OCinBuffalo

1. Read your own signature, moron. 2. You know what else I can't find? Where you give us your bona fides to speak as an authority about the mortgage industry. Mine are: I managed a $30 million enterprise system of record conversion and integration project for a year, so that means knowing their whole thing, at a top 5 national mortgage company. But, even I know that there are people on this board who know the mortgage business better than I do.... EDIT: Notice how they are all ducking me on the "a Real Democrat would never support Obamacare, because a Real Democrat doesn't give away union benefits to non-union people" thing? Hysterical. I been saving it for an opportune time.

I am speaking Democrat....so...as a Democrat, remind me again why I wouldn't be treating theories as though they are solutions, please....

Does affirmative action give money/placement based on individual achievement, or does it simply treat every black kid who gets through high school the exact same? How does a black kid who's parents are high net worth from suburban Atlanta(who I know)....end up being treated the exact same affirmative action-wise, as a black kid from a single parent home in gangland(who I also know)? If they both ended up with the same test scores which one worked harder to get there? Answer: wrong, no matter what you said, because you don't know either kid, do you? Which one has more ability? Which one has more needs? I could fill a convention center with the things you don't know about these kids....but yet you think affirmative action, and all the other poor(read: targeted towards blacks)/social justice programs are wonderful one-size-fits-all methods for solving the problem. How many more decades of your failing methods must we endure? You know? I don't know why I even bother. You have no idea that they are completely different people, do you? To you they are just "black kids we have a moral obligation to care for", aren't they?

Nope. I simply want us to free ourselves of trying to make cheap political points, as BishopHedd and, not including hedd, the cowardly posters who all ran away from this board as soon as the surge worked were doing with Iraq, when the subject of war comes up. I want most people to accept the fact that on the topic of war in general, and military action specifically, they have no idea WTF they are talking about....and they should take the word of the professionals...who have been doing it every day for the last 30 years over that of the Huffington Post or Sean Hannity. But most of all, I want people to understand that President, the office, not the man, has to make these decisions and does not make them lightly. As a country we can do without the vilification and the utter nonsense. War happens. Grow up.

No... No...exactly as much as no REAL Democrat would have voted yes for it without demanding a hold on all foreclosures without government oversight . We are talking Democrats here, right? Why am I explaining how Democrats do things to a Democrat? Our tax money was supposed to be used by the banks to lend to people, and get the economy moving(our problems)...NOT to be spent on what amounts to a turnaround activity(their problems). Why weren't the Democrats...who were in control of House/Senate/Presidency...riding an Obama 65% approval rating...unable to demand that the money be used as intended? You know what? Don't even bother. There is no excuse for what occurred. And a REAL Democrat knows that. No REAL Democrat would ever support Obamacare, because it puts non-union workers = union workers. But, you aren't a REAL Democrat, so you have no idea WTF I am talking about, do you?

Actually, this has nothing to do with you at all. Carry on.

Oh no...booster and his imaginary friends on this board have already determined your rep. Didn't you know that? Booster is such an obvious liberal: the dismissive smugness, the superior tone...with absolutely nothing, in word or deed, that justifies either. It's like a veiled form of Moslon_Golden's old "being a liberal makes me an intellectual" shtick. Remember that? That's the real problem here: People running around with nothing but one corollary/statistic to make their point, and nobody with a hint of data that supports any sort of causal relationship. People emoting at an Oprah level, and, a-holes trying to score political points, on both sides, on the backs of black people. Here's some things I think we all can agree on: If your "culture" celebrates bad behavior, it is indefensible. Therefore, using your culture as a defense for your bad behavior is retarded. If your culture sucks, it's time to get a new one. If your culture celebrates bad behavior, and mine locks you up for it, and more people subscribe to mine, don't be shocked if your azz ends up in prison with nobody giving a flying F about you or your awful culture. Why should we? You are an assclown who celebrates bad behavior. I don't see how telling a black person that based on national stats, they are less able, individually, therefore, entitled to more "help", but not more or less than any other individual black person, because they are the same as every other black person...can in any way define "judging men based on the content of their character". Whose character? The man's or the entire demographic's? Isn't defining an entire race's character...as homogeneous....the very definition of prejudice? The entire point has been missed: creating a one size-fits-all government solution for black people sucks exactly as much as creating one for white people. Once again, we see that despite the noblest of motives, the method fails...to the degree that the motive becomes irrelevant. Same old pattern. Time to improve/remove the method.

