lostfan

I think it's pretty hilarious, if slightly pathetic, that after left-wingers started calling themselves "progressives" more often because the right-wingers made "liberal" a bad word, that the right-wingers picked up on it and started trying to make "progressive" a bad word. You can immediately tell when someone is a talk radio listener/Glenn Beck watcher when they use that word. 8 times out of 10 they don't even know what the f*** it means.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Feb 22, 2010 -> 11:23 PM) Why aren't they moving? Because someone doesn't want them to for some reason. Not really. Nobody can give a simple answer because there's not one. Even supporters of tribunals will acknowledge that's the biggest weakness.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Feb 22, 2010 -> 09:09 PM) And there's also a point to a military tribunal. But that's ok, just marginalize that point to make your point. You must've forgotten that I've pretty consistently supported military tribunals for the last few years now. But the thing is, they just aren't moving. At all. How many terrorists have been convicted in criminal courts since 9-11? Like 300? And tribunals? Like 3?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 22, 2010 -> 09:17 PM) I got the years backwards. Bankruptcy is 10 years, negative reporting is 7. http://www.creditinfocenter.com/creditreports/cr_time.shtml Is that a recent change? I've always been told that bankruptcy stays for 7 years.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 22, 2010 -> 09:09 PM) I think it can stay on for 10 years. Yeah I was wondering. The 7 years thing comes from bankruptcy, stuff like late fees only stays on for 2 years.

If you owe someone a significant debt (e.g. $1100) and the person you owe the money to closes the account, and you just don't pay for 7 years, does it still affect your credit or does it just go away?

QUOTE (MattZakrowski @ Feb 22, 2010 -> 08:27 PM) The sports questions are always crazy easy, they had one where they asked what position Magic Johnson, Steve Nash and some other point guard played. I hope that wasn't the actual question (or "answer" as the case may be on Jeopardy), lol

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Feb 22, 2010 -> 10:55 AM) via Sullivan: I really think most people (vast majority are conservatives) just flat-out miss the entire point of trials and the basic rule of law. It's not just a symbolic show, there really is a point to it all.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Feb 18, 2010 -> 06:08 PM) If you were there a month earlier we'd bump into each other. Did you get your visa too? Bump into him in a country of 1.3 billion people? heh

I just checked in with Southwest (literally just, on my way to the airport, and I get a security document and not a boarding pass. So wtf. I'll be in Group C again.

QUOTE (DBAHO @ Feb 17, 2010 -> 09:18 PM) Bulls fans should be very happy with that trade. Getting Salmons off the roster is enough for me.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Feb 17, 2010 -> 07:42 PM) You can bypass the entire line for SW by checking in online? Wouldn't everyone just do that? That never seems to work for me, I don't know why. I fly Southwest a lot because I live 10 minutes from BWI and go to Midway a lot (3-5 times a year I'm guessing, not counting business), and they're both major Southwest hubs, so I like the schedule. I don't really think they have bad service at all and I don't know why they have that reputation, however, I think the open seating thing is pretty overrated. I show up usually an hour before my flight leaves, and I don't see the point in showing up earlier than that and why people do it is beyond me. I have better things to do than sit in the airport for 2-3 hours. I'm always in Group C unless I have my kid with me. I've been in Group A I think one time, and I checked in early on my phone once and got Group B. Also, when I fly, why is it that I always sit next to some old white guy in his 50s, or some homely overweight woman? I might've been lucky enough to sit next to a young, attractive-ish woman one time in all the times I've flown, or at least it seems like it... but I know they are on the plane, I see them when I'm boarding!

My first love (or what I assumed to be love back then) was just kind of meh... we thought we knew what we were doing but it became clear later on that we had no clue what it was really all about. I joined the military and then we tried a long-term relationship because we thought that's what we were supposed to do, that wasn't working. She was really immature about it when she realized she wanted to break up and decided the way she'd tell me is to just stop answering my calls, stop responding to my e-mails, and block me from IM so it looked like she was never online. Nice. So eventually she finally broke down and told me and I was like "well no s***, it wasn't hard to figure out, but what a piss poor way to handle it" and I had already started on other women. So when I went on leave a few weeks later we saw each other and still had the same physical attraction to each other and thought we'd try getting back together. That didn't go any better than the first time, so this time I broke up with her, she took it pretty well. We've been on pretty good terms ever since then, when I deployed to Iraq and came home for R&R we had some no-strings-attached sex, and every now and again until I met my eventual wife. We stopped talking for a couple of years after I got married but we're still cool. She lives in Dallas now and I talk to her on Facebook every week or so.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 13, 2010 -> 02:10 PM) In 2 years, the Chinese will be operating 42 separate high-speed rail lines, connecting virtually all of their major urban centers. In 4 years, the U.S. may have a high speed rail line running from Tampa to Orlando. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy This is just sad.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 17, 2010 -> 02:06 PM) Except that Olbermann doesn't even pretend to be a journalist, and he's downright libelous/slanderous in his comments. The Scott Brown rant was pathetic. Why would he? He's not. None of these talking heads on the opinion shows are journalists and none of them pretend to be. I could get a show on Fox if I could hold good ratings. People see them that way though for some reason. QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 17, 2010 -> 03:22 PM) Right, like the fact that the study focused on his Talking Points segment, which is the soap box portion of the show. Shocker he wouldn't stick to the professional standards of journalism there. I mean i don't want to argue that O'Reilly is better than Olbermann, that he's more of a journalist. I'm just saying that besides from the "that guys stupid" or "that's insane," I've never heard him attack someone with such unsubstantiated vitriol, which had little to do with whatever he was reporting on, and everything to do with his hatred for a certain segment of society. I'm still shocked that no one went after Olbermann for it. He was basically saying "look who these f***tards just elected," and then proceeded to bash him. If someone on Fox News had done that the uproar would have been deafening. Meh that's a daily occurrence on Fox, it would border on being a non-event. That's pretty much Glenn Beck's MO.

