lookin

Interesting question about 'gay' message boards being liberal. If I had to guess as to why there might be an overlap, it would take me back to compassion. At the risk of another generalization, I find most of the gay men I know to be compassionate. (There are exceptions, of course, and I'm sure we could scare up one or two.) The self-identified liberals I know tend to be compassionate too. I think on this message board, in particular, there are a goodly number of compassionate gay men and it doesn't surprise me at all that many identify themselves as liberals. The question about whether it's the only thing that "works" is a bigger one than I'm going to tackle here two fingers at a time. I can tell you that, for me, a worldview that doesn't include compassion would not work. In my heart, as well as my head, I want everyone to have a healthy and secure social net and if that aligns me with some looney liberal fringe, so be it. Pretending I don't care would not work for me. I tried it once upon a time, and it didn't work well at all. But trying to figure out what works for others, and how, and why, is for me a lifetime's work. It seems pretty clear that those who self-identify as conservative have a viewpoint that works for them. I've heard some refer to themselves as 'compassionate conservatives', but I'm aware of more who could be perceived as non-compassionate conservatives. They seem to do just fine, and are definitely feeling their oats these days. So, yes, I think that viewpoint can work too. However, I do find myself wondering if it will work as well when they eventually find themselves needing the compassion of others. Nope. Sure hope I never gave you that impression and am very sorry if I did. Yep. Willing and eager here. Limp. Mince. Lope. Trot. Leap. However we get along. But I don't think we should let them get out too far out of our sight.

In choosing both friends and politicians, compassion comes first for me. If they don't have that, we will come no closer. Respect is probably second or third. Compassion and respect are qualities that I have difficulty associating with Sarah Palin. - Somebody go arrest that homeless guy. He must be wanted for something! And check out those two Mexicans too. - The hell I will! Alaska's twice as big as England. That old broad should be curtsyin' to me! Unless it's over drinks with Levi Johnston, Sarah Palin and I will come no closer. It's fun to watch her keep stepping in cow pies and, as others have said, the entertainment value is way up there. But she causes me distress too. Well, not so much her, as the fact that there are tens of millions of my fellow U. S. citizens willing to elect her President and cheer her on as she tears down bridges we've spent decades building up. Can you imagine her negotiating an arms treaty with the Russians? For the next little while, I plan to enjoy her occasional flames, all the time wondering if I would have been one of those Germans in the 1920's laughing at that funny little man with the mustache.

Your take surprised me a bit too, RA1, and maybe I misunderstood. You've always seemed to me to be a guy who looks at things from all sides, and stays away from pigeonholes. These days, I get most of my news from the internet and have put together a bookmarks folder of various news sites. It's always enlightening to see the same 'news' delivered to different constituents. Can't do it for every issue, of course, but I don't feel comfortable taking a position on something important until I've at least peeked into a range of opinions. And, for me, the wider the range, the better. Thanks to JKane, I just checked my bookmarks to make sure Pravda is there. It is.

Well thankee kindly gents but modesty demands that the credit go to my fellow members for strewing the Forums with such choice nuggets that need the merest bit of bending over and picking up. I mean here we are in the midst of a thread on fiber and regularity. All that's left to do is find a snapshot of a beaver leery of making any sudden moves. Y'all have done the heavy lifting. (A friend reminds me that y'all is actually the singular and I should use all a y'all to include everyone. Not sure of the spelling though. )

A Booklover's San Francisco

Well, I knew the day was coming. I so enjoyed being a 'Tumescent Member' that it's somewhat harder becoming an 'Esteemed Member', so to speak. I like tumescence. In a member, and in life in general. To me, it's always implied 'good enough', with the potential to get even better. I enjoy a somewhat restful state knowing that I can usually rouse myself should the occasion arise. And 'Tumescent' is certainly a lot closer to my day-to-day reality than 'Esteemed' is or, perish the thought, 'Prodigious'. But, remembering the fun time we had coming up with these member names, I found the post that did it and am offering here a modest appendage, you should pardon the expression. Too bad the punctuation got clobbered in this vintage post, but it's still pretty readable. Most of the picture links are gone too, especially the ones to Kaique, an erstwhile Brazilian escort. To me, his pictures were such perfect examples of various member types that I'm uploading them here for your closer inspection and, I hope, enjoyment. Here's wishing my fellow members the state of arousal that suits you best! Curious Member: Dangling Member: Aroused Member: Tumescent Member: Esteemed Member: Prodigious Member: Olympian Member:

And sometimes it goes the other way . . .

