Controlled Chaos

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 18, 2006 -> 11:05 AM) Agreed. If it's 8% of payroll, then reduce payroll when possible. Of course, given their business model, Walmart is probably already pretty lean on personnel, since they would see that as a cost center. Lean on personnel?? They have a f***in person at the front of the store saying hi and handing you a cart.

Does this count?

QUOTE(Milkman delivers @ Jan 18, 2006 -> 11:24 AM) Impossible now. When did that go down?

A curious form of optimism Jan 18, 2006 by David Limbaugh ( bio | archive | contact ) Unlike our president, who spent Martin Luther King Day paying respectful tribute to MLK and Abraham Lincoln, Democratic Party notables, Hillary Clinton and Albert Gore, used the holiday as another opportunity to character-assassinate President George W. Bush. Just when we were beginning to think Hillary Clinton had found her voice -- albeit a decidedly phony one -- as a mature, seasoned politician poised for a presidential run, she reverts to those cacophonic utterances that find little resonance beyond her embittered but indispensable base. If one could momentarily suspend his powers of discernment, he could almost sympathize with a woman saddled with the dilemma of trying to sound reasonable without permanently alienating that cabal of reliably unreasonable malcontents. But alas, Hillary obviously has no real beef with her base on principle, and from time to time, it insists she demonstrate her loyalty by paying homage to its cynicism and hysteria. During a speech at the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem, the fair-skinned wife of the first black president wasted no time proving her bona fides by exhibiting her penchant for negative hyperbole in critiquing the president and Congress. She said, "We have a culture of corruption, we have cronyism, we have incompetence. I predict to you that this administration will go down in history as one of the worst that has ever governed our country." And, never passing up a chance for political exploitation, Hillary offered up some racially charged red meat to the Hurricane Katrina evacuees in attendance. She apologized "on behalf of a government that left you behind, that turned its back on you" -- a government, I suppose, she denies being a part of when it suits her immediate interests. But as regrettable as Hillary's remarks were, they were anemic compared to the rantings of that poster boy for instability Albert Gore, who, you may recall with horror, came within one state's electoral vote of being president. Gore, remembered for declaring that "there is no controlling legal authority" when caught with his hands directly in the middle of a fundraising scandal, was quick to call for an independent investigation into "President Bush's spying program," about which there truly may be no clearly controlling authority. Of course, Gore doesn't need to wait for an independent investigation. He has already concluded that "the president of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and insistently." Despite the incontrovertible fact that Bush briefed congressmen on his surveillance program, Gore shamelessly said he "secretly assumed that power anyway, as if congressional authorization was a useless bother." Further displaying his unique gift for chutzpah, Gore yelled, "A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government." He must be making exceptions for serial perjury, suborning perjury, obstruction of justice and, yes, criminal violations of campaign finance laws. Indeed, this proud vice president under the president who made a sport of mocking the rule of law said, "It is imperative that respect for the law be restored." Then, picking up on the Democrats' latest mantra demonizing President Bush as a megalomaniacal dictator, Gore characterized Bush's attempts to intercept Al Qaeda phone calls for the purpose of protecting America's security as a "constitutional power-grab by the president." Continuing with this theme, Gore said, preposterously, "The president's judicial appointments are clearly designed to ensure that the courts will not serve as an effective check on executive power." I just have to wonder if Gore really thinks enough people are impressionable enough to believe that President Bush, who will leave office in three years, is appointing judges to augment his power rather than to restore integrity to the Constitution. And, though separate bipartisan commissions concluded the Bush administration did not pressure the CIA or other intelligence agencies to exaggerate their reports of Iraqi WMD, Gore brazenly accused the administration of silencing dissent, censoring inconsistent information and demanding conformity from all executive-branch employees. He said, "CIA analysts who strongly disagreed with the White House assertion that Osama bin Laden was linked to Saddam Hussein found themselves under pressure at work and became fearful of losing promotions and salary increases." After accusing President Bush of virtual tyranny and depicting America as on the brink of ruin, Gore closed by protesting, "I am filled with optimism that America is on the eve of a golden age … " Old Albert could have fooled me. He sounds more like George Bernard Shaw's description of a pessimist -- one who "thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it." Either way, I just hope Albert and Hillary continue to spread their contagious optimism between now and November 2008.

