lostfan

Lousy parenting (or high out-of-wedlock birth rates) is also an eventual by-product of lack of education.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 02:23 PM) There needs to be a way to build people up and out of the situations. This argument will always come back to the need to strengthen our education system, especially in poorer areas.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 02:00 PM) You should have waited until she paid, then kicked her in the shin and taken the CR. I totally would have if it wasn't an empty bag.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 03:18 PM) I think we should all do a better job of keeping perspective on these sorts of things. I've personally made a strong effort to ignore the frivolous b.s. that others bash McCain over. Am I perfect? No but I'm doing my best. Yeah, you seem to have toned down quite a bit from the primary days.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 03:16 PM) It is stupid, yet, it was clearly (IMO) Obama's choice. Campaign staff is not allowed. Okay. But he could have still gone and chose not to because he wouldn't get the mileage out of it. Yet, it's frivilous in a sense... people looking to manufacture news. At the same time, how many Obamatron posts would we have if McCain would have done the same thing? I guess that's what bothers me about this whole cycle. ding! This is what's really burning my ass right now. How much relevance does this have to what kind of president Obama would make? ZERO. And if I actually cared enough to participate in the argument I could easily come up with at least 3 examples to mitigate or completely refute the implied point this "ordeal" is trying to make in the first place.

Just a thought, but shouldn't this whole stupid (IMO) argument be taking place in the Obama's Tour thread?

What is the point of harping on doubletalk, as shady as it might sound? Is it to prove the superiority of one candidate over another? If so that is the fail, because both candidates are doing it, and I can't think of a past election where the same thing didn't happen. Especially nowadays, with the Internet, and instant access to pretty much everything they say.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 02:30 PM) And me without my jars of pennies to take in : Once I let an old lady in front of me in a line at Walgreen's thinking I was doing the right thing and being a gentleman and all, since she only had one thing in her hand. She smiles, thanks me, and then proceeds to pull out a Crown Royal bag and pays for her purchase of several dollars in all pennies. I wanted to kick her in the shin.

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 02:40 PM) *** UPDATE *** From NBC's Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube A U.S. military official tells NBC News they were making preparations for Sen. Barack Obama to visit wounded troops at the Landstuhl Medical Center at Ramstein, Germany on Friday, but "for some reason the visit was called off." One military official who was working on the Obama visit said because political candidates are prohibited from using military installations as campaign backdrops, Obama's representatives were told, "he could only bring two or three of his Senate staff member, no campaign officials or workers." In addition, "Obama could not bring any media. Only military photographers would be permitted to record Obama's visit." The official said "We didn't know why" the request to visit the wounded troops was withdrawn. "He (Obama) was more than welcome. We were all ready for him." Sorry. Just had to.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 01:38 PM) Neither are what I'd call experts. I was just responding to this idea that McCain knows nothing, and that somehow that same problem won't effect Obama. This is one of the reasons why I think Obama will likely pick Richardson for VP. No, not experts. But Obama gets painted as if he's completely clueless about the world. This is the primary logic behind McCain's attacks, too. McCain goes out of his way to say Obama is naive, but he doesn't bother to explain why his plan is right, or better, or why it'd work where Obama's will fail. To cite a specific example that McCain has beat into the ground, he says things like "he will talk to tyrants in Tehran, Havana, and Pyongyang." Ok, and? What's to be lost in him doing it (Obama made his case why he thinks he should), and what are YOU going to do?

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 01:28 PM) I'd say he "knows" more than Obama does, actually. I don't like McCain's policy direction, but, in terms of knowledge, Obama doesn't have much room to talk. I don't want to sound like a pro-Obama shill, but he knows a lot more about foreign policy than people give him credit for. But that McCain is a wealth of foreign policy wisdom compared to Obama's n00bishness has been decided for us already.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 02:13 PM) People were saying it all along - just not the majority of newscasters et al. Panic and mayhem sell, and so does an apparently easy solution. TRADERS BAD is an easy solution - someone to blame other than themselves. So, the mainline news folks fed people what they crave - simple, easy, loud, and shallow. I could easily make an argument that this is why we ended up going to Iraq.