This is a good thread to tell this story: About 6 years ago, my crew had a real problem with referring to things that were bad as "gay", myself included. One of my guys had just gotten his first apartment and his first cable subscription. Of course he signed up for the full package...including Cinemax. He found out, as many have, that the "porn" on Cinemax is endless, lame, and stupid. But, he kept watching, because, it's porn, and, he hoped it would improve. One day he walks into the bullpen and says "So..the last couple nights I have been watching nothing but gay porn. Does it get any better?" That was the end of calling things gay.

Actually, grampa OC was an elected Democrat. An elected Democrat who would be literally cracking ..lybob's, and the rest of the far-left's, heads right now. All of the good will that the labor unions/New Dealers worked and in most cases had to literally fight to create in this country has been used and abused and is now FUBAR. The concept that "the Democrats are better on the economy" is totally destroyed and with it 90% of what OC's grampa spent his whole life on. That's why it's hysterical for me to listen to people like ...lybob talk about being a Democrat. You think I'm kidding with the head cracking thing? I spent many elections standing around the fire barrel, listening to the union guys tell stories about grampa OC. NONE of them would have signed up for what the supposed Democrats are doing now. Bailing out Big Banks who turn around and put working people in the street? Allowing non-union people to get the same benefits union people do(Obamacare)? ...and about 1000 other things that have gone on since 2006? Like I said: cracking heads. For the last time: I have no issue with Jim and Steve touching pee pees, and I probably have more gay friends and co-workers than you do. I work in NYC and San Francisco about 30% of the time. You figure it out. Also, you have argued yourself into a circle. If I am guilty of what you routinely accuse me of...then it's physically impossible for me to even care about this, never mind actually consider the idea itself. Nice work. Either way you are full of schit, dolt. More evidence that all you can be effective at here is posting emoticons. And, I simply don't trust idiots who tell me that they have no solution, but that I shouldn't worry and/or that I'm a bad person because I dare to demand they provide a solution before I sign up for their idiot "no plan" plan. You, clearly, are one of those idiots. Apparently Zulu didn't read this. Right, and 80% of the lawsuits the ACLU files are not based on dumbassery. You highly doubt? The Roman Catholic Church is the brass ring for these haters. As if these people haven't gone after the Boy Scouts. As if these people aren't every bit as vindictive and judgmental as the Evangelical Christians they hate. You doubt. Hysterical. And therefore: my bet still stands. If you are honestly believe that the ACLU/far-left tools will file 0 lawsuits based on this law, put your 100 naked youtube pushups where your mouth is. Otherwise: understand that all I am asking for is that some lawyers and politicians do their f'ing jobs and write rational laws prior to any changes in an effort to spare us a giant cluster F.

Yes, but not in the way that you think: If, since 2005, this board was bereft of: 1. honest-to-God idiots like conner 2. easy targets like Holcombs_Arm(for the newbs, that's where 3.5 comes from) and Exiled in Illinois 3. people who place a higher value on short posts and auto-posting.......rather than actually taking the time to think their posts through and/or check their facts and/or construct reasonable arguments in their posts(causing them to be longer than one sentence ) then I am fairly certain DC_Tom would have tired of this board....years ago. But the fact is that this board abounds with these people, and apparently Tom has the time and motivation to own them all. So, yeah, he's a hypocrite...because stupidity, or more accurately ignorance, has made this a target-rich environment for him.

That's why I enjoy being a principled person. I understand that sometimes a President has to make a call, and usually the info he's basing that call on is incomplete and/or inaccurate, Republican or Democrat. That's what happened with Iraq, and that is what is happening, I think, with Afghanistan and Libya now. I understand that because as a leader, I know that most leaders, at every level, have to make calls based on incomplete and/or inaccurate info. Conversely, there are people on the left who are consistently anti-war and therefore also principled people. The problem is: you can count them on your fingers.

Perhaps you can explain to me why we don't simply declare war on people? I never understood that, and it seems like the War Powers act attempts to get around it. We should have declared war on Afghanistan, and on Iraq, as we had legal pretense for both. 9/11 and Iraq breached their surrender agreement with us on too many occasions to count, respectively. We agreed to a cessation of hostilities, and accepted a conditional surrender. If those conditions were broken, we go right back to 1991. But, because don't formally declare war, or re-declare it, we open the door and the cavalcade of conner morons pour through. Spare me the "we don't want to look like a big nation picking on smaller ones" I mean honestly: how else would you define our foreign policy over the last 10 years...especially that now that we are at war in 5 Arab countries? I am quite certain the Libyan who just got sauced by a drone rocket doesn't care that we didn't declare war before saucing him. So who exactly are we doing this for...and why do we care what they think? Really. Why do I care what some pissant in a pissant country thinks about us taking out scumbags? What's the worst they can do? Not come to our aid in a war? Well, they already do that...so what should I actually be concerned with? (Where are the far-left peaceniks now? Where are the "No Blood for Oil" signs? Does anyone need further confirmation of just how unprincipled and phony these people are?)

