StrangeSox

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 13, 2015 -> 10:31 AM) Closed June 9th, have been painting seemingly every day for a month, and we finally have 2 coats on the master bedroom, hallway, entryway, living room, dining room, family room and sunroom. So we can move in. I also put fresh paint on the ceilings. Man, painting entire interior = so much harder than one bedroom You have no idea how much longer it is to paint trim/windows until you start on it. Such a treat when you can actually start rolling on the walls. One benefit of having a father-in-law who was a professional painter for 35 years is that he'll paint all of the "hard" stuff and can paint an entire room in an hour or two from cracking open the can to tools cleaned. He can cut perfect lines against ceilings etc. with just a couple of brush strokes.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 3, 2016 -> 08:42 AM) For my two cents, with student interest rates being much lower than consumer debt AND it being tax deductible, it would be one of the last things I would pay off. If you have credit cards, pay those first. If you have a car loan, pay that next. Then pay your student loan, and last of all mortgage. I think the counter-point to that would be that those other debts can much more easily be discharged in a bankruptcy or assets sold to cover it (sell your house to pay mortgage, sell your car to pay loan or at least some of it) if it ever came to that, but student loan debt can hang around your neck forever. I'd still agree with any high interest debt first (e.g. credit cards), but after that I might prioritize student loans over car loans. Hopefully having to even worry about bankruptcy is a really low probability risk, but still something to consider.

Rand Paul is out. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rand...s-2016-campaign

Not sure what exactly happened. I called and set up internet at my new house last Tuesday with the "self-install" option because I already had my own modem and the previous owners had Comcast. Plugged the modem in, called to set up the account, had it all activated in about 10 minutes. Worked great for a week. Then about midday yesterday, I got a voicemail from Comcast saying my service ticket was being cancelled because I had selected the self-install option so no service was needed. Weird, I hadn't made any service calls, so I just ignored it. I got home and of course the internet doesn't work, it just kicks me to the auto activation page. That doesn't work, so I call and get transferred to their moving services line. The lady there was nice and helpful, but some of her remarks included "huh, I've never seen that before" and "I don't know why they would deactivate an account like this, hold on while I contact our internal help desk [five minutes of hold]." She supposedly got it all straightened out and then transferred me to account activation to get my modem registered. This guy was completely useless and after trying to to activate twice, told me I needed to go to my local Comcast office. Which, of course, is like 25 minutes away and only open 9-5 during weekdays. No idea what that office is going to be able to do that they couldn't do over the phone/remotely, and of course I'll have no way of verifying that everything's functional when I leave that office. Google fiber can't come fast enough. edit: I hate getting mad at CSRs because I know how s***ty of a job that can be (please don't yell at Southwest phone people, you may be yelling at my mom!) and really, it's not their fault that Comcast is such a pile of garbage company with underpaid and usually incompetent technicians.

Any decent non Comcast options for Internet? Man did they piss me off tonight.

QUOTE (Tony @ Feb 2, 2016 -> 12:42 AM) I decided to watch it. That was a huge mistake. Did you actually watch that video? Aside from raises taxes on the 1%, when did they even bring up what Sanders is standing for? Fox News continues to use the word "socialism" because people don't understand it and are scared by it, it's a buzz word. What did they actually say in that video? What did you take from it? It's incredible that in 6 and a half minutes, they could actually say nothing. Socialist media? REALLY?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 2, 2016 -> 01:58 PM) A lot of time? No, but some time? Yes. We just had an election won by 5 electoral votes, so they're important. 600k votes out of 115 million is nothing. In 2000, nobody paid any attention to the small states. They are rarely if ever in play, and when they are, it's still much more effective to spend your money on states like Florida or Ohio. Point to some actual historical examples of people bothering to campaign in low population states. edit: for that matter, why is it so important that we try to design a system that has different states specifically campaigned for rather than ensuring that every single eligible citizen has exactly the same voting power? The House also overrepresents small population states. Just because they designed it a certain way doesn't mean it's a good design, either. The bottom 20 states get 40 Senate seats and still don't have the population of California. It maybe made sense as a compromise when states were still quasi-nations and forming the Constitution, but it doesn't make much sense in 2016. And as I said, it also skews the Presidential voting powers of each state. It's silly that someone living in Wyoming has roughly 5x more say in who is President than someone in California or New York. There's zero incentive to campaign there now, and there's no incentive to campaign to 10 million people living in metro Chicago, or the tens of millions living in and around NYC, LA, SF.* If we had a popular vote and someone came along and proposed the EC, everybody would wonder why you'd ever do something like that. *not entirely true, lots of campaigning for donations, but not so much campaigning for votes like you see in contested states. Still leaves rural areas high and dry.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 2, 2016 -> 12:32 PM) They absolutely knew better, they just paid enough politicians and people to deny it. It was literally killing people in the 1920s and it took until the 1980s to get rid of it. And there's pretty strong correlation to the crime waves of the 70's and 80's. So much unnecessary human suffering.

