I think prenuptials and such are pathetic. If you don't love a woman enough to risk losing some money to her, especially if she's raising your kids, then you just shouldn't get married.
I've never understood the visceral hatred that so many people have for the religious activists, volunteers, and peaceful human beings that constitute the left wing of the US.
You must be projecting your own feelings for me. I don't hate you. I just hate your ideas about politics and economics.
Hmm, and I almost forgot: squirrel, buffalo, conch, eels, Cornish game hens, guinea fowl, cuttlefish, clams, mussels, oysters, and abalone. I would also note that I have consumed tasty parts of various animals that are sometimes overlooked in this country, including brain, heart, tongue, kidneys, liver, sweetbreads, bone marrow, and Rocky Mountain oysters (calf testicles.)
Make room for all of God's creatures. Right next to the mashed potatoes.
Is there anybody out there who doubts that Bush is not good for our country?
Me. I think Bush is not only good for our country, but the best President in my lifetime. I am proud to have voted for him and would do so again if I could. The louder the Left squeals, the better I like it.
The next step is the ammo box, and there are a lot of people that I know thinking its time to have a major shakeup of the federal government.
Bring it, tough guy. You pathetic tofu eaters would be shot to rags in 36 hours. You'd face not only the full force of the police and military, but many millions of fascist counter-revolutionary baby-eaters like me. And we are positively awash in guns and ammo. I could arm a platoon with the contents of my gun room, most of which are off-paper private purchases.
You had better reconcile yourself to the democratic process, just as I had to do in the Clinton years, or you will face certain doom.
Given the way accounting worked in the early 2000's in corporate America, it was probably "cooperate and we won't look very deeply into your books..."
Actually, all the well-known corporate scandals took place in the late 1990's, on the watch of a certain good-time Charlie whose mind was on other pursuits, and were exposed very early in Bush's first term.
Not only was Clinton too busy having his dick sucked to take any notice of the largest frauds in American history, but his own DNC Chairman was involved in Global Crossing up to his eyeballs. Terry McAuliffe schemed with his good pal, CEO Gary Winnick, to pump and dump a $100,000 investment to the tune of $18 million, stealing a fortune from pension funds and mom-&-pop investors.
Bush signed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and those responsible for the biggest frauds are being aggressively pursued by the Bush Justice Department. Many of the major offenders have already been convicted and handed stiff sentences, and more are certain to follow.
I am sorry to have to bring this news to all you dewy-eyed college dimwits who think that these are Republican scandals. It must be hard on your tender unformed psyches when reality socks you with a clue-by-four.
You understand, of course, that the music business is just like Hollywood. The rules of accounting are distorted beyond recognition to ensure that the big movie studios and major record labels can hoover up all the money. When the musician or director or actor shows up to collect his royalties, it's "Sorry bud. Your album/movie didn't make any profit after expenses."
What I'd like to know is how those companies are booking the income on their own internal accounts, and whether it's being reported to the IRS. They got Al Capone when nobody else could touch him; maybe they can get RIAA/MPAA too.
When exactly has there been a time that popular music didn't suck? I've been hearing this since the 70's, and it has probably gone on even longer, I just wasn't there to hear it.
It's like Easterbrook's law of economics: All economic news is always bad. Music critics justify their existence by slamming everyone. Even the good bands get denounced as "sellouts" as soon as the public notices how good they are and starts buying their albums.
Music critics are frequently would-be musicians themselves, but devoid of musical talent, and anybody knows it's easier to tear the other guy down than to build yourself up.
I'm sure someone will find a way to blame it on the Bush Administration.
The disappointment at not being able to is almost palpable, isn't it?
We need Congressdingbat McKinney to hold some more hearings. There are sure to be witnesses who will accuse Karl Rove and Dick Cheney of controlling the Earth's magnetic field from a giant console in their "undisclosed location." Women and minorities hardest hit, of course!
You completely misunderstand me. I am all for appropriate testing and regulation. The key word is appropriate.
It's the precautionary principle crowd who are the extremists, not me. The advance of civilization depends on trading off one set of risks and benefits against another.
The PP nuts reject all trade-offs and demand that all societal progress come to a complete halt until perfect safety and stability can be assured. This is madness, the ideology of the graveyard. But it is music to the ears of government bureaucrats and environmental hysterics.
That reminds me of an old joke I heard from an Aussie friend: Why did America get the Puritans, and Australia the convicts? Australia had first choice.
Except in this case it seems that a few of the Puritans managed to slip into Oz.
