I'm sure by now you've heard about her having notes written on her hand in a debate, a worse offense then Palin's, so I'll spare the analogy, just wanted to remind you I said people would dig up someone on the left who'd done it too. Personally I don't think have some not eon your hand during a political debate is immoral, so I couldn't care, except to point out the obvious, it wasn't what was done, it was that Palin did it, and I think you'll agree that where that is the motive for criticism, it is wrong.
I'm really not the political junkie I once was, and have definitely cooled on Rombama. If she wrote something like "funding teacher training programs for fiscal 2010 will cost $7.3 million" I don't have a problem; if she wrote "healthcare" SHE has a problem (maybe her teachers needed more federal funding.
)A pistol ban isn't a blanket gun ban (I strongly support the Second Amendment AND pistol bans because I consider them murder weapons, since you don't need surprise for deterrence, but we've been over that) yet I see your point; she's not really after my vote anyway (though if I voted in the primary she'd get it. ) Term limits aren't the issue for me; as long as the people want to vote someone back, that's called, "democracy" (and as a rule I've noticed most Republicans only support term limits when Dems are in office; they wanted the 22nd Amendment repealed for Reagan even though they danced on FDRs grave with it, and forty years of "CONGRESSIONAL TERM LIMITS111" rhetoric disappeared overnight in '94. ) Perry's gonna do what serves his interests though; maybe he should run for Kays seat, though if any credible Republican ran against him I think he'd still lose the primary.
Well, it takes a lot of training to learn how to use a rifle for close-quarters self-defense. And even then, elite troops carry sidearms not just as a back up but for close quarters work, it's much easier to traverse a pistol onto the target and time is a critical factor. Most self-defenses cases don't arise in the middle of a large field or woods. Inside a house, with two equally trained people, the guy with the pistol will be able to get off the first shot on target. Now if we're talking about needing a permit to carry a concealed firearm, I'm fine with that, so long as such permits are reasonably available. I just don't subscirbe to the idea that any weapon is a 'murder weapon' because murder is mental thing, now some weapons are cruel, and I've no pro banning them, or far beyond any reasonable level of self-protection (a howitzer or bazooka) but I feel the burden of proof to remove a wepaon as acceptable is all on the plaintiff, not the defendant's job to prove a pistol can't be used for purposes beyond self-defense, plaintiffs need to show the weapon has no legitimate use.
I favor shotguns, preferably pumps sawed off with pistol grips, remember? Not much more than a handgun, but unless you routinely wear a trenchcoat (which draws the eye these days... ) not too concealable. Bottom line, I don't mind you having a gun as long as I KNOW you have it; that people want to hide it makes me very insistently ask, "Why...?" Far as that goes, you can carry a .357 and I'm fine with it--as long as it's on your hip, not in your pants. I don't dispute your right to bear arms, but I don't think expecting to KNOW you're doing it infringes on that right.
Term limits are sticky issue. I'm sure you and I both know and understand the arguments for and against, I strongly favor term limits, especially for executive positions, you know why and I know why you don't, so probably a moot point, there's no 'fundamental flaw' in either sides reasoning that I've ever seen.
I deeply dislike being told I can't vote for someone. Even Reagan, though without term limits he probably dies in office.
but my point is the interstates were created to encourage and enable interstate travel (with specific emphasis on the military during emergencies) and slapping tolls on them inhibits that. To say nothing of the fact that the lions share of I-35 and the rest comes from that evil federal government, but Perry wasn't planning on providing them any toll revenue (in fact it pretty much all goes to Cintra, which is why they bought the bonds Perry induced people to vote for. ) Seriously, read a little about the Trans-Texas Corridor and you'll probably understand why it's another area where Perrys base thinks he sold them out--he basically did.
Well, I agree, as long as roads are paid for in any way by the general fund, there is no excuse to put a toll in place on any road where no alternative route exists. Franklly I don't really like the idea of toll roads at all, but they do tend to keep traffic on that route down, making it easier, faster, and safer to do longhauls. Like I said, your case sounds weird and wrong, bridges, yes (assuming there is an alternate route) long stretches with few exits, yes, your paying for a convenience then, and it's fair to say that those benefitting from that convenience the most should pay an extra junk of the bill. Using them for profit? No, no publically funded toll-anything should ever be taking in more than it's operating and maintenance costs - but, I don't know if that's the case Joel. Local issue and not one with any abuse going on that merits exterior attention, unless maybe Perry deicdes to run for POTUS.
