Jobber of the Week

What Moscow does have is a crap-ton of millionaires. More than any other city in the world, judging by some Fortune or other mag study a few months ago.

I don't know if you noticed, but people wind up upside down in loans all the time. It happens with cars a lot, even without government interference at all.

They sort of try to bring it up, but the signal is lost in the noise of Obama being very timid, and McCain getting a bit of a pass on being able to talk about cutting taxes. People simply believe it's more likely to happen because McCain's a Republican.

McCain does indeed want to tax premiums as income. And he plans to give you $5,000 a couple or something like $2,000 an individual if you don't have a plan to go out and buy a private plan on your own. Of course, if you do that, you don't have the power of collective bargaining on your side and you're pretty much at the whims of companies who will inspect your medical history and make a decision depending on how you affect their bottom line, so good luck with all of that!

Finally watched the forum from last week. Harper is mostly a snooze, but he had some good answers around the time they got past the economic questions and got to things like his cultural funding and Afghanistan. May was probably the strongest speaker in the room and the kind of person who would do well on likability among Americans, but she got cornered by the moderator and I think Layton about whether or not she would require that all health facilities be fully nationalized, and didn't think far ahead enough to have an answer. Dion had a few good exchanges with Layton but loses any strength when talking to Harper. It is now, being able to see him in an environment that was not designed to make him look good, that I see how humorous Dion really must seem. Maybe it was the netstream, but he kind of looked like Chevy Chase with more hair and sounds a bit like a comedian's bad imitation of Schwarzenegger. Even though I try to like the guy, since I'd probably agree the most the platform (though May did a great job selling herself), he's kind of to politicians what Black Elvis is to celebrity impersonators. Nobody is going to mistake him for the real deal. Layton would nearly skirt around issues in order to bring the focus back to Harper's tax cut because boy oh boy does he hate it. Bad move, since it's a bit of a one-note samba. Would have some really good moments where he would look directly into the camera and go on about policy. Probably went a bit too far when he indirectly voiced support for Obama (an American politician giving a shoutout to a Canadian politician would result in waves of outrage and attempting to fix an election by Canadians, and rightly so.) Giles from da Bloc was there without any notions of leading the country, but was there to simply complain about Harper in his own special way. He mentioned the Quebec nation a few times, helping us all remember that just because the party adjusts to the times doesn't mean it isn't what it always has been. Most Skillful Dodge Award: Everyone but Harper. When a question appeared asking why Canada isn't staying in Afghanistan past 2011, only Harper answered the actual question. Dion rambled about Iraq, May went on about the UN, Monsieur Québec griped about America a bit, and Layton voiced support for peace without really addressing the point.

Yeah, fuck it, I'm not even going to travel down this road any further, having read the rest of Marvin's posts. IGNORE WHAT I HAVE SAID KTHX

I figured the difference would be much larger than that between those two, since wrestlers used to give such little effort at house shows that they'd sometimes wrestle in their street clothes until the company started promoting a more official dress code. Did you just make that up? I've been going to house shows for over a decade and have never seen anything like that. No, I have seen guys in the big leagues come out in whatever the fuck they were wearing when they came into the arena, and work a match. I've seen Flair do it and one of the big tag team guys of back when, I think one of the Dudleys.

Uh, no, Fox News is about controlling a political message through soundbytes and stupid chyron text under the talking heads. As I just pointed out, the NYT exposes date back decades and involve all kinds of shit we weren't supposed to know about, from exposing pregnant women to radiation to electro-shocking people or attempting to brainwash them in the name of research and destroying all the evidence. I know that in the 50s and 60s we didn't have a lot of respect for human rights, but find me something today that shows comes at all close to that.

You dont find it funny that she's using facts obtained from an article in the New York Times (same article I linked to) to attack Obama? 99% of the time its the other way around. What's the deal with Republicans and the New York Times? This is like one of those grudge matches that goes back for decades. Are they pissed off about Watergate still, or what? The most common complaint seems to be that they tend to reveal things that the state would have wanted kept secret, such as quiet wiretapping projects or locations of captive holding camps. While I can get the argument that these things only make life tougher for soldiers in the area who don't set the policies of the war they're fighting, that's not always the case. I agree that not all these "revelations" are worthy of the front page, but critics seem to want a media that will arbitrarily run and bury stories based on who they'll hurt if published. And yet they also accuse the media of doing just that right now and say it's biased because of it. The government is probably a kindler, gentler place due to the media's attempts to be almost counter-productive against government's quest to do whatever they want. The kind of shit that gets whistleblown today on the front page of the Times is nothing compared to Watergate or Project MKULTRA or Pick A 70s Whistleblower Story Here.

