bmags

Do you know how closed captioning works? You know what I find telling? Nobody affected by the tragedy or who was AT the ceremony found the crowd inappropriate. But now that I know it's appropriate, I will go to a wake tomorrow and if I see anyone laughing I will go up and tell them this isn't a comedy show! Stop laughing! I have an idea about how you should behave and this isn't fitting it!

Iphone and Evo are both fantastic phones. It doesn't have to be a zero sum game.

QUOTE (TomPickle @ Jan 14, 2011 -> 07:01 PM) Broadcast lead singer Trish Keenan passed away this morning after a two week battle with pneumonia. Just terrible news. I was sad to hear this. Tender buttons was such a great album.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jan 15, 2011 -> 12:29 AM) But that just isnt really true. You have fiscal conservatives and social conservatives, as well as fiscal liberals and social liberals. Many times their ideology should be in absolute opposition, but they stick to the party line. In fact I would say that if anything part of the problem is that there is no ideological view that can be attached to either party. Both parties mean entirely different things depending on the candidate. Yet the candidates stick together, regardless of their ideology. Sorry, but this is nonsense.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jan 14, 2011 -> 11:09 PM) What does ambition have to do with partisanship> Most of the time you are seeing the votes align right down party lines. That is partisanship. Iamshack is saying that there used to be times where Democrats and Republicans would vote on things and not just follow party lines. (I think that is where he is going). We may disagree on why this is happening, but I think we both agree that right now each side is more willing to draw the line in the sand on anything. (Look at filibusters by both Democrats and Republicans, not approving judges etc.) I've already said this is due to the two parties being much more ideologically aligned than in the past. The republicans have decided that it's good political strategy to not participate in congress when they are out of power and obstruct (as you see in parliamentary systems), and they were rewarded politically. You can make our system more able to run like a parliament with rule changes.

I guess I don't agree at all. I think we had a pretty ambitious 110th congress, and have a pretty ambitious 111th as well.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jan 14, 2011 -> 10:46 PM) Do you honestly think this is providing any substance to the conversation? I am a history major, and I am aware of events in the past that were just as bad if not worse than they are now. Should we not know better at this point? Given how much more well-educated people are today? I think it is. And if you are a history major I don't get your weird sentimentality toward a previous time. You want to know why parties could work more easily in the past? Because they had more ideological similiarities than those in their own party. Democrats were democrats in the south because republicans had governed them against their will after the civil war and this lasted a long time. Republicans were republicans in the NE for the same reasons. Now that is gone and people are democrats because they are more liberal and republicans because they are more conservative. There were no 2 people that could've disagreed more in the US political debate in 1963 than the two i mentioned, and they were in the same party.

point: strangesox.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jan 14, 2011 -> 11:32 PM) I understand the point you are trying to make, but I am not buying it. To say that unless we fear annihilation is the only way anything is ever going to get accomplished...well, I don't really buy that. you know what helped get things accomplished? Bizarre party lines created by the civil war. Those are gone.

perhaps it's because the parties are more ideologically aligned. We don't have the good ole days where Martin Luther King Jr. was in the same party as George Wallace. Oh, the good old days.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jan 14, 2011 -> 11:10 PM) So how did politics exist before they became this ridiculously partisan? Now that we have reached this point, we can never turn back? I guess it's time for me to move to Canada... people used to beat each other to death with canes on the senate floor. (house floor, maybe). California's first house session i'm pretty sure featured someone getting shot b/c they were drunk off of whiskey, or maybe that was oklahoma.

will people be praising wikileaks?!

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 14, 2011 -> 08:56 PM) In liberal speak, involving say a brown person or a black person or a woman or a gay person, this would be called stereotyping and not at all acceptable. Is palin a race?

