EvilMonkey

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Oct 28, 2008 -> 02:08 PM) Actually the reality is that the jury is still out on how that bridge collapsed. It may very well have been a design flaw. However, the bridge was considered to be structurally deficient in 2005 and 2006. Internal state documents in 2007 discussed the possibility of condemning the bridge. Any attempts to retrofit the bridge would have resulted in further weakening of the bridge so a replacement was deemed necessary. It would have been left basically alone except for standard work until a replacement was built in 2020 under the plan. Jury isn't out. And all the people who played politics with this, mere hours after the collaps happened, should be ashamed of themselves for the accusations they threw about. http://www.startribune.com/local/33308279....QL7PQLanchO7DiU

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 28, 2008 -> 02:39 PM) A lot of this same kind of crap happened on the margins in 2004 too. Except it was the Dems making the same sort of complaints you are right now. Some of these are real issues, that need to be investigated and addressed. Others are just conspiracy fodder. In any case, they aren't likely to make or break the election. With such small victory totals in Ohio and Florida last time, why do you assume that they can't make or break an election? And I like how you point out that these charges were leveled at the repubs last cycle. Sort of like saying 'see, they did it too', without really saying it.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 28, 2008 -> 02:48 PM) By the way, has anyone seen that TV person's response to the hubub yet? She says she is shocked that people are upset by her being "aggresive" and "asking tough questions instead of "softball" ones. LOL. She has completed missed what went on there. Softball question: Does it make you feel good to be helping all those poor people with your new tax plan? Hardball question: Is it such a good idea to be raising taxes on the economy's biggest engines (the rich and large corporations) in a time of recession? Wild pitch into the dugout question: Are you actually Karl Marx? The range of reactions by Obama supporters hasn't been as broad. It ranged from disgusted to mobilizing the Digital brown Shirt brigade.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Oct 28, 2008 -> 01:27 PM) Tell that to the families of the people who died on that bridge in Minnesota. The bridge collapsed to due a design error and the extra weight from the construction equipment that was on it, not from a lack of funding. Go ahead, just keep repeating that lie.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 28, 2008 -> 12:23 PM) ACORN clearly stole the election. Clearly. Don't forget the Vote at Home folks, moving to battleground states and trying to claim residency, the Ohio officials trying to push 200,000 potentially bad registrations all atg once, and the Virgian AG invalidating military ballots, while pushing to get felons and inmates registered to vote.

What he may have been saying is what do the poor owe to the people who are actually paying thier taxes, funding their schools, etc.? Don't they owe society something? What is their obligation for being on the receiving end of this redistribution?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 27, 2008 -> 10:49 PM) And the Obama people should fear the response they'd get if they actually tried to do that for the reason that they don't like a station. Should Obama win, his supporters have already come to expect to get their way. The response they expect will be silence and obedience. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/s...al-brownshirts/ As fot that station, for the moment they are just going after the reporter. http://firedoglake.com/2008/10/27/action-i...en-hatchet-job/ So far they have at least absatined from illegally accessing governement records about her to try and dig up dirt, like they did to Joe the Plumber. http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/conte...ics&sid=101 Yeah, no political reason to illegally look at Joe's records. Except maybe that she is a max contributor to The One. http://tinyurl.com/55x2uj Can't cross The One, or you will pay!!!!

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Oct 26, 2008 -> 08:17 PM) I worked in local radio during the 2000 election, if Bush surrogates were asked anything approaching as idiotic and obviously baiting as that was, my station wouldn't have gotten a single other surrogate either. Ant the station would have b****ed endlessly about how unaccessable the Bush admin was being, how childish they were acting, 'why can't they answer tough questions', and on and on. What the TV station SHOULD fear is that an Obama admin would try to have the FCC revoke thier license.

QUOTE (kyyle23 @ Oct 26, 2008 -> 11:14 AM) LOL, its funny that the scene where CE is looking down the barrel of a shotgun at the camera reminds you of your father. What kind of trouble did YOU get into in your formative years? I meant more of seeing my father say stuff like that. Thankfully WE were rarely on the receiving end of those comments.

QUOTE (juddling @ Oct 25, 2008 -> 07:59 PM) Just saw the trailer online for Clint Eastwood's new movie "Gran Torino'. I got to say....i love that guy's movies. Granted he doesn't have the range of some actors but he plays (and directs) to his strengths and does it well. Bill, in that trailer, doesn't Clint look like Dad? Especially when he is pointing the gun and saying 'Get off my lawn'.