However, state regulations MAY vary! In Ohio, for example, if a company makes under $150,000 a year, as many small businesses do, minimum wage is $2.80/hour
State regulations may mandate a minimum wage higher than the Fed standard, but not lower.
I've been thinking: it's no secret that the blue states subsidize the red states with tax dollars.
And so they should, to the good bleeding-heart liberal who favors progressive taxation and government handouts for the less fortunate. Compare the average yearly incomes in the different states and you will see what I mean.
According to liberal dogma, the wealthy limousine liberal in Connecticut ought to be proud and happy that the government will take money from him and give it to the poor white trash living in a Mississippi trailer park.
Funny how fast that left wing sympathy for the downtrodden vanishes, when the benefits go to stubborn rednecks that don't reward their patrons with votes!
That's the sort of dumb simplistic view you find on the American right,
Well, at the risk of a-1 Off Topic, I will say that there are at least as many dumb simplistic views on the Left.
Exhibit A: Socialist economics. Any dewy-eyed college freshman can believe in socialism, as easily as any dimwitted kid can believe in Santa Claus, and for the same reason.
I'd sure rather prepare in an alarmist mentality and be chagrined to find out that I was blowing things out of proportion than vice-versa.
There's a name for what you are saying-- the "Precautionary Principle." It's complete and utter bullshit. Our ancestors would laugh themselves sick at such a pitiful, pantywaist outlook on life. If they had lived their lives this way, we would have never tamed fire, much less discovered vaccination or flown into space.
People, if you buy into the Precautionary Principle, you are unworthy to be a member of the human species. Go jump off a bridge, before the chaotic turbulence of one of your farts causes a hurricane and kills ten thousand people. You never know! It just might! Better to stop farting forever than take the chance!
If I recall correctly, studies are increasingly showing this to be false. Anyone want to cite sources for/against?
I have a source: Yosemite Valley. Sculpted by glaciers half a mile thick, while our ancestors were mere apes just learning to make stone tools. At other times, tropical plants grew at the poles. If you think the earth is anything even close to a steady-state climatic system, you're a moron.
Anthropogenic warming, as predicted by even the most hysterical doomsayers, is not even a pimple on the ass of natural variation.
The obvious ways to "correct" that are to increase the salinity by removing fresh water, or by adding salt, or some combination thereof. Doing such a thing would be a huge and expensive exercise, but depending on how badly tthings stall and how bad the weather gets, it may well be worthwhile. I expect that there are people working the numbers for various schemes along those lines.
Just off the top of my head, I would estimate that all the energy ever released by human activity, from the first cave man's fire to the Atomic Age, would still be many orders of magnitude less than the amount of energy needed to separate enough fresh water from sea water to affect current flows in the North Atlantic.
Just like the so-called global warming crisis is mere statistical noise when measured against the natural background of changes we know have taken place since the dawn of time.
I really love this post. Only gay people would ever have trouble finding work.
Did I say that? No, I did not. You can be an English major specializing in literary criticism, or for that matter a Queer Studies major, without being gay. It's the field of study that is worthless in the real-world job market, not the sexual proclivities of the job seeker. There are plenty of gay engineers and doctors making serious coin and loving their interesting, challenging, socially useful jobs.
they had old records from philosophers., that families used to sit around the phonogram and listen to.
Well, you have illustrated the academic equivalent of the difference between Michael Jordan and the kids playing basketball at my local park. There is still room at the top for a few superstar philosophers to make a living from books and tapes and lectures, even if they may not call themselves philosophers. Deepak Chopra and Stephen Hawking and George Lucas are philosophers, after a fashion. But there's no way every holder of a Philosophy B.A. can make a living in his chosen field.
I suspect we'd be a lot more thoughtful society if people still revered philosophers like they used to.
Philosophers have inflicted a good deal of misery on the human race, too. I'm sure Hitler and Lenin and Pol Pot considered themselves philosophers.
I'm with William F. Buckley; I'd prefer to be governed by a hundred names picked at random from the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard.
And if there's not, then we're perhaps a bit poorer but really no worse for the wear overall.
Total rubbish from an economic simpleton. Poverty kills. The more money that is deflected towards unobtainable social-engineering goals or speculative global-warming alleviation schemes, the less is spent on food aid and pharmaceutical research and education.
The net benefit to society of every dollar spent on global-warming boondoggles is infinitesimally small. Even if you accept every pronouncement of the global warming scientists, the burden of proof is still on them to show that their proposed solutions would be cost-effective when balanced against all of society's other competing claims on our collective wallet.
