Consie

Chicken or the egg, dude. I don't disagree with any of your comments and none of them are news to me (although they might be to most other US citizens) but arguing that the US started it, that the US created corporate greed, militarism, and torture while the UK and the rest of the world blindly followed, it's just not very productive and often isn't relevant. Further its incredibly difficult to substantiate -- how far back do we want to go? -- after all, the British empire probably invented the modern concept of invading a territory and raping it of resources under the false pretense of "trade" and free markets. Then again, maybe it predates even the British Empire. My point is that you seem to always play the blame game. It's really easy to blame the US for every cultural, social, economic and militaristic indecency in the world but just don't let it get in the way of real self reflection.

Ok, I'm not naive, so maybe it was a sinister and deliberate move to try to place blame on a foreign entity for the oil disaster. Maybe it was a mistake, considering everyone in the world knows what BP originally stood for (I may be wrong but I believe 'Beyond Petroleum' is just a marketing thing). He was wrong to do this, without a doubt. But his doing so has never led to any public or government furor directed at the UK. The US media and US public has never gone after the British government over BP -- that is, until this week when the rumors over the Al Megrahi affair surfaced. Take a look at this BBC article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/ma...tbashing_i.html In it you will find the truth -- that there is no anti-UK sentiment WHATSOEVER in this country. For whatever reason, the UK media loves to stir up supposed diplomatic provocations every so often. The articles last year about Americans boycotting Scotland were LUDICROUSLY false.

This entire post was unbelievably f***ing stupid and ridiculous, I honestly don't know where to begin. I don't have a clue what "goshed sticky wicket" means but your point that Cameron shouldn't have to defend the government he represents for colluding with a private company to release a terrorist who blew up a jumbo jet for business interests means that you can't blame Obama for the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan because he wasn't president at the time they were started. So most of the rest of your post has already been discredited, but let's continue for the hell of it. You have left me speechless by this rant. This is utterly appalling jingoistic nonsense. And extremely offensive, by the way, coming from someone who calls people out all the time for generalizations and stereotypes. You have lost all credibility in that regard, seriously. There have of course been problems with American soldiers and the military has lowered its admission standards and even allowed convicted felons to serve, which is unacceptable. But to blanket the entire US military, hundreds of thousands in number, with the sweeping generalizations you have is beyond stupidity. Even more absurd is your delusional image of "the professionalism and discipline of the British soldier" who, by the way, tortured and killed innocent Iraqi civilians in 2003, 2004 and 2006. I will admit there are problems with the US military -- you choose to believe all British soldiers live up to some ideal. You claim to loathe jingoistic military propaganda, but you just gave me a North Korea size dose of it. No one has asked David Cameron or any British politician to apologize for the actions of BP, which is a scumbag piece of $h!t corporation run by f***ing criminals, just like Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell. That you think Americans walk around all day angry at British people or British politicians for the BP oil spill is the height of insecurity. Seriously, we have better things to do and it is insulting to us that you think we can't tell the difference between the British government/citizenry and a corporation. Oh wait, except, BP may have successfully lobbied for the release of a terrorist to gain profit from oil in North Africa... how do you react to that? The company you won't defend is in bed with the government you're defending rabidly and nonsensically. Grim, you are a smart guy and have shown yourself to be tolerant and sensitive in the past (usually in defense) but this post is seriously ridiculous. I don't even understand what the point is -- that Cameron shouldn't apologize for BP's oil spill? Well, fine, so he shouldn't. He didn't, to my knowledge. If your opinions match those of many or most Brits then I'm guessing the UK-US diplomatic "rows" that the UK media fabricates once a year (Americans "boycotting" Scotland over Al Megrhai's release?! Are you KIDDING ME?!) are probably welcomed by the UK. Ouch.

Not much love for 'Cooler than Me' on this forum -- I think it's a great song!! Oh, and Ne-Yo's new song is fantastic! Glad to have him back in the charts. I feel like it samples Voodoo and Serano "Blood is Pumping"

:lol:

Wonder if Taio Cruz could get a second #1. Airplay is rising almost as fast as sales. However he would have to outsell Katy Perry by a lot. And for everyone who bitched and moaned about Ludacris -- Dynamite has no token rapper!! :P

I hope Bulletproof's success convinces radio/record cos/artists to give more support and promotion to Euro pop because it can succeed here. There is no reason in the world why MIA, Robyn and Kylie couldn't go top ten with their new songs, except that the best promotion a Euro pop artist can typically expect is to be played in a commercial for Mitsubishi or something.

Thanks, flatdeejay! These posts are really taking me back... makes me feel old!!

