muff528

I've always kept a spare car key and a dime in my wallet. I've long forgotten what the dime was for.

Oh ...I thought this was gonna be a thread about Disney World.

Who else thinks it's funny how the "real" refs (those highly-skilled, irreplaceable, union-protected, grotesquely-paid one-percenters) almost screwed the Packers out of another game with a bunch of scab-like calls. http://www.mensfitness.com/leisure/sports/whats-up-with-the-nfls-referees

Funny thing about this whole argument is that Obama has yet to commit a detailed plan of any kind to writing ...not even a good cookie recipe. Probably learned that from his terrorist buddies. (just speculating)

Well shit, if Linda S. says so that changes everything. I liked the bomb illustration. I thought it brought the message down to the level of those medieval minded people who need to know what is getting ready to happen if they continue on. This paragraph is .....uh .....I have no words for it: "Moreover, the main thrust of his patronising argument was deeply flawed. On the one hand, he painted the Iranian leadership as out-of-control radicals who would stop at nothing to incinerate Israel and turn the world into an Islamic Caliphate. On the other, he expressed the belief that a red line could deter them from their evil intent, which, if were true, would mean the Iranian leadership was rational. “If the western powers had drawn clear red lines during the 1930s, I believe they would have stopped Nazi aggression and Second World War might have been avoided,” he said. Oh well, what a pity marker pens weren’t invented until the 1940s. Just think how many lives could have been saved if Churchill could have swapped his nibs for felt-tips!" The bomb "cartoon" was simple, clear, to the point, and in the only language understood by his intended target audience. It was not directed at all the other pinheads in the room. Also, this one: "Netanyahu’s bomb sketch was funny but, to my mind, this extract from his speech shows how deluded this man really is. “Today, a great battle is being waged between the modern and medieval. Israel stands proudly with the forces of modernity. We protect the right of all our citizens, men and women, Jews and Arabs, Muslims and Christians, all are equal before the law”. Coming from the leader of a nuclear-armed nation that refuses to return stolen land and keeps 1.5 million people locked up in the biggest open-air prison on earth, a person salivating for war, that’s the biggest laugh of all." She neglects to point out that the wardens in these concentration camps are Arabs. There's a "big laugh" for you.

source? with demographic data and maybe a map showing locations of gov't ID providers?

I'm pretty sure that other guy is Bibi N. That looks like an Uzi he's holding. Better shot of him here.

17 miles distance to the DMV? From where? If we are talking "hundreds" of folks I seriously doubt that the DMV is 17 miles from them. Maybe a few folks living way the hell out in the boonies, but those are more likely to be racist, bible-thumping Republican voters. If the closest DMV, in say Chicago or Nashville, is 17 miles away from a citizen of that city there are more problems there than voting rights. Is the 17 miles the average distance to the DMV for all American citizens? ...or just the ones that vote for Dems? Just asking.

