Jenksismyhero

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 03:21 PM) That's about where mine was 140/85 range. Sometimes a little over 90. But at the doc my last trip it was 170/105 or something wacky. So he finally gave me the pills. I bought one of those machines and my reading was never as high at 170/105. I guess I feared doctors/hospitals as well until the last couple years where I've been to the doc more often. I usually try to strike up a conversation with the doc about sports and that has made me think of them more as non scary individuals. I will say after visiting doctors the past couple years for some 'minor' things (knock on wood) that I think the medical profession is screwed up. They take way too many patients a day and I'm just not impressed with the level of service u receive. It's f***ing awful. My wife went in a few months back to get this thing on her fingernail checked. The doctor spent approximately 5 minutes with her (after she waited 40 minutes past her scheduled appt) and said "oh i think it's X, do A, B, and C." My wife had the audacity to ask what X was and the doctor told her to google it and then left the room. Luckily my wife works at the hospital in philanthropy and knows the board members and president and other higherups and was able to make a very high level complaint. Hopefully that doctor got canned. Oh, and she was charged like 180 for the visit, 40 dollar copay. For 5 minutes.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 03:00 PM) Boehner made concessions. It's pretty apparent now that they would never have been approved by a large chunk of the House GOP since they rejected something with zero revenues. Well I suppose that's true, though do we know whether they wont agree to the plan more because of the timing issues?

Alright but you're talking about two things that politicians won't drop or change much because of their personal interest in keeping the defense/health care lobbies happy. So again, without anything to force them to do it, what will?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 02:42 PM) That would have made Keynesian economic policy unconstitutional. It would have required drastic spending cuts as GDP fell off a cliff, amplifying the cycle instead of stopping it. It would make the current struggle to get 217 House votes look like a joke. It incentivizes screwing around with the budget and not counting spending on things like $1B/day in Iraq and Afghanistan in the budgets. In short, it doesn't actually force Congress to follow any reasonable fiscal policy and seriously constrains their ability to react to a crisis. Well given the fact that they won't do it on their own, what's your solution?

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 02:18 PM) I think we can all agree that tea party republicans are acting like immature school children in regard to this debate. Any debate you enter and say, no matter what we will not -- instantly makes you a f***ing idiot in the political arena. And this is exactly what some of these idiots are doing. This is bulls***. They made concessions regarding an increase in revenues that they didn't want to make. And you can't say this with a straight face when Reid is doing the same thing (which you accurately pointed out a page or two ago) by saying he'd reject the bill before even knowing what will eventually be in it.

Here's the balanced budget amendment that was 2 votes away from passing Congress in 1995:

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 02:24 PM) A hard rule would mean no exceptions. Well, you can run deficits in perpetuity as long as they don't eclipse a certain ratio of GDP growth. And as you've recognized, there are plenty of situations in which it may be necessary for government to outspend what it brings in. To handcuff the ability to respond to a crisis with either positive action or simply letting automatic stabilizers kick in with the requirement of a supermajority vote of Congress is to essentially have a hard cap in place. Imagine if we had another financial crisis 20 years from now, GDP plummets and bring revenues along with it. In order to let the safety net spending occur or, god forbid, enact fiscal stimulus, one party could hold the entire economy hostage to demand radical (and largely tangential) policy changes. Now, I know that doesn't seem likely... Well no one is proposing a hard rule. And I think you could clearly spell out what to do in situations like that without upsetting the general rule that the budget needs to be balanced.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 02:22 PM) This flows quite well both ways though. Remember...hypothetically, let's say we balance the budget tomorrow. However we do it, don't care. That still doesn't mean that in next year's election, the Republican candidate won't propose $1.6 trillion in tax cuts, get the Dems to agree to $1.3 trillion, and destroy any semblance of a balanced budget. You can't hamstring a future Congress just by passing certain tax laws now. Then make a rule about timing that wouldn't allow that kind of maneuver to happen. I dunno, just on a basic level I don't see any good reason why we shouldn't have a balanced budget every year, with any surplus either going back to the American people or going to pay down the deficit.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 01:34 PM) I'd have to see what the qualifications were for those kind of things. Philosophically I HATE things that limit the ability of the government to govern when it is most important. The reality is if our leaders governed with some sense of responsibility for the future, we wouldn't need these kinds of amendments. Nothing in our 230+ year history supports the idea that this would ever actually happen. When your job depends on making people happy, and making people happy entails bringing some money back to your district/state, there's zero incentive to not spend as much as you can grab.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 01:31 PM) It's either a hard rule and thus terrible policy or you neuter it such that it's essentially meaningless. Especially given the perpetual state of war we find ourselves in. Why is a hard rule terrible policy? Why on earth does a government need to spend more money than it brings in, except in emergent situations like war. Don't even define it, just say that Congress has to vote in a special session at a super majority or something.

