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Using food sources for bio-fuels has resulted in people STARVING to death in developing nations. Why can't these intelligent scientists see this?

Perhaps because these intelligent scientists are intelligent enough to know that this is not true?

Anyway, this idea is about using waste biomass for fuel.

All it takes is for watermelons to get expensive, and in poorer countries, you'll have the farmers selling their entire crops to bio-fuel companies.

And since no culture relies on watermelons as a basic sustenance crop, the problem with this is what, exactly?

Or does a high fat diet cause both brain atrophy and obesity?

No.

We've become a culture where a serving of fettuccine Alfredo is nicknamed " heart attack on a plate" and french fries are frequently mentioned with the prefix "artery-clogging."

"The results of cholesterol and heart disease research was not meant to be applied to healthy people or the world at large," said Dr. Donald McNamara, a cholesterol research scientist and director of Eggs for Health Consulting in Laurel, Md. He compares such an approach to "prescribing the same pair of glasses to everyone."

Few experts argue that for those with cholesterol levels outside the norm, or with high risk factors for cardiovascular disease, dietary change often can be a valid intervention. But when it comes to high-fat foods such as burgers, cheese, butter and cream being liberally shunned by those bent on lowering their cholesterol intake, it's time to lard the conversation with a little straightforward science on dietary fat and health.

Your body knows how to handle dietary fat, and if you're not overweight and have no other high-risk conditions, your risk of heart disease is probably low. That means even if you occasionally eat several slices of pizza with a Haagen-Dazs chaser, you needn't punish yourself with guilt and worry. The stress will probably do more damage than the Super Bowl special you just ate. According to Mark Anthony, nutrition science instructor at St. Edward's University, Austin, Texas, and author of "Gut Instinct: Diet's Missing Link," analysis of the research into cholesterol and disease is bearing this out.

Infant death is more common with low birth-weight and/or early babies. Lifestyle choices in the US, such as obesity and teenage motherhood, drive more low-birth-weight babies than in other countries. That has nothing to do with the health care system, unless you include "social measures" (in this case forcing people to adhere to your personal standards).

The real test of a health care system is to control for those factors. Strip away the effect of the number of low-weight babies are born here, and ask: if you're going to have a low-weight baby, where is it more likely to survive?

No one denies the problem. Our infant mortality rate is double that of Japan or Sweden. But we live different lives, on average, than people in those places. We suffer more obesity (about 10 times as much as the Japanese), and we have more births to teenagers (seven times more than the Swedes). Nearly 40 percent of American babies are born to unwed mothers.

Factors like these are linked to low birth weight in babies, which is a dangerous thing. In a 2007 study for the National Bureau of Economic Research, economists June O'Neill and Dave O'Neill noted that "a multitude of behaviors unrelated to the health-care system such as substance abuse, smoking and obesity" are connected "to the low birth weight and pre-term births that underlie the infant death syndrome."
[...]
The National Bureau of Economic Research paper points out that among the smallest infants, survival rates are better on this side of the border. What that suggests is that if we lived under the Canadian health-care system, we would not have a lower rate of infant mortality. We would have a higher one.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0823chapmanaug23,0,7962367.column

[Tangent: It's interesting that those who support the "public option" for health care insurance reform do so because they believe that private profit oriented insurers should be forced to compete with non-profit, government backed, insurance. But, it seems that most who support this approach for health insurance seem fearful of making non-profit, government backed public education compete with private enterprises. And the inverse also seems to be the case. Curious indeed...]

The argument against vouchers isn't one against competition, it's one of limited resources. The argument is that with vouchers, tax money is being redirected away from public school system towards private schools. Now this wouldn't be a problem if the lack of funds ended up with simply one underperforming school being eliminated due to lack of students, but rather what actually happens is that total pool of money allocated for all schools in the district is reduced, and thus all schools, but the good and the bad are adversely effected, and that a (perhaps quickly occurring) tipping point is reached where the entire public school system begins to collapse. Now before someone says, "Well good! Private schools are better performing!", a 2006 Dept of Ed report found no significant difference between private and public school performance, once results were controlled for statistical population. (Keep in mind that private school families tend to be wealthier and more engaged than poorer families, and so when poorer students attend the private schools on vouchers, the population of self-selected over-achievers begins to be diluted by newly arriving average and under-achievers.) Also there is doubt that each voucher provides enough financial support to the private school to educate the newly arrived student.

