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Ah. Joel Send a noteboard - 23/02/2010 09:55:45 PM
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. )

It was fairly short, nobody seems to know what it said yet. It's very clear as writing on the video but I guess VHS recordings from 1990 aren't easily enhanced. For all I know, it might have said 'Hi Mom' or "Take Mittens to Vet", not long enough to be a cheat sheet. Your objections may differ from the norm on this one, my point primarily being that writing on your hand is not in of itself an indicator of stupidity or dishonesty... after that it's really an "eye of the beholder" situation.

In itself, no, it's not an indicator of stupidity or dishonesty. You might need to write your boss' cell number on your hand; you shouldn't need to write your own name there.
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.

Yes, not a pistol grip on shotgun fan, I think I mentioned as much when we were previously going over this sometime last year. I don't really have a problem with concealed weapons where the motivaiton is simply to be able to carry a gun without having gawkers everywhere you go. Of course, I'm used to carrying an assault rifle everywhere I go and it being 'normal' and my mental attitude towards pistols tends to be 'ah, well, blatantly inferior but probably not so ackward'. I don't object to conceal bans, but I don't consider them especially useful either, I agree it doesn't fundamentally violate the 2nd amendment to have laws about concealment. I don't really favor those laws, but it's a local issue IMO - note that I may not be especially representative of 2nd amendment sorts on that though. I wouldn't want the penalty to be especially big either, if you have a permit or your area doesn't require one, and you move and get frisked, I think'$100 fine' is appropriate, not 2 years in prison.

That's reasonable, though it does highlight one problem with allowing concealment to be a local issue (though I tend to agree it should be. ) It's hard for me to fully articulate, but the idea of concealing deadly force unnerves me on a primal level. While not everyone with a concealed weapon is a criminal, almost every armed criminal will try to conceal it until ready to use it, and if discovered before they commit a crime, concealment bans become a way to PREVENT more serious crimes. I can't imagine many scenarios where possessing a weapon becomes a greater deterrent by adding concealment. I tend to think of it more along the lines of the TX shaped wooden sign I used to see at a local shop: A picture of a revolver and the caption "we don't dial 911. "
I deeply dislike being told I can't vote for someone. Even Reagan, though without term limits he probably dies in office.

I think he'd have stepped down. Now, let me emphasize, I don't believe term limits are built into the constitution (with the obvious exception) so my attitude is that every state should decide. I think if Colorado wants to pass a law saying their senators can only be around for 3 terms, well, that seems fair, if they want term limits on their governors, that seems fair. There really is no pre-eminent right to vote for whoever you wnat in elections, since there are already rules controlling a candidates age, country of origin, etc. For POTUS, well, I tihnk what FDR did was wrong, I think Washingston was very right to establish that precedent, remove it, both as a rule and a tradition, and we will get president's serving for life. You'll always get a certian segment that will resist a change under the 'devil you know' principal.

Yes, there are qualifications for office; there's nothing in the Constitution that bars a qualified candidate except the 26th Amendment and the birth requirement. And I think you give Reagan too much credit; I think he was as much a believer in the imperial Presidency (in his own image) as Nixon and Bush 43, and even had he needed to rationalize it with something like the Cold War creating an extreme situation akin to America on the eve of WWII, he'd have stayed in until forced about by defeat, death or incapacity. Especially since, once again, he admitted after leaving office that Alzheimers was affecting him by the end of his second term.
Probably; the governments purpose is service, not profit. Note that the opposite is true of private industry.

Of course the service industries would probably point out to you that the two are the same. Trust is practically a marketable quantity. I'd say you're more like to get good service and a profit on the private end then you are to get good service and low cost on the public end. Scoundrels not invcluded, but I don't think there are really that many scoundrels and they end up in both areas anywya.

Accountability is not a given in the private sector as it is in a free democracy. Maybe on paper, but it ignores things like monopolies, collusion and exploitation, the things private industry critics of government like to ignore. Really, the only differences between a government service and a private one are that the former isn't obligated to bill you more than it costs them to provide it nor do you automatically have the option of replacing them with someone better.
There's really only one logical explanation I can find: Employees Perry and Cintra have in common.