He's tolling a lot of alternates also; folks won't use 'em unless forced (hence tolling I-35. ) It's a serious mess, and will be done in stages thanks to the complaints, but will be done.
Part of what's bothering me with the public toll roads is it looks like it's going to go like electric deregulation did in CA: The private owner will collect all the profits, but the state taxpayers will be responsible for maintenance and other overhead. Cintra didn't build the roads and they won't repair them; TXDoT will, at my expense. Cintra just shows up to collect the tolls, most of which are automated. 
If they're banking a huge profit off that, then it's bad, of course, they should be getting some profit. ANd capitalism being capitalism, they can probably bank a healthy net profit for as cheaper or cheaper than a public department could.
Probably; the governments purpose is service, not profit. Note that the opposite is true of private industry.
Right, but they don't have a bridge every half mile or so. I've been on REAL toll roads, where they've built in big rest stop areas as part of the road so you can pull off for gas and/or food without having to pay a toll to get back on again. This is just idiotic; why would I pay a toll to have merging traffic every half mile, then get down to the next CROSS STREET and wait for a light to change? This makes my commute faster (and thus justifies paying for it) how...?
Seems pretty stupid to me, I'll say that.
There's really only one logical explanation I can find: Employees Perry and Cintra have in common.
Sorry, I kind of went off on a toll road rant there; I'm not a big fan of them, once again, but I can at least see some justification if they're done right and on a limited basis. These are done VERY badly in such a way as to make nearly every major road in the state a goldmine for a Spanish contractor and, despite the claims and commercials, they don't make travel faster, they make it slower in the interest of insuring people pay as much as possible. I've had to pay a toll three times in the past year because if you don't exit US183 at a certain point, getting off at the next exit forces you to pay a toll. Of course, if you take the two exits BEFORE the last one, they lead to a different toll road.
Well, to use the buffalo example, I-90 turns into a toll road just past the PA border, runs till the suburbs, then turns into a normal freeway again and breaks into various sub-roads (I90, 290, 190, etc) and then on the other side, a syou leave the area, it turns back into a toll road until you hit Rochester. Now thatere are tons of back roads you can do 50 on and don't meander much in the area, and in the city and subrubs there's no toll, except on a couple of bridges, and it's not stupid high. In ohio, I-80 is a toll and runs parallel to I76 most of the time, and 422 and a few others, but it is a straighter shot, few exits, less traffic. There's been talking of making the expressway of I90 around cleveland (two lanes that run parallel to I90 but have no exits except a few places to merge back in) into a toll, and that's understanable, so's the reasons why they didn't do it. Local affair really. Not to say I want some town with the only bridge over the river in fifty miles to be able to fleece me for crossing, but...
*nods* I can understand it if done right, even if I don't really agree. You get it back at the gas pump, I reckon.
I'm REALLY trying to avoid debating the relative benefits and risks of vaccination though, but feel obliged to say I agree it's a judgment call, and I therefore feel it should be left to individual discretion or, in the case of minors, that of their parents, as we do so many other things. I think it's kind of asinine to say parents can deny their kids life saving blood transfusions on religious grounds but can't deny them vaccines on the grounds it could kill them.
It's a tricky issue, I'm pretty libertarian on things like this, but I'm also a ruthless draconian bastard. I'd have no problem forcible vaccinating the populace during a full blown plague even if it killed 1% of the people taking it, if quarantine were not an option. Same as I'd have no problem forcibly diasrming someone running around a mall with a chainsaw even if I had to shoot them to do it. Leaving yourself as a major infection vector during a massive plague is, to me, a form of negligent homicide. Obviously, cases like this don't apply, kids aren't falling over dead left and right from the vaccine, nor from a lack thereof, so it's not a national crisis and doesn't justify government forced vaccination. Government financed vaccination now, that is fine, it's blatanlty in the public's interest to pay for it, including propaganda pamphlets on it's benefits. I also don't believe parents have paramount rights over their children's lives (since I'm pro-life) so I have no problem with doctors giving blood transfusions to minors even if the parents object. There's a thing grey line in there somewhere, but whenever those pop up I always remember the 'we know it when we see it' ruling.
