StrangeSox

QUOTE (ptatc @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 12:55 PM) Got it. That makes more sense. It was everyone who borrowed more than they should have regardless of current income. Is that more accurate? Again in a simplistic manner. That, plus the securitization/"risk-spreading" stuff that Y2HH covered. Though I might frame it as banks lending more than they should have as they're supposed to be the financial professionals. Both sides have to sign the papers.

Just to add to that a bit, the banks and mortgage brokers would also knowingly and willingly lie on the paperwork or encourage the borrow to lie, or they'd simply hand out money with no verification whatsoever in NINJA loans. But the big investment banks also started to believe in their own MBS snake-oil and held on to a later of the paper themselves. Or maybe they knew it was garbage but didn't care because they were making huge fortunes every year and knew that, even when it all hit the fan, they'd still be walking away with millions.

While not everyone might want to go to college, I don't think "how much money your parents have" is one of the hurdles they should have to clear if they want to.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 10:10 AM) Isn't this based on the fact that people who really need it have a greater risk of not paying it back? Wasn't this was one of the primary factors of the housing crash. Too many people who were at too great of a risk of not paying it back were loaned too much money. Or is this simplifying it too much? Depending on how you read your first sentence with the third, not exactly. There have been numerous studies looking into the causes, trends, etc. and there really isn't much evidence poorer borrowers being the primary cause. The third sentence in isolation is more less or correct in that too many people at too great of a risk of not paying it back were loaned too much money, but what this most recent study found is that people were overextending themselves across the income scale: http://www.vox.com/2015/1/26/7897035/poor-...crisis-mortgage and then of course what could have been a relatively isolated mortgage default problem was hugely amplified by all sorts of "AAA rated" mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps. So, generally speaking, yes, the root of the problem was banks/mortgage brokers telling people they could take out loans much larger than they could actually afford because the banks were just going to securitize or sell those mortgages right away anyway and people taking these loans that the banks assured them they were qualified for. But if by "those who really need it" you mean people with lower incomes, then no, they weren't more of a cause than any other income group.

He'd clearly rather not go at all and has been fined for taking that road in the past, and taped segments are a bit different from unscripted press conferences.

Right, all the student loan reform in the world won't really help the problem of 22-23 year olds graduating with over a hundred thousand dollars of debt for an undergrad degree, several hundred thousand if its a medical or law degree (or they had to pay for their masters).

That the biggest story to come out of "media day" is a single player who has a history of not talking doing exactly that sort of tells you how valuable it is. I feel the same way with the radio segments with players during the season for the most part. They can't and won't say anything about what the team's doing, what's "really" going on in the locker room, strengths/weaknesses they've actually identified. It's all canned answers, "work hard focus on the next game play hard and win." Woo.

QUOTE (zenryan @ Jan 28, 2015 -> 12:07 PM) I'm sure he's a nice guy off the field but he's a jerkoff when it's football related. All he wants to do is promote his brand and acting this way gets him the most attention. But if nobody made such a big deal that he doesn't make himself available for meaningless interviews, he wouldn't get any attention from it.

But what really ever comes out of "media day" that matters or anyone cares about? It's always just canned non-answers.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 27, 2015 -> 04:56 PM) Bitter that in this country I and others like me (middle to upper middle class) have to shoulder the burden of both the rich and poor? Yep, I sure as hell am. I think it's odd that you make this complaint shortly after strongly defending 529 plans that primarily benefit the upper class and labeled any removal of that preferential tax treatment as punishment.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Jan 28, 2015 -> 07:38 AM) I agree with this and also don't understand why there are objections to it. I do think there should be a buildup to the flat tax % but that floor should not be too high. Because it would result in massive cuts.

I really don't get the Sherman hate.