Well, that's always an area to look at for corruption, but as an example, a lot of military contractors are stacked for of ex-soldiers, and on the other end of that, a lot of their higher ups end up in positions of gov't power on the military. Sometimes that just a matter of common association and passion, people often mistake that for corruption, when that's usually on a small minority of the cases. Not saying something isn't up there at Cintra, just playing devil's advocate on it.

I don't think a state governors senior staffer has the kind of resume that says he's suited for a given private position because of his public ones. We're not talking about a lifer who hits mandatory retirement age and ends up as a Boeing consultant.
*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.

More or less, realistically the higher speeds people travel on them at is probably using more fuel than medium-heavy traffic occasional braking does. The faster you're going, the more energy you lose to air resistance per distance. So I wouldn't say you really save at the pump, but certainly you do in time. And of course avoiding those toll roads to take back country roads will involve some winding, probably equalling out or exceeding what you burn on the freeway. HArd to say, but in theory, yeah. The gas taxes are supposed to pay for the roads, so the tolls save people who don't benefit from those roads a fair amount of money, and toll roads aren't evenly distributed like normal roads are.

The gas tax was what I had in mind, yes; theoretically, if you have a lot of toll roads the gas taxes primarily used for road maintenance should be less. Though I wouldn't take it as given.
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. "

Agreed. Still, we have a number of things that we could do a better job at there if we had a bit more control. i.e. Not forcibly making everyone take HIV tests but making them free and issuing people 'clean cards'. A lot of people wouldn't do it, but in the more promiscous sectors (for fun or profit) you might see people saying 'Wait, you got your card?' and infection rates might drop significantly. That sort of thing doesn't trample on anyone's right or represent an objectionable public expenditure, though now that I think on it, that particular example probably would tick off the 'increased safety breeds bad behavior' crowd too. But that's just a random example that comes to mind, I tend to feel a mixture of shame and embarrassment combined with a free lollipop is a good way to influence behavior.

I generally agree; while I'm not a fan of them myself, I do think the HPV vaccine should be freely available to everyone who wants it. Ironically, that's one of the issues with Perry executive order (which the state Legislature basically met with "Aw, HELL, no!" ) that Gardasil is still a fairly expensive vaccine, in part because it has to be administered multiple times to be effective, and that requiring it for every school girl in a state of ~20 million was going to make Merck a LOT of money.
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.

Well, I meant vouchers that applied to private schools fix a lot of the objections... I want evolution to be teachable in schools and sex ed too, but I don't like fighting battles with people who have legitimate objections. Handing someone vouchers says "You don't like it, send your kid to X, they don't teach it there" and that sort of thing diffueses it. This is how I meant vouchers tend to solve most of these problems. People who object to sex ed and those who don't but support them, well, the latter will desert when ther former has an option around it, and most of them will grow less strident on the matter. There objection is basically 'not my kids' as opposed to 'no one's kids'

It's a touchy and fuzzy area (sex ed itself, I mean, not the anatomy involved. ) It's all well to say, "not my kid" but maybe I don't want your son pressuring my daughter into sex, or refusing to wear a condom because he doesn't like how it feels and, anyway, he hasn't slept with a LOT of girls and she can't get pregnant since she's a virgin. If we accept compulsory education (and some don't) then knowing how to minimize the risk of pregnancy/STDs as a result of sex is at least as important to society as knowing how the inverse square rule of gravitation. Guess which one most people use more. The suggestion kids are learning about sex in school is laughable; it's often true, but (usually) not because of the teachers....
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.

Yes, I had a survey with something like that I posted a few days back. Removing warning labels isn't going to fix stupid people via darwinian removal, they are unlikely to know how to read them

I was trying not to go there; illiteracy can be a sensitive subject for some (flip side, most of them won't be offended by reading our comments on it. )
I want to emphasize on tort reform, we're not talking about setting draconian limits, we just want limits. I think 7 mill might be a bit high for a 40 year old, but it's not ridiculous. If you think the average award should be maybe 2 mill, then a cap at 10 mill seems fair. Personally, having that sort of subconscious ire that comes from knowing my life was worth exactly 500k to my family (which actually seems quite fair, generous even) I have difficulty thinking wrongful death should ever be paying out much more than a million, if the guys ultimate earnings would have been more than that, well, his survivors should already consider themselves pretty blessed.

