UConn James

From what I heard on the news, the motorcyclist was in the hospital, a little worse for wear but he's not doing bad, and he thanked his rescuers profusely. If it hadn't been for them, he'd have been extra crispy inside of another 5 minutes. A number of ordinary people who aren't paid to do so risked their own safety to help this guy. Even if there was the whiff of a lawsuit, with that video, it would be a rare jury that would side with a plaintiff, and there would be a heavy onus to prove he would deserve anything but a slap upside the head. Nonetheless, know your state laws and whether there are strong Good Samaritan laws to CYA before you do anything like this.

SILENTLY A FLOWER BLOOMS In silence it falls away; Yet here now, at this moment, at this place, The whole of the flower, the whole of the world is blooming. This is the talk of the flower, the truth of the blossom. The glory of eternal life is shining here. - Abbot Zenkei Shibayama Roshi --------------------------------- Thoughts / prayers....

* Hic * * BUUURP!! *

Not the past couple of seasons and especially not last year. The Chiefs' punter, Weatherford was available as an UFA and placed over 40 punts inside the 20 last year. Moorman had, iirc from responding in the Moorman thread during camp, ~ 15. I didn't see much today to convince me that he hasn't lost the touch. It was a hell of a win and this may be down on the list of problems, but Moorman's production and placement is off. And as the season wears on and his leg gets tired, the problem will likely compound. Further on and in tighter games against better teams, it may cost us.

The obvious reason being that he's a !@#$ing * who here deigns to tell everyone the content of our own thoughts. Thoughts that, wouldn't you know, agree with Krugman's worldview. And then being too chickenshit to accept criticism. So basically, just another day of being a typical liberal.

I say this without a political tinge, just an observation of their communication styles.... President Bush talked to us. He wasn't a smooth speaker at all times, for sure, but it was almost always a conversational tone of someone who could connect with anyone one-on-one. Certainly a far cry from Ronald Reagan but I believe that's who he modeled himself after. But you're always going to get an undawdled honest answer based on what he knows and how he thinks. President Obama talks at us. He's a clear and concise speaker who has a halted speech style that makes sure he's picking/reading the exact right word. Professorial, I'd call it. There is an immediate distance established. Ask him a question, present him with something that needs to be decided on RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW, and he wouldn't know whether to **** or turn purple. The impression from his style is that he's crafting his message with the goal of persuading and winning approval rather/more than just telling you what he thinks... but that he'd rather go to his office and map a response out and test it for a month before he gives an answer.

Just to put this to bed with the predictable outcome, the league has gone on record now that players can wear licensed gear featuring 9/11 tributes / Red, White and Blue during week 1 games, without facing fines. Link Now back to your regularly scheduled program.

I heard that they want to reduce Social Security and Medicare garnishment by the tune of $1,000 a year for an average worker.... No words spoken on the borrowing we'll have to do to fund those programs. Or hell, maybe they'll just let them collapse in 2025 or 2030 and for all us younger folks who've paid in and will never see a dime of that back, they'll just laugh and yell out, "SNOOKERED!"

Count me as one who misses the Anthem being shown before games. It's just a great reminder that for all we enjoy, there are those who've sacrificed their time, their freedom, their lives to preserve this nation. Is a 45-second song that connects us as a common people --- among all our divisions and petty disputes --- really that hard to live through? As an addition to this topic, I'd just like to say that I loved Jordin Sparks' rendition on Thursday night. Wasn't over the top, wasn't a gob of Elmer-Fudd-on-a-blender vocalizations trumping Francis Scott Key's words. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0muP8G7tbM&feature=player_embedded

You do know that Obamacare's not in full force until 2014, right? And just this week, we learned of yet more great things packed down deep into a bill that needed to be passed before everyone could find out what was in it. Link

If it's not settled, and Gilligan said that it'll be up to the viewers to decide, then OK. Fair game. I thought the disclosure was foreshadowing specific events to come. But that doesn't change that the thread structure re: spoiler tags needs to change. This is the last time I'm going to harp on it, but if the episode has aired (11 p.m. Sunday), anything that has aired and our own observations and speculations are free to discuss openly. If you've DVR'ed/Tivo'ed then read at your own peril. Anything beyond discussion of previously aired material and viewer speculation needs tags. That Gilligan isn't saying and might not disclose Gus's sexuality is actually pretty cool. Because it's not that big a deal. Gays are just like anybody else, don't you know. I wonder if that was even Gus's house. There's a whole double bluff smokescreen that exists between Gus and Walt/Jesse. He's seen when he wants to be seen. The don was trying to neuter his competition there by taking out the most important man of the operation --- the cook. It would be totally counterproductive of Gus to off Walt or allow Walt to be offed. Gus has now been shown to have had even more of a problem with retaining his high-level cooks than we knew wrt Gale. And I think the Yes or No question was whether Gus would hand over Walt ostensibly to be killed as payback for the twins and/or Tuco. When the don said that he knew everything that went on in his empire, I was so waiting for Gus to say that evidently, he didn't even know that Tuco's uncle pisses in the don's pool. I suppose that would've been a bit of disrespect, which wouldn't be a smart move. Gus's past in Chile remains to be seen, but it appears that he was a muckity-muck who had enough influence to make his records there disappear like a ghost.

The obsession-gene appears to be recessive, tho. So, I'm safe. (I don't even have a cellphone.)