Al Gore and the next 9-11 Jan 18, 2006 by Terence Jeffrey ( bio | archive | contact ) When Al Gore ran for president in 2000, he said, "Our Constitution is a living and breathing document" that changes its meaning over time. This week, we learned that among the things changing in Gore's Constitution is the war power. It meant one thing when Bill Clinton was president, but means another thing now. Seven years ago, then-Vice President Gore supported Clinton in launching a war Congress didn't authorize. Now, he says the Constitution denies President Bush the power merely to intercept an enemy's communications in and out of the United States -- without permission from a federal judge -- in the midst of a war Congress did authorize. The program in question has been described by Gen. Michael Hayden, principal deputy director for national intelligence, as yielding information about terrorists that could not have been gleaned through court-ordered wiretaps, while intercepting only international communications involving persons linked to Al-Qaida. Yet on Monday, Gore described the program as "eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens" and claimed it "virtually compels the conclusion that the president of the United States has been breaking the law, repeatedly and insistently." While the liberal ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights are bringing lawsuits against the program, Gore is calling for a special counsel to investigate Bush. Now flash back to 1999 -- the year when only a failed Senate impeachment prosecution stood between Gore and the presidency. On March 23, 1999, President Clinton ordered U.S. forces to begin bombing Yugoslavia because of its treatment of people in Kosovo. Clinton bombed for three months. The day the war started, then-White House Spokesman Joe Lockhart was asked whether Clinton believed congressional support was "constitutionally necessary." Lockhart said, "Well, I don't think he believes it's constitutionally necessary because we don't believe that." Congress, in fact, declined to authorize it. The Senate voted 58 to 41 for a resolution "authorizing the president of the United States to conduct military air operations and missile strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." But the House defeated the resolution, 213 to 213. Gore aggressively backed Clinton's unauthorized war, suggesting its critics were guilty of "politics." "I think the American people want to see politics removed from any kind of action where our military forces are involved overseas," he said on the April 2, 1999, edition of CNN's "Larry King Live." Was the Clinton-Gore Kosovo War constitutional? No. As I have argued before, citing Louis Fisher's "Presidential War Power," the Framers unambiguously denied the president the power to initiate offensive military action. But as Framers James Madison and Elbridge Gerry, authors of the war-powers clause, explained at the Constitutional Convention, they did leave "to the executive the power to repel sudden attacks." In the Founding era, no one doubted Congress needed to approve any act of war beyond what was necessary for the president "to repel sudden attacks." In the 1801 case Talbot v. Seeman, involving a ship seized as a war prize, Chief Justice Marshall explained: "The whole powers of war being, by the Constitution of the United States, vested in Congress, the acts of that body can alone be resorted to as our guides in this inquiry. It is not denied, nor in the course of the argument has it been denied, that Congress may authorize general hostilities, in which case the general laws of war apply to our situation; or partial hostilities, in which case the laws of war, so far as they actually apply to our situation, must be noticed." Was Clinton repelling a sudden attack on the United States when he bombed Yugoslavia? Even Gore never claimed that. In the war against al-Qaida -- including his order for the NSA to intercept al-Qaida-linked communications in and out of the United States -- was President Bush acting either under a congressional war authorization or his own authority to repel sudden attacks? He was doing both. After 9-11, Congress authorized the president to make war against "those nations, organizations or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks." If this authorized the president to invade Afghanistan, surely it authorized him to intercept communications between the United States and suspected terrorists in Afghanistan. But even if Congress hadn't authorized a war, it is reasonable to conclude the president could intercept al-Qaida-linked communications in and out of the United States even in circumstances where a court-order could not be secured. Surely, the president's authority to repel sudden attacks includes the authority to listen at our frontier for sounds from the enemy. But -- at least so long as there is a Republican in the White House -- it seems that Gore's "living and breathing" Constitution would put earplugs in the sentries who guard the border between us and the next 9-11.