Actually, I have not heard of any proposals, short of mass human extinctions and a return to Stone Age conditions, that would even have any meaningful effect on the climate changes alleged by the more excitable type of Green.
Slashdot Mirror
-ccm
You must be projecting your own feelings for me. I don't hate you. I just hate your ideas about politics and economics.
-ccm
Make room for all of God's creatures. Right next to the mashed potatoes.
-ccm
Hmm, let's see: Cow, pig, chicken, lamb, goat, turkey, goose, moose, duck, whitetail deer, mule deer, reindeer (caribou! YUM! The best of all), axis deer, fallow deer, elk, Dall sheep, desert bighorn sheep, mountain goat, javelina, kangaroo, chuckwalla lizard, pigeon, dove, emu, ostrich, quail, partridge, pheasant, rabbit, frog, rattlesnake, pronghorn antelope, nilgai, eland, three or four other African antelopes whose names I forget, sea cucumber, sea urchin, jellyfish, octopus, turtle, squid, crab, lobster, prawns, Moreton Bay bugs, ants, crickets, grubs, snails, and at least three dozen species of fish.... That's about it...
You do have me whipped on the whale meat and horse meat, though; my hat is off to you, Sir.
-ccm
Me. I think Bush is not only good for our country, but the best President in my lifetime. I am proud to have voted for him and would do so again if I could. The louder the Left squeals, the better I like it.
-ccm
Bring it, tough guy. You pathetic tofu eaters would be shot to rags in 36 hours. You'd face not only the full force of the police and military, but many millions of fascist counter-revolutionary baby-eaters like me. And we are positively awash in guns and ammo. I could arm a platoon with the contents of my gun room, most of which are off-paper private purchases.
You had better reconcile yourself to the democratic process, just as I had to do in the Clinton years, or you will face certain doom.
-ccm
Actually, all the well-known corporate scandals took place in the late 1990's, on the watch of a certain good-time Charlie whose mind was on other pursuits, and were exposed very early in Bush's first term.
Not only was Clinton too busy having his dick sucked to take any notice of the largest frauds in American history, but his own DNC Chairman was involved in Global Crossing up to his eyeballs. Terry McAuliffe schemed with his good pal, CEO Gary Winnick, to pump and dump a $100,000 investment to the tune of $18 million, stealing a fortune from pension funds and mom-&-pop investors.
Bush signed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and those responsible for the biggest frauds are being aggressively pursued by the Bush Justice Department. Many of the major offenders have already been convicted and handed stiff sentences, and more are certain to follow.
I am sorry to have to bring this news to all you dewy-eyed college dimwits who think that these are Republican scandals. It must be hard on your tender unformed psyches when reality socks you with a clue-by-four.
Thanks for cleaning up Clinton's mess, W!
-ccm
You understand, of course, that the music business is just like Hollywood. The rules of accounting are distorted beyond recognition to ensure that the big movie studios and major record labels can hoover up all the money. When the musician or director or actor shows up to collect his royalties, it's "Sorry bud. Your album/movie didn't make any profit after expenses."
What I'd like to know is how those companies are booking the income on their own internal accounts, and whether it's being reported to the IRS. They got Al Capone when nobody else could touch him; maybe they can get RIAA/MPAA too.
-ccm
It's like Easterbrook's law of economics: All economic news is always bad. Music critics justify their existence by slamming everyone. Even the good bands get denounced as "sellouts" as soon as the public notices how good they are and starts buying their albums.
Music critics are frequently would-be musicians themselves, but devoid of musical talent, and anybody knows it's easier to tear the other guy down than to build yourself up.
-ccm
The disappointment at not being able to is almost palpable, isn't it?
We need Congressdingbat McKinney to hold some more hearings. There are sure to be witnesses who will accuse Karl Rove and Dick Cheney of controlling the Earth's magnetic field from a giant console in their "undisclosed location." Women and minorities hardest hit, of course!
-ccm
It's the precautionary principle crowd who are the extremists, not me. The advance of civilization depends on trading off one set of risks and benefits against another.
The PP nuts reject all trade-offs and demand that all societal progress come to a complete halt until perfect safety and stability can be assured. This is madness, the ideology of the graveyard. But it is music to the ears of government bureaucrats and environmental hysterics.
-ccm
"English" should be capitalized.
If your grammar was ever off she would proclaim that the "grammar mobile" would be coming to your house and that the grammar police would be notified.
If your grammar were ever off, you mean. Subjunctive mood, please.
