TampaYankee

By the looks of it maybe I should consider moving there.

Adam, are you practicing your html again?

Loved the movie. Lusted over Jason Scott Lee & Esai Morales running around in the skimpiest of loin clothes.

If I were in the Southwest I'd love to attend. They always sounded like a lot of fun.

I am so happy to have this drama behind us. When the warning was active I couldn't login to either the site or admin. I was read-only and that damned warning popped up on every page transfer... and it took two responses not one to gain access to the actual site page. I'm sorry all you guys were subjected to it too. It was only logical to take us down until this got resolved. Fortunately, the Google watchers absolved us of any intentional malware activity finding that we were the subject of an outside attack. It wasn't even us specifically attacked but an attack on Invision software. I'm glad that this is behind us. For those who demand to know how we will guarantee our virginity going forward, well... you use the industry recommended prophylaxis tools. We use them, our host uses them and hopefully our software suppliers use them. However, there are no perfect guarantees in life. As long as there is ingenuity and innovation suborned by the human animal someone will be testing the boundaries and looking for new avenues to go where no man has gone. If you demand absolute assurance then you will need to follow the trail emblazoned by the 'Boy in the Bubble'. You will have a very safe life in a very isolated sterile environment. Step one: disconnect from the internet.

I'll take a flier and volunteer to cuff him. Maybe we can come together to turn this bust into more pleasant experience. Puns intended.

It is hard to believe it has been 20 years since he led the first Iraq war. Both my parents died at 79 earlier this decade.

I'm always a sucker for Carmina Burana - O Fortuna though. I can listen to it any time. Eye candy only makes the experience sweeter.

They all have wives too.

Another warm familiar face passes.

CHEST Study Reveals Penis Size Linked To Condom Usage The Huffington Post | By Ron Dicker Posted: 12/19/2012 11:51 am EST While one researcher concedes the findings are "politically volatile," a recent study of gay men in New York City shows the larger a man's penis is, the less likely he is to use a condom, Pink News reports. Researchers at Hunter College’s Center for HIV Educational Studies and Training (CHEST) culled responses to surveys of about 500 attendees at local community events. According to Queerty, some respondents in the survey said they had unprotected sex because they couldn't find the right condom fit, and just 40 percent said they were easily able to find condoms to suit their length and girth. While larger-sized condoms are available in stores, the one-size-fits-all variety are more readily available -- and often free from health clinics in New York City, the study found. The risky behavior revealed in the study's data appears to go against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's long-held conclusion that "consistent and correct use of latex condoms is highly effective in preventing sexual transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS." But the findings are in line with a 2009 Indiana University study indicating that men were more likely to have "negative attitudes" about condom use if they had penises that were bigger or smaller than average. “This type of public health research is very important, no matter how politically volatile," Dr. Jeffrey Parsons, CHEST’s director, wrote on the organization's blog. He added that the findings would enable researchers to better meet the health needs of gay and bisexual men. The study, "Self-reported penis size and experiences with condoms among gay and bisexual men," will be published in the February 2013 issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior. See original article at: http://www.huffingto..._n_2330044.html

Good list. Add to it all 'heavy' greens. By that I mean kale, collard, mustard, turnip, chard etc. They are very dense nutritionally including all sorts of goodies besides the basic vitamins. Include mushrooms. They have nutrients (enzymes) that apparently help starve cancer cells of blood supply. That's a good thing. Who knows who has a few of those pesky cells trying to form. Ounce of prevention... Garlic too. Each as much as your company can stand. Cooking softens the impact both odorwise and probably a little nutritionally as well. It's a trade.

Thanks for the report. It is great to hear of successes in the lesser traveled cities reported in the forums. Sounds like you had a great time.

This would be really funny if it weren't so characteristic of the modern press determined to be fair and balanced at the cost of actual facts and reason, and the many many people who, as my mother used to say, will 'argue with a sign post and take the wrong road' to spite reality and concur with preconceived notions of silliness or worse. We have transcended the Age of Reason to reach the Age of Irrational Silliness -- well many of us have and that includes some political leaders and professionals and even some educators. It would really be funny but for the fact that many in our government institutions subscribe to this silliness and worse. I know, I used the word silliness three times not counting this sentence, but I cannot think of a more apt expression.

