Jenksismyhero

QUOTE(Texsox @ Mar 8, 2007 -> 10:26 AM) I'm going to press Add Reply and see if the earth starts shaking, or lightening strikes, I agree with you. Wow....I never thought I'd see the day that TexSox and I agree on something!

I thought it was great. Back to the old Lost filled with action and surprise and not boring love triangle crap. I thought Sayid's flashback was better in that it was a brief interruption of the action on the island and not the other way around. I don't trust Roussaeu....I think she's one of them.

QUOTE(jackie hayes @ Mar 7, 2007 -> 10:11 PM) Weak. What? I was laughing the whole time. "Apologize." Takes off pants, shakes hips. "Apologize." "You wan't me to? Oh... Ok..." "Yeah, apologize." That little real-estate midget cracked me up too.

QUOTE(Alpha Dog @ Mar 7, 2007 -> 11:35 PM) So, maybe some lawsut reform would go a long ways towards ending needless tests and increasing medical costs, eh? Stop needless tests for CYA stuff, keep costs down a bit and so on. but I guess the trial lawyers wouldn't stand for that, would they? The over-hyped, over-sensationalized view of medical malpractice is hysterical. Personally I say let's blame the judges/jury's for handing out the ridiculous awards. I'm all for a cap, but let's not go crazy. We have to keep doctors in check or the standards would drop. Threatening them with a loss of their license and heavy fines/lawsuits is the most effective way of doing this, IMO. It sounds lame, but there are lots of people that get really messed up by the poor decisions of doctors and should be able to recover something for their loss. It's easy to say 'let's stop the needless med malpractice claims,' but try telling someone that their problem isn't severe enough to warrant a lawsuit. Let's not blame the doctors who don't do their job correctly. Let's blame the lawyers for exposing those problems and helping victims recover for their loss...

Calling out Repubs and Dems in this piece. I love it. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucac/20070307/cm_u...phantsinabarrel

QUOTE(knightni @ Mar 7, 2007 -> 10:30 AM) Because he probably had an embarassing youth. He is a Cubs fan...

QUOTE(WhiteSoxfan1986 @ Mar 7, 2007 -> 01:40 PM) New espisode tonight, can't wait. Same here. "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson" is the title of the episode. It's going to be great. I hope they rip into Jesse Jackson like they did Tom Cruise/R. Kelly last year. Unlike the Simpsons, I have yet to get tired of South Park. Sure they've had some lame episodes, but the vast majority have been hilarious.

I've had this same thing happen to me. Whether it was a glitch or not I'm not sure. I wanted to buy a subwoofer for my home theater system. I saw online that it was on sale, got to the store and found the price was different. I had a sales rep pull up the site and it showed the regular price. 20 minutes later I went home and the price I saw was the same. I ended up printing out the webpage and taking it in. At first they wouldn't honor it, but after I talked with a manager and told him I'd be happy to take the print out to Circuit City he decided to honor it.

I don't understand this nonsense about overusing healthcare. Last time I checked nothing bad happens from making sure that you're 100% healthy in every way. Aren't the odds of getting treated for major problems usually dependent on how soon you catch it? Wouldn't it be unwise to start telling people to go to the doctor only when you see a problem? I think if you're paying for it you can get whatever you want. I'll continue to go to the dentist twice a year even though I probably need to go only once. I'll continue to go to the dermatologist a couple times a year to make sure my skin is cancer free (hereditary concern there, but still). Any time you go to the doctor and get something looked at or checked out it can't be a 'waste' or overconsumption of a benefit. It's your body and your health, you should be able to do what you want with it. If the system is getting too expense, how about we start questioning the medical industry and their insane costs of treatment. Why does it cost me hundreds of dollars for an f'n physical? They check my vitals and jewels and I'm out the door in 20 minutes. Also, I'm a big believer in the pharmacutical industry inventing new problems. Restless leg syndrome? Drippy eye syndrom? Have you seen these insane commercials? Everything needs to be medicated these days. How much waste does that create?

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_po...dex.asp?PID=652 2nd or 3rd most popular in the nation 3 out of the last 4 years. Never said they were a traditional powerhouse, but in the past few years they've drawn a ton of national attention.