Well, pandemics are a little different; presumably if martial law was declared compulsory vaccination is as much on the table as "you loot, we shoot. "
Oh, I don't doubt they can teach their kids how to get pregnant but most of the time I don't think that's really where the trouble starts. We need something a little more thorough than
"Janey says you can't get pregnant the first time"
"Er, no, I can tell you firsthand that's not true, sweety....
"
We need something a little more thorough than"Janey says you can't get pregnant the first time"
"Er, no, I can tell you firsthand that's not true, sweety....
"I'm not sure we do. Never bother teaching people (across the board) more than the minimum they need to get the point. I don't like public venue because it's teaching morals through commitee. Any parent who can't teach it, or can't send them to someone for it, is pretty much my defintion of 'awful parent' anyway, so the kid's probably screwed. Let me point out though, that privatizing schools and giving parents vouchers to cover it would slice out a lot of these problems, and by a lot, I mean all of them. You just set some minimum standards and some price controls and bag, all good. 'Bussing would be a big problem' always seems the only logical objection, except people deal with that for every thing besides schools anyway, and the answer would be having facilities that were just central locations and daycare/latchkey faciltiies all in one.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure teenagers got each other pregnant before compulsory education, so I don't think vouchers and the like will fix that.
Just like I don't think mom and dad will be too great at teaching the kid they had at 16 how NOT to get pregnant. We're not going to stop teen pregnancy by just saying, "DON'T HAVE SEX111" and isolating the genders. We're going to have to accept the, er, "facts of life" that very few HS graduates are virgins, and do something about the potential consequences of that. Something that leaves them with better data than "if you drink a Coke with cigarette ash in it you won't get pregnant. " To cite yet another of the absurdities passed around my HS like it came from C. Everett Coop.When they don't let the profit motive preempt it, which happens all too often lately (cough, cough, tort abolition. )
)Well, the FDA is hardly perfect. By I tend to agree with John Stossel, a lot of consumer protection doesn't get much done and often makes things worse in the process. This is a whole different can of worms though.
Indeed, we're talking about oversights that can cause permanent injury, disability or even death. That's in a very different arena than some idiot that doesn't know up from down on his coffee cup. What's the line? "I'm not saying we should execute stupid people, I'm just saying remove all the warning labels and it's a self correcting problem. "
If you want to restrict the grounds for a suit (within reason) that's one thing, but if a jury of peers says that 40 year old father of fives life was worth $7.3 million to his family, I'm not going to argue with them. Saying some evil trial lawyer conned them into it is really just saying a TEAM of evil trial lawyers couldn't con them out of it.Fair enough; it IS a little unfair to ask you to comment on what's going on up the street from me, but combining Palin and Perry was sort of a perfect storm for me. I'd feel really good about Kay taking over, despite her being a die hard Republican, if I didn't fear it could be the springboard to successful White House run.
>I very much doubt she'll run, Palin might though. If she does, it will have been something the left brought on itself. Prior to '06, people said Hillary had a snowball's chance of winning the White House, and we both know that wasn't ultimately true. If Palin ends up in the WH in '12, it will be because of sympathy and attention generated by all the attacks on her. Outrageous attacks tend to override legitimate ones. A politician who walks past a Klan rally on his way to a brothel, then get's accused of being a racist, is likely to float free from the whole brothel fiasco. If she wins, it won't be love of her, but anger at her accusers, that did the trick. As is, if the left had kept their attacks on Palin strictly to policy and experience, and left out the personal attacks, Palin would be old news, and a lot of female mods and right-wingers would have one more thing to assocaiate with her on and depsise the left over. Personal attacks trump everything.
