birdog1960

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squatting. if you disagree then explain why.

yes, they have been a problem since they've been squatting on land there for decades. would it be much worse? our multiple attempyts at direct intervention certainly haven't improved things in the region from a perspective of our own national interests.

they're the same barbaric, war mongering players that were present long before we chose a side to give military aid to, thus alienating much of the other side.

this http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=sumerians+british+museum&qpvt=sumerians+british+museum&qpvt=sumerians+british+museum&FORM=IQFRML#view=detail&id=2F2FDB017452A184773E0493191CFEB122FEB49D&selectedIndex=98 is what is likely to happen. been going on 1000nds of years without our intervention. not likely to stop anytime soon regardless of what we do or don't do. unfortunately, i can't find a picture of the massive carving from the british museum showing the sumerians in battle and then killing prisoners and taking others as slaves.

let em figure it out for themselves, with their own resources. step aside and watch what happens.

it's plenty enough that if we pulled that support the israelis would be hair-on-fire wild and calling in markers all over washington dc. love to see it happen.

i feel you can stop after "yes". no "but". spying on the citizenry should be a line in the sand.

he'd be much less smug if his military wasn't propped up financially by our tax dollars

but spying on the citizenry is the mean to that end, non?

thanks for bursting the bubble. that implies many mediocre teams and a very few very bad ones and very good ones. seems to me there were more at the top and bottom and fewer in the middle previously. agree?

smug versus concerned. i know which emotion i find more appealing in a leader especially in today's world. you? nevermind.

"may the odds be always in your favor"

every year there are at least a dozen teams with no realistic chance of winning a sb. we've been one of those teams for almost 20 years. we all know that the concentration of talent and top coaches is not even close to equivalent throughout the league so arguing 32 teams and 32 to 1 odds is false and flawed logic. it's really among the top 12 teams or so as was said earlier although there have been some outliers. as i recall, the giants were pretty big outliers the year of wide right. anyway, i'm not sure 33:1 for the bills this year is a stellar bet based on probabilities but i'll likely make it based on pride and optimism. very happy to see it. on the flip side, it took pegula 1 year to reach this point. doesn't say much for our beloved previous owner's will to win. if he really wanted it, he coulda done it too. oh well, i'll try to look ahead and not behind.

for all of you that have made this bet regularly, how long has it been since the odds to win were this low? last timer i bought a ticket was prolly 10 years ago and i got 200:1.

we don't always agree but we certainly do here. it's scary as shite. big brother for real. 1984 in 2015. the frightening analogies are nearly endless. it's abuse of power leading to a logarithmic concentration of power and it's all very secret. the guy that told us about it is public enemy number one. truth is stranger than fiction. i don't get how libertarians aren't leading the charge here. i guess the paul's have made some screeches, especially the old man. and i salute him for that. it's the truly patriotic thing to do. but how many of the mainline wannabe candidates are screaming about it on either side? and the so called libertarians here seem to think the aca is a bigger threat to individual rights than this. i don't get it. kinda reminds me when one we first invaded iraq and anyone that questioned the wisdom was considered unpatriotic and shunned. the mob mentality at work and it works very well here.

i'm just wondering how a chapter in oklahoma knows the words verbatim to a racist song first popularized in the frat 150 years ago. do you know the song? was anything similar taught to you or would telling us nullify the secret handshake? the fact that the song survives, unchanged over generations within the frat isn't an accident. it happened by design.

do you? there all on youtube right?

that might be funny if the hazing scenarios weren't so plausible. but in SAE's case it'd probably be a topsider or perhap a mount blanc fountain pen clenched instead of a sharpie

why isn't the question posed by your statement that it wasn't illegal. the expert in the pbs piece disagrees with you on the question of legality. sine he was invited and does TEDS talks on economic issues and you don't, i favor his version of the facts.

ot was illegal to do it to this extreme: So what’s changed? Stock buybacks were once considered a form of illegal stock manipulation, until 1982, when President Ronald Reagan’s Securities and Exchange Commission chair John Shad (a former Wall Street CEO) loosened the rules. It was this rule change that made possible the shift toward stock-based compensation that has driven the dramatic rise in the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay, from 20-to-one in 1965 to about 300-to-one today. Before 1982, such massive stock grants would have diluted the number of shares outstanding, causing both EPS and share prices to tumble. But armed with the SEC’s seal of approval, CEOs can now prop up EPS by diverting profits into stock buybacks, making their own previously unimaginable compensation packages possible.

ATO, dude. there was/is a hierarchy among frats at different schools. i suspect you are well aware of this. SAE was reputed as being monied. ATO, not so much. Phi alpha -isn't that the one that has the infamous "liqour in the front, poker in the rear" party? c'mon it's multi generational racism at work here. it's carefully cultivated and passed on. and it's present in many surprising factions of american society.

not when it's artificially propped up. it, as usual, greatly benefits a few at the cost of the many. and it used to be illegal for this very reason. it should be again.

i'm interested in your response to hanauaer ccontention on stock buy backs and how it relates to lower wages and the falling middle class that i linked earlier: Between 2003 and 2012, the companies that make up the S&P 500 spent an astounding 54 percent of profits on stock buybacks. Last year alone, U.S. corporations spent about $700 billion, roughly 4 percent of GDP, simply propping up their share prices by repurchasing their own stock. And much of the rest of these profits has been paid to shareholders in the form of dividends. Over the past 10 years, according to data compiled from its public filings, Wal-Mart has spent more than $65.4 billion on stock buybacks — about 47 percent of its profits. That’s an average of more than $6.5 billion a year in stock buybacks, enough to give each of its 1.4 million U.S. workers a $4,670-a-year raise. In the past, this money flowed through the broader economy in the form of higher wages or increased investments in plants and equipment or in public investment. But today, trillions of dollars of windfall profits are being sucked out of the real economy and into a paper asset bubble, inflating share prices while producing nothing of tangible value

"baring that"? what exactly. i think you,ve just invented your very own idiom. how nice. but what's more interesting is that of all the points i made there, you choose to refute the most insignificant and small. not that the others are any more easily attacked...

it takes time to sort itself out. if everyone made at least $15/hour there'd be more people able to afford to eat out at a $15 buffet on a more frequent basis and a lot less never able to afford a $10 one. i doubt c level execs that have seen billions diverted to them from the middle class make up much of these places biz. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/10/25/cheat-sheet-middle-class-cant-afford/17730223/