Probably for the following reasons: 1. Steve Jobs defines the word "giant douche". 2. Steve Jobs only had to come back and "save Apple" because he was forced out due to #1 and #4. 3. Steve Jobs refuses to admit mistakes and honestly believes he knows better than everybody about everything in IT. 4. Due to #3, Steve Jobs cannot learn from mistakes: see not allowing the Mac to be open to outside developers...and getting killed by PC because of it...and then, not letting the iPhone be open to outside developers...and about to get killed by Droid and Blackberry because of it. 5. The company never would have been in near bankruptcy had it not been for the blatant stupidity described in #4. 6. Steve Jobs will continue to insist that he was right all along about open architectures being bad and insisting that Apple maintain totalitarian, planned economy-type control(uh, only allowing developers to charge $14 per app is socialist price fixing)...right up until he dies...and then somebody once and for all makes Apple the viable competitor to PC it should have been all along....or Macs will simply go away. Ultimately, it was the loyalty of skilled workers companies cannot afford to lose, like engineers, architects, etc., that kept the Mac alive when every IT department in the world wanted them dead. Ever try networking a Mac in 1995? That's why. Steve Jobs got lucky that these skilled workers held their ground. Period.

And, I don't want to see the entire legal system turned into a circus with case after case of buffoonery, which has real consequences, just so you can have a self-righteous Hallmark moment, which is worthless to everyone but you. What about marrying a woolly mamouth are we supposed to "weigh" exactly? Should the kids from this guys first marriage get f'ed out of their inheritance by the mammoth? Does a mammoth now have legal standing in court? How about kids from 2 different women? IF one of the women sue for divorce, does that mean the other woman can claim custody and visitation rights on kids that aren't hers? If the first women gets the divorce, does the other woman now have to pay child support on kids that aren't hers? These aren't "worse case scenarios" these are basic legal questions that have basic legal answers when we define marriage as between a man and a woman, and only in that circumstance. You appear to want to gleefully open a can of worms you have no idea how to deal with...all so you can have a Hallmark moment. That's capricious, to say the least.

IF they do....I really hope that they put a law together without unintended consequences...that also doesn't force churches to marry people they don't want to marry, that can be used as a viable contract in other states, and doesn't open the door to all kinds of buffoonery marriages or anything else that brings the entire enterprise to a crashing halt...and clogs the court system for decades. How about this: you owe me 100 naked youtube push-ups if the ACLU files a suit, using an affirmative vote on this measure, to force a church to marry 2 dudes, or, if any other state refuses to recognize the contract, or, if the ACLU files suit to allow the marriage of 3 people, or anything else you don't intend occurs. This is not a moral question, because it is based merely on values, not principles. Rather, it is absolutely a legal question, and unless you have all the legal answers...you are signing up for a mess.

Yeah, ok Lt. Steve. Perhaps you can do a "Frenchie" impersonation next?

Hysterical. If you must know, I do the exact opposite. We don't sit at meetings. They last 15 minutes, and I will leave if I don't hear anything important....which ends the meeting. I send 3 sentence emails as a matter of course to clients, never mind my people. As usual, you are 100% wrong, and there's 0 point in talking about what I bring to the project: everybody already knows and I don't have to say a word. Here is the only place where I write long...and that's because dopes like you can't come to the conclusion you got-->from me, without it. Where are your conclusions? Where do you ever say anything other that "I agree" without telling us why? The answer is simple: you don't really know why. You just read what other people say and it sounds good, so you go along with it...or not...and either way post a dopey emoticon.

Oh I certainly agree, and if I was one of the Karl Roves running this thing in the background I sure as hell would resist any attempt to make this the strategy. I merely think that this is what is likely to happen, regardless of all efforts on both sides. People aren't really going to buy in to any of the rhetoric...really, unless a "voted for it before I voted against it" thing comes along. But really, the polls show that people are either sick of or pissed at Obama. He hasn't been a centrist. He refuses to realize that his party is a minority in this country, with only 20% of our people actually believing what he does. He doesn't understand that you can't be "everybody's President" if you only represent and attend to 20% of the people. He refuses to realize that college professors don't know how to run businesses in a practical environment, never mind entire economies. I, and many other people I have met, even people on this board, could have done a better job advising him on the economy than they did. It sucks that we have to go through hell to finally prove, once and for all, that Keynesian economics sabotages, not stimulates, economies. Hopefully this is the very last time we allow college professors from Berkley to become economic saboteurs. These, 100% valid, indictments are so massive, in there scope, never mind their scale...that I think it's clear that Not Obama will work by default...and possibly in spite of any Republican designs.

