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posty

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Posts posted by posty

  1. Posted

    WVU had a great win against Villanova...

     

    Hopefully as long as they beat DePaul, Rutgers and South Florida, that would put them at 20-8 and 9-6 in the conference... Notre Dame at home is winnable, Cincinnati is a toss-up and Louisville will be tough, but at least it is at the Colosseum... I think that they will end up 21-10 and 10-8 in the conference, which should definitely get them into the tournament...

     

    But hopefully they don't have a let down after defeating Nova...

  3. Posted

    http://www.wtopnews.com/index.php?nid=116&sid=1602279

     

    WASHINGTON (AP) - Just days after the nation honored the 200th anniversary of his birth, 65 historians ranked Abraham Lincoln as the nation's best president.

     

    Former President George W. Bush, who left office last month, was ranked 36th out of the 42 men who had been chief executive by the end of 2008, according to a survey conducted by the cable channel C-SPAN.

     

    Bush scored lowest in international relations, where he was ranked 41st, and in economic management, where he was ranked 40th. His highest ranking, 24th, was in the category of pursuing equal justice for all. He was ranked 25th in crisis leadership and vision and agenda setting.

     

    In contrast, Lincoln was ranked in the top three in each of the 10 categories evaluated by participants.

     

    In C-SPAN's only other ranking of presidents, in 2000, former President Bill Clinton jumped six spots from No. 21 to 15. Other recent presidents moved positions as well: Ronald Reagan advanced from No. 11 to 10, George H.W. Bush rose from No. 20 to 18 and Jimmy Carter fell from No. 22 to 25.

     

    This movement illustrates that presidential reputations are influenced by present-day concerns, said survey adviser and participant Edna Medford.

     

    "Today's concerns shape our views of the past, be it in the area of foreign policy, managing the economy or human rights," Medford said in a statement.

     

    After Lincoln, the academics rated George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman as the best leaders overall. The same five received top spots in the 2000 survey, although Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt swapped spots this year.

     

    Rated worst overall were James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, William Henry Harrison and Warren G. Harding.

     

    The survey was conducted in December and January. Participants ranked each president on a scale of one, "not effective" to 10, "very effective," on a list of 10 leadership qualities including relations with Congress, public persuasion and moral authority.

  8. Posted

    Not a fan of the Simpsons, but being that a lot of people seem to enjoy it, I figured I would post it...

     

    http://www.tvweek.com/news/2009/02/sundays...es_hd_updat.php

     

    "The Simpsons" is finally going HD—and, in what some fans might consider an even bigger development, getting a new opening title sequence as well.

     

    Both events will take place Sunday, Fox said during a promo for "The Simpsons" that aired as part of Wednesday night's "American Idol." The network actually made a low-key announcement of the news late last month, casually mentioning the developments as part of its episodic listings of various shows.

     

    According to Fox, Sunday's "Simpsons"—entitled "Take My Life, Please"—will include the first full, permanent revamp of the show's opening titles since its premiere in 1989. The last few seconds of the title sequence have long featured a different weekly "couch gag." Fox also airs both a full-length and an abbreviated version of the credits.

     

    While "The Simpsons" has never aired in high-def, Sunday's episode won't be the first time fans of the show have been able to see Homer and Co. in their full digital splendor on television. HBO aired "The Simpsons Movie" in HD last year.

     

    While most live-action scripted network shows now air in HD, animation hasn't been as quick to make the leap, although that's starting to change. The producers of "South Park" recently announced their Comedy Central series would go HD starting with its 13th season, which bows March 11.

  9. Posted

    Thinking back on the events in 2001, he does have a point on how similar these events are...

     

    http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/14...ullum13.article

     

    I flashed back to the fall of 2001 upon reading the subhead over a New York Times story about Monday's presidential press conference: "He Says That Failing to Act Could Lead to Catastrophe." To rush a complex, ill-considered piece of legislation through Congress, George W. Bush invoked the specter of another terrorist attack. Barack Obama, bringing the change he promised, invoked the specter of economic collapse.

     

    Just as the Patriot Act was a grab bag of legal changes that law enforcement and intelligence agencies had been seeking for years, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is a grab bag of expenditures that leftish Democrats have long wanted, repackaged for the crisis du jour. In both cases, instilling fear was the key to suspending skepticism and cutting off debate.

