NUKE_CLEVELAND

On a side note I see this thread heading straight for the Filibuster. LOL!

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 2, 2006 -> 04:56 PM) That is one of the lamest defenses I've ever heard. And believe me, in my previous line of work, I heard a few. Including that one. I laughed. A lot. You actually think people should only get in trouble when they are caught in the act? How can you say that with a straight face? Following that logic youd have to let 99.99% of murderers, rapists etc.....etc.... go because they weren't caught in the act.

QUOTE(Mplssoxfan @ Feb 2, 2006 -> 04:47 PM) Huh? I didn't see anything about his parents in this piece. Where do you think someone that young gets those ideas. It sure as hell aint from Power Rangers or whatever grade school kids watch these days.

QUOTE(Spiff @ Feb 2, 2006 -> 04:48 PM) If they were caught doing it in the act I'd agree but the judge is just being a sore ass. Wrong, wrong, wrong. They broke the law plain and simple and if they hadn't been so stupid and spiteful about doing it they would have gotten by with it. Additionally, its not as though someone came by and ratted on them, they were caught in the act......via their own photographs.

QUOTE(JUGGERNAUT @ Feb 2, 2006 -> 04:45 PM) I left out Japan. I am sure to hear someone say Japan's VG industry is even bigger than ours. How come they aren't suffering low scores among their men? Simple answer: a much more disciplined society. Cram school is normal in Japan & the family structure is such that both parents & students by & large care more about achieving success than playing games. Can the same be said about America's youth? Based on Telander's numbers, no. I spent a year stationed in South Korea and they're an order of magnitude more obsessed with video games than Americans are. Yet still, they consistently score higher in pretty much any acedemic area than we do. I guess they manage their time better or something.

QUOTE(jasonxctf @ Feb 2, 2006 -> 04:00 PM) couldnt agree more. some people dont have id's. plain and simple. to require them to go out and spend $ to get one, just so they can fulfill their constitutional right, is insane. just think, if you don't pay with checks in the store (which few people do anymore), appear to be older than 21, and don't drive... do you really need a Drivers License/ID? People are all up in arms about a national ID card infringing on privacy so what else can we do?

QUOTE(Soxy @ Feb 2, 2006 -> 02:16 PM) Yeah, "a little bit illegal" is similar to "kind of pregnant"

QUOTE(Spiff @ Feb 2, 2006 -> 04:31 PM) I'd be pissed too if I was those kids. The judge just needs to chill out and leave them alone. Just because they hurt his feelings doesn't mean he should be able to drag them into court and put them in jail for two weeks. And yes I realize they acted like idiots for putting pictures online of them violating his "order". Chill out and leave them alone?! They broke the law once and got off with not even a slap on the wrist. They break the law again, defy the Judge's specific orders not to and throw it in his face to boot?!!? They deserve some jail time.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Feb 2, 2006 -> 12:16 PM) "More than 400 digital photos showed some students appearing passed out, others using special tubes to gulp beer, couples playing a drinking game called "beer pong," inebriated girls sitting on toilets -- all of it tagged with captions, many of them profane and aimed at Martone. Stesney, visiting from Detroit, and Senopole, Meershaert's roommate, were also shown drinking at parties at MSU." Oh my god, they use SPECIAL TUBES. Wow, lets go ahead and convinct every college kid who is drinking underage and has pictures to prove it. Talk about the judge taking something a little too far. My whole dorm/fraternity would have been jailed. s***, my parents let us have some beers once we got into college, it was even legal in OXford if your parents were with you. I think this is complete bulls***. Oh so just because everyone else is doing it does that make it right? :rolly