Jenks, I think I know what you're trying to say but you're pretty far off base and (I hate to have to phrase this cuz it sounds kind of condescending and I don't mean to be) you seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the point of science is, or the things it tries to do and doesn't try to do. Science can't prove or disprove how life was created so it doesn't even try to touch the topic, and also "science" isn't just some repository of facts, it's a method used to reach conclusions based on observable data, like people have already mentioned. There is no observable data on how life started. There is for the Big Bang. I've also never heard anybody claim the Big Bang explains how life started, they say it's how the UNIVERSE started (universe ≠ life), but just now is the first time I've heard anybody say that's what the Big Bang is. Evolution is something totally different.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 17, 2010 -> 04:47 PM) I was in engineering, and aside from one guy who ranted about Bush my first semester, my classes were pretty much as politics-free as they could be. My instructors were never political but a lot of times in discussions, students would give themselves away and it was pretty annoying. Usually they were conservatives that would do it but there was one that had to go on time-out when she kept ranting about Bush in every answer. lol. poor girl.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 17, 2010 -> 04:25 PM) What? Scientists don't claim that the big bang created life and that there's no other explanation? I think that's their whole argument! They think a greater power is laughable (clearly some of you agree), despite not being able to answer the first part of the question. I don't really know where you get this from, science doesn't attempt to answer this question because it can't be done.

Maddow is opinionated but not crazy. Olbermann is definitely pretty off.

Not sure where you're going with that. I'm talking about Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity's books and others like them

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 16, 2010 -> 07:45 PM) Except when they actually say it by advocating eliminating the 12th grade. On Amazon, if you search by categories for "keeping america stupid" all the books seem to fall into a certain category.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Feb 16, 2010 -> 12:47 AM) I like America a lot, and I'm getting a little bit sick of cliched "I remember when I started to question things!" stuff as it pertains to our history. Have people lost sight of how justified we usually are in what were trying to accomplish? Defeat the brutal dictatorships of the 30's and 40's who sought to build empire through eugenics, beat the Soviet brand of communsim which proved to be a destructive force that set much of the world back 50 or so years, eradicate international terrorism that's claimed thousands of lives... these are good things for us to be doing. We've even cleaned up after some of our messes with things like the infusion of Iraqi infrastructure development and the Marshall Plan*. You all get so caught up in the means that you forget the ends; America by and large has been an overwhelmingly positive influence on the world. We've had our f***ups (Native American genocide, Latin America) but they are tiny blips compared to our successes. *our track record here is not perfect, but its a step up from previous empires who left everything they couldn't loot to die. Yeah I'm not disputing any of this, at all. Hell, even with all of the f***ups (Iraq is a pretty big one) that still probably makes the United States the most benevolent hegemon in the history of civilization. That wasn't really the point of my mini-rant though. I'm talking about kool-aid drinkers who sincerely believe the United States is incapable of doing wrong simply because of who we are. That's not patriotism, that's just being a sheep and that kind of dumb pseudo-nationalism is actually toxic and dangerous.

QUOTE (bmags @ Feb 15, 2010 -> 10:22 PM) It was sarcasm. That was a big capture. I know, I wrote that as if you said the opposite of what you posted

The "law enforcement approach to terrorism" and "capitulating" or "pre 9-11 approach" or however that talking point is phrased is just a fallacy at best, a bald-faced lie made out of whole cloth at worst. You just can't say that with any kind of credibility when the administration still has troops in Iraq (for now), increases the American presence in Afghanistan by about a factor of 3, and authorizes twice as many Predator strikes as Bush did, while pissing off his base because he continued a lot of Bush's policies. I guess it doesn't count if you don't arbitrarily invade another country.

I really feel for JD though, even if he does come across as whiny and making excuses right now. It's too bad he seems to have miscalculated on the RF/DH thing because he might've had some pull with the Sox to be a DH.