The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Nov 5, 2009 22:34:23 GMT -5
Absolutely awful, in so many ways. Simply beyond words.
My condolences to the family and friends of those murdered.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Nov 2, 2009 20:58:25 GMT -5
Be quiet, Boz, the President is studying it. He promises a new direction in Afghanistan by Thanksgiving or Christmas or Valentines Day. Not sure what year. After 8 years of having a President who consistently made the wrong decision quickly when it came to sending American men and women into harm's way, I'm glad to have a President who takes the time to make the right decision. Sending young American men and women into harm's way is the most difficult decision a President can make. It's not something that should be done rashly. I also find it interesting that the conservatives who are now accusing President Obama of endangering our troops in Afghanistan by not sending more troops never mentioned this problem while Bush was President.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Nov 1, 2009 22:01:50 GMT -5
The Pacers apparently picked up Roy's option for the 2010-2011 season.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Oct 27, 2009 20:52:15 GMT -5
In other news, Scott Hartnell is officially the reincarnation of Ogie Ogilthorpe, right down to the orange jersey.
(PLEASE tell me that somebody gets that reference!)
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Oct 27, 2009 20:49:28 GMT -5
Another doozy between Philly and the Caps. Nice rivalry building up there, led by Ovechkin and Richards. In this one Philly was up 2-0, then Ovechkin decked Richards and gave the Caps the momentum, which made it 2-2 by the end of the 2nd.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Oct 27, 2009 18:08:45 GMT -5
Well, I never said marketing was the Republicans' strong suit. Paul Ryan is out championing this plan every day, in town halls, on the Web, in any media outlet that will give him an opportunity. To a lesser extent, the plan's other three sponsors are as well. Why the Republican leadership is not on board and trying to sell the plan every day is beyond me. It's not because they don't believe in it. The plan has everything they want in health care reform. I am not exactly enamored of the current Republican leadership though, so I might not be the best person to ask. I don't think that the GOP leadership wants anything that can be labeled 'health care reform' to pass before the 2010 midterms. In order for Ryan's bill to pass, most if not all the Dems will have to support it. Even though it will be a GOP initiative, the Dems will claim credit for it, and a big chunk of the general public will believe the Dems because 'health care reform' has become a term that everybody associates with the Dems. The GOP leadership wants to be able to go into the 2010 midterms saying that the Dems have failed to get ANY health care reform passed. So they have to make sure that no health care reform gets passed, regardless of who wrote it. Ryan, to his credit, is holding up the grand Wisconsin tradition of ignoring the Party's orders.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Oct 27, 2009 6:42:37 GMT -5
Unlike Rush Limbaugh and whether or not we can impeach Obama for accepting the Nobel prize (that was a good one), this is something I DO consider to be a serious development. Apparently Charlie "Hustle" Rangel's Ways & Means Committee today approved HR3200 as qualified to pass the Senate via reconciliation. I'm not exactly sure how they decided this, but they voted without any debate on it. It will be interesting to see if Harry Reid is willing to fall on his sword and go this route. There is not much stopping him from doing it, but he is extremely vulnerable and I can virtually guarantee that if he tries to pass HR3200 (not the Baucus bill) via reconciliation, he will not be coming back to Washington next year. I don't like either bill, but Baucus at least has some compromises negotiated by Snowe that the toxic House bill does not. (Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not entirely sure Reid could GET to 51 votes on HR3200.) I'm not sure Reid could get those votes, since reconciliation itself is a controversial process. That could put some previously secure votes in danger. I'm thinking mostly about one of my own Senators here (Feingold). He's got the balls to do that kind of thing.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Oct 27, 2009 6:22:18 GMT -5
