UConn James

Missouri application to join SEC imminent It's been rumored that they've been sleeping together for a few months now, but now it's getting closer to becoming official with Missou ready to file for a marriage license.... Also in here, the Big 12 is reportedly courting Louisville and WV.

And pretty much all of Western Europe, and South Korea. You know... so we can stop paying for their security.

Berkshire-Hathaway's tax returns under scrutiny When Warren said he wasn't paying enough taxes, evidently he was correct.

I don't know where the tipping point was WRT the obesity epidemic, but the fact that first "Survivor" winner Richard Hatch was prosecuted for child abuse for making his overweight adopted son begin a walking regime was a low spot in the degeneration of our society. I mean, Richard Hatch is what he is --- you can hate him for not paying his taxes, say he's a manipulator, call him a big gay bear --- but trying to put him in jail because he wants to get his son some exercise to get healthier? Seriously, WTF? I wouldn't have as big a problem with obesity if I weren't forced to subsidize it with higher health insurance premiums, because companies now legally cannot charge overweight people more. The land of plenty became the land of too much and it's populated by people who must have and have and have.

I got that impression as well from the several shots they had of Fitz sitting on the bench --- all quiet, just sitting there with a thousand-yard stare. The body language was telegraphing that his mind was elsewhere or that he was hung up on the INTs. Need to snap out of that, put it behind you, talk with your teammates, look at the formation photos and DO SOMETHING besides sitting there and brooding.

I'm not going to say that racing is evil, but there comes a point at which it's too fast.

Before LA gets two teams, perhaps it would be prudent for them to show they can/will support one.

Oh I remember that now. Jack's scenario makes some sense in a scorched-earth policy, as Team Red is already down a player. Going down by 2 (especially losing Ozzy for challenges... but then again, if he's going throw them because he's kitty-sore then he pushes the issue) would really hurt going toward the merge. As a strategy, if Ozzy thinks he can get into the Blues' graces by destroying Red like this and then feels he can win individual immunities then he'll go for it. Smart money says this is a mistake tho.... That Blue core is going to be tough to crack. And NO DOUBT that Coach has no intention of letting Ozzy stick around.

Active duty gays say coming out has been A nonevent

My in-week reading and pre-game viewing has all but ended. Never thought I'd've said that 10 years ago but there it is. (Not having to listen to marblemouth Shannon Sharpe instantly makes Sundays 164% better.) As The King sang, "A little less conversation, a little more action!"

Yeah. Just because you're hurt doesn't mean you're no longer an employee of an NFL team....

First Viagra Niagra! I've had no complaints since the switch and I like seeing it when watching Sabres games. Feels good to support a Buffalo company. No ATM fees, anywhere (their commercials say they'll compensate if there are). Lots of branches in the area and through the Northeast and they're growing.

Mountain West, Conference-USA plan football merger But in a related note... AP source: Big East to invite Boise St., Army, Navy in football; Central Florida in all sports

Actually, I do believe that Ozzy hasn't told anyone. And I think that's the wrong tack given this group. He needs/needed to form a solid core of 3-4 and all he had was a bond with Elyse and an understanding with Keith and Jim that has not been addressed/reinforced in the past couple of weeks. Ozzy's game is nothing like Robfather's... and he doesn't have the luxury of having as stupid/crazy a group to lead around by the nose.

I don't know the answer, but I do know that Wannstache has done an excellent job bringing Sheppard along (he is the ILB coach first and foremost) in a really short time.

In the preview, Ozzy says he is now a "free agent" and from the looks of it, he was throwing the immunity challenge. Way to be kitty-footed because his lady-interest got it... even if she is damn hot. Ozzy, you don't play Survivor to form long-term romantic attachments. By the by, Elyse was just wrapping him around her little finger anyway. Don't know what Ozzy's tack is here --- maybe he wants to go to Redemption because he thinks he can physically beat anyone (a la Matt) until the merge and then join ranks with the Blue team. Whatever his plan, Ozzy seriously misplayed his idol find, as well as his "If I were Coach, I'd get rid of Albert now" comment. Gotta say that I'm rooting for Mikayla. Not because she's "hot" (the buff she wears turban-style does nothing for her WRT making her face seen 3 sizes too small for her body or the jutting ears), but because how she's handled Brandon's dumb ass. For as much as he says he's a Christian and wants to do the right thing, he 1) targeted her for being sexually attractive / wanted to get rid of her because he had impure thoughts and then 2) when he called everyone together and tried to apologize after the council where he was outed for his lies... it ended up not being an apology at all, but a further back-handed attempt to put a scarlet letter on the girl, all while saying he wants to be a good person. Dude needs to talk less about being a good person and redeeming the Hantz name and just... be a good person. Interesting to note the alliance-within-the-alliance in Blue of Albert, Sophie and Coach, made all the stronger with the idol. Discord on Team Red, consolidation on Team Blue.

Independents are probably wondering, "If this is what Obama does when he has to face a re-election test, what the hell's he going to pull when he's got nothing to lose?" Actually, in the polls I've seen, Herman Cain is in the lead by a few percentage points nationally. We'll see how long it lasts when he has to live up to it, as there've been several upstarts already in the campaign that have turned out to merely be Whack-a-Moles for Romney. Once the pressure's been on in debates, with the press vetting their records, the rigors of the road, actually forming a campaign infrastructure, and (perhaps most importantly) raising a war chest, their sprints during the marathon petered out. Romney is getting battle-tested and he's playing it absolutely right. If Juror#8 is correct and the Obama camp isn't afraid of Romney, it's not the first time they've been wrong and it won't be the last. As for the original thread content... shades of 1980, anyone???? This is somewhat on par with Carter's "crisis of confidence" speech.