I hated her back then, but have since realized how much I hate people that don't use correct grammar or correctly spell their or there properly.
Not me. I hate people who presume to lecture me on grammar and yet make mistake after mistake themselves.
-ccm
-ccm
My shining intellectual prowess dazzles even the dopey young slackers on Slashdot! Neener neener neener!
Give it up, hippie, the future belongs to us right-wing puppy-kickers.
-ccm
Except in this case it seems that a few of the Puritans managed to slip into Oz.
-ccm
Note: Where Federal and state law have different minimum wage rates, the higher standard applies.
A state law that allows a lower minimum wage than the Federal law for any given employment circumstance is moot.
State regulations may mandate a minimum wage higher than the Fed standard, but not lower.
-ccm
And so they should, to the good bleeding-heart liberal who favors progressive taxation and government handouts for the less fortunate. Compare the average yearly incomes in the different states and you will see what I mean.
According to liberal dogma, the wealthy limousine liberal in Connecticut ought to be proud and happy that the government will take money from him and give it to the poor white trash living in a Mississippi trailer park.
Funny how fast that left wing sympathy for the downtrodden vanishes, when the benefits go to stubborn rednecks that don't reward their patrons with votes!
-ccm
Well, at the risk of a-1 Off Topic, I will say that there are at least as many dumb simplistic views on the Left.
Exhibit A: Socialist economics. Any dewy-eyed college freshman can believe in socialism, as easily as any dimwitted kid can believe in Santa Claus, and for the same reason.
-ccm
There's a name for what you are saying-- the "Precautionary Principle." It's complete and utter bullshit. Our ancestors would laugh themselves sick at such a pitiful, pantywaist outlook on life. If they had lived their lives this way, we would have never tamed fire, much less discovered vaccination or flown into space.
People, if you buy into the Precautionary Principle, you are unworthy to be a member of the human species. Go jump off a bridge, before the chaotic turbulence of one of your farts causes a hurricane and kills ten thousand people. You never know! It just might! Better to stop farting forever than take the chance!
-ccm
I have a source: Yosemite Valley. Sculpted by glaciers half a mile thick, while our ancestors were mere apes just learning to make stone tools. At other times, tropical plants grew at the poles. If you think the earth is anything even close to a steady-state climatic system, you're a moron.
Anthropogenic warming, as predicted by even the most hysterical doomsayers, is not even a pimple on the ass of natural variation.
-ccm
Just off the top of my head, I would estimate that all the energy ever released by human activity, from the first cave man's fire to the Atomic Age, would still be many orders of magnitude less than the amount of energy needed to separate enough fresh water from sea water to affect current flows in the North Atlantic.
Just like the so-called global warming crisis is mere statistical noise when measured against the natural background of changes we know have taken place since the dawn of time.
-ccm
Did I say that? No, I did not. You can be an English major specializing in literary criticism, or for that matter a Queer Studies major, without being gay. It's the field of study that is worthless in the real-world job market, not the sexual proclivities of the job seeker. There are plenty of gay engineers and doctors making serious coin and loving their interesting, challenging, socially useful jobs.
-ccm
Well, you have illustrated the academic equivalent of the difference between Michael Jordan and the kids playing basketball at my local park. There is still room at the top for a few superstar philosophers to make a living from books and tapes and lectures, even if they may not call themselves philosophers. Deepak Chopra and Stephen Hawking and George Lucas are philosophers, after a fashion. But there's no way every holder of a Philosophy B.A. can make a living in his chosen field.
I suspect we'd be a lot more thoughtful society if people still revered philosophers like they used to.
Philosophers have inflicted a good deal of misery on the human race, too. I'm sure Hitler and Lenin and Pol Pot considered themselves philosophers.
I'm with William F. Buckley; I'd prefer to be governed by a hundred names picked at random from the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard.
-ccm
Total rubbish from an economic simpleton. Poverty kills. The more money that is deflected towards unobtainable social-engineering goals or speculative global-warming alleviation schemes, the less is spent on food aid and pharmaceutical research and education.
The net benefit to society of every dollar spent on global-warming boondoggles is infinitesimally small. Even if you accept every pronouncement of the global warming scientists, the burden of proof is still on them to show that their proposed solutions would be cost-effective when balanced against all of society's other competing claims on our collective wallet.
Actually, I have not heard of any proposals, short of mass human extinctions and a return to Stone Age conditions, that would even have any meaningful effect on the climate changes alleged by the more excitable type of Green.
-ccm