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/02/01/ipod.suit.ap/index.html Well no s*** sherlock. I had no idea that you could hurt your hearing by listening to your music too loud. Moms everywhere have been saying that forever.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 2, 2006 -> 03:02 PM) You've missed the point. Driver's license is fine. State ID is fine. Whatever works. But there MUST be some sort of state ID available that is free, or else you are expecting people to pay for a Constitutionally-granted right. There is no logical argument that can be made for that to be OK. As for the "racist" thing, I didn't even hint at that. Race is irrelevant to me. Is it to you? I was making a seperate point. I understood what you said just fine and I agree that we dont need to make a special ID that costs people money, especially when a simple photo ID gets it done. Problem is you have idiots like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton crying their eyes out charging racism just because people want voters to show ANY form of ID when they go in to vote.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 2, 2006 -> 02:57 PM) Agreed. Travelling outside the US is not a US-granted right. Voting, on the other hand, is. If you require IDs, they'd better the heck be free, or else you are charging for a right. Why not just require people to show a photo ID when they go in to vote? A drivers license would get it done and its certainly universal enough already. Oh wait, I forgot. You cant make people show ID when they vote because thats racist. Thats Jesse Jackson speak for "we want black people to vote multiple times for Democratic candidates and if you try to stop us from committing this fraud you're a bigot". :rolly

QUOTE(juddling @ Feb 2, 2006 -> 02:26 PM) Secret Service investigates violent essay by seventh grader February 2, 2006 WEST WARWICK, R.I. --A seventh-grader who wrote an essay saying his perfect day would involve doing violence to President Bush is being investigated by the Secret Service The unidentified boy from West Warwick turned in the essay on Tuesday, and his teacher alerted school officials. The assignment was to write what students would do on their "perfect day". Thomas M. Powers, Secret Service resident agent in charge in Providence, said the investigation is ongoing but the essay may have been a "cry for help." Threatening the president is a felony, he said. The one-page essay also said the student wanted to kill Oprah Winfrey, hurt executives at Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart and attack a Walgreens pharmacy, police and school officials told The Providence Journal. "His perfect day would be to see the destruction of these people," Schools Superintendent David Raiche said. Raiche said the student felt the companies were doing inappropriate things. He said the student had been barred temporarily from coming back to school, but as a mental health rather than disciplinary precaution. The essay did not threaten anyone at the school, and did not detail specific plans for an attack, police Detective Sgt. Fernando Araujo said. "He was writing a letter threatening everyone on the planet," School Board Chairman Daniel T. Burns Jr. said. "He was just mad at the world." ok..oprah I can understand but the rest?????? I hope that kid and his family get some help. :headshake :headshake His parents are obviously radical leftist, G8 Summit protestor types. Shame on them for filling their kids head up with such drivel.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Feb 2, 2006 -> 02:49 PM) OK, that's fine, then how about reducing the incentives for our oil companies to do nothing to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. I will agree that oil firms don't need any help from the government these days. However, you're misguided in your assertion about them doing nothing. http://www.abcmoney.co.uk/news/3020051444.htm http://www.newenergyreport.org/016506.html

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Feb 2, 2006 -> 02:35 PM) I heart rhetoric. Its not about the government, private industry is taking the lead on this. They have venture capitalists lining up to throw money into this research because they, rightfully so, want to get in on what is going to be what I like to call "the next oil industry".

