StreetScooby

I gave my son (a freshman in college now) an old Mirror Image T-Shirt when they were "All Out" back in the day. He has no idea what he's wearing, and I doubt he'll ever meet anyone who does... We are all engines of karma

Nice! We are all engines of karma

ROFLMAO.... ID10T.. Ah, that's a seat error.... (i.e., the person sitting in it) We are all engines of karma

Great question... We are all engines of karma

Congrats! We are all engines of karma

Bwahahaha... Did you see that guy's teeth? They are stained from all the kool-aid he's been drinking... We are all engines of karma

I still have my Sabre I. I lose all of 250' in a spiral. We are all engines of karma

Maybe the guy should have used more ether on the snake? We are all engines of karma

I've started asking people who are passionate about this subject the following question - How much global warming is due strictly to the water vapor green house effect? None of them know the answer. IIRC, it's about 60 degF. We wouldn't be here without that warming. How they think an additional 1.5 degF over the next century is going to kill us is something I haven't been able to follow, yet. Having said that, I do NOT think it's a good idea to keep pumping as much CO2 into the atmosphere as our species is. We need to find another way to get our energy. Letting the President/VP take more money and control over our lives is NOT going to change this problem one bit. We are all engines of karma

Agreed, quade. I should have made that clear in my original statement. We are all engines of karma

I watched that, also. Was appalled by what I saw (e.g., removing the calf from the mother, mixing different pods and not being able to handle subsequent aggression, seeing the drooping fins on the males, the danger the trainers were in, etc.). IMO, these are clearly sentient, intelligent, and dangerous creatures. They shouldn't have to endure this in their life, especially as a tourist attraction. RonD - I saw your comment, and even if it's not an accurate account of the Tillikum/trainer event, it doesn't change my opinion expressed above. We are all engines of karma

I watched the opening statements. Ken Ham did a very good job framing the debate by presenting non-standard definitions of science. You were not going to win any argument with him, using his definitions. These debates are simply pointless, IMO. We are all engines of karma

Good points, GeorgiaDon, and well put. We are all engines of karma

IIRC, he only ended it in the south, not the north. We are all engines of karma

I think these are all valid points, Wendy. Defining the "best person" for a job is rarely, if ever, based strictly on technical merits. Building a cohesive team for a given business is very difficult, and there are always other factors than being "technically best". Those other factors can be quite diverse. +1 We are all engines of karma

+1 We are all engines of karma

Please read the article. It's worthwhile. We are all engines of karma

The NRA's push for reciprocal carry is going to get very interesting. Even though I have no desire to carry, I hope it passes. We are all engines of karma

This is beyond ridiculous. And yet, LGA TSA continue to let women dressed in burkas walk through with no checks. We are all engines of karma