In short, the vouchers shift just enough money away from the public system to hurt it, but not enough to support the private system, while at the same time not actually providing an educational benefit. A lose-lose-draw situation.

Personally, I'd like to see public schools to be funded equally per pupil out of a general state fund, instead of the current system of using property taxes, thus ensuring that that schools attended by the poor are underfunded, dilapidated, and thus guaranteed to underperform, while the schools in the rich part of town get two of the best of everything. It's simply unconscionable that we have schools like the one Ty'Sheoma Bethea attends. (Don't count on stimulus funds to fix it either.)

If I may be permitted to misquote Isaac Asimov: Conspiracy theories are the last refuge of the incompetent.

That's one hell of a misquote, and is entirely incorrect. Of course many conspiracy theories are bogus, but there are more than enough to put the lie to your epigram. I guess you're not old enough (or aware enough) to remember Watergate? Or Enron? Or George Ryan? Not that I believe this particular conspiracy theory, but if this was an elected judge rather than an appointed one, it may be possible.

The correct Asimov quote has Salvor Hardin saying "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent". Lying, twisted facts, and ignoring reality must come in as next to last.

If copyright law wasn't so badly bent and twisted, there would be few pirates.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-obama-birth-certificate-photo,0,7688869.photo

Can you point to one or several Fox News stories that are absolutely false...?

Google is your friend.....

Fox News: We Report — Even If We Know It's False
Fox News Sinks to New Low, Repeatedly Reports Parody Story as Actual News
Anatomy of a False Story
Dobbs, FOX News, and Drudge Report Push False AP Story
Countdown: Fox News Caught Creating False News
Of Mice and Misinformation: Sammon Joins Other Fox News Personalities in Spreading Stimulus Falsehood

That's just from the first page of results.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-texas-profiling_wittmar10,0,6051682.story

The design/development/implemention is being done by Accenture, formerly Andersen Consulting.

Need I say more?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-wi-uwsystempayroll,0,2597575.story

A more complete article: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-mi-revertingroads,0,1719061.story

Some follow up. It appears the verdict was reversed on appeal to the CA Court of Appeals, and from there went to the CA Supreme Court which recently heard the case. According to this article from June 4, 2009, a decision is due in 90 days.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/la-fi-coffee4-2009jun04,0,7389392.story

So what's the difference between the crowd making a mistale and the police making a mistake?

DNA Testing Clears Virginia Man Of 1984 Rape
Chicago man sues Chicago, police over wrongful conviction
Milwaukee DA Drops Charge In 1995 Murder Case
Tests prove innocence of 23-year prisoner in Texas
New arson analysis may free convicted murderer
Texas Enacts 'Innocence Committee' Over Excessive Wrongful Convictions

Celtic

http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2008/nov/11/nation/chi-talk-code-namesnov11

Slashdot:
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/20/128246

Sun:
http://www.sun.com/third-party/global/oracle/

Oracle:
http://www.oracle.com/sun/index.html

Chicago Tribune:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/yourmoney/sns-yourmoney-0503leckeyfile,0,5105395.story

The Tribune regularly reports about what Chicago politicians are doing, and their editorial board loves to rail against them and ask how the crooks are still in office. Not to mention Mike Royko who wrote for the Tribune, being one of the most well-known muckracker jounalists of recent history. They even have a page just on corruption: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/corruption/.

Sure, the convictions are what make Chicago seem dishonest, but I doubt many people outside Chicago know about the recent Tony Rezko case, so it is not the convictions themselves that give Chicago its name. The only reason everyone knows of the city as the most corrupt is because the Tribune does a good job making everyone aware of what is going on. Funny you should use the man that tried to get Tribune staff fired as an example why the paper dishonestly favors the government.

