lostfan

Re: Jenks's comment about Obama making fun of Pelosi being unable to pass anything - he actually shat (thank you Rex for using this word earlier, lol) on the Senate, hard, much more than the House. How many times did he point out "the House passed..."

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 28, 2010 -> 09:48 PM) Kap, if the point is that you think that since the dems has 60 sens that they can't complain about anything, that's fine. I think it's stupid because it's completely ignoring very conservative senators. But the fact that just because they have sixty you can accuse them of not having tried to get some republican senators is really inane. They clearly did. They wasted 4 mos. doing it even when it was clear grassley would never vote on it, and even when he stated that yes, he did have an impact on that baucus bill that is so clearly the senate's bill at this point. They clearly tried to court snowe and collins, and snowe, who said she could commit to a triggered PO, is not even going to vote for a billl without any PO at all. And you want me to believe that no, the dems didn't reach out to the GOP at all. it's clearly false. And in the climate change negotiations, when sens. like Graham and McCain who so clearly agreed with climate change legislation before now say they are adamently against it, you can again claim the democrats clearly never reached out to GOp. But there are two sides. And one side is committed to not even trying to legislate, and do whatever they can to reduce the senate to a halt. They've said as much. But yet you seem intent on pushing this memo that the dems are just pushing this radical leftist legislation, when the hard progressives have shown willing to compromise A LOT to pass something to help the situation. So yeah, I find your comments stupid, especially when you are pushing them in the dem thread. I think all the talk about radicals trying to impose an agenda on the country is kind of hilarious actually because if you look at "THE LEFT" (ooooo scary omg) and what "THE LEFT" wants to happen, since Obama's been elected (hell you may as well go back to 2006) they haven't gotten a god damn thing that they've wanted, at least in the form they've wanted and with the expediency they've wanted, and they aren't going to get it, even if Obama gets re-elected. They know it, too. Which is why they're so pissed off, which I think they have every right to be, but I think where the blog commenters and such who rant so much are wrong is that they think if they elect a "real" progressive (like Obama is supposed to be) that that will change everything. It's as if 2008 taught them nothing, they should've learned that lesson in patience already.

I think technically we are not supposed to copy/paste more than a 3 or 4 line abstract from any site and we're not supposed to paste entire articles of anything, even free content, but that subject's never really come up around here.

I totally forgot this was today.

Balta I don't recall you ever actually answering that question, FWIW

QUOTE (southsideirish71 @ Jan 27, 2010 -> 01:08 AM) Here is the formula that explains his behavior. Awesome. So true though (the theory in general. I've heard stories, but I don't know JimH) edit: I just read his posts there though, damn its like he has a dossier on every poster here. lol. That's funny to me for some reason.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Jan 26, 2010 -> 10:07 PM) Have an unlimited supply of Green Cards for Doctors that can pass certain levels of educational requirements. Currently there a limits on the spaces available to attend medical school, so f*** that, juice up on overseas schools. They would also have to pass exams. Trust me on this, there are a whole lot of Indians willing to learn just about anything to get a green card. Availability to care would increase. Now, I'm not going to lie here, the 'instant green card' doctors aren't going to necessarily be the best around, but good enough and comparatively cheap. Maybe have the green card doctors do the easier type of stuff for a minimum of 5 years at a certain wage (low wage of course). After that time they are free to work wherever they want without wage restriction. They can start a private practice as well, if they so choose. I believe it

Sounds plausible if it doesn't reduce quality/availability of care but I don't know enough to be able to speak intelligently on it. How are we going to get more Indian doctors though?

I don't really have a beef with Social Security so much since it has its own tax unlike most of the other budget. I would say Gates more or less wants to do what you suggest on defense but the wars have to end before that happens. He would rather spend money on something that's going to be used in Iraq or Afghanistan 10 months from now than on something that could hypothetically be used in 15-20 years.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 26, 2010 -> 08:45 PM) Awesome. Thank you for the rest of the post, too. We've got two sources of information here: the US intelligence agency and (supposedly) Osama Bin Laden. I'm not going to give credibility to either of them. lol, figured you'd like that. We had a US attorney in today talking to us about prosecuting terrorists (summary of what he said: there is almost no black and white and there's tons of shades of grey and different reasons for each shade being what it is) and he was saying how, as a prosecutor, he doesn't care if Mutallab was Mirandized or if he loses admissions of guilt in court because he got caught red-handed. Then he stopped and said "well, actually it was another body part, but..."

