StrangeSox

the Ivy League is an abnormal case; they've had a reputation of being the best-of-the-best academically since before there was collegiate sports, and now they're pretty much irrelevant in sports. Comparing them to the SEC or the Big 10 athletics conferences just doesn't make sense imo. I don't think a Northwestern degree would be devalued if the Big 10 took in Phoenix University. Or, if it really would, that's a good argument for abolishing college athletics.

QUOTE (PlaySumFnJurny @ Aug 19, 2011 -> 07:32 AM) That's a bit of a snobby cliche. Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, George Jones, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson all came after. Cash and Jennings both owned. I wasn't being serious aside from agreeing that modern country is pretty awful imo.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Aug 18, 2011 -> 07:29 PM) Just so you guys know, Kenny Chesney, Toby Keith, Tim McGraw, that guy from Australia, Sugarland, etc. are completely watered down Country. Those first three USED to be awesome, but they all went more pop. There's a lot of chick country out there now. Anything after Hank Williams is garbage

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Aug 18, 2011 -> 12:32 PM) http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.asp...14_CUTLIN497125 AFFIRMATIVE ACTION!!!

Perry actively questioned evolution on the campaign trail and claimed that Texas teaches both creationism and evolution and that children should be "smart enough to figure out which one's right" (paraphrasing). lol.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 18, 2011 -> 12:06 PM) Most of the states that have these large expanses of wilderness already allow for that. But most people still don't carry out there, for a variety of reasons. I've had people in our groups carry, on occasion, but it is rare. Furthermore, in some of those areas (particularly national parks), firearms are specifically prohibited. Didn't the restriction on firearms in national parks get lifted a few years back?

I'm in Woodridge and there's a ton of trees around my house.

I notice balta did not deny that he's

I find idiots like Schultz or anyone I've had the brief displeasure of hearing on a democrat radio station so much more annoying than Hannity, Limbaugh, etc. You don't have to be self-indulgently nerdy like NPR or PBS, but you don't need to make terrible arguments that make no sense and only serve to cheerlead in order to make a point.

Balta's rolling in the dough, we all know it. Ed Schultz is terrible and should be fired for being the really, really bad "liberal" version of Limbaugh.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 16, 2011 -> 03:23 PM) I have 3, but only two that are plugged in. Any good HDTV antennas you could recommend? The amplified RCA one I have doesn't pick up CBS at all.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Aug 16, 2011 -> 11:08 AM) Motorola is a terribly run company from what I've heard. One of my coworker's girlfriend worked there and they promised her coming in out of undergrad that they would pay for her MBA, 3 years later they kept denying to do any such thing. She left for Wrigley. My college roommate left after two years, my dad left after 15 recently. They just don't know what they're doing.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 16, 2011 -> 03:31 PM) Yeah, now that quote I do see an equivalence with. Neither that quote nor Perry's was Presidential or appropriate. Absolutely. And it's not the "he'd be heckled and harassed in Texas" part that bothers me, it's more if he truly, honestly believes that Bernanke's actions have been purely political moves to help Obama and more importantly that they're "nearly treasonous."

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 16, 2011 -> 02:11 PM) Equal in what? It's the same action with the same intent. The message doesn't matter. I'm just going to go ahead and disagree that the actual rhetoric used, in this case calling the actions of the fed "nearly treasonous," doesn't matter. Not all political speech is equally benign and equally malicious.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 16, 2011 -> 02:29 PM) I mean, it clearly sounds bad but it's very vague. That could be anything from tarring and feathering him to booing him like Thome when he comes to Cleveland. Right, he's explicitly saying he'll be treated badly, but badly doesn't have to be defined as violent.

QUOTE (vandy125 @ Aug 16, 2011 -> 02:00 PM) Try not to come back with some snide retort, but aren't we jumping to conclusions a bit there? Since when does this imply violence? That can mean an awful lot of different things and you are jumping to the conclusion that it equals violence. I honestly haven't made up my mind on who I would vote for. So, don't consider this a backing of Perry. you're right.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 16, 2011 -> 02:00 PM) Never said they were equal, just pointing out it was done for the same purpose. If they're not equal, it doesn't matter.