Well, considering it's Jim "DMCA Canada" Prentice, I hope you didn't press 1. Stupid Foreigner Question: Does it cost money to be in a party in Canada? Here you just pick a party when you fill out your registration, but every party's site has this link that says "join the party" and when I click on it it's a donation form. Is everyone a non-partisan unless they donate or somesuch?

I figured the difference would be much larger than that between those two, since wrestlers used to give such little effort at house shows that they'd sometimes wrestle in their street clothes until the company started promoting a more official dress code. I also remember that there's a financial incentive to being champion, since Lesnar buying a plane clusterfuck involved him wanting to hold onto the belt as long as possible for the extra money.

Being a citizen of one of the invading nations, it would probably be more prudent to one's survivalist instincts to not attack. I mean, I defended that Lindh kid we picked up, but mostly because he seemed more like an idiot than a real terrorist. It's hard to see Khadr as anything less than a terrorist sympathizer since he comes from a family of terrorist sympathizers. I know you can't judge everyone on in their parents, but building landmines doesn't really help his case.

And now, Your Moderator, Walt Disney.

What? They'll just pick what they'll pay for, like any other HMO. If you want more than that, you can still opt to pay out of your own pocket. And you're fooling yourself if you think Doctors don't lie to the insurance companies about what they're doing and how much it cost just so that they can help the customer. Also, unlike an HMO, the public system can't drop you at the first sign that they'll have to pay out.

Vince McMahon pays himself as both an executive and a performer. As for who gets paid the most, well, there you go. As for everybody else, it's a combination of a cut of the gate and a cut of merchandise, combined with the annual guaranteed sum. House shows are important to the wrestlers themselves. It's TV deals and PPVs that keep the company afloat but live gate that keeps the wrestlers fed. Though to use that kind of phrase is perhaps a little over the top, wrestlers have been getting a lot more now than they used to because WCW's ginormous guarantees totally threw the market value for everyone out of wack, and they've been slowly chipping away at that over the years. As for who makes the most money, that's difficult to say. Guarantee is generally placed by the spot on the card, and some wrestlers sell a lot of merch even when they're jobbing (Hardys, Mysterio, Cena) while some guys have less merch but are high up enough on the card that it doesn't matter (Orton, Batista.) And then there's guys who are both high on the card and have a lot of merch (Edge, Undertaker, Trips.) The guarantees typically top out at a million a year, though unprecedented 1.2-1.5 million guarantees were tossed out to Hogan and the Outsiders in 2002. Nowadays per-appearance cash is handed to guys like Hogan and Rock, both of whom think it's too small to be worth it (remember when Hogan bitched about his WrestleMania 19 take.) Finally, you have that odd X-factor that Vince McMahon values guys for various reasons including company loyalty and simply liking their look, and throws out different perks for people. So if I had to name who goes home with the most cash each year, I'd wager it's Undertaker. HHH doesn't make as much but his contract includes crazy benefits like a number of flights on the company jet a year.

There's a tiny little state that doesn't exist now by Kentucky that voted Libertarian, huh?

Your map is a bit odd, since you give NC to Obama but SC to McCain, when conventional wisdom has them flipped around. What's the margin of error on that poll? The two participants were too busy making out to check.

I don't, but I've been posting exclusively at the other board for the past few years. Explain? Meanwhile..

Dick Morris? bwahahahaha Just so you know, I thought of you a few weeks ago when Dick Morris put up this map on his NewsMax page:

As far as a "reading a brochure of platform ideas", I like the Libs but every time I see Dion and try to like him he fulfills the "quietly lodge a polite protest and then promptly sit down" stereotype that he has become saddled with. I like that video of his leadership on climate change where he takes the headset off while accusing them of holding up an important issue, then very nicely asks them if they'd discuss their objections. I bet he's one of those guys who says "and another thing!" after losing an argument.

You realize there's a lot of different ways to approach UHC right? In what I was talking about, government isn't running shit, it's merely paying for it.

Ed Rollins on CNN is a GOP talking head who I like because he seems to actually speak his mind and not the talking points the party wants you to hear. "This debate confirmed she will be a fighting force in 2012." He has long doubted McCain's chances, but that was a nice way of complimenting her and confessing that they're going to lose at the same time.

Luntz is not an independent. He had the same guy who supported the same candidate appear in more than one focus group, and he's generally associated with the right wing. He's associated with a casino boss here and a biography I was reading about the industry mentions that he's often hired by Republican-leaning industries for market research purpose. Frank Luntz is why our Wynn hotel is named what it is, Steve Wynn wanted "Le Réve" originally but Luntz told him it polled better to name it after himself. Meanwhile, the future of your own country was being debated on other channels.

CNN's big ol focus group: "Did anyone make a decision to vote for John McCain after tonight's debate? ..... We got one hand. You are a registered Republican, why did you decide?" Woman of about 27-ish: "I think she was able to regain.............. regain.............. that she's a real person."