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The Nobel Prize lost all credibility when it was given to Arafat. Pretty well irrelevant gesture so far as I can tell.

MLB is about as exciting as Soccer. ...just sayin'.

The total income you show here represents 100Million or so... that's a DROP IN THE BUCKET of the money in health insurance. The profit margin in the health insurance IS very small. ...they make a lot of DOLLARS in profit as a result of volume, but the actual profit margin is very small.

Thanks for proving my point, 'cause you did it so much better than I could. This story didn't come out via a form e-mail, it has been in the news since Tuesday, and all over the internet. You don't care to do your own research, yet you attack people with a differing view as simply falling in line with some talking points and not doing their own research? Really? ...and then you finish up by further attacking the folks you apparently disagree with? You attack the messenger, which is exactly the argument I presented in my first post. If the postings in this forum cause you such greif, why don't you just stay out of this particular forum? If you want to debate the information being presented, I think we all welcome it, and would love to have a debate about something that is so important as this issue, but just throwing out the smart-ass comment and attacking those who you don't agree with is just dumb. Why waste your time?

Ok, I see where you're going with this. But then woudn't the confustion that regular insurance doesn't cover such a service be universial - I.E. people with BCBS applying for nursing coverage to be denied and told that is a different type of insurance. I have BCBS and had no clue that extended care isn't covered. I would have applied and been denied and then had to seek care through another avenue. Why would medicare be feilding or denying this type of claim at a larger rate than any other company?

...ah yes, the old "if you can't debate the point, attack the messenger" trick. Bravo, CBL! Bravo! You sure blew the information presented out of the water with that brillint bit of debating. Silver Eagle - don't ALL insurance companies field claims for nursing home stays? I'm not debating your point, but I don't get it. Can you clarify? Seems to me any insurance company or system would be faced with nursing home claims from seniors.

ROTFLMAO!!! It was part of the grand "Bush Strategery" to screw Chicago out of the Olympics. ...must be a part of that vast right wing conspiracy against Bill and Barak.

This makes me smile. ...I agree with Riley, and I believe the truly feels this way as does the rest of those guys. Now it is time to use this frustration to your benefit. I am with the crowd that says EVERY game for the rest of this season is winnable, but the mental mistakes and the turn overs have to be minimized. The mental state of this team has to be low right now, and the break couldn't come at a better time. They have two weeks to prepare for a ULALA team that appears totally beatable, and I expect to be in every game for the rest of the season. The only two games I list as uphill challenges at this point are Troy and AkySt. We play OUR GAME and play as well as we have demonstrated we can, and we are the better team than ANYONE left on the schedule. Now it's time to execute. To HELL with moral victories. Let's win some football games.

ANY TIME a mid major pulls something like this off, it is good for all of the rest of us mid majors. There is more parity in college football today than ever before. Today, I'm certainly a Houston fan, and I'll be rooting for them all season. It would be great to see a Mid Major from Texas do some BCS Crashing.

Dare to dream.

i think NT wins in a squeaker, by less than 3 points. I'm inclined to think it will be a fairly high scoring game. 35-33, good guys win.

I'm with you on the girl from WVU... ...but give me a curvy brunette with a perfect smile like that and I'm a happy guy. Anna from Miss is the best lookin' girl in the group bar none. ...don't worry, our girl got all my votes.

Our girl is cute, but the girl from Mississippi is pretty smokin'. ...that being said, the SEC and Big East counts are going up real quick, so we better get to it gents.

After 15 gallons of green Kool-Aid, NT WINS 31-30 in a sloppy rain game. Yeah... That just happened.

I feel, in colleges we have in common, I.E. business, the two schools are pretty well balanced.

...he must be a gay fish.

...But their income and other taxes are higher. It's true, there is no eutopia. :frown:

[Austin Powers] SHE'S A MAN, BABY!!! [/Austin Powers]

Eagle, I am simply debating a policy, I'm not trying to make this personal. I'm just showing another side to the story. I didn't mean to come off as dickish, and I certainly don't have any beef with you personally. As always, we're on this forum for a common reason. FM's make a comission on addons and points, but the comission made on a financial deal (less any addons) going through the manufactur's credit agancey (GMAC, Ford Credit, etc) is a pittance. Certainly not the 10% I threw out there to come up with the number to have as an example. I don't claim to be an expert, though I am familliar with this particular business, and I certainly never claimed you supported this program as good for America. The overall crux of this thread, however, is "was it worth it" and the math, as boring as it may be, doesn't seem to add up. The financial math doesn't add up. The fuel savings math doesn't add up. The "carbon footprint reduction" doesn't add up, none of it adds up. I enjoy the debate, and I hope we can spar again in the future.