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Oct 26, 2008 -> 07:53 AM) For all the foot in mouth moments Biden has, I don't think any other candidate would have handled that as well as he did. The poor anchor looks like a robot, I don't think she understood any of the words she used. Lie with confidence and then refuse to gove that station any more interviews, because they were mean to poor Joe. Yup, handled that well.

QUOTE (PlaySumFnJurny @ Oct 25, 2008 -> 12:09 PM) I assure you the point was not missed. They turned something off; I get it. You equate that to some form of wrongdoing; its not. If it was illegal or the credit card companies did not allow for it; it wouldn't be an available option. The credit card companies charge higher fees to offset the added logistical burden it causes for them to catch and bounce any resulting charge discrepencies, which, again, are less risky to "accept" upstream for service or non-retail businesses like charities or campaigns. Again, haven't you ever been bounced by Ticketmaster after trying hurriedly but honestly to buy Sox or concert tickets? I have. How do you think that happens? The orders get thrown out by the system because the data doesn't match up. I think its really that simple. Again, I see no big deal here because I am absolutely certain that the Obama campaign will not see a penny of this cash. If I am wrong because the credit card companies' vast computer resources are really as unsophisticated as you seem to imply, then we really don't have much of a diasagreement; this is a loophole that should definitely be closed. Nevertheless, I still see the cries of "fraud" as so much sour grapes. There is no data for the credit card companies to 'match up'. Obama will get every one of them, as long as the card holder wants them to go thru. Just keep wearing your blinders if you see no big deal. The fact that they willing incur extra fees by turning the verification off is enough to give pause. But if you have drunk so much koolaid that you can't even see the potential there for massive fraud, keep on being an ostridge. At least NSS realizes the huge potential for wrongdoing that exists there, and that is is questionable as to WHY they would turn it off in the first place.

QUOTE (PlaySumFnJurny @ Oct 25, 2008 -> 08:29 AM) There isn't one. Not really. The difference is not between pledges and donations. If that's the only distinction I raised that you caught, I'm afraid you missed my overall point. My problem is with the illogical, hyperbolic conclusion that the Obama campaign is committing/encouraging/aiding campaign fraud because, essentially, they use a different system for "accepting" credit card donations that screens a little further downstream. That's like a Norton user saying a McAfee subscriber intentionally infects his own computer with viruses by using different software. So the McCain campaign does it differently; maybe even "better." So what? That makes the Obama campaign guilty of fraud? I don't think so, and that kind of reach just sounds like sour grapes from a camp that's getting absolutely dusted in fundraising. It makes sense to me that a campaign (or a charity) that doesn't send product out the door in exchange for credit card numbers does not have to be as strict or stringent about "accepting" a number upfront, because, unlike a retail business like Amazon, it won't suffer any loss by sending out a shipment or providing services before the cardholders' money actually hits its account. Maybe the FEC needs to change this (that seems like a good idea given your concerns), but the accusations leveled here against the Obama camp just seem baseless to me. As I said in my earlier post, regardless of whether the campaign website was set up to "accept" the fradulent donations submitted by these oh-so-clever conservatives, the Obama campaign will not, in the end, see a penny of that cash. Either the campaign will catch it down stream (a point mentioned by the Times reporter, but brusquely disregarded in the other posts), the credit card company will refuse it, or the card holder himself will challenge as a final fail safe. That's why I don't see a problem, other than in the possible inflation of fundraising totals for public relations purposes, which I conceded eariler. You miss the whole point. The verification feature is something you manually have to turn off. And the cc comapnies do not like that, and charge you higher fees when you do because it leaves them open to more chargebacks. So the campaign knowingly turned it off, even though it costs them more money, because why? And no, the campaign can't 'catch it down stream'. How are they going to do that? Sure, they can spot the obvious ones with Mickey Mouose for the name, but if someone puts in a gerneric name, and a valid cc number, there is no way for them to catch it with the verification turned off. And if Joe WANTS the charges to go thru, and charges them under John, Jack and Jim, the card holder willnot refuse them. So your 'fail safes' do NOTHING to stop someone from voluntarily giving more than the max under different names.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 24, 2008 -> 08:18 PM) The bolded part is 100% incorrect and I can tell you exactly why. In the original bloggy days, there was a standard operating procedure for how to designate when contributing to a campaign which blog you came through...and that was to add a specific amount of cents to the contribution, where each # of cents was correlated with the blog you went through. A number of people still do that. Here's one of the old keys: Balta, you can say not entirely corerect, but unless you have access to some logs that onbody else does, you can't say what i typed is 100% incorrect. You reference the good ole original bloggy days, but how many people going to blogs now went there 3 years ago? Or more, whenever this wonderfull program was designed? However, even if every single donation ending in odd cents is what you claim it to be, that still leaves his site with the ability to accept multiple donations from the same person as long as they change the name, sine there is no address verification. That is like putting up a big neon sign saying 'fraud here!'.