That's your opinion and you're entitled to it. My uncle was in his early fifties and had a good union job when a rig decided not to wait for the rig ahead of him to make a left turn, drove around him, and steamrolled my uncle in his SUV, killing him instantly. Had he lived another twenty years (as his father did) his earnings alone would've been over a million dollars, and social security would've been even more; not only that, but the truck driver already had a record for unsafe (and on one occasion, drunk) driving in a rig, but the company hired him knowing that. He'd already earned enough money that he paid cash for his brand new SUV (a total loss, naturally) and the only reason he didn't pay off his new house in cash is that he didn't want to completely empty his bank account. Flash forward a few years and one of his daughters has a newborn, is about to be unemployed for reporting illegal activity by her employer, and they're turning off her lights because she can't make her bills. Her sister is in a similar situation because taxes on dads new house are around $3000/year. Oh, and their father's dead, too. How much is that worth to them? Where should we set the limit? Why don't we just let their lawyers and the companys both make their respective cases and let the jury decide instead of having the state or federal legislature do it for them? Since that seems to have been the idea for the Founding Fathers I see no reason to change it, and many reasons not to do so. In this particular case the company chose to settle out of court for a clean million, in large part because they knew they'd lose a trial and have to pay much more; how inclined do you think they'd have been to do that without that nearly certain possibility? Maybe my cousins should've been forced to prove their case in a trial in between burying my uncle, but I don't think so.

It's not like companys can't appeal if they think the verdict is wrong or too harsh, and whether or not they do judges have been known to reduce judgments or order juries to make new ones (in fact, exactly that happened in one of John Edwards' "Four Trials. " ) Let a jury of peers do their job as the Constitution and God intended.
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.

I still like Bush. Anyway, Kay or Rick, I'd imagine they'll win by a decent margin, I'm not surprised he's leading, like I said, nobody in the party hates Hutchinson, but she's not been to good about toeing the line, and while we don't go around punishing them for that, we don't really like to reward that kind of behavior either, especially when intregity in the party is all that's keeping the opposition form having it's way, so anyone with a rep for 'doing there own thing' justified or not, is going to be viewed with even more dislike than normal. When you're 60-40 or 59-41 in the senate, and that's the best situation you have in either place, well, you don't view Snowe's, Anthony Kennedy's, etc with much enthusiasm.

