Juror#8

Agreed, great movie - but dammit if they didn't try to be too clever with ending. Somewhere online is an interesting comparison between the endings of NCFOM and "Inception" though. The crux of the discussion is that in principle the endings in both leave the audience in the same place but "Inception" is lauded for it's ending whereas NCFOM is maligned. I just don't see it.

Just watched "Box of Moonlight." Awesome movie and thanks for the recommendation. "I Heart Huckabees" is another ubsurd comedy that is well cast and engaging. Also "Little Miss Sunshine" is a little indie flick worth a Saturday afternoon.

Indeed, Mr. Book. "Memento," more Nolan awesomeness. Good eye. I've been telling people this for years. "Matrix" to me is a big budget "Dark City." Check out "Metropolis" if you haven't already. I think the whole segment originated from Lang's vision.

"Olaf, 'Berserker'!" "My love for you is ticking clock...." Great stuff man. In college we'd have "Clerks" and "Friday" marathon sessions. Brings back memories.

Will check out "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Read a synopsis and it sounds interesting. Plus it has Robert Downey Jr. when he was still using which is when he was arguably putting out his best performances. Glad someone else has seen "Cedar Rapids." Ed Helms and John C. Reilly are magic together in those roles. Movie should have got much more pub. 60% of the way through the movie it descends into complete chaos and then somehow finds it's way back to reality and yet it all seems right. Great flic. "mothhhhhhrrrrrraaaaa.........mothhhhhhhrrrrrraaaaa...." Checking it out...

Anyone know of any obscure flicks that are not over-burdened by Hollywood formulaic repetitiveness or big budget, CGI technocrap? Any good comedies that don't have Adam Sandler? Any recommendations for great movies that are under the radar - so most haven't seen? I'm having a relaxing 10-15 movie weekend next weekend so I'd be interested to know a "Top 2 Movies That You Probably Haven't Seen But Should." "The Thin Red Line" is already on my list for next weekend. Thanks again. Here is my list (of 3): 1. The Limey 2. Dark City 3. Cedar Rapids

Have not even heard of Malick but once I type this post I'll be searching on Amazon to see what the cost is to order "The Thin Red Line." I read the synopsis and it sounds like something that I would enjoy. Thanks for the recommendation. With respect to "Inception" - big grossing movie, tons of good pub, but many people just enjoyed the action sequences and big budget production. I was surprised at how many people complained that it was too complicated to follow.

Agreed. Mostly great discussion. I'm pretty conservative on a lot of matters. I'm just funny about social programs (welfare) and healhcare. Growing up where I grew up I've seen directly how some social programs have helped people who had no where else to turn. I've left Barry Farm but I have trouble leaving Barry Farm. I just approach social welfare very existentially...in a Soren Kierkegaard type way.

I feel that it leans right. That's a nice change from some of the other boards that I frequent. Folks here will try to pigeon hole you as "secretly progressive" because of disagreement on an issue. When I'm not "right" enough and the only group here pushing that distance is the conservative contingent that kinda betrays the board's ideological leanings.

I've fallen asleep, at a movie theatre, on two movies...ever: The Mummy Returns and The Jackal (Bruce Willis/Richard Gere version). I actually asked for my money back and was successful after having spirited words with the manager. The guy was a jerk and I probably was too. 15 years later and I still tell people not to go to that movie theatre in Laurel, MD in the plaza with the Ruby Tuesdays. I don't even know the place is still there.

Everyone I know seems to hate Donnie Darko - they thinks it's too complicated. So I'm basing it off that. I seem to like movies that everyone else thinks is too complicated or too esoteric: Donnie Darko, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Inception, David Lynch flicks.

You must be confusing "League of Extraordinary Gentleman" with "Inland Empire" - The latter is a movie that many feel is stupid but in reality it's just very different and very creative. The former is dry, poorly acted and poorly produced. It's a shame, because the LEG concept is really cool.

Plan 9 from Outer Space is ABSOLUTELY unwatchable. I've tried cause it has a cult status but it's horrible. 1. Plan 9 2. League of Extraordinary Gentleman 3. The Jackal 4. The Stuff 5. Howard the Duck Movies that are supposed to be bad but that I really enjoyed: 1. Swept Away 2. Waterworld 3. The Postman 4. Inland Empire 5. Lost Highway 6. Eraserhead 7. Donnie Darko I think I just like post-apocolyptic movies.

Oh yea, if you venture into a neighborhood of row houses and everyone is watching you intently - especially from on top of buildings, try to not be mesmerized by the kids clapping to send the building pigeons flying. That is not for entertainment value. It is a hopper call and you should leave.

