blzrul

Ken Lay probably donated to Gore and Kerry too...well maybe not Kerry, I think he died first. He probably WOULD have donated to Kerry if he hadn't dropped dead. I object to all corporate funding of political candidates because obviously they are then beholden to that corporation. The issue with Bush and Lay is that when Enron melted down, Bush denied he knew the guy. The issue here is that these guys are being attacked for making a trip that, as it turns out, was funded by someone on the Axle of Evil list, not Ken Lay. It's not the same thing and it's not even an issue.

When I bought my very first house, I knew exactly where I wanted to live. Sadly, those houses were out of my price range, and what I could afford in that area were in disrepair. So I bought a house I could afford somewhere else. Is that such a difficult concept for people to understand?

Explain to me how a trip in 2002, at a time when you neocon nutjobs were going orgasmic over invading Iraq, raised money for said Iraq to build a "nucular" arsenal? Did said three congressional reps come back and get an aid bill passed that we don't know about? Or did they smuggle nukes in their briefcases and hand them over? Your boys Ronny and GHWB handed over money and WMDs to said Iraq in the 1980's....maybe you are confused. It would not surprise me at all.

Actually an older one is probably better. My first house was built in the 1920's. Updates were things I wanted, not things that broke. Next house was a 1950's house - again, needed cosmetics but structurally great. Then came my 1940's bungalow - solid house. I upgraded to circuit breakers etc, but stuff didn't BREAK. Then came the house built in 1988 - I bought it in 1994. New roof, foundation repair, air conditioning, ductwork, furnace, etc....Piece of sh-- construction. I paid 122 for it, added a 28k pool and spa, owned it for 10 years, sold it for 184. Probably cleared a $500 profit after all I had to put into it when stuff failed. I'm not even counting the cosmetic stuff I did like hardwood and ceramic floors, etc. Current house was built in 1993. It's better than the house in TX because construction codes are stricter but still...I am having to upgrade some of my plumbing from plastic to copper (plastic is just gonna leak eventually) and it's nickel-and-dime stuff, but it adds up. I would buy a 75-100 year old home any day. The fact that it's still standing is testament. I can guarantee you that much of the crap built (particularly down South) in the 80's and 90's will be crumbling in 30 years, or less.

I don't recall there being any issues with Repigs going trips that turned out to be funded by scumbags? I recall Repigs BEING scumbags (mostly in public restrooms but other places too). But maybe you can refresh my memory.

But no equity in the home....I guess it depends on what you expect from a home. In the old days we were encouraged to buy a home because of the tax savings but those have been whittled down. When you offset the cost of maintaining a home vs the tax advantages, sometimes it's a wash. These days one is often better off renting....

Weeelllll - she's separated from her husband and who knows if he pays support. Many people don't have the savings they should. I just about DIED the time I read (within the past year) that most people over age 45 don't have more than $25k in retirement savings? Say WHAT? I'm freaked out about retiring on less than $2m. I don't live lavishly, but I am trying to plan ahead for horrendous healthcare costs, living into my 90's and no Social Security, in other words, worst case. I have saved for retirement since I was 21...usually the max....my mother taught me to "pay yourself first", meaning put something away right up front and don't even count it in your disposable income. I used to work with people that hit Sbux twice a day, that's about $10x5x4=$200 a month on hot milk with a little coffee flavoring! Good lord! The @#$@#$ people spend their money on. Yeah, it's their money, but you need to be responsible. An easy life is not guaranteed just before you're born on American soil. You still have to earn it, in most cases anyway. There are so many people in this country who work hard and do all the right things and still suffer, THEM I sympathize with. These people? Naw.

A friend and I got into a rather heated argument when I stated I was not sympathetic with people who were stupid and greedy and got over their heads with big mortgages for homes they couldn't afford. She insisted it was predatory lending as much as anything.... Then I read this. It starts out a tearjerker until you get into it a bit. Then you see 1) A $2,500 monthly payment which is INTEREST ONLY. You're better off renting 2) The mortgagee is a loan processor and should have known better My grandparents rented until they were in their 50's - THEN they bought a little house they could afford. My parents lived in a 3 bedroom apartment with 4 kids and finally bought a house after 9 years of marriage...when they could afford it. I have never taken out the "max" loan that I qualify for, in order to have wiggle room in event of an emergency. I could have a 6500 sq foot McMansion...but why? I don't need it, I don't want to clean it or maintain it...there's more to life. Bad stuff happens to people and some are genuinely victims, but this really ticks me off. I certainly understand the fear and anxiety she must be experiencing, and I feel very sorry for the children, but for crying out loud, this was so AVOIDABLE.

