Texsox

QUOTE(Wong & Owens @ Feb 2, 2006 -> 12:21 PM) NOT doing it never crossed my mind, I thought I was just doing a favor. But all it would have taken is one phone call, or one false accusation, and my life could have been negatively altered forever. And that just sucks. I use to worry about what pissing off one kid could do. When accusations are made and reported in the media, I try not to judge too quickly, there have been false accusations made. Scary of you work with kids at any age.

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 07:54 PM) the Catholic church needs to let priests get married or this kind of stuff will never end. they are attracting the wrong types of people to be priests. Again, there are pediphiles who are married. I'm not certain that celebacy causes pediphilia. Sex with a child is unnatural, I don't believe not getting laid triggers a attraction to children. Maybe to prostitution or pornography, but not to children. I do believe parish Priests should be allowed to marry, but for many other reasons. The Religious Order Priests will probably remain celebate. I know any statistics would be unreliable because of the unreporting that has gone on, but I wonder if clergy are any more or less likely to be pediphiles than day school workers, teachers, coaches, cops, etc. The Catholic Church is getting all the press, and thankfully so, but so far the outrage hasn't extended further to protect even more children. In a parallel thought. The Boy Scouts have in place youth protection rules that have made it very difficult for a leader to molest any children. One report I read form a national child advocacy group showed anadotal evidence that the rules caused some molestors to switch to Church groups, because they allowed for easy access and a "easy" environment. Non-denominational would be even easier, not as much scrutiny. A few highlights of BSA rules. No one on one contact between adults and childrens. There is always another adult or another child present. No tenting with an adult other than your son. Seperate shower and bathrooms. Background checks on all volunteers. There is a guide to protecting your child in every Scout handbook and one of the requirements is to read over the material with your son (or daughter in Venturing). There are age appropriate programs we present to the youth so they can follow the 3 Rs to protect themselves; Recognize, Resist, and Report potential abuse cases. I am one of the presenters and I am saddened when units do not want to educate their families for fear that it will "scare them". What saddens me in all this is how careful honest, caring adults have to be to avoid any appearance of in appropriate behavior. I remember my High School Cross Country coach opening his home every Saturday to the guys, we'd head for a run then have french toast afterwards. We'd take showers at his house (BYOtowel), I remember another coach sitting with me in the stands after I finished second at our conference meet, (if JC Lang reads this :finger ) with his arm around me, and consoled me while I cried for 55 minutes. Neither situation would be repeated today. Teachers and coaches can't risk it. And for that, I think our world loses.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Feb 2, 2006 -> 11:25 AM) Im not saying people should stay away from stock purchase plans altogether but for someone to dump their life savings into 1 single stock is lunacy. Exactly. Once the options have "vested" or whatever the term is, you should diversify if possible. The difference is they weren't dumping their life savings in, this was a part of their overall benefits package. IIRC, when I was with Marshall Electronics it was a payroll deduction we could sign up for. The hook was you had to hold the stock for 28 months or some silly number like that, but we bought at the lowest market price the previous quarter minus another 5%. It turned out to be a decent investment, but I now worry if I would have been able to buy my first home if those had tanked.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 09:15 PM) I can. The only free lunch in investing is diversification and they refused it. Given a choice between purchasing only company stock and going into a 401K, I would go with the latter every time. The company can tell me whatever they want to about how great things are but that wouldnt cut any ice with me. Id have put a percentage ( Maybe a quarter but probably less than that ) in company stock and the rest would be spread out over large/mid/small cap mutuals. Too many people look at all the millionaires that work at Microsoft and other high tech sector jobs who were paid low plus stock options. The problem with many of these programs is you have to hang on to the stock for a set amount of time. So if you had a choice of buying one company stock at a huge discount and holding, or buying another at street price, you would choose street price? I'm not certain many people have your willpower. Especially when analyists are fawning over the stock. Example buy Enron at 25% below market and hold for 24 months, or buy something else at market?

Each state report their numbers differently. Texas for example lies to themselves in their numbers. If a kid stops attending and says he plans on getting a GED, he hasn't dropped out. If he fails to ever take the GED test, he has dropped out of GED, not High School. Down here in these school districts, we have a large migrant population. If they say they are heading north to a new school, there is no follow up if they ever do register with another school. I was working with the school administration on an Apprenticship Program and the estimates I heard, for what common sense tells us is the drop out rate, was 50-60%. That is figured by taking all incoming Freshman then looking at those getting a high school diploma. In one racially and economically profiled population, it was estimated at 75% drop out rate. I am going to assume that other areas have the same problem. How this balances with New Trier or Conant numbers and becomes I national average, I don't know. But if we can't agree on a definition of what it is to drop out, how can anyone accurately quote a number?