On the other hand, wouldn't he also be faulted later on for not properly saving for his own retirement?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 27, 2015 -> 01:31 PM) Obama in 2009: "Now, add it all up, and the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years -- less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and less than the tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans that Congress passed at the beginning of the previous administration. (Applause.) Now, most of these costs will be paid for with money already being spent -- but spent badly -- in the existing health care system. The plan will not add to our deficit. The middle class will realize greater security, not higher taxes. And if we are able to slow the growth of health care costs by just one-tenth of 1 percent each year -- one-tenth of 1 percent -- it will actually reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the long term." The CBO report in 2015: the program is costing 1.99 trillion from 2016-2025. How it that not anymore misleading than the Daily Mail? Obama is telling people, hey don't worry, this is a decent price, 900 billion over the next 10 years. I won't tell you that for the subsequent 10 years it'll be more than double that. Come on. And the war comparisons are irrelevant. If in October 2011 Bush came out and said we need to invade Iraq and it's going to cost us 900 billion over 10 years to do it, and then 5 years later the projections are more than double that, you wouldn't say "oh well all sorts of things happened in the mean time and the President can't set budgets alone!" You'd nail him for misleading the public about a costly and expensive war that was now way off budget and costing us more and more into the future. This wasn't a budget on a pre-existing program. He had to sell the program at a certain cost and it's now more than that. Yes, the Daily Mail was playing some games by going back to his original projection in 2009 and not including the full projection to 2025, but so what? That's what Obama said. I don't think it's taking it out of context anymore than Obama not telling people the costs would keep going up after those first 10 years. You still don't seem to get it. The program is projected to cost less than it did when Obama made his $900B comment. It has not doubled in cost. It is "off-budget," but it's cheaper than anticipated. The estimates of the costs from 2016-2025 were available in 2009, and those estimates were higher than the estimates done recently. Yes, Obama, being a politician, used the first 10 year period that did give a lower headline number, but it wasn't inaccurate. The projected cost for 2010-2019 was $900B. You can make a political argument that he should have instead $X over the first 20 years, but that has nothing to do with whether or not the program actually increased or decreased in cost. That is not the same as what the Daily Mail did. Obama did not say that the program costs from 2016-2025 would be $900B. He was talking about the costs from 2010-2019. It's not about taking his words out of context. This has nothing to do with setting budgets or "things happened in the mean time." It's about comparing program analyses that are fundamentally different. Any PPACA cost estimate that included years before a majority of the PPACA actually kicked in would always be lower than cost estimates over a time period when the PPACA was fully functional. The Daily Mail managed to prove that running a program costs more than not running a program and publish it as a political attack in their news pages. I really don't know how else to explain it. You don't need war comparisons, you can look at any projected cost analysis that starts before a majority of the program's costs kick in versus one that doesn't and it'd be the same bad comparison. edit: actually, it's even worse than that now that I look at Page 1 of the CBO report. It's not even a crappy slight-of-hand, it's a straight-up lie from the Daily Mail. For the years 2010-2019, the original projected cost was $900B. The revised estimate for 2010-2019 is $139 billion, or 20%, less than the original estimates. So Obama said the 2010-2019 costs would be $900B, but they're actually projected to be $761B. The costs of the program, both long-term and short-term, have been revised downward in each new baseline. The Daily Mail is simply flat-out wrong here. http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbo...t-AppendixB.pdf

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jan 27, 2015 -> 02:06 PM) Unless it was all front loaded savings, which ends up costing 50X that in the years beyond 2015, you mean. If that happens, then it's not a cost savings at all, but a cost shift from one administration to another...also known as kicking the can in political circles. No, that's not what he's saying. He's saying that the cost estimate of 2016-2025 released in 2015 is several billion less than the cost estimate of 2016-2025 released in 2009.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 27, 2015 -> 12:00 PM) I don't think it's really wrong to hold a politician accountable for what he says when trying to sell policy to Congress and the people. Yes, it was 2009, not 1989. Yes, the projections are for slightly different years, not 50 years. You're talking about a 50% mark-up on what he was telling people, even if that's not what was ultimately passed (as if any legislation that starts with one number EVER becomes smaller by the end of the process). That's pretty damn critical. If you're looking at 2010-2020, you have a four whole years without federal exchange subsidies at all (2010, 2011, 2012, 2013) and several years without full Medicaid expansion. The period 2016-2025 has almost the entirety of the law in place and functioning. Those numbers were always very different, going back to the start. Think of it like this: the cost of the Iraq War from 1995-2005 would look a heck of a lot different than the cost from 2001-2011. The cost of WWII from 1930-1940 would look a lot different than 1935-1945. That's the sort of comparison you're trying to make here. And this legislation has, in fact, become smaller since the original CBO projections for the period 2016-2025. 20% smaller, but the Daily Mail thinks so little of its readers that it didn't bother to report that. edit: this article from 2012 explains what's wrong with these shenanigans ACA opponents have been trying to play for years: Conservative media outlets have been playing this same game of lying to their readers/viewers for years. Comparing CBO cost projections that cover different time periods with critical policy/program shifts that happen within those windows is fundamentally dishonest. You should feel insulted that the Daily Mail thinks so little of you. edit: and just for a little clarity, if the estimate really did jump from $900B to $2000B over the same time window, it'd be an increase of 222%, not 50%.

