Terry Tate

Please tell us you sell propane and propane accessories, and you were just there to land a big account.

Bills still need a DT. Can you wrestle coach Krumrie?

I don't have an answer for bankruptcy law; I just wanted to mention that simultaneously having a mortgage, car loan, student loans and credit card debt is really unwise. Not only for the hardship due to the loss of a job, but the huge cost to you in terms of additional expenses - you're paying a premium for having everthing you want now, instead of waiting. This statement is obviously geared towards the credit card debt and car loans vs any of the other debt, but also includes not pushing your credit to the absolute limit for the house, either. If any of our dear readers are currently in this situation, please do all you can to avoid this, and make a serious effort to reduce your debt load. But you did say six months, so if our hypothetical family had that much savings to live off of, they at least planned that part of it. Many would be facing a negative balance within three months. Steel yourself against the constant barrage of "buy now, pay later" - you're paying top dollar, when you don't need to.

I find little (personally, actually no) solace in being told up front that I'm being robbed. Lied to and robbed is worse, but I'm still getting robbed either way. I want another choice. I'd talk to my congressman about it, but I'd have to stand in line with 639,295 other people.

The "People's House" simply isn't anymore, and hasn't been for some time. I apologize if what follows is old news to some, but past high school I'm self-taught on civics, so I honestly wouldn't know what is covered in colleges and universities. After the Constitution was ratified, the first Congress met and proposed ten articles that were ratified into amendments, aka the Bill of Rights - everyone knows that, right? Don't answer too quickly - because there were twelve articles proposed, not ten. These were the issues the states had been guaranteed would be addressed in order to achieve ratification of the Constitution. Articles 3-12 were ratified and became the Bill of Rights everyone should be familiar with. Article 2 - Regulating Congressional Pay, actually passed over two hundred years later, becoming the 27th amendment. But the first article proposed, the one with the greatest significance, before freedom of speech, before the right of people to peaceably assemble, etc? It was to set the level of representation in the "People's House" to a level determined after the first census. What level did they think appropriate? One representative for a population of 30,000 people. Unfortunately (some suggest deliberately), the article as proposed had an internal logic error, and there were states fighting not only to achieve their maximum representation, but to deny others from getting too much - and it did not pass. But the general expectation of the states, one of the agreements that their ratification of the Constitution was based upon, was that there would be a common divisor so that districts were equally sized, and that the size would remain near the constitutional minimum of 30,000. Today, each congressman "represents", on average, over 680,000 people. That number continues to climb quickly. Every decade the size of Congress was increased to reflect the size of the population, until it reached 435 in 1913. In 1941, Congress passed a law fixing it at this size permanently. I believe this was unconstitutional, as the founding fathers clearly meant for the number of representatives to grow along with the population. They recognized citizen's participation was crucial to protect the citizens from the government. Nowhere is Congress authorized to permanently fix the size of the House. This freeze in the size has a lot of predictable outcomes (predicted, in fact, by some of the founding fathers), many of which we are suffering the effects of today. With an average House district size of well over 600,000 people and a two-year term, representatives are forced to raise enormous amounts of money to campaign. The pressure to obtain these funds starts on day one, and makes the average human being subjected to a level and intensity of consistent corruptive influences that I doubt many here would be able to contend with. Corruptive influences, by the way, that find it much easier to focus their influence successfully on a smaller number of individuals who have way too much power than they would a larger number of individuals wielding nowhere near as much individual power in a larger House. If the districts were closer to 30,000 people, they could practically campaign door to door. Doing the math on this, it's pretty easy to see that a population of almost 300,000,000 people would require a House of nearly 10,000 representatives. Is that necessary? Well, James Madison believed the size of the House should have a maximum, lest it turn into a mob. So frankly, I don't know what the appropriate size would be. But I'm sure any of the founding fathers would have immediately recognized the problem with having a People's House of 435 representatives for a population of nearly 300,000,000.

Discussed in this thread.

I haven't gotten that far yet. I'm still upset Gale Gilbert never got a shot. "You did it before in college, there's no reason we can't do it now." - Gale Gilbert to Frank Reich, Jan 3, 1993. Reich had just had a pass intercepted and returned for a TD by Bubba McDowell to make it Oilers 35, Bills 3 with 28 minutes to go in the AFC Championship game.

I didn't think you would, but I always ask. I do apologize if the rest of my post seemed directed at you. I didn't mean to imply you were saying 'GOP - Stupid, Dem - Brilliant!' - that thread is woven through TV and print/(and now, internet) media and op-ed, and I just got on a rant.

Now that's kind of curious to me, because you nearly always remark about how stupid he is. Could you give some idea of what people, and how they would know? If it would not betray anyone's confidence, of course. And I'm aware you have the same low opinion of, well, seemingly everyone's intelligence except yours. But after years of hearing nonsense about how 'stoopid' this or that Republican is/was, or how a particular Democrat is clearly the smartest to ever hold public office, I don't buy into any of it. I don't think either Bush or Kerry are geniuses, but I don't have any problem assuming they may both be slightly above the average level IQ for college graduates, say in the mid 120's somewhere. BTW, most of the people who think they are smarter than Bush usually attribute the clever scheming to someone else (Rove, Wolfowitz, Cheney, etc). Finally, I don't think it would be out of the question for someone with a BA from Yale and an MBA from Harvard that pursues a political career to make use of populist, folksy language - including some that may make you cringe - in an attempt to endear himself to common folk. I'm not saying this is the case, just acknowledging it would not be out of the realm of possibility. Because as John Kerry found, and by KRC's report the Libertarians appear to be figuring out, people don't vote for plans, they vote for people.