As for the AC sibling knocking Colbert, most conservatives can't even figure out that he's joking!

No, they have ALWAYS not. And usually they get to CHEAT, by not being subject to Federal, State and Local taxes, like a private company. Remove those taxation costs from the private companies and you'd see and even bigger savings.

http://www.privatization.org/database/policyissues/water_local.html

and more recently

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/green/chi-crestwood-water-bd19-apr19,0,3074699.story

A hint for future arguments. The use of absolutes, like "always" and "never" are dangerous and easy to debunk. All it takes is one counter-example and you're backpedaling.

Any time there is a broad new (read that as "poorly worded") piece of law drafted people always use it to the poorly worded maximum.

No knock warrants were originally to "fight terrorism" - now they're used as a judicial shortcut to bust drug dealers. Often times with horrific results.

Forfeiture laws were originally to return the goods from a crime to their rightful owners. Now, it's a cash grab by the government. They actually find property guilty. Or sometimes not even that much. Then they find the property (not the person carrying it, mind you) guilty and keep it.

Now we have the DMCA, which is being used to stifle competition and strangle free speech.

Why is anybody surprised?

We had precedents of poorly worded laws and what happens when we pass them into law. But when it's the government that benefits, it's hard to convince them to stop.

http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/features_julieshealthclub/2008/10/the-ultimate-pr.html

http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/features_julieshealthclub/2008/10/the-ultimate-pr.html

        "On a crisp fall day, she sat in the exam room with an opaque tube running through her nose, down her throat and into her stomach."

        "We just need that little brown bag," said Dr. Timothy Rubin, a gastroenterologist. He meant the stool sample from Jolliffe's husband, which was being processed in the lab. It was mixed with water and filtered to take out the organic matter, leaving a dark brown liquid that contained billions of bacteria.

        When the little bag arrived with the sample inside, Rubin used a large syringe to inject the liquid through the tube and into Jolliffe's stomach. It was over in less than a minute.

        "All I felt was cold," she said.

I don't know about you, but *I've* seen the smoldering wreckage of a burnt-out car sitting on the side of the highway before. I have no clue whether the occupants escaped alive, but car fires absolutely do still kill people.

And as I've mentioned elsewhere on this thread, FYI, the Roadster's cells are individually isolated and the packs are tested with multiple cell failures to make sure that fires are contained. And Tesla is near-unique in using laptop cells rather than the "automotive" li-ions which use different chemistries and don't have the fire risk. Oh, sure, the electrolyte in them is flammable, but that's no different from gas in a gas tank.; the big difference is that you can abuse the automotive variants to heck and back and not cause a fire. They pay for their safety in terms of an energy density hit, mind you.

(re: Pizza hut advertising on a NASA rocket http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=2202 [spaceref.com])

Off topic to the article, but to your point about sponsors... KFC is actually spending money to fill pot holes and spray-paint their logo on them. Complete with Col. Sanders standing around with a bright green jacket.

China's already saber rattling about doing just that. Observe their recent calls for a new currency so they can stop buying our increasingly bad debt.

The other amendment I'd add is over this:

(c). In order to assure a minimum of false positives, the State of Illinois would have to implement a comprehensive insurance-to-registration tag database that would be automatically updated by the insurance companies within seconds of issuing or changing a policy.

The Chicago Dept. of Revenue couldn't care less about false positives. They'll just ticket anyone and everyone the same way that they do now. No parking on one side of the street on Wednesday? We'll just ticket both sides. No parking within 15' of a fire hydrant? Sounds like 50' to me! Feel free to take your own personal time to contest the tickets and, if you're lucky, we'll rescind the fine. If not, tough luck!

Then there's this lovely bit of news: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-tue-problem-0224-feb24,0,6344552.column

Two quick amendments.

