The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Nov 17, 2009 18:56:59 GMT -5
It's better to win an ugly game than to lose a pretty game. One of the hallmarks of JTIII teams that we missed last year was winning close games.
Even in the 'good days' of 2007 and 2008, we had a lot of games that were closer than they should have been. The difference between those years and last year was that we won pretty much all of them in the good days, and lost all of them last year.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Nov 17, 2009 18:54:36 GMT -5
As a Democrat, I love seeing Palin on the front pages. After all the help she gave us in 2008, I'm really looking forward to her running in 2012.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Nov 16, 2009 19:43:51 GMT -5
Getting a new coach didn't work last time for football. It only worked for basketball because we made a home run hire, and because the great coach we wanted had a very specific reason to come to Georgetown. Even if we found a great potential coach for Georgetown football, how on earth would we be able to lure them to Georgetown?
As far as the Richmond game, I'll tip my hat to the players for forcing Richmond to bring their starters back in. Making the best team in I-AA give you a bit of respect is an accomplishment.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Nov 16, 2009 7:14:10 GMT -5
The Taliban aren't from the same background as Al Qaeda. Maybe a few of their leaders are from wealthier backgrounds (we actually don't know much about them - there's no verified photo of Mullah Omar), but the rank and file are mostly poor peasants who took up arms. Remember, the Taliban and Al Qaeda are NOT the same groups.
As far as timelines for Obama's decision, most are expecting a decision after he gets back from Asia. But even back in August the military was saying that the soonest they can deploy any additional troops is January, so those who say that Obama's delayed decision is endangering the situation there are wide of the mark.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Nov 15, 2009 22:25:27 GMT -5
And, finally, don't discount the possibility that the chief architect of the September 11 attacks will be found not guilty, basing his defense on the prosecution's evidence being not admissible in court because he was subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques and was not read his Miranda rights before he talked. Holder knows his job is riding on this. I'd be absolutely stunned if he didn't do his homework and make sure that we have enough admissible evidence to prove these guys, especially KSM, guilty. Anyways, the entire justification for the 'enhanced interrogation' techniques was that they were used to prevent future attacks, not that they proved guilt in past attacks. If that was indeed the case, then our evidence linking KSM to 9/11 came from somewhere else. Will there be some evidence thrown out because of how it was obtained? Possibly, maybe even probably. But unless Holder's a total dunce, we've got other evidence that we know will stand up to prove KSM and the others guilty.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Nov 15, 2009 10:06:22 GMT -5
With Jennings absolutely lighting it up in Milwaukee (he's been awesome every game), will more one and dones start to think Europe?
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Post by The Stig on Nov 15, 2009 9:58:30 GMT -5
I should also mention that I have no major problem with using properly conducted and fair military tribunals as a way to try these people. What's important to me is that America gives everybody a fair trial, and that the accused are given a chance to defend themselves.
If these people are guilty, then I have no moral qualms whatsoever with locking them up for life or executing them. But the entire point of our justice system is that we don't just assume guilt. We prove to an impartial jury (or panel) that the people are guilty before we punish them.
My point all throughout this Guantanamo debacle is that we shouldn't be holding people if we don't have enough evidence to prove that they're guilty of at least planning to harm the United States, and have that proof stand up in a court of law. If we're imprisoning people without solid proof of their guilt, that brings up the possibility that we've been imprisoning some innocent people for the last 8 years without giving them the chance to defend themselves. That is 100% un-American, no matter what side of the spectrum you come from.
I'm not saying that everybody at Gitmo is innocent - I'm sure that most of the people there are guilty and will get the justice they deserve when they're put on trial, KSM being the most prominent in that category. But having even one innocent person imprisoned by the US government for 8 years without the chance to defend themselves in a court of law is an absolute outrage.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Nov 14, 2009 18:07:18 GMT -5
If we've been holding these people for almost a decade, we better d*mn well have enough evidence to convict them.
We already put an Al Qaeda terrorist on trial with Zacarias Moussaui. His rantings in the courtroom simply made him look like an idiot. The trial was long, but despite Moussaui trying to pull all sorts of stunts, we got a conviction. I'm not aware of any dangerous information becoming public as a result of that trial. So it IS possible to try these sorts of terrorists in a public court and give them the justice they deserve without compromising our national security.
