar Jar Binks are attacking the marines from Aliens.

I'll not take the NHS thread off topic again. The goal of keeping stakeholders at the table was threefold: Keep them from advertising against the White House plan Keep them from torpedoing vulnerable Democrats in 2010 so there isn't a repeat of 1994 Keep their money out of GOP coffers You can see the fingerprints in the deals that they made: the $150 million PhRMA was spending on ads for health care reform, the $2.5 million they spent helping vulnerable freshmen, and the total fury that Boehner has unleashed on PhRMA and other stakeholders for making deals with the White House. People make a mistake when they think the battle for health care reform is about ideology, because it's not. It's about who controls K Street and the cash that flows from it, which could fund a 2010 GOP resurgenece -- or not. On June 9, a lobbyist who worked for the insurance companies, hospitals, and other stakeholders said that these groups were "considering joining their Republican allies and mounting a public relations offensive to put the brakes on President Barack Obama’s overhaul plans." In response, on June 11 Sullivan and Selib fired a warning shot: On June 17, Roll Call ran an editorial crying foul, called "intimidation": And that's right at the time that Kent Conrad unveiled his faux "public plan," the "co-op" plan (June 15). It was the time I started getting really nervous. There could only be one purpose served by such a plan: pull a bait-and-switch on a public plan. Which was why when we started the whip count effort on June 23, our goal was to define a public plan as not a co-op. In short order, a series of deals were announced by Baucus and the White House. On Monday, July 6, the deal with the hospitals, whereby they'd commit to reduce projected cost increases by $150 billion over the next decade. On Tuesday, July 7, PhRMA's Billy Tauzin and 5 CEO's went to the White House to seal their deal with Rahm Emanuel, Jim Messina and Nancy-Ann DeParle, Director of the White House Office of Health Reform. On July 8, Rahm tried to float the idea of triggers -- and it went over like a lead balloon. On June 10 Obama spoke to the AMA. There was a huge push to keep these groups happy during this period, and more importantly -- keep them from aligning with the Republicans. And it seems to have worked. John Boehner recently wrote a scathing letter to Billy Tauzin saying that he had "betrayed" the drugmakers by failing to align himself with the Republicans. The GOP needs the money of PhRMA and other disgruntled businesses to fund its 2010 war chest. Just as it was during the bank bailout, the goal of the White House was clear: more important than saving the financial system was keeping the financial institutions happy and stop them from financing Republicans. Who would think that way? Whose primary objective would be to keep anyone from funding a GOP ascendancy, to sell out health care reform worth billions for a hundred fifty million in pro-reform advertising? Who would think to ask PhRMA to run ads in the districts of vulnerable freshmen, as well as Blue Dog Mike Ross, who is anything BUT vulnerable? Certainly not some policy wonk. But ask yourself -- would consider it a victory to use the "public plan" as little more than a political pawn with which to threaten stakeholders and force them to stay at the table, with no thought as to the emotional and moral consequences suffered by the people who had pinned their hope on having one? Someone who had worked as the head of the DCCC. Who remembered the 54 seat swing to the GOP in 1994 after the failure to pass health care reform. Someone whose sole goal was a "political victory," so the White House could be 14-0 not "13-1." Someone like Rahm Emanuel, who works through the Blue Dogs in the House to make the House bill conform to the deals he sets up in the Senate. Rahm wanted a public plan with "triggers" and had been pushing for it since January. Lo and behold, who is insisting that any public plan in the House have triggers -- Mike Ross and the Blue Dogs. The PhRMA deal on July 8 says that there won't be any drug price controls, and the next day, Blue Dogs Heath Shuler and Debbie Halvorson author a letter demanding -- no drug price controls: The American Hospitals Association deal was signed on July 8. The hosptals want higher medicare reimbursement rates for rural providers. On July 15, the Blue Dogs threaten to block health care reform -- if it doesn't increase reimbursement rates to rural providers. And suddenly, the hospitals are spending $12 million running positive ads about health care reform with PhRMA and the AMA. Mike Allen said earlier this week that "this weekend’s comments by White House officials simply acknowledged the long-obvious reality that the idea of a government-run insurance plan was partly a bargaining chip." If you look at the cat-and-mouse game played between the Democrats and the Republicans, support expressed by the President for a "public plan" meant "don't you dare." A commitment that the bill will be "bipartisan" (since the GOP would never agree to one) was a signal that there would be no public plan. The White House never cared about getting Republican votes -- it cared about keeping the Republicans from peeling off the dollars of stakeholders like PhRMA. Giving in to "Republican" demands was cover for writing shitty things into the bill that would keep the stakeholders happy. They didn't need Republican votes, they never did, and they never truly cared. As long as the money stayed out of their campaign coffers, it was all good. If a public plan gets into a final health care bill, it's going to be because of public pressure, because people who put Obama in office demand one. Because in the grand scheme of White House priorities, it was something that could acceptably be dealt away in pursuit of a higher political objective by the guy who was calling the plays: Rahm Emanuel. http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2009/0...itals-and-rahm/ If i read it right, basically Rahm (and Obama) knows and always knew there wouldn't be a public option, he made enough promises about it to get the private companies worried about it though and has been able to stop them running off and throwing money at Republicans by conceding it, going back on his word and retaining their bribe money for the democrats war chest in the next elections. Any flickering flame of hope you had left for Obama should now be completely extinguished, but overwhelming public support for the public plan might still see the White House defeated and forced to use the huge majority they have which could see ANY plan they wanted pushed through autonomously. Democratic members are going on the record in increasing numbers to commit to voting no on any bill without a public option.