I agree with you--Chicago is corrupt. But Blagojevich was the State governor, not the City's. For that, you'd have to turn to Daley and his corrupt cronies (convictions pending). If you're going to point out the corruption present in my great state, please at least point at the right people. :)

Second, you're right about the assumption that people who aren't willing to pay for insurance aren't likely to pay a citation mailed to them. However, in Chicago, it is now possible for your car to get booted with two outstanding parking tickets. My assumption would be that these insurance citations would apply to that total. And since the Chicago Department of Revenue (yes, they don't even pretend it's for public safety...) can access outstanding tickets much more easily than they can insurance records, the probability of getting the Boot would be higher. Perhaps more people would pay.

Didn't you hear? Congress is too busy these days. They don't have time to do any of the trivial stuff.

Want some more Koolaid??? (Google 'Jim Jones Koolaid' if you missed the reference)

You seem to have drunk the Kool-aid Kool-aid!

And a bad review from a non-fanboy, whichever suits your preference.

Ebert, since his unfortunate brush with death, seems to have had an spiritual awakening and realized that every movie is beautiful in its own way. A great outlook perhaps, but not very useful for a critic.

There are plenty of other reviews out there, both kind and unkind, if you wish to read them (be warned: many have spoilers).

Wow, Violet Blue gave a talk-- oh, THAT Violet Blue, the one who stole the porn chick's name [1] [2] [3] (note, having a name doesn't mean you own it if someone else gets famous with that name before you, but of course you can outspend them in court anyway!), and later was erased from BoingBoing (eliminating any sense of credibility BB had, and showing they have no problem with revisionist journalism) because she broke up with Xeni [4] [5].

She was in I Love Lucy and The Untouchables (The Chicago Tribune's text changed from this morning where these two shows were mentioned)

Born Majel Lee Hudec on Feb. 23, 1932, in Cleveland, she began taking acting classes as a child. She had some stage roles, then in the late 1950s and 1960s had bit parts in a few movies and small roles in TV series, including "Leave It to Beaver" and "Bonanza."

She met her husband in 1964 during a guest role for a Marine Corps drama he produced called "The Lieutenant." That same year, she was cast in the pilot for the "Star Trek" series as the no-nonsense second-in-command. The pilot did not appeal to NBC executives and a second pilot was made, although parts of the original later showed up in a two-part episode called "The Menagerie."

The couple married in Japan in 1969 after "Star Trek" was canceled. After her husband's death, Roddenberry continued her involvement with the "Star Trek" franchise.

She also was the executive producer for two other TV science fiction series, "Andromeda" and "Earth: Final Conflict."

My guess is that Obama does not know what kind of music player he is using, does not load it and has no idea what software is involved. The difference between him and you geeks is that he has a personal assistant who has that job. Read on:

"Obama's 'body man' on his game: Ex-Duke athlete and 'good people person' Reggie Love helps keep senator fit, fed and hydrated on trail" by John Mccormick and Tribune Staff Reporter in the Chicago Tribune on November 15, 2007:

Reggie Love makes sure the water bottle is always full, the PowerBars are stocked and that the boss gets out of bed on time for his daily exercise regimen. The former football and basketball player at Duke University is what presidential campaigns call a "body man." Every major candidate has one. Love, 25, has walked - literally - in Sen.Barack Obama's shadow since February, acting as something of a traveling valetto make sure the Illinois Democrat's personal needs are met.

He snaps photos when supporters ask that their picture be taken with thecandidate, makes sure there is always a Sharpie marker at the ready forautographs and keeps the candidate's favorite music loaded on the iPod. ...

More here with pictures: "On the Court and on the Trail, One Aide Looms Over Obama" by Ashley Parker in the NYTimes on May 27, 2008.

Birds of a feather. The "Ayers/Obama connection" is a bad joke, but Rezko is Illinois politcical business as usual. The nice thing about Rezko is his is non-partisan sleazery; he has ties to highups in both major parties.

Bill Cellini, otoh, is Republican sleazery. His buddies are all Republicans.

But my point was, politics in Illinois have always been corrupt. Honest politicians don't get elected here.

SCO gets a final judgement and loses $3.5m

meanwhile Darl McBride is still disgustingly filthty rich. Too bad instead of stealing millions of dollars from innocent rubes, he wasn't dog fighting instead, like Michael Vick.