Sounds a lot like group think to me, but, once again, there are fewer variations on "the old ways are best" than on "change. " Bush never struck me as sincere while Governor or President; there are plenty of other examples (such as the "downsize government" candidate leading the biggest and most expensive expansion of government in US history) but the best is still invoking 911 at every opportunity while telling me how unconcerned he was about the man responsible (then denying it later. )
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This message last edited by Joel on 23/02/2010 at 09:56:10 PM
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Palin reads Cheat Notes. - 08/02/2010 12:43:02 AM 1423 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 251 Views
yes yes it is. a teleprompter is subtle - 08/02/2010 01:22:17 AM 591 Views
a teleprompter is not subtle - 08/02/2010 02:25:46 PM 520 Views
staring openly and blatantly at your hand is? *NM* - 08/02/2010 03:09:25 PM 321 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 522 Views
you're right, we probably would not have heard about it - 08/02/2010 07:56:09 PM 561 Views
Yes for what the notes were - 08/02/2010 12:44:35 PM 555 Views
no biggie *NM* - 08/02/2010 02:00:12 AM 270 Views
Isn't her 15 minutes over yet? *NM* - 08/02/2010 02:45:58 AM 357 Views
This only obscures the rational reasons for duly decrying her political popularity. Moooooooo. *NM* - 08/02/2010 03:19:45 AM 324 Views
I disagree, I think it underscores it. - 08/02/2010 03:39:57 AM 523 Views
Or they might believe that a far left liberal - 08/02/2010 04:16:51 AM 540 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 535 Views
soory but your wrong, again - 08/02/2010 02:23:31 PM 495 Views
You shouldn't need reminders of your major themes after two years pushing them. - 08/02/2010 02:55:22 PM 526 Views
That's a bit silly - 08/02/2010 08:40:25 PM 689 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 708 Views
Well, let's discuss some of these points - 09/02/2010 07:13:33 PM 714 Views
Re: Well, let's discuss some of these points - 10/02/2010 09:15:04 AM 746 Views
Re: Well, let's discuss some of these points - 10/02/2010 06:49:51 PM 813 Views
Ironically, Palin seems to agree this is different than using a teleprompter for a speech. - 11/02/2010 09:05:19 AM 707 Views
Again, two seperate things - 11/02/2010 09:51:15 PM 523 Views
Agreed, but Palin and other Republicans, not I, drew the comparison. - 15/02/2010 01:02:25 PM 672 Views
Just to get the obligatory Feinstein comment out of the way... - 15/02/2010 11:43:42 PM 734 Views
Hadn't heard, actually. - 19/02/2010 06:58:50 AM 649 Views
Re: Hadn't heard, actually. - 19/02/2010 08:32:11 AM 647 Views
Ah. - 23/02/2010 09:55:45 PM 724 Views
Re: Ah. - 24/02/2010 01:32:34 AM 671 Views
Yeah, I think we've reached an understanding if not agreement. - 01/03/2010 03:51:49 AM 665 Views
Re: Yeah, I think we've reached an understanding if not agreement. - 01/03/2010 11:46:24 PM 879 Views
Re: Yeah, I think we've reached an understanding if not agreement. - 05/03/2010 12:11:48 AM 754 Views
Random Title - 05/03/2010 02:49:59 AM 681 Views
Re: Random Title - 15/03/2010 05:37:22 AM 597 Views
Re: Random Title - 15/03/2010 09:17:53 PM 912 Views
Re: Random Rejoinder - 29/03/2010 03:45:08 PM 635 Views
Re: Random Rejoinder - 30/03/2010 12:34:23 AM 1282 Views
Oh dear, who ever let you two get into a subthread together? - 15/03/2010 10:31:24 PM 743 Views
Ben was asleep at the switch, clearly. - 29/03/2010 02:48:46 PM 679 Views
oh yes, and the right never uses ad hominem - 08/02/2010 03:56:42 PM 490 Views
This is petty and also rather ignorant - 08/02/2010 03:59:40 AM 686 Views
There had to be better ways, though - 08/02/2010 08:36:50 AM 443 Views
so you're saying you're as dumb as sarah palin? - 08/02/2010 10:55:00 AM 501 Views
Basically yes - 08/02/2010 06:57:16 PM 557 Views
a couple of points... - 09/02/2010 01:53:29 AM 522 Views
Let me get this straight. - 08/02/2010 03:59:40 AM 600 Views
Okay, folks, it's not that she had a cheat sheet. - 08/02/2010 04:39:06 AM 556 Views
Style is EVERYTHING, dammit! *NM* - 08/02/2010 05:34:14 AM 282 Views
As Cheat Sheet was raised as an objection, so it clearly was - 08/02/2010 06:16:57 AM 660 Views
It's completely unprofessional - 08/02/2010 08:27:47 AM 520 Views
why? - 08/02/2010 02:29:44 PM 544 Views
well it's all she's got going for her. *NM* - 08/02/2010 03:10:37 PM 233 Views
You know that's a good question - 08/02/2010 05:19:10 PM 506 Views
maybe you are just projecting - 08/02/2010 06:15:57 PM 510 Views
well what is the association we have with notes on hands? - 08/02/2010 07:58:41 PM 536 Views
or people on the far left are being grossly disingenuous - 08/02/2010 08:18:06 PM 648 Views
dude, only posted it because it was funny - 08/02/2010 08:43:55 PM 504 Views
I agree on your title - 09/02/2010 11:30:11 AM 572 Views
Who cares? She's hot. *NM* - 08/02/2010 03:06:58 PM 245 Views
I agree with your first sentence. *NM* - 08/02/2010 03:07:31 PM 346 Views
I also totally agree with that first sentence. *NM* - 08/02/2010 03:48:24 PM 273 Views
Much ado about nothing. She was just making sure she didn't forget anything. - 09/02/2010 02:00:56 AM 487 Views
No, humble would have been note cards. *NM* - 09/02/2010 05:55:27 AM 251 Views
Nah, note cards can be dropped or lost. - 09/02/2010 03:03:25 PM 506 Views
She's such a retard. *NM* - 09/02/2010 02:46:51 AM 274 Views
Maybe - 09/02/2010 09:29:45 AM 543 Views
No offense, girlie. - 09/02/2010 11:36:55 AM 649 Views
She should have left herself a note... - 09/02/2010 11:04:34 PM 512 Views

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