GeorgiaDon, I'm not sure this is a fair statement on your part. Look as what DeBlassio is doing in NYC. He's trying to shut down charter schools, most of which have been started by conservatives that deeply care about education. They are affordable, and NYC inner city parents are clamoring to get into these. The more I think about this, the more I agree with you. I'll never forget being on Westchester Grand Jury duty. There were several young black men charged with possession/intent-to-distribute crack cocaine. It only takes 0.5 grams of crack cocaine in New York State,...and your are a felon. Some of these young black men came forward and made their case to us. These were guys who made a mistake. They could absolutely make something of their lives, but were now going to be denied that opportunity. I was, and still am, appalled. On that note, here's a very interesting article from today's WSJ by a Federal Judge regarding sentencing guidelines. Let's hope they remedy this situation. ============================================ The Prisoners I Lose Sleep Over Sentencing guidelines forced me to send them away for a long time. Now there's a chance to make things right. By Michael A. Ponsor Feb. 12, 2014 6:47 p.m. ET The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the "Smarter Sentencing Act" by a bipartisan vote of 13-5 on Jan. 30, sending it to the Senate floor. The legislation is excellent and its passage would mean a long overdue correction of a misguided sentencing regime that Americans—including federal judges like me—have struggled with for more than two decades. I've been on the federal bench for 30 years, having served 10 years as a magistrate judge and 20 as a U.S. district judge. My pride in our constitutional system runs bone deep: No system of law has ever existed that tries so hard to be truly fair. I can take scant pride, however, in the dark epoch our criminal sentencing laws have passed through during my decades handling felony cases. In 1984, at the start of my career, 188 people were imprisoned for every 100,000 inhabitants of the United States. Other Western industrialized countries had roughly equal numbers. By 2010 that figure had skyrocketed to 497 people imprisoned in the U.S. for every 100,000 inhabitants. Today, we imprison more of our people than any other country in the world. How did "the land of the free and the home of the brave" become the world's biggest prison ward? The U.S. now houses 5% of the world's population and 25% of its prisoners. Either our fellow Americans are far more dangerous than the citizens of any other country, or something is seriously out of whack in the criminal-justice system. The capricious evolution of federal sentencing law makes the moral implications of this mass incarceration especially appalling. In 1987, all federal sentencing became subject to sentencing guidelines designed to smooth out disparities among sentences of different judges. This move was not in itself a bad thing; sentences for similarly situated offenders obviously ought to be roughly the same. The problem was that the appellate courts interpreted these guidelines so rigidly that judges like me were often forced to ignore individual circumstances and hit defendants with excessive—sometimes grossly excessive—sentences. Then, in 2005, in a series of cases starting with United States v. Booker, the Supreme Court ruled that this lock-step interpretation of the sentencing guidelines was unconstitutional. The "application of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines," the court held in Booker, "violated the Sixth Amendment." To comply with the right to a jury trial in the Bill of Rights, the Supreme Court went on to say, the guidelines had to be deemed no more than advisory. After more than 15 years in a sentencing-guidelines straitjacket, judges were now empowered to do what was appropriate in light of the particular defendant's conduct and circumstances. Consider the implications. Right now, scores of men and women remain in prison at huge cost serving excessive sentences that I was compelled to impose, often against my better judgment, under an interpretation of the sentencing guidelines now recognized as unconstitutional. But Booker and its subsequent sister cases were not deemed to have retroactive effect. So there my defendants sit, and there they will continue to sit, serving out prison terms that were imposed in a manner that violated the law. A similar pattern followed with the Fair Sentencing Act, adopted in 2010 to reduce minimum-mandatory terms for dealers of crack cocaine. For years, I could recite the mandatory terms for crack in my sleep: five years for five grams, 10 years for 50 grams, 20 years for 50 grams with one prior conviction, life without parole for 50 grams with two priors—no discretion, no consideration of specific circumstances. These mandatory terms (unless the defendant cooperated by implicating others) were the same for low-level couriers, called mules, as for high-echelon drug lords. By passing the Fair Sentencing Act, Congress recognized that this system of mandatory sentences, in addition to being unjust, was to some extent racially skewed since black drug users tend to favor crack, while whites prefer much less harshly penalized powder cocaine. Yet defendants sentenced before the act was passed still languish today, serving out sentences that virtually all members of Congress now recognize as excessive. And there is not a darn thing anyone can do about it. If you're the one doing the sentencing, this reality will keep you awake at night, believe me. The Smarter Sentencing Act would reduce 20-year mandatory sentences to 10, 10-year sentences to five, and five-year sentences to two years. Increased numbers of offenders with very modest criminal records would not face mandatory sentences at all. If adopted, the law would also permit thousands of prisoners to seek reduction of their prison terms to bring them in line with the Fair Sentencing Act. None of these changes would reduce the power of judges to slam the really bad actors. But they would permit judges to do what they are paid to do: use their judgment. Our vast prison apparatus is too costly, but more important, it is unworthy of us as a free people. This new statute is well named—now is the time for smarter sentencing. Mr. Ponsor is a senior U.S. district judge in Springfield, Mass. He is the author of the novel "The Hanging Judge" (Open Road Media, 2013). 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Don't know what SHTF means... We are all engines of karma

What a great movie! We are all engines of karma

This is an article from Slate(!!!). It's not a short read, but there's a lot of information in here that I personally was never aware of. Thought I'd pass it on. In brief, Richard Nixon started quotas (never knew that). It describes his motivation for doing so, and discusses the consequences of today's implementation. Worth while read, IMO. The one thing it does not discuss is the importance of the nuclear family. I think that's critical, not only for the children, but also for civil society in general. The Massive Liberal Failure on Race We are all engines of karma

More of a documentary than any of us may ever know. Thank goodness Curtis LeMay was on our side. We are all engines of karma

Thanks! We are all engines of karma