Um, no, quite the opposite. Mannnny people who knew me in college are astounded by what I ended up doing. Pretty sure they had me figured to be a bartender/professional alcoholic after college. They were idiots, because they never bothered to actually ask what I did when I wasn't drinking. Or, when only slightly drinking I was merely responding in absolute terms based on Buftex's absolute terms. I have never had a WoW account. Interesting that you abbreviated it exactly how someone with a WoW account would though.

Yes, he's caught in a logic trap: 1. he is either competent, but screwed it up, or, 2. he is incompetent. Either way he's an idiot for walking into the trap as easily as he did. I remember the high points of that thread and how your question evolved. Notice that nobody is even trying to defend the positions in that thread anymore. There really is no argument left to have. So, really, ...lybob is doing the only thing he can do: STFU and hope we move on. EDIT: This is like me with The Surge...in fact I would say the surge unequivocally working, just as I said, for the reasons I said, left many a dumbass poster here with the same option ...lybob has. So now you have been able to hang one on ...lybob...enjoy!

That's because ethics is a useless term invented to avoid this fundamental truth: There are only values and principles. By contrast, ethics can mean anything to anyone, can be defined by anyone, at any given point in time and is wholly dependent on point of view. Principles are universal: it will never be OK for anyone to kill, lie, cheat, steal, etc. because we need tax revenue or for any other reason. That is true the world over. Values on the other hand are cultural, familial, you name it, and can be changed at the drop of a hat. Some very principled people are ok with polygamy, some very principled people are not. Some cultures value haggling over a set price, etc. Drugs by themselves violate exactly 0 human principles...which is exactly why you cannot get people to stop taking them, selling them, or making them. Some people may not value them as much as others, but nobody in their right mind equates doing drugs with stealing, lying, cheating and certainly not killing. And, certainly there are some very principled people who value doing drugs. And, the celibacy of priests goes a looooong way back to the Holy Roman Empire and Charlamange...who was a polygamist btw, and so does the definition of marriage as monogamy taking the place of polygamy. It all came down to real estate. It was about trying to make sure a mini-war didn't start every time a noble died, and, as most priests were the 2nd sons of nobles, etc. had the added benefit of the church being able to claim the land that was left to the priest if no other heir survived. Again, celibacy and monogamy are merely values. They are not principles. That is why the gay marriage/health care is a right/social justice arguments fail: they are based on values, not principles. When you hear Democrats talk about "people who share our values"...that's actually accurate. However, the fact that they are trying to use language to merge the concept of principles with values is lost on no one but idiots.

Got any other witty responses there Lt. Steve? Got some "comedy, and yumor" for us? Perhaps you should focus your energy on answering 3rdandlng's question. What has been? I forget, but it's probably at least 2 months since he asked what makes your opinion a qualified one. Your refusal to answer really sets off my BS allergy. Perhaps you should start by telling us why rent control causes aggregate rent prices to increase, rather than decrease as intended. That usually identifies far-left ignorance with relative ease. It's either that...or some more retarded, unfunny metaphors. I love it when people bust on me...and it's funny. You have yet to say anything approaching witty, never mind funny. It can't even be called "creative". It's just a stupid way of telling us what you probably did this weekend. Manure spreader....that could be funny(as I wrote this I thought of two ways), but leave it to you to kill it dead.

I will not deny drunken posting. I will deny being high. But most of all I will deny being a modified instance of Tom. Just because we happen to have the same allergy to BS, especially when it comes from you, or Buftex(just threw that in because Buftex seems to have an affinity for me), doesn't mean we are alike. Don't forget: He has a Ph.D. and is therefore a lot smarter than all of us.

How about "not Obama". And why? Because "not Obama" is going to win in 2012 just like "not Bush" did in 2008. Hopefully this time around, whoever Not Obama is will actually be qualified for the position. Hey, we can always hope.

But you did read it. Otherwise, you wouldn't be asking these questions. Moron. Hysterical that you think Gawker = respectable source for news. Notice that they have yet to produce a single thing that isn't hearsay? IF there are emails...where are they? IF there is a reply on Craigslist, where is it? I'm not questioning your sources. I am questioning why you think you can come here with this obvious BS and/or lame attempt at piling on, and not expect to get crushed. You know this board by now. Re-read your own links and look for the word "confirmation" or "multiple, independently confirmed sources". You won't find any. Seriously Buftex, I never considered you that intelligent, but I don't think your as flat out dumb as some here. This post makes me think I give you too much credit. Regarding the Frat Boy thing: you know what I wrote is true. Don't bother denying reality. In fact, given the right circumstances I am certain I could coax even you to pee on the nerd fraternity's lawn.