BagBoy

I think Team Europe blows. I like the kids to win, too. Could be just as much sloppiness as "oh, wow" moments in this game, but I still can't wait to watch it.

Harakiri (or Seppeku) is a fantastic Japanese movie from 1962. I've been putting off watching it because from what I've read about it, it's heavy. Really heavy. I finally watched it yesterday and I'm still digesting it, but this movie absolutely knocked me out. Tragedy, hypocrisy, justice...films like this are few and far between.

Exactly! Thank you!

I don't believe they knew there were no WMD's either, or they would have indeed planted them. However, they seemed to really want to go there no matter what, and this clouded their thinking and caused them to use some pretty shabby intelligence as an excuse. Nixon and many other presidents from both parties probably would have planted stuff faced with this situation. Bush didn't. I don't know if they were just so sure there were WMD's there, or if they thought things would go so well in Iraq that the US population wouldn't care. The cynic in me wonders if Bush was just sure that between Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, any planting of WMD's would have turned into a gigantic embarrassing failure.

Claude, Swamp is talking about Papa Bush, not junior. But I was always surprised about what you mentioned concerning Junior. It would have been so easy to plant something somewhere to justify that whole rationale of starting Iraq War #2. I don't know if they failed to do that for the right reasons or for the wrong ones!

You and I and others have been discussing this here for more than a year. I know where you stand on this issue and I do not agree with you at all.

Oh please! On this topic there is no possibility of a rational discussion with you. You are 100% intractable about it.

Don't you feel bad enough for me to answer the question? I am white after all.

You should have stopped after 'no opinion on the matter'. It must be a terribly hard burden to bear having to defend the white race virtually all by yourself. I know that you will stubbornly always deny you are a racist. Will you at least admit that compared to most, you are far more focused (if not obsessed) with race?

...one of the 'greatest hits' from the early internet... http://chickenhead.com/stuff/tampon/index.html

Sorry, I'm late to this party. Drunkard, I'm with you man! You're right in the hipster age group, but you seem to have just as much derision for them as I do. Keep it up! All my ball caps have beautifully curved brims, just like they should. Liger, learn to embrace your inner tangent. Some of the most wonderful give and takes can and do happen where they don't belong. So back to the NHL stuff. Dominic Moore. I just KNOW that guy wears fedoras, so screw him!

True, but you have to have your right hand over your heart, and then your left hand just holds the container right up to your mouth and you eat out of it like a horse at a trough, cause you know, that's patriotic!

You did! But Palin was "preying" on fears, not praying on them...well maybe it was a bit of both! And, yes, it is scary stuff trying to figure out how to make healthcare work humanely and functionally. But we're Americans, not dummies. We just need to start by objectively assessing how universal healthcare has worked for all the other first world countries (and 2nd and 3rd world countries for that matter). What has worked well? What hasn't?

Speaking only for myself, I thought the same thing about Gene and Gilda. I did not know he had remarried. If I knew that he had remarried, I would share your sentiments (and do now). I'm thinking most of the other Gene and Gilda posters were as in the dark as I was.

What knockers! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID1mST8AzGo

No arrows coming from me. Pretty sure you've got it completely correct. I read today epipens are only $200 in Canada and $100 in France.

I like those pads, too. And they have exactly 50 stars.