Don't know how I missed this the first time around. I haven't seen that many but my favs in order starting from the top: Le Miz Phantom Rent Starlight Express Mama Mia

Finally, a sane alternative to the political insanity that presumes doing the same thing over and over again will yield different results. What is wrong with the first Sequestration? Wasn't it drastic enough to force action? Well yes and no it seems. It wasn't painful enough to urge Congress to act last summer but it is too painful to let it come to fruition. What will Sequestration II accomplish that Sequestration I couldn't? Will it be even harsher in consequence than Sequestration I is? We cannot live with Sequestration I apparently and now we need Sequestration II? This is bullshit. Linkins has stumbled upon the obvious: demand that lawmakers get penalized for failing to do their job. Make it uncomfortable, then make it pinch, then make it hurt, then draw blood -- all of course in other than physical ways. He gives reasonable penalties that might be improved on with a little more thought. But they are good enough for a start. This won't affect the millionaires but there are enough others to cause the tides to shift. There ought to be a fail safe for this strategy too. If Congress fails to act by a date certain then wheel a table saw into each chamber and start with the smallest digit on the least used hand for every day a fully structured bill, with concrete goals and concrete methods and means (with numbers) to achieve those goals, does not pass. The members could draw straws to determine order. I'm only half hearted about the last suggestion, but half is enough to build on if need be.

'Sequestration II': The Latest Stupid Idea That People Will Be Stupidly Talking About Jason Linkins -- The Huffington Post -- Posted: 12/13/2012 2:15 pm EST | Updated: 12/13/2012 8:55 pm EST So, every day for the past month or so we have been told that we are nearing a "fiscal cliff" and without a "grand bargain" we will "go over" it and "bad stuff" will happen to us, the American people. Now, in my capacity as a real-keeper, I must tell you that the size and depth and horrors of the potential "bad stuff" has all been overblown by partisans and a political media that understands tragically little about the underlying issues. But the simple fact of the matter is that if we spend too long on the other side of the "fiscal cliff" without mitigating the austerity that will ensue with some amount of deliberation and expedience, it will eventually have negative impacts on the economy. So, now we know what it's like to be on or near or around a "fiscal cliff" -- it's an environment of panic and ignorance that eventually starts costing you and me. And it's important to remember how we came to be on or near or around the "fiscal cliff": lawmakers in Congress went on a long, long jag of incompetence and neglectfulness, during which they passed their responsibility back and forth and into and out of various commissions and committees, accomplishing nothing, until they ultimately decided that what they needed to motivate them to act was an assurance thatinaction would cause a number of terrible policies to be triggered all at once, to the detriment of the American people. Surely, knowing that their dithering would directly harm ordinary Americans would motivate them to go to work, at long last. Ha, ha: no! So whether you believe that immediate doom ensues at the moment we go over the cliff or not, I think it's pretty obvious that setting up an elaborate series of triggers that fire right into the face of the American people as a punishment for the galactic incompetence of your idiotic lawmakers is not something that we should repeat. But now I read this piece over at the Morning Joe blog (yes, the "Morning Joe Blog" is something I didn't realize was happening until now), which reports that a "Sequester II" -- a second batch of the sequestration cuts that form the most painful part of the so-called "fiscal cliff" -- is being mulled in some quarters as the means by which we get an agreement on reforms to earned benefit programs. Ugh, here we go: “In terms of entitlements, this is going to be a two-step deal, we’re going to have to have some sort of down-payment that gets us past the cliff, where we agree on the broader outlines in terms of what this program will look like,” Morning Joe economic analyst Steve Rattner explained on Thursday’s show. “Then we’re going to be working well into next year in order to do the entitlements work, to do the tax work. One thing that hasn’t been figured out is the enforcement mechanism.” Meet the Press’ David Gregory added that a second sequester, or batch of automatic cuts, is the most likely enforcement mechanism. No, no, no! This is the exact wrong way to go about it. The problem with the sequester cuts is the same problem that we see in the "fiscal cliff" scenario: it threatens ordinary American citizens. If lawmakers were actually motivated to save or help ordinary American citizens, they would not send so many of them off to die hopelessly in Afghanistan. If you tell lawmakers that their failure to act will imperil their constituents, they will not act. I feel that recent history overwhelmingly confirms this. "Instead of coming up with schemes to hurt the American people if no grand bargain is reached," Matt Yglesias suggests, "come up with a scheme to hurt the politicians in question." Exactly. If we come to the point where we are talking about a second set of sequestration "trigger" cuts, then we need to aim the trigger at lawmakers. Your lawmakers will never be motivated by the pain that could be visited upon you, so we need to force them into a position where they start bearing the cost for their incompetence. Ideally, the punishments meted out should begin reasonably and eventually proceed to levels that are both cruel (so that it really hurts them) and comedic (so that we can all enjoy it). So, let's say that their failure to act should trigger a massive reduction in their take-home pay, right off the bat. After another week of inaction, they lose their office funding. A third week costs them their family health benefits. A fourth week costs them their privileges. After five weeks, they get punched in the face every day. And we continue from there, until their punishments are so severe and their public humiliation so acute that they are desperate to come to an agreement. Naturally, we live in a free society, and there is no reason why anyone should feel forced to endure this if they don't want to, so I'll suggest that any lawmaker who cannot endure this pain is allowed to end it immediately by using the "safe word," which in this case would be, "I resign, effective immediately." If we must have some set of triggered mishaps and punishments, then this way probably leads to better overall outcomes for actual human Americans than any other. So anyone who suggests any other kind of "Sequester II" is a straight-up monster. See the original article at: http://www.huffingto..._n_2294191.html

