Cheech

I have plenty of lids I ain't usin no mo, and a OSHP 12ga shotty that needs some action. Let's do this shit.

Do eeeet

Didn't know about the Masshole who didn't have his license, or any license to speak of. The driver is never, ever, going to see the inside of a courtroom (and rightly so), at least not a criminal one. No jury in the world is going to convict the driver based on that video, and although it's possible that the driver could attempt to sue the riders, I doubt he's going to be able to find anyone that isn't in the hospital, or get any appreciable assets out of the ones that he does find. Although the ITG in this thread came on strong (I'm lookin' at you, Butters), I do wonder what would have happened if the driver had been armed, and what the proper self defense measure would be (and no, Butters, indiscriminately shooting into the biker group is not a valid answer).

Fuck yeah.

so·cial·ism noun \ˈsō-shə-ˌli-zəm\ : a way of organizing a society in which major industries are owned and controlled by the government rather than by individual people and companies Last time I looked, the Exchanges were either private (as in, not owned or controlled by the government) or Medicaid/CHIP (which is a previously established program with LONG "socialist" roots that no one seems to have a problem with) Either way, can you show me the legal statute that says it's illegal to pass a "socialist" law, and also their legal definition (or established case law) of what being "socalist" entails? I said it before and I'll say it again. You want a completely free, unregulated market? Move to China. You want a free, unregulated market AND a government that's pint-size, without any unnecessary spending or entitlements? Move to Somalia.

Who's talking about Libertarians? There are PLENTY of hard-line Repubs who read Rand so many times that they're making slashfic out of the main characters. For every piece of evidence (and the plural of anecdote is not data) you bring to the table that premiums are being raise "drastically", I can show you similar data that there are MILLIONS of people that were previously not able to afford healthcare and since they have access to affordable coverage they will hopefully start buying it and reducing the costs for us all with lessened ER visits. Look, I'll save us both some hand-wringing here. It's a law, it passed Constitutional scrutiny, and it's done. Yes, it has some parts that are less than ideal (the individual mandate), but it's a damn sight better than what we had. Republicans had all the time in the world to negotiate and argue about it when it was going through Congress, and instead they all decided that if they just sat on their hands and did nothing, then the bill wouldn't pass. Well, it did. How about you give it a year after it's fully implemented and then we'll see what happens? The same fervent teeth-gnashing happened with the New Deal and Social Security, and I'm willing to bet that a SIGNIFICANT percentage of people that are decrying this LAW are collecting some sort of SS/Medicare benefit, and would probably shoot you in the face with the Garand they kept from the War if you tried to take it away from them.

Using the 0 instead of O completely derailed my arguments. I'm defenseless in the face of such a well-reasoned and well-spoken person.

I wasn't being sarcastic. It seems that the same group of people who keep chanting to burn it down, drown government and so on frequently do it with a copy of Atlas Shrugged in their back pocket. They want to go Galt? Fine by me. Pick a nice parcel of land (my vote is the entire state of Wyoming, and I'll throw in S Dakota for free) we'll fence it off, and they're free to create whatever cornball vision of America they like.

I don't have to, since your argument is invalid on its face. The Dems never engaged in hostage-taking with the gun control debate. They tried to put it in in various forms I'll grant you, such as amendments and riders to other bills (which was a dumb idea then and now), but they never blocked important votes or took hostages in order to get it passed.

You know, this really isn't a terrible idea. The lines more or less have already been drawn.

Look, here it is. The ACA was passed by both houses of Congress. It was signed by a very legal President. It was challenged and held up to judicial review by SCOTUS. Romney attempted to make the Presidential election a referendum on it, and failed miserably, furthermore Republicans failed to generate enough seats to get a majority in the Senate so it could be repealed. You're all out of timeouts and the game's over. The majority of Americans want this, otherwise they wouldn't have fought so hard to get it in there in the first place and keep people in place that wouldn't overturn it. It's passed through every single check and balance this nation has as far as legislation. And for fuck's sake, it just opened for business today, with provisions not related to the exchanges going into effect when the law was signed but the real meat and potatoes starts today. I'm sorry that you feel so bootstrappy that you need to deny healthcare to others, or that you hopelessly cling to the idea that there's a sekrit muslin usurper in the White House, or that you're pissed because you don't understand what the concept of the debt ceiling is and why it's important the US doesn't default. I really am. I'm also fucking pissed off that the majority (at least from what I can see, i know there are a few my age that took this mantle) of these people are Boomers, who don't give a flying fuck what damage they do to the economy or world markets because fuck it, they got theirs and are already retired, why do they give a shit about the rest of us who are trying to build a 401k that's constantly under assault from market uncertainty? In short, sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up, the rest of us grownups who have the mental capacity to engage in open dialogue and work through our differences without engaging in massive hyperbole, disinformation campaigns, or temper tantrums on the House/Senate floor have work to do.