Assuming they put in some sort of "in extreme circumstances" clause (war, recession, etc), why is a balanced budget amendment a bad idea? They're using the same language that Democrats proposed in the mid-90's.

http://thebiglead.com/index.php/2011/07/29...way-greg-olsen/ Agreed. The Bears are gonna f***ing blow. 2007 all over again.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/201...is_is_mine.html lol, classic:

Apple has more cash than the US government. WTF.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 28, 2011 -> 03:04 PM) I can't say whether it would be an interesting twist. I'm half procrastinating right now so I've been reading up on his work, and again, still can't get that journal to load, but the idea that data from this satellite show an incorrect response to short term heating events is something he's published before. The first, and probably the most important thing to remember is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary levels of proof. It's a little bit bothersome to most scientists to see a new piece of data come in and have the response be "This clearly disproves 30 years of work" if the data doesn't show that. Especially when that is written in the popular press...be concerned, because that usually means someone has taken a few liberties to make their case. The actual author of the paper believes that most of climate science is wrong and that modern day warming is just an effect of changes in cloud cover. I did manage to get a quote or two from him via the U-Alabama-Huntsville press release, and there were some bothersome details in it. Now, the bolded part there is just not true. Increasing cloud cover is generally a negative feedback, in fact its a pretty strong one (clouds reflect solar energy back), and he can get away with this in no small part because cloud formation was as of the last IPCC report a very active area of study. Dissolved water vapor in the air detached from clouds is a very different story; that should be a positive forcing (the water vapor absorbs extra energy reflected up from the ground).. In the press release text that has been mixed up, probably for a good reason. I'm not quite sure this makes intuitive sense either, and I wonder about the employment of the model here. One example might be summer. The most sunlight hits the northern hemisphere on June 21, but most of the Northern Hemisphere is hottest a month or two later (July/August are the hottest months). I don't see any reason why in a short term hot spell, the maximum in heating should happen at the same time as the maximum temperature; same reason as the maximum temperature doesn't happen on June 21. A warm front can keep getting warmer even if it has started shedding its energy already, it just needs to be taking in slightly more energy than it is shedding, and if you measure the energy output, you'll only see 1/2 of that story. I'm sure I'll be able to find more work on this subject as the coming months happen, but intuitively and based on what people have challenged the author on before, this doesn't seem to be an atmosphere-shaking data point. Might be some interesting science, but it's hard to believe this will be an "A-ha, the Earth is actually cooling!" moment. Yeah, that's kinda what I figured.

Balta - can you put this into laymans terms? http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-data-blow-gapin...-192334971.html s***ty study? Interesting twist? Will this new data "dramatically alter the global warming debate?"

