Jenksismyhero

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Sep 27, 2013 -> 01:23 PM) Surely you're not serious? And that article is a joke right? I mean, using "magic" as the answer to any unanswered question is pretty ridiculous. Pretty sure that's the point - they didn't need to explain why things were the way they were, it just is. Martin doesn't need to explain how/why dragons exist in the GoT universe, you just go with it. I totally agree that a lot of the stuff they brought up didn't necessarily fit with the world they ended up creating by the end, but I think that's just the nature of creating a story and having the network suits tell you that you need to extend the story out so they can get more episodes.

Samsungs from the last few years had issues with capacitors on the power board not being strong enough, resulting in the tv flashing on but not staying on. Mine did that and it was a $4 fix from radioshack. Do some googling with whatever problem you're having before you take it somewhere to get fixed.

QUOTE (Brian @ Sep 27, 2013 -> 09:08 AM) I'd say more like 20% Yeah I can't think of a ton of major mysteries that they didn't explain by the end of the show. edit: a good read http://www.cracked.com/blog/108-answers-to...ered-questions/

QUOTE (Brian @ Sep 27, 2013 -> 07:50 AM) Whomever thought that episode of The League was a good idea should be fired. Totally disagree. I thought it was hilarious. Generally though I agree The League has not been as good as it was in the past. It's also kind of weird that Kroll hasn't been in two straight episodes.

QUOTE (Brian @ Sep 26, 2013 -> 04:03 PM) If you were such a big fan you'd know that was the season 3 finale. Duuuuuuh. Just messing with you. Lost was definitely that show that showed social media could bring folks together to talk about TV. I was a huge Lost fan but wouldn't rank it in the top shows ever. Definitely had its niche though. Yeah I always get that screwed up. And no, definitely not best of all time. But certainly one of the most entertaining for what it was. Sopranos is the better show overall, but not nearly as entertaining IMO.

I'm gonna be in the minority here but I've yet to understand the love for GTA V. I'm not very far into the story yet (Franklin and the non crazy white guy just destroyed someone's house), but already I can tell this is yet another GTA game. Yes, that's obviously what it always was, but I dunno, it just feels too familiar. The dude on Grantland who I normally hate wrote a piece about maybe being too old for the game (although he's 40, i'm 31). Yet I kinda feel like maybe I'm too old for it now. I dunno that I can do open world games anymore. I normally only get 20-30 minutes to play a game and I need more structure a la The Last of Us or a sports game that I can just play a game and be done with it. GTA is almost too daunting and I don't have the energy to get sucked in (on top of it being super repetitive).

Agreed. I had a small group that couldn't wait to watch it on Wed. night and then email/text about it the next day. It was that way for a number of seasons. It was also the first show that made me want to read recaps the following day. It's sad that the ending wasn't good because I agree that the show just sort of fell off the face of the earth. It really should be up there in the all time most entertaining shows list, but probably won't be because of the ending. Also, I'd argue that the season 4 (I think) finale is the best 2 hours of television ever (the one where Charlie dies and they have the flash forward). We'll see, maybe Sunday's BB will be better but I really doubt it.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Sep 26, 2013 -> 12:04 PM) To each his own. Anyone who says "The Wire" > "Breaking Bad" is just trying to be cool and different in my book. There has been what, maybe one or two "not great" episodes of Breaking Bad, while entire seasons of The Wire flat out stunk. Sopranos too. BB built towards its ending. The Sopranos and The Wire both spun their wheels a couple of times.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Sep 26, 2013 -> 11:39 AM) Breaking Bad is incredibly overrated by those caught up in the moment, but it's still pretty good. Definitely worth watching through it. As a huge BB fan I keep thinking this too. HOWEVAH, there has never been a show I was more excited to get home and watch. Lost had that same momentum, but this show is on another level in terms of excitement/anxiety (and acting and writing and cinematography, and etc). Move over Sopranos and the Wire (talk about overrated). BB is officially the best of all time in my book.

