StrangeSox

Todd Collins is pretty terrible. edit: that was posted before that amazingly bad throw for the INT. Stop letting him look deep, he has no arm strength.

What a terrible decision and throw by Collins. There wasn't even an open target there.

Wow, three rushing touchdowns in the 1st quarter. Is Carolina really this bad, or did last week light a fire under the Bears offense?

They weren't playing the panthers. Damn, Hester almost had that one. Shoulda made a better move on the punter.

Haha I was just about to post that. Tea party candidates continue to be crazy: Sharon Angle claims Dearborn, MI and a non-existent Texas town are under Sharia law. And Iott's SS fetish, which at first glance you can pass off as historical interest, but a look at their website shows they completely white-wash that division and paint them in the light of a fight against communism and a fight for personal freedom (of the master race, of course!)

The Town was enjoyable.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Oct 8, 2010 -> 08:27 PM) So I have a question. Why wouldn't the insurance company either raise his rates by $75 and pay the fee themselves, or demand in order to be insured that he have the fee paid? Or did I miss that somewhere? I made a comment about that, wondering if the insurance company would deny any claim because he failed to get insurance and what the bank would do if their was a mortgage on the property. It does seem odd.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 8, 2010 -> 05:59 PM) LIke you need to show that it could have been put out with minimal or no risk to the firefighters. We are just gonna have to disagree. To me, you can't seem to get past the 'compassion, compassion, compassion' part of the argument. kinda like the Dems saying everything they do is 'for the kids' or some such tripe. I can't get past the "they didn't have to let his house burn down and are heartless bastards for doing so", you can't get past the "he didn't pay the $75! he deserved it!" Maybe that does sum up liberals v conservatives.

I'll say it again: yes, he chose poorly, but that decision could have been rectified without much difficulty and without harm to anyone else; why is this suffering and punishment necessary? What good does that serve? They let his house burn down over $75. They did not save any money by letting it burn and then preventing it from spreading (and any competent fire department should prevent fires from spreading if they are able). Again, What good does that serve? Why is this suffering and punishment necessary? If, as a society, we can prevent great harm coming to a fellow human being, a citizen and a neighbor, with minimal risk and cost to ourselves, why shouldn't we? That's a pretty weak cop-out. You'd also need to show that performing this service would open them up to liability beyond their typical operating liability.

You're still not really defending this policy or the decisions made. They could have put out the fire. They could have billed him later even if no formal mechanism exists. Instead of expanding this policy, they can get these payments covered in other manners so situations like this don't arise. What they should not have done, either as government officials or decent human beings, is let this man's house burn down and then head out there to put out the remains. The mayor could have chosen to handle this differently regardless of what the policy is. I notice the theme in your posts that this man needs to be punished for his actions. "bit him in the ass" "learn his lesson" "bill him up the wazoo so hard". Yes, he chose poorly, but that decision could have been rectified without much difficulty and without harm to anyone else; why is this suffering and punishment necessary? What good does that serve?

That they are terrible people and no good comes from this policy. It is indefensible.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 8, 2010 -> 03:20 PM) You still keep slightly missing the point. This man's property was NOT IN THAT TOWN, so therefor the town lost zero property tax revenue and property value. That town had no legal obligation to put out his fire since he did not pay taxes that went to the fire department and did not pay the fee that would have given him access to that service. You can seperate out the two. And they did. They had the resources and elected not to act.

They're stopping foreclosures because they were rushing through them and evicting people who didn't have mortgages with them. No one was taking time to actually review the documents and verify that. If that's how their going to operate, blindly signing tens of thousands of foreclosure documents as one GMAC manager/exec put it, then they need to be stopped.

Analogies to TV's or cars don't work because this is a public service. Tax revenues are hurt. Property values are hurt. The community is hurt. Someone lost their house and their pets burned alive. The town had the resources to put out a fire and the mayor chose not to. You can't divorce the moral issue here.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Oct 8, 2010 -> 11:18 AM) Because IMO, America has done almost as many horrible things as Britain.... And the same things can be said about our treatment of Native Americans as well, although it was mostly contained on the N.American continent. Obviously, the treatment of aborigines in Australia was pretty abhorrent, though. British treatment of indigenous people was pretty abhorrent no matter the continent. Colonialism, in general, is terrible for existing populations. But you're hearkening back to the great days of the British Empire as some sort of glory period or situation to strive for. While simultaneously asking for all troops on foreign soil to be withdrawn. Your arguments are not only bad, they're self-contradicting. edit: except your tea party=pity party line. The observation that it's really just pissed off typical conservatives is spot-on imo.

Therefore, he deserves to watch his house burn down over $75.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Oct 8, 2010 -> 09:00 AM) What are you going to do to provide for the millions of jobs lost when you shut down the federal government for a year, and the billions in revenue that state and local governments rely on from the federal government? Isn't this exactly what happened until Gingrich back down 16 years ago? I'm actually hoping that the GOP will overplay their hand and go for the jugular and it will backfire, because I've lost my confidence in Axelrod, Plouffe and Emanuel to deal with the messy day-to-day business of governance versus campaigning. *snipped* That only lasted a few weeks. It wasn't guaranteed for a year. The rest of your post doesn't address the many huge, glaring problems with your proposals, like functional governance, competent policy choices, realistic budgets, and protections of civil rights if the executive and scotus were to disappear overnight.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Oct 8, 2010 -> 09:11 AM) I'll leave the issue of the assassinations of Guevara, Allende, Lumumba, Castro (multiple attempts), Trujillo in the Dominican Republic...for another debate. I do think it's hard to list many countries that are DEMONSTRABLY better off for our involvement over the last 40-50 years. *snipped* What does that have to do with the validity of British Colonialism and how terrible it was for the indigenous populations?

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Oct 8, 2010 -> 08:33 AM) Perhaps the best example is a much larger version of Great Britain's empire slipping from where it was 100 years ago. Yeah, it's a damn shame British colonialism finally came to an end.

You're not going to get 75% of the country to agree on anything beyond very high-level "policies" like "we need a military". You're also asking for a completely unbalanced mob rule government. How can you enforce any laws without an executive? How do you check the validity of laws and violations of them without courts? What are you going to do to provide for the millions of jobs lost when you shut down the federal government for a year, and the billions in revenue that state and local governments rely on from the federal government? And there's the problem that a complete democracy is going to give us the best government and the best policies. That people won't vote with little or no knowledge of short, mid and long term implications of decisions. That they wouldn't be swayed by emotional rhetoric and corporate spending.

tl;dr

Republican Revisionism at its finest.

RS interviews Obama. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/209395

Glenn Beck discovers what really caused slavery.

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Oct 6, 2010 -> 09:34 AM) I think I'd even be ok with paying the annual fee - with the understanding that you'd have to pay for the service used if you don't, but this is ridiculous and a little heartless. QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 6, 2010 -> 10:29 AM) that wouldn't work, nobody would opt-in. There'd have to be a penalty larger, but one still capable of being paid while also saving the property. Or you could just do opt-out. opt-out opt-out opt-out. I think he means you'd be stuck with the bill for the operation, which would be in the thousands of dollars.