UConn James

Thinking about it the other day, and with the S4 finale ending as it did, with everything tidied up, all the operations ceased, and what appeared at the time like a clean break and that Walt and Jesse could go their separate ways --- to me, that just ensures that we're not going to have that kind of finale where these characters just walk away, b/c we've already seen that. I would probably end the series --- the final scene --- with Walt Jr. watching a breaking news story about whatever had just happened in the denouement (the penultimate scene having left some questions that are answered by the story). That would just seem like a great way to end it all. Because we all watch these stories every night and there's rarely, if ever, any kind of extrapolation or closer look into the nitty-gritty. Just would be a great point in how all we (the everyday American) get is a sanitized view.

Poor Pres. Obama!

Pit bull and a boxer attacked me and my pup on a scenic back-road. Really thought they were going to kill him and possibly me. Ended up with hand bites and my dog had some pieces of torn flesh in ~5 minutes before the owner heard the shouting, came outside and pinned them down. And come to find that these were socialized, obedience-trained dogs. Alaska Darin et al. come here and say that they have to be taught to fight or not taught anything. And I used to agree with that. Suffice to say that my view of pit bulls/fighting breeds changed utterly that day. Until you experience the business end of a pit bull or other breed whose instinct, once it's on, is to bite and not let go your opinion is ing WORTHLESS.

Link No hypocrisy here.... Obama derides Romney for outsourcing when he had stepped away and was CEO in name only, but... he will accept campaign cash from the people at Bain who did the outsourcing post-Romney. Still, I remember a time when damn near every politician said globalization was the cat's breasts. Money in a globalized world is like a beautiful woman --- you need to treat it right or it goes elsewhere. How does the left not get this?

Actually, I would chalk up last year's win to rattling Brady and that offense. George Wilson completely laid out Edelman with a hit you could hear and that was the tone of the day. Brady was flustered and threw... was it 4 INTs? As Kyle Williams said leading up to the game, 'We may win, we may lose, but by the end, they are going to feel and know they just went through Hell.' That was a defensive victory. Up 'til there, it was always a given that Brady would be throwing for 400 yards and Welker would toast you. Well, as one poster's sig line here reads, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Fitz and the offense was able to capitalize on a horrid Pats* defense, especially their pass D which was last in the league. Looks like they may have reloaded, tho. The game plan should still be to beat them up, take advantage of their OL losses, get to Brady and shake him up. That's how we won, that's how the Giants beat them in the SB.

It really doesn't matter who is the president. If the military wants to get involved somewhere, we get involved. See: Obama nosing into Libya while we still had two fronts. If the military doesn't want to close GITMO, GITMO doesn't get closed. If the military wants to hold Bradley Manning in solitary confinement, despite every liberal/progressive saying that he's a "hero" then there he is. If the military wants to start using drones more and strike inside of countries like Pakistan, Yemen, etc., then it happens. If the military wants to launch STUXNET, it does. If a president, especially one with no military background, says no to something the rank and file military wants to do... that's dangerous ground. There won't be much of a difference.

It's entirely possible that Gus will be back via flashback. Spoiler-y (then again, this news was released last month in a Gilligan interview): Next week will introduce a character that is a (now-)former associate of Gus Fring.

He added regulations that took pre-wage/salary costs for employers up to ~$12K per year. He got passage of the ACA, which means that employers with over 10 employees graciously get to pick up the tab for health insurance. I hear that this policy makes businessowners want to stop looking at their spreadsheets and get out there and hire, hire, hire so they can have the privilege of paying for more healthcare. Rather than approve the Keystone pipeline that would reduce fuel and energy costs, Pres. Obama courageously said 'No' because... why would anyone in business want less expensive fuel sources? We can get by for another 50-100 years until alternative energy / fuels are widely available and perform as efficiently as traditional sources... right? And if we get four more years, just imagine how much more he could do for small businesses!!!

Wonder what he's going to do WRT the forthcoming $200M renovation....

