StrangeSox

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 11, 2013 -> 08:14 PM) Yeah, remember how they decided an appellate court didn't need a full slate of judges entirely and they were going to block any appointment to that court? I sure don't. Appointing judges to vacancies is "court packing" now, apparently.

"Remember that one judge that was blocked?? Proves both sides are equal always and forever!!"

whoops, forgot the link to the article. http://inthesetimes.com/article/15849/teac...er_the_problem/ I think it's the latter.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 11, 2013 -> 03:12 PM) If a bridge fell into a river tomorrow and it had been removed from the list of "things that need to be repaired" in order to come up with funds to pay for the Medicaid expansion, you'd have a great point. And literally everyone in that community was screaming "something big is about to happen please do something about it". That is documented over and over. The last time that happened in the intelligence area was the millennium plot, which the previous administration went into crisis mode in response to. When they got the first hints of a guy arrested that might have been connected, they rolled the plot up completely because they were watching for it. The Bush administration was convinced that all of the fervor in early 2001 about Al Qaeda was really just a false-flag from Saddam. There was a pretty detailed article in the NYT early this year or late last year that I posted in the Dem thread.

No, that security is not guaranteed to all.

Tinker is the big one, bong hits for Jesus was a big case a few years ago too.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 11, 2013 -> 02:30 PM) I think it was more about preventing an overly exaggerated threat moreso than trying to pile up bodies in revenge. Saddam was the only enemy we had with the means and hatred to smuggle WMD's to terrorists. Faulty or not, I think that was Bush's ultimate goal - preventing that from happening. The gross misjudgment was that it was going to be an easy, short war. Clearly a huge mistake. Saddam didn't have the means and groups like aq were not his friend.

Everyone involved with Iraq was stunningly incompetent. Many of his appointments were stunningly incompetent (heckuva job, brownie!). He was bad on social issues, and his court appointments have been disastrous for them (Roberts decision gutting the vra is appalling, and I'm sure we'll see aa ending shortly with s***some upcoming rulings.) His fiscal policy has left us with a permanent gap in basic government funding. His tax cuts left a giant hole, and he even tried to go down the path of privatizing social security. The parallels really aren't there. 9/11 wasn't a pre existing condition for Bush, and his administration completely ignored that potential that in favor of obsessing over Iraq from day one.

Don't forget the torture!

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Nov 10, 2013 -> 08:41 PM) I laughed out loud at that article. Local bureaucrat: "7.8 million? Thats like one smaller sized contracting favor. How am I supposed to get all my nephews jobs holding the "Slow" sign with $7.8m?" But you liberals got the answer, tax em more. Yea, that'll do it! Levy 10,000% taxes on something that is literally in every product you have ever bought and everything you physically own. It protects the precious roads so your rolling deathtraps held together by duct tape and one working brake you get irresponsibly wasted on will have a slightly easier time. You want this plush life of yours where youre comfortable enough to give a s*** about starving Africans or run around with some pretentious "Save the Planet" petition? Thank the trucking industry. And yea, the point of the IHS being a defense project is that it wasnt set out to be some pork laden work project and contracting sweepstakes. The people in charge of it where discplined, smart, and resourceful which is a far f***ing cry from the idiotic, wasteful, spoiled, lazy, entitled ingrates who make up the unnecessary side of the public sector now. "But they maintain the roads, Duke!", no they dont. They go to the capitol begging the legislature there to increase their budget then use that money (after giving themselves big fat raises of course) on private contractors to do the actual work. Its a sham, theyre like big crooked brokers leeching taxpayer dollars without doing jack s***. lol