Once the Homeland Security Bill has been renewed, Internet surfing as you know it will be tracked by what the FBI calls a "non-intrusive method." The FBI says you will hardly notice anything different. For a demonstration, click on the link below: http://users.chartertn.net/tonytemplin/FBI_eyes/

Bump

QUOTE(CrimsonWeltall @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 06:02 PM) I don't see how anyone could vote for No. It would allow an organization to get away with anything. Some organizations that "police themselves" for various acts. US Military Police - Internal Affairs Attorneys - Bar Association Doctors - AMA Congress Steff, I pray all that has ended, but I don't share your optimism. In the past, school districts would dismiss someone to work elsewhere, sports teams would fire the coach, Little Leagues would fire the volunteer, families would not visit their "Uncle". If anything, all this attention, and a willingness of the public to not blame the victim, should have ended all this. Unfortunatly there is still a stigma for being a sexual abuse victim. There is still the trauma of testifying, and the most ridiculous to me, families that don't want to turn in a relative. That one pisses me off more than the others.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 03:15 PM) The church tried handling it for like 50 years and we see where that got us. I have said it before, I think anytime that the upper elcelons of the church knowingly move around a molesting priest without informing the proper authorities they should be held liable, and as such charged as a criminal conspiracy. They also should lose their not-for-profit tax emption as such. What would you do to school districts and other organizations that also quietly fired someone instead of prosecuting? We've singled out Churches, but school districts did the same thing. We had a case down here that was resolved quietly like that, then someone got wind of it and went to the press and it was exposed. It turns out the victims parents where the biggest proponents of settling quietly, they didn't want the world to know what had happened to their sons. They didn't want a trial and all that trauma. It really sucks that victims of abuse have to relive the abuse by testifying, but what else can be done?

Pedophiles have come from all walks of life. If people are not going to Church because of a small number of pedophile clergy, then stay away from Doctors, teachers, cops, birthday clowns who do construction, keep your kids out of sports, off the beach, and away from your relatives, including your spouse.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 05:04 PM) Thats not exactly true. In a mutual fund you pool your money with others and buy shares of various stocks. In turn, the performance of the stocks determines what your rate of return is, not the infusion of new monies from other people. I said savings, like a bank passbook. Different animal. I was considering the least risky of investments.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 05:00 PM) I dont buy that Enron BS for 1 second. If you're dumb enough to plow your life savings into the stock of 1 single company then you almost deserve to get wiped out. Anyone who knows anything about investing knows that you have to diversify or you're going to pay the price at some point. On your second point, long gone are the days when a single bread-winner can raise his family. Thats just a fact of life. To raise a family comfortably and still provide for retirement wifey's gonna have to get a job, that is unless you're making a great salary on your own. If you cant afford to raise children then is it so bad to hold off until your situation improves? On the last point, I trust my money split between large/mid/small cap mutual funds far more than I trust a shaky government program to provide for me later on. Stock market returns, despite all the ups and downs, are far and away better at providing a good rate of return over the long term. Before 401k, there were pensions. People stayed at the same company for decades and retired with their GE Pension, Sears, whatever. Those pensions were most often investing in the company. Many of the Enron losers, were in a similar situation, they were getting options which they took advantage of. But that is such an extreme case, I wouldn't even consider it in the overall scheme. Fortunately we are so far removed from the depression that everyone has confidence in the stock market, and I'm certain it would never crash again.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 04:57 PM) Enron was sad, and they are paying now. But a lot of those people had their entire savings on ONE STOCK. That's pretty darn stupid. Maybe the better approach to this is education. Part of high school economics classes should be about spending, saving and investing. Actual, practical stuff. It was an employee stock option plan and similar. Kind of like all the mods are retiring on our shares of soxtalk.com

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 04:50 PM) If you think you're gonna retire on SS alone then you are consigning yourself to 2 decades or so of abject poverty. BTW. I prefer to liken SS not to welfare but the Ponzi scams of old. I know it's an ackward analogy. But the government is supporting you either way. Any savings is a Ponzi scheme of sorts. To pay interest in the savings, you have to find someone willing to borrow the money at a higher price than you return. In it's simplest form, social security should be a zero cost game to the government. Basically it is a mandatory savings plan. We will take X dollars from you each payday and we will invest it for you, offer a guaranteed return, and take a small percentage for overhead. Hell make a profit, my broker does. But then we started giving benefits to people who did not contribute, and those who did started living longer and taking out more than they put in.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 04:44 PM) Im with you on the 1st point. Americans are absolutely horrible when it comes to planning their futures. They dont wake up and realize they need to have money put aside till they're in their mid 50's and by then its damn too late. They just want to live way over their heads, pile up thousands in credit card debt then complain when they retire that they are living like animals. I say screw em. I laugh like hell when I read stories about seniors eating dog food because they arent getting enough money from their SS checks. If they had a half an ounce of foresight and started saving in their 20's, they'd be eating caviar instead. Its so easy to retire rich in this country it just blows my mind when people are still working at 80 out of necessity. I have to agree with everything here, of course there are exceptions. If you were working for Enron, how would you know you'd suddenly lose everything? Couples trying to raise a family on $30,000 a year won't be eating caviar, but they shouldn't be eating dog food, when they retire. But if you cannot depend on the United States of America to fulfill it's social security promise, how can you depend on the stock market?