The time to be upset was in 2002 when they went. Six years later it comes out that money may have come from Saddam and funneled through third parties, none of which was known by the travelers. You can't unring the bell. Do you really think ANY of them would be STUPID enough to knowingly let Saddam pay for their visit? Puh-lease. It wouldn't be the first time an unsavory individual or company turned out to be a "benefactor", unknown to the beneficiaries. If proof is offered that they knowingly let Saddam pay for a visit which then influenced them to take action in Saddam's favor, then we can be outraged. We have plenty of other things to be outraged about until that happens.

This guy has got to be one of the biggest idiots on the face of the earth. That, and the laziest. Surely if he can afford to buy a gun, and own a home, he can afford a drill ... or maybe he was just too lazy to go get it. Dumb freakin idiot.

So now CNN.com has placed this in the headline position. What's interesting, if you think about it, is that Wal-Mart let this go for awhile and THEN went after her. Again, within their rights. But when you think about all the money they are spending on advertisting in an attempt to improve their poor image, they could have gotten a ton of great PR for doing something for this lady. Certainly they spend more than $400k a week on advertising...and PR is more credible. If CNN keeps hammering on this, ALL that money they've spent on rehabilitation will have been in vain.

With or without trans fats? Actually what eats up my $$ is season tickets for the Bills...season tickets for the Seahawks....season tickets for the Symphony...2-3 trips to NYC annually...and my kid's college tuition.

Are you saying that our media are fallible? Ill-informed? More interested in sensationalizing circumstances than reporting the facts?! Say it ain't so! He's just lucky he didn't shoot his @#$$# off.

It was my mother's cleaning lady, dumbass. There is NO-ONE who cleans up to my standards. So I do it myself. Always have and always will. Besides, that gives me more money to spend on football tickets and bling...and I got plenty of both.

It doesn't seem like they tried to rip WalMart off. She probably didn't know the clause was there...and obviously, more to the point, she had to have healthcare insurance, so she sucked it up and signed. This is an uncommon case, not a situation where someone is trying to victimize "poor unfortunate WalMart".

As I stated in my post, and as it's stated in the "15 second" snippet, the healthcare policy contains a clause that they can recoup their money. Hence the courts are correct. But that doesn't mitigate what a !@#$ing unconscionable POS WalMart is. It's one of those things that drives you nuts - it feeds off the very people that it totally screws over. And most of them have no clue, poor things. They really think it's just a store.

Yea CNN makes it hard to grab the links of the videos (without watching the commercials). The point is that per the clause in the healthcare contract (which she paid into) Wal-Mart can legally recoup expenses if there is a settlement. And there was. But this is a relatively young woman who's in a nursing home, and will be forever. She got a $400k+ settlement (after legal fees) and WalMart wants ALL of it, plus MORE. Her husband had to divorce her so Medicaid could pay more...he's working two jobs...his older son was killed in Iraq serving his country....and this guy is going to lose everything. Surely if Wallyworld wanted to show some compassion for its employee it could start a fund if it didn't want to set a "dangerous precedent". I shop at Costco.

Not sure if this will take you directly there (CNN Videos) but if not find your way there and watch the one about Wal-Mart suing this lady. Granted, they have a legal right to do so. But "right" and "what's right" are two different things. And the really frustrating thing is that these are the sort of good people who probably (until now) spent a good portion of their income at Wal-Mart. This sort of thing just tears at my heart. I guess because my brother has been through a similar hell...and you won't find a guy who works harder to take care of his family. It's for people like this that we need some sort of control on access to reasonable healthcare ... in America, people should be able to get help BEFORE they become destitute...to keep them from getting there.

Yes that was the first thing I looked for too - I would have been devasted if they were gone. God I miss him.

I would only go if it was a good game (not preseason and not one that promised to be a stinker, say versus the Falcons or something). Since I live in Seattle it's much easier for me to get to Toronto (non-stop) than slog thru O'Hare (or worse) to get to Buffalo. In principle I am not happy with it, but since I can only make a couple of games per year my choices are limited. So if I can go to one more game due to the relative ease of travel, I just might.

Does "posts up to 3/13/08" mean that all BiB's stuff is gone? That would be the ONLY reason I would consider saving the old drive. Of course, his reaction to that would be to ask what I was wearing when I came up with that stupid idea....

And that would be how many?

