eulessismore

Why would a sane and capable person want to go to work for... this guy?

I'm thinking that the whole golf thing has to provide a basis for some weakness; if the North Korean people learned enough about golf to recognize the impossibility of 3 or 4 hole-in-ones per hole, he will be seen as less invincible.

Got to agree with Flyer on this one; when an unstoppable force (economic desperation) meets a fence, there's always a way over, under, or around it. Until they build a fence high enough to keep aircraft from landing at DFW Airport, there will always be people who come to be in the USA illegally by just overstaying a tourist visa. Maybe that's ignored, because they have the money to buy an airline ticket, but they're still illegal, and some are a security threat. The only reason we talk about Mexico all the time, and have ignored the fact that most of the 9-11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia is that we need the Saudis oil.

Somehow, incompetence isn't completely reassuring, especially in nuclear matters. Hey, maybe a good use of an american stripper would be to send her over there to ask the dear leader what he really wants. Perhaps you could instruct her on drinking responsibly before she goes.

I've been thinking about osteopathic practitioners more over the last month or so, mainly because my Primary Care Doctor, a sole practitioner, and an M.D. specializing in Internal Medicine, sent me a form letter saying he's closing his practice because today's environment doesn't work for sole practitioners. I'd gone to an osteopathic before (O.D.), and really he was good, but my prejudice was toward M.D.'s. Also, my mother-in-law had successful cataract surgery done by a guy who teaches at UNTHSC (I've known others for whom this was not so smooth a procedure). Anyway, I was just looking through the latest U.S. News, ranking graduate and professional schools; the only UNT school or specialty that was mentioned for UNT was primary care at UNTHSC (No. 29 out of 50 listed). So, what experience or insight do any of you board members have on this; is osteopathic in general, or UNTHSC trained osteopaths in particular, promising as far as primary care medicine?

Well, it's interesting to hear about people making plans for 20 years from now; mine has me watching North Texas (yes, at the game) play for the National championship after its fourth time in the field of 32 playoff teams.

I have just read "Lords of Finance, the Bankers who Broke the World". I found it laborious, but at times entertaining, and made the link between international banking and economic cycles somewhat understandable. And if you read closely enough, it has good and bad about both Democrats and Republicans. Warning: it did make Maynard Keynes seem smart, if weird. I consider it worth the read.

I'm going with 4-8: Out of conference wins over Ohio, and Army. In conference we finally beat Arky State, and beat WKU without having to do it in the last few minutes. A big question mark in the above is Army; their new coach really knows football, and really knows the triple option. Also, they weren't really all that bad last year if you look at their record. A personal question for me is, do I feel conflicted, since I was in the Army for a brief and long ago period of my life, gaining the educational benefits which allowed me to graduate from North Texas.

Many of the students when I went to North Texas didn't wear enough clothes to conceal much of anything! Ah, the days.

ee, the whole drug scene nowadays scares the hell out of me and a lot of other people, but, Tancredo, like William F. Buckley before him, is probably right. I think meth is the most obviously destructive drug out there; from what I understand, jailers don't want to keep the meth users locked up; then they'd be responsible for their dental care and that would be more expense than most any jail system could bear. What may be needed is the long, hard, difficult road of education and prevention. One wealthy gentelman who had moved to Montana (this was a few years ago, when he was informed how bad the meth scene was there) was ready to strart up a controversial campaign of public service announcements showing before and after pictures of meth users. I wonder how that went.

With the passage of "welfare reform", I never thought I'd see such a sense of entitlement as the bailed out CEO's have shown. The Republicans showed some hope of recovery by helping throw the credit card companies under the bus. Of course that was easy enough to do when said companies are benefitting from a federal funds rate of 0%, billions in taxpayer funded cash infusions, then engaging in interest rate increases for any and no reason, while imposing myriad user fees, including those for paying bills online!

Well he did say "Wall Street got drunk". At the time, he didn't mention that the taxpayers would make good on the tab.

Sorry I didn't have the guts to come out and say what I really believed, which is what you two guys have said. My lame defense is that I consider most people to be oblivious to such blatant and needless cruelty, so I take a narrow approach and attack such behavior on economic grounds, such as "he was also gambling, and that undermines the credibility of the sport". My bad.