Budget woes probably mandate searching a bit closer to home. Just last week, I found them nosing through my refrigerator.

What an outstanding opening line! I hope you've locked in the screen rights. Pleasure Under The Pampas original screenplay by NeedSome

Here's how The Catholic League and John Boehner are marking the day: Christian activists force Smithsonian to pull Aids video from show One doesn't know what to say.

Interesting article. Thanks. The arguments make my head spin, as both sides seem to have valid points. I'd like to know how much Comcast is charging Level 3 for handling Netflix traffic. Obviously it's enough to make Level 3 squeal. My guess is Comcast is motivated by losing some of its own pay-per-view business to Netflix, rather than by having to handle the additional traffic. Reminds me that we're really still in the early days of the internet, and business models will come and go quickly. So long as Comcast keeps its mitts off Cam4, I guess I'll just bide my time.

As you say, the answers are important. For example, if Canadians were coming across the border for half - or even 20% - of their health care, that would suggest some pretty significant weaknesses in their system. But my understanding is that only a percent or two come to the U S. for health care and, even then, usually when they're here for something else, although the Mayo clinic may indeed be a magnet as it is for many around the world. So the answers are available, and they indicate that Canadians are pretty well satisfied with their health care system. There was a program on TV a couple years ago that showed a hip-replacement patient who went to India for her operation. Not only did she have the option of a less invasive procedure that hadn't yet been approved by the FDA, she also paid about a third of the U. S. price, and recuperated for a few days at a luxury resort with some nice-looking Indian boys bringing her drinks poolside. While it wouldn't be fair to ask our seniors to travel to India for hip replacements, it might be possible to bring parts of the Indian system here. We'd almost certainly have to give up our right to large malpractice awards for a start, and the FDA might have to find a way to streamline its approval process. Of course, there are folks who don't want the FDA to change and others who support the idea of a large malpractice industry. Though that may be more about preserving wealth than about preserving health. In my opinion, our country continues to struggle with universal health care not because we can't find the answers, but because many are not yet willing or able to hear them. But I think the message will continue to get louder as the days go by.

Wish I had one of those down the street from me. They'd get a lot of drop-in traffic just from us locals. San Francisco has pretty good low-cost or no-cost health care too, and Healthy San Francisco is showing that on-going care is better and cheaper than emergency care. I tried to check out Memphis's health care approach through Wikipedia, and so far found only this snippet: Memphis is also home to the Memphis Medical Center, which is locally referred to as "The Med". In recent years, the hospital has experienced severe funding difficulties that nearly led to a reduction or elimination of emergency room services. In July, 2010, The Med received approximately $40.6 million in federal and local funding to keep the Elvis Presley Trauma Center operational. Perhaps the free clinics in your area indicate that Memphis is also shifting its emphasis away from emergency care and toward preventive care. As others have said, emergency room care, even if free and readily available, is often too little and sometimes too late. I think we all need affordable medical care that keeps us well and lets us avoid the emergency room whenever possible.

Call me crazy, but I think all paths lead to single-payer health care. Even though some don't like abandoning the toll booths they've erected along the way, no reason they shouldn't do fine if they adapt their business models, as many have done before them. I was disappointed that the Dems gave up on single-payer, but I think they left enough back roads in the legislation that we'll get there eventually. Who knows, it may be just over the next rise.

≈ ≈ ≈ Sarah Palin on Ice ≈ ≈ ≈

Do please ask him to represent me in a second piece of pie! I'm very thankful for the great group of guys assembled here, and there's not a soul I wouldn't enjoy sharing a drumstick with! A Very Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Thanks from me too! Makes me want to go there.

Just be careful not to drop it anywhere. Enjoy!

