Texsox

Cuba was a grand vacation destination for Americans before the enbargo. Thanks for the cigars

Yes, that is part of the problem. Child care benefits is one area I am most familiar with. Shameful that a family has to give up those benefits when they earn more. The decrease in benefits swallows up more then the raise, yet child care is one of the single biggest hurdles that poor people face. Basically, if you were a parent and your child was currently in a safe day care and "moving up" meant placing your child in an unlicensed, unregulated, daycare which usually is over crowded and does not offer the same meals, etc. What would you do? And the jumble of agencies that are in place is daunting even for an educated person. I sat through a presentation and lost track of the number of agencies where someone can turn to for help. And the companies that try and untangle it for their employees, are routinely criticized for those efforts. We need to fix the system where a family doing the right thing is not penalized as they move up and those that stay the same or decline lose out. The problem is always punishing the adults and not their children. We have little stomach for starving kids in poor environments. We could just eliminate programs for the working poor, or work out the incentives for staying in place.

Tragic, and complicated. Humans, even police make mistakes. BTW, did Condit run and lose or not run?

QUOTE (OilCan @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 08:06 AM) Texsox, Glad to hear you guys down the street are "OK"... We got plenty of rain here in Luling, about an inch and a half. Most of my family's 3 acres were flooded but those have now been absorbed in our dry soil... San Antonio received plenty of rain, as did the Hill Country. It didn't really come down in Austin until around 1pm yesterday. Glad to hear that. We have plenty of fields under water, but the irrigation methods we use actually help to contain and channel the water. I was just thinking I have been through Luling, what is the BBQ joint that is Texas Famous?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 08:20 AM) http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Politics/story?i...8351&page=1 I'm just not liking Obama's short list. I do like a couple names on McCain's list. The more and more I see, the more I like McCain's chances. He seems to be running a tighter, more professional campaign and making better decisions.

How did Bush handled his cocaine use? I think he denied it, much like Clinton. Both lied and we know it. Seriously, how many candidates in this age range have not used drugs at some point in their lives? McCain was in Vietnam, it would be amazing if he didn't smoke pot. And how many voters in this age range also did illegal drugs? Sorry, I just can't get excited over this issue. I've always given every candidate a free pass on most misstatements. They say so much in the course of a campaign, and damn near every word is recorded and dissected. It's amazing they don't trip up more often. So when I give a pass to my man McCain, it will not be hypocritical.

Wow. I was about 60 miles inland, but the eye wall passed very close by. The winds and rain were impressive. I noticed that Mother Nature finds the weak link in everything. We were without electricity for about 20 hours, other areas are still without and it may take a week to ten days to get it back. Being an avid backpacker, I had plenty of odds and ends and a couple camp stoves if necessary. I never lost water, which was very nice. My car port was half ripped out where it was attached to the house, but it remained in place. I did reach South Padre Island. The usualy 90 minute drive to close to four hours as I negotiated around flooded roadways. Imagine the largest wooden power poles you have ever seen, and splinter them in sections like a toothpick. About 10' of beach was eroded away at my camp. Some items were destroyed, other, more fragile, remained undamaged. Fences and signs were down everywhere. My detours took me thorugh some really poor neighborhoods. Sadly, we could not tell what was normal conditions and what may have been storm damage. Remembering what Jim went through a couple years ago and am very grateful we had it relatively easy.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Jul 23, 2008 -> 06:07 PM) the exact same argument the FOX news defender used The just of it was that the media is slanted so far to the left that anything in the middle would be considered right wing biased in comparison. When in reality both the MSM and FOX are slanted. FOX is basically a retaliation network to the pro-Democrat bias in the MSM. But when some people see things on TV that they agree with, they automatically assume it's non-biased and true reporting, when that may not be the case. and this is really beating a dead horse now, as this is like the 1 millionth 'liberal media' debate in the filibuster Whether the media is biased or not, the GOP has won the battle. I'm not certain if it is more amazing they won over an unbiased or biased media.

QUOTE (Brian @ Jul 23, 2008 -> 04:52 PM) He'd be dumb not to do it, but that is me. Just hope there would be security around. He's turned down more, which is pretty stupid IMHO. And Rodriguez should kiss Bartman's ass every day. He's the one that really cost the Cubs their chances.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Jul 23, 2008 -> 05:54 PM) Well, I think having CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, and most of the nations news papers filled with pro-Democrat journalists is a win for the Dems. The coverage is totally pro-Dem. I had a similar debate with someone, but she was convinced that FOX news is completely unbiased; nothing could convince her otherwise. Oh well. And this will be studied and the analysis of the MSM will be obvious; a strong pro-Democrat bias in the news media. As The Gorace would say, "The debate is over". At this point, totally unbiased would appear as liberal biased because the GOP has made the public super sensitive to anything that is negative towards them or positive for the Dems. Look back at the letter that GOP leaders sent to the NYT, if you believe their numbers, and I do, the majority of Americans believe the media is biased against the GOP. So I cannot agree that having pro-dem journalists is a win for the Dems. The GOP has turned it into a big victory for themselves.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jul 23, 2008 -> 05:29 PM) 'k. I'll be around. I have an aircard, too. They work pretty well. technically it is not an aircard. My Sailing Director had the Verizon version and he was 10X faster then my cell phone using Edge technology from T-mobile. Basically I was using it along with a Java application to access my gmail account.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jul 23, 2008 -> 05:39 PM) And so have the Democrats. They know how to play that fiddle very well as well. Media relations has been huge since Kennedy v. Nixon. I think today, the GOP has easily won the battle. From the GOP radio network to Fox News. They are the front runners, yet are portrayed as underdogs. It may be decades before it is recognized, but I think this will be studied in political science and journalism classes for a long time. I would even venture to say that in the present environment that Nixon would have a better than 50-50 chance to have finished his term and Woodward and Bernstein would have been discredited as liberal biased reporters.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Jul 23, 2008 -> 05:03 PM) McCain is making the right move not changing his stance to mirror Obama's as to appease the NYT. He would be a fool to give in on this and he knows it. Honestly, this is a win for McCain, as the media digs itself deeper and deeper in a hole. They have been hemorrhaging credibility for a while now; from their front page tabloid story on McCain to insisting he be more like Obama in order for the paper to publish any retort in their paper, the NYT comes out as the loser. My understanding is the NYT wanted fresh material, not a rehash of the previous year, which makes sense. You are correct, any time the GOP can make it seem like the media is screwing them, it is a win. The underlying suspicion is anything negative about REPs is made up and there is vast amounts of great positive stories that the media is sitting on and not printing. Of course when they publish an article on Dems, the suspicion is the opposite. Vast amounts of negative stuff isn't being reported and the positive is made up. The GOP would be fools to really want any changes from the media. The GOP has managed the media far better than any organization in history.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Jul 23, 2008 -> 04:01 PM) What an asshole. This guy should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The nice thing is these guys remove themselves from the gene pool before they can reproduce.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jul 23, 2008 -> 04:43 PM) If you can check in from time to time, please do so. Hopefully you have the batteries and the wireless card ready to go (those towers can take a beating unlike the land lines). I have internet via my cell phone and use it like a modem. I can also text message you. I'm starting to realize this is serious. When TV images start to get closer and closer to where you are it becomes real. Now the areas that were hit this morning are clearing up and what they had is coming here. The weather station about 1/2 mile from me is reporting sustained 40+ mph winds. My car port is trembling like Mike Tyson in a spelling bee.

LOL the border patrol busted a truck carrying 9,500 pounds of pot north. I guess they thought it would be a good time to make a run for it.

Holy Crap. We're about an hour or two from the really nasty stuff. Already we have sustained 40 mph winds and rain. The heavy bands are about 20 miles away and from what I'm seeing on the local news, this will be a nasty evening and night. Already we've been losing power from time to time.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian man's dare went horribly wrong when he tried to play chicken with cars on a freeway wearing only his underwear. The 18 year old was critically injured after being hit by a four-wheel drive on a freeway in the southern city of Melbourne in the early hours of Wednesday, police said in a statement. "Police are dismayed at the utter stupidity of a man who decided to play chicken on the Tullamarine Freeway," the statement said. "It was lucky nobody was killed as a result and police couldn't believe anybody would be foolish enough to take such grave risks with their personal safety and that of other road users." The driver and passenger in the car were unhurt, though the vehicle was a write-off. (Reporting by Jonathan Standing; Editing by Valerie Lee) Gotta love those crazy Aussies

QUOTE (FlaSoxxJim @ Jul 23, 2008 -> 03:17 PM) How had the turtle nesting season been going down there this year? Pretty much every nest that hadn't hatched out by now is toast. We lost an enormous number of nests in a better than average nesting season with the 2004 and 2005 storms. We were invited to view the secret corral where they relocate the nests. Very cool. They dug one up that was hatching. Already this year more nests hatched then last year. Over 1,000 turtles have been released, so two or three may survive and reproduce.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 23, 2008 -> 01:33 PM) I'm still waiting for the headlines praising the speculators for pushing the price of crude oil down about $23 in the last week and a half, not to mention the gasoline futures down almost 60 cents, heating oil down 60 cents, and natural gas down nearly 4.000 points or about 33%! Good news doesn't sell.

University of Texas - Pan American Broncs #268 ahead of powerhouse Northwestern

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Jul 23, 2008 -> 01:50 PM) I'd say that winning the NIT is more impressive than losing in the first round. In theory, the NIT winner would be the 66 ranked team in the nation. I think 2 versus 1 point seems fair.

Interesting that the most conservative of institutionns, the US military, would help out the Obama campaign like that. If someone wants their full, unedited, piece published, they should take out an ad. To appear outside an advertisement and in the editorial section, it can, and should, be edited. Now that may mean nothing is changed, or it is changed by the author, but to expect a newspaper to print something verbatim, is just not right.

The latest forecast is all hell to break loose about 7 PM tonight for me. I can feel it starting to pick up.

QUOTE (FlaSoxxJim @ Jul 23, 2008 -> 12:32 PM) Now if 6 turned out to be 9, I don't mind I don't mind. Sorry, 6 is 3