Taro T

It will likely be cheaper (in direct costs) to the insured person on the government plan. It is not at all a given that the government plan will in fact be cheaper. It especially isn't a given that it will be cheaper when no one knows what exactly the government plan is going to be.

Well, you and the Dems pretty much are betting that the public will like it better by the time it gets passed. Because if they don't, '10 definitely becomes a single issue race, and '12 could very well be dominated by it as well. Aren't a lot of the provisions of "the plan" (no, what plan's on second, who's plan's on 1st, I don't know, 3rd base) supposed to kick in in '13. If they are, that could backfire on Obama if he's spending '11 & '12 trying to keep the Repubs from overturning his healthcare triumph of '09. The interesting question to me in the scenario where the public believes the healthcare reform got railroaded through becomes is the public frustrated enough w/ both parties that a 3rd (or even a 4th) party actually becomes viable. My gut feel is no, but I hope I'm wrong there.

Reason #2 being, Krugman is using them also. All I was suggesting was that the $300/$900 numbers would seem to be per year, not per month. At $300/month, that puts admin at $3,600 and (if Kelly's 20% figure is correct) full year cost for a single person at $18,000. Going w/ what would seem to be more realistic estimates for admin cost %ages would put that full year cost even higher. For my family last year, our insurance premiums were ~$2k. I'd be surprised if the company were eating upwards of $16k (probably closer to $60k in that case as it is a family plan). The plan's full cost is probably more like $4k, which w/ put administrative costs most likely into the $400-$800/year range. EDIT: And for the record, I agree that the comparison is an apples-to-kumquats comparison.

Don't know where those #'s come from, but for a Heritage Foundation / Paul Krugman biatchslap contest, the administrative #'s being bandied about for 2005 were $509/yr for Medicare and $453/yr for private health insurance. Those sound a bit closer to realistic as they put the costs of coverage for each more into the ~$10k/yr for Medicare and ~3k/yr for private insurance range. I doubt either is correct, but as mentioned they do seem more realistic.

Memory is a funny thing. After you posted, I started thinking that it was later that the Bills had the royalty issues. But according to Bills Daily, it was the off season prior to '94 that the song nearly changed.

According to the playlist for "Buffalo Bills - Ultimate Tailgate CD for Buffalo Fans" the "Buffalo Bills Shout (Part 1 & 2)" is performed by Buffalo Bills All Stars. Not sure when it was adopted, probably late '80's. It was definitely used by '91. ~'94 they considered going to a different version of "Shout" apparently to reduce royalty payments, but outcry from the fans got that plan nixed. Not sure if it was "official", but the team played "Talkin' Proud" in the early '80's.

Lori, It sounds like a really good idea to make this a series. It's interesting that you chose this book as your 1st one to review because my wife got me this one and Paul Wieland's "Then Perreault Said to Rico ..." for Christmas. (Apparently Triumph has a whole series of these books.) I liked the book, but was slightly disappointed in it because I read Wieland's book 1st. Gehman's book was good, but after having read the book by the guy who had been with his book's subject since day one, it was slightly disappointing. It just didn't seem to have as good of a flow. I'd definitely suggest reading them Gehman's book 1st and then Wieland's if anybody is thinking about checking them both out.

Back in the glory years, Sansone's on Westheimer was the place to watch the Bills. They had 2 huge TV's and a bunch of small ones. One of the big ones showed the Bills every game and the other showed the Eulers. They're still open, but I don't know if they still have the huge Bills contingent.

But if Tom wanted to vote in one of the polls, he could do it at least 3 different times w/ his 3 different logins. Yes we do. And they are so effective as a tool in keeping illegal aliens out of the country that my senior Senator has proposed switching to biometric data. Which no doubt, somebody would find a workaround for that as well. Are 72 hours enough time to fully understand the ramifications of how a bill maintaining sugar tariffs will impact another bill regarding celluosic ethanol production and existing petroleum production. Especially if the person reading the bill has no rudimentary knowledge of any of that? No, the poor have access to the internet as well. But how informed on an issue is an individual w/ a 10th grade education working 3 jobs and trying to raise a family going to be? They'd pretty much only know what they heard on the radio about a particular bill. How much of the nuts and bolts of a bill would they get from this format? I doubt they'd get much. Considering the fiascos that we've seen in Florida and Minnesota, I'd agree w/ you there. Who would set the limit and who would enforce it? The executive couldn't enforce it - separation of powers issues. It also would pretty much do away with all trade agreements, as I doubt they could be reduced to 2-3 page documents. While it is an interesting concept, and would like to read your additional thoughts on the matter; I see many difficult issues in attempting to implement such a system. And that's without even getting into how legislation is written, introduced, and debated to be put before a vote.