God and New Orleans Jan 18, 2006 by Linda Chavez ( bio | archive | contact ) Imagine for a moment that Salt Lake City was hit by a massive earthquake that toppled buildings, destroyed infrastructure and made the city unlivable for months. Much of the city's population fled, many never to return. Then imagine that the mayor began wistfully extolling the virtues of his town in barely veiled racial euphemisms. "Salt Lake City has always been a plain vanilla town," he says, at first only before audiences he thinks will warm to the message. Then, as the city starts to rebuild, the mayor hints that he's not thrilled that many of the jobs to rebuild the city are going to Latinos and blacks, many of whom did not live in Salt Lake before disaster struck. Before long, the mayor gets bolder in his appeals. "It's time for us to rebuild Salt Lake City -- the one that should be a vanilla Salt Lake," he says. "I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are, this city will be vanilla at the end of the day. This city will be a majority white city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have Salt Lake City any other way. It wouldn't be Salt Lake City." Are you squirming yet? I certainly would be. And if this fictional scenario played out in real life with the mayor actively discouraging non-whites from moving into Salt Lake City, the feds would be on the case. Housing discrimination is against the law -- it has been since Congress passed the Fair Housing Act of 1968. A city official who made clear his intention to keep his city white would not only incur the wrath of the federal government, but he'd likely be hounded from office by the media. So why is it that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin -- whose comments I've paraphrased above, substituting "vanilla" for "chocolate" and Salt Lake City for New Orleans -- can get away with such blatantly racist claptrap? Most major newspapers buried the mayor's comments, if they reported them at all, and those national news programs that played them did so largely without commentary. I can't imagine a white mayor praising the racial purity of a white community getting similar treatment. For all his appeals to black solidarity, the irony is that Ray Nagin wouldn't be mayor of New Orleans were it not for whites. Nagin won election as a political novice in 2002 because white voters overwhelmingly cast their ballots for him. According to Ed Renwick, the director of Loyola University's Institute of Politics, Nagin won about 90 percent of whites' votes, but less than half of blacks'. Perhaps he thinks he can curry favor with New Orleans' African-American community by appealing to race. But those who were stuck for days in the Convention Center during Hurricane Katrina may not soon forget that their mayor let them down. He was slow to order an evacuation when Katrina was bearing down on the coast, refused offers of help to move people out of the city before the storm hit, and let city workers -- including many police and firefighters -- flee rather than stay to keep order in the city. He had no clue how to marshal New Orleans' own resources to help in the rescue, letting school buses that could have been used to transport people out of the city be inundated by rising flood waters. And in the first few days of the tragedy, he was hunkered down out of sight, except for a strange call-in to a radio show where he rambled on about everyone else's but his own failure to provide leadership. The best thing Ray Nagin could do for New Orleans would be to announce he's withdrawing from the mayor's race. Instead, he makes racist appeals and then pretends he didn't mean what he said. When asked about his comments by a local reporter Nagin said, "Do you know anything about chocolate? How do you make chocolate? You take dark chocolate, you mix it with white milk, and it becomes a delicious drink. That's the chocolate I'm talking about." Yes, and vanilla comes from a brown bean, but no one would believe that a mayor who talked about making sure his city stayed "vanilla" was promoting racial integration.

Happy Birthday Wingnut!!!!!!!!!

Yeah I have a tv in my bedroom. I'm glad my wife didn't have a problem with that when we got married. She thought it was a little big for a bedroom and I was like...honey there is no such thing as "too big" in the bedroom if there was, you wouldn't have married me...hahaha... Needless to say, we still have the tv in there. 60" in basement 60" in living room 35" Bedroom 19" second bedroom If I couldn't see the one in the lving room from the kitchen, I'd have one in there.

AWESOME NEWS!!!!!!

This reminds me of my old siggy.... "There are assholes in every park, but ours is the only one with cameras in the toliets"

Not sure if you all would be interested in this. As of January, there is now a Roth 401 K, that some people may be interested in. Here's some info: http://www.roth401k.com/

QUOTE(kyyle23 @ Jan 17, 2006 -> 09:46 AM) Nagin talking about his "Chocolate" New Orleans Yeah, I think Hilary and Al might have been on the same page. But Ray is definitely on his own wavelength this time. Mayor Nagin and the Chocolate factory. Nice. Apparently you can be racist on MLK day.