Stay east of MLK Blvd. Stay east of MLK Blvd. Do not go to West Baltimore. Fells Point, the Harbor, Mt. Vernon are o.k If you stray far from the nest, and notice that you are on Belair Rd, Orleans Ave., Northern Ave. look for any red and blue sign for ___95 and follow them. If you're having difficulty identifying the street names, a good indicator that you're beyond the safe zone is when the general ambiance becomes depressed and off-tan, boarded row houses appear out of nowhere, and you see various permutations of the following buildings consecutively on the same block: KFC - Dedicated Liquor Store - Dedicated Check cashing spot - mom and pop ghetto food spot (which is usually some proper name followed by "Soul" + "food," "diner," "cuisine," or any permutation of the aforementioned + "n-carry.") -barber shop - abandoned building with club flyers, DJ self promotion, independent record label announcement or local community organizer contact information plastered on 8 x 11 paper - combination check cashing and liquor store - Popeyes - place that sells incents, bootleg dvds and NOI literature. If you see blocks that reflect this pattern, you're probably on one of the aforementioned throughways and should quickly seek safety. You've gone beyond the safe zone. Also, avoid Druid Hill Park (commonly referred to as "Dru Hill"). It sounds utopic and cute but it's really just a place to get your ass kicked. And watch The Wire. Good Luck.

Opt for 401K up to your company's match and then put anything over that into a Roth IRA. If you can contribute yourself into a lower tax bracket (by lessening your AGI), that's even better. Keep in mind that your Roth can be an advantage to you as your paying the taxes on it now. Considering that tax rate obligations will likely increase in the next 40 years, you can be diluting the purchasing power of your money if you defer your taxes until then. By paying your taxes now you "lock in the rate" so to speak. But......most people will be in a lower tax bracket post-retirement so it may behoove you to wait and be taxed later. Just depends on where you see yourself in 30-50 years. With respect to where to put our contributions - read your company's fund descriptions. It may seem like Latin but the explanations around risk and recent quarterly return is instructive. Every company should have a cash equivalent fund - usually that's some type of stable value fund. No matter how you allocate the remainder of your contributions, you should have 15-20% between stable value and/or bond funds. Many people run to svf and bond funds when the market turns to guard their money after it's taken a bit of a loss. The only thing that does is locks in the hit. You don't need to pay someone to explain to you this stuff. Good luck.

Good points. I'll certainly defer to you on the point about people continuing to frequent ERs and Urgent Care even if they have insurance since you have professional experience there. The point about increased MDs, though, I have to take issue with. To give you some absolutely unneccessary background: There is a great site that I frequent called JDUnderground. It's a forum where a bunch of lawyers and professionals of all types complain about being lawyers, complain that law school misled to them, complain that the legal market is over-saturated with lawyers and incompetent schmucks, lament leaving their previous career, and complain that law schools are debt factories producing more candidates than there are jobs. The site is rife with nihilism and every other post is someone suggesting that another poster should "killself" (THE word on that forum) because that poster hasn't found a job for 10 months. Some classic threads (Rob'sHouse pleeeeeease take notes): http://www.jdunderground.com/all/thread.php?threadId=23185 http://www.jdunderground.com/all/thread.php?threadId=23765 http://www.jdunderground.com/all/thread.php?threadId=25907 http://www.jdunderground.com/all/thread.php?threadId=25556 Anyway - enough with the background - the point is that the site has a good many medical professionals (in discussions with those seeking career changes) who have mentioned on more than one occassion that med school enrollment is up significantly and medical schools have a mandate of sorts to lower admissions qualifications to increase matriculation. This is maily do to the boomer generation that are entering retirement age. A quick search validates this point: http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Daily-Reports/2012/May/04/med-school-survey.aspx http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20111024/NEWS/310249959 Apparently admissions to med schools is at an all time high and more MDs are being pumped out than ever before. This increase in MDs should allow for the accommodation of folks who would now be seeing PCPs as opposed to ER visits and hopefully keep costs down.