QUOTE (PlaySumFnJurny @ Oct 24, 2008 -> 12:44 PM) Again, I must be missing something here, because I don't see why this is such a big deal. To me, the fact that a website or business "accepts" a credit card transaction with erroneous information doesn't necessarily mean they'll ever see a penny of that cash. That transaction is going to be thwarted by the credit card company once it gets that far. I know I've logged off of Ticketmaster thinking that I had purchased tickets to games, only to be denied tickets later because Mastercard didn't process my "accepted" order due to some mistake on my part. Furthermore, anyone that's ever been involved with fundraising knows that you never collect all the money that's been pledged. When Jerry Lewis says that he's "raised" $X million at his telethon, its understood that MDA will not see all of that, because people forget to follow through, renege, bounce checks, etc. Does that make Uncle Jerry a fraud? Now if these posts mean the Obama camp is essentially making bogus contributions to itself in order to grossly inflate its money raising totals, I can see how that might be something; However you need to make some major leaps to conclude that this is going on here. The only folks I read about here who are purposedly making defective contributions are the Woodward and Bernstein wannabes looking to create a story by submitting erroneous data themselves. I told myself that i would stay away from here until the election was over because I get too wokred up, but i can't believe that you can't see the HUGE problem here, and that nobody has enlightened you yet. First, these are donations, NOT pledges. if you went to the page online, entered your credit card information and it was accepted, you just made a donation, not a pledge to send money later. So now then, what is the problem? It is that due to the way Obama (his campaign) has set up their system, anyone can enter credit card info that does not match the info on file. They turned off the address verification. You don't have reports of jane Doe saying that someone charges $2000 to Obama on her card (although there ARE 2 or 3 reports of that very thing happening), but you have the possibility of one person, donating the maximum amount to Obama, as many times as they can enter names. With no name verification, Joe Doe can enter his cc info and name on a max donation and send it away. Then, log back in, use his cc info again, but change the name to Henry Doe. With no verification, the only check is to see if the number is valid, which it is. And since Joe wanted to donate twice, he isn't going to complain that a second donation showed up on his credit card statement. he could do this for as long as he had room on his card and names to make up. The kicker is that for the small internet donations, Obama is either not keeping track of them, or not releasing the info if he is, so there is no way to track it. This would allow people who shouldn't be donating to donate. With no address verification, who knows how much foreign donations there are. At one point Obama had released a list that contained just amounts. Most people donate in even dollars, like $25 or $100. The pages were littered with amounts like $43.87 and such, which would be the amount in dollars after being transferred from foreign currancy thru a credit card transaction. This simple ommission by the Obama campaign opens the possibility of fraud on such a massive scale that it is almost unimaginable. Is it happening for sure? We don't have a clue, because as usual, Obama is not sharing any information. And to use an over-used phrase, just imagin if the McCain site was set up to accept potentially fraudulant donations, and not keeping track of who was making them? How many times has george Soros donated to Obama in $100 incriments, which aren't reported? How many people in Europe have donated to The One? We don't know, what a suprise.

QUOTE (FlaSoxxJim @ Oct 23, 2008 -> 02:21 PM) I am a good friend. A buddy managed to score 4 tickets to WS Game 2 for tonight - he and I were going to go and we'd move the other two tickets. Instead, I called another buddy who's kids are hardcore Philies fans and the three of them are going to go with my other buddy and I'm staying home. I got to take the family out to the ALCS Game 2 slugfest and I thought it would be cool for my buddy's kids to go. Now Philly Dad is father of the Year. Someone owes me a beer. I would say several beers.

