StrangeSox

My office sent out a nice message saying that if we don't feel we can safely drive into work tomorrow, we can use paid time off.

Probably would be best to just go to a local tax guy who can go over everything in detail. I can give you the name of the guy my dad handed his clients over to when he went to the IRS a couple of years ago, if you want.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 1, 2011 -> 11:09 AM) Individual purchase mandates are clearly unconstitutional. I believe the bill was written in green ink.

QUOTE (bmags @ Feb 1, 2011 -> 10:20 AM) well, if you want it to work you need the mandate. Which is why the judge struck down the entire law.

QUOTE (Controlled Chaos @ Feb 1, 2011 -> 09:30 AM) Do that little thing SS2k5 just did where it tracks who posts where? Probably see more names pop up that we're forgetting. I would love to see that as well, just to see all the people that have given up posting anymore. If you click the "replies" number for any thread, it'll tell you the number of times each person has posted in the thread. no mod powers needed. Works the same for most forum software.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 1, 2011 -> 08:48 AM) Tex has his own party.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 1, 2011 -> 08:44 AM) I said that because it sounded like Balta thinks those incentives are BS. But maybe I read it the wrong way. I think he's just trying to justify his position by showing it in the same light as things you support.

tex?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 1, 2011 -> 08:36 AM) The way I read what you're saying, you're arguing that if I give person A a gift but don't give person B a gift, then I've just "taxed" B. I don't get how that's the same. It's an incentive. It's open to everyone. It's not a mandate that forces everyone to do something. I agree with what you and NSS are saying regarding mandate vs. incentive, but I think Balta's got you on the societal benefit point. If you're going to allow things because they benefit society, then clearly universal healthcare, in some fashion or another, would be allowable and desirable.

Just give us single-payer and be done with all this bulls***.

Thankfully made it out of KC tonight!

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jan 31, 2011 -> 05:56 PM) It's a valid point though, these party threads were not intended to be the place to have multi-page arguments about obviously biased articles. The occasional "that's factually untrue and here's the proof," ok, but not knock-down drag-out arguments, that's what the rest of the forum is for. (it doesn't just happen in this thread btw, you guys are basically just talking about Balta anyway) I end up posting in this thread a lot because a) I'm a mod and B) I just post a lot in general, but you usually won't see me doing that. This I would agree with, but I'd add that I think mods should split discussions that start to become more detailed out into their own threads more frequently.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jan 31, 2011 -> 03:26 PM) A quote like that makes me sad to be in the same profession as the Judge because it shows a complete fundamental lack of understanding about the Boston Tea Party. Its not that the tax itself that people were against,it was the "NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION." Unlike the current US govt, the colonials did not have representation in the British parliament. The entire Revolutionary War was over the fact that we did not have representation in parliament and therefore the tax was unfair because the British were taxing American colonists and the colonists had no real rights or representation in the British govt. Now lets apply those facts to the current situation. The Health Care bill was passed by the US congress, which is made up of (wait for it), Representatives. Thus when the Health Care Bill was passed, there was representation for the people and thus distinguishable from the Boston Tea Party (laws created with no representation.) Poor reasoning that shows a complete and fundamental misunderstanding of our history. A much more compelling (and why this law can not be overturned judicially) would be that the US has the right to create drug/consumption laws therefore the US has the right to create health laws. If the US does not have the right to force me to buy health insurance, citing that it is for the health and welfare of society, than it doesnt have the right to stop me from injecting heroin and topping it off with some cocaine. Either the US has the right to create laws for the health and welfare of society, or it doesnt. Im fine either way, but I have a feeling the people who are adamantly against the insurance law arent going to be favorable to legalizing every illegal substance either.

I don't see the benefit in allowing factually incorrect things to remain unchallenged. I'm not talking about detailed discussions or nuanced positions, but something like the example that started this discussion where we have a misinformed-at-best statement. If Balta hadn't posted that link looking into it a bit further, or we didn't have the multi-page marathon on the $200M/day thing, how many people that read those would assume they were true and factual, have the impact future judgments, or even used as evidence of the President over-spending in the future? On the other thread, what's the benefit of letting the accusation that Wikileaks somehow harmed Ugandan democracy stand? If there's clear, undeniable evidence that a claim or statement is incorrect or a lie, it should be posted.

Sitting in a hotel in Kansas with not much to do.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 30, 2011 -> 10:06 PM) Yes

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jan 30, 2011 -> 09:15 PM) The New Year's Day blizzard. That s*** was awful. That s*** gave us an extra week of winter break. The worst blizzard I remember was 2007 down in Champaign. It was the first time they shut the University down since the 1880's or something like that. Snow was still piled up in parking lots when it was 70 in April.

Odds I'll be stuck in Kansas City tomorrow?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 30, 2011 -> 03:55 PM) More like anyone who did care quit posting. Ok? You're right, there are a lot more counter-points posted in this thread. What do you propose happens, though? No refutations allowed? QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 30, 2011 -> 03:55 PM) I got one of those follow-ups on a "Wikileaks might have caused something bad" post a few weeks ago.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 30, 2011 -> 03:51 PM) I only wish the Dem thread had this kind of follow up done on it. No one's stopping anyone.

But they didn't, that's an important point. I'm having flashbacks to the "ZOMG! Obama spending 200 TRillion a day in India!" crap/

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Jan 28, 2011 -> 02:23 PM) If a President can only have one priority at a time, we're in a lot of trouble. Here's what House Republicans are making their priority (aside from their symbolic-but-doomed repeal): redefining rape.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jan 29, 2011 -> 09:14 AM) Cloud computing is another word for dumb terminal computing...a concept that's been around from the start of the Internet. It's not new. The implementation is not new, either... It's just re-branded and called 'cloud' now. Just because people have "finally caught on" to storing video/pictures remotely doesn't make it new. I've been doing it for over a decade now. Eh, it's a little bit more than that. What they'd like to do now (and I'm not talking about the OMG! Remote Desktop! Windows crap) wasn't possible without modern bandwidth. But the idea of distributed computing certainly isn't new. Hell, I remember the folding@home project from 10 years ago.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jan 28, 2011 -> 05:00 PM) Which is the same as remote access to said storage. It's one of the base concepts of the Internet and has been from the start, they're just kept on re-branding it rather annoyingly. As Microsoft is advertising it, yeah, that's all it is. But the move towards "cloud computing" is starting, at least in some places. Even CAD companies like Dassault (CATIA, Solidworks) are investing in developing cloud-based CAD system.

I'm still waiting for all of my tax information. I'll have my IRS agent father do it for me.