QUOTE (bmags @ Feb 2, 2016 -> 09:15 AM) Just because something is obscure doesn't make it good, it just makes it novel. The caucuses are ridiculous which is why we of course give them so much prominence. Something to keep in the mind is that the real results and awarding of the Iowa delegates doesn't happen for months still, and things can and do change at the "county caucuses." These first caucuses are to elect delegates to the county caucuses, and then these county caucuses meet in June to actually award the state delegates to various candidates. Uncommitted delegates and delegates from other candidates (e.g. O'Malley) who drop out of the race can switch their vote at any time. For example, in 2012 Rick Santorum "won" in January but got zero delegates at the convention. Mitt Romney finished 0.03% behind Santurum and got 6 delegates at the RNC. Ron Paul came in 3rd place on January 3rd. However, his campaign managed to work the rules of the system, and he was awarded 22 out of 28 delegates at the RNC. What an incredibly stupid system. I have no idea why anyone pays attention to Iowa's nonsense.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 2, 2016 -> 10:19 AM) lolololol I've been arrested for an armed takeover of a federal facility. I will send a certified letter indicating that the facility is in fact mine and you bad cops should get out of my way. This is REALLY going to help his defense at trial, haha. Or maybe he's going for an insanity defense? I'd imagine at least one of the trials from this goes into full-blown "GOLD FRINGED FLAG ADMIRALTY COURT!" pro se land. A judge in Canada had a pretty thorough and entertaining ruling on these sorts of people a few years back. For whatever reason, these Sovereign Citizens and "Freemen of the Land" are common enough in the US, Canada and the UK. Not sure how often it happens in non-English countries.

QUOTE (bmags @ Feb 2, 2016 -> 10:47 AM) Really love this group writing to a democratic-government owned property that the land has been taken over by the people. Also "we the people of Harney County" I don't think a single militant was from Harney, most aren't even from Oregon, and Harney has consistently told them to gtfo.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 2, 2016 -> 10:31 AM) You're right, but this is all cyclical. It might not be this way in 20 years or 50 years. Illinois could become a GOP stronghold. Florida and Ohio can become locks for Democrats. Who knows what can happen going forward. But nobody is ever going to waste time and money on Wyoming's 3 EV's. Sparsely populated states already are overrepresented in the Senate and to a lesser extent the House. There's no reason to give them yet another unnecessary advantage in Presidential elections as well. The bottom 15 states combined match the population of Ohio, but they have 40 EV's whereas Ohio has 18. A NPV means that downstate voters in Illinois get just as much of a say as Chicago voters.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 2, 2016 -> 10:00 AM) Yeah but that's benefit of the EC. You have 10-15 states that collectively don't have the population of the top 3, so why would politicians waste their time campaigning in those sparsely populated states? They wouldn't. They'd focus on California, Texas, New York, etc. They already don't focus any of their time on those states because 1) they're generally very safe states for one party or the other and 2) still barely have any electoral votes. They only focus on the "swing states" that conceivably could go either way. Look at the bottom 15 states: Wyoming-safe R Vermont-safe D Alaska-safe R North Dakota-safe R South Dakota-safe R Delaware-safe D Montana-safe R Rhode Island-safe D Maine-safe D New Hampshire-sort of a tossup, but only has 4 EV's. lots of attention due to being the second state in the nomination process, but otherwise largely ignored. Hawaii-safe D Idaho-safe R West Virginia-safe R lately, maybe less so if it's a white Democrat, but still only 5 EV's Nebraska-safe R New Mexico-safe D lately, still only five EV's Nevada-the first one that might be a more contested state? Went Obama twice, Clinton twice and R for all other elections back to 1980. Now compare that to the "Swing states" people actually bother campaigning in: 3 Florida 6 Pennsylvania 7 Ohio 9 North Carolina 10 Michigan 12 Virginia 22 Colorado So the EC doesn't actually mean anyone bothers to pay attention to the smaller states, but it does mean that an overwhelming majority of the population gets ignored for a handful of large-mid states that happen to be polling close in that election cycle. I have no problem with Presidential candidates focusing their attention on our most populous states that represent a wide variety of people and industry rather than what we get now.