Good article I thought. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/sto...&id=2785830

I think Illinois has to win its first game and not get blown out in the second and they should be fine. Too big of a name, too popular of a program to be left out. If Purdue wins against Iowa I would not be shocked if they get in as well. At the end of the day the tournament comes down to viewership and money.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Mar 2, 2007 -> 01:27 PM) Why do we help people today? Perhaps it is because enough people in this country do not like hearing about 12-year old kids dying because of a toothache. Perhaps enough people in this country would rather give other people money than step over the bodies of starving people? We could stop all these social programs, and perhaps Sally Struthers will come to our neighborhoods instead of some third world country, and ask people to please help this starving person. Our current system 'caused' the death of this girl... so how exactly are we helping them? I know, let's just give them MORE money! That'll help them, right?

QUOTE(hitlesswonder @ Feb 28, 2007 -> 05:03 PM) This Malcolm Gladwell article on healthcare starts off discussing tooth decay. Almost prophetic. It's a long read, but for the tiny percentage of people out there interested in public health policy, I think it's interesting. I don't believe Gladwell is a knee-jerk "socialist" either, IIRC he used to be in favor of the government staying out of healthcare. See, here's my thing with Gladwell. I like his approach because it's different. It says: we waste a ton of money on blanket-programs, let's focus the funds to fix the most expensive parts of the problems. That'll make more economic sense. So in this case if it's going to cost us 250k in medical bills later we might as well spend 10k on them now and save ourselves a ton of money. Even though we don't like to do that because it feels wrong to give people free money who don't deserve it, in the name of economics lets do it anyway. But the problem with this is that you never fix the problem. I'm finding more and more that our social programs aren't designed to fix problems. Be it poverty, lack of health care, lack of food, whatever, the solution to the problem is always: let's just give them what they need, we'll work on the underlying causes of the problem later. Why don't we take Gladwell's theory and use it in a different area altogether? Why don't we take the XX millions that we spend on welfare and put the money into schools and communities? The entire fallacy behind the welfare system is that the more you give people money, the more money they expect to be given. Funny how we've gone 40-50 years now giving people money and our poverty rates are worse, our homelessness #'s are worse. So why should we just GIVE people healthcare? Obviously it's going to help certain people today, but it's not going to help the hundreds of thousands later. How about we fix the underlying problems of poverty? Why not attack the fact that the people on welfare have ZERO desire to get off welfare because it's free money? Why not create social programs to help them understand the necessity of education? Why not create programs for job placement? (and yes, i realize there are exceptions where people really work hard to get off welfare, but i'm willing to be the overwhelming majority don't). This is obviously a sad story, but it's funny that we look at it from the perspective of 'wow the government is terrible for not providing them what they need,' when in my mind we should be saying, 'what's preventing these people from utilizing the services the government already does provide or why are they so dependent on the government in the first place?'

QUOTE(retro1983hat @ Feb 28, 2007 -> 01:11 PM) Lost has been bleeding viewers since it came back after the hiatus. People don't want to follow a story that they feel the writers have no idea where it is going. I just don't get this at all. How could they not know where it's going? How can they be so complex/intricate with their writing that EVERYTHING seems to have a double meaning, yet they have no vision of where the show is going. I think some things came up along the way that forced them to change the storyline a little. Actors doing dumb things off set (ana lucia), actors being unhappy (mr. eko) etc. They also aren't sure how long they have to tell the story, so they had to throw in some filler episodes to take up time. But all that said the major plot line is still progressing, albeit slower than normal.

I dunno what to think. Fire the tellers for letting teen girls do this? Laugh because it seems so ridiculous?

As to the body issue, didn't they say the coffin was empty? Also the reason that it took 25 years to come out was that they found it and then the local authorities closed it down before they could investigate further. I'd imagine Cameron's pull ($) helped them change their mind.

Sounds awfully familiar to the liberals who say Bush and Cheney are fear mongers who use it as a tool to control us all. But of course, like you, THEY aren’t being serious, are they?

If you preach that violence is bad and then go out and beat the crap out of someone, your message obviously is still good but your credibility in giving that message should take a hit. Gore is a hypocrite. That doesn't mean his mission is a joke or that his message isn't important. But his credibility should be questioned when he doesn't practice what he preaches (even if he does take SOME steps that others don't). And he might not even be that big of a hypocrite. But I find it laughable there are hard-core environmentalists here who gloss over the fact that this guys house uses more energy in a month than the average Americans home does in a year. On top of the caravan of cars he travels with, the private jet, the vacation homes, etc….