Not you or me, but the well-heeled, wealthy socialite types get a TON of pressure to join from members. Celebrity friends of Tom Cruise have talked about this before. Also, once you are in, they take great effort to force you to stay in! Unless I assumed falsely that you are not a wealthy socialite :lol:

Obviously it's very early but I hope MIA can break the top 100 with XXXO. It's super radio friendly so maybe it will get picked up...

Correct. It was frustrating. It was kept from #1 by Empire State of Mind which was by then, IIRC, outside the iTunes top 5 having peaked weeks earlier. But to be fair, Poker Face only made #1 on the Hot 100 because iTunes deleted Right Round for a day. So she got lucky once, unlucky once :)

Interesting point... I recently read about a book that argues the US Deep South is quite similar to many developing countries. The Human Development Index ranks the development level of Mississippi (the least developed state in the US) as roughly the same as Turkey. Obviously I don't have to ask you to imagine what it would be like to have Turkey as part of Europe because that conversation is ongoing :lol: Source: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009...-index-measure/

Patently absurd policy. How the hell can anyone commit a sexual crime on an open, crowded, confined airplane?

It's still illegal, she is still committing a crime! Just lying about it doesn't mean she is no longer committing a crime. If I push someone off a balcony but tell the police they fell off, I am not "within the law" just because I lied.

The point has already been made, but it bears repeating... as long as she is accepting payment for a service, she is participating in a regulated market that falls under UK law... anti-discrimination laws apply, and she should be prosecuted. No. That would still be illegal. More difficult to prove/prosecute, yes. But let's be clear that it would still be discrimination.

New song streaming on her site... http://www.robyn.com/ IT IS AMAZING!!!

Cider has way more calories. A pint of Magners has 210 calories. That's over 10% of the recommended daily caloric intake in one drink. The amount of alcohol you drink is probably less of a concern than the calories you consume, hence diabetes, heart disease, etc.

YES MORE HATE FOR LAFFY TAFFY, the single most embarrassing single to ever top Billboard. Followed closely by This is Why I'm Hot. I'm not talking about taste or opinion or preference... those songs go BEYOND, they are universally, wholly, completely, absolutely terrible. ...oh, and congrats to Taio Cruz, totally unexpected. I'm guessing I'm one of the few who actually likes Ludacris on the song. But I think if the record companies stick rappers on there just to add credibility, they are wrong - the success of Jason Derulo, Iyaz, and Chris Brown's Forever show that you don't need a guest rapper to get airplay.

SPOILER!!!!!!!!!!!! Wow, congratualtions :D

I see why they had to arrest him... I know UK law isn't based on precedent (US law is), but still... the risk of a slippery slope is too big. Can someone determine the exact point at which it becomes legal to end someone's life? If not, I'm afraid, they had no choice but to arrest the poor guy.

Ugh the charts are SOOOOO BORING right now, there is NO new music... someone, PLEASE, release a new single! Imma Be at no. 1 reminds me of the sad days when the 19th single off an Usher album made no. 1 just because there was nothing else.