Whether one thing is conceptually better than something else or not does not implicate other options. I was speaking as between one option and another. Secondly, what is this "better way" and who have you held to account for not pursuing it? If you're pissed about the ACA then surely you're enraged by the trillions in waist and folly from being forced to subsidize the inefficient and wasteful practice of making the taxpayer account for inflated after-the-fact healthcare costs incurred by the indigent and uninsured. You've held the WH to account for the ACA, who have you held to account for the last 40 years? Any links to posts and diatribes? Any thoughts or articles? Letter to congresspersons? Emails? Now ask me if I do... Thirdly, I never said that it was "better than nothing." I have been very clear in stating that the ACA is a beginning point to accomplishing better things legislatively around the idea of health care reform. The ACA is not "better than nothing." However, putting something in place that is a template upon which better ideas can be forged and implemented is better than the status quo. The same people who bemoan the idea of "2700 pages," "trillions in cost," "huge bueracracy," "government intrusion," "too much," "Big Government," "built on freedom," etc. are the same people who have had five presidents in the last 50 years and umpteen opportunities to do something about the system that they, themselves, acknowledge is broken. I blame every Congress, Democrat and Republican, and every WH who for the last 40 years, has let this mess transpire on their watch: trillions and trillions of waisted dollars, hundreds of thousands of hours of medical effort and attention waisted, trillions in expeditures that could have been appropriated for bridges, schools, buildings, infrastructure, human capital, research, stimulus, beautification, defense, environment, tax decreases, etc. that didn't happen. In comparison to the shortcomings of the last 40 years, the current WH and the problems with the ACA are infinitesimally small. Yes, 2700 pages: infinitesimally small. Yes, 1.76 trillion: infinitesimally small. The status quo is unsustainable. The ditherers of "leave it alone" fame have allowed a self-perpetuating system of health-care incompetence to exist unaltered for decades. Documented cases of the inaccessible $50 penicillin regimen turning into $15,000 surgery and consultation fees is ridiculous. And we're paying for it. Every dime. They won't. But those who consider the ER as their primary care physician will decrease substantially. I imagine that billions will be saved as a result.

I can appreciate what you're saying. But everything else aside, your thesis was essentially that unqualified black folks were given the job because they were black and that there being black was the quality that precluded a more qualifed white (or candidate of another race) from being chosen for the position. That would presume that there were more qualified candidates of a different race or ethinicity that body politic had to choose amongst but didn't. Isn't knowing that variable - which would entail the "bunch of reasearch" that you mention - absolutely necessary to advance your thesis? For how can someone opt for a candidate that was not available to be chosen?

So would you rather have the status quo...where insureds are forced to subsidize the un-insured because they went to the emergency room and racked up exorbitant costs that would have been less costly and more manageable had they been able to go for a routine physician visit? Cause that's where we're at. Hospitals provide care. Liability, Hippocratic oath, and humanity forestall doctors from not treating patients in need. When uninsured patients go to the emergency room for routine things, it's costly. Emergency rooms are costly. The cost of any service at an ER is exponentially more than the cost of a routine health visit. That cost point is compounded by the fact that the uninsured or impoverished go to the ER with ailments, the origins of which may have been profoundly less severe, but in their current state is an exacerbation due to innattention. So not only does compulsory health insurance implicate a cost savings with respect to direct servicing cost, it also, at least theoretically, implicates a cost savings peripherally - because health issues that would otherwise be exacerbated - and consequently more expensive - can be addressed while they're less severe and more fiscally manageable. The status quo is NOT sustainable. You, me, 3rdnlng, Doc, BigfatBillsfan, TheNewBills, ChefJim, LA, Tom, B-Large and B-Man, etc. are all forced to pay the cost of the uninsured. Every week. Every premium payment. It's compulsory. Most states have funds set up to subsidize hospital budget short falls due to ER visits. They are funded by tax revenues. You're gonna pay. It's unavoidable: http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/29/magazines/fortune/colvin_aetna_csuite.fortune/index.htm "Today we all pay for the uninsured. If an individual sticks up a bank and walks off with $25,000, there are consequences. If someone who really could have had an insurance policy consumes $25,000 worth of health care, everyone else pays for that. The average employer is paying 12% more in premiums today to cover the uninsured than they would pay if we brought those 47 million into the system. So for every group we bring in, health care becomes more affordable." http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/08/25/us-insurance-health-idUSN2540397020080825 So we can continue paying $1200 - $1500 a year through residual costs and hidden taxes, or we can pay, what will likely be, a reduced amount because the lion share of those who precipitated those residual costs will have a level of care and coverage such that they can see a physician in a way that isn't imposition on the remainder of the tax base. Doing nothing is acquiescing to the above. That is silly. Maybe you're not advocating "doing nothing." Maybe you want something but not the ACA. Ok, then what? Because heretofore, all those who have said "I want reform, just not _______," have been content with the status quo - year after year after decade after decade after politician after politician.... The "I want to see change just not _____" is subterfuge - just a proxy for "leave things the way they are." It that brings me back to my original thesis - the ACA is not perfect, but it is "somebody" doing "something." Cell phones used to be big as bricks, have black screens,green numbers, and rely on FCN ___ keys to accomplish any one of the three tasks that it was capable of. Cars once had wooden wheels. But I'm not thinking about that when I drive my Shelby and tell it to "call home." The ACA, all 2700 pages of it, is conceptually better than the status quo. If it feels good to call me a "liberal" for saying that, go for it. You'd be wrong, but I'm not gonna sweat some name calling. And please, don't quote this last paragraph and go off on it as if there wasn't a bunch of detail and opinion leading up to it. The entire post deserves consideration - not just the denouement.