If Barry O wants to earn that Nobel Prize, let's see him square the Lunatic Left with no public option. The public option itself is a compromise. The left wants single-payer. The public option isn't really anybody's first choice, but it's acceptable to most people. In other words, a classic compromise. I've held back a for a while on this, but I can't hold my tongue anymore. I'm really sick of the way the GOP is behaving over this. Somebody inside the Party clearly gave an order to oppose ANY health care bill, public option or no. They don't see this in terms of what the country needs, they see it in terms of humiliating Obama like they got Clinton back in 1993. That's all this is about for them. The fact is the GOP has an enormous amount of power here. Look at what Snowe did. By engaging in good faith negotiations with the Dems, she got the entire bill changed to fit her views. They didn't just make a few tweaks, they took out the entire freaking public option! And that's all for ONE VOTE! As a supporter of a public option, I don't like what Snowe did, but politically it was absolutely brilliant. But how did the GOP react to Snowe's move? Did they praise her for almost singlehandedly removing their biggest problem with the bill? NO! They threatened to revoke her committee assignments! They wanted to punish her for the single greatest piece of political maneuvering we've seen in Congress in years. Snowe's move shows just how powerful a few GOP senators could be over this. If 5 or so GOP senators went up to Reid and said asked him to put language in the bill explicitly excluding abortion and explicitly saying illegals can't be covered, and said that if those changes are made they WILL vote for the bill (the second part is the important part, which the GOP isn't doing), Reid would make those changes in a millisecond. Heck, he'd dance the hula on the Senate floor if they asked him to. But the GOP isn't doing that sort of stuff. They've just put up a wall. To steal a line from Barney Frank, negotiating with the GOP on this issue is like negotiating with a dining room table.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Oct 25, 2009 20:53:31 GMT -5
To me it looks like the major problem was management's complete and total fixation on stock price and their competitors. That means a major focus on short-term gain at the expense of long-term viability.
With this sort of thinking, facts are molded to fit the business model, not the other way around. Anybody with a modicum of knowledge of housing markets knows that house prices will fall quickly at some point, but due to management's focus on improving stock price and taking business from their competitors, people who should have known better based their business model on the assumption that housing prices would always go up.
This sort of problem goes way beyond WaMu, and way beyond the banking industry. Executives want to please stockholders, and stockholders are only interested in share price. Then sometimes you get executives who have an obsession with market share, often at the expense of profitability. They're out to gain market share even if it means taking a big loss to do so. The airline industry is one of the worst offenders here (I'm looking at you, American Airlines). It's not a coincidence that two of the most profitable airlines in the US (Southwest and Allegiant) are two of the very few that don't give a sh** about market share.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Oct 23, 2009 21:32:20 GMT -5
Box score line that nobody expected to see: 10:20 ›WSH Jeff Schultz (1) - Assists: S. Varlamov (1)
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Oct 19, 2009 6:02:45 GMT -5
Jenson Button is the 2009 F1 World Champion!
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Oct 17, 2009 10:27:47 GMT -5
And after reading the Voice story, major non-kudos to the "female officer with a federal agency, possibly the Park Police" who let their gun get stolen.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Oct 17, 2009 10:25:56 GMT -5
Glad nobody was injured, and kudos to the administration, JTIII, DPS, and MPD. It sounds like they handled this situation very well.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Oct 16, 2009 20:35:21 GMT -5
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Oct 16, 2009 6:10:47 GMT -5
Yeah, every team there is a derivative of All Blacks. The best is the basketball team, which is the "Tall Blacks."
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Oct 15, 2009 22:02:15 GMT -5
As I said last night, the worst sob story of the 2010 qualifying cycle is Saudi Arabia. They were in the two-leg Asia playoff vs. Bahrain for the right to play New Zealand for a WC spot. In other words, the winner advances to the World Cup. The NZ team is officially called the "All Whites." That's not a joke.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Oct 15, 2009 21:58:45 GMT -5
I hope the Colorado police and all the other agencies involved in the chase send the bill to the family.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Oct 14, 2009 21:07:58 GMT -5
YYYEEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
Never been that pumped up for a draw!
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Oct 12, 2009 16:42:18 GMT -5
Nice one
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Oct 9, 2009 16:39:31 GMT -5
Rugby Sevens should be fun to watch. As Jack said, the Rugby World Cup will always be the top event for traditional 15 man rugby, but the Olympics could become the top Sevens sport in the world.
Sevens is also a much more global form of rugby. The full version of the sport is pretty much dominated by a handful of traditional rugby nations, and no outsider has ever really broken into the top ranks of the sport (although Argentina may do so at some point). It's also an opportunity for smaller Pacific nations like Fiji to get their moment in the Olympic spotlight.
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