Michael Vick lives in a prison in Kansas, making 12 cents an hour while plotting his return to the NFL. His houses and farms will soon be gone, the two yachts are history, and he's down to his last couple of Range Rovers.

A race horse he bought for $60,000 died of colic, the Atlanta Falcons are still trying to hit him up for millions they paid him, and the IRS and the state of Georgia want nearly $1 million in back taxes.

In 2006 he made nearly $15 million. Recently he reported total income of $12.89 for an entire month.

I want to see Brainwol and McBride (while we're at it, my mortgage company's President and oil company presidents as well) in a cell with Vick.

These people are the anti-Robin Hoods, stealing from the poor to give to the rich.

SCO gets a final judgement and loses $3.5m

meanwhile Darl McBride is still disgustingly filthty rich. Too bad instead of stealing millions of dollars from innocent rubes, he wasn't dog fighting instead, like Michael Vick.

Michael Vick lives in a prison in Kansas, making 12 cents an hour while plotting his return to the NFL. His houses and farms will soon be gone, the two yachts are history, and he's down to his last couple of Range Rovers.

A race horse he bought for $60,000 died of colic, the Atlanta Falcons are still trying to hit him up for millions they paid him, and the IRS and the state of Georgia want nearly $1 million in back taxes.

In 2006 he made nearly $15 million. Recently he reported total income of $12.89 for an entire month.

I want to see Brainwol and McBride (while we're at it, my mortgage company's President and oil company presidents as well) in a cell with Vick.

These people are the anti-Robin Hoods, stealing from the poor to give to the rich.

The administration also commissioned a classified domestic eavesdropping plan for monitoring international calls that dispensed with legal requirements for obtaining warrants. When that plan came to light, the administration pushed legislation through Congress this year that granted it much of the surveillance authority it sought, along with providing immunity for telecom companies that had allegedly cooperated in the secret program.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-terror_oliphantnov20,0,522164.story

The article also refers to whether the new President will keep the programs that so offend the Constitution. The President-Elect has said he needs the "flexibility" offered: "

From wiretaps to Gitmo, he faces pressure to overhaul Bush framework without sacrificing gains made in the name of security"

Let's see how fast the newly-elected Constitutional Law lecturer dismantles the "gains made in the name of security". That will tell us volumes, whether they are immediately discarded, changed to put a nice face on them, or continued for an indefinite period.

that cash makes a very big stick with which to put everybody in the line you want.

I spoke with some high school teachers here in Illinois. There is a fundamental flaw in the education funding system here. Schools are funded by local property taxes, so areas that have low home values have poor schools. All of the areas with high property values have rejected federal funding under NCLB. Schools in poor districts have accepted federal funding.

Which high school teachers complain? They all do. They always do. The high school teachers in the poor districts are complaining more than the ones in the rich districts, but that has always been the case. The federal government isn't going to fix it, only the state can.

The teachers I know say, the biggest improvement the poor schools can make is a complete repeal of the residency requirement in the city of Chicago. You can't throw federal money at that problem. Only the local government can solve it.

Just a socialist, or a socialist Muslim terrorist?

Real socialists are offended by the comparison.

The owner didn't lie about anything. The phone company asks who lives at the address when they install a land line in a residence. They listed their pet which is obviously pretty common. I had a girlfriend do it and I have heard of a parrot actually getting a voter registration card before.

Apparently the problem is more widespread then this one thing or instance.

Perhaps though that's why i like Palin's bio as a cleaner of Alaska's Republican Augean stables and am frustrated by the one-sided coverage of her.

