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Besides:
Economic growth & development
Soccer
Games on Nintendo consoles
I don't know which is worse: that there's a chance I can add porn to the list, or that there's a chance that I can't.
Basketball in Minnesota before WWII
In other words, the conservative critique is essentially correct as far as it goes.
But the first problem is that it doesn't go far enough. They've convinced a lot of people that the government is the problem. You don't have control over your own life because the government has too much. So let's drown the government in a bath tub and all of your problems are solved.
But there's another entity that has the resources, the scope, the scale, the power to usurp your control over your own life and it's big business. If you emasculate government without reining in big business, they will have a field day with you and you will be worse off than you are now.
You've got to fix both. (This is the populist position--not the phony one the conservatives pretend to espouse--the real one. It's a one-two punch, a double whammy. You've got to fix both.)
The second problem with conservatism is they're so totally insincere in their critique. They'd rather the problems continue, they'd rather run against them, use them to gain power, than fix them. The fact is they have no more idea how to fix them than the liberals do, which is why they don't propose any solutions. That and the fact that they don't want to solve them anyway.
I said the conservative critique is essentially correct. As to Glenn Beck, he is not essentially correct because everything is at the level of reductio ad absurdum. Him and Ann Coulter. Not that there isn't a lot of that with Limbaugh. Some think they make liberalism appear absurd, some thinks they make themselves appear absurd, some think both. Nobody could think neither.
Fire away.
2. Ultimate Fighting
3. Rocking out
4. Space
5. Race cars
6. Sports
7. Spycraft
8. Weapons
I considered this myself, but I've only been doing it for about a year and a half. I'm confident that I'm pretty good at it, but I expected that someone else probably has done it for longer.
It is possible to gain a monopoly without government intervention, for example, there is no credible alternative to Facebook. You can reject it outright, but you can't go anywhere else as an individual to get the same service.
Also, baseball cards from 1973-1987. Top 3, but probably not the top.
At this site, I probably know the most country music. There don't seem to be too many of us. Oh, and Jimmy BUffett songs.
Maybe I know more about some stuff than I thought.
Sure you can. Facebook is far from the only social networking site out there. What you can't get an alternative for is Facebook's enormous user base, but that's like saying something becomes a monopoly because so many other people like it. If Facebook started charging users, someone else would create a free, ad-based browser application that does pretty much everything that Facebook does, and people would migrate. It would start out as a fringe application, but if was a quality product, people would show up.
Anything that couldn't be perfectly copied is a result of either trade secret or intellectual property law; the latter is definitely government intervention.
If you're looking for a Facebook alternative, you might have to use multiple different applications, but every single thing Facebook does can be done by some other program. The only hard part is making sure the people you're looking for are using that other program.
Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly. You can run a successful business without touching a Microsoft product, by using one of several choices of Unix as your operating system. There's a home market for computers that function without Microsoft products, if you're willing to buy an Apple.
Microsoft is the "default" home computer product, but that's very different from being the only viable option.
'Fraid not. Perhaps it would've been clearer had I referenced Fisk's homer against the BRM. (That event happened a couple months before I got my forestry degree from U.Maine.) My experience in Ohio was limited to the Cleveland airport before my daughter and family moved to Illinois in 2008. Two trips back and forth across Ohio have impressed me with the state, in particular the overpass architechure (especially the "Ode to Flight" in Dayton) and the western gateway arch.
Saw a great alto aria last night by his great-uncle J.C. (1642-1703), Ach, dass is Wassers gnug hätte, awesomely lovely and weird. Ended on the leading tone.
Sounds very cool; also helps to see where great-nephew Sebastian learned some of his complex harmonies. (And I wish we'd get some rain, so my garden would have "genug Wasser."
No, wait - I have had brain surgery. I knew it was something like that.
I shove a camera on a stick up the leg,
rip out the vein and sew it on the heart,
but I'm really a soldier
I would say I may be the expert on two movies: Animal House and About Last Night. SOmeone else may claim and challenge for AH, but NO ONE is coming forward on ALN.