Well, I actually heard today that Perrys showing a big lead in primary polling, which floors me. I might actually have to think if it was Kay vs. Houston Mayor Bill White, because he's the guy who introduced the red light cams that have become ubiquitous across TX. I think he owes me a new set of tires.
If Kay doesn't get nominated, well, my favorite candidate is anyone who can beat Rick Perry, or something like that. I'm a little sick of Governor Puppet, though at this point I can't even blame his failings on orders from Bush. He's worse than Bush, and I didn't think that possible.
Honorbound and honored to be Bonded to Mahtaliel Sedai
Last First in wotmania Chat
Slightly better than chocolate.
Love still can't be coerced.
Please Don't Eat the Newbies!
LoL. Be well, RAFOlk.
Last First in wotmania Chat
Slightly better than chocolate.
Love still can't be coerced.
Please Don't Eat the Newbies!
LoL. Be well, RAFOlk.
Palin reads Cheat Notes.
- 08/02/2010 12:43:02 AM
1320 Views
Is it really worse than reading answers on a teleprompter? sorry, I see no big deal here. *NM*
- 08/02/2010 01:02:49 AM
211 Views
yes yes it is. a teleprompter is subtle
- 08/02/2010 01:22:17 AM
501 Views
a teleprompter is not subtle
- 08/02/2010 02:25:46 PM
441 Views
staring openly and blatantly at your hand is? *NM*
- 08/02/2010 03:09:25 PM
285 Views
I think if anyone else had done the dame thing we wouldn't even had heard about
- 08/02/2010 06:13:44 PM
438 Views
Yes for what the notes were
- 08/02/2010 12:44:35 PM
466 Views
he is calling her content free while attacking her in such a content free manner?
- 08/02/2010 02:50:04 PM
461 Views
It's good the media still hounds her. I don't want her to be a candidate. *NM*
- 08/02/2010 01:20:21 AM
244 Views
This only obscures the rational reasons for duly decrying her political popularity. Moooooooo. *NM*
- 08/02/2010 03:19:45 AM
287 Views
I disagree, I think it underscores it.
- 08/02/2010 03:39:57 AM
434 Views
Or they might believe that a far left liberal
- 08/02/2010 04:16:51 AM
451 Views
Calling someone who needs a cheat sheet for their talking points stupid isn't an ad hominem, IMHO.
- 08/02/2010 12:13:36 PM
452 Views
soory but your wrong, again
- 08/02/2010 02:23:31 PM
411 Views
You shouldn't need reminders of your major themes after two years pushing them.
- 08/02/2010 02:55:22 PM
439 Views
I used to work in a call center and had a note to remind me to talk slower
- 08/02/2010 05:54:25 PM
555 Views
I don't hate her, and I think most liberals love her.
- 09/02/2010 10:45:25 AM
568 Views
way to play the pregant daughter card
- 09/02/2010 03:06:37 PM
446 Views
*shrugs* If you're going to suggest sex ed is harmful, unnecessary and promotes promiscuity...
- 10/02/2010 08:34:16 AM
533 Views
so if you don't support the liberal agenda your family is fair game for attack? nice to you admit it
- 10/02/2010 06:26:30 PM
474 Views
Um, no, if you're going to demand everyone follow your advice it better not be disastrous for you.
- 11/02/2010 05:29:01 AM
453 Views
Do you have anb example of when she demanded everyone follow her advice?
- 11/02/2010 05:33:17 AM
498 Views
Honestly, her sex ed position seems so muddled to me it's hard to say
- 11/02/2010 06:50:39 AM
663 Views
That's a bit silly
- 08/02/2010 08:40:25 PM
603 Views
I'm perfectly happy to discuss her positions; I just think Huckabee does a better job of it.
- 09/02/2010 10:26:54 AM
616 Views
Well, let's discuss some of these points
- 09/02/2010 07:13:33 PM
625 Views
Re: Well, let's discuss some of these points
- 10/02/2010 09:15:04 AM
648 Views
Re: Well, let's discuss some of these points
- 10/02/2010 06:49:51 PM
696 Views
Ironically, Palin seems to agree this is different than using a teleprompter for a speech.