That's your problem. You have this image of her as a corruption fighter, which couldn't be farther from the truth. Like I said, she's just like Gingrich - she didn't take on corrupt figures because she wanted to clean out the system, but because she's a ladder climber who was looking to make a name for herself:

• She takes Bush's peonage appointments and turns it up to 11.
• She tried to ban books and tried to fire the Wasilla librarian when she rebuffed Palin's request for the third time.
• She fires officials that don't support her during elections.
• She requested earmarks that McCain specifically complained about as being wasteful spending.
• She fully supported the bridge to nowhere until Congress said it would have to be paid for with state money, yet took the federal funds anyway. Now she's lying by saying "I told Congress, 'Thanks, but no thanks,' on that bridge to nowhere."
• She illegally uses personal email accounts for state business.
• Abused her position by trying to have her ex-brother in law fired, and when the state commissioner refused, she fired him instead.
• And most dispicably, signed off on charging rape victims for examination kits.

I am SAYING that these are facts, and that reporting them is (of course) fair. My complaint is the failure to report other pertinent facts.

Like those Fox News talking heads that wished that the rest of the media would stop talking about all the bad things happening in Iraq - like bombings that would kill a hundred people at a time, roadside bombs killing our troops, and ethnic cleansing between Shiites and Sunnis - and focus on the positive things like construction of a new clinic inside the Green Zone. I'm sure the women of Iraq who would wear mourning robes for years at a time - another family member would be killed before it was time to take them off - would concur.

With all due respect there's a pretty big difference between being endorsed by a pastor and having someone BE your pastor for over 20 years.

With all due respect you're rationalizing a racist smear. If you watch more than "Goddamn America" soundbyte played on the media, he's speaking about how the United States kept slaves "in perpetuity", the "separate but equal" Dred Scott decision, Jim Crow, forced American Indians onto reservations, interned Japanese Americans during WWII, and the Tuskegee experiments on black men with syphilis. Funny how the media never mentioned that this Angry Black Man hated the United States sooo much he voluntarily gave up his student deferment and served two terms of duty as a Marine in Vietnam, and then re-enlisted as a medical corpsman and was so good he was the valedictorian of his class and was on LBJ's surgical team in 1966.

It is at least conceivable that McCain wasn't fully aware of

Hell, I'd be happy if the existing penalties for perjury were imposed. Ever. For a really egregious and obvious example, see the case of Pamela Fish.

Straw man...I never said that.

Not specfically, but that's exactly what you implied. In order for a bailout to have the effect you suggest, the people who actually determine the value (aka Wall Street) would have to understand less than you. Sure you can find people with money invested who don't understand what is going on, but a huge portion of the market is managed by professionals who do actual research.

some are very beholden to what the fickle masses think they should do.

But the public wasn't asking for this, the banks were. Public sentiment has been either mixed or overwhelmingly against.

I'm not defending the gold standard, just saying that now perception of value is much more fickle and salient

Can you prove that? People seem to forget that you can't actually eat gold, nor is it a practial building material. As a result, for gold to have value someone needs to have faith that someone else will believe it has value.

Why do I have to read Obama's books to find a time when Obama showed any inkling toward leadership?

Off the top of my head, I can think of a half dozen times John McCain has demonstrated leadership:

1. McCain-Feingold Act (ultimately successful)
2. Normalizing relations with Vietnam (ultimately successful)
3. Gang of 14
4. Climate Stewardship Act (cosponsored with Sen. Lieberman)
5. Created the 9/11 Commission with Sen. Lieberman
6. Called out Secretary Rumsfeld for being a moron and supporting what history has revealed to be the successful troop surge in Iraq
7. Immigration Reform (ultimately failed)

So, OK. Let's hear what, exactly, Obama has accomplished as a community organizer. Let's hear how he reformed corrupt Chicago politics. Surely if he intends to reform Washington, he must have done a great job back in Chicago. </sarcasm> Let's hear how he showed some leadership. Anywhere. At any point in his life.

Cost of the last major hurricane, $22 billion.
Cost of the existing "martial involvements", $12.3 billion per month.
Cost of the "largest bailout in history", $700 billion.

Silly congress critters who think they still have tax payer funds to fritter away... priceless.

Maybe the PHB's are just trying to market to the many people becoming homeless due to the increase in foreclosures.

If there are going to be more citizens living in tent cities like during the great depression, corporate America will want to be there to provide desperately needed services, like up to the minute stock quotes and SPAM for new investment opportunities in Nigeria.