QUOTE(Texsox @ Feb 26, 2007 -> 05:53 PM) Taking children from their families bacause their parents are poor is not a core family value. Family values is about strengthening the family unit, not about you've had too many chiildren, the state will take them now. "At some point the parents have to be held responsible for their own irresponsibility." And having the kids grow up in a "huge schools/dorms" accomplishes this by? And how much different would this be than a prison? Then we have all these kids getting settled with foster parents, perhaps attending school regularly, bonding with their new families, and along comes mom and dad wanting them back because they have better jobs. I see the kids being used to punish the adults in your scenario, and don't like that aspect. I agree we need to make some changes, but removing children from their parents and placing them in an already over burdened foster care situation would not be a step forward. How is this situation any different from mothers who leave childern in abusive homes becaues they're too afraid to leave or parents who abuse drugs with children in the home? Society has decided that we have the right to take children out of those situations and place them in a 'better' one (obviously we can argue whether a foster agency/adoption center is indeed better). The huge schools/dorms I envision are nothing like prison. They're more like boarding schools. Obviously it would take funding (and a helluva PR campaign) but I think anything is better than watching this poor kids grow up in the hell-hole that is Cabrini. I'm 24 years old and I wanted to pick up some of those kids and run away from that place as fast as possible. It's absolutely terrible that people live like that. Seven and eight year old kids talking to crack heads (saw it). Families with 6-7 young children (1 year old-15 years old) in a 750 sq foot cement jail cell. The parents have difficulties, no doubt, but not so serious that they can't overcome and give their children a good, decent life if they had made the right choices (and i'm not talking about being perfect...they've repeatedly made poor choices because they don't have to worry about being on the street, they have a place given to them). I just don't see how it would be a step backwards. You'd be giving these children a chance at a life. We all can agree they practically have zero chance to get out of the projects and do something. They're totally left behind. I guess we should respect the rights of stupid parents to pop out babies even though it creates even more of a burden on an already burdened family, lowering the odds of any of the children getting out. Family values indeed!

QUOTE(Texsox @ Feb 26, 2007 -> 04:53 PM) Just to be certain, you favor taking kids from parents and placing them in foster care because their parents are now on Public Aid? Parents with their children are only for the rich folks, that isn't for poor people. Will you be hiring enough case workers to track all these kids, or just forget about them once they are placed? If the parents get off aid, can they have their children back? If it takes years? Are you also in favor of somehow artificially restricting the birth rates? Because the conservative, religious arm of the GOP, gets a little feisty about that. It may be tough to convince the GOP on a plan that rips apart families and gives incentives for abortions. On the assumption that we increase funding for those places, abso-freakin-lutely. It's on the edge of child abuse to force a kid to grow up in an environment with 9 other siblings living of pennies a day. At some point the parents have to be held responsible for their own irresponsibility. Yes to the case workers. I'm in favor of opening up huge schools/dorms instead of the foster system we have. Might as well give these kids an education while waiting for them to find a home, if they ever do. And as far as giving them back to their parents, this sort of thing happens all the time when parents get into drugs or go to jail. Some governmental protection agency steps in, takes the kid away and then the parents later show the courts that they're responsible enough to have them back. This would be done in the same manner. I don't think the GOP would have problems with this. Why would they? It's in the best interest of the child to get out of that situation.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 26, 2007 -> 08:56 AM) Most low income people have criminal records and drug problems? I'd like to see a source on that, because I think that's a huge stretch. Let me look for the study our prof mentioned in class.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Feb 26, 2007 -> 07:03 AM) Now let's pause here for a second...your advice here is to make people accountable for their poor decisions. What exactly are you suggesting when you say we should make them accountable? So we have in the example we've been running with a family with 10 kids, they've clearly made poor decisions, they're living in subsidized housing while both parents work and still in pretty bad shape. What exactly is considered making this family accountable? Taking away their public housing, and tossing their family out on the streets? They've put themselves into a position where they simply can not get through the day without help. They can not find better jobs because they have no education or training and probably have health care issues as well, the state can't just seize all their children, and tossing a family of 12 out on the street puts them in even more hopeless of a situation than they're in now? How exactly can they be made accountable? What would you advise taking away from them if they don't meet whatever standard of improvement you set? Assuming this situation is true I'd have no problem taking the children away from the parents. Why couldn't the state? You're telling me that a family of 12 living off welfare, living in such dire circumstances as you set out, is providing the minimal requirements of a home under the statutory guidelines? I'd also put the parents on a short ass leash to better their situation or they'd lose their federal help. Sorry man, I just don't buy the fact that people get in situations they can't get out of. Borrow money like the rest of us. Take out educational loans. Work a job or two and go to school part time. Or here's a better thought, after your 6th kid, close your f'n legs (which makes me wonder if they're so poor how exactly did they afford to have 10 kids? they're not exactly cheap, especially if you don't have insurance...)! Seriously though, there is PLENTY of aid available to help people in the short-term. I never said that I didn't want to help at all, but social services shouldn't be a lifelong crutch. Also this hypothetical family is extremely rare. Most low-income people are single, some with kids. Most have criminal records. Most have drug problems. So should we just give them a pass for the rest of their life because they have a tough time? I'd prefer to kick them out on the street unless they show that they're actively working towards bettering their lives (or even the lives of others through volunteering).