     

    In a Washington Post op-ed piece last week, President Obama warned that if Congress did not immediately pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, "our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse." While Bush gave us the concept of the never-ending war on terror, Obama has introduced the idea of the never-ending recession, a phenomenon that has never been seen before but that can be averted only by uncritically approving his spending priorities.

     

    "We can't afford to make perfect the enemy of the absolutely necessary," Obama declared in his weekly radio address on Saturday. "The time for action is now." During an appearance in Elkhart, Ind., on Monday, he said, "the situation we face could not be more serious" and insisted, "we can't afford to wait." At his press conference that evening he said, "a failure to act will only deepen this crisis" and "could turn a crisis into a catastrophe."

     

    Obama insisted there was no time for debate. "We can't posture and bicker," he said in Elkhart. "Endless delay or paralysis in Washington in the face of this crisis will only bring deepening disaster." At the same time, he claimed there had been plenty of debate already: "many weeks of debate and discussion," as he put it at the press conference.

     

    The stimulus bill was introduced in the House on Jan. 26 and passed two days later. The Senate began debating its version last week and approved the bill this week. No hearings were held in either house. If that's Obama's idea of "many weeks of debate and discussion," verging on "endless delay or paralysis," maybe we should not worry so much about his prediction of an endless recession.

     

    The false sense of urgency created by the president was designed to override two kinds of doubts: about Keynesian stimulus spending generally and about this package in particular. "Doing nothing is not an option," he said in Elkhart. It should be, especially when the something the president wants to do could be worse than nothing, adding $1 trillion to the national debt and diverting resources from more productive uses without delivering on the promise to "jolt our economy back to life."

     

    And that probably won't be the end of the story. At Monday's press conference, Obama said the Japanese government "did not act boldly or swiftly enough" in the 1990s, when it spent trillions of dollars on construction projects in a vain attempt to revive the country's economy. From his study of Japan, the Times reports, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner concluded that "spending must come in quick, massive doses, and be continued until recovery takes firm root."

     

    As with the Patriot Act, the success of Obama's Recovery and Reinvestment Plan will be hard to assess. If the Bush administration can take credit for the absence of terrorist attacks without any firm evidence that its policies were decisive in preventing them, the Obama administration can take credit for an economic recovery that would have occurred anyway. I hope that's what happens, because otherwise we can expect further expensive sacrifices to the god of economic stimulus.

  10. Posted

    Nice, the stats blow the doors off your lies and now it's nitpicking when you get caught in a bald faced lie. What a shmuck. :thumbsup:

     

    30 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<230

    And the difference between RP and me is, I primarily post other shiit. He only posts the same shiit over and over again.

     

    So, do you want to apologize for lying now??

     

    As to your question. TWO 'McSame' threads. Compare that your hero and his various nicknames. This is easy to research. - Unless of course, you just want to keep on lying.

     

    Methinks that just bc your guy got poked, you feel those a lot harder than any others.

     

    End of the day, RP/Rusty/Fla/Posty is/are trolls. They add nothing BUT political shiit - That's just plain dooshbaggity.

     

    And pathetic. :cheers:

     

    Thanks gutterslut...

  13. Posted

    Let's be honest, do you really think there is anything that Obama can possibly do, whether it be this stimulus package of anything else, that would prompt Recliner Pilot, posty, Jerry, Faghawker, or phillybear to say something positive about him? Of course not. That's why everything they post is just nonsense. It's like tuning into Hannity or Limbaugh. I'd love to listen to a political talk station if I didn't know execatly what the premise of each day's show was going to be. (and i realize it works the same way with left-wing radio). Same with the 'political guys' on this website. If there was a single member who actually didn't have an agenda, then their opinion might actually be worth reading. Unfortunately, there are few if any. If Obama actually did do something that might be detrimental to teh country, there is no way in hell I would ever find out about it on this board. I could never seperate it from the other twenty-five 'doomsday' threads on page one.

     

    If Obama does something that I like and I think is worth it, I will praise him...

     

    Just right now he hasn't done anything to warrant that...

  14. Posted

    From AP...

     

    http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti...D=2009902130390

     

    Analysis: Stimulus won't jump-start economy

     

    By Jeannine Aversa

    Associated Press

     

    WASHINGTON -- No, the big stimulus plan won't "save or create 3.5 million jobs," as the president and congressional Democrats claim -- at least not this year.