Yup, whatever it takes to make sure those po' folks have to mortgage their non-existent house to go to the doctor!

If the report is to be believed (and I have to start somewhere objective, this thing is already being politicized to hell), then I'm backing the school on taking action, however the action they took was extremely heavy-handed. The kids were shooting at other kids on their way to the bus stop. The school has a vested interest in maintaining the safety of students on their way to or returning from school. Now, this interest has its limits, but just because the kids was popping off airsoft rounds from the comfort of their own yard doesn't diminish the fact that they were intentionally shooting at people other than themselves, and those people did not want to be shot. Now, kicking them completely out of school for this was a bit much and this could have been handled a lot better, but this isn't as cut and dry as your garden variety school board "zero tolerance" overreach. For all we know (speculation ahoy!) these kids could have been bullying the other bus-stop kids, and this was another in a long line of assholish behavior by them.

Much respect. Good work.

Excuses? No, there aren't. However, it's an honest mistake that I'm willing to bet most of us made at one time or another, in this case the cop got burned on it. Given what little I know about his record, there doesn't seem to me to be a lot of reason to toss this guy out for it. Re-training fine, protracted probation with desk duty fine.

If it came out that he was texting while driving then yes, I want him fired, criminal charges for involuntary vehicular assault, as well as a civil suit for both him directly and the OSHP. These guys have hanged felonies around "civilian's" necks for making mistakes not half as worse as this, if they can't uphold the standard they enforce then they have no business being on the job. If, however, it came out that he fell asleep, I have infinitely more sympathy and understanding, and for that the victim's bills should be paid, the option for a civil claim is still on the table as is their right, the cop should be off the road for a while, but I see no reason why he should be forced to step down from his job.

Makes sense. If you're going to go to Microcenter, keep an eye out for the Momentus. BBY won't have them, but it's a good possibility that Microcenter would. Buying parts is easy, reinstalling the OS and all that is a bitch, and I would only want to do it once.

If you can find one locally, the Seagate Momentus are a decent hybrid between solid state drives (which you won't buy because you're a cheapass) and traditional disk drives (which you're going to complain that everything is slow, see earlier cheapass comment) I'd save yourself some money and order one online.

And this guy:

I dunno, whatever it says over there. <---

I'm no munitions expert (paging ReconRat... ) but I'd think that using a large-scale thermobaric weapon such as this would be as much of a surgical strike as me trying to perform an appendectomy with a 20# sledgehammer. Plus, you're still exploding things out and around, so what happens if the weapons are spread out beyond the destructive heat radius but enough within the pressure wave to cause disbursement?

For someone who's such a stickler for facts, you certainly dropped the ball on this one. If there's actionable, direct evidence that the Syrian state knowingly and willfully used chemical weapons on its people, that's a war crime that the UNSC has an obligation to respond to, both militarily (directly or through an intermediary via a Security Council resolution) and/or judicially by handing the case over to the ICC for prosecution. For fuck's sake, it was the entire reason why the UN took over for the defunct League of Nations after WWII. Sans a Security Council resolution asking for direct military involvement from member states, at no point is it America's legal, ethical, or one could argue moral obligation to take unilateral action, and that goes double for taking action without objective, third-party verified evidence to at least half-assedly justify taking that unilateral action. The UN inspection team (that everyone asked for, at least initially) to be that third-party verifier AREN'T EVEN FUCKING DONE, and won't be until AT LEAST THE END OF THE MONTH. There's no goddamn reason for the rush, other than saving Obama's credibility in the international community and his dick-waving with Putin. I'm starting to come around to the idea that he's engineering this vote to fail so he has a public escape route. Either way, brinksmanship isn't the way to handle this.

I'll run this by the GF when she gets home in an hour. I hope he finds a good home ASAP.

From the extremely limited knowledge I have about this, it seems like you are correct. Given chemical weapons' ability to stick to things and not degrade like biological weapons, the best method of destruction (again, spitballin' here) would be a contained, high temperature burn, like with thermite. You ain't getting that by dropping explosive ordnance, if you miss and that shit starts flying everywhere, that's a whole 'nother can of worms. Also, you misspelled Captain Planet. Do I have to do everything around here?

...an axis of assholes, if you will. Taking an awful lot of assumptions in there, eh? As was stated, military service is not an obligation, so you're just flat out lying there. Secondly, to immediately assume that someone is "chickenshit", when there are a bunch of non-voluntary reasons why one would be denied for military service isn't doing your argument any justice. Third, as was discussed in the other thread, just because you were in the military and chose that job to have for however long you had it, does not confer to you some superior title or authority over me who has not served. You're the same person as me, and you're the same person as Magz, you have no super secret squirrel rights and authority just because at one point you served in the military (current active-duty members excepted, of course).