QUOTE(YASNY @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 03:43 PM) Of course they're still doing it. That's part of the problem. Of course, the biggest part of the problem is that they ever started to begin with. I think the biggest part of the problem was during economic prosperity (and to get more votes), the government increased the benefits beyond a safety net to where people try and retire just on social security. In reality there isn't much of a difference between welfare (or whatever term you like) and social security. We are basically pooling our money and supporting people who can not support themselves. (I know there is a difference between too old to work and whatever put some one on public aid). I actually find it easier to support someone who has retired after being a productive citizen.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 04:07 PM) Clearly, it is scum like this that the death penalty was designed for. I'm talking about the worst of the worst. Call me what you will, but if I was the father of that little girl, I'd be waiting right outside the prison gates when and if the day came when they opened the doors to let him out. He'd never take one breath as a free man. YASNY, the only difference in our responses is that I know in my heart, it would be wrong when I killed the SOB. He should never, ever, see a day as a free man again. And I hope he has nightmares every night for the rest of his life. I know I'm not a good Christian, but I can't even pray for his salvation, the thought of spending eternity with someone that I know did something like that, makes me want to puke. I always wonder if there is a limit to what God can forgive, and if there is, this better be included.

QUOTE(aboz56 @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 01:57 PM) I don't think Gload will be on the Sox next year, but that's just me. I'm with you there. I'm a little surprised he's still here.

QUOTE(kyyle23 @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 01:52 PM) I understand your point, and I understand what the blogger is trying to do, I just dont think he lends any credibility to his stance when he is saying that he gave some senator a BJ in the union station bathroom, and that is his proof that this senator is gay. To me, this blogger is painting homosexuals in a bad light and he isnt helping his own cause by pulling this stunt. Realistically is this "outing" going to actually get something done? It might get him a date I still believe this was a ploy to increase traffic to his blog. I doubt he did a Senator in the bathroom of Union Station. I can't believe a Senator would be that dumb/horny/stupid, especially one that reportedly has a wife for cover.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 01:49 PM) If you let people keep their SS money and they invest it wisely then youd be stepping past them as they get in their caddy and drive off. We've been over this around here before. If only we could trust them to invest wisely. Look at the number of personal bankruptcy in this country. Those are the ones that will hit 65 without any money. Toss in an illness, we are living longer, and boom we have problems. What I think we can agree on is SS should be a safety net only. There should be adequate planning above and beyond SS. It should not be the sole source of income. The biggest problem I see is too many people hitting retirement trying to live just on SS.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Down here starting pay is about $25,000 per year, plus a small uniform allowance. Anyone that has ever chased their puppy when he got out of the yard will understand the emotion of wanting to knowck the piss out of the person you are chasing.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 01:21 PM) Cindy Sheehan's congresswoman not the first to invite a "special guest protester." http://www.drudgereport.com/flashts.htm There was also some other wife of a congressman ejected for wearing a t-shirt that said "Support Our Troops." I always did like the "Clinton didn't inhale, he sucks" t-shirts.

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 01:34 PM) This was in 1993. He has an elected position. However after you are elected retention for judges is a piece of cake. He always gets a highly regarded from the Illinois Bar. He is a defense attorneys wet dream. Plus he is good friends with Bobby Rush. To bad voters are that stupid in that area.

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 01:28 PM) I wish that sentencing guidelines could apply without a shadow of a doubt. However my comments that the judge was an activist are on spot. He wasnt incompetent(as much as I would like to believe that). He was calculated in his sentencing. In Illinois if you are in the commision of a felony and murder someone it becomes a death penalty case. The judge knew this, so to get around the sentencing guidelines he threw out the conviction from the jury on the sex assault so he could give the guy a break. This is also the same judge who let a group of guys go because the cops didnt have probable cause on a theft ring that was plaguing the Beverly area. The police were coming down an alley, they saw 4 men carrying out a TV at 3 in the morning on a wednesday. They were wearing ski masks and it was july, they dropped the TV which smashed into a million pieces and ran. The judge rulled that because the defendants were black, that the mere fact that they ran from the police is not probable cause. The TV could of been theres and he didnt believe about the ski masks. His ruling was black people are naturally afraid of the police and therefore running is not out of the ordinary. This crack pot judge isnt going anywhere soon, he is a friend of Bobby Rush. They were in the black panthers together. I thought Illinois dropped the death penalty after too many wrongfully convicted? Was this during that time? Why is that Judge not going anywhere? Doesn't he have an elected position?

QUOTE(Steff @ Feb 1, 2006 -> 01:21 PM) Clearly I am thinking of a 19 year old and his 15 year old girlfriend when I make comments about assholes like this never being allowed out of jail. GMAFB. Clearly you were not, which is why I posted a clarification. Clearly I wasn't thinking life in prison would be too harsh for a sexual predator that tortured and killed a little girl. Even when I agree with you, you still like to argue. Don't just blame the Judge, let's also put heat on the legislature to allow for longer sentences.