We have one account. At first, I was the one in charge, but the wife kept writing checks and debits that pushed us right to the limit. I made her sit down with me and balance the checkbook, and pay the bills for a month, and now I can't get it back! She manages that things tight. We both deposit our checks, take out $100 or so for ourselves, everything else is there for the bills. I see the account all the time, check the balances and transactions online each week, and if she is saving some of her $100 somewhere else, good for her. I have encouraged her to do that, as I have a box with my leftover cash as well, which I dip into from time to time for things I want that I can't really justify as a need. Like my XM radio, or hookers.

It was only the occasional night class that I was drunk for. Hwoever, as part of a cycling class I had, we had to log our daily intake of everything. After one drunken weekend, I get my log book back with a message in red on the previous weekend's page saying "After seeing how much alcohol you ingested over the 48 hour weekend, how are you still alive? " Ah, those were the days.

When I was a kid, to me, he was great. If they do, I will enjoy it. If they do not, I will not lose sleep over it.

QUOTE (Brian @ Oct 21, 2008 -> 03:19 PM) I got behind a guy in a 50 zone and he was going 35. I accidentally came up on her pretty fast. She did the little "flash yer brakes" thingy. I put my hand up to sort of apologize, not sure if she saw me. It was a two way road so I didn't feel like going 30 in a 50, so I passed her when I could. She flashed her brights at me and even sped up before slowing back down. Whatever. It was funnier because as I looked in my rear view mirror, a line of cars was forming behind her again. Yeah, I never got that when people who are going slower than the limit get pissed because you passed them. Some people just can't stand to be passed at all, regardless of speed. Can't tell you how many times on an expressway I change lanes to go around someone and they speed up.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 21, 2008 -> 11:02 AM) HYIYM and Big Bang are both quality and depending on the week one might be better than the other. I also watch Heroes and Terminator on Monday. Heroes I actually think has been good this year (I know im in the minority but i like where the story arc is heading.) Terminator, well maybe its just cause as a kid I liked it, but whatever its a good waste of an hour. For heros, I am not sure how they could have done it, but for me, it just took them too long to get to where they are at now. NOW you can start to see the battle lines. Why did it take half a season to get there? And for the love of God could they just PLEASE kill off Mohinder, or however you spell that name?

QUOTE (juddling @ Oct 21, 2008 -> 09:51 AM) I know HIMYM is popular around here but am I the only one here that finds "Big Bang Theory" right before it is quite often laugh out loud funny? IMO That is good as well. The one where the chick got caught up in a WOW-style game was really good.

QUOTE (shipps @ Oct 21, 2008 -> 09:08 AM) That guy gets a Platinum Man Card. Make it 2! That was pretty cool.

So, after having my car totaled in a rear end collisiona little over a week ago, I got a new car. new being a relative term here. I bring it home Friday, and Saturday, take a drive up I-355 to go to K&G and get a suit. On the way, I missed having my second car totaled by about 1 foot. I really hate assholes who have no f***ingn clue how to merge, and assholes who follow way to close in traffic, especially construction traffic. I am in the right lane, and there is lots of space in front of me and the car ahead of me. As we approach the ramp merging on, i see a car coming down the ramp, at about the same speed as the car in front of me. Lots of room behind him, just like I left, so i figured the guy would slow down and slip right it. Um, no. Merging asshole never slows down, or speeds up, and at the last second just before turning into the lane, suddenly sees that there is a car there and slams on his brakes, causing him to miss that car, but slide to a stop right in front of me! So, I hit mine. I was slowing down as i saw all this happening, so I wasn't going too fast, but cvouldn't change lanes, I checked. As my car stops, I look in the mirror and see a car sideways, and hear the tires screechign on the road. Apparently the idiot behind me forgot what brake lights meant. His car managed to slide to the right of mine, missing me by a foot at best. So what happens? The jackass who started allthis by not watching what the f*** they were doing, and skidding to a stop half in an expressway lane, flips ME off, and drives away. And the asshole who almost hit me from behind ALSO flips me off, and drives away. I am the only one in this situation who paid attention and did whatever he could to avoid this crap, and these idiots flip me off. They are so lucky they drove away, or Alpha Dog would have really needed that appeal.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 21, 2008 -> 07:38 AM) How many other Chuck fans are there out there? The show has really grown on me. I love the side characters, especially the guys from the Buy More. I like watching Chuck. I just keep wondering why Chuck doesn't ask for a nice paycheck from the government for being a spy. I mean, it's not like he's geting to sleep with his 'handler'. And don't we all know guys like the ones in Buy More?