While your point about trying to present a more pithy message is valid, your bullet quote is incorrect.

Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality

The difference might appear minor, but this is what the pols do. They get you to believe they support something, but then come back later with BS like "well, what I said was I believe in the principle of foo" - which gives them plenty of room to claim that they never really supported foo, or that you just have a difference of opinion on what foo is, and what you think of foo, s/he never really understood it to mean bar.

Whether it is drilling for domestic fuel, bailing out people who took out loans for homes they couldn't afford (it isn't a tax-payer-funded "bail-out" my senator claims), bridges to nowhere, peanut museums, etc pols will always, always find a way to spin it and make us seem like we don't know what we we're talking about. How often has Sen. Obama said something like "Well, that's not the person (Rev. Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko, etc) I knew"? He isn't alone in this two-facedness, it comes from both sides, but the expediency of disassociation from notorious Chicago politics in this case is interesting at least.

It just appears to me as someone who is trying to objectively evaluate the options, that his supporters have drunk the kool-aid. He can't do anything wrong, and any criticism of him, his proposed policies, his past, or the company he keeps, is shouted down or met with cries of racism. It isn't about the exchange of ideas with this guy or his campaign. There is no debate, no discussion. If you don't like the direction he wants to take the country, you're a racist, and that is the only possible reason he might lose. Really sad, and makes me very wary of his administration might do to free speech in this country. From what I've been able to gather, WGN inviting on someone from the left to argue for Obama wasn't good enough. The campaign made an obvious effort to muzzle speech they didn't like - instead of arguing against the content and making their case why it was wrong.

Yesterday I saw Sen. Shumer (D-NY) and Sen. Kyle (R-AZ) on one of the talking heads programs. They obviously disagreed on current events, yet it was civil, respectful, and they both made their arguments well.

To the original point, when you quote a pol, quote them exactly - because every word matters, and they'll use that to play the people and the tax payers like a fiddle. To state flat out that Sen. Obama supports net neutrality is simply not correct.

Still the $2.1M sale price was $300K below the price she should have expected on the open market if she went through a broker

You are wrong, at least on this detail.

According to the article cited by the other poster, "that's about $300,000 less than a broker's asking price ".

If she went through a broker, the broker would ask for $2.4M, possibly collect that amount, then pass along the rest--less expenses and a hefty commission. Going through a broker also would have required additional red tape to the process because of the extra middle man.

- RG>

Sorry, I should quote my sources. The $300K below market came from the Chicago Tribune. I'm sure you will continue to say that number is just "spin" though because all the press is "liberal media" trying to smear Palin rather than an actual attempt to get news out about an unknown candidate who's suddenly a possible VP for our nation.

Instead, the 23-year-old 10-seat Westwind II was sold in August 2007 for $2.1 million to a Valdez, Alaska, entrepreneur; that's about $300,000 less than a broker's asking price, according to news accounts. -- Chicago Tribune

Sarah Palin did not need the jet because she could drive to work. However, there are areas of Alaska where there are only two forms of transportation: airplanes and boat. Any Alaskan can tell you that air transportation would be a necessity for a governor who lived in one of those areas since boat is too slow for state business. However, there is no reason such a governor could not use public air flights instead of a private jet.

BTW, there is one small mistake in my post, the entrepeneur is not named Valdez but from Valdez. His name is Larry Reynolds and he is a good friend of Republican speaker of the Alaska House, John L. Harris, who brokered the no-bid deal. Reynolds made campaign contributions to both Palin and Harris in 2006 and 2007.

Controls most Sushi-grade fish distribution in the US.
See: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-0604sushi-1-story,0,3736876.story

So, what else to expect from the new Messiah? Tilapia to Maguro = PROFIT!

Funny thing - Maguro and Tilapia have very different textures, flavors and colors. I could (remotely) buy a novice eating Tilapia instead of Albacore - but, once again the textures and taste are vastly different.

More like the Moonies. Didn't you know Rev. Moon supplies most of the sushi we eat?

There you go, confusing the Mafia with the Moonies again.