Of course they are not. What "impartial" sources are the source of your wisdom? The default rate for CRA loans is totally impartial. UNLIKE the Heritage Foundation. But the default rate of the CRA loans (and other subprime loans) is not the only, or even the important factor in their contribution to the collapse. These loans created a market-disturbing, massive influx of money for mortgages causing property values and housing prices to artificially and dramatically spike. Here in Central Florida it was not uncommon to see homes which were in the $40K class spike to $200,000. Loans were made with $zero down payments with the belief that the properties would increase in value, thereby creating equity for the new owners. Homes often sold for more than the asking prices with bidding wars among potential buyers. These same houses are now devalued to the original values ...or even less. A lot of homeowner's who have not defaulted (regardless of whether or not they benefited from the CRA or subprime loans) are now tens of thousands of dollars upside-down in their homes. Other homes sit abandoned causing further devaluation of neighborhoods and surrounding property values. Banks are stuck with these properties. Homeowners who took advantage of the high prices sold their homes for these inflated prices. Of course they had to live somewhere and they used the windfall and a new mortgage to upgrade ...but now, with a mortgage they didn't have before, they found their property taxes and insurance become unmanageable. (for example: on a $40000 house with a $25000 homestead exemption they paid taxes on $15000 of value. Now they were paying taxes on $150,000 of their property's value ...even with the homestead exemption raised to 50K). A lot of folks lost their homes just over that. Along with the spike in property values were the re-evaluations by local governments who received windfalls in taxes on the artificial values and began spending like drunken sailors. The City of Lakeland even used the loss of these windfall taxes after 2008 as an excuse to close parks during holidays, reduce services, etc. Another factor was greed of the speculators who began flipping houses for heavy profits. They also made a lot of money until the crash, with the last one holding the house being the loser. Also, builders and developers started a lot of new communities to meet the demands generated by the free flow of money made available through the subprime and CRA market. Not just homes, but shopping centers, malls, etc. were built. Many of these are now vacant or unfinished. The banks and lending institutions (although not totally blameless) recognized the precarious nature of many of these loans and that's where the derivative market comes in. They packaged these loans in an attempt to hedge against the collapse which they knew was coming. Fannie and Freddie were more than happy to take these toxic loans off their hands. After all, they weren't using their own money. The problems facing Fannie and Freddie were known years before the housing collapse. No-one did anything then and in fact their only actions were to deny there was a problem. By the time QE came around it was too late. And it ain't over yet. There are still thousands, if not millions, of overvalued mortgages out there that will never see parity with the property values. These "homeowners" are essentially just paying rent and may yet just leave the keys on the counter and walk off.

Out of curiousity, how do underage youth manage to obtain alcohol at bars and liquor stores? Illegally. It's also mostly illegal to kill people or jump off of antennas but folks still do it.

Because it's easier to whip up the hype about "voter fraud" as opposed to "errors". And it's pretty well documented that the ID requirement will affect more voters in the demographics that tend to vote Democrat. Which is why you see more Republicans getting all worked up over this. We all know this. I just wonder if they'll ever own up to it. As soon as you provide numbers and reasons why an ID is so impossibly hard to get. You leave me to assume that great numbers of these folks are simply not able to get an ID but still are able to register to vote. What might be a valid reason for that? I know that some may just simply be unable to get an ID and that's the way it is, but it would seem to me that it might be a statistically insignificant number. And are you sure that all of these "no-ID-getting" folks will vote Democrat?

2008 debt ~$9T or ~65% GDP - 2012 debt ~$16T or ~102% GDP. Almost double in 4 years and completely devours GDP now. Dow don't mean shit and hasn't since the 1950s when the DJIA actually reflected business performance rather than artificial speculation and betting. Don't put too much stock in the Dow. Personally I learn by history and hindsight. I think we should re-install some secular ruthless dictators in these countries to keep a lid on some of these 7th century barbarians. They actually did a very good job keeping them contained. The dictators occasionally asserted themselves with a lot of spouting rhetoric (like Chavez or Hussein) but they were, for the most part, harmless outside their own borders. Of course there was the occasional exception but we could compartmentalize the responses. Not good for those folks who wanted real freedom and self-determination and would welcome a deliverer, but what the hey. Also, some jihadists would occasionally get loose and do some damage, but we could learn to get used to these "man-caused disasters". So are you "for" or "against" the program? I couldn't tell by your response.

I'm a registered Repub and I am "against" ALL voter fraud. Some folks seem to be "for" some voter fraud and "against" other voter fraud. Voter fraud, at any level, is a problem that attacks the core of our republic and should not be tolerated. Indifference or tolerance for ANY voter fraud is even worse than the fraud itself. IMO, of course. Yes, given 8.1% unemployment, $trillions added to the debt in 3 years, incomprehensible foreign policy, Bengazi-gate, a dead ambassador and the lying coverup, $upport for our avowed enemies and abandonment of our allies, growing dependency on government for basic necessities, cell phones and flat-screen TVs, systematic demonization of our wealth producers, etc. etc .....and the polls are still running neck-and-neck?!? Yep, we're pretty much focked and a has-been nation. I'll take this opportunity to apologize to the rest of the free world ....we dropped the ball so you guys are fucked, too.