     

    The economy will remain feeble through 2009, analysts warn, and businesses will keep shedding jobs, though not as many as they would have without the $789 billion boost.

     

    The stimulus agreement, heading for final votes in the next day or so, goes to the heart of President Barack Obama's strategy to revive the economy and will go far in shaping how Americans view his economic leadership.

     

    What it won't do is quickly snap the country out of the painful recession, now in its second year.

     

    It should provide some relief, economists say, though some argue it won't plow enough money into the economy to prop it up.

     

    Tax cuts will spur at least some spending by consumers and businesses, and that should help save or create jobs. Aid flowing to cash-squeezed states will prevent some layoffs.

     

    And money for big public works projects, such as bridge and road repairs, and longer-term ventures, such as networks for more high-speed Internet connections, eventually will generate jobs and stir economic activity.

     

    But even with the stimulus, many economists predict a net loss of 2 million, 3 million or even more jobs this year. The recession already had cost 3.6 million jobs through January. The unemployment rate, now at 7.6 percent, the highest in more than 16 years, will probably hit at least 9 percent by next year.

     

    "The stimulus package is not going to turn the economy around right now," said William Gale, director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution.

     

    "The best-case scenario is that it mitigates the depth and the severity of the downturn. That's not a bad thing. It's just not the magic bullet that fixes everything."

     

    Some analysts say the job market won't return to normal health -- with unemployment hovering around 5 percent -- until as late as 2013.

     

    And the broader economy? No sudden revival there either.

     

    The economy is expected to slide backward for all of 2009 -- a decline in gross domestic product of more than 1 percent. That may not sound like much, but it would be the first yearly decline since 1991.

     

    "Congress put the minimum charge into the stimulus battery," said Brian Bethune, economist at IHS Global Insight. "We're taking this big chance, turning the key and praying there is enough juice to turn over the economy. We should have juiced it up so much that we are guaranteed that this engine will start" through a bigger package of tax reductions.

     

    This recession has proved especially stubborn and dangerous. The root causes -- housing, credit and financial crises -- are the worst since the 1930s and don't lend themselves to quick fixes.

     

    The package includes Obama's signature "Making Work Pay" tax credit for 95 percent of workers. But negotiators scaled it back from Obama's campaign promise: to $400 a year for individuals, instead of his $500, and $800 for couples, down from his $1,000.

     

    That equals around an extra $13 a week in most paychecks, and it should show up very quickly after Obama signs the bill. The hope is Americans will then feel more inclined to go out and buy, which would help bolster the economy.

     

    But will recession-shocked consumers, spooked by vanishing jobs, shattered nest eggs, tanking home values and surging foreclosures, actually spend money?

     

    "Chances are people are going to save much or most of the tax cuts because of the climate of uncertainty and doom and gloom," Gale said.

     

    Given the severity of the problems, economists said, the bigger the economic revival package the better. Some said it needed to be $1 trillion to make a noticeable difference this year.

     

    Others argued that the package should have been front-loaded with a lot more money -- at least $500 billion -- in tax cuts, which tend to act more quickly to boost economic activity.

     

    Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com., estimates the bill will create just more than 2 million jobs by the end of 2010. The problem is, the recession will probably wipe out many more jobs than that. Zandi's prediction: 6.5 million jobs will disappear.

  15. Posted

    Lee Harvey, you are a madman. When you stole that cow, and your friend tried to make it with the cow. I want to party with you, cowboy. If the two of us together, forget it.

     

    LOL

  16. Posted

    http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/62082.html

     

    WASHINGTON — The compromise economic stimulus plan agreed to by negotiators from the House of Representatives and the Senate is short on incentives to get consumers spending again and long on social goals that won't stimulate economic activity, according to a range of respected economists.

     

    "I think (doing) nothing would have been better," said Ed Yardeni, an investment analyst who's usually an optimist, in an interview with McClatchy. He argued that the plan fails to provide the right incentives to spur spending.

     

    "It's unfocused. That is my problem. It is a lot of money for a lot of nickel-and- dime programs. I would have rather had a lot of money for (promoting purchase of) housing and autos . . . . Most of this plan is really, I think, aimed at stabilizing the situation and helping people get through the recession, rather than getting us out of the recession. They are actually providing less short-term stimulus by cutting back, from what I understand, some of the tax credits."