Neo, I'm no Commie, and I don't think anyone else here is a Commie either. I love the free enterprise system. I am just profoundly worried about how long free enterprise will actually remain "free" based on the directions big corporations and the politicians they own are taking us. By "free" I don't mean the without cost kind of free, I'm talking about the Liberty kind of free. Money and wealth are good things, obviously. Capitalism in a general sense has served us pretty well in terms of creating a society where most people have what they need money-wise. I just get concerned when principles of naked supply and demand are used to justify unethical things that large corporations are doing on an ever growing basis. This is nothing new. We have been here from the day Eli Whitney created the cotton gin. Corporations make less money when people work 40 hour weeks vs. 100 hour weeks. Corporations make less money when they have to be responsible for the safety of their employees. Corporations make less money when their products are rigorously tested to ensure their customers can truly trust their products. Corporations make less money when workers unionize with the support of society to ensure fairness. None of these things are bad things. They are all in fact very good things. There has to be a balance between the profit motive and what is truly best for everyone in society. Strangely enough, this is just as true for the long term viability of big corporations as it is for citizens in general. Can you imagine if none of the reforms in the 1800’s and 1900’s had happened? We would have worked ourselves to death at an early age, not had as many kids, had no disposable income, etc. The big corporations would have begun failing very quickly with only dead and poor people as consumers. That is a miserable picture no matter how you paint it. Violent revolution would have been nothing short of inevitable. Please read the attached link. http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/08/25/491372193/discounts-arent-enough-to-halt-outrage-at-high-epipen-prices It just came out today and is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. Nobody wants the government supplementing corporations who make buggy whips. Nobody needs buggy whips. But when the “demand” in question for a given product/service is not a whimsical “I’d like to have some of that”, but rather a life and death scenario, can we really look at ourselves in the mirror and say, “hey there’s a real opportunity to maximize profit here!”. If Budweiser raises its prices to $1 a beer, fine, I’ll drink something else, or not drink at all. If I need epipen’s because I’m deathly allergic to bee stings, I can’t just decide I’m not going to buy it anymore, at least not willingly. And if I can’t afford them anymore and die because of it, well that’s one less customer for epipen – not exactly a great long-term strategy. It’s all about getting that extra 12 cents today for the shareholders, at whatever cost that may entail…which is unsustainable. And get a load of this. That NPR I linked article was absolutely sanitized since I read it earlier today. Mylan has made hundreds of millions over the last year just by exponentially jacking up prices of epipens. Their CEO’s compensation went up about 600% this last year. Oh yeah, by the way, she’s the daughter of US Senator Joe Manchin. I work for a gigantic corporation and I have seen amazing changes over the last 20+ years. We used to go out of our way to give back to the community, to hire physically challenged people, to embrace diversity of every kind, to invest in our future. We used to understand the importance of the customer and employee aspects of our business, in addition to shareholders – a nice balance. Now it’s all shareholder driven. Naked short term greed. Now we outsource and re-engineer, that’s all. Guess what? We were way more successful with the previous model. We would be remiss if we didn’t worry about existential threats to our way of life. You can’t turn on the TV without hearing about things that are clearly bad, like new diseases, natural disasters, ISIS, rogue states, climate change, identity theft, Hope Solo, asteroids, micro-aggressions…the list is uncomfortably long. But the degree to which big corporations now absolutely own government scares the absolute schit out of me. I’m glad I’m 50+ years old because I don’t want to be around for what I fear things will look like 50 years from now. I’m not gonna sit here and tell you I have any answers. I don’t. But I know what the question is that we should be asking ourselves. It is “What are we going to do to ensure that capitalism works for us instead of us working for it?”

This was my take. too. You nailed it. I watched the whole AUS game - not any kind of impressive. Who picked this team? It shouldn't be an all-star offense only team. It should be a well balanced team. The coaching was terrible. Honestly, do the coaches matter that much? No. But they should be PRO coaches, not college coaches. We used college coaches back when we had to send college players. Those days are gone.

Very slippery slope when you take the side of corporations in the spirit of Liberty. When companies get so big that they can buy, kill and eat politicians for lunch, it may already be too late. My argument is that Big Corporations and the power they wield have just as many drawbacks as Big Government and then some.

Smell and SDS are right. Early to mid 80's, U2 really was pretty much the best band at the time. They were unquestionably my faves during that time. Very heartfelt and moving stuff, and their lack of true musicianship actually made them even more endearing at the time. Then they started talking about non-music stuff, especially Bono. I generally agreed with where they were coming from, but in doing so, they really couldn't have been bigger pr1cks if they tried. So incredibly smug, and pretentious and self-righteous. I swear to God there really is some sort of universal truth around how they fell from grace, like Shakespearean/Greek tragedy stuff. Like all tragic "heroes", they had no idea whatsoever what as$holes they had become. They thought they were ASCENDING to grace rather than falling hopelessly away from it. Then the press couldn't get off their knees for a second to stop sucking their dix, they got richer than anybody, and whatever essence their music had that made them worthwhile in the first place was long gone forever. To this day I can't even listen to what they did that was good at the time, because of what they became. Sorry. I meant to apologize in advance for this rant. But I do feel better now!

Internally I pronounce San Jose as San Josie, but never aloud. That would bug San Joseianites people from San Jose. But getting back to 2 letters vs. 3, there are dilemmas with Columbus and Colorado, and the Isles and Rangers. Besides I would rather have the Sabres as BUF than BU or BL, etc. Terribly important stuff here. Sometimes I think October is NEVER going to get here!

As a UNC alum, please allow me to explain. This refers to people who self-identify as "golfers", but are still not comfortable admitting this to others who are non-golfers. When said non-golfers begin to suspect this about a potential golfer and say as much to a wider group, then they are "golf outing." I know, hilarious, right? But just for the record, I still identify as at least attempting to be politically correct. As many here have said more eloquently than I can, it's just not that difficult. (note -> I didn't say "hard" instead of "difficult" in deference to the Viagara crowd).

^ Hopefully they don't have any operatives here, or you will certainly be #52!

A win for sanity... http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/08/17/490121285/a-swimmers-period-comment-breaks-taboos-in-sports-and-in-china