You do understand the difference between searching through millions and million of already registered voters for false ones, and then finding less than 200, as opposed to verifying new ones? How is new voter fraud any more illegal or damaging to the electorate than existing voter fraud? So, to you, the important point is not that voter fraud exists, The important point is how that fraud is discovered ....or more likely who is committing fraud. Hey, I have an idea. Let's verify each registration at the point where that registration, fraudulent or not, has the most impact ...at the polls, by requiring a photo ID. Eliminate early voting. Implement an accurate and efficient system to verify absentee ballots. Let's increase penalties for lying on applications and for fabricating voters, and for fraudulent voting and for voter intimidation, etc.

106?! Wait just a minute! 106!?! Wasn't this thread started by the same OP who lamented the wasteful cost of ferreting out a measly 198 illegal voters in that other thread?

Makes the GOP's attempts to disenfranchise the poor and elderly in the name of preventing "fraud" (and their support in doing it on this forum) look like a bad case of "he doth protest too much methinks" Why isn't FOX covering it? Have you guys even read about what happened from anywhere else other than the most left wing major news outlet? The GOP caught this themselves and took action. WRONG. The alarm over the latest potential fraud was first raised by Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher, who flagged 106 "questionable" registration applications turned in by SAC this month. Bucher said her staff had raised questions about suspiciously similar signatures and incorrect addresses and dates of birth on the forms. After Bucher sounded the alarm, election officials in at least 11 Florida counties said they had uncovered potentially fraudulent voter registration forms submitted on behalf of the state Republican Party. By Friday, county election officials had found dozens of forms turned in by the party that had wrong birthdays or spellings of names that didn't match signatures. In other cases, multiple forms were filled out in the same handwriting. One voter in Palm Beach County was registered to an address that is a Land Rover dealership. "It was that flagrant," said Ann W. Bodenstein, the elections supervisor in Santa Rosa County, where officials found 100 problematic applications — including one for a dead voter. "In no way did they look genuine." (1) Substantially increase penalties for voter fraud. (2) Arrest all vote fraudsters as they are discovered (Repubs, Dems, old Jewish ladies from NY who vote twice, latinos, whites, blacks, illegal aliens, olive-skinned, Pennsylvanians, Idahoes, etc, etc.....) and prosecute to the fullest extent. (2) Require a valid photo ID at the polls for each voter. Problem (mostly) solved.

At what level does voter fraud become unacceptable to you. ...or is it simply that you believe the numbers don't matter as long as the "correct" folks are the ones being disenfranchised? I've always heard the libs chant "every vote should count". How about the votes which might be negated by these 198 ...and if they did, in fact, translate to fraudulent votes you can bet that one legitimate voter was disenfranchised for each fraudulent vote.

... every boy at school was wishing he was me that night ... Well, you got to do what you can and let Mother Nature do the rest.

... every boy at school was wishing he was me that night ... Well, you got to do what you can and let Mother Nature do the rest.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/sep/26/hubble-astronomers-deepest-view-night-sky I wonder if Hubble will ever get a deep view of the daytime sky?

I doubt the union would have gone for that. Also, one of the union demands is that the NFL keep the guaranteed 15-game minimum/official. The NFL wants to do away with that. This, in itself, severely limits the number of referees in the available "pool" of referees. There are seven officials in each game and only 32 teams. So there are only 15-16 regular-season games played per week for 16 weeks. (They are paid extra, a lot!, if they officiate a playoff or SB game.) That leaves very few "extra" bodies if they must be guaranteed 15 games (I assume each official can work only 1 game a week). There can only be a total of 120 officials, and no more, if each is to get his allotted 15 games.

It's my understanding that a lot of the replacements were available because they weren't working because of alleged incompetence. I think there are good refs who could come up from NCAA, etc. and be NFL-ready with minimal training. (rules differences, etc.)

Wow. Where is a tree when you need one? I like the titles of some of the other videos. "Very Unfortunate Parachute Accident" ....There are "fortunate" ones? "Hand Grenade Training Goes Wrong" ...Do you really need to see the video to find out what happens?

Well, obviously some of the replacements are simply not qualified to be there. Some likely are competent and there are likely many more very qualified non-NFL refs who could make the transition with few problems. Then there are the existing refs who could wake up and realize that they are letting what is already a very well-paid and enviable "job" slip from them.