I just don't buy this. Is it more difficult? Yes. Is life fair? No. You play the hand however the cards are dealt. Obviously it's a more difficult situation growing up in one of those places where priorities aren't about getting a high paying job and the house in the burbs but instead being safe and finding food to eat. But really, I don't have much sympathy for most of these people. Everyone knows right from wrong, regardless of where you grow up. Everyone knows there are consequences for your actions. Everyone knows that having 10 babies isn't the smartest economic choice in the world. Obviously the numbers of people getting out of public housing versus those that stay are incredibly small. But it happens. I refuse to give people a pass because they fail to work hard at life. It's impossible to make everyone in the world equal. That's why we live in an equal opportunity society, not an equal results society. Yip, that was me. And I wanted to write my opinion about this above but didn't want my post to take up an entire page. I completely agree that we should be more selective in the entire public housing process. I was talking with a classmate about this while we were walking around and I told him it's sad that those who are actually trying or those that are volunteering their time to help others aren't compensated. Like the power-distribution article, I would spend more money on the administrative side of public housing, using those funds for management and counseling instead of gigantor housing projects that have proven over the last 70 years to do nothing but promote violence, crime and continued poverty. My main argument in the class has always been that we need to put money towards the secondary issues of poverty and homeless. I would put more money into education, health and job placement services instead of housing. But it's not the short term. This experiment has failed over and over again across the country. Every major public housing development, from Robert Taylor or Cabrini to Columbia Point in Boston has failed miserably. To me it's the same faulty logic with our welfare system. The theory goes that if we give it to them now they'll be working towards getting off the system later. But that just doesn't happen. People get money or get a home and then want more or accept what they get and continue to live off of it. These services are meant to help people get back on their feet, not be a permanent crutch. I think a harder line is needed. Kick some people in the ass to do something with their lives instead of living off the government from week to week. Make people accountable for their REPEATED poor decisions in life.

So I had an interesting experience this weekend, on the topic of poverty. For my housing law class we had to tour Cabrini Green, talk to some residents and talk to the local leadership there. It's quite sad with everything that's going on (the transformation plans) and the people that live there. I came out of the situation with a few thoughts: 1) There are far too many people that live there, practically free, who contribute nothing to society. They are a drain and do not deserve a penny from the government. 2) There are far too many people there that deserve a beautiful new condo. They volunteer hours and hours of theirs lives to help other residents, be it for drug counseling, educational tutoring etc. The president of one of the towers that we talked to worked two jobs, from 7am till midnight, and still volunteered his time (10-15 hours a week) to helping the residents of his building. 3) There's a reason these people are poor. This same president, whom I admired greatly for his work, spent years in jail stemming from his role as 'governor' of the Lords and Disciples (or whatever the name of the gang is). He also has 11 (yes, 11) children that he has to feed. He's turned his life around, but is it any wonder he can't afford a home or a decent place to live? This theme (large families) was everywhere. Everyone we talked to had incredibly large families for people that can't afford more than 100 bucks a month on rent. 4) Most of the people feel entitled to what they're given. People complain that they have to spend 30 bucks a month on electricity, when it should be free. A women in one of the newly developed buildings (a mid-rise, 2 bed, 2 bath w/ washer and dryer in unit, which she pays 300 bucks a month for) complained that she was in charge of her own utilities, though only up to a certain amount a month. This was the point in the tour that drove me crazy. 5) The new trend is to create mixed income communities whereby 30% is public housing, 30% is affordable living and 40% is market value (that's the goal, though it varies depending on the area). Most people in the Chicago Housing Authority, HUD, etc feel this is the best way to get people up to the middle class. If they live with other middle class individuals, through something like osmosis they'll become middle class too. Problem is every resident we talked to thought this was a terrible idea. They want to live with other low-income people. They have zero desire to change and get out of the system. They dream of getting better public housing, not their own. In general I think the big problem with poverty in the country is how we attack it. We think giving people things, like homes, is the way to go, but that doesn't solve the problem. It gets people of the streets, yes. It probably saves lives. But something like 85% of the people that grow up in public housing stay in public housing.