Hey, no fair!! I had it first!!!!

OK, but would a direct call to an evidence lock-up warehouse be the same as calling a police department?

Maybe go out on the deck and scream "Let's go Buffalo!!!! WOOOOOO!!!" But otherwise, I'd act like I've been there before.

The perfect summation of the president's mindset.

As I understood it, Mike was calling to confirm whether they'd searched and seized yet. He was pretending to be a postal regulator and inquiring about a postage meter that was ostensibly in Gus's office at Pollos Hermanos, where the laptop was. He got confirmation that APD did have a meter, so they know the office has been searched and the laptop is sure to have been taken into evidence. It was also a mechanism of finding out which law enforcement agency had possession of it. If they followed up... well... do you really think a government desk jockey is going to be that curious and actually show that kind of initiative that means they have to do more work? That would be a first, to my recollection. Even if they did call back, could also easily chalk it up to being a wrong number, etc. and that's the end of that.

I would add that the first few years of Two and a Half Men before it became a kind of meme of itself. Jon Cryer is an excellent straight-man with the physical comedy. Another that I just thought of is Ed --- the bowling alley lawyer --- that starred Tom Cavanaugh and Julie Bowen. It wasn't everyone's cup of tea, but I have to admit I enjoyed its quirkiness.

The Olympics are ostensibly about each country collecting the best of its country and showcasing their own. I suppose you can chalk this up as akin to the IOC loosening standards of citizenship of the athletes, say, from the US being allowed to compete for another country because their grandparents were born there. There was a girl I went to high school with who played for Greece in the Athens games under these terms. I get that it happens. But that doesn't mean people have to like it. And again, a number of people who have a hand in supporting the US team don't like the symbolism of this. I wasn't under the impression of anyone/very many advocating burning them at this point. That's highly impractical, if not impossible to re-purpose with less than a week until the opening ceremonies. And as much as I'm upset about it (and at how much we import crappy wares and counterfeit materials from China in general), burning them might be quite offensive to the Chinese. The overriding opinions seem to be to wear them for this games b/c the news broke way too late to do anything feasible, but for there to be rules in place for these to be made in the USA for all future Olympics.

Surprised no one has mentioned it. Frasier. What, it didn't win enough Emmys? It was many times better than it's offshoot source. Ten years ago this would've been sacrilege, but Seinfeld has NOT aged well. Not at all. M*A*S*H is eminently watchable still. A few people thought they were bigger than the show, but Alan Alda's Hawkeye made it what it was. He was a perfect match for that kind of character. I loved the British series Yes, Minister / Yes, Prime Minister. Comedy gold. I was a little young to get everything, but I remember Night Court pretty fondly. The reverse of Seinfeld, I think The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air has aged well, for what it was.

The safety and legal implications inherent in that sentence are just... wow. I get that you and others think it's fairly innocuous, but Rx drugs like class-2 narcotics shouldn't be given out by non-professionals like candy, even to someone who rationally might have use for them. You don't give Rxs to anyone who isn't named on the bottle. Also, I believe there are old/expired/unused medication collection efforts every now and then to try to keep these substances out of the water system. You might look online or call your local health dept.

Well, it always was e.g. the dinner with Hank where Walt started drinking and flapping his gums. He thinks he's so much smarter than everyone. As Walt Jr. says that "Uncle Hank was just toying with [Gus Fring] the whole time" the coming build-up and face-off between them is going to get good. Advantage Hank, tho. Walt at this point is believing his own bullstevestojan. I just wonder when the intro scene will be picking up. I'm not sure it's going to be this mini-season, even. But it looks like Walt's cancer is back in it.

They think they can save their seats if they say this and don't go to the Democrat convention next month. They think they can change their constituents' impressions of them bu distancing themselves from Obama. What they can't change is their voting records and party affiliations that give the Democrats control of the Senate Rules, which means that whatever Harry and Obama don't like, they push to the side. Not to mention that it'll just remain for the Senate to ratify the UN Arms ban treaty that would underminethe Second Amendment, which is all being discussed very quietly --- or at least the MSM here isn't going to say Boo until it's right on top of us --- on the Old Continent.