I think what Bernie supporters are hoping for is what happened in 2008. Going into the Iowa caucuses, Obama wasn't necessarily seen as a "serious" candidate, and Hillary had the votes "locked up" in many states, including the black vote. Once Obama made a couple of strong showings, though, things started to really shift in his favor. It also helped that Clinton's campaign apparently didn't understand how delegates were actually awarded. But Obama won Iowa by 8 points in 2008 and Clinton finished 3rd. Bernie's going to crush it in NH, but I think Clinton has this locked up by Super Tuesday. Your point about choosing the nominee heavily on states the party won't even win in the general is another mark against the Electoral College in my opinion. If we had a national popular vote, those Democratic votes in South Carolina and the Republican votes in Illinois would still matter.

More Legal Magic Words, this time from Cliven Bundy.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Feb 1, 2016 -> 09:10 PM) It's actually a good lesson in civics and government...I remember being in high school when we tried to lead a Jesse Jackson block in 1988 but we had to give way to Dukakis because you had to get that 15% threshold or join another candidate (basically the same challenge an O'Malley supporter faced coming into tonight). But that was a very crowded field, and much deeper. Nah it's dumb, needlessly complex, and disenfranchises anyone who can't make it to a physical location at a specific time on a specific day for an extended period of dealing with people trying to badger you on how to vote. And then it literally comes down to flipping a coin. Just hold a secret ballot primary.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Feb 1, 2016 -> 07:09 PM) Only the 'establishment' types that are afraid that he will end THEIR opportunities for graft as well. Both parties are for big government, the difference is just what part is big and what isn't. Lol

Caucuses are dumb, just hold a vote.

Caucus Caucus Caucus!

An alternative to guaranteed employment would be a Universal Basic Income. It's an idea that's been around for a long time, has support from somewhat of a wide ideological range, and has been implemented in one form or another in multiple places. Alaska's Permanent Fund is sort of like a basic income, as is the Earned Income Tax Credit (and negative income taxes in general). Canada conducted a UBI experiment in the 70's. The results were positive, but it was limited to a single city for a short period. Democracy in the workplace is related but a separate concept. The John Lewis Partnership in the UK is an employee-owned-and-controlled company, unions can give some form of workplace democracy, etc.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 29, 2016 -> 04:18 PM) I think you are close to convincing Greg. nah it'll be some random USA Today op-ed and then he'll flip positions completely like he's done with just about every GOP candidate so far

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jan 29, 2016 -> 01:08 PM) How long can people blame the messenger on this? Hillary finally is going down over this IMO. How many times have bulls*** rumors been leaked by "sources close to the investigation" that lead to a media s***storm that had to be retracted once the real story came out? Looking at google, this story first broke ten days ago and the story published today that you linked to doesn't really contain any new information. Clinton is still not the subject of any sort of criminal investigation, and nobody seems to care much about this latest development because it doesn't seem materially different from the story that came out last summer about the FBI investigating emails that potentially contained material that may or may not have been classified at the time.

probably more 100% bulls*** leaks from House Republican staffers.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 29, 2016 -> 07:56 AM) I have to say, I really had my doubts about the way the FBI and OSP were handling this, but they seem to have done quite well. Happily wrong on this one. They may or may not have bungled things in the beginning, but man they sure executed it damn near perfectly at the end so far. The one death appears to be a suicide-by-cop. Hopefully the four remaining people at the refuge give up peacefully shortly.

There were some rumors/conspiracy theories brewing that claimed Levoy Finnicum was shot while surrendering and complying with the officers' requests, including claims from occupants of the other car (who it turns out had no way of seeing the shooting) and of an 18 yo passenger in Finnicum's car who claimed the FBI shot him and teh car 100 times (they didn't). Finnicum evades the initial roadblock where Ammon Bundy was stopped and continues driving up the road, evading another spike strip. When he encounters the second roadblock, he attempts to drive around it at high speed. An FBI agent shoots at the vehicle as he's attempting to ram/evade this second roadblock. He almost hits an FBI or OSP officer before plowing into the snow bank. He exits the vehicle with his hands up, but he reaches for his pocket twice before he's shot. His pocket contained a loaded handgun, and he had said at some point during the occupation that he'd rather die than go to jail. edit: the shooting starts at about 5:45. If you watch it, you will see somebody killed, but it is not gory or anything.