OCinBuffalo

Hmm. Sounds like Molson and the rest of the far-left whack-pack.

Well, it makes them look stupid to people you and I, not sure if anybody else cares. And yeah, this is very stupid. There were multiple alternative ways to make this phony crash happen, and all of them are much less detectable than what they did. I can think of one right now that would be virtually undetectable. But, I doubt Granny is going to care one way or the other. I am sure you've seen clients whose brains automatically switch off the instant any technical term is used, right? And, this wouldn't be the first time somebody who "knows what they are doing"/client-side/corporate IT came up with an asshat design would it?

Or you stop building your damn house on the damn river bank, stop being "tornado bait" and living in a trailer in the middle of Tornado alley. Or, stop being amazed that mother nature comes along every 3 or 4 years and gives you a beating, then asking people to bail you out.

You could sleep for 15 hours get up tomorrow, and still not be right. The budget of Medicare is about 449.2 BILLION, they are not responsible for turning a profit, yet, they need all that budget? Please. And, as evidenced by my link, they do not run, or report, their "overhead" the same as a real business. There is no comparison here. It's fundamentally flawed, a distortion, and used by political hacks to give themselves the appearance of knowing what they are talking about. God I wish that stupid last season of the West Wing had never happened. Millions of 'tards running around telling people what they saw on a TV show....

Buddy NOWHERE has that been proven. That is a myth. It is true in limited fashion in some areas, but if you were to give a grade, would be something like: Medicare/Medicaid 50%, Private 40%. Both are still failing grades, so what exactly is your point? You only want to fail by 15 points instead of 25??? Great Look, managing health care is a tangle no matter how you look at it. But, looking at it from a "# of decisions/people making decisions", standpoint, the more you can decrease the numerator and denominator the better. Letting counties decide does both.

Um, need I remind you that the people doing most of the failing here are Federal government employees? Your plan is to add approximately double the # of Federal employees, triple their budget, and you think that somehow that will work??? Here's the answer: let counties run and regulate their own health care collectives/insurance. Counties will need to compete with each other. If you consume health care in a county that's not your own, interstate, the Feds run that like a clearinghouse, the state does county to county. This way what health care is provided, for whom, and how much, is a local decision, determined by local doctors/officials/taxpayers. If you hate what your local officials decide, vote them out. IF you can't get rid of them, move to a new county. If you think you need more insurance than the average joe, you can sign up/pay for more. Simple. Don't have some impossibly large, myopic agency attempting to determine what health care Mrs. Jones needs at 3 in the morning, on Saturday, 1000 miles away. Let her neighbors figure that out, they are there, they know her better, and they actually give a crap.

I've done work for 2 insurance companies, both health care. Never in the history of capitalism has there been a better example for regulation. At one place(and this was before HIPPA was taken seriously at all, not that it is even now), every day I walked past the 40 full time "investigators" whose job it was to basically get their hands on people's private info by any means possible. This is why I get pissed at Republicans when the call for blanket deregulation. But I also get pissed at Democrats for things like how they do surveys for Medicare/Medicaid. Then, I get pissed at Wall Street/SEC because the entire attempt at regulation there is both ineffective and inefficient. It's a giant waste of money that accomplishes exactly none of the stated objectives. To be clear, both positions are retarded. Neither party has a monopoly on stupidity here, there's plenty to go around. It's not and can't be, an "all or nothing" situation. Democrats = ALL, Republicans = NOTHING, and you end up with a "compromise" that doesn't work, and only causes business to do a bunch of things that cost them money and provides no value in return, and nothing of real value to the government either. The only thing these "compromises" do is provide for additional legions of government jobs that serve no real purpose, blatantly fail at their mission, and waste everybody's time. Edit: Some supporting data $33 Billion in Medicare and Medicaid Fraud An additional $1.1 BILLION for the guys who are supposed to be stopping the above fraud What are the chances that the succeed? Nah, just throw them some more money so that the can continue to fail miserably.

IF is the whole thing. IF we think we can trade up and get an impact player for the O or D line, then I say they do it.

Que?