Hmmm.... Lucky, Google must be reading your posts. Pretty impressive following.!

This is not rocket science folks. There is no secret about the laws that set up Social Security and how it is funded. Yet all this gobbledygook that has been perpetuated on and on by supposed pros and experts is cloaked in ideology or worse plain stupidity. The above article points that out. Just one more example of how the Press, including the fact checkers, are incompetent at informing the people about the facts relating to political issues. Is the Press full of incompetent boobs? There used to be a bar for competency for journalists. Not an official bar but a bar that separated professional news operations from the scandal sheet publications which were given no credence by either the main stream press or political, business, and legal professionals. Those days are gone!!

Fact-checkers Sputter And Flop Attempting To Explain How Social Security Works, Affects Deficit Jason Linkins and Ryan Grimm -- The Huffington Post A gaggle of fact-checkers recently attempted to bring clarity to the question of whether Social Security adds to the deficit. Much as they did during the campaign, the fact-checkers have instead confused what is in fact quite a simple issue. Social Security, by law, does not add to the deficit. It is not a driver of long-term debt.We’ve been over this. The reason no one can get it right is because here in this season of the fiscal cliff, no one is getting anything right. It’s a full-on headless chicken panic. Everyone needs to calm down, about a lot of things, but especially about Social Security, which does not even have to come up during the “fiscal cliff talks” because it’s totally irrelevant to the situation and will only complicate everything needlessly. Sweet nutty, here comes the Associated Press, relying on a familiar line of reasoning, arguing that the program does in fact add to the deficit because the government "spent that money on other programs, reducing the amount it had to borrow from the public, including foreign investors...In return, the Treasury Department issued special bonds to Social Security. The bonds are now valued at $2.7 trillion. They are accounted for in two Social Security trust funds, one for the retirement program and one for the disability program. The bonds pay interest like other Treasury notes and are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government." Social Security adds to the debt if it spends more money than it takes in, so let’s look at how that’s doing in the most recent fiscal year. Okay, then! To say that Social Security added to the deficit because it handed money to the federal government is the same as saying that foreign investors or grandmothers or pension funds who bought U.S. bonds added to the deficit. Besides, what did the AP think the U.S. government would do with the money? Invest it in tech stocks? Hide it in a mattress? Replenish its gold supply? Of course it spent the money. Glenn Kessler relies on similarly silly logic. "This looks like surplus, worth about $36 billion after rounding," he says of Social Security's surplus. "But notice that fully $110 billion of the income was interest on Treasury securities. But that interest is simply paid with new Treasury bonds." By Kessler's logic, China is running a massive, major, breakneck deficit because it holds Treasury bonds, and the only way to pay those off is with new bonds. Why it's supposed to matter to China or to Social Security how its bonds are paid off isn't made clear by Kessler. But more importantly, how does Kessler know that the only way to pay that interest is to borrow more? He doesn't know that. In fact, the Treasury has many means at its disposal to pay interest other than through borrowing -- such as, I don't know, taxing people? Instead of confusing itself and its readers, the AP and the rest could simply have referred to a 2011 Senate hearing, chaired by Max Baucus (D-Mont.), during which two of the foremost Social Security experts -- one liberal, one conservative -- answered the question. Nancy Altman, head of Social Security Works, which opposes cuts to the program, read the law to the lawmakers. "The law is unambiguous. So let me read it: Social Security ‘shall not be counted for purposes of the congressional budget,'" she read. "Social Security is not part of the budget. So that $14.3 trillion debt that we are at, the limit that you are going to have to raise -- or at least have to vote on whether to raise in a few months -- if you cut Social Security, that $14.3 trillion does not change. It does not put any room into the debt limit." Baucus