QUOTE (Middle Buffalo @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 01:07 PM) In cases like this, I think it's horrible for a player to holdout. What has to be considered is the average salary (including bonuses) when compared to players of similar value. If a player is by all accounts a top five player at his position, but his average salary is 20th in the league at his position, I think he has a strong argument for renegotiating. If the player was being paid top five, but his performance was well below that, the team would be justified in cutting the player and saving on the salary. I can't think of any cases when that's happened, though. When players get their money they're pretty much happy. When vets hold out for better contracts I don't really have a problem with it. I only really have a problem when rookies do it, especially first-rounders. STFU you dickhead, take your millions in guaranteed money you get automatically but haven't earned because the team has no idea if you'll amount to anything or not, and go out and show you can play. Then they go on to be guys like Cedric Benson and Cade McNown.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 02:06 PM) The experts were even saying this on CNN and other outlets too, though. I even linked to the article about the Speculators BAD Act, from CNN, which had one expert quoted - and he made it clear, exactly what SS and I have been saying. It was only a graf or two though, buried in the article. Most people don't bother to read into it. They just take the headline and teaser lines, and infer their own truths from it. It's difficult to want to read into it when you read the same thing 50 times and then watch a 10 minute discussion on it every night. Only recently can I recall people saying that speculators aren't having a significant impact on prices (it should be assumed unanimously that there is increased demand from Asia, amusingly enough when you read their media they hate that we point this out, as if we were trying to stop it or something).

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 01:43 PM) The real story was out there, you just can't listen to the talking heads. If more people turned away from the boob tube for their news, and went to websites and papers and periodicals that actually provide NEWS (as opposed to just flashy commentary), then we as consumers could change the type of news we get. I mean, when talking heads and "experts" talk, it's rare that they are unanimously wrong about something. Well not counting the time when the ESPN panel unanimously picked the clearly inferior Saints over the Bears in the NFC Championship for some reason only to watch the Saints get their asses kicked.

Every time I think of Qantas airlines I think of this:

Why is it discussed as a fundamental fact by the talking heads on TV, and almost never disputed? I mean, honestly, I didn't know it was all bulls*** until SS2K5 explained it to me in dummy terms.

It's definitely a blunder by the Obama campaign that could've been prevented but it's really not that big of a deal. If that somehow influences someone's vote, I will lower my head in shame for them.

None of this changes the basic fact that Powell was right and everybody else was wrong, about pretty much everything. 100 years from now when kids are in class talking about the turn of the 21st century, I hope that's how it's written.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 10:49 AM) He probably did like he did with Canada... "Nah, I am just saying those things to get elected. They won't really happen." [not real quote] The people in the Midwest and whatnot who are pissed about losing their jobs to NAFTA are misguided and they just need something to direct their anger at. But those blue-collar workers are a big part of the Democratic party and you have to play to that sentiment. Obama got carried away trying to out-do Hillary. All of it should've been immediately recognized as BS though. Why anybody thinks that NAFTA is killing this country, specifically losing our manufacturing jobs to Canada, is beyond me.

QUOTE (Texsox @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 10:41 AM) 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. I dunno, McCain seems to be running a crappy campaign with no identity that is frustrating a lot of Republicans. I don't really mean this as a bash against McCain, I think this has been a weakness of his. He's spending most of his time telling people why they shouldn't vote for Obama than telling people why they should vote for him. And also I feel comfortable saying that in this thread because I don't get the impression many people here actually like McCain.

QUOTE (Middle Buffalo @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 09:36 AM) Right. And GMs purposely make the contract longer in order to spread out the salary cap hit over a number of years, though. So a $6M signing bonus on a six year contract only counts $1M (plus the base salary) against the cap each year. By the fifth or sixth year, however, there's a good chance that the market will have changed or a player like Hester will totally out perform the contract. At the same time - and I'm just talking semantics at this point - some GMs like to front-load salaries and give as much of the guaranteed money up front as they can when they have a big chunk of salary cap space, especially when the bonus is massive. It gives more flexibility with the cap later in the contract. Angelo does this sometimes, I think Tommie Harris's contract is like that. Urlacher's was too, if I'm not mistaken. Freeney made something like 30 million in actual dollars last year (dollar amount is different from the cap value).

You still have to pay the bonus money regardless, or whatever the guaranteed amount is. What you don't have to pay is the base salary and the incentive money.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Jul 24, 2008 -> 09:40 PM) So, let me try and flesh this one out. John McCain "won" Kosovo and Bosnia. but the war was run by Clark who did a "less than stellar" job. So, John McCain did a "less than stellar" job in those wars. Correct? More or less, yeah.