And a flannel shirt. Doesn't look like she has the Maine Butt Disease, as my uncle who lives there terms it.

The colors there don't quite jibe, but that swath in CA is getting the Cleveland-Oakland game. Look at the Ohio/Indiana/Kentucky/Ill. area --- that's the color for the Colts-Bengals.

Again, you make the jump in logic that folding in 4% uninsured in one of the wealthiest states that has a large, sophisticated & geographically spread health care network "[bears] a striking resemblance" to a national situation where the uninsured range from 10% to upwards of 30% in a good many Southern and Western states where per capita incomes are low and they have geographically clustered health care infrastructure. (One of my cousins married a guy in Colorado where if you had a burst appendix, stroke or anything more than a slight heart attack, basically you're dead because you can't physically get treatment in time. Her father-in-law died a couple of years ago in just one of those situations.) Massachusetts' health plan cannot work effectively nationally --- at least, not without costing a truly massive amount of money we don't have, and in less effective methods than each state being able to craft their own plan based on their specific needs after some broad federal reforms that reduce medical costs. Because, insured or uninsured, it's the outrageous medical costs in this country that drive the problems of health care. That needs to be addressed first.

By the by, Romney is being endorsed today by mainstream Republican/quasi-Tea Party darling Chris Christie. Actually, their records aren't that dissimilar. Romney brought Mass. out of ~$3B (yes, that's billion) debt and created a surplus while he was governor... without raising taxes. I just get this sense that with each Whack-a-Mole flavor of the month in the Republican field, there's a certain segment that are just trying to cling to any candidate who's not Mormon/LDS. And when each Trump, Bachmann, Perry, and soon-to-be Cain's words and past statements start to meet headlines, there's Romney, still standing tall.

The headlines there make it seem like those are Romney campaign aides, which they're not. They are Massachusetts policy wonks who advised the then-governor. I doubt they have any connection to his presidential campaigns or I'm sure the article would have mentioned that. This White House is scared stevestojanless of Romney. They know he's one of the few Republicans who has very little chance of making a complete ass of himself and stick his feet in his mouth during a general election. All of the others have had moments, likely will have more, are not as thoroughly vetted, and are polling double-digits behind Obama in head-to-head electability, whereas Romney is 3 points back. His appeal to Independents --- which any presidential candidate has to win now --- particularly frightens the Obama camp which now has to run on a record rather than slogans. Independents are how they won Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania.... They know that in order to win, they have to be playing against the craziest, most divisive Republican in the race. I've said this before and I guess I have to write it again.... Romney was the Republican governor of a state that has literally a 80-90% Democrat legislature. Whatever they want to pass, they can pass. They were going to have a universal health care bill with or without him. Romney offered to pass it bipartisanly if the Democrats would agree to some terms that would make the plan less expensive for the Mass. taxpayers. And all of this was based on conditions on the ground in Massachusetts --- 4% uninsured (vs. upward of 25% in some other states and ~16% nationwide), a vast health care network that features several state of the art hospitals located throughout the state, and a population that has one of the highest per capita incomes in the country. It could be reasonably absorbed in Mass. Romney said that this model would not work in other states that have different conditions. He's also promised that if elected, he will make his first policy move to repeal Obamacare and replace it with the more limited common-sense approach the Republicans proposed (and were ignored) --- allow health insurance companies to compete across state lines, work to lower medical costs, and enact tort reform that will reduce the absolutely crippling malpractice insurance that doctors have to purchase and pass the cost along to their patients. As such, Romney was working within classic Republican states'-rights rules (for as much influence as he could, given the Democrat legislature). This state does what works for it, that state does what works for them. These people were not Romney's inner circle, then or now. Nor is it even known what kind of advice they gave. The Dems are going after Romney now and hoping that a specious smear campaign can eliminate their strongest competition before they have to face him --- kind of like how North Carolina might hope that South Dakota State beats Duke in the regional semifinals of the NCAA tournament.

Gilligan touched on this toward the conclusion of that NPR "Fresh Air with Teri Gross" interview from a while back that I mentioned before. How he grapples with morality while writing characters. He said he's basically an agnostic/leaning atheist and that there's something quite void about it, that since he believes we'll never know if there is a God/that there's probably not a God, the basis for morality is gone. People can just do what they want and there's no cosmic/forever consequence. There's no spoilers there. He does believe in a generalized morality --- that there should be consequences from bad guys, but that this isn't always the case in reality. Mum was the word on what awaits Walt from the writers' desired direction. There is still a very heavy onus on screenwriters in Hollywood that the bad guys ultimately have to pay for their crimes. Otherwise, a lot of the time, the audience walks away unsatisfied or uneasy about a film. That unwritten code among the studios has obviously laxed from where it stood in the '50s and such, but not as much as one might think. BB is one of a relative few that could get away with the bad guy not facing much or any ultimate consequences. "No Country For Old Men" and the Anton Chigur(?) character is another --- and that was just an absolutely brilliant film. Chillingly dark, but brilliant.

Maybe as a response to the fact that they commit crimes? Blacks are over-represented as a percentage of the state legislature too. What should we do about that? How about the state spending roughly twice as much per pupil in inner-city schools compared to rural areas? Why is no one complaining about disproportion there? Anybody who argues that statistics ought to reflect demographics can go shampoo a skunk's ass. BTW --- those statistics are bound to be inaccurate now, as Gov. Dannel Malloy decided to release several thousand prisoners to reduce DOC costs (And yet, his budget managed to increase state general fund spending by $3B over two years. (This despite already being $3.5 in the red)).

I haven't followed other teams.... I thought they lost their top 2 CBs to knee injuries.