GGC may be the best codebreaker.
Good thing military can't sue for malpractice.
I used to think that I knew a lot about history and baseball, before I started coming to this site. Now I really need to narrow cast.
1) 82nd airborne operational history, specifically 505th (they make you memorize a lot in basic, unless someone has been in more recently)
2) Central and Eastern Europe television
3) Parachuting (see 1)
Hmmm... Demi Moore, Elizabeth Perkins, Rob Lowe, Jim Belushi, mid-80's. From Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago but sadly without as much sex. What else is there to know?
Tell that to the Pinkerton Agency, toolboy.
Not my favorite, either. Hard to take a game seriously when the big twist is essentially lifted from Super Mario Brothers - Congratulations on beating the sorceress...but the real sorceress is in a different castle!
This is because you are the third Belushi brother given up for adoption at birth. It's why all your bros call you 'Dial' - they wanted to make sure you never guessed your secret Belushi identity.
On the civil war front, I'll go ahead and claim the aventures of the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteers.
And I think it's fine to say "we" as long as you limit yourself to one team per sport (ever). I'm rooting for Tampa and Cincinnati this year, but the A's (and only the A's) are "we".
There was dialogue in ALN? All I remember is Demi Moore's body.
Sounds like most of Europe over the last decade or so. Are they manifestly unhappy?
Do you mean the Europeans living in countries with imploding economies or the Europeans who will have to foot the bill to rescue the first category?
Anyway, I think the answer is yes.
I'm glad I only use "America's Team" instead of "we" when I talk about the Yanks, because I'd feel silly wearing a Yankee cap and having some smartass punk look at me sideways and say "I thought Casey Stengel was dead."
In other words, the conservative critique is essentially correct as far as it goes.
But the first problem is that it doesn't go far enough. They've convinced a lot of people that the government is the problem. You don't have control over your own life because the government has too much. So let's drown the government in a bath tub and all of your problems are solved.
But there's another entity that has the resources, the scope, the scale, the power to usurp your control over your own life and it's big business. If you emasculate government without reining in big business, they will have a field day with you and you will be worse off than you are now.
You've got to fix both. (This is the populist position--not the phony one the conservatives pretend to espouse--the real one. It's a one-two punch, a double whammy. You've got to fix both.)
As a conservative, I think you are essentially right here, as far as you go, however you need to extend your critique.
Big business, especially multinational business, is dangerous, not as dangerous as the government (since they can't use force against you) but dangerous. It doesn't give one good damn about American workers, or consumers, except to the extent they can make a buck. If they can move all there production to China, pauperize 25,000 Americans, exploit Chinese workers, and rape the environment in China at will, to increase profits 0.5% they will.
Small and mid-size business are very different. They are rooted in their communities, and generally actually have attachments to their workers, suppliers, customers and consumers.
Likewise big labor, especially public sector unions, are very dangerous. They are single minded, and face no competition to keep them in check. They will bankrupt taxpayers to feather their nests, and have no moral compunction about doing so. They also have no moral compunction about defending their most reprehensible members: thieves, child abusers, con-men, etc. And I do include police and fire unions in this.
What you're looking for is essentially the distributist view of economics a la Chesterton, Belloc, and Rerum Novarum. All authority needs to be pushed down to the smallest unit capable of exericising it.
One additional factor; there is a strong need for government protection against global factors, both personal and impersonal. National security is the obvious one, but if economically driven phenomena threaten the well-being of Americans (e.g. cartels (OPEC), unfair trade, illegal immigration) it is the job of the government to look after the interests of Americans, not pander to high falootin ideologies like "free trade".
Yes and no; I know too many instances of small and mid-size businesses that have sold out to big business and have left their workers and communities to just twist in the wind. The common practice seems to be for the small business to sell out to one of the larger competitors in their field (this is not necessarily a bad thing for the business owners), and, sooner or later, the big business will either bring in their own people to run the (now) branch office or just decide that the operation is superfluous to their needs and shut it down entirely.