I am somewhat surprised. As for #10 - I agree it's a bit extreme, but we have to get serious about recidivism. Anyone who repeatedly enters the country illegally is either here to enjoy the liberties and privileges of a United States citizen (jobs, opportunity, abundance of fertile women) without paying the concomitant price or there is an illicit purpose where anonymity is a requirement. One it a taking and the other is nefarious. They're both injurious to the integrity of this country.

Yes. So long as their mental illness doesn't implicate any prior criminal behavior. If people were doing their jobs and admitting people who were considered threats to the public safety because of mental instability, it wouldn't be an issue that impacted gun ownership (Virginia Tech). Also, if we had responsible healthcare policy that allowed the financially disadvantaged to have access to mental health services we silmilarly wouldn't have to use increased restrictions on gun rights as a backup plan. Restricting gun ownership shouldn't be a proxy for bad healthcare policy.

1. Abortion: Personally I think it's repugnant. But doctrinally I agree with Griswold and it's successive emanations so I support a right to privacy and believe that it is contemplated by the Constitution. Ultimately states must be given freedom to impose criteria based on advancing state interests. 2. Gay Marriage: State issue. Not analagous to #1 because marriage requires state to acknowledge the union and provide certain corresponding benefits. 3. Prayers in school: Yes. Anyone who doesn't want to participate, doesn't have to. No taxpayer subsidies. 4. Death Penalty: Only in instances of admission of guilt or conclusive DNA evidence. Especially not in circumstantial cases or cases that rely solely on extrajudicial statements and accomplice testimony. 5. Guns: Unfettered access to everyone but convicted felons and minors. Background checks to determine criminal history (obviously). No restrictions on CCW except those already mentioned (and John Q. Public would obviously have to abide by the policy of commerical establishments). No restrictions on manufacturer or gun type absent compelling state/law enforcement justification. 6. Health Care: Health Care system needs reformation. I support legislative efforts and government entry into the healthcare arena. I support taxpayer dollars being used to subsidize health coverage for the abjectly impoverished and finacially disadvantaged. 7. War on drugs: Use it to create revenue stream. Tax the schit out of the sale and distribution. It may require more bueracracy and another arm of the government but at least they'll be revenue. 8. Taxes: Too complicated to distill down to a couple of sentences but I'll try - basically I think that a fair tax is BS because the middle class will always be left carrying the load. The current tax code is convulted. I think that an agonizing reappraisal of our spending is probably warranted to determine where the over-reaches are. Then a re-evaluation of taxing structure consistent with the refigured revenue needs is the best starting point. I don't think that any new tax plan is plausible without a realistic knowledge of overall spend commitment. 9. Immigration: None unless they can offer redeeming artistic, political, societal, or professional value. No "safe cities." We're all in thi together. One city or state shouldn't be able to compromise or put in jeopardy the safety and integrity of this country for political gain. We should deport children born to illegal immigrants on U.S. soil. 10. Illegal Immigrants: Deport. If they continue re-entry 3 or more times, consider them "enemy combatants" and place them in holding camps on some U.S. territory that doesn't require traditional due process. 11. Free trade: If reciprocated. 12. Military Spending: Should be outside traiditional budgetary constraints and priortized above almost all else as a country. Our safety and security is paramount. That said, U.S. manifest destiny for economic geo-political reasons should be curtailed. Developing a strong U.S. presence internationally for strategic reasons is necessary in today's world. 13. Foreign Policy: Inherently protectionist. But unfortunately it's not the 1880s so solipsism is impractical. As stated above, U.S. manifest destiny for economic geo-political reasons should be curtailed. Developing a strong U.S. presence internationally for strategic reasons is necessary in today's world. 14. Social Security: Raise taxable maximum to ensure solvency.

I didn't say you said anything. I asked you a question. Not calling you a narcissist. Not trying to have this conversation go anywhere but on schedule. Trying to keep this conversation civil. Back to the point... You're making the point that unqualified folks are being thrust into those positions because they're black. Do you have proof that the electorate had other choices?