See that's the thing. At each personnel group, we are talking about needing one good player. It's not like it was 2 years ago, when we clearly needed 2-4 players in every group. I.E. They made some drastic moves to get an O line, so now we only need one good Center to either be a backup/eventually start. If we are going to keep playing Cover-2, then we need to get Raji. Nothing helps the DEs like chaos in the middle. Kyle Williams is a hustler, and he works hard, but we need more consistent chaos out of the middle, and out of the D line in general. I thought we had it after the Seattle game.

At first glance this seems plausible...but with so many holes, the Lions need as many draft picks as they can get. So I don't see them giving up picks, just the opposite, right? Then again, we are talking about the Lions so perhaps the conventional wisdom goes by the boards here.

For the first time in a long time, it's not like we have to run the table on our draft class = picks 1-5 have a good chance of starting. A case can be made for all of the players listed above. We will probably get help from the return of Schobel, Crowell(if he signs) and Digiorgio. Worst case 2 of them are done. We still don't know what we have in Ellis...but he looked pretty good in the pre-season I thought. LB and DE might not be as critical as some have said, given that we have at least 2 coming back at each position. Who knows about Bowen. So for me, I don't see the 11th pick as absolutely critical. Therefore, I'd like to see us take Raji, if he is there, and a TE(Coffman) in the second round. I'd trade up in the third and get the best Center available. Basically I think we have a lot more flexibility than in years past, so a trade up in the first to get an elite player isn't out of the question for me either. I don't think a trade down is a good idea = why do we want to get more back-up/stop gap type players instead of a few good ones? That's for the teams like the Lions.

Yes. MREs = 3 lies in a bag. There's not Meals, they're not ready, and you can't eat them. It's strange that upperclassmen would lie to us about something like this though, but then again, they easily might have been lied to as well. Well the one thing nobody realizes is that you actually have to join the Regular Army before you do anything else. We actually got paid, in addition to the free school, like an E5. So, it goes like, you fill out a one page West point paper = a credit app, then you do all the RA stuff, then you do some of the real App, then you do interview stuff, then essays and all the bulk of getting all the paper in order, then you dinners and meet cadets, then you do more interviews, then the big interview, and the rest didn't apply to me because the coach rubber-stamped me. The big thing is: none of this wonderful discussion means I am going to start thinking Ivy people will ever be any better than average in our business. I have yet to meet one that is.

A ha! Harvard cuts admissions rates for economic reasons So West Point raises theirs because of a war, and Harvard drops theirs because nobody can afford it in a recession. Drat. Oh well, I guess that makes them better.

And for the third time, this guy isn't talking about what you think he is talking about. I have no reason to think you aren't being earnest here, you simply don't know. He is talking about the #s he gets, not the #s that start the process in total. I understand what you think he is saying. No need to explain it again. The problem is, hopefully for the last time, that applications are not submitted until after you have qualified medically, physically, etc., otherwise they would be wasting massive amounts of time reviewing kids that are going to get profiled anyway. These tests start in your Junior year of high school, and they are the standard "join the Army tests" not specific to West Point. This guy is talking basically about the back half of the process, not the whole thing, which is in fact what he deals with. The reason is: West Point itself doesn't handle the entire process. Most of it is done locally first, before you even get anywhere near them. Specifically, I had to get a crazy ass physical. Then I had to do a whole bunch of crap at the armory, tests, PT, etc. (Edit: this was all going on in the summer between junior and senior.) Only after all of that, was I given the rest of the application to fill out. Basically it starts with your guidance counselor, or the local recruiter. You don't start out by filling out the entire application. You then do the essays and crap like that, but even then it's not your entire "file". So, the "files they open" are really kids who have already passed a slew of tests. The numbers I had beaten in to my head are about the # of kids who start the process, period. I could be wrong about the # of nominations though. We don't really know about the part that happens between the big interview and who gets nominated for what. They just tell you what rank you are, and then you sit around waiting, or in my case, the coach calls and asks you to come. Edit: Or, the more I think about it, we were lied to/there were "exaggerations". It wouldn't be the first time, or the 1000th time I was lied to in the Army. Who knows? Like I said originally, I am merely repeating what I was told. But there's no way in hell only 10,000 people or so start the process. The numbers don't jive. There were 40+ kids that were made it to the first little interview in my district alone. Multiply that by 400 congressman and you have 16,000 +/- right there, never mind the prior service people, the prep school and all the rest. And that interview is AFTER the attrition from the earlier tests.