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 26, 2013 -> 10:38 AM) The state exchanges are open to you. There are some great resources where you can calculate how much a silver plan would be for you and your wife. Whether your current plan will be a better deal depends on your income level. To get the government subsidies (i.e., cheap premiums) your income can't be more than 4 times the federal poverty line. Balta had a link a few pages back that will let you see what the cost would be.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 10:33 PM) If you are against universal healthcare that is fine, I just want people to own that position. Not dance around it. Interesting definition of rejected. Like every liberal versus conservative argument over policy, the party that's trying to reign in total socialism/government control/the nanny state ends up looking like bad guys because they don't promise the world. "Oh Mr. Republican, you don't want to provide health care to people? You're ok with people dying in the streets? Well, I'm not cruel like that! I think people should live!" Republicans can't easily articulate a position that society should assist people but not provide for them totally with everything. Or that society should assist people but not at the cost of bankrupting the country. The message gets spun way too easily the other way. I'm all for the government being a last resort if you're broke and dying and can't afford medical payments. I'm all about the government making sure that insurance companies aren't making it impossible to obtain health insurance. I'm against the government taking over the medical industry altogether and providing everyone with the same level of care. I want choice. I want convenience. If that means I have to pay out of my pocket a little more, so be it. But it should be my choice to do so, not the government taking it out of my paycheck. I just wish this country had a "i'm responsible for myself and my family" view instead of "society owes me everything!" We're a wonderfully lucky society that is prosperous enough to make sure that no one dies in the street, everyone becomes educated, everyone has shelter, etc. I just wish we would view government assistance as a last resort as opposed to the first demand. My own family does this s*** and it drives me crazy. I have a cousin who has 2 kids. She quit her job to raise her family, which means she ended up on welfare. And she and her husband just decided to have another kid! f*** feeding my family, the government will pay! That's the bulls*** mentality this country has and it's because of liberals who have sold the public that society should provide you with everything you don't have. Spend all your money on worthless things. Have kids you can't afford. Uncle Sam has your back. (and yes, this is an over generalization, but i've seen enough of this mentality in just about every facet of my life so I know it exists.)

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 04:45 PM) Because if we keep them uninsured, they'll be smart enough not to get in fender-benders. Or at least we can pretend that they never have to leave the house, because otherwise, we'd be paying the much larger bill. After all, a $20,000 bill for a fender-bender is just what this hypothetical person needs to teach him or her the lesson that he or she shouldn't be poor. Now you're getting it.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 11:48 AM) I accidentally caught the first 10 minutes of The Goldbergs. I was very close to jabbing my eyeballs with chopsticks but luckily my wife turned off the TV just in time. I didn't think it was THAT bad. New Girls has been kinda meh the first two episodes. Every time major characters get together the funny eventually gets sucked out of the show and it gets way too sappy. Instead of 3 funny characters, there are now only 2 (Winston and Schmidt...Jess is a stretch as "funny." I think Deschanel is an annoying hipster with pretty much everything she does).

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 04:07 PM) Actually, first of all yes they would. The plans have generally been coming in at about 15% lower costs than the CBO projected a couple years ago. That means the typical bronze level plan would, on its own, cost in the range of $1200 per year. For health coverage on its own, that isn't bad. I'd have paid that happily when I was below the poverty line. However, there is a substantial tax subsidy piled on top of that for low income earners. Using yoru $16k a year example, the subsidy the federal government would pay to purchase insurance, for a "silver" level plan, would be $1500, with the person's out of pocket yearly expenses being ~$500. (used this subsidy calculator) At $16000 per year, buying private insurance in the exchanges will cost $500 for your person (non-smoker assumed). Man I wish this existed 8 years ago, you have no idea. For the bronze package they also have to pay 40% of their healthcare costs. I assume silver is 30% So yeah, you pay the low premium, but if you have basically any sort of medical issue in a year you're on the hook for quite a bit of money. Random fender benders could cost you 10-15k in medical bills. Does that person have an extra 3-6k laying around? Nope. So, the doctors/clinics overcharge other patients (me) to cover the loss. Again, where's the savings for your average American? There is none. This is all coming out of your paycheck. Edit: Pssh, according to that site there's a cap on how much you would spend in a year. $2250 for a silver plan. What a joke. Again, we're all paying the bill.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 03:59 PM) Maybe if everyone would have been gung ho on universal health care we could have all gotten great health care! But unfortunately a group of people dont want everyone to get health benefits, so instead we have "the best we could pass". If only the word "compromise" would have been invented. "If people would just do what I say we wouldn't be in this mess! Guh. Come on guys, let's compromise!"

QUOTE (Tex @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 03:14 PM) The problem area are the working poor whose employers do not offer benefits. They do not qualify for medicaid, etc. They clog ERs and never pay. Their medical bills become so big they could never pay. Someone making $10 an hour, $20,00 or so annually can barely afford food, clothing, transportation, and shelter. A $6,000 medical bill, even if it is a co-pay never gets paid. Roughly $16k/year is the cutoff for medicaid. At that point the person we're talking about isn't going to be able to afford the ACA rates of coverage anyway.

