Crap Throwing Monkey

You were hypocritical, I called you out on it, then you cried about me "butting in" to a public exchange, and I called you out on that. NOW you're bitching about me defending LA...and I'm calling you out on THAT as well: when did I say he wasn't condescending? I didn't defend him, I called you out on your hypocrisy.

Some breeds ARE more aggressive than others by nature (I've been around pit bulls, dobermans, rottweilers, shepherds...and the most aggressive - not dangerous - breed I've seen, in fact, are Lhasa Apsos, believe it or not, though they're hardly scary as small as they are.) But nature is only nature; training dictates behavior, nature only dictates how you train (how much, how sternly). I'd sooner trust a responsible owner with a pit bull than I would an absolute dumbasss with a "child friendly" breed like a retreiver. In fact, the guy we just bought our house from has a huge and very territorial Mastiff that had fire in his eyes when he saw me walking up to the house...I wasn't the least bit afriad because I could see the owner handled him firmly. I'm more afraid of those stupid Yorkshire Terriers our current dumbass neighbor owns but doesn't control than I am a well-handled "aggressive" breed.

Really? I think it's normal...

Bugs Bunny isn't cartoons anyway. It's legitimate artwork, as much as the early Disney stuff. But it figures a dumb !@#$ who doesn't know an "entrenching tool" from a "shovel" and thinks Daddy Day Care was a better movie than Saving Private Ryan wouldn't know art if it walked up and bit him in the ass...

He is compared to Jack Bauer.

Because five years ago you would have bitched that they were wasting money armoring non-combat vehicles. Funny how you focus on trucks and not C-130s or C-17s being unarmored. Those are transports that get shot at with little protection for the crew. Probably Blackhawks as well. Why just trucks?

You've got to be kidding. Were you raised in a cave or something?

He did have a parachute. And the nuke was detonated in a valley, with a largish hill between Bauer and it, and I think it was a smallish nuke. They at least tried to give it a veneer of realism. But he has, to date, shot and killed something like 84 people. Most of whom were shooting back at him. I don't recall him ever getting hit by a bullet.

That's right, 24's in LA. There won't be a quake. Not with Jack Bauer on the job.

Gives the boats more flexibility, though, and less incentive to stay out in bad conditions. From the boat's perspective it's probably about a wash; overall risk's probably about the same, but spread out over a longer time. Who'll benefit most is the Coast Guard, who'll be better able to respond to less frequent emergencies.

Who does go "outside the family" for that? Clinton sure as hell didn't, Bush I didn't, Reagan didn't...that's about as far back as I reasonably remember. Plus...define the "family". And consider the source. PastaJoe would consider it "inside the family" if Bush appointed anyone to the right of Ted Kennedy.

You were lucky as hell. I've never heard of a single broker in DC who wasn't pond scum. I'm sure it's like everything else, though: for every good broker, there's 25 who don't see "customers" but "marks", and the good ones' image suffers for it.

Butting in? It's a public board, nitwit. You don't want comments from the peanut gallery, take it to PM.

Hopefully their marketing will improve.

That's not a chick.

As well as the title search, laws, etc...just because I can do something (and I have done a couple hundred title searches, believe it or not. Saved a friend in Amherst a couple hundred thousand on one once) doesn't mean I won't hire a professional. It just means I'll have a better idea of whether or not I'm getting shafted.

I couldn't help noticing, as well, that by ommission the implication is that retatta is acceptable...

Actually, having seen it from many different angles, I suspect the bigger problem lies in your typical transaction involves knowledge of: real estate sales, real estate law, construction, land recordation (which gets screwed up alarmingly frequently), finance including financial planning and mortgage banking, and an alarming shitload of administrata that has to be handled by someone. Expecting any one person to be knowledgable in all that is unrealistic; it is SO friggin' easy for things to get screwed up, with that many people involved. Between me and my wife, we've got about all of those topics covered (I can run comps, do an inspection, title work, finance and financial planning - when my wife doesn't max out her federal deductions . She's more up on process and law than most of the lawyers in her firm - she actually gets paid more for her expertise than they do for theirs.) And we're both still intimidated by this; it's far too easy to miss something because you didn't ask someone the right question.

And LA's condescending? Hello, pot? This is kettle...you're black.

Link?

I don't like Kerry...but I have a hard time getting all giddy about a memo some staffer wrote detailing his food, leisure, and sleep preferences so that he wouldn't have to worry about them during long campaigning stretches of 18-hour days. And I hate tomatos and celery as well. So what?

Like what we did. This house is in line with the comps in the area...a little over, actually, but it's a bit of a nicer house as well, and could probably have gone for more (one couple I overheard looking at it was talking about offerring $25k more than us...but the owner liked us better. )

Yeah, you should have seen some of the nonsense we saw. We saw one new construction, "ready to move in", where none of the doors were hung square (one door to the back deck had actually carved a gouge in the floor), the windows were friggin' painted shut, the carpet had paint drops all over it, and whatever yahoo finished the deck didn't bother to cover anything, so there's overspray all over the siding and windows!!! The wife does settlements for new constructions; some of the stories about construction quality she has are ridiculous...like the luxury condos a developer built, forgetting to install the ductwork. The lawsuits drove them out of business in short order. Personally, I'm happy to own something from an era when they valued craftsmanship and took pride in their work.

Perhaps. Technically, I thought Boeing's entry was more impressive...but less suitable as a combat plane. And it's also a great example of the typical sh------- way the government runs things. A design built around a fundamentally conflicting set of requirements, in a program so damned big that everyone in the government has a stake in it. JSF is the epitome of the federal diarhhetic elephant: massive, hard to move, impressive in its own way, and good for little more than generating incredible amounts of sh--. And of the major DoD acquisition programs right now, that's my favorite. Don't even get me started on FCS...

'50s housing boom. The guy's the original owner. It's actually kind of intimidating; here he raised a family, sent them off into the world to raise their families, and just buried his one-and-only wife last October (hell, this day and age, it's intimidating this guy was married just once.) It's very much like he's leaving all those memories in our hands for safe keeping. (Side note: no one tell meazza I feel this way. I have a rep to maintain.) Even aside from that...beautiful house. Solid '50s construction with a few well-constructed additions (you wouldn't even know they're additions from looking; they're very well constructed and architecturally blended). This guy did most of the interior himself, and did beautiful work. Good neighborhood full of "greatest generation" people (met the guy down the street; he won about six medals in the Ardennes in WWII; four years ago some historian doing research at National Archives found his recommendation for a CMH, so now he's in line for that.) Very nice house... But geez, the closing costs...would be easier if my dear, sweet, misguided wife hadn't raised the number of deductions on her paycheck to 12 (!!!) last year. In three weeks, I'm supposed to cut Uncle Sam a check for thirteen thousand dollars. LA: actually, what did it was the "family room" addition which is just about the perfect size for my library/office (200 square feet of open wall space - about 16 more than I need for my books.)