That's true.
But, as long as they stall small, they tend to behave better.
The answer is probably strict enforcement of anti-trust law, and a corporate tax code that taxes larger businesses at a much higher rate, either through higher rates, or fewer deductions.
That way, industries would only consolidate if their were compelling economies of scale, and not simply b/c CEOs of larger companies are paid more.
Oh, let me add corporate governance to my list of corrupt institutions. Most boards are jokes, and most corporations are run largely for the benefit of senior mgmt.
Secondly at the end of the day those supposedly big bad businesses are still being run by individuals and it is those individuals that make the reprehensible decisions.
That would indeed be an interesting standard for anyone to think about, regardless of one's ideology. It obviously wouldn't always work out to the best in practice, but as a default position it has its points.
One additional factor; there is a strong need for government protection against global factors, both personal and impersonal. National security is the obvious one, but if economically driven phenomena threaten the well-being of Americans (e.g. cartels (OPEC), unfair trade, illegal immigration) it is the job of the government to look after the interests of Americans, not pander to high falootin ideologies like "free trade".
How can OPEC be resisted in the long run, as long as we (meaning the entire developed and developing world) are addicted to the automobile and the air conditioner?
Free trade when combined with enforcement of labor standards can benefit everyone; free trade without that enforcement is another matter altogether.
And WRT to illegal immigration, if you take the "illegal" part out of it and just think about what levels of legal immigration we should be thinking about, you might want to note a little item that came over the wire in today's Associated Press.
To make a long story short, the U.S. birth rate is down to 13.5 births for every 1,000 people, its lowest level in over 100 years. By contrast, the rate in 1909 was 30, and even at the bottom of the Depression, in 1932, the rate was just below 20 percent.
Trying to eliminate illegal immigration is fine and dandy, but unless you also provide for expedited legal paths to citizenship, who's going to be fueling the economy down the road? Not even the Mormons and the fundamentalists are going to be able to do the job all by themselves, and even the old line Catholics are falling down on the job.
That would be me. I'm outta here until you kids can play nice with each other.
So wait, you are telling us that you came to a Glenn Beck Rally thread to talk baseball? Why?
Those are way too many rules. How about just one that says unless you're actually part of a team, you don't get to say "we."
take a cab.
They'll have extra Metro cars for the demonstrations, and since there'll probably be at least one speaker at the Beck rally warning the crowd about muggings on the government-run subway, you might even have a bit of breathing room before game time.
And BTW if you don't care for politics, there's a Strasburg thread that's alive and kicking as I write.
I hate hate hate hate HATE adding to the on-topic/off-topic ratio here (which is as bad as it's ever been), but this statement is so willfully (pseudo) naive, I don't know where to begin:
Control can be had via
Propaganda/advertising (I don't think anything more needs to be said here)
Price collusion (pay our price or its the highway for you man-need insurance for your big operation? Tough.)
Limiting the amount/quality/types of services (sorry we don't have what you want, but our Big Macs are on sale for $1.50 this week!)
And that's just for starters; big business has so artfully manipulated our minds, altering our society in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that most people probably aren't even aware of it consciously. You don't necessarily need "laws" to control people and populations, ya know... In other words, it's pure grade A simplistic horseshit (hey! I beat the nanny!) that they need a monopoly or the like to control us.
Very true, but even still, the very nature of consolidation and the power that is accumulated by one or a few large business controlling a particular industry give those reprehensible decisions much larger consequences. If we agree that the type of people who run "big business" are not appreciably different than the people who run small or medium-sized businesses then that reason by itself would be compelling for greater anti-trust enforcement, not to mention the effect that greater ownership would have on us citizens.
Bourbon
Delta blues (history/origins of, artists famous for, and playing)
Scrabble
Bob Dylan
various Federal civil rights statutes
Chicago history
David Lynch films
In all fairness...