No kidding. It is what it is and it's probably high time we really talk about it in this country. We all carry baggage about a lot of things and in many cases, race is one of those things whether we want to admit it or not. If there was a black person on this board, he or she would no doubt share with us his or her experience in learning about white people. and we might find it wasn't so different from our own learning experience. My parents simply followed the "American dream" and took us out of the city in the 'burbs when we were quite young. We never had black kids in our school until my senior year in high school. When a black family tried to buy a house in our tract, the neighbors lobbied the builder to block it - the exceptions were a handful of people who circulated a petition to allow them to buy, including my mother, our next door neighbor, and Louise Slaughter (then a housewife). Intellectually I knew that black people were just people like me, but until I went to university and actually interacted with them on a daily basis I had no first-hand experience. And for many of them, they had never been up close and personal with white people either. So we all learned together. I remember the time my friend Linda told me I was making her blush when I paid her a compliment - she was black as coal and if she was blushing I couldn't see it. I didn't know if she was making a joke or what ... I cracked up and so did she, but it could just as well have gone the other way. Would it have been as funny if Linda was white? Of course not. And Linda would not have been Linda without her blackness. And it WAS funny, whether she meant it to be or not. The laughter was not AT her but at what she said. And when I pointed it out to her, she laughed even harder. Had a talking head or other nitwit been present though something so innocuous could have been blown up all out of proportion. My nana was born and lived in Brooklyn her whole life and she was just as isolated. She would cross the street if a black man was coming toward her...she never said anything, I think she did it unconsciously. I never heard her say a word against blacks, but that action by today's standards makes her racist. In those days it was common. So, she was a typical white person of her generation (she's 99 now). And, that same black man might have been relieved that the white lady DID cross the street because in those days, in many places in the US, if a black man got too close to a white lady, there could be trouble. The fact that this raises so many emotions and discussions proves that the subject is not "a done deal" but something that should be discussed.

All this hoopla just shows that Obama was right to face the race issue head on - we like to think we're past it but we are not. I was raised "white", in a white neighborhood in a white town in a city where the only black faces were in "the ghetto". My parents weren't overtly racist but they were typical white people of their generation - black people cleaned our house, we had to be polite to them etc but at the end of the day they went home to "the ghetto". We took Christmas baskets to poor black families in "the ghetto". How can you know what black people were like when you were never exposed to them other than what you heard second-hand, read, or saw on TV? People in those days actually DID believe blacks were better athletes because of genetics, that they did like fried food and watermelon, etc. They didn't know any better. And of course it worked both ways. Kids in "the ghetto" would see a white person and make certain assumptions. At age 15 I was working in the city of Rochester one evening, registering voters. The dropped us off in "the ghetto". A gang of young black guys on the corner started catcalling etc....I walked up and asked them if they were old enough to vote and their jaws dropped. At the end of the conversation I had 5 new voters signed up, and I wasn't dead. I guess I could have been - at least based on what I'd always been told about "the ghetto". But perhaps what I'd learned was wrong. I was a typical white girl at that time - didn't know any better, but it didn't make sense that black folk sat around "the ghetto" waiting to kill me and as it turns our I was right. I ended up moving to what I had thought of as "the ghetto" as a child when I bought my first house. It was the best place I ever lived. Sometimes the gunshots at night were scary, but I lived with black folk, immigrants, blue collar white folks and we all took care of each other and had a great time doing it. I have never since found that sense of togetherness in any of the neighborhoods I've lived since. Obama's words are upsetting people because they should be upset. There are some things you can't tie up in a pretty bow. Race and gender issues are raw and emotional, and there's no way to get over it than to talk about it. He may not always express himself in the manner that we would like, but if he were to express himself in a way calculated to soothe and win over all sides, we'd just get the usual pandering blather that we so deplore from all politicians. Anyone who thinks that Obama cannot handle diversity, conflict and manage diplomacy ought to consider this situation...and reconsider their position on that. He's doing extremely well in a situation that is very difficult.

When I lived in WNY people couldn't refer to The City without a sneer. They were under the impression that The City is the favored child while WNY gets sloppy seconds. They feel all their tax dollars are sucked away and spent on Ronald Reagan's "welfare queens" etc. who they feel comprise the bulk of NYC population. The rest are muggers, gang-bangers, Wall Street types, and in the middle are the cops and firemen holding things together. Very simplistic, but WNY is pretty parochial in its thoughts, words and deeds. It's the same as here in Washington State, where the "red" side of the state (east of the Cascades) constantly complains and talks of succession. My response is, as long as you don't like roads and schools and stuff, go right ahead. Because once you secede, none of my tax dollars will be coming your way, and since you're underpopulated, underemployed and underfunded, you'll have to learn how to do it your own self on what you got, which ain't much. We got all the people, so we got all the money, and you may not like what you got but it's a whole lot more than you'll get on your own. If there was ever any doubt that WNY needs NYC more than the reverse, 911 should have dispelled that. So basically, it's the feeling that WNY is held hostage by the city, because of the co-dependence that exists. Albany sends a lot of $$ to NYC, but if NYC goes under the rest of the state will look like....Wyoming.