What mechanics are you proposing to ensure no one votes more often than once on a particular issue? What are your systems to make certain only legitimate citizens with full citizenship rights (ie felons and minors are out) vote? What system would you use to ensure that people that work odd hours or are out of the country get the same opportunity to vote as those with normal jobs have? What system would you use to ensure that the poor have the same access to the tools of voting as the rich? How do you propose the vote tallies be counted and how would they be disseminated? And far more importantly, what system do you propose to get 200MM or so people informed as to what is included in a 1,200 page spending bill? Not busting your chops. Just curious how you would propose to implement this idea.

I'd agree that, at least by the midpoint of the season, barring injuries, the middle of the line should be significantly improved. I expect that Walker/Butler will be better than what the Bills would have had with a disgruntled Peters and Walker, and that it'll be worse than what Peters/Walker could have been. As such, I expect this year's line as a whole to be better than last year's line. I'm looking forward to seeing what the RB's can do when they can actually make it to the line of scrimmage before the 1st contact on traps and draws.

The original MJ had to have had the best job going. Travel the world, drink beer, write about drinking beer, and talk about drinking beer. Sweet gig if you can get it.

I didn't even know he was sick. Saw him give a lecture / beer tasting at the Crown and Serpent in Houston. The guy knew his stuff.

It'll take a lot of 'em off the street, but you'll still have a few stragglers. Heck, car washes are everywhere - high end hand wash, cheapy gas station ones, and do it yourselfers; basically one for every budget. But the squeegy guys still come to the curb each day to wash the windows.

Which is probably where he wants it to look like he's going with it. Not only that, he's being proactive and doing SOMETHING. Unfortunately, all I see this proposal does is allow the government to have a national biometric database of the citizens and again ignore illegal imigration.

Makes perfect sense. We don't enforce the existing laws. Let's create new laws that are burdonsome to the law abiding populace, will be ignored by the unscrupulous, and also will most likely be not enforced.

The ignorance in DC isn't what's astounding. It's the ignorance of the general population to not see what's going on. Most of the politicians are willfully ignorant (there's only a handful of Pelosi's that are truly mind-numbingly dumb); in order to look like they're doing something, they have to come up w/ new laws/regulations. If they do what you suggest - make the regulatory agencies actually do their job and enforce the existing regs - then not only don't they get to stand before the cameras and say "I've created and passed this law that will solve all the problems" but someone might ask them why the existing laws / regs weren't enforced up front. Not my fault - it's the executive's fault. True, the executive enforces the laws and makes the regs, but the Congresscritters still write the checks. I still am more amazed by the "yeah, you're right, the existing regs aren't enforced, but we still need new ones because the old ones aren't enforced" than I am by politicians playing the system.

Defending Champs 3 years running.

Sorry to read about your brother. I agree w/ you on the bolded portion. Thus why I'd go with legalizing most drugs (definitely the "soft" ones) and make the penalties for committing crimes while high much more severe. I'd also have a "zero tolerance" (man, do I hate that phrase) for minors with severe penalties for those distributing to minors and penalties (loss of license perhaps) for minors committing crimes / violations with (what would be) formerly illegal substances in their system. I'd have some sort of an exception that would allow parents to supervise "experimentation" w/ alcohol or pot. I'm sure that there's no way it will ever happen, so I haven't been real worried about the details of it.

Absolutely. Gold Jerry. This is gold.

Bristol's looking for media attention seems to me to be more of a "the horse is out of the barn, no sense in locking the door now" thing. She had been slammed from every direction as soon as the pregnancy became public knowledge. So, if she's going to get/ is getting slammed, I can see where she'd try to jujitsu it into something positive. I would agree that she is squarely in the public and has taken steps to keep herself there. I was merely pointing out that simply having been on stage with her mother is not what, nor should have been what, opened her up to the late night jokes. If being on stage is all it takes to make the kids fair game, then every politician's kids are fair game as every one of them brings them out at the big events.

The media dragged the Obama kids onto the stage at the DNC? I guess those 2 girls are fair game now as well?

If term limits are enacted, what sort of restrictions would you put (if any) on staffers? If the 2nd year Senator is relying on a 30 year insider running his office, I'm not too certain that the staffer is working for the Senator and not the other way round.

Not necessarily, 2 wrongs making a right and all.