StrangeSox

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 7, 2009 -> 11:20 AM) Frankly, I dunno if he could. Have you ever heard a serious policy discussion from him? Not just on his radio show, but in private speeches, appearances, writings, etc.? How about "he could if he tried"? Doing what he does makes him a rich man, so there's no motivation to actually make a coherent, well-supported argument.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jul 7, 2009 -> 08:51 AM) Take the decisions out of the employers hands and give it back to the individual. That would help immensely. I better see a concurrent bump in pay.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jul 6, 2009 -> 09:53 PM) There is absolutely no way that we do not have MASSIVE wait times. There's too much of a shortage CURRENTLY - let alone when we "flood the system" (right) with all these new people (which they admit ALREADY that they can't get insured until past 2012 anyway!!!!). So why are they doing this again? To get uninsured people on the insurance plans? Riiiiiiiiiiight. Oh, to control costs? Yea, because they've done SO well on Medicare. The only way they get costs in line to Medicare (again, they admit this) is to cut the s*** out of the services offered. But it doesn't matter, they're all old and going to die anyway, so f*** 'em, who needs 'em? Let's get the AMA to stop artificially limiting the supply of doctors then.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Jul 6, 2009 -> 03:44 PM) Or we could let them deteriorate and collapse with cars on it and killing people. up to you. I support the infrastructure part of the AR&RA 100%. I just hate that every single road I drive on (355, 88, 294, Touhy, 75th street in Naperville, 290, Devon in Elk Grove, soon the Throndale exit on 355) is under construction right now. Makes it a big PITA. In other words, it was a joke

Touhy Ave. in Des Plaines and the Lemont State St. bridge are both being repaired thanks to AR&RA. I think the slogan of "putting Americans back to work" should be "making Americans late for work"

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 6, 2009 -> 11:03 AM) If it wasn't for the damage that the world economies would take due to the loss of Seoul and the sucking up of oil by the military, I could be game for a war-as-stimulus right now. Especially since my knees are now so bad that no one would ever draft me. War-as-stimulus is just a broken-window fallacy, though. Better to spend that money on tractors instead of tanks.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 6, 2009 -> 11:41 AM) In looking at the parallel with car insurance, you need to decide if health care is a right or a privilege. Driving is of course a privilege, and so the state or federal government is well within its right to levy rules and protections such as requiring car insurance. Using that logic, requiring health insurance seems logical and understandable as well. EXCEPT ONE MAJOR PROBLEM. If you choose not to drive, you don't need car insurance, which of course makes sense. With health insurance, you wouldn't have that option. So let's break that part down. Virtually everyone uses health care in their lives - but it is not truly everyone. There are Christian Scientists who refuse such things, for example, but they are they very small minority. So how similar is it to car insurance, really? Can we use it as a parallel example? I personally would be OK with a requirement to have health insurance of some kind, getting my choice of whatever private or public options are available to me. I'm also OK with the federal government providing some subsidy to their base level insurance plan, as a backstop for those who get into dire situations, or just plain can't afford it. But they too would still need to pay into it. Should you allow them to opt out on religious grounds?

1) Learn how to sail 2) Sail around the world and eventually get involved in charity work. Set up a foundation/ organization.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jul 3, 2009 -> 05:23 PM) Although I'm sure many don't realize it, today is a good day to be a Republican. She is popular among the base but she lost virtually all her support with independents. Given that the GOP hasn't really developed a coherent strategy to broaden their base other than banking on Obamas failure, she very well may have gotten the nomination and gotten destroyed in the general (its not easy to take down an incumbent unless he is really unpopular). http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/...0KEjkSAN0&D Among Republicans, 73 percent view Palin favorably, compared with 57 percent for Romney, 55 percent for Gingrich and 28 percent for Steele, who is still not widely known.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 3, 2009 -> 05:09 PM) Of course, she could just seriously be tired of the national spotlight on her and her family and decided to get out of the way rather than continue to be a punchline. I'll accept this if she withdraws quickly and quietly from the national spotlight.