turned to Charles Blahous, a Social Security trustee who is also with the conservative Hoover Institution. "Do you agree with that, Dr. Blahous?" "I do agree with that," he said. [The full exchange between Baucus, Blahous, and Altman is below.] Let’s talk once again about Social Security solvency, shall we? The way the Social Security works is that current workers make contributions, from their paychecks, to current retirees. (This arrangement is often forgotten about -- too many people have been led to believe that they are “paying in” to their own Social Security savings, and they aren’t -- those contributions will be made by a younger generation.) The solvency of Social Security is at risk if the following two things happen: 1) the number of recipients overwhelmingly outnumber the number of contributors and 2) American lawmakers forget how to do math. What we popularly refer to as the “Social Security solvency crisis” refers to a large population of Americans (the “Baby Boom Generation”) entering their retirement years at a time when the number of contributors is less than ideal. Hopefully, however, someone at some point is going to remember how to solve a simple arithmetic problem, raise or remove the income caps on contributions (right now, incomes that exceed $110,100 are not subject to contributions beyond that amount), and then we will never have to worry about Social Security solvency again. And let's not forget that when Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill reformed Social Security -- as we're constantly reminded they did -- it's more than possible they were aware of the Baby Boom generation. If they were blessed with eyesight, they could look around and see them for themselves. They were older than 30 by then, after all. In fact, one of them, Nancy Altman, actually worked on the commission that reformed Social Security. So we asked Altman, a baby boomer, if she was aware in the 80s that she existed. She said that she was -- and that other people were aware, too. So they took the baby boom into consideration. That's why it's solvent late into the 2030s. Knowing this makes all the hand-wringing from fact-checkers all the more dumb. Calm down and learn the subject guys, and do try to keep on task -- discussing matters that are actually germane to the fiscal cliff while we are having to talk about it every single day. See the original article including the Baucus, Blahous, and Altman exchange at: http://www.huffingto...hp_ref=politics

Of course it is... well not a bluff, more a scam. The same scam Romney proposed in order to avoid taxing rich bastards like himself. Their whole game actually rests on increasing revenue by increasing economic growth - that is the argument anyway -- while blocking Obama from doing anything to stimulate economic growth. Thus the deficit will grow necessitating more spending cuts. Anyone see a pattern? This is another failure of the press to inform the people of the 'facts associated with the numbers' leaving the discussion at the level of a controversial 'he said -- she said' squabble. They do the same controversy mongering by reporting that the real 'Mayan End of the World' prophecy is the coming fiscal cliff, which if looked at in an objective light is another man-made disaster created out of smoke and mirrors. Nothing other than irrational fear and panic is going to happen Jan 1st if we do not pass any legislation. If we understand the facts then there is no need for panic. We have a window -- a short window -- left to right the ship before any parts of the sky actually begin to fall. But that doesn't sell papers or generate cable show controversy. People still don't get the obvious -- The GOP goal is to starve government of money until it collapses to an entity that provides only defense security, including occasional wars of economic or political opportunity -- yet another way to spend money that cannot go to domestic programs, and to extend largess and other assistance to the plutocracy. Oh, and most of them want to dictate who you can love or what you can do with your own body and raise one religion above the others with government sanction and impose the strictures of that religion on everyone through law. No big deal. As far as restructuring the tax code... their only interest is how to restructure it so that the plutocracy can achieve minimizing their tax burden without have to employ an army of accountants and attorneys and lobbyists to achieve that goal. If 'carried interest' is eliminated it will only be over their strenuous objection. More likely that pig will get a coat of lip stick if they have their way.