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 10:39 AM) What happens to states' budgets when the federal medicaid subsidy ends in a few years? Kick the can down the road. It's what states/governments have been doing for decades.

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 10:17 AM) Insurance companies use purchasing power leverage to force lower costs for procedures and medicine. Pushing more people into insurance would facilitate that. I do find it funny that during the creation of the law the idea of cost controls was DOA, yet as soon as it was removed all the sudden the biggest rightwing critique was "it does nothing to control costs!". Well it does throw the book at every marginal cost control idea to control costs, more price transparency, batched payments, etc. It also pushes a bunch of people into medicaid which has cost controls on payments. That was my beef from day one. Along with the "tax" requirement. I did like the pre-existing condition part of the law though.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Sep 24, 2013 -> 05:31 PM) I don't know if anyone saw Conan last night, but the entire episode was Breaking Bad themed. He had the entire cast on the show, he did all Breaking Bad skits, he had the mexican band who did the Ballad of Heisenberg perform that song on TV, he had Vince Gilligan there, it was wonderful. Here are a couple funny skits..... Cranston reading the fan letter had me rolling.

I was going to say, do you have your windows open? I have a Ford with sync and it works pretty well 90% of the time. "Mom cell" definitely works well. Sometimes it gets similar names mixed up, but that's to be expected. The accuracy definitely drops if windows are open though. My major complaint with Sync, at least in my vehicle, is that the volume of the prompts and the volume of the calls do not match...at all. To hear someone clearly you have to turn the volume up, which means the Sync prompts are loud enough to hurt your ears. It's really annoying.

QUOTE (Tex @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 09:28 AM) Doesn't reducing the number of patients that never compensate the providers lower costs? I don't know who you are referring to here. The people that can't afford healthcare now go to doctors/clinics that still get paid by someone (medicaid/non-profits, etc.). So nothing changes there. And what business do you know of that will drop their prices when their demand goes up?

QUOTE (Jake @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 08:17 AM) I have found that many people are not very convinced by comparing to other countries. A couple factors - we tax less than many other countries, especially on the highest earners. Also, we have a giant defense budget while many of the people providing better services are essentially relying on our military for their defense. Mostly, though, we are generally far less willing to implement government services for some reason or another. There is a strange fear of anything that could be called socialist, which is how we failed to implement universal healthcare while Truman, JFK, and Nixon thought about implementing these things. The Nixon administration, cooperating with Ted Kennedy, actually got pretty close while marketing it as "Medicare for all" after people really started to love Medicare. The fear is that more government intervention/services just means more problems in the future (GENERALLY speaking there). You want a liberal point on that, look at the military industrial complex. Once the government starts printing checks, it never stops. it just continues to grow. And as someone who deals with Medicare a decent amount for work as an attorney, it's f***ing terrible. I feel awful for my parents/in-laws as they are soon to be medicare eligible. It's a broke, corrupt system with stupid limitations (limitations that are put in place because it's f***ing expensive to pay for old people's healthcare. Healthcare which in many cases is purely elective.) I'm with Duke. I see the need (and responsibility) of our society to make sure people don't die on the streets and to protect them from a broken system that makes healthcare unaffordable. HOWEVA, Obamacare does jacks*** to help with the real problem with our healthcare system - the cost of the actual care/treatment/procedures. f*** doctors, f*** big pharma and f*** just about everyone involved in any sort of medical equipment ever created. They're all vastly overpaid/overpriced and THAT is the reason why healthcare is unaffordable. It has nothing to do with the availability of insurance. And I have yet to understand how adding 30 million people on the government payroll is going to lessen the cost of healthcare for everyone. Someone explain that to me. You're talking about poor people here. Let's assume they can afford to pay their premiums. What happens when these people want to start having surgeries and can't afford to 3-5k per yer deductible. Who gets stuck with that bill? You and me. And we're back in the same spot we're in today.

Nate Burleson broke his arm last night. Out for a few weeks. Good news for the Bears as they go up against Detroit this weekend.

Pretty sure he's said if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. Hopefully Black/Snider continue to recruit him down to Illinois.

Agreed. Still, I don't care. Can't wait for the season to start. When Rose goes off for 35/8/8 and a dunk or two, all will be forgiven.