Fixed.

Agree with a lot of the points made. Liked the realistic feel that departs from the campy-ness of the earlier series and from every pre-Batman Begins superhero movie. It's going to be very hard for anything of this genre to go back to the way things were before. Nolan's touch took it to a higher level, similar to how Burton's Batman at the time seemed like such a fresh departure from the Adam West teevee series. It was accomplished, by going back to the best of the source material comics, which was a lot darker than studios had dared to go. Similarly, TAS got much more serious. Sage, WRT the part about how to breathe new life into a series that's still fresh in the mind, I was thinking about the Tobey McGuire / Andrew Garfield comparison kind of like Noomi Rapace / Rooney Mara for the "The Girl..." series. Only there, the remake was.... how do you say.... not as good. Rapace really defined that role and provided the template that Ms. Mara took to an Oscar nod. Here we kind of have the opposite situation, as I saw it. My only quibble was the whole Dickens-like too-intricately-weaved sortline of Gwen being an advanced intern slash docent slash scientist at Oscorp. I can understand why they wrote it that way for the sake of condensing the plot. It stretched the imagination with how many things they had her involved in --- much like reading about super-accomplished kids in the paper it leaves you a little exhausted just listening to it all. Minor kvetch. Mark, I enjoyed the teenage attitude the writers and Garfield brought to it as well. I hope they portray JJJ the way he ought to be as well. The Raimi series had Peter Parker as if he came out of the womb at 40 years old and made JJJ into such a stupid caricature. Bring on Batman!

Sure, the pols can STFU about their personal feelings unless they donated. But when dealing with a widespread fraud, it often falls on elected representatives to speak for their constituents. It is what it is. The important thing is that a LOT of people who donated to the USOC --- who tend to be red-meat Americans --- have become very upset about this news. They trusted the organization they gave to, to represent their ideals. It's not that they blame the sport they support or the athletes, who had nothing to do with the decision. But it still makes them less likely to donate or to donate as much in the future. USOC is doing and has to do major damage control here to keep that private funding coming in. My family has donated for a long time to the target shooting sports through the NRA. It's not a huge amount, but it's not nothing and it's part of a collective effort. It's something we support because we want it to remain competitive and to promote the sport. My father read that in the news and the look on his face was a little deflated. It would be like Rockpile raising money for MS, and then discovering that the charity he walks for every year spent most of it properly, but then to discover that 10% of it went to hookers and blow.

Because encouraging filling out a census form doesn't involve saying, 'Hey, you. Yeah, you. Over there. All y'all can sidle right up here and get free money! Does it matter if you have a good diet already and this will practically force you into the over-adulterated food cycle so you can join the rest of America in being obese? Hell no. Sign up for continual benefits so you can spend your other money on DVDs, beer, and porn! Good thing you're listening to soap operas in the middle of the day rather than working, huh?!!?'

Was he in the military? No. Why are you bringing the military into this? Plenty of people off themselves who have nothing to do with the military. And plenty of people in the military who do off themselves for reasons not directly connected to the war. The suicide rate has increased in all sectors. The crappy economy has much more to do with this rise than the fact that there's an ongoing war. The rate has traditionally spiked in bad economies and declined in prosperity. Stress is up all over --- money/taxes, relationships and the breakdown of the family unit, religious institutions that has lost moral authority as more people see what's really going on, there's more anger brewing just beneath the surface of everybody today than I've ever seen. Combine that with the sad state of actual communication in a world where everyone is talking at each other and no one is listening. It's very easy to feel alienated and alone / not good enough / have no hope these days. Was this suicide, was it leaning toward accidental as we've seen so much of in the past several years with the abuse / oversuse / mixing of Rx medications? That'll be determined.