From Western Kentucky? The only thing I can think of that he's accomplished is to be the only FBS coach to lose twice to Todd Dodge.

That's the key to the whole Vick thing, whether or not the fact of his involvement in gambling can be glossed over (the judge in his criminal case didn't seem convinced of his noninvolvement in that). Once an athlete is publicly known to have a gambling problem, they're done for in sports. Any league will decide it's not worth the chance; lingering doubts about games being fixed and all that.

A professor, said to be from Duke, quoted from the segment of "the History of Sex", on the subject of the literary device of talking penises!

Wait for the New York Times to come out with an article on recidivism rates among dogfight promoters?

Damn I hate that.

I'm so glad you dropped that skinny girl as your avatar and have this one.

Not me, but it does sound like kind of a stretch, especially with the size of hole in which he was residing at the time of his capture.

Of course it doesn't really matter whether or not the article comes from the left or right end of the political spectrum; as the Russian novelist Dostoevsky said, the "the left has no monopoly on stupidity". Dude, I have no problem whether it's from the New York Times, one of my favorites, or from the National Review, another one of my favorites; in this case, the article was incorrect; there is noone who has posted talking about how they pay off their credit card balance at the end of the month whom the credit card companies would consider to be a "Sterling payer". Read the story itself, and you will find that those are what the credit card industry calls "deadbeats", because they don't generate sufficient revenue for the issuers to have their greed satisfied. Some day when I have the time and inclination to bare my soul, I'll send my personal horror story at the hands of the "Bank in America" and let you know the reasons behind the depth of my rage at these thieves in corporate offices. But I, you, and anyone on this board can generally avoid the greatest outrages of these usurers by paying their balance in full at the end of the month.

After spinning out of control on a dry road at low speed while braking, and running over one of those "built to collapse" roadsigns, I can say that the only thing that could have made the corvair safe would be a collapsible world.

Well, after laying into the credit oligopolists in another thread, I have to hand it to consumers for utter stupidity during the Circuit City liquidation. NPR was doing a feature about that on their "This American Life" program. One thing the workers said they got sick of hearing was "this is cheaper at such and such a store, with the workers wanting to say, "well, go there and buy it, then". It turns out that the the first thing the contractor in charge of the liquidation (seems this is the way such things are done nowadays, outsourcing the liquidation) did was to mark things up. Something like a third of the inventory was sold at prices higher than before the liquidation was announced.

I agree; I can't think of anything I gained for banking 20 years with what I now call the "Bank in America" (I just can't bring myself to think they're "of" America). Being the biggest doesn't make any bank the best.

ee, there's nothing in the legislation, approved by the Senate 90 to 5 (so, I'm guessing there was broad based bipartisan support) that requires the credit card issuers to charge anyone additional fees, interest, or whatever. That is the proposed response by the INDUSTRY to the legislation, in case you weren't noticing who was being quoted. And where, other than the headline, is the term "Sterling credit" mentioned, much less defined? For all of you here who have mentioned paying your balance in full each month, the Industry has a word for you, "deadbeat". "Robert Hammer, an industry consultant, said the legislation might have the broad effect of encouraging card issuers to become ever more reliant on fees from marginal customers as well as creditworthy cardholders — “deadbeats” in industry parlance, because they generate scant fee revenue." Don't want to suffer the ill effects of all this? Do like me; don't pay interest on anything for which you don't know the total payout and term of the credit, such as a new vehicle or a house. Credit card issuers have ways to earn income, such as processing fees (yes, we'll have them passed on to us by the retailers, but it's once and done), or annual fees. Don't like that, don't use credit cards. Unlike you, my heart sings that for once in recent political history, the Congress doesn't see it's role as being a thug for the financial services industry, which seems like, after having gotten everything it asked for in the "Bankruptcy Reform" legislation, never provided the cheaper credit they said would result, then went on to become our biggest corporate welface case. Go ahead and cry for them; don't expect me to join the pity party. I contributed at the office. And by the way, unlike the credit card industry, I don't consider any of you "deadbeats" for paying your balance off in full each month. Oh, I guess I should give you credit for quoting a "liberal" media outlet such as the NYT. I still think it's all about money as to what any media puts out. I guess if I thought they were "liberal" or "conservative", that might mean I thought they believed in something other than being self serving.