QUOTE(Cerbaho-WG @ Feb 2, 2006 -> 10:58 AM) Considering it's unconstitutional and a form of a poll tax, it's horrible. But I've been hearing that this would be happening in Ohio just in time for the election, so this doesn't surprise me. Rediculous. So you're in favor of the status quo which is a system rife with vote fraud. You no longer have a cause to complain about rigged elections if you are against measures taken to stop it.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Feb 2, 2006 -> 11:16 AM) Too many people look at all the millionaires that work at Microsoft and other high tech sector jobs who were paid low plus stock options. The problem with many of these programs is you have to hang on to the stock for a set amount of time. So if you had a choice of buying one company stock at a huge discount and holding, or buying another at street price, you would choose street price? I'm not certain many people have your willpower. Especially when analyists are fawning over the stock. Example buy Enron at 25% below market and hold for 24 months, or buy something else at market? Im not saying people should stay away from stock purchase plans altogether but for someone to dump their life savings into 1 single stock is lunacy.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 08:13 PM) I don't fault those people too much. Many middle and lower level employees only have enough money to choose either an ESIP program or a 401K. These guys were flat out lied to. They were being told by the company officials that this company was going to the moon, despite knowing the shell game they were playing with losses. The employees were also offered incentives for purchasing company stock, such as cheap option exercize prices and discounted stock purchases. They were used, I can hardly blame them for that. I can. The only free lunch in investing is diversification and they refused it. Given a choice between purchasing only company stock and going into a 401K, I would go with the latter every time. The company can tell me whatever they want to about how great things are but that wouldnt cut any ice with me. Id have put a percentage ( Maybe a quarter but probably less than that ) in company stock and the rest would be spread out over large/mid/small cap mutuals.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 05:12 PM) I said savings, like a bank passbook. Different animal. I was considering the least risky of investments. Gotcha.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 04:58 PM) I find it really easy to distinguish one regime from another in this case. Iran and North Korea were threats. Iraq wasn't. We f**ked up. And Israel won't be looking for a war. Just taking out Iran's nuclear and long-range missle capabilities. That's all they need to do. You can bet thats going to happen at some point unless some sort of settlement averts it.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 04:57 PM) I know it's an ackward analogy. But the government is supporting you either way. Any savings is a Ponzi scheme of sorts. To pay interest in the savings, you have to find someone willing to borrow the money at a higher price than you return. Thats not exactly true. In a mutual fund you pool your money with others and buy shares of various stocks. In turn, the performance of the stocks determines what your rate of return is, not the infusion of new monies from other people.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 04:57 PM) Enron was sad, and they are paying now. But a lot of those people had their entire savings on ONE STOCK. That's pretty darn stupid. Maybe the better approach to this is education. Part of high school economics classes should be about spending, saving and investing. Actual, practical stuff. The best class Ive taken in all my years of schooling was my Applied Econ course in my Jr year of High School. All we did that whole year was talk about money and investing and it made us stand up and take notice.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 04:53 PM) I have to agree with everything here, of course there are exceptions. If you were working for Enron, how would you know you'd suddenly lose everything? Couples trying to raise a family on $30,000 a year won't be eating caviar, but they shouldn't be eating dog food, when they retire. But if you cannot depend on the United States of America to fulfill it's social security promise, how can you depend on the stock market? I dont buy that Enron BS for 1 second. If you're dumb enough to plow your life savings into the stock of 1 single company then you almost deserve to get wiped out. Anyone who knows anything about investing knows that you have to diversify or you're going to pay the price at some point. On your second point, long gone are the days when a single bread-winner can raise his family. Thats just a fact of life. To raise a family comfortably and still provide for retirement wifey's gonna have to get a job, that is unless you're making a great salary on your own. If you cant afford to raise children then is it so bad to hold off until your situation improves? On the last point, I trust my money split between large/mid/small cap mutual funds far more than I trust a shaky government program to provide for me later on. Stock market returns, despite all the ups and downs, are far and away better at providing a good rate of return over the long term.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 04:47 PM) I think the biggest part of the problem was during economic prosperity (and to get more votes), the government increased the benefits beyond a safety net to where people try and retire just on social security. In reality there isn't much of a difference between welfare (or whatever term you like) and social security. We are basically pooling our money and supporting people who can not support themselves. (I know there is a difference between too old to work and whatever put some one on public aid). I actually find it easier to support someone who has retired after being a productive citizen. If you think you're gonna retire on SS alone then you are consigning yourself to 2 decades or so of abject poverty. BTW. I prefer to liken SS not to welfare but the Ponzi scams of old.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 01:53 PM) If only we could trust them to invest wisely. Look at the number of personal bankruptcy in this country. Those are the ones that will hit 65 without any money. Toss in an illness, we are living longer, and boom we have problems. What I think we can agree on is SS should be a safety net only. There should be adequate planning above and beyond SS. It should not be the sole source of income. The biggest problem I see is too many people hitting retirement trying to live just on SS. Im with you on the 1st point. Americans are absolutely horrible when it comes to planning their futures. They dont wake up and realize they need to have money put aside till they're in their mid 50's and by then its damn too late. They just want to live way over their heads, pile up thousands in credit card debt then complain when they retire that they are living like animals. I say screw em. I laugh like hell when I read stories about seniors eating dog food because they arent getting enough money from their SS checks. If they had a half an ounce of foresight and started saving in their 20's, they'd be eating caviar instead. Its so easy to retire rich in this country it just blows my mind when people are still working at 80 out of necessity.