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Post by The Stig on Nov 13, 2009 21:32:28 GMT -5
Didn't we have an agreement to not discuss serious issues on Friday?
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Post by The Stig on Nov 13, 2009 18:12:19 GMT -5
There are some things the VA does far better than the current system. The doctors I talk to say that Medicare should have adopted the VA's prescription drug program instead of building its own. If we'd adopted the VA's system for Medicare, we'd be providing seniors with a more reliable supply of higher quality drugs at a much, much lower cost to the taxpayer.
Unfortunately, the GOP was in the pharmaceutical companies' pockets when they wrote the Medicare prescription drug plan, so the plan was focused on giving the pharma companies money, not on saving the taxpayers money. As a liberal, I'd love to say that the Dems had a better plan, but their proposal was even worse.
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Post by The Stig on Nov 13, 2009 7:12:26 GMT -5
O'Reilly has mellowed out in recent years. I still don't like him, but he's not as bad as he used to be.
As a liberal, I can't stand Olbermann and Maddow and the rest of the MSNBC gang. I'm so happy NBC let Ben Affleck skewer Olbermann on their own network on SNL.
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Post by The Stig on Nov 11, 2009 22:40:13 GMT -5
The head of the CBO actually weighed in on this today (Link): I think that a decade's worth of deficit spending has partially severed the connection between "spending" and "cost" in a lot of people's minds. People like government spending, they don't like government cost. Wow, that CBO quote is 100% on the money. The WSJ is right, it is the deficit mess in a single sentence. I should add that this isn't a liberal or conservative thing. Everybody is caught up in this. The liberals are probably more guilty of the spending part, while the conservatives are more guilty of the not paying for it part. In the end, both are equally guilty for the out of control deficit.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Nov 11, 2009 15:14:22 GMT -5
"But I think the general trend against voting out entitlements shows that people like a lot more government than they let on. They whine about big government and excessive spending, but they love their government programs." Wrong. Voting out entitlements, or even cutting them back, has not been possible because there are groups of voters who oppose those changes and Congressmen and Senators don't want to lose any of their votes. Do you think the office holders want to cut back on Medicare and lose some of the seniors who will see their "entitlement" reduced? What happened when President Bush tried to introduced allowing (not forcing) people in the workforce to put a small percentage of their Social Security taxes into private accounts? It's certainly not that Americans like more government; rather it's don't monkey with what's mine. If you ask people whether they like big government, most will say no. If you ask them whether they like what government gives them, most will say yes. The problem is that you can't have it both ways. For the government to give the people what they want, it has to be pretty darn big. If people really had such a big problem with government, the popular support for eliminating these programs would outweigh the votes lost from the particular group that supports the program. That's what happened with welfare reform. But your argument is irrelevant to my original point about single-payer systems. Single-payer systems directly affect pretty much everybody in the country. There's no special group that gets targeted. If single payer were as bad as American conservatives make it out to be, Candians/Aussies/Brits/other Euros would have voted it out long ago. But if you started a political party in one of those countries and said you'd cut the single payer system, you'd hardly get any votes. Even if you promised to cut all the taxes associated with it, you still wouldn't get anywhere. None of the single-payer systems are perfect, but they're a heck of a lot better than the American-style alternative.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Nov 11, 2009 9:24:58 GMT -5
Fair enough. But would you vote to eliminate Medicare, even with its astronomically higher than anticipated costs? Yes, the costs of Medicare are high, but I think most Americans agree that the benefits are even higher. My issue with the current public option proposal is that the benefits are too limited. You're paying a lot of money to set up the entire program that not a lot of people are going to use. That's not terribly efficient. I'd rather spend a bit more money and get a lot more benefits. Of course, the most sensible solution would be to go the single-payer route and simply expand the infrastructure we've already built up with Medicare. The public option is an awkward compromise between free market ideologues and single payer dreamers. For those who say that single-payer is evil, name for me one country that has voted its single payer system