So how 'bout that Probowl?

QUOTE (gatnom @ Jan 27, 2015 -> 11:34 AM) That would be the ideal gas law I always learned. If you wanted to include mass, wouldn't you have to divide by the molar mass? ... Obviously the m/n is constant, so the whole conversation is moot you do if you want to use the universal gas constant, otherwise you can use the specific gas constant which is just the universal gas constant divided by molar mass M if I remember correctly. Either way m and R cancel out so you're left with just pressure and temperature in this case. QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Jan 27, 2015 -> 11:33 AM) SS what do you do for a living again? Mechanical engineer by degree/license but I don't usually deal with that sort of stuff actually. Only remembered it correctly (use absolute temp units not F or C, add gauge and atmospheric pressure) because I took the licensing exam about a year ago and it was heavily tilted toward thermal stuff.

QUOTE (gatnom @ Jan 27, 2015 -> 10:23 AM) Well, technically, "m" is the number of gas molecules... that's for pV=nRT

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 27, 2015 -> 10:29 AM) Excuses, excuses. The point remains - the program he sold to the American people and Congress is more expensive and not as effective as he predicted. Why is it at all important that a program Obama gave a speech about but which did not become law had some rough estimate that was less than what the actual law did? Obama deliberately did not go the route Clinton went and didn't craft a full-fledged program himself that he then presented to Congress--he left it up to Congress to come up with it. There are no "excuses" there. The original CBO scores of the actual PPACA were 20% higher than their current cost projects. Every legitimate news agency points that out, but Daily Mail intentionally misleads its readers with this comparison. You got duped by a crappy article.

Indiana will be expanding their Medicaid program: Healthy Indiana Plan expansion gets green light from federal government

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 27, 2015 -> 09:16 AM) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-29...get-report.html Obamacare now estimated to cost us 2 TRILLION dollars instead of the 900 BILLION Obama originally forecasted. edit: that's just the government portion, not any private increase in premiums/out-of-pocket expenses. And 30 million Americans are still going to be uninsured. What a great program! lol daily mail crack journalism there! Other news agencies have a slightly different headline: The Hill: Budget office lowers ObamaCare price tag by 20 percent Reuters: Obamacare To Cost Far Less Than Estimated, Budget Office Says Bloomberg: Obamacare Will Cost 20% Less Than Initial Projections, CBO Says Maybe that's because The Daily Mail is using a speech by Obama in 2009 about his proposal that didn't actually become a law instead of using the actual CBO forecasts of the actual law. It's almost as if an outfit owned by Rupert Murdoch isn't a legitimate news outlet at all. As for the 29-30 million still uninsured by 2025, yes, that's awful. But again, the Daily Mail is portraying things one way while the actual CBO report stresses it very differently: That's a greater-than-50% reduction in the number of uninsured people in this country. There are better, simpler ways to get that reduction or even better, but this was more or less the best thing that could pass the late 2010 Senate with 60 votes.

QUOTE (Tex @ Jan 26, 2015 -> 11:09 AM) That is the exact advice a fellow educator gave his son who is considering being an archaeologist. Be Phil Collins instead and buy every Alamo artifact worth owning and fill the dream that way. I can't say I disagree. I don't see how "become a multimillionaire rock star" is more practical than becoming an archaeologist. Plus, "IT BELONGS IN A MUSEUM!"

Subconscious slip? And then the "it's" typo, ugh. Not on my game.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 26, 2015 -> 03:24 PM) Banning shifting is impractical and idiotic. That's all I have to add. how would you even do it? have "zones" marked on the field where the different position players have to be in? or what? automatic walk?