- 11/02/2010 09:05:19 AM
592 Views
Again, two seperate things
- 11/02/2010 09:51:15 PM
431 Views
Agreed, but Palin and other Republicans, not I, drew the comparison.
- 15/02/2010 01:02:25 PM
558 Views
Just to get the obligatory Feinstein comment out of the way...
- 15/02/2010 11:43:42 PM
627 Views
Hadn't heard, actually.
- 19/02/2010 06:58:50 AM
561 Views
Re: Hadn't heard, actually.
- 19/02/2010 08:32:11 AM
551 Views
Ah.
- 23/02/2010 09:55:45 PM
633 Views
Re: Ah.
- 24/02/2010 01:32:34 AM
585 Views
Yeah, I think we've reached an understanding if not agreement.
- 01/03/2010 03:51:49 AM
576 Views
Re: Yeah, I think we've reached an understanding if not agreement.
- 01/03/2010 11:46:24 PM
766 Views
Re: Yeah, I think we've reached an understanding if not agreement.
- 05/03/2010 12:11:48 AM
662 Views
Random Title
- 05/03/2010 02:49:59 AM
575 Views
Re: Random Title
- 15/03/2010 05:37:22 AM
510 Views
Re: Random Title
- 15/03/2010 09:17:53 PM
823 Views
I disagree. For all we know she has a learning disability. "Disability" does not equal "stupid".
- 09/02/2010 03:23:24 PM
523 Views
A possibility I hadn't considered, true, and sorry if I gave offense.
- 10/02/2010 08:25:52 AM
642 Views
oh yes, and the right never uses ad hominem
- 08/02/2010 03:56:42 PM
405 Views
I do see as the primary focus like I see from the left these days *NM*
- 08/02/2010 06:15:22 PM
299 Views
could you rephrase? you seem to be missing a noun or something in there. *NM*
- 08/02/2010 07:57:19 PM
245 Views
misisng a couple actually
- 08/02/2010 08:04:35 PM
431 Views
Touch typing is easier, at least to learn, if you don't try to read it at the same time, FYI.
- 10/02/2010 09:24:33 AM
494 Views
- 10/02/2010 09:24:33 AM
494 Views
Really how many times can you rememeber a Bush press sec openly ridicule people in a press confrence
- 10/02/2010 06:28:57 PM
367 Views
Good point; all they used to do was have the VP say opponents helped terrorists.
- 11/02/2010 05:33:08 AM
430 Views
one is about actions ands the other is about personal attacks
- 05/03/2010 02:19:38 PM
393 Views
True, one is about what Palin DID and the other is just characterizing opposition as treason.
- 15/03/2010 04:39:45 AM
411 Views
This is petty and also rather ignorant
- 08/02/2010 03:59:40 AM
585 Views
so you're saying you're as dumb as sarah palin?
- 08/02/2010 10:55:00 AM
408 Views
- 08/02/2010 10:55:00 AM
408 Views
In other news liberals can't get over someone being popular they don't agree with
- 08/02/2010 04:12:19 AM
570 Views
It's completely unprofessional
- 08/02/2010 08:27:47 AM
428 Views
yeah, she should have had them inscribed into her nail polish instead...
- 08/02/2010 10:55:43 AM
405 Views
why?
- 08/02/2010 02:29:44 PM
456 Views
You know that's a good question
- 08/02/2010 05:19:10 PM
420 Views
maybe you are just projecting
- 08/02/2010 06:15:57 PM
428 Views
well what is the association we have with notes on hands?
- 08/02/2010 07:58:41 PM
445 Views
or people on the far left are being grossly disingenuous
- 08/02/2010 08:18:06 PM
557 Views
dude, only posted it because it was funny
- 08/02/2010 08:43:55 PM
417 Views
so you like to point at people and laugh and can't understand why others would object
- 08/02/2010 11:24:37 PM
502 Views
Who cares? She's hot. *NM*
- 08/02/2010 03:06:58 PM
211 Views
Much ado about nothing. She was just making sure she didn't forget anything.
- 09/02/2010 02:00:56 AM
404 Views
I don't like the woman at all, but this is just silly. Who cares? *NM*
- 11/02/2010 10:11:17 PM
203 Views