I'm sorry, I cannot give Glen Beck any more credence when he agrees with me than when he doesn't. This guy is a nutty charlatan, no if's and's or but's. A broken clock gives the right time twice a day. Big F**king Deal. You can be sure he thinks he has a way to make this work to his advantage, however that is. Fuck him!! Tune in next time to find out what I really think about this bastard!!

Why Republicans Can’t Propose Spending Cuts By Jonathan Chait “Where are the president’s spending cuts?” asks John Boehner. With Republicans coming to grips with their inability to stop taxes on the rich from rising, the center of the debate has turned to the expenditure side. In the short run, the two parties have run into an absurd standoff, where Republicans demand that President Obama produce an offer of higher spending cuts, and Obama replies that Republicans should say what spending cuts they want, and Republicans insist that Obama should try to guess what kind of spending cuts they would like. Reporters are presenting this as a kind of negotiating problem, based on each side’s desire for the other to stick its neck out first. But it actually reflects a much more fundamental problem than that. Republicans think government spending is huge, but they can’t really identify ways they want to solve that problem, because government spending is not really huge. That is to say, on top of an ideological gulf between the two parties, we have an epistemological gulf. The Republican understanding of government spending is based on hazy, abstract notions that don’t match reality and can’t be translated into a workable program. Let’s unpack this a bit. We all know Republicans want to spend less money. So the construction of the debate appears, on the surface, to be a pretty simple continuum based on policy preferences. Republicans like Mitch McConnell say government spending is “out of control” and would, at least ideally, like to bring it into line with revenue entirely through spending cuts. Democrats like Obama endorse a “balanced” solution with revenue and taxes. Right-thinking centrists, like the CEO community and their publicists like Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei, think we should cut deeply into entitlement spending while also raising tax revenue. (VandeHei, in a video accompanying his execrable story, asserts, “There’s money to be cut everywhere.”) There really isn’t money to be cut everywhere. The United States spends way less money on social services than do other advanced countries, and even that low figure is inflated by our sky-high health-care prices. The retirement benefits to programs like Social Security are quite meager. Public infrastructure isgrossly underfunded. The Bowles-Simpson “plan” was an earnest and badly needed attempt to reconcile the GOP’s hazy belief that government is enormous with reality. They did everything they could possibly do: They brought in representatives from all sides for long meetings with budget experts, going through all aspects of federal policy in detail, in the hope of reaching an agreement on the proper scope of government and how to pay for it. It failed. The Bowles-Simpson plan wound up punting on all the major questions because it simply couldn’t bridge that gulf between perception and reality. That’s why, in lieu of any ability to identify government functions to eliminate, the plan simply pretended the federal government could have everybody do a lot more work for less pay. The real domestic savings in Bowles-Simpson came from building on Obamacare’s steps to save money by holding down the growth of health-care costs and to cut defense spending by pretty steep levels. But these turned out to be ideas that alienated rather than satisfied Republicans. So basically it turned out to be impossible to find real spending cuts that Republicans wanted. It’s true that Paul Ryan’s budget plan had some deep cuts. But none of those cuts touched Medicare for the next decade or Social Security at all. Ryan just kicked the crap out of the poor. So, that provision aside, if you’re not willing to inflict epic levels of suffering on the very poor, there just aren’t a lot of cuts to be had out there. Republicans and even many centrists like to endorse taking away Medicare benefits from people like Warren Buffett. But even defining “Warren Buffett” at a level way below Warren Buffett’s income level yields pathetically little money. (The very rich have a vastly disproportionate share of income but not a vastly disproportionate share of entitlement benefits, which means taxing them produces way, way more savings than reducing their social spending.) This is why the spending side of the fiscal cliff negotiation is so discouraging. The potential cuts on the table range from fairly painful steps like reducing the Social Security cost-of-living index to even more painful steps like raising the Medicare retirement age, and none of them would save all that much money — certainly not on the scale that Republicans want. When the only cuts on the table would inflict real harm on people with modest incomes and save small amounts of money, that is a sign that there’s just not much money to save. It’s not just that Republicans disagree with this; they don’t seem to understand it. The absence of a Republican spending proposal is not just a negotiating tactic but a howling void where a specific grasp of the role of government ought to be. And negotiating around that void is extremely hard to do. The spending cuts aren’t there because they can’t be found. See original article at: http://nymag.com/dai...nding-cuts.html

File this show under Guilty Pleasures. I never miss an episode.

I would prefer to be decorating his Yule Log.