http://www.thetvaddict.com/2011/07/28/fall...811-terra-nova/ umm, yes please

QUOTE (jasonxctf @ Jul 28, 2011 -> 09:02 AM) meet your 8th district congressman. Classy guy. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/60111.html I heard something on the news that he has a ton of emails from his ex-wife who was basically trying to get 10k up front from him, he refused, so she sued.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jul 26, 2011 -> 03:08 PM) No. Not at all. We have a 7 week old baby. In 3 more weeks my wife's leave is up and she has to return to work. Our options are to send our 10 week old infant to daycare or get a nanny, both quite expensive, or have one of us stay home. We have grown so attached to our little girl in these last 7 weeks and know that once my wife starts going back to work it will be extremely difficult for her since she will miss our little girl. Think about it. It will be 10 weeks of spending all of your time with your newborn that you love to death down to a couple hours a day of seeing your baby until the weekend arrives (Leave work first thing in the morning....get home by 6pm...baby in bed at 8pm). That's a huge transition that is very difficult for parents so I don't see anything wrong with one of the parents deciding to stay home to rear the child until they're ready for kindergarten. If WIC was truly such a cash cow as you claim, then my wife would easily decide to stay home and raise our little girl but it won't come remotely close to substituting her high salary and lets not pretend it could. How is it not? Welcome to what MILLIONS of Americans do every single year. My two sisters (5 combined kids) have done EXACTLY what you're going through. A lot of our friends too. And it sucks. That doesn't mean they just decided "well, if i just don't go back to work, we can still support this baby because the government will help us out." That's such a bulls*** mentality that liberalism has cast onto society - "worry not, government is the great provider." It's absolutely wonderful that we live in a society that ASSISTS people that NEED assistance. But this is the case of people that CHOOSE to put themselves in a position to NEED assistance. Why the f*** should I continue working? According to you I should just be able to quit (who wants to work anyway? I'd rather just stay home and play xbox) and the government should provide me SOME assistance and no one should think twice about it. Hell, according to you EVERYONE thinks that's a GREAT idea. And I've never claimed it was a cash cow. But it clearly provides a LOT of things for families. And it's clearly enough in the example we're talking about. It's absolute bulls*** that millions of parents work their jobs and don't get free food or diapers or the like, but because this women decides she'd rather not work we all get to contribute to her kid. That's f***ed up. And just so you don't think i'm some heartless bastard, which i'm sure you already do, i'm 1000000000000000000000000000% in favor of our s***ty working society reanalyzing the importance of family and spending time with kids and working from home and all that. I completely understand our society sucks because kids are f***ing expensive and we all have to work to provide for them. As I said, my wife and I are incredibly depressed that right now despite obtaining two professional degrees we can't afford to have a kid. But I would never in a million years find it acceptable for one of us to stop working simply because we can expect to drop into the income level that qualifies for state aid.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jul 26, 2011 -> 03:01 PM) I think Jenks has a point which some people are trying to gloss over. Everyone would love to stay at home and raise their family, who really prefers to work. The only reason I work is that they pay me to do it, if I could get paid to sit at home, I would. The question is, why should the govt pay for people who choose not to work at the expense of the rest of us who choose to work? Its a fundamentally sound question. YOU COMMIE ASSHOLE! YOU JUST HATE PEOPLE THAT DON'T MAKE UNDER A MILLION A YEAR. UGH, GAWD!

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jul 26, 2011 -> 02:58 PM) Just reading this post saddens me. Honestly. Your mentality when it comes to spending government money saddens me. It also does not surprise me at all given that you're an extreme liberal. Don't you think what this chick is doing is just a slap in the face to millions of Americans in her exact same position who decide to keep their job and provide for themselves?

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jul 26, 2011 -> 02:53 PM) The sad thing is you actually think there's something wrong with this statement whereas a majority of people would think it's perfectly normal to want to stay home and raise their kid. I doubt this statement very much. Millions of people bust their asses to be able to raise their kids. They don't think it's acceptable to simply quit work and stay at home knowing that they can just sign up for some government assistance. WIC is there to help people in time of need, not just to get it as a perk because they don't feel like working and would rather stay home with their kids. Poll every parent in the country and i'm sure they'd tell you that if they could just get paid by the government to be parents they'd happily stay home with their kids all day. Edit: I should say that I doubt that people would think it's acceptable just to not work. Not that they wouldn't want to stay at home with their kids.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jul 26, 2011 -> 02:50 PM) Do you even know anything about the WIC program? Do you honestly think it covers much in the grand scheme of things? You clearly do not since you think it's worth 45 a month. It pays for everything a child needs - food, diapers, formula, etc. It's not some 15 dollar a week coupon. It's a significant chunk of change that she's CHOOSING to accept because she WANTS to stay at home.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 26, 2011 -> 02:47 PM) Oh, that mother had a child and quit her job to raise that child "just to collect a government check" that likely doesn't cover the cost of raising a child? Impeccable logic. Lol, oh so you get to create facts to support your view? I get it.

How about instead of being a condescending ass you read what the original post was about: