lostfan

Grayson by default gets lumped in as "crazy" along with Michele Bachmann's bats*** ass because of the media's tendency to want to make everything equal on both sides, mostly because of that "the Republican plan is for you to die quickly" quote. He's really not, he just made a conscious decision to not be a typical p**** ass Democrat who is afraid of hurting Republicans' feelings and just says what's on his mind. This is something that Republicans have never had a problem doing in my memory.

People kill me with their not having a single solitary clue what free speech rights actually are. Unless your state has specific laws stating otherwise or you have a contract with your employer speficially stating terms to the contrary, you do not have a Constitutional right to keep your job, and 1A doesn't apply to your employment. They can fire you for any reason, and that includes "not liking something you said." This kind of thing should be common knowledge and to me it's kind of embarrassing to see it actually debated. (Granted, they can't fire you for "ANY" reason, i.e. because you're black, or female, or a naturalized citizen, etc. but almost anything, yeah.) Still, I don't think NPR was ever really comfortable with him recently and if you listen to everything he said in context, it seems like they just needed a reason to fire him and this was it. Kind of like when ESPN fired Rush Limbaugh for saying the media wants to see black quarterbacks do well. Not so much because he said that, but because they had been thinking "why the hell did we hire Rush Limbaugh?" and that was a convenient way to undo that.

Glad the Rangers won. I would've taken the Rays too, but it's nice to see some new blood in the World Series for a change. I'm not one who vehemently hates everything the Yankees do, but to me there is no entertainment value in seeing the Yankees in the World Series (or very close to it) seemingly every other year, on the heels of whatever brand new $150 million contract they just gave to the latest free agent superstar that the other 29 teams desperately wanted to give but couldn't. It just gets old and stale.

Copied from a Slate article. Apple To Announce New, Secret Product Social Media in [Country X] Faces Crackdown Middle East Peace Process Restarted Security Lapse Exposes Private Data of Millions Market Falls on Fear of Inflation Market Rises on Hope for Inflation Long-Shot Candidate Challenges Status Quo Inside the White House: Aides Disagree on Policy Partisanship on Rise in Congress Lobbyists Exert Influence Over Legislative Process Congress Recesses With Unfinished Business Leading Corporations Pay No Taxes Standardized Test Scores Rise, Racial Gap Remains Despite Gains, Women's Pay Lags Day Care Found To Advance Children's Social Skills Day Care Found To Delay Children's Social Skills Americans Heavier Than Ever Heart Drug Found To Cause Heart Attacks Election Shatters Campaign-Spending Records Additive Linked to Cancer Broadcaster Fired Over Offensive Remarks Interest Rate Jitters Drive Dow Down Markets Rise on New Unemployment Numbers Mixed Signals From Fed Send Stocks Lower President Extends Olive Branch to Washington Insiders Irregularities Found in Pension Fund Civil Rights Leaders Embrace Personal-Responsibility Message Lindsay Lohan Violates Parole Brett Favre Mulls Retirement CSI Launches Spinoff New Job for Kinsley Any more?

2005 occupies its own space in my head that will never go away, apart from everything else. In 2006 I still connected it to the current team, but I made a clean mental break from it in 2007 after that unmitigated disaster to spare myself delusions and/or heartbreak. I don't see today's team, or anybody who played for the 2005 team, through a 2005 lens.

QUOTE (Swingandalongonetoleft @ Oct 22, 2010 -> 05:54 PM) /\ Sometime down the line I do actually kind of see AJ returning to coach or manage in some capacity. Catchers usually make good managers, no other players know as much as they do. I could see it.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Oct 22, 2010 -> 05:28 PM) Yup. I didn't go through it obviously. I still think I would get sick of hearing about them even if I had been old enough to experience it. I don't want it to be 2025 and having to refer back to '05 because the organization has done little to nothing since. That's all I meant. This - or for example, say, AJ Pierzynski retires and works his way up as an assistant but becomes a mediocre to poor manager with another team, but we still have meathead fans screaming that the Sox didn't sign him while they b**** about the current manager. There will be none of that from me in 2020.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 22, 2010 -> 02:16 PM) The major media don't seem to be running with it just yet, but a suspicious white powder package was received by the offices of Congressman Raul Grivjala's office. It was tested and the leaks to people in the know suggest it is a legitimately toxic chemical. The Congressman is the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The vast vast vast vast VAST majority of white powder incidents are bulls*** so I was surprised there was actually a chemical in it.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 21, 2010 -> 07:44 PM) There's no place for the racist crap Lebron gets, but you can't tell me he never got any before he signed with the Heat. If he's looking for sympathy, hey what they are sending you shouldn't be sent, and no one should ever have to deal with it, but bringing it up now.................wow. I bet you every black player who has ever played in the NBA has been called that plenty of times. I love him crying about how hard it is to be a professional athlete. Then why don't you just retire and do something else? All athletes, all entertainers have to know coming in, the interaction, the lack of privacy, the love, the hate is all part of it. Its the big reason the careers are so lucrative. If no one really cared, playing basketball may net you 100K a year. And if he's getting all this hate on Twitter and its bothering him, can't he just get rid of it? Oh yeah, he probably gets paid huge money to hawk stuff there. This ftw.

This is hilarious

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 21, 2010 -> 09:44 AM) I believe my description was an ADHD Hummingbird. Omars signing was the best one of the last year. I remember that, I think I had it sig quoted for a while.

QUOTE (kev211 @ Oct 21, 2010 -> 04:34 PM) And he also needs to realize that I am not going to show any sympathy to someone making millions of dollars to play a game. Give me LeBron's salary and you can call me a n***** every day for a year.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Oct 21, 2010 -> 12:59 PM) i think aquabuddhagate is having an effect the outsourcing ads the Democrats have been running are closing some gaps (or even building leads) in some races the GOP really wanted to win. GOP has an enormous advantage in the 3rd party ad category, I think what happened is that the GOP peaked sometime around the summer so you have some regression to the mean, or whatever you want to call it. So instead of it being a "super ultra mega bloodbath for the Dems who could possibly lose 10,000 seats" now we are just back to "possible GOP takeover of the house"

QUOTE (jasonxctf @ Oct 21, 2010 -> 11:58 AM) Call this a partisan comment, but I'm a bit annoyed by the attack line used against Alexei for Senate. He lost $150 million in the College Savings Fund. If you look closely at the reference date for that comment, its from January 2009. Right after the DOW took a huge tumble. Anyone else want to tell me what other funds didn't lose money from 2007-2009. Probably every single one of them. I just don't know why Alexei doesn't post a response showing that the fund has regained all (if not more than all) of it's losses in the past 14 months as the DOW has moved up 40%. This is what's annoying to me about the Maryland races. Yeah in the last year the state has lost jobs under O'Malley (who I really don't like btw). Anyone care to point out who hasn't in the global recession? I get that this is standard political stuff (O'Malley bulls***ted about energy rate hikes knowing he wasn't going to do anything about it because he couldn't) but it's still insulting to my intelligence.

QUOTE (Tex @ Oct 21, 2010 -> 08:18 AM) I was in San Antonio this weekend and could not stand the ads. The b.s. that is tossed around is just embarrassing. And yes, it is from both sides. And I've sent letters to a couple campaigns telling them how insulted I was about their ads, but I assume they just figure I wasn't going to vote for their candidate anyways. Which is somewhat true. NPR just did this story yesterday and highlighted the "cookie cutter" ads that both sides are using. I believe when a campaign makes a false statement like that they should be liable to run and pay for an equal number of ads setting the record straight. So and so says he/she cares but he/she raised your taxes So and so voted for/had a part in Legislation X that raised your taxes So and so is responsible for our deficit So and so is responsible for X that made you have to pay more for Y So and so is singlehandedly responsible for job losses during the recession that every state had to deal with across the board

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 20, 2010 -> 11:08 PM) I'll be voting green but I genuinely believe he's the best candidate of the three. If I was running I'd probably be the best candidate of the three. lol. That's how I feel about the Maryland governor's race

The funny part is she was sitting there looking like she thought the audience was laughing at Coons.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 20, 2010 -> 10:29 PM) The establishment clause as it is written is stronger than "Separation of church and state" anyway. The biggest issue, to me anyway, was that she didn't even appear to know the establishment clause was in the first amendment. Coons couldn't answer a trivia question on the spot (granted, everyone should know speech, press, religion, assembly, and petition but still). O'Donnell actively denied something that exists actually existed when someone said it did in front of her. Now, now I get it, I know she actually believes herself when she says that, I've heard Ron Paul talk about how the founding fathers never intended for government to actively be hostile to religion, how the nation was founded on Christian values etc. But it doesn't take too much digging through case law to know there is in fact a separation of church and state even if it's not specifically spelled out that way. And I tend to give Thomas Jefferson's opinion a little more weight than Ron Paul's (although this textbook I just bought from Texas tells me that Thomas Jefferson was a nobody and that we are in a better position to know these things than he was).

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Oct 20, 2010 -> 09:44 PM) So, they will trade for a guy that they let go of a few years ago and his brother? Hehe. For some reason, I don't think the Rangers are going to trade anything with the Sox... seeing as how they get fleeced every time. But that's just my lack of analysis... In fairness I'm sure they are kicking themselves in the ass for that trade.

I could buy that, but I honestly don't know, I don't follow Illinois politics as closely as I used to.

It'd probably be pretty funny if you looked at my posts on Alexei's defense last year (which at the time were accurate) and what I think of him this year. Complete 180, because his defensive game has done a complete 180. It wasn't just me either, even notoriously sunshiny guys like 2K5 were saying "he is physically gifted but as long as he is a bonehead it will keep him from being elite."

Is Quinn really that bad? He punked out on the Blago thing but he inherited a pretty f***ed up situation... I mean it's hard to follow arguably the worst governor in your state's history.

I really need another 360... haven't bought one since my wife broke it this summer.

I hate this time of year... I only casually follow Maryland politics and I can spot the heroic stretches of the truth and distortions in the Ehrlich/O'Malley ads (call me biased but Ehrlich does it more). There's SO many of them though, that's the thing I hate. The most ridiculous ad isn't for a candidate though, we have a question on the ballot whether to allow slots at Arundel Mills or not, the biggest mall in this region (we had this on the ballot whether to allow slots in the state in 2008 and it passed easily). The "anti" slots are funded by groups who aren't so much worried about slots in principle but stand to lose money if they end up at the mall and not where they want them... anyway most of their arguments against are silly. One of them had a girl who looked to be about 9 they had saying "I just don't think it's a good idea." Really? What the f*** does she know? She's 9!

1. Policy views 2. Political affiliation (let's be real here. a dyed-in-the-wool liberal is not often going to vote for a conservative and vice versa) 3. Charisma/likability (mostly because all politicians need this for various reasons) Leadership style isn't as important until later in one's career. Resume and background matters, but if I like Candidate A's ideas and he is new on the scene, I'm not voting for Candidate B if I think they are a hack just because they've been around a long time (see Obama vs. McCain). I really don't give a f*** about character and IMO this is what ruins elections for most people. I mean if he is a complete and utter bag of s*** then yes of course. But, you've got Krystal Ball running for Congress in Virginia and someone released some photos of her sucking a dildo that was attached to a guy's nose from when she was in college. First off this is a) pretty god damn awesome but more importantly B) completely irrelevant to how fit she is to be a legislator and c) the reaction it's intended to provoke makes me like the candidate MORE if someone releases a photo of someone smoking a bong in college or whatever. That means they're just a regular person who's done dumb things just like me.