A different take on California, this time with a few facts. The truth about California Commentary: Maligned state is actually saving the rest of us By Brett Arends, MarketWatch BOSTON (MarketWatch) — Can everyone please stop talking total nonsense about the California budget? I know that facts and truth seem to be optional these days. I know that in the exciting new world of infinite media everyone can choose to believe whatever fantasies they want. But in the case of California, it's getting on my nerves. Last week Chris Whalen, the high-profile analyst at Institutional Risk Analytics, caused a stir by arguing California was going to default on its debts. "I think they're going to default… I think eventually the debt will have to be haircut," he told Henry Blodget, the former dot-com analyst and now editor of Business Insider. "I don't think the Republican Congress is going to sign on for a bailout of California." Default was "inevitable," Whalen added, and suggested Sacramento might have to start issuing its own currency. Alarming stuff. But when I e-mailed Whalen, asking him for specific calculations, none were forthcoming. "My general comments have to do with my guess as to the impact of mounting foreclosures and flat to down GDP on state revenues," Whalen replied. Do the math Your guess? These are important problems, to be sure. But do you have any actual numbers? "Revenues fall and mandates rise to the sky," he wrote. "You do the math." Er, no, actually. It's your assertion. You do the math. Whalen blamed the matter on Blodget. "I am a bank analyst," he wrote. "I have not written anything on this. My comments have taken on a life all their own… This is all Henry's fault. Call him." Some prediction. Meanwhile Blodget chimed in on the e-mail exchange: "It's a bold prediction! Don't back down now!" Bah. Welcome to the media world in 2010. But this is hardly an isolated case. California bashing is everywhere these days — especially since Californians had the temerity not to vote Republican a few weeks ago. You've probably heard a variant of the following storyline: California is a basket case. The Greece of America. Decades of crazy liberalism and runaway spending have crippled the economy. Wealth creators are fleeing in droves. The people left are spending themselves into rack and ruin. They can't balance their budget, once again, so they are asking the rest of us for a bailout. And they even voted for Jerry Brown, a Democrat! It's time we said enough is enough. No bailout for California! And get out of their muni bonds while you can — they're going to default. Basket case It's persuasive. You can hear it anywhere. But it's total hogwash. You might just as well believe that California is inhabited by pixies from the planet Mars, or that the budget problem in Sacramento has been caused by a giant sea monster destroying downtown San Diego. It's not just slightly wrong. It's almost totally wrong. California's a basket case? The state has one of the highest living standards in the country, yet over the past 10 years the economy has still grown much faster, per person, than the national average. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, it's up 15% — compared to 8.9% for the U.S. overall. It's grown faster than low tax neighbors like Arizona, Utah or New Mexico. It's grown three times faster than Texas. And this was from 1999 through 2009: In other words from the peak of the dot-com years through the depths of the recession. It managed this growth despite the double blows of the tech and housing busts. Most of the states that have grown faster than California during that time are farm states, riding an incredible boom in agriculture prices. Fact. Venture dollars Back in the Silicon Valley glory days, in the late 1990s, California attracted an incredible 42 cents of every venture capital dollar invested in America. Ah, those were the days — when the private sector was still willing to back California with its own money. As any conservative will tell you, that's the real voting in the economy. How far has California fallen from those giddy days? According to the latest data from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association, in 2010 California just got a miserable, er, 50 cents of every venture capital dollar invested in America. That's right. Venture capitalists are putting a bigger share of their money into California today than they were in 1999. Wow. What a failed state. What a basket case. Will the last person left please turn out the lights? Don't expect to read about this at the far-right Manhattan Institute or the National Review. Don't expect to read a column about it from George Will anytime soon. Are wealth creators fleeing? I keep hearing this. Did Apple Inc. and Google Inc. just relocate to Oklahoma? Is Twitter being run from Alabama? When Mark Zuckerberg left Harvard to run Facebook full-time, did he open shop in "low cost" Utah? During the past decade, one of the biggest reasons its residents left California was simply because of the astronomical cost of housing. Tax base Now let's talk about taxes. This is where the lies really earn a Ph.D — as in "piled high and deep." The best study of state and local tax burdens comes from the venerable Tax Foundation, an independent non-profit that's been acting as a taxpayers' watchdog in Washington since 1937. The Tax Foundation is non-partisan, but by the nature of what it does it leans politically to the right. According to them, as of 2008 (the most recent year analyzed) state and local taxes in the average state came to about 9.7% of the annual state economy. What was it in crazy, liberal, communistical, socialistical, un-American, soviet-style California? Er, 10.5%. That's right. The burden was all of 0.8 percentage points higher than the average. Higher wages Paging Leon Trotsky! In the late 1990s, when California was riding high, it was...10.6%. Thirty years ago, when even Meg Whitman thought it was a wonderful place to work, start a family, and hire an illegal immigrant to raise your kids, it was...10.1%. You will occasionally hear horror stories about "public sector teachers" in places like "San Francisco" (shudder) earning, say, $100,000 a year. I've never understood why it's wrong for a teacher to earn a good salary. The same people who wouldn't blink at the news that a Wall Street banker made $20 million anthraxing our economy is horrified that a teacher makes $100,000. But even putting that issue aside, it's worth remembering that wages are higher in San Francisco for a very simple reason. It costs more to live there. A lot more. According to the authoritative ACCRA cost of living index, a $100,000 income in San Francisco will only buy you the same living standard as a $55,000 salary in places like Austin, Texas, or Little Rock, Arkansas. Do we hear horror stories about teachers in Texas earning $55,000 a year? But if you think the lies stop there, think again. Because we haven't even gotten to the biggest of all. That California "bailout." There's no such thing. California bails us out. It has been bailing out the rest of America since, oh, about 1849 — before it even joined the union. Californians are so productive that every year they send billions of dollars in surplus dollars to the rest of America. Year after year they have sent vastly more in federal taxes than they ever get back in federal spending. California isn't our Greece, it's our Germany. It isn't Little Orphan Annie. It's Daddy Warbucks. Fact. The conservative-leaning Tax Foundation, which tracks the data, calls this surplus a "fiscal transfer." I call it a bailout. The numbers are simply staggering. In the quarter century through 2005 (the most recent year for which we have data), Californians bailed out the rest of America to the tune of about $620 billion in today's dollars. In 2005 alone it came to nearly $50 billion. That is 30 times next year's forecast "budget shortfall" in Sacramento. The only reason California has a budget problem at all is because they have, foolishly, spent so much money subsidizing everyone else. If it weren't for that, California could cut its state and local taxes by around $1,300 a person. That's a $1,300 tax cut for every man, woman and child. Hmmm. Funny you never read about that anywhere, isn't it? Meanwhile, take with giant fistfuls of salt those self-serving claims of fiscal rectitude you're apt to hear from politicians in other states, especially in the South and the West. These states haven't balanced their own budgets with their own money in living memory. Without bailout money from states like California, New York and New Jersey, their taxes would be much higher and their citizens poorer. But don't expect to hear any of this from California bashers — least of all those on the right. After this November's electoral humiliations of Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, the Republican Party is putting away the kid gloves and getting out the knife. Could California really default? Run the numbers. State debt costs come to just $6 billion a year — a fraction of the $90 billion-plus budget. Under the state Constitution, the interest on the debt gets paid second, after the $36 billion that goes to K-12 education. Certainly it would be foolish to be complacent. And there are serious problems with long-term budget commitments, especially for the retirement and health care benefits for teachers and other public employees. Future cost growth with have to be restrained, and presumably some planned benefits will end up being renegotiated. But how big are these costs in California? The non-partisan Legislative Analysts' Office in Sacramento estimates there's a $136 billion gap in the state pension and benefits system. It may work out to more or less. But that's the actuarial figure at the moment. Size of the state economy? Oh, $2 trillion a year. That's 14 times the size of this gigantic pension-fund gap. But don't expect any of these facts to surface when Washington starts talking about a California "bailout." This is 2010. Inconvenient facts are optional. - Brett Arends is a columnist for MarketWatch and The Wall Street Journal, based in Boston.