out of existence. The UK, Canada, Australia, and other developed countries all have functioning democracies, and if their single-payer systems were as bad as US conservatives say they are, the people would have voted to get rid of them long ago. The fact that the systems haven't been voted out shows that the people clearly consider them to be better than the alternatives (like the American system). I agree. And as a single-payer supporter, may I point out that if we end up splitting the baby (which as an aside I believe will be the hallmark of this insecure, under-qualified administration), we'll end up with high taxes and no cost control. That will be on the heads of the soon-to-be-voted-out-of-power-before-they-even-knew-they-were-in-it Democrats. That's not necessarily a bad thing as I'm not what would be described as "liberal" on many issues. But on this one our "liberals" will fail miserably. I think more people are cynical in that regard than they are scared of becoming Europe. They're scared of becoming a more bankrupt US as a result of political cowardice. To be fair, I think everybody agrees that single-payer would never get past Congress these days. You can't blame the Administration for that. As far as voting entitlements out, welfare basically stopped being an entitlement program in the 90's. But I think the general trend against voting out entitlements shows that people like a lot more government than they let on. They whine about big government and excessive spending, but they love their government programs.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Nov 10, 2009 20:57:17 GMT -5
Various organizations, from Roll Call, to the AP to more conservative sources like Heritage and Senator Gregg have estimated the actual cost at 1.5-1.7 trillion. The "up to $3 trillion" figure comes from the fact that the bill is frontloaded with taxes and backloaded with additional spending. This is not a knock against the CBO. I respect their estimates, but the bill is "gamed" to provide a lower initial estimate. Plus, the CBO estimates exist sort of in a vacuum. When reality takes over and no legislator has the guts to say no to spending on entitlements, CBO estimates get blown out of the water. You can call me cynical if you want, but IIRC, when Medicare was introduced, there were similar estimates saying that it would not lead to huge spending and budget overruns. I think we all know how that turned out: the initial estimate in 1967 was that Medicare would cost $12 billion by 1990. By 1990, Medicare ACTUALLY cost $110 billion. So, forgive me if I have my suspicions that everything government does always costs much MUCH more than what the initial estimates are. I think there is ample additional evidence to back that position up, but I'll be happy to modify my position if you can tell me the last time a defense project, for example, came in on or under budget. Or the last time we actually succeeded in making real cuts to ANY entitlement program. If you want to know what I really think, my belief is that $3 trillion is low. It will be more than that. This bill is simply the foot in the door or the camel's nose under the tent. Once it is law, you can bet your ass that costs will skyrocket, and I believe they will skyrocket even higher than the current estimates. (Part of the reason for my thinking this this is that, while everyone is talking about Medicare cuts of up to $500-600 billion, I am fairly certain those cuts will never happen; I differ with some Republicans on this who are trying to scare seniors with those cuts, but it's a good tactic, because Democrats can't exactly come out and say, "No, those cuts aren't real. We've just put them in there to make the total cost of this bill seem not as mind-boggling as it really is." There's also the mythical "savings" from cutting waste, which I believe I covered in my earlier post.) Fair enough. But would you vote to eliminate Medicare, even with its astronomically higher than anticipated costs? Yes, the costs of Medicare are high, but I think most Americans agree that the benefits are even higher. My issue with the current public option proposal is that the benefits are too limited. You're paying a lot of money to set up the entire program that not a lot of people are going to use. That's not terribly efficient. I'd rather spend a bit more money and get a lot more benefits. Of course, the most sensible solution would be to go the single-payer route and simply expand the infrastructure we've already built up with Medicare. The public option is an awkward compromise between free market ideologues and single payer dreamers. For those who say that single-payer is evil, name for me one country that has voted its single payer system out of existence. The UK, Canada, Australia, and other developed countries all have functioning democracies, and if their single-payer systems were as bad as US conservatives say they are, the people would have voted to get rid of them long ago. The fact that the systems haven't been voted out shows that the people clearly consider them to be better than the alternatives (like the American system).