Spin making the rounds: She is resigning because: Basically, the line is that she's quitting because the AK Democrats and the media were too mean to her.

QUOTE (maggsmaggs @ Jul 3, 2009 -> 04:27 PM) Cubs win on a horrible call by the ump. 3-2 to Fox with bases loaded, the Brewers pitcher lays right down the heart of the plate, belt high and it's called a ball. You can't get much more of the plate than that. Brutal call. The MLB needs a mechanism to fine umpires for sucking at their jobs.

Where the hell was that last pitch?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 3, 2009 -> 03:31 PM) More and more candidates are trying it. John Edwards comes to mind right away, though most have just not run for re-election. I think there's a distinct difference between the two. One is moving on to something new, the other is quitting an elected position in the middle of your term. Doesn't it set up easy "will she just quit the presidency half way through if it gets too hard?" rhetoric from her opponents?

Bill Kristol on Fox is trying to spin this into a positive for her. Shrewd political move and all. "Just saw the opening of the 2012 campaign" Wouldn't it be incredibly easy to beat her over the head for abandoning her elected post?

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jul 3, 2009 -> 11:52 AM) I wonder if Palin can still ball? Palin vs. Obama on the court would be a pretty sweet publicity stunt if she could. This is how the next election should be decided.

I have one socket that pops CFL's in about a week, so that one is back to incandescent. The rest have been CFL's for years. Definitely reduced the electricity bill. For most of winter, fees and taxes make up a large part of our bill than actual electricity use.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jul 2, 2009 -> 02:38 PM) Not exactly. I can't get a read on him. He wants to confront al-Qaida but how? I guess I have to read one of his books. It's all a clever marketing ploy

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jul 2, 2009 -> 01:34 PM) Yeah, he's one of the ones that sees Islamic militancy as a threat that's going to get worse and worse and that we need to do something about it. Which is kind of ironic since he also criticizes our foreign policy and says that it feeds into their propaganda as an unintended consequence. So I'm not sure what exactly he'd want us to do, it's my opinion that whenever we leave Iraq (whenever that is) that it's something that's an intelligence and special operations problem that shouldn't involve a whole lot of conventional military if it can be avoided. It seems like he's just an isolationist. Bring everyone home and our troubles will go away.

Sheuer explains his comments.

Section 131 Row 22 earlier this year against the A's. It was early June and game time temp was about 48*.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jun 29, 2009 -> 04:11 PM) Especially since he'll probably be staying at a country club type facility. Not likely. They had a story on NPR this morning. Your location is based on "points," age, health, type of crime, etc. but also sentence length. His 150 year sentence wipes out all of those. It seems the best he can hope for is medium-security some time down the road. He might end up in solitary at a Super Max. for his own safety. This won't be an easy sentence for him. edit: here's a link http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...oryId=106193972

What sort of influence does the makeup of Congress have on the CBO? I know its ideally completely non-partisan, but... edit: typo

Probably just any number of "experts" who do nothing but give opinions on TV shows. It was a while ago, but someone here (Balta?) posted some interesting stuff on that. There's even seminars you can take to be a pundit without any real expertise or knowledge. edit: what Balta said. Seems weird for him to say that, as everything on his wiki page indicates that he's left-of-center and not exactly a booga booga guy. I'd like some more context for that quote, but then I'd have to watch Glenn Beck.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 1, 2009 -> 10:50 AM) Clue One that the article is disingenuine, and engineered to make people believe something that isn't true. PHILOSOPHY DERAIL I think it goes deeper than that. It goes to an epistemological level. A study says "this is so" or an expert says "this is so", therefore it is so. But, as you know, that's not how scientific knowledge operates. Relativity isn't correct because Einstein said so but because his data and methods said so. The weight of his statements comes from the evidence, not from his name. However, I don't think that's how a lot of people operate--reliance on some authority to dictate what is true makes it true, so they don't even see the problem of saying "Study X says Y is so" without at least providing the study. The study said it, they agree with the conclusions (a priori, of course), therefore its fact. This view is just my own poorly thought out philosophy. /PHILOSOPHY DERAIL