If cutting the budget by 20% arbitrarily was even possible it would've been done already. It's not. It's just not. Has anyone who complains about the federal budget ever actually looked at a chart to see where the money goes? Social Security, Medicare, and defense by themselves are probably 2/3 of the budget and those three are basically untouchable (even the thought of proposing cuts to Medicare gets howls of protest and for some people is a career-killer, defense is basically an industry in itself with super-powerful lobbies, and politically, proposing cuts in defense would be a disaster). Discretionary spending is like 20% or so but "discretionary" doesn't mean "pork" and most of that spending is already accounted for somehow too, and couldn't reasonably be called wasteful. There's VA budgets and benefits for military retirees, that's 5% or so, obviously thats going nowhere. To top this off, the recession has dropped revenues (Sarah Palin would say decreased revenue is a good thing). Basically, where is someone going to start ? There just isn't an easy way to "fix the budget." I don't listen to anyone's opinions on it unless they have big ideas that would actually reduce spending in a way that's actually possible to do other than just ranting about how politicians suck, which is what most of those opinions tend to amount to.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 24, 2010 -> 01:06 PM) So about this not really being Al Qaeda... http://nwitimes.com/news/world/article_e66..._medium=twitter It's inappropriate for me to comment in too much detail about this specific incident, but like I said earlier in the thread, just because someone claims they did something on behalf of al-Qaida doesn't mean they are actually al-Qaida, and just because they claim credit for something doesn't mean they directed it (hell, they believe they single-handedly caused the subprime mortgage crisis and that they're locked into an eternal struggle with our civilization, and they're on the right side of us and our civilization is in decline, so take their more grand claims with a grain of salt). There's different layers of al-Qaida and then there's a whole bunch of wannabes out there. Now, I'm not saying whether or not Great Balls of Fire was actually working for al-Qaida, but everything I said in the previous paragraph should be considered in all circumstances. Besides, we shouldn't really be getting too hung up on what basically amounts to petty details. I personally believe UBL himself doesn't even really matter, in terms of the global jihadist movement. He's not even close to what he was 10 years ago.

So I'm at this conference and we are getting a series of presentations/lectures... earlier today we had a retired VA state cop talking about the Virginia Tech shootings (I'm not going to type his name but if you should happen to google it and figure out who I'm talking about he has a funny last name, lol). Each of the presentations is to give us some kind of perspective or a lesson, there is a point to most of them, this one was for some broader perspective on the Fort Hood shootings so the parallels there were pretty obvious. Anyway, today was like "Irrelevant political rant day" all morning and it was obnoxious as hell... I write in it in this thread cuz they were all conservative. The presenter responded to a question with the answer "I'm a strong 2nd Amendment guy and I think any good citizen that follows laws should be able to purchase a gun" and some people randomly broke out into applause even though that barely had anything at all to do with the subject. Then later someone commented "the pendulum is going to swing left to right on this political correctness stuff" and the presenter said again something like "I don't like when our political leadership won't use the word terror or won't say Islam without saying extremism and I don't think we should apologize for it" and there was more random applause. Come on guys... put your f***ing hands back in your laps, STFU and listen... and presenter, you talk about Virginia Tech. So annoying to sit and listen to that. None of us set national policy so none of that discussion was appropriate. We also had a 20 minute sidetracking/soapbox fest earlier that morning regarding prosecution of terrorists. Next time I'm just going to leave to my hotel room and take a nap. I didn't come here to hear people b**** about politics in an official setting.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 26, 2010 -> 05:40 PM) Senator Judd Gregg, R-N.H. I wouldn't have expected a Republican to make that statement right now, honestly.

If you park in a shoveled out spot but you won't shovel your own, technically you didn't do anything wrong, but if you do this you're an asshole and you need to be hit by a bus.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 22, 2010 -> 05:31 PM) Why don't you try that, and see what happens. Fortunately, its been years since I had to park on residential streets more than on rare occasion. Living somewhere with street parking only is annoying. Yeah aren't you like a half a foot taller than me? lol. I would get KTFO. I would try though.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 22, 2010 -> 05:04 PM) I don't acknowledge the whole chair/cone thing with parking spaces cleared of snow. Its a public street, I'm taking the spot if its there. I am willing to accept this if you are ok with me punching you in the face if you park there an hour after I shovel the spot out.

The internet is a double-edged sword. The access to so much information is just a beautiful thing. But the downside to that is everyone has a voice and it's easy to be heard, even when you are one of those people who shouldn't be heard, and it's a lot easier for bulls*** to get traction and a lot harder to vet it all (or some people don't even try to vet, they like living in their insulated information loop, like anyone who takes Orly Taitz seriously).

I read the line of something SS2K5 posted that says they didn't lift a ban on unlimited corporate contributions so I feel better about that... still pissed about the ruling though.

We could force people to vote, but if they can't even be bothered to vote on their own, could you imagine who they'd elect if you made them? Ugh. Although in a lot of cases it's not like you can really be that much worse. Hell, James Inhofe seems to be comfortable in his seat.

I understand corporate personhood, but when it comes to politics, a corporation is automatically like 1000x more powerful and influential than me unless I become a billionaire. Ironically, right now, a corporate entity has MORE freedom to contribute to campaigns than we do because the law hasn't caught up yet. We still have the $2300 limit. Me specifically, I can't even donate at all because I'm a federal contractor. But now my employer can. How f***ed up is that. Because a corporation is an artificial entity to begin with there need to be some limitations on this... I'd feel a lot better if Congress passed some kind of legislation (they won't).

We totally should send one right at Caracas.

I don't want corporations OR unions running the government. This ruling is just an all-around epic failure.

QUOTE (SoxFanForever @ Jan 21, 2010 -> 09:19 PM) Yup, pre-ordered it a few days ago. I'm going to be out of town unfortunately when it comes out... I should Amazon it and it'll be there when I get back

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Jan 21, 2010 -> 11:19 AM) I don't understand the "I'm With CoCo" thing. I prefer Conan to Leno, but I don't think I need to stand in solidarity with someone that just got a $45 million golden parachute. lol there was a headline earlier, on Huffpo or something, saying "Conan O'Brien set to be unemployed" and I thought uhh he hardly qualifies as being "unemployed" when he just got $33 million or whatever his portion of that is.