Comparing an arbitrary selection of differing municipalities (?) in said states is not getting inside the data or getting past bias or misleading statements. If anything, it's even more egregious cherry-picking, but the worst part is that the cherry-picked data doesn't actually support his conclusion at all. It doesn't dispute it, it is simply irrelevant. You cannot conclude that the claim that most of Texas's job growth is low-wage is a "myth" by looking at the average wages in Harris County and comparing them to part of NY, NY and to Boston.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 16, 2011 -> 01:13 PM) He's an orator getting his crowd amped up. You know, like when Obama promised change. "change" =/= accusing the fed chair of treason and implying he'd face violence if he came to Texas.

I never said they were random blue states. They were chosen as states with comparable statistics to Texas. Again, the point here is to examine Texas's economic policies, whether they result in the "miracle" of job growth, what sort of jobs are being grown and if those economic policies are a necessary condition to obtain similar unemployment rates. Showing that some municipalities* in Texas have comparable wages and lower COL to some municipalities* in NY state and Massachusetts doesn't address that. The argument isn't well laid-out because, again, the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises. You cannot conclude that the claim that most of Texas's job growth is low-wage is a "myth" by looking at the average wages in Harris County and comparing them to part of NY, NY and to Boston. That information simply cannot tell you what the wages of the jobs Texas is adding are. You need to compare wage trends for that. Picking a small subset of data set and comparing it to another small subset of another data set doesn't tell you anything about the validity of comparing the two complete data sets and if one if "garbage" or not. What you've said here is that "sure, the numbers look great for PK if you focus on the comparison he's actually making (state v state), but if you look at an arbitrarily chosen subset of that data, well!" Also, he doesn't exactly refute PK's claim that Texas has an usually high uninsured rate--instead, he points out that Texas has a large Mexican immigrant population, many of them illegal and most working low-wage, low-benefit jobs. Which, uh, was sort of PK's point: yeah, Texas is adding jobs, but those jobs suck. At the end of the article, the author even says "well even if Krugman is right and all these jobs really are s***ty, low-wage jobs with little or no benefits, hey it's better than not working at all!" That seems to me at least, to be a partial admission that Texas is adding a lot of crappy jobs but that its better than adding no jobs. I'm focusing on the parts of the article that are blindly, glaringly nonsensical: completely illogical arguments and comparisons. This is an interesting quibble here because it seems that's essentially what Williamson is doing: making off-base comparisons with minor parts of Krugman's article. *what's a good catch-all category for the category of counties, cities, and neighborhoods? does such a category even exist?

I want to add Krugman could still very well be wrong here, but that article doesn't make a cogent case for it.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 16, 2011 -> 10:56 AM) The other ones are randomly chosen to try to make his article look as good as possible, just like the author did in response. They weren't randomly chosen. They were chosen because, yeah, they make Krugman's point that you don't need a business environment like Texas in order to have comparable unemployment rates; that can be achieved in liberal tax-crazy bastions like NY and MA. His argument isn't that every blue state is better than Texas. Unless this author's goal was to chose three different civil levels (county, city, neighborhood) in a satirical attack on Krugman choosing these states and wasn't actually trying to make the argument laid out in the article about "McJobs," then it makes no sense at all. It's not misleading or incorrect for Krugman not to analyze city-by-county-by-neighborhood each civil level in each state in a discussion on state-level policies and economics. You cannot claim that "McJobs" is a myth by comparing Houston, Brooklyn and Boston current average wages and COL. It just doesn't make any sense.

Well, Texas is the obvious one because that's what the article is about. The other would be "states that are performing comparably to Texas but are often denigrated as liberal bastions of anti-business satanism where growth is impossible." You can point to counter-examples like California. You could do the same average-wage vs. cost-of-living analysis at the state level, since that's what the contention is. Maybe the "McJobs" claim really is a myth, and Texas' average wages and average benefits/health insurance coverage rates haven't plummeted as they would if all this growth really is low-wage. What doesn't make sense is comparing a county in Texas to a neighborhood in New York and city in Massachusetts in a discussion over state unemployment and job growth levels. Absent from the article is any data showing that Houston, Brooklyn and Boston are reasonable proxies for Texas, New York (state) and Massachusetts in terms of employment, wages and job growth. How do we know from this article that Houston hasn't been completely stagnant and thus would be immune to the "McJobs" effect? We don't, and his argument makes no sense. "McJobs driving growth in Texas is a myth" does not follow from "Harris county, Brooklyn and Boston currently have comparable average wages while Harris has a lower cost-of-living."