No way, not even close. There's simply no way that was true for me. Let me be clear. There's like 15 steps to this. It's not, send your application, and then they pick, like everywhere else. 160,000 kids started the process my year, thats definite. At each step, kids are weeded out. So, it's more like(estimated): Application 160,000 Medical Tests 100,000 Physical Tests 70,000 Citizenship Stuff 65,000 Congressional/Army Stuff 60,000 Actual Nominees that they really consider 15,000 FBI stuff and a bunch of Army tests like the ASFAB... ...or in my case the lacrosse coach simply appoints you, after you get past the nomination. 1500. (and the really funny part is around 300 of those are gone during the first week) So if you want to compare my year's process to college, which you really can't anyway, it's exactly as I said. All the numbers you keep linking either refer to actual nominees, which each Congressperson gets a number based on population, Senators, VP and President 5 each, Puerto Rico 1, etc.<-- This group gets in no matter what, unless there is an FBI problem, the rest get appointed by the Com's office. Look this has all been entertaining, but let's not forget, the HONOR part of the honor code. I don't like getting mine questioned based on ignorance. I have no problem explaining something you don't understand, though.

Again, if you are talking about the famous "Army of the 70's"(another thing we had drilled into our head), then I, again, would agree with you. This guy graduated in 70. Which means he was a plebe in 1966. Hmmm. What does 1966 and 2008 have in common? It couldn't be that we were fighting REAL SHOOTING WARS both years COULD IT? How many people do you think were signing up to be officers in Viet f'ing Nam, where more were killed by their own men than by the enemy? Man, your ignorance of history/military matters is astounding. Kellllllyyyyyy.....this is a loser argument for you. And, when I went, we were at the end of the great Reagan/Bush military build up. We were fighting no one, and the incentive to come out of the Point at the time was astronomical. It virtually guaranteed that you could skip 10 years of your career. My buddies are all VP's of blah, blah at [insert company you know]. Is it within your grasp to assume that the # of people who start the process is indirectly proportional to the likelihood that they catch a round, in real war?

Edit: The numbers are down significantly it appears. I don't doubt it. The reason should be obvious, even for you Kelly.

What am I full of crap about Kelly, specifically? What others are you talking about, besides the ones in your head? When have you ever consistently shown anything? And what RCP #s are you talking about? The favorables or the LV polls?

Hahahaha. Read my post above. I just make #s up out of nowhere? Keep talking. Edit: Verification? You need verification? OK. "Sir, there are 324 days and a butt until Army Beats Navy!" "Sir, there are 1 million days and a butt until Kelly realizes this is a loser argument for him."

These numbers are about kids who are nominated. That's around 5 steps deep into the process. I think this is hysterical you guys grabbing all these links super-fast, like you know something. Hmm. I seem to recall getting up at 5 am every day and told: "Sixty Thousand other people were nominated for for this, never mind the 160,000 that applied, and you are going to tell me that you belong here, when you can't even tell me [insert knowledge here] or [insert physical training here]." Yeah, I didn't hear those numbers every time I turned around, every time I, or any other plebe made a mistake. You were there, and you know better. But go on, this is highly entertaining. I am going to send this to my Beast squad. They will get a kick out of it. Especially the guy that quit Princeton after 3.5 years and went there, because he wanted to do something "harder". We still can't figure him out either...

Yeah. Keep talking about something you know nothing about. Good plan. Oh, wait, don't you talk about economics too? I guess you're used to it, huh? Or am I getting you confused with Molson/Eliott/whatever?

Ahh, but I'm quoting #s from my class. They are different every year. I heard they were talking about accepting more too. I imagine reporting to the Cadet in the Red Sash is not quite as popular an option nowadays. Besides, I'm just telling you what they told me. This is '= to a regular college application. Supposedly 160,000 kids started the process my year, but how the F would I really know?

You're just the first poster to ask me directly. No reason for me to be offended, really. If I'm going to be a smart-ass, I have to be prepared for getting smart-ass back at me. Besides, I certainly have been "hazed"....OMG! Call Oprah! The bad man said the H word!

Certainly. The United States Military Academy. It receives around 160,000 applications/nominations a year and up to 1500 are accepted, so I guess it's only 10 times harder to get into than Harvard, huh? My mistake.