I do know that's how it works, but 20K isn't an average. That's 5% comission (which is common on that type of sale in the auto industry) on 400,000 in add-on sales. ...or 10% on 200,000 in ADD ON sales. Not in car sales, but in ADD ON sales. Think about that for a moment, and then come back and tell me if you think that is realistic. Let's say that the comission rate is 10% on those add ons, and then let's assume the addons are 10% of the cost of each car. (3000 in add ons for a 30000 car) ...Now, lets assume your friend's base salary is $60,000 per month. It isn't, if he's a finance guy at a car dealer, but let's just say it is, and take 5K off the top. So now we have to account for 15K that he made. that means that your "friend" was responsible for selling (at the 10% comission level) $150,000 in add on product. That means he ran the financing and addons on 1.65 million dollars worth of product. Or, if we're still going with the 30,000 per unit number, 55 cars in a month. Figure that he works 6 days a week, that's 2.2 cars run through with a perfect record of getting 10% add on sales on 2.2 cars per work day in the month of August. That's a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT of paperwork. ...but now let's say it's true. ...and let's say that 700,000 cars were sold at 30,000 per unit. ...and now lets say that every finance guy was as badass as your buddy and had a perfect record selling 10% addons and made 10% comission on his/her sales. Tha'ts $210 Million dollars in comission. Taxed at 25%, which is $52 Million in Federal Tax Revenue off of the finance people. Add that with the $262 Million and were up to $310 million in new tax reveunes to the Treasury for a program that cost tax payers $3 billion. Barely 10% return on the investment. ...the math doesn't lie, folks. I'm not saying several people didn't make out like bandits. ...but the general population didn't benefit from this program, it didn't meet its stated goals (this is a fact, it can't be disputed using ANY factual information) and absolutely cost more than it brought back into the treasury. ...Had the program met its stated goals but still was a net loss in terms of dollars, I might not agree with it, but I'd at least admit that "I didn't agree with the program, but it did what they said it would do." ...but that's not that happened. The American Tax Payer should not have their money spent to the benefit of a single industry. Your friend enjoyed a taxpayer funded winfall. Good for him, and he has nothing to be ashamed of - he did his job. ...but his awesome month isn't worth 3 billion dollars of taxpayer money. forevereagle, don't put words in my mouth. I didn't say there weren't benefits. I didn't say that lots of folks made lots of money as a result of the program. What I'm saying is that it wasn't worth the cost to the rank and file individual who's out here busting his ass to make ends meet and being taxed to death to provide a winfall for a very few, that will have very little to zero effect on the economy. During the month that this program was going on and all of this awesome economic activity was going on that eeally and other keep talking about, 270,000 more people lost their jobs.

The difference between you and I is that I can acutally back up my conclusion with facts. Lenders make less comission than the sales people do, so that doesn't hold any water, and financial people in the dealerships don't make a comission on deals financed through the auto companies. ...so that's a fail. How do you figure the 3 billion has been repaid 10X over. I'm looking for numbers... ACTUAL FACTS to back up your claims. ...the sign of someone who has lost an argument is when they whip a straw man that has NOTHING to do with the debate, in this case the war on terror, in an effort to show comparison where there is none. Saying that something is a success doesn't make it so. The facts have to back up that claim. In this case the FACTS do not back up this claim. Even publications like the New York Times have run pieces on how this program failed to meet any of the measurable benchmarks set when the program was started. 3 billion IS a big deal. 3 billion is a LOT of money.

What a shame. He was a great guy from all accounts. Cancer sucks.

Great feature guys! Thanks for taking the time to write it. Great Job!

Much of this has been covered in this thread. There were no factories kept open or any layoffs avoided as a result of this program. GM had many factories on idle, and they recently reopened as planned BEFORE this program. This program DID clear some inventory, but GM, Ford or Chrysler isn't cranked up to replensih the inventory at the rate it came off the lots. No jobs saved or created as a result of this. You took cars off the road the service facilities outside the dealers would have been paid to work on and now have dealer employees are going to get paid to work on these new cars. You haven't created any new work or economic activity here, you've simply shifte the work from one technician to another. There isn't a net increase of cars on the road, there is the same number as a result of this program, and the ones that are on the road now are a net LOSS to the service industry as the new cars are more reliable and won't need as much service. Same goes for parts - this is a net loss to companies like Autozone and Pep Boys. Accessories? Where do you see more automotive accessories on cars - in the neighborhoods where people have the credit to take advantage of these rebates, or in the neighborhoods where the cars being driven are 3rd and 4th hand and feature 2 generation old Ford and Chevy trucks with Buick style portholes down the hoodline? By and large (and this is a business I happen to be involved in) performance, visual and audio accessories tend to be found most often in older vehicles, and not on brand new ones. ...at very best, the swap of the cars as a result of this program will be a net push. The accessory industry may not lose, but they are not gaining as a result either. ...you may have a point on insurance, though the last time I bought a new car for my wife, our insurance went down even though it is newer and cost more to insure, it was safter, having tons of extra airbags and crap. ...so I'm not sure there is a gain there either. ...Certainly nothing has been gained that is worth the 3 Billion spent.