MattPie

Free loaner motorcycle while mine is in the shop, awesome!

I tend to agree with this. On the world stage, it's OK to not jump into a fight your friend starts. No one is going to call the US cowardly (except the pro-Israel people in the US). Israel has been attacked several times in its short history and hasn't had much trouble turning back those attacks. I doubt the US is even needed, other than for the arms US companies (among others) sell them.

What if it's less common, like Willamina and Mina? Despite my above statements, I'm kinda ok with Voter ID *as long as* it doesn't put a burden on people (the poor, mostly). Maybe we should all read up on Poll Taxes, since this would seem to be another form of it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_tax_%28United_States%29

You say that like the SC isn't political.

The elderly. Can you guys really not see this?

Made pesto tonight, didn't quite lick the bowl but I did run my finger around a few times. Mmmmm.

Guaranteeing anything in sports is stupid, I don't blame him at all. Maybe "I guarantee this team will make the playoffs unless we have a prolonged rash of injuries" would be ok though. :)

If you don't travel abroad or drive a car, what ID would that be? If you're destitute, the $10-15 to get an non-drvier ID is a burden (not to mention the time involved). Being a child of the suburbs that seems crazy to me, but it happens. I'm sure the libertarians love the idea of the government having a name, picture, address, and now RFID chip on every person in the country too. Denying the right for citzens to vote is wrong. Plain and simple.

All the studies I've seen show while there is voter fraud, it's so small it's lost in the noise (as mentioned above). Does it raise my hackles a bit? Sure. But there's bigger problems than that with the voting process. I know people my age (mid-30s) that don't have a driver's license or passport. They're also 'poor'. It's a foreign concept for me to not have an ID, but there are people that don't whether by cost or having 2 jobs or whatever. Denying even one citizen their right to vote is entirely wrong. That goes for the jokes that you'll start seeing in the next couple months about 'extended voting', Republicans vote Tuesday, Democrats Wednesday, and Independents Thursday[0]. Yes, that seems silly but again, if *one* person believes it and loses their vote, that's just wrong. [0] I suppose the order could be different, but the examples I've seen are Republicans first.

Too thin, he'll never be able to play 70 games. Send him back! (/sarcasm)

It is a very good point. I can't see the downside of locking Ennis up at maybe 4x$3-4 as it would make him a great trade piece. The downside would be if he regresses, I suppose.

Sorry, verbal diarrhea there. I meant to tie that in as Apple should be able to do better. At the very least an ipad to sign in on. Although the Apple way would be to sniff your iphone's wifi or cell hardware address when you walk in and automatically text you when it's your turn. What a nice way for Verizon to always keep a pool of money around. They should give you interest. :)

Wow, in before the lock, I renewed on the 20th or so.

Really? I kinda like the local Comcast office's system. When you walk in there's a kiosk with a couple buttons. You select your need (new service, repair, return, etc.) and it prints out a little ticket for you.

Is this new? I renewed my phone at the end of June (Galaxy Nexus), and I could keep my $29.99 unlimited plan.

I haven't been buying many books lately, but that's more because I haven't been reading as much. I've bought a couple ebooks, but I'm mostly avoiding them as I don't know how long the formats (or more importantly, the DRM scheme) will last. I'll be pissed if I have to go re-purchase things. I'm the same way about music, I still buy CDs. But for public domain stuff (like gutenberg.org) and the library, ebooks are generally cool. It's really nice when travelling light to only have to pack a small tablet-like device rather than one or more books (that may get damp, in the case of motorcycle camping).

Read the Bible, you'll get a bit of both! Finishing up the last book of the Eragon four-parter (quadrilogy?). The first book was OK, I read the next two years ago since my girlfriend at the time was reading them but they got more and more tedious as time went on. Occurred to me that the library would have the last one, so I picked it up for the sake of completing the set. It's just as tedious as the third book, but I'm pushing thru just to finish the series. You can tell the author is pretty young, it falls into a lot of cliched plot lines. As a side note, the way my local library handles ebooks seems to work pretty well. Once you get a library card (which can be done online and they'll mail it to you), you can browse on the web and then check out a book for 7 or 14 days. The only hassle is I don't have a personal Windows or Mac machine at home, so I had to install Adobe Digital Editions on my work laptop to download the book. Once that's done, ADE sees my Nook and I can just drag it over. You could read it thru most devices (computer,phone, tablet, etc.) if you don't have a dedicated reader.

I have a highly-informed source in Twitter in addition to Dreger, check out @spndchz. :)

If I remember correctly, it was situational. Both in that series and the Boston series the year before, no one though Buffalo would stand up to those two teams, but they did. They also didn't win either, but it wasn't because they got run out of the building.

Socialists can also be facist. But the pledge is just kinda weird. Pledge allegiance to the US, fine. To the piece of cloth? Eh.

That's pretty creepy. Is that in the evening? I did watch any of the evening stuff, I had it on during the day though and it was pretty 'down to business'.

I'll start listening when you conceed any point that you disagree with. So far you've just been rattling off talking points and no one can possibly be right unless they agree with you. Seriously, that's the impression I'm getting. I'm with Scotty. I'm better off than I was 4 years ago. I'm still comfortable and have enough income to do most of what I want. Would it be nice to have a little more income via paying less taxes? Sure! I am willing to say that poor people can suck it in the process? No. I'm willing to give up another motorcycle so others can have healthcare. That's what it comes down to for me. To whip out a pithy quote: Freedom isn't free, so stop whining about paying your taxes.

NC BBQ doesn't really do ribs though, right? BBQ is so varied it's tough to compare styles.

He does have a point on that one. Fox News is the go-to place for conservatives to get their news. By your own suppostition, all the others are liberal (a view I don't entirely share). It would make sense that liberals (just to use black and white terms) would split their view among the 4-5 'liberal' cable news outlets. FWIW, there's a spectrum of views in the cable news. MSNBC is on the left, but the others aren't as liberal as you'd paint them to be. It's not unlike Apple's iPhone being 'the most popular smartphone'. While true, iPhone counds for 25% (give or take, I'm not going to look up the numbers) while the collection of Android phone manufacturers carve up 60% (Windows phone and RIM cover the remainder). Fox news is the most popular because it's unique.

Oh, snap.