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jan 14, 2011 -> 07:15 PM) I disagree with BMags and you here. This is called "coincidence." A really, really sad and unfortunate one, but I deem it entirely coincidence. Now if one of the other people with a target on them in that map gets attacked soon, then I will concede you might have been right. And to BMags point, I disagree. This isn't going to stop or change anything. In fact, both parties have seized on it for political gain. Instead of there being some realization that this has all gone too far, it has gone even further. I don't believe the outrage or the fabricated sadness one bit. Yes, we are all sad and frustrated that this happened. It's terrible. But now both parties are tripping over themselves to see which can be more sorry and more sad and more outraged than the other to see which can come out of this looking better. It's not making anything better. The parties are only descending into a lower form of pathetic. I've watched the news quite a bit the past week, and your characterization is pretty ridiculous. Frankly, what you're describing is not happening by anyone in leadership positions nor most of politicians i've seen interviewed.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jan 14, 2011 -> 06:54 PM) But still Sqwert, and I know you are very liberal in your beliefs, you can't honestly believe that the target map in any way could be interpreted by anyone who is at all sane in a literal manner. I mean, come on. There are limits on how far one can stretch the politicising of things... It's not about that. There are times in life where things get really heated and you say and do things, and then an event happens where you realize the other people are humans. They have families. They are a lot like you and we all need to be more respectful. These are the silver linings of tragedies, for a little bit we remember that we are a lot alike, and our differences are not life and death. This was pretty much the reaction once the hubub died down. And everyone started to realize things have gotten a bit out of control. And then someone decided to come out and make herself the victim.

Even places like techcrunch has stupid commenters

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jan 12, 2011 -> 04:10 AM) I don't think Verizon's network is going to have problems handling the extra traffic. They've been dealing with high-bandwidth smartphones for a couple of years now so they don't have to scramble to keep up the way AT&T did, they've been able to build up their network more or less in peace. Also depending on where you live your iPhone might be nerfed on Verizon's network since technically AT&T's network is about twice as fast. Although this was already true. dude, the traffic verizon has handled from their smart phones is not even close. They are going to slow quite a bit. This is good for everyone. But yeah i'd wait for 4g and LTE iphones.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jan 12, 2011 -> 06:06 PM) Im not a tax attorney, but my understanding of tax law for income is that you are responsible to pay the state where the income is earned. Thus if you work in IL, you owe IL income tax. The best example of this on a baseball site, is a baseball player. A baseball player pays taxes to many different states, because they have to pay taxes on income earned in each state. Thus when they play in IL, they earn income in IL and have to pay IL taxes. So if you are on the Florida Marlins, you still pay NY taxes, IL taxes, on a portion of your income. This sounds crazy to me. So if you are on a business trip, you must pay that state tax because you are technically earning income whilst in their territory?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 12, 2011 -> 05:36 PM) And the posts about the Dem Rep who called for shooting the governor of FL... talkingpointsmemo actually covered that.

Man, could palin use some of those millions to get her ghostwriter an editor? Come on.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 7, 2011 -> 09:00 PM) Anyone else want to agree with me that this didn't happen for them? who cares? What does it change? Even if it isn't satire, it's what it was. It's real. Huck finn is largely read in freshman year of high school. We can stop with the "george washington cut a cherry tree! And martin luther king was a great man." and start getting into the real sacrifices and uglyness that happened to show just how great the struggles actually were.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jan 7, 2011 -> 03:54 PM) Shook hands with Rahm this morning at the California Blue Line stop. How was the nub.

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Jan 6, 2011 -> 07:20 PM) So in the attempt to be the "Constitutional Congress" that angry voters sent to Washington, the House had the constitution read (minus all the nasty mentions of things like slavery and who constitutes what percentage of the person) today. And then to show how serious the new Republican led Congress is about the constitution, nobody showed up to the reading. Oh and our new Constitutionalist speaker of the house? Picked the time when the constitution was being read to hold his press conference. So I guess we can look at it this way, according to the new Republican led House, its important that Congress reads the constitution aloud. It's just not important any Congressman actually listens to it. It's like saying most of their gripes were symbolic and not substantive?!

hahaha i'm crying laughing

PBS starting FEb 1st i believe. 24 year old chicagoan Ignaty Vischnevetsky sp who writes for the reader and mubi.com was chosen out of nowhere, and i sort of know him, i thought it was pretty cool. He's definitely not ben lyons.