At least she upgraded to the Lincoln-Mercury badge. If you're going to trade one of your children for a car, you should get the 'luxury' version. If you go with standard features, you'll be kicking yourself later.

LOL, I hate that song, and the obligatory exploding graphics are something I never really thought about until you said it - it's true. As a bonus for me, a Florida car dealership uses the MNF song to further torture me - 'are you ready for a truck, or a sport utilitee-hee?' Ugh. I usually turn the game on, but I'm often doing something else by halftime.

Which kind of rules out one single deal with Tampa (at 5), Arizona (at 8), possibly Philly (at 31) to accomplish. It would take multiple moves. That would be interesting. And, it would almost guarrantee I'd never understand the end result of the actual value of the trades, no matter how many times I read it.

Never happen, gentlemen. If there were to be another large-scale terrorist attack, the pressure to further restrictions would be intense, and the opposition to it would be demonized. (Think of the children. How can you be against saving children?) Hopefully, intelligence agencies and law enforcement continue to keep the threat of this down. But if they fail, the proposed legislation will be horrible, and the resulting legislation will be disappointing. Which is kind of where we are now.

I thought their point was that it wasn't one party that was responsible, which is pretty well documented. Republicans' behavior has been galling because they won many of those seats that gave them the majority by masquerading as the fiscally responsible party. As we now see, that is not the case - it wasn't big government they were against, it was the Democratic version. Republicans believe their version of big government is better. The end result is if you're a single-issue voter deciding between R and D, it's pointless to focus on the amount of money the government spends, or the size of government. The only debate in that regard is what it's being spent on - which on individual issues is can certainly still be a worthwhile debate. The question I have is this - with the understanding that both parties will overspend, is growth inevitable, and can only be slowed or re-directed? I know too many self-described 'conservatives' who will then also state their support of one government program or another, so I don't believe a third party will ever gain enough power to make a difference in this regard (that is, there aren't enough actual conservatives to reverse this trend). I have yet to decide where this will take my vote in the future. It is clear that in regard to spending, there is no one in the two major parties who takes my side, and only justification for a 'lesser of two evils' vote. Not the case on every issue, but certainly on this one.

You tell me. I just read the article that you linked in your post. "President Bush stepped back on Thursday from plans requiring passports from people to enter the United States, concerned the effort to tighten borders against terrorists would hamper legal travel from Canada, Mexico and other U.S. neighbors." My post was just a sarcastic response I have when I see posts from the same people, always expressing their outrage (or should it be OUTRAGE!) over the same specific politician or party, in every post, on any subject, for any reason.

Makes an effort to increase security at our borders, then adjusts it to allow for the relationships with our neighbors. Yeah, what an outrage.

The longer this argument goes on, the funnier it gets. It's make-believe! The author says it's true! The author says it's make-believe! He says he believes it! It's still made up! If he believes it, then he thinks it isn't make-believe! (start over at the top)

Current age: 42 Life Expectancy: Late teens, early 20's at the outside. Just incredible I made it through those years. Everything past that has been a gift. The test said 90-something, but I figure I've already passed my real-world expectancy. Today's a freebie!

That's what I gathered from reading about him here on TSW, but I didn't know if TD was just whistling past the graveyard, or if it was seriously a consideration, or what. If you guys don't buy it, none of the other team's GMs will buy it. Bummer.

I've always done it myself, including clearing, fencing and cross-fencing 5 acres, but if it's not your bag and you can afford it, I have no problem with hiring it out. Just please take care of what you have somehow. Don't be the guy that brings down the neighborhood. Doesn't have to be a magazine cover, just keep it cleaned up.

If your commute includes 66 or the beltway at any point, sell your car, purchase a full-size pickup, and replace the bumpers with railroad ties. Apply a little extra anti-persperant before you leave the house, and skip the extra cup of coffee - the andrenaline rush should more than make up for it.

In the RD&C article on the TBD front page "Henry is an ace in Bills' deck for draft" Leo Roth quotes TD as saying the starting line as it stands now would be "Gandy at left tackle, Anderson at left guard, Trey Teague at center, Chris Villarrial at right guard, Mike Williams at right tackle." I don't know if this has been posted before (I mean, the 'official' depth chart reflects last year's lineup), but I'm curious what people think of this as the starting day lineup. Long ways to go, but if it should happen, what do you think? Just curious - I'm not as knowledgable on the individual players skills as many here.

An angel. Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings. At least that's what teacher says. Nice going, Clarence.

Tommy: Did you hear I graduated? Richard Hayden: Yeah and just a shade under a decade. All right. Tommy: You know a lot of people go to college for seven years. Richard Hayden: I know, they're called doctors.

I haven't read it, but the reviews it has received sound like it is a wonderful, well-written story. As far as the truth goes, the best conspiracy theories always contain enough truth to mask the line between fact and fiction. Which is precisely the 'big lie' about any grand conspiracy theory. That the individuals involved are somehow different than every other human on earth, and never have any motivation or willingness to allow any of the 'facts' about the alleged conspiracy out. The longer the alleged conspiracy continues, the more individuals it touches, the more ridiculous this presumption becomes.