I, for one, would have been more than satisfied if Blue Cross / Blue Sieve would have dealt with me and my wife on the "micro relationship" level in the same manner I dealt with my own customers, or even if they'd done so as straightforwardly as the average carryout cashier.** If conservatives are seriously wondering why "Obamacare" got passed, you might say it was the byproduct of millions of encounters that Americans have had with the Blue Crosses of the world.
**meaning that they don't change or re-interpret the rules of the game in mid-stream, and force you to wait months on end for a hamburger that you've already paid for. The difference between dealing with Medicare + the Medicare supplement, and dealing with Blue Cross, is like the difference between Heaven and Hell. And I'm not talking about the far smaller expense, I'm talking about the complete lack of resistant bureaucracy on the micro-level. In the 13 months since I've turned 65, I've had one general physical, four glaucoma checkups, one colonoscopy and one endoscopy, and all it involved was showing my two cards at the reception desk---no extraneous paperwork at all. It almost seems like the French and their carte vitale, but of course that's "socialism" and we all have to jump up in horror at the thought.
Every Washingtonian knows about that horrible incident. Does that mean that we should tell people to avoid the Metro in reaction?
Of course if they want to do that, all that means is that glenntwo will be sure of getting a seat when he rides to the ball game. So maybe Nats fans should encourage the fearmongers to do their thing.
I could see that incident being a logical deterrent for some people.
just walking up from gallery place, and the traffic looks worse than the metro. We're gonna hop on the green yellow, beckists and crazy brawls and train collisions be damned.
1 - how it feels to be pregnant
2 - how it feels to give birth
3 - how it feels to nurse a baby
and
most important
how to get a male human being over 18 to go to the doctor BEFORE he is dead/in a coma so that he doesn't GET dead/in a coma before you can do anything about it because then it is too late to kill him for refusing to go to the doctor
2 - how it feels to give birth
3 - how it feels to nurse a baby
Um, I think BBC wins.
I don't know
I once had a hang-nail.
That's kind of like giving birth isn't it?
2 - how it feels to give birth
3 - how it feels to nurse a baby
4- The genius of Ed Wade.
Clearly you don't have the skill of hijacking political threads that I do.
4- The genius of Ed Wade.
And the LUUUUVVVVVVVV of two certain Barry Lamars
Nobody does, Ray. You're the Barry Bonds of thread hijacks. :)
I am an expert in:
Mass transit and its effects upon urban/suburban planning.
History of the Los Angeles Dodgers, 1985-present.
History of Arizona State athletics, 1990-present.
Arizona.
* baseball
* Properly hijacking political threads so that they don't turn into flamewars
* patent law
* Columbo
* Hawaii Five-0
For example; did you know that a pretty large majority of armed robbers have never actually shot anyone and, upon the victim resisting, simply give up and look for another target rather than shoot them?
(Don't use this advice next time you get held up; I don't need it on my conscience that someone took my advice and got killed over it.)
In the interests of some Americans.
In principal, free trade with countries of similar wage levels and similar labor/environmental/fraud laws (e.g. UK, Germany, Japan) should benefit Americans in general as long as the trade is actually free, i.e. they actually give access to our goods and respect our intellectual property rights. You get greater competition and greater specialization.
"Free trade" with nations like China does not do this. China has virtually zero labor/environmental/fraud protections, they deny us access to their markets, the rip off our intellectual property left and right (movies, software, drugs - India is a huge at pirating our patented prescription drugs).
All benefit with countries like that does is benefit capital at the expense of labor (by depressing wages, and allowing multinationals to move production there) and benefit the tiny minority of Americans who own a lot of capital and have "knowledge" jobs that are, so far, safe from competition.
So, 3% of Americans benefit from trade with China, and the rest suck it up.
Yes, along with environmental and fraud protections, as well as protection for intellectual property.