     

    House and Senate negotiators this week narrowed the differences between their competing stimulus plans. In so doing, they scrapped a large tax credit for buying automobiles that would've caused positive ripple effects across the manufacturing sector. They settled instead on letting purchasers of new vehicles deduct from their federal taxes the state and local sales taxes on the cars they bought.

     

    The exception to this is for buyers of plug-in hybrids, cars that run off a battery that can be charged at home or in the office. Buyers of these vehicles, available in very limited supply, could get a tax credit of up to $9,100.

     

    A Republican-backed proposal that would've provided a $15,000 tax credit to first-time homebuyers also was scaled back dramatically. Instead, the compromise provides first-time homebuyers a tax credit of up to $8,000, and it doesn't have to be repaid over the life of the mortgage. Incentives already in place offer buyers a $7,500 credit that must be repaid, so the bill is an improvement, but short of what many economists think is necessary.

     

    Another reason that some analysts frown on the stimulus is the social spending it includes on things such as the Head Start program for disadvantaged children and aid to NASA for climate-change research. Both may be worthy efforts, but they aren't aimed at delivering short-term boosts to economic activity.

     

    "All this is 25 years of government expansion jammed into one bill and sold as stimulus," said Brian Riedl, the director of budget analysis for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy research group.

     

    The view wasn't much more supportive on the other side of the political spectrum. In a brief on the stimulus compromise, William Galston, a senior fellow at the center-left Brookings Institution and a former Clinton White House adviser, warned Thursday that a bank-rescue plan being finalized will make the $789 billion look like "pocket change."

     

    "While the stimulus bill is a necessary condition for economic stabilization and recovery, it is hardly sufficient," Galston wrote. "As the lesson of Japan in the 1990s shows, fiscal stimulus without financial rescue yields stagnation — at best."

     

    " . . . Serious observers believe that recovery cannot begin until we acknowledge that losses in the financial system amount to some trillions of dollars, rendering many institutions insolvent. The temptation will be to muddle along, hoping that these institutions can gradually regain strength without putting massive amounts of taxpayers' money at risk. If we go down that road, we are likely to end up with zombie banks whose balance sheets are riddled with near-worthless investments — banks that cannot lend to credit-worthy customers and who cannot trust one another," Galston wrote.

     

    With the economy in a tailspin, doing nothing isn't an option, however.

     

    "Something is better than nothing, and bigger was better than smaller in terms of the stimulus needed," said Chris Varvares, president of prominent forecaster Macroeconomic Advisers in St. Louis. "The economy needs a fiscal jolt."

     

    Even some proponents of a stimulus are disappointed, however. Harvard University economist Martin Feldstein, a former adviser to President Ronald Reagan, was an early supporter. He said that government is now the only engine left to spark economic activity, but he said that the compromise falls short of what's needed.

     

    "If the choice is between the current bill and an improved bill, I would say wait and improve the bill," Feldstein told CNBC on Wednesday after the compromise was announced. "I am disappointed with the structure of this bill."

     

    Like Yardeni and other analysts, Feldstein wanted more incentives for consumers to make big purchases that have ripple effects across the economy. When a car is purchased, it helps not only the carmaker, but its suppliers, the trucking companies and railroads that transport cars, the states that issue license plates and so on.

     

    Still, could this stimulus get the U.S. economy back on its feet?

     

    By itself, probably not. The stimulus plan, however, is supposed to work in tandem with new efforts by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve to rid banks of distressed assets that are poisoning their balance sheets, and with other federal efforts to halt mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures. Much will depend on the details of both federal attack plans, which the Obama administration promises are coming soon.

     

    There's also the problem of time. Much of the stimulus is to be spread over a two-year period or longer — and 2009 looks increasingly bleak.

     

    A Wall Street Journal survey of 52 mainstream economic forecasters published Thursday found that while most forecasters still think there could be slow growth by the second half of the year, that won't offset steeper-than-projected declines in the first half of 2009.

     

    That means this is essentially a lost year for the economy. Most scenarios envision the economy picking back up again next year.

     

    The president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in a speech in Detroit Thursday, tried to put a brave face on the tough year ahead. Thomas Donohue acknowledged that big business didn't get in the stimulus bill some of the tax-relief measures it most wanted, but promised the Chamber's support.

     

    "The bottom line is that at the end of the day, we're going to support the legislation. Why? Because with the markets functioning so poorly, the government is the only game in town capable of jump-starting the economy," Donohue said.

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