Since there's a lot of discussion in this forum about Britain's youth and how measures need to be stepped up to keep them in line, I thought it would be interesting to show the opposite end of the spectrum, which may be where the US is today. Zero tolerance is resulting in outlandish punishments for children. (CNN) -- There was no profanity, no hate. Just the words, "I love my friends Abby and Faith. Lex was here 2/1/10 :)" scrawled on the classroom desk with a green marker. Alexa Gonzalez, an outgoing 12-year-old who likes to dance and draw, expected a lecture or maybe detention for her doodles earlier this month. Instead, the principal of the Junior High School in Forest Hills, New York, called police, and the seventh-grader was taken across the street to the police precinct. Alexa's hands were cuffed behind her back, and tears gushed as she was escorted from school in front of teachers and -- the worst audience of all for a preadolescent girl -- her classmates. "They put the handcuffs on me, and I couldn't believe it," Alexa recalled. "I didn't want them to see me being handcuffed, thinking I'm a bad person." Critics say schools and police have gone too far, overreacting and using well-intended rules for incidents involving nonviolent offenses such as drawing on desks, writing on other school property or talking back to teachers. "We are arresting them at younger and younger ages [in cases] that used to be covered with a trip to the principal's office, not sending children to jail," said Emma Jordan-Simpson, executive director of the Children's Defense Fund, a national children's advocacy group. There aren't any national studies documenting how often minors become involved with police for nonviolent crimes in schools. Tracking the incidents depends on how individual schools keep records. Much of the information remains private, since it involves juveniles. But one thing is sure: Alexa's case isn't the first in the New York area. One of the first cases to gain national notoriety was that of Chelsea Fraser. In 2007, the 13-year-old wrote "Okay" on her desk, and police handcuffed and arrested her. She was one of several students arrested in the class that day; the others were accused of plastering the walls with stickers. At schools across the country, police are being asked to step in. In November, a food fight at a middle school in Chicago, Illinois, resulted in the arrests of 25 children, some as young as 11, according to the Chicago Police Department. The Strategy Center, a California-based civil rights group that tracks zero tolerance policies, found that at least 12,000 tickets were issued to tardy or truant students by Los Angeles Police Department and school security officers in 2008. The tickets tarnished students' records and brought them into the juvenile court system, with fines of up to $250 for repeat offenders. The Strategy Center opposes the system. "The theory is that if we fine them, then they won't be late again," said Manuel Criollo, lead organizer of the "No to Pre-Prison" campaign at The Strategy Center. "But they just end up not going to school at all." His group is trying to stop the LAPD and the school district from issuing the tickets. The Los Angeles School District says the policy is designed to reduce absenteeism. And another California school -- Highland High School in Palmdale -- found that issuing tardiness tickets drastically cut the number of pupils being late for class and helped tone down disruptive behavior. The fifth ticket issued landed a student in juvenile traffic court. In 1998, New York City took its zero tolerance policies to the next level, placing school security officers under the New York City Police Department. Today, there are nearly 5,000 employees in the NYPD School Safety Division. Most are not police officers, but that number exceeds the total police force in Washington, D.C. In contrast, there are only about 3,000 counselors in New York City's public school system. Critics of zero tolerance policies say more attention should be paid to social work, counseling and therapy. "If they have been suspended once, their likelihood of being pushed out of the school increases," she said. "They may end up in jail at some point in their life." One of Lieberman's clients was in sixth grade when police arrested her in 2007 for doodling with her friend in class. The child, called M.M. in court filings to protect her identity, tried to get tissues to remove the marks, a complaint states. Lieberman says police subjected M.M. to unlawful search and seizure. A class-action lawsuit, filed in January on behalf of five juveniles, is pending. It maintains that inadequately trained and poorly supervised police personnel are aggressive toward students when no criminal activity is taking place. Several studies have confirmed that the time an expelled child spends away from school increases the chance that child will drop out and wind up in the criminal justice system, according to a January 2010 study from the Advancement Project, a legal action group. Alexa Gonzalez missed three days of school because of her arrest. She spent those days throwing up, and it was a challenge to catch up on her homework when she returned to school, she said. Her mother says she had never been in trouble before the doodling incident. New York attorney Joe Rosenthal, who is representing Alexa, plans to file a lawsuit accusing police and school officials of violating Alexa's constitutional rights. New York City Department of Education officials declined to comment specifically on any possible legal matters. Several media outlets have reported that school officials admitted the arrest was a "mistake," but when asked by CNN, Feinberg declined to comment specifically on the incident. She referred CNN to the NYPD. The NYPD did not return CNN's repeated phone calls and e-mails. It is unknown whether charges will be pressed against Alexa. Kenneth Trump, a security expert who founded the National School Safety and Security Services consulting firm, said focusing on security is essential to the safety of other students. He said zero tolerance policies can work if "common sense is applied." Michael Soguero recalls being arrested himself in 2005 when, as principal at Bronx Guild School, he tried to stop an officer from handcuffing one of his students. A charge of assault against him was later dropped. He says police working in schools need specific training on how to work with children. In Clayton County, Georgia, juvenile court judge Steven Teske is working to reshape zero tolerance policies in schools. He wants the courts to be a last resort. In 2003, he created a program in Clayton County's schools that distinguishes felonies from misdemeanors. The result? The number of students detained by the school fell by 83 percent, his report found. The number of weapons detected on campus declined by 73 percent. Last week, after hearing about 12-year-old Alexa's arrest in New York, he wasn't shocked. "There is zero intelligence when you start applying zero tolerance across the board," he said. "Stupid and ridiculous things start happening." Source: http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/02/18/new.yo...dex.html?hpt=C1

Congratulations to him!! I can't stand that Begg-Smith guy. Overall I think Vancouver is doing well. Every Olympics has its problems.

Wondering if We Are the World could top every itunes store in the world... it's #1 on the Japan chart, which is very rare for an international act... so far the only countries without it in the top ten are UK, Greece and Finland. It may struggle in Canada to beat the Olympic theme song.

The autotune is ridiculous. But I must say that I disagree with you... I think Michael Jackson would have LOVED this... The song was cheesy in 1984 and of course it's cheesy today. But I am so happy they kept all that made the original so charming... the awkward combination of new and old artists, the random actor thrown in for good measure (Vince Vaughn is the Dan Aykroyd), the artists taking themselves so seriously, everyone reading their lyrics from a script (like they couldn't memorize their 5 words).