Rex Kickass

Where's Cross Roads?

QUOTE (Kid Gleason @ Oct 15, 2009 -> 12:02 AM) Is TMZ one of the worst things to ever grace TV??? I can't believe what kind of crap this show is. It's pretty horrific. Although, to be honest - it beats the Entertainment Tonight's who pretend that gossip is real news. At least TMZ doesn't try to take itself seriously.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 13, 2009 -> 12:55 PM) That's not where AIG lost vast sums of money (their insurance business was pretty much OK). Ummm, that's exactly where AIG lost big. A Credit Default Swap is essentially insurance.

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QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 14, 2009 -> 04:02 PM) Problem is, this attitude means you leave zero room for independents to be part of the process. Absolutely wrong, just because you aren't a chair, doesn't mean you aren't part of the process. I didn't say kick him out of the committees. I said take his gavel away. If he wants to play "grand independent" whenever it gets him more attention - especially when in the process he ends up backtracking on his own commitments made to his own constituents, he should be given the leadership role he deserves, the back bench.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Oct 14, 2009 -> 02:34 PM) Seriously though I know everyone who read that knows full well what I was saying with or without the minor oversight where I decided to stop typing. Lieberman is obnoxious as s*** but this doesn't mean he's a conservative. He's a weasel who ought to be booted from the caucus, IMHO. He most definitely doesn't deserve to have the gavel in a committee. That should be given to Democrats who run as Democrats.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 14, 2009 -> 12:51 PM) The courage would be if she was facing a tough reelection fight and still voted that way. Unlike the Dem party, you are often penalized for crossing the aisle in the GOP on key votes. Snowe may lose her ranking membership position on a key committee or two from this actually.

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Not to bring this topic back to Afghanistan but I love Fred Kaplan at Slate. Always has an interesting perspective on Foreign Policy http://www.slate.com/id/2232194/

I don't think there is a goal to conquer. I think there's a goal to flush out enough of the Taliban and enough of the terror elements left in tribal Pakistan and Afghanistan that what remains can't hurt us, the western world, or destabilize a nuclear Pakistan for at least a few years.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 13, 2009 -> 11:08 AM) Dude - its a solid red background. And someone made the leap to the Chinese flag from there? Maybe you could just set up a bot to auto-post RSS feeds from the DNC and ObamaCo in here, and save yourself some time. The walking Michael Steele made me laugh. My computer doesn't have a lot of memory so it sorta looked like someone was stop motion animating a shrinky dink across my screen.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Oct 9, 2009 -> 03:28 PM) The Arena league and XFl arent even close in comparison, the AFL was around for 21 years before their little bankruptcy problem, and again is coming back after a little "remodeling". I thought the Arena Football League was done done.

QUOTE (Soxy @ Oct 13, 2009 -> 09:23 AM) Wait, wait back up--there are boxes WITHOUT dicks in them? I know, I had no idea either. This totally changes my Christmas shopping plans.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 12, 2009 -> 05:21 PM) All the above are true. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that the CTA has inefficiencies, but the CTA is actually funded less per track mile than most systems in other cities, and its an older system with higher maintenance needs. The CTA is only partially to blame here. The larger problem is the completely bizarre mentality about transportation funding, where a state will spend billions on roads without any revenue expectations, but balk at spending $100M on mass transit which asks its users to pay fares. Its idiotic in the extreme, and other countries with mass transit systems do it in a more sane way. I am OK with the CTA raising fares, but I would like to see the state and federal government take a broader look at transportation funding, and try to level the playing field a bit. This is part of the reason this country has such an oil use problem - the addiction to cars. There is so much externalized cost to driving our cars around that are not being charged to the driver, and instead are being paid by all of us by way of immense taxation and indirect costs due to pollution and higher gas prices. This is consistently one of the most frustrating things about modern politics, for me. The whole philosophy is absurd. The situation in Chicago has a similarity with the mess New York has with the MTA. Both are hamstrung by systemic funding issues that they have no control over. In the case of Chicago, its underfunded in comparison to funding for transit development in collar counties, despite a much larger ridership base and a much higher maintenance need and hamstrung with an RTA created IIRC to handle commuter railroads which were threatening to shut down throughout the 70s and 80s. In New York, the MTA has to issue bonds for capital improvement. Unlike any other public infrastructure bond issue, funds used to run and maintain the system it funds has to be diverted to interest repayment. When the CTA or any other transit authority issues a bond, the city or the state does the repayment. It does not have to repay the bond out of its own budget. As a result, both systems require users to pay a much greater share of the cost per mile than the average transit system, both in the US or the rest of the world.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Oct 12, 2009 -> 04:38 PM) WORST.PUBLIC.TRANSIT.EVER Is there anything run more incompetently? LINK The CTA has tons of systemic funding issues. If I recall correctly, they have a very old system that they haven't had the budget to maintain because funding from Springfield had been disproportionately gone to PACE and METRA from the RTA instead of the CTA, despite the fact that by and large PACE and METRA operate as feeders for the CTA system. If you really wanted to know the best reason for Chicago to have gotten the olympics - it would have been Chicago and Illinois would have basically been forced to fix the CTA.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Oct 8, 2009 -> 11:17 PM) I don't think it was an observation about what laws were being broken, as you mentioned at the end, it was just picking our worst way of passing the death penalty and the worst way of that time. The cross didn't become the symbol of Christianity until the religion itself started to get militarized. The fish is the original symbol of Christianity IIRC. BTW: I expect the supreme court to completely sidestep the greater issue and rule that the land swap is an acceptable solution for the issue in question.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 2, 2009 -> 06:16 PM) He has to pin George Costanza's dad? To be diverse, Christmas has been replaced by Festivus.

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ Oct 2, 2009 -> 04:21 PM) Yes, Tony Blair will be working directly with the Minister of Magic. That's of course assuming he masters the required feats of strength.

Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist ® hearts a public option. Makes you almost forgive the kitten torturing. http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/10/02...id-vote-for-it/

I was really hoping, when the election happened... that politics would get boring again. And it wouldn't be all screaming and outrage all the time. I don't know if the media, which seems to need it to survive these days, will allow it.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 2, 2009 -> 12:36 PM) If I am nothing else, I am honest. I can criticize who I like when they are wrong, and give credit to those I don't like when they are right. Barack Obama did the right thing by going to Switzerland. It was Denmark. and I was just kidding

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 2, 2009 -> 12:33 PM) I would have been madder if he didn't go and we won. The President should be the nations biggest cheerleader, especially when an event is going to happen in his backyard. The results should be damned. I am very happy Obama went. I think that's the first time you've ever used the words "I am happy" and Obama in the same sentence. Nice!

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ Oct 2, 2009 -> 12:30 PM) Bulls***, the President answers to know one. If Chicago really was pushing the issue they could have talked to Rahm about it. Obama wanted this, he fought for it, in the end, he failed for it. The President answers to the people who get him elected. Especially if he wants to get elected again.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 2, 2009 -> 12:29 PM) Why would Obama not want to go? I'd like to hear that reasoning. In case what happened happens. It was a pretty unprecedented step for the US. But I think, a good one nonetheless. Say what you want about where I stand on the issue, but I love the idea of a high ranking government official try to win support for an initiative that would bring a lot of new jobs to the US in a time where employment is such a big issue. And I think I'd like that no matter who was in office.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 2, 2009 -> 12:14 PM) Here is the arrogant American in me... We also fund a lot of the games. The IOC doesn't exist if it isn't for all of those Americans they now seem to hate. True, also hosted the only profitable Olympics in modern history too.