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Nov 9, 2009 21:52:32 GMT -5
Back on topic: Revised numbers from CBO indicate the absolute bare minimum cost of the House bill over 10 years is $1.7 trillion. It is more likely to run close to $3 trillion or more between 2010 and 2019. This begs the question: is there a point at which this becomes entirely not worth it? I think if we changed nothing and kept providing care to the uninsured the way we are now, it can't cost more than that, almost certainly a lot less. Look, I am opposed to a government-run insurance program on principle. I don't think the government can run it well, I think it will end up being worse than Medicare or Medicaid in terms of being anywhere approaching affordable. As opposed to these mythical cuts in "waste, fraud and abuse," I think we are adding just another entitlement that will create even MORE of that. I think it will end up costing a lot of people their current insurance and the quality of care that they get with that. Will it drive private insurance out of business? I don't know. The government certainly has the power to do so, but I can't speak that possible future outcome with a lot of authority. But for those who support this in principle, at what dollar amount do you say to yourself, "maybe this isn't such a good idea"? Is there such a threshold? Are you willing to spend whatever it takes, even if it gets up to or exceeds this astronomical $3 trillion figure? Do you have a risk/reward or cost/return evaluation for health care reform or is it something you feel we just need to do no matter what? I can't imagine this will get anywhere near 60 votes in the Senate with these current cost estimates. There is simply no way. Add to that the possibility of Stupak getting stripped, Lieberman and a few others' objection to any public option, and I don't see how this gets done, even in conference. On your first question, there's certainly a cost-benefit analysis to be done here. I don't know the numbers on how strong the House bill would be, but I know the benefits of the Senate bill, with its weak public option, wouldn't be worth that much. But the numbers with the House bill are all irrelevant because, as you said, there's absolutely no way it'll get anywhere near the Senate floor. The bill to watch is Reid's bill. It's really the only bill that has a chance of passing. If it passes (and that's a huge 'if' right now), the Conference report will have to basically be identical to it, otherwise it'll get fillibustered to death. It's really on a knife's edge in the Senate right now. Lieberman says he will support a GOP fillibuster on any bill that has a public option, so unless he jumps the Reid bill is dead. Burris says he'll fillibuster any bill that doesn't have a public option. The GOP would support his fillibuster just to slap Obama in the face, and a few liberal Dems would probably join them (talk about strange bedfellows), so the Baucus bill won't pass. There's a very good chance this ends up in a deadlock. So get ready for a few more decades of insurance companies denying coverage for preexisting conditions and cutting you off when you're sick!
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Nov 9, 2009 7:06:12 GMT -5
That's the point of the public option. Requiring everybody to hold insurance and banning some of the insurance industry's predatory practices without the public option is madness - prices will skyrocket even faster. If the public option works like it's supposed to, it'll help keep things in check, so us younguns will have some affordable options.
Whether it'll actually work is a completely separate argument.
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Post by The Stig on Nov 8, 2009 22:42:00 GMT -5
It IS your fair share. There's no reason young people, with virtually no assets to lose, should be able to be free riders on the system. There were hundreds of amendments submitted for the Baucus bill in committee. They verge from the overtly political (change every single instance of the word "fee" to "tax") to the ridiculous (Orrin Hatch's amendment that would give special benefits to every state that starts with "U"). I went probably ten years after college without ever seeing a doctor or ever going to the hospital or any clinic. Why shouldn't I have been able to do without health insurance if I wanted to do so? What about everyone on Medicaid? Why do they get to be free riders on the system? You were lucky. Some young people aren't. There was a girl in our office talking about this with us the other day. She was in her mid 20s, healthy and fit, and out of the blue she got gallstones. She had insurance so she was okay, but if she had been uninsured she would have had to declare bankruptcy, since she she didn't have enough money or assets to pay what the operation would have cost. Again, she was young, fit (not obese, like most gallstone patients), and lived a very healthy lifestyle, but if she had chosen to not have health insurance she would have been bankrupt and a burden on the system. Another guy in our office right about my age got badly sick too and started getting vertigo. He would have been in the same boat without insurance. As far as Medicaid, that's only for people who are unable to pay for normal health insurance. There's a huge difference between being unable to pay and unwilling to pay. Most young people without health insurance have the money to pay, but they just choose not to because, like all of us young folk, they think they're invincible.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Nov 8, 2009 21:03:16 GMT -5
It IS your fair share. There's no reason young people, with virtually no assets to lose, should be able to be free riders on the system.
There were hundreds of amendments submitted for the Baucus bill in committee. They verge from the overtly political (change every single instance of the word "fee" to "tax") to the ridiculous (Orrin Hatch's amendment that would give special benefits to every state that starts with "U").
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Nov 6, 2009 7:15:41 GMT -5
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8345944.stmA BBC article on the killer. It sounds like there were some major institutional problems here (harassment for being Middle Eastern, being trapped in the military, no support for those who have to deal with horrific injuries). It was a perfect storm in a lot of ways, but that doesn't excuse what the guy did. I'm sure there are thousands of people in the military, including lots of Muslims, who put up with the same problems without shooting their fellow soldiers.
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