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Nov 10, 2013 -> 05:45 PM) Except the IHS was designed and implemented as a defense program. The Supreme Allied Commander oversaw its construction! He got the idea in war, he literally said this would be for the defense of the USA. Stated goals and s*** dog. That's a whole different story than cowardly adhering to my definition of what government should do (mainly because there's no real way to defend anything else they're up to) and then trying to improvise ways all your pet issues help defense. B-b-but the soldiers want free stuff and I want free stuff! Gubmint, oh lord and savior Gubmint, give us some more free stuff because itll make us safer. I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not, but there has been quite a bit of expansion of our interstate system since the 1950's.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Nov 10, 2013 -> 04:02 PM) According to the liberals I didnt build anything. That money I make? Its not my money, its our money. And it doesnt get to be "ours" until its filtered through a pile of private sector washouts. I just want to live one day in pre-Reagan America. Just a day, see what it was like. Ive seen nanny state, big government, "FOR YOUR PROTECTION AND UH.. ERR.. BENEFIT? LOL" America and it bores the s*** out of me. Give me the place where even the most mundane expansion of the state was leading us on the path of our bitter rival. Get rid of all these bulls*** government employees I pay for and just see what happens because this going-on 6 year recession isnt being cured and, worse yet, I cant have any f***in fun. You want to live in Jimmy Carter America? Or Nixon America? Or LBJ America, with its Civil Rights Act and the Great Society? Or did you mean WWII-era America, when the entire country was more or less unified towards one goal? edit: by the way, we're at the lowest number of federal employees since 1966. So on a raw-numbers basis, we've got less government than the previous several decades, and a per-capita basis, we've got drastically less.

Bush didn't surround himself with incompetent people? edit: also, how was Bush moderate? edit2: also seems odd to give some lenience to Obama for coming in in the middle of a huge economic collapse, but fail to assign any of the blame for said collapse to the guy who immediately preceded him

Oh well. Bears are going to be facing an uphill battle to make the playoffs now.

QUOTE (fathom @ Nov 10, 2013 -> 03:03 PM) Horrible, horrible play on the 2pt conversion. Forte's had no running room all game. This game falls squarely on the coaches for playing Cutler. yep, some bad playcalling at critical moments and a bad decision to let him start in the first place.

Cutler should not have played today.

horrible, horrible run defense capped by a personal foul.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Nov 9, 2013 -> 03:20 AM) This truly is disgraceful. I just get the feeling nobody cares unless it affects their own family. There's no empathy anymore unless there's a national disaster. Then people donate. But when it's something like medical costs driving individuals to the poorhouse, nobody cares. I just don't get it. "Nobody cares" except those of us who constantly push for socialized health care access.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Nov 8, 2013 -> 10:24 PM) The worst is yet to come. The mandate still looms and, oh boy, if you think people are pissed now wait until they start getting 30 hours a week at the mill. The only reason they delayed it is because they wanted us addicted to another big entitlement bomb before revealing the cost. This was supposed to be the fun part and its wound up an absolutely epic disaster, imagine how bad its going to be when the not-fun stuff kicks in. And if you think they're going to make any meaningful changes to the mandate I'd like to remind you these are the same bureaucrats who cannot will their collective brainpower into making a website. Oh boy!

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 8, 2013 -> 04:45 PM) Of course, if you really want to get to talking about that...one big reason the Federal government didn't start developing this web page in 2010 is that they didn't want to. The bill was written with the expectation that the states would want to continue controlling their own insurance marketplaces and not have the heavy-hand of the federal government involved. It actually did not include funding to develop the website at the national level for this reason. Funding for it had to be scraped together once 2/3 of the states decided they wanted more Federal control of their marketplaces and not less, and Congress would of course not appropriate funds to do so. But then again, that can't be right, because that would be letting politics trump everything and that would make the Republicans at the state level making those calls "assholes" by your standard. There was nothing political about making PPACA "Obama's Waterloo"!!!

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Nov 8, 2013 -> 04:43 PM) No the word cancelled means you did not get to keep your policy like bozo said you could. Nothing more nothing less. Obama should have nationalized the insurance companies to ensure that health plans would never be modified or canceled in the future by private insurance companies, which never happened prior to the ACA. My grandfather still has his same plan from 1947!

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Nov 8, 2013 -> 04:37 PM) Maybe he shoulld have started the process in 2010 instead of waiting until after the election. Once again politics trumps everything with this asshole. How would starting the website development process playing any political role in 2012?

just fyi that's Sir Patrick Stewart, in case you didn't recognize him