And WRT to illegal immigration, if you take the "illegal" part out of it and just think about what levels of legal immigration we should be thinking about, you might want to note a little item that came over the wire in today's Associated Press.
To make a long story short, the U.S. birth rate is down to 13.5 births for every 1,000 people, its lowest level in over 100 years. By contrast, the rate in 1909 was 30, and even at the bottom of the Depression, in 1932, the rate was just below 20 percent.
Trying to eliminate illegal immigration is fine and dandy, but unless you also provide for expedited legal paths to citizenship, who's going to be fueling the economy down the road? Not even the Mormons and the fundamentalists are going to be able to do the job all by themselves, and even the old line Catholics are falling down on the job.
The answer is not to import high volumes of low skilled immigrants.
The answer is to get the birth rate back up in this country. Our system is incredibly punitive to young working families, in terms of the tax burden, and heavily subsidizes the elderly.
Add to that the flat to declining wages for the lower 50% of the workforce, the spiraling costs of college, and the decline of marriage, it's no wonder the birth rates are down.
I think it is more amazing/disturbing that anyone at all would risk 25 to life for $60 and a lousy cellphone with a cracked screen.
Geee, where do you think all the cheap stuff you all buy at Walmart is coming from, Santa Claus?
I once successfully hijacked some nascent Limbaugh thread with a discussion of baseball uniforms, but this time ... this time my efforts were paltry and will shame generations of Perrys to come.
I think her claim to fame is having two abortions (despite being a pro-life activist) and being estranged from the King family, for condemning her aunt for coming out in support of abortion and gay rights.
Did Jesus make an Ultimate Warrior-style return at this rally yet or what? Beck promised something "miraculous" would happen, but it seems like it was just a bunch of loonies talking about God and delivering platitudes about "restoring honor", loving the military and loving America.
Beer.
For a 23-year-old to potentially school a group of old dudes on alcoholic beverages of any kind requires some serious passion, so I suppose I'm calling out other beer-crazy Primates.
I also might know more about Jacques Tati and possibly Seijun Suzuki than anyone here, but I really doubt that.
As for them giving access to our goods, they should, but it's irrelevant to the benefits of free trade to us. As Joan Robinson famously noted, if your trading partner throws rocks into his harbor, that's no reason to throw rocks into your own.
To make a long story short, the U.S. birth rate is down to 13.5 births for every 1,000 people, its lowest level in over 100 years. By contrast, the rate in 1909 was 30, and even at the bottom of the Depression, in 1932, the rate was just below 20 percent.
Trying to eliminate illegal immigration is fine and dandy, but unless you also provide for expedited legal paths to citizenship, who's going to be fueling the economy down the road? Not even the Mormons and the fundamentalists are going to be able to do the job all by themselves, and even the old line Catholics are falling down on the job.
The answer is not to import high volumes of low skilled immigrants.
You may have noticed that in the absence of job opportunities, low skilled immigrants tend not to stick around for too long. And of course you adjust the quotas to reflect the real job demands for particular occupations.
The answer is to get the birth rate back up in this country. Our system is incredibly punitive to young working families, in terms of the tax burden, and heavily subsidizes the elderly.
Of course it's the elderly that put those young working families through college and is letting many of them live with them at home, so I wouldn't frame this as a generational war. And if you're thinking about tax credits for children a la Europe, that's fine by me, but that's a point more appropriately directed at your libertarian and conservative friends who complain about "welfare" and the "nanny state."
Add to that the flat to declining wages for the lower 50% of the workforce,
I don't quite know how to say this, but your argument here is not with people like me.
the spiraling costs of college,
To which you can add the cost of housing (in spite of the recent slump) and the cost of health care. But those are subjects where "the market" was supposed to take care of everything....
and the decline of marriage, it's no wonder the birth rates are down.