These are conclusions that many average Americans could see long ago. And yet, she's among a few who'll actually say this and actually sound like, if it were up to only them, we might have a chance for change vis-a-vis things like term limits, cutting wasteful federal spending, balanced budget amendment, etc. D.C. is there to keep big business and Wall Street running. And that's okay, there's not too much overly wrong with it --- indeed there's a feeling in me that the macrocosm should mostly deal with the macrocosm level of the country. But where the political class fails is in trying to make Main Street businesses think D.C. gives a rat crap about them. They don't, they really don't. They're there to ensure a steady stream of income to the federal govt and small businesses just don't show up on their radar. To a large degree, D.C. believes that governors and states are there for that, and for smoothing out the bumps left in the road by the feds. And again, that's not entirely wrong-headed, states and cities/towns should focus on state business. Where D.C. goes wrong is in trying to mandate outside of their focus. and without a clear sense of what conditions "on the ground" are where they're making these mandates. Case in point is Obamacare. They may try to pass off that the Massachusetts plan was their model. And yet, the Massachusetts plan only has a chance of working in Massachusetts because it was tailored for that state/commonwealth, their demographics (4% uninsured), their medical system infrastructure (extensive and accessible geographically) and within their own means (affluent) such that the changes have a good chance of success and being absorbed. As Romney has said, in the good old "states' rights" way, what the legislature came up with and he tweaked to bring some fiscal sense to for the Mass. plan will not work for the whole country with such different conditions among states. I still think, whether by design or just how she is, she comes across as an unsavvy, tactless moron. And that's not something people usually want to have for the demeanor of the POTUS, given an alternative.

But no matter who wins, I hope they use some Lysol on it. For a Brooklyn/Queens district, this is a shocker. And perhaps only a harbinger for what Democrats can expect for 2012. You can chalk up some percentage of this to Weiner's conduct, but really, how much does that explain for perhaps the most urban of urban (read: Democrat) districts? Link

Speaking as a half-Dutchie heritage-wise, this is entirely believable. Their rate for (diagnosed and undiagnosed) serious obsessive disorders is probably tops in the world, per capita. Obsessiveness has benefits in things like engineering and construction, but there is a dark side.

And yet, the league can mandate that they have flags on the helmets and this 9/11 tribute ribbon on every jersey.

Funny how in the LOST threads we RARELY --- if ever --- had this problem. I don't give a sh-- about people who DVR. If they DVR and come here and see discussion about an already-aired episode, that's their own fault. The problem is the strange case of putting SPOILER tags on BOTH regular discussion of something that's already been shown on AMC and on posts that reveal something, say, that you read on SpoilerTV about something that's going to happen later in the season. As things stand here, how can one tell the difference? The spoiler tags are being grossly misapplied here. If that's the way everyone's going to do it, then I'm out of here.

OK. I've just been spoiled on a MAJOR plot development because most everyone here has been using the spoiler tags for regular discussion post-episode (for some reason that escapes me) as well as for future actual spoiler information. This sh-- has to stop or I'm not participating in this thread any more. (Note: Hops, this isn't your fault and I'm not blaming you.)

Uhmm..... Soccer.

Hmm. I thought the monoliths were "full of stars!" That is a wicked entrance. We're ten years into D-I and there's nothing even close to that. Used to ban all tailgating that had a heating device of any type in the parking lots, no tossing footballs, no fun. Game-day really suffered from what used to be when the stadium was on-campus in Storrs. (They're evidently going to be tearing down Memorial Stadium to build a basketball-only practice facility). Seems to be getting better in East Hartford, as they've apparently loosened up the rigid regulations judging from pictures in the Hartford Courant. USCarolina has really great programs, especially baseball.

It is a neutered society. They put their trust in government and CCTV and have become the very thing Orwell tried to warn his countrymen about. Same as Greece invited all sorts of immigrants in because the Greeks don't want to lift a finger, these places eventually rot at their core because of laziness and mortgaging every asset they have to continue a way of life that is unsustainable. Because not only do the citizens not want to be productive (and have no incentive to be productive because of the taxes), the immigrant workers also don't want to work and discovered how to become parasites on the extensive social welfare system. Then, when Cameron threatened to take their ice cream away with austerity measures because they're going broke, these people started looting and burning ****. And a lot of citizens there still don't see the problem because they're so close to it, nor still do they want to/have an incentive to lift a finger.

Then again, the case could well be made that brain damage ain't a disqualifier for congress --- it's a requirement! What's wrong is that it's very disrespectful. If she decides not to run, there will be plenty of time to find an alternate candidate and stage a campaign.

Her office has said that the decision will probably be made near the start of the year, about a year on from the attack. Giffords has reportedly participated in discussion and interactive with her staff. But ****, give the woman some time.

You know, I've gotta agree with the former leader quoted at the end. I don't think this a case of a trophy / sick joke (as said, it was planned before Rep. Giffords was shot) but continuing with it is in bad taste. While some can see it as discrete coincidence, there can be every perception of it being a very low blow. With every nuance of action and inaction carrying meaning in politics, this is something they should have just taken a loss on giving it back to the dealer or donor. But also in bad taste is the stuff being spouted by the liberal special education teacher who was thinking about running as a Republican or Greenie for her seat because it was questionable whether he could get 700 signatures to primary as a Democrat (he since has gotten those signatures). I mean, a special education teacher saying that she hadn't been voting in session and because she had a TBI, she might no longer be fit to be a Congresscritter... and he's forcing a primary "just in case" Giffords doesn't run. Tho there's no indication that he'll drop his bid if she does decide to run. (Giffords, who used to be a Republican, is one of the few conservative Democrats who held their seats and had been staunchly pro-gun. I'm sure that crackles their corn flakes.) You stay classy, Anthony!

Not like this topic hasn't been discussed ad nauseum for time out of mind.... But I'll summarize: Beyond worrying. Whatever happens will happen. If they stay, ownership is almost guaranteed to not f--- things up worse than Ralph. If they go, a lot of us here get our Sundays back. Period. Dot it. File it. Stick it in a box marked 'Done.'