QUOTE(SoxFan101 @ Jan 17, 2006 -> 09:27 AM) well the reason they D-Line couldnt get all that pressure is because most plays Carolina had two TE's.....so its hard to win when they can double team everyone on the D-Line practically or the 3 that matter really Brown, Ogunleye, and Harris. This is what everyone keeps forgetting....Carolina only sent out 2 WR on most plays... so they had 7 or 8 guys blocking.

RayNa is a f***ing nut job.

QUOTE(mmmmmbeeer @ Jan 17, 2006 -> 07:34 AM) raped by her husband? you lost me there. my biggest objection would be that "criminal gene". with that in mind, it's VERY different from adoption. Adoption you get to choose your child after careful research. A baby borne of rape you not only have no chance to research and choose a child, but you also know from conception on that that child's father was genetically prone to violent behavior. THAT is not something I'd want to get involved in. Like I said, it may sound cold hearted but i have my values and my own life. If my wife made what I deemed as a ridiculously poor decision that I just couldn't live with, I'd have to leave. Criminal gene?? Not sure what this is. Plenty of women are raped by the husbands. Just cause you're married doesn't give you free reign to rape your wife. I have to go with Rex's answer as well. It is ultimately her decision and I would support it either way. Maybe it's "what we're supposed to say" because it's the right thing to do.

It ain't tight ta make fun o' da way someone else talks. Don't make me come ovah there biatch...I'lls smack you in the toof foo!!!!! sho 'nuff!!

I actually blame two people for this loss. Tillman and Rivera. The game plan on defense sucked. #1 focus should have been Smith. Make someone else beat you. Tillman should have known or at least been told...if Smith is opposite you..then he is your #1 f***in priority. Do Not peek in the backfield to help stop the run....you have their top offensive weapon right in front of you. Let everyone else worry about their jobs. Every DB should have known that...and the safeties should have known to keep an extra eye on Smith. The line couldn't get any pressure because they were keeping everyone back. They were only sending out 2 wr on most plays, but they were still getting it done because we didn't game plan to stop Smith at all costs. If they had beat us because we were focusing on Smith and missed some plays due to that fact, then I'd be fine with it. But to let them do EXACTLY what everyone knew they were gonna f***in do...makes me sick!!! I personally tag the loss on the defensive scheme. The offense, while not stellar, got the job done. Rex will be a good QB if he stays healthy....He throws one hell of a pass.

Going down there for some golf and sox. Looks the one game I know we're going to for sure is March 14th. March 13th they are in Phoenix so it's gonna be a 36, or if we can make it, 54 hole marathon. We come in March 12th, in the morning, so we might make it to the game that day or we might go golfing. It's up for a vote. Either way...I can't wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If it was a white guy beating up a black guy...this would be a national story.

What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

f*** you Ashton...come on now. Come out here...this is crazy

I keep waiting for Ashton Kutcher to pop up and tell me I'm getting punk'd.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Jan 12, 2006 -> 11:45 AM) Just because someone has no faith doesn't make them an asshole. However, you take someone that attempts to talk down to, or belittle, a person of faith because the other person's views are faith based, then yes, I think the term applies. I agree and therein lies the difference between you and AssholeFan93 during this whole thread. You understand there are different beliefs for all people. One persons belief over anothers doesn't make one an asshole and one not. It doesn't make one right and one wrong. However, one which will not accept the FACT that you have a right to that belief, in my opninion, an asshole.

QUOTE(AnthraxFan93 @ Jan 12, 2006 -> 11:44 AM) Well now I will sleep better knowing this. Don't forget to say your prayers!!

QUOTE(AnthraxFan93 @ Jan 12, 2006 -> 11:38 AM) You should pray for more faith. Who would I pray to. If you believe no higher power exists, I guess you're destined to be an asshole in my eyes forever.