I'm 100% with you in lamenting the decline of marriage and the easy acceptance of pre-planned single parenthood, but you know and I know that short of a cultural earthquake that requires putting a million genies back into a million bottles, that's just one of those unfortunate parts of modern life that come along with the things we seem to treasure, like extreme individuality and "personal freedom." And short of attempting the impossible task of returning to the cultural attitudes of the 1950's (which had many good points, to be sure, though the underside was more visible at the time than it may be in nostalgic hindsight), how exactly would you reverse this? What you're really asking for here is for the world to forget the last 50 years, and it ain't gonna happen.
Gotta love the morons at ESPN:
Dude, those are ti leaves. Different animal altogether.
Check.
You must have contributed to the material uplift of your team through the purchase of at least three pieces of official merchandise. Additionally, at least one of these items must be emblematic of your team’s sport. For example, if it’s a baseball team, then you must own a cap.
Multiple caps through the years and a jersey, check.
You must, on command, be able to name two members of your team’s front office besides the GM and principal owner/managing general partner.
Oneri Fleita (VP of Player Personnel, scouted Zambrano, Cruz) and Mark McGuire (VP of Business Operations, used to be VP of Marketing, IIRC, thought by many to have taken steroids and hit 70 home runs in 1998), check.
You must, on command, be able to name one beat writer or columnist at every major daily/official site covering your team.
MLB.com - Carrie Muskat, Tribune - Paul Sullivan, Sun-Times - Gordon Wittenmyer (more official blogger than beat writer), Daily Herald - Bruce Miles, check. I'll cop to having to double check Wittenmyer's name, though.
If you live outside of your team’s media market, then you must have seen multiple home games in person in your lifetime.
Check.
You must have attended one of your team’s road games.
I get extra-credit for this one: it was in Tokyo!
If you live outside your team’s media market, then you must purchase out-of-market telecast/Webcast package of some kind each season.
I plead physical impossibility. I have had MLB.tv when I was back in Minnesota, but it's unavailable here in Japan. Or rather, I could buy it, but all games would be blacked out.
You must have begun your fandom of said team during a period of prolonged mediocrity or incompetence (mediocrity or incompetence on the part of the team, not you personally) or before you turned 15 years of age.
Jeez, God, yes, check on the former, and on the latter.
You must have, at some point in your life, cried or pondered physical violence because of some misfortune that befell your team.
I broke my brother's computer desk back in 2003, check.
The sport your team plays must be your favorite sport of all. This would be the case even if your team did not exist.
Check.
Still in all, I use the fan "we" generally only when talking with my brother, or on Game Chatters. Really, it's less identifying with the team than it is acknowledging the shared psychological well-being of my fellow fans. When I say, "We need a hit, here," or "We could really use some live-arms in the 'pen," I'm not really saying "We (the Cubs) need X", I'm really saying, "We (Cubs fans) need X." I do not, at any time, no matter how joyous, say, "We won."
And you know that conservatives are totally insincere how? Because you disagree with them? Oh, ok.
The part about not proposing any solutions is more of the same silly BS. Conservatives have propsed solutions, you just don't like them and the mainstream media won't report them.
Have at it.
I plead physical impossibility. I have had MLB.tv when I was back in Minnesota, but it's unavailable here in Japan. Or rather, I could buy it, but all games would be blacked out.
I happily grant you a dispensation for this one.
I've done my part as a real American. It's time for someone else to carry the ball.
Talk about an offensive quote! "Could care less" ARRRRGHHH!
Maybe he should work a little harder at his day job, given how St. Louis proceeded to have its lunch handed to it by the Nationals.
I guess:
Japanese Tech House and Psych Trance
Student Activism
Angry Asian American politics
Japanese street fashion
Chicago Education
Probably top five:
Champaign-Urbana
Doctor Who
Asimov
Race/ethnicity and other identity studies
Adolescents
Definitely not #1, but probably top five:
Japanese Language and culture
The U.S. Department of Education
East Asian Cinema
Feminism
Speech writing
Mah-jong
Baking desserts
Stuff I wish I knew more about:
Punk
DJing
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