Maybe we could outsource to the TSA. They're already doing physical exams and colonoscopies.

Perhaps then JT's purported public peccadilloes are merely his way of thumbing his nose at the more hidebound views of his adopted religion? Control me, will ya? Ha! Blackmail? I don't think so!! Good for him! Sounds like he's got 'em on the ropes.

You're being far too modest, MsGuy. While Columbus may have happened upon America, it was Isabella who showed him the way.

I think Obama set the strategy, including asking Secretary Gates for the military's report by December 1st and requesting Congress to pass the legislation. I agree that he could have issued an executive order to repeal DADT, but his present strategy involves all three branches of government. If successful, it should not be open to any further challenges. I'm not sure the same would be true of an executive order. The good news is, we should know by New Year's Eve if his strategy worked. If it doesn't, I expect he'll try something else. I believe him when he says that DADT will end on his watch. Must admit to some mixed feelings about the whole issue, as I would like to see our military reduced substantially. If all our gay service members resigned in protest, it would be a start to the reduction in armed forces that I'd like to see. Maybe they could each bring a fellow soldier along with them, and get some of the straight guys back in circulation too.

Indeed there is and, thanks to MsGuy, I've found it as well. On the right of the Similar Topics banner is either a + sign or a - sign, which can be used to toggle the (allegedly) similar posts on or off. They stay on or off until the next time you toggle. Neat, huh? I found them rather unrelated as well and chalked it up to a fledgling algorithm that would improve over time, but no sign of that yet. Still, without the feature, I wouldn't have stumbled upon the doings chez Lucky when the power goes out, and I'd never in a million years have guessed your fantasy upon becoming an Esteemed Member.

Jerry, is that you?