Lobowolf

Not sure if I took this the right way but FWIW the last time I took a legit IQ test it was 156. There are obviously many people with higher IQs than me but I would say I am above the genius level lol. It is amusing to me that so many people think they know anything about me. Yeah, I was lol a little at this. "Genius level" is 2 standard deviations, which means 1 out of every 50 people you trip across as you go about your day to day life. I'd've offered good odds that JL was on the right side of that border, but I thought it might be in poor taste. And now he's gone and spoiled what would have been a winning bet. At least there's BYU tonight.

lol

This would amaze me if it means in any widespread way. I was aorund at the time and I grew up in Minnesota. Plenty of folks with German backgrounds there, and I never heard of it. My direct experience is not quite a counter-example but still.. My father came here for Croatia and took out citizenship in something like 1937. As a child, I understood he came from Austria. Croatia was part of Austria-Hu ngary in 1910 when he arrived. Well Croatia is neither Austria nor Germany but there was absolutely no trouble He considered volunteering after Pearl, but my mother pointed out that he was forty-one, I was two, and maybe he should stay home. He went to work in a munitions factory at Rosemont, Minnesota. No questions asked. I don't know which of my young friends were German and which weren't. I didn't think that way, and despite the best efforts of some to turn us all into hyphenated Americans, I still don't. But in Minnesota in the 40s, I don't believe it would have been possible for there to be a round-up of German-Americans that would have escaped my notice. One other piece of evidence: I was chatting with a friend about childhood days. He is of German background and when, as a child, he heard of a great German victory on the radio he cheered. His mother explained the facts to mhim. He said nothing about any trouble, but he did learn not to cheer for the Germans. One thing I learned just a few years ago: In Minnesota there were prisoner of war camps for Germans, and many of the prisoners were used as farm laborers. This was common in many places. I read some novel, set in Canada, about this practice. A little over 10,000 I believe (German-Americans that is, not counting the Italian-Americans in that figure).

Heh. btw with respect to the FDR excerpt, did you know that Italian-Americans and German-Americans were sent to internment camps, also?

Where's the love you espouse for "rule of law," Winston? "Suppression of Rebellion" is a specious distinction - the Supreme Court ruled (and on more than one occasion, I believe) that Lincoln violated the Constitution and acted illegally.

Me. But then I remember history. Lincoln did it. It figures, what with Lincoln being a Republican and all.

I think your example is a bit less speculative than than some of the other ones.

2♠ It's as good a fit as we know about, it describes our hand in case partner has any relevant decision to make later, it pays better than our other possible fits, and it preempts a 2!H balance.

Funny how some people have the heads stuck so far up their own ass that the come up with tripe like this... The company that I work for sells some of the best software for mathematical modeling in the world. I don't dispute the existence of principal - agent problems, however, I don't think that "probems with mathematics" are involved in any significant way. If you want to be dismissive it's more effective to do it politely. Good luck with that, Nigel.

Not to nitpick or anything, but Clinton wasn't impeached for extramarital blowjobs (considered a bit sleazy by most conservatives I know, but not worth even thinking about impeachment over), but rather for perjury and obstruction of justice. Clinton didn't exactly "bring us" unprecedented prosperity; he took and held office at the peak of the dot com boom, when people thought it was a great idea to pay $400 a share for companies with no earnings, because, hey, you can always sell 'em for $450 in 6 months. That's a bit like saying Madoff shouldn't have been arrested, because he did great for the people who cashed out in time. As Lloyd Bentsen once said, "I could create the illusion of prosperity, too, if I could write a trillion dollars' worth of hot checks."

I guess "We don't really have much of an idea what unemployment will be if we do X, and we don't really have much of an idea what unemployment will be if we don't do X, but we do know that it'll be a lot worse if we don't do X" would be a tougher sell.

♦K for me, too. I wouldn't do it, but I have to admit to being curious about what would happen on the lead of the Q. Ditto Phil by the way, with respect to the overcall. I pass 1♣. But if the person who overcalled drops dead after the auction, and I have to fill in to make the lead, it's a diamond.

Reminds me of when I was a kid on vacation in Mexico. A lot of items in Tijuana had price tags with letters, rather than numbers. My Spanish was decent, so I asked a guy why they did that. He said the Americans liked to bargain, so if an item was $5.00, they'd have to ask, because it wasn't in numbers. So he'd tell them it was $12, and let them talk him down to $8.

Spade

Charlie wouldn't.

How would anyone who cares to answer rate the lead of the ♣A?

What definition of "is" are you using?

The caption of that photo is taken out of context. It doesn't have anything to do with conspiracies; "It's a Conspiracy" properly interpreted means "the proper lead from 3 small against a suit contract is low."

He was only trying to get him some piece.

Is FoxNews the only channel you get on your TV? If you're going to call out other people's opinions as 'rubbish', maybe you shouldn't make comments like this. Which major decision of his has been very popular? Apparently, his commitment to the war in Afghanistan. We Americans love still being at war in the Middle East. That's why Bush was so popular. I'll never remember which, but I remember seeing a poll or two lately that Americans are roughly split on whether to stay in Afghanistan or not. Of course that means by default no decision he was going to make on the issue would be very popular, that is true. My best recollection is that the ones I saw indicated a solid plurality opposed (maybe 40-45%?) with the remainder split between staying and being undecided.

Is FoxNews the only channel you get on your TV? If you're going to call out other people's opinions as 'rubbish', maybe you shouldn't make comments like this. Which major decision of his has been very popular? Apparently, his commitment to the war in Afghanistan. We Americans love still being at war in the Middle East. That's why Bush was so popular.

This strikes me as a really odd thing to say, particularly in conjunction with your previous statement that he ran on Afghanistan being a war of necessity, but might not have believed it. If he's campaigning and acting as though Afghanistan is a war of necessity without believing it, that's unprincipled. And it's certainly not popular. FWIW, I think his commitment to the war in Afghanistan is clearly both prinicpled and unpopular.

The real "Green" Party?!

"21st Century Progressive Democrats" would be more valid. Far more charismatic leader - one of the key components for any cult. The thing is he's got a LOT more going for him than just charisma, as opposed to say Dubya or Palin or Limbaugh or Beck. Democrats like a herd of cats, Republicans purity tests, 'dittoheads', etc. Your point fails. They're the cultists...we follow the one true leader. You're in pretty serious denial. Democrats don't blindly follow their leaders, it's not in our DNA. That's why we have '60 votes' and still can't pass anything. Because we don't slavishly toe the line. That's why the pro-life Democrats are so prominent, and Joe Lieberman had to leave the party for which he was just the VP candidate because he was on the other side of the party line over one issue. Check the CA state legislature, if you want to see lockstep voting. The most common rationale I heard for Palin's inclusion on the ticket was that she was needed to bring in a faction of the Republican party that wouldn't have been on board otherwise. There's certainly a split between the Republican party's "religious right" wing and the more moderate Republicans. The Republicans haven't had a "cult hero" type of figure since Reagan. Having more going for him than charisma doesn't counter the point; cult leaders can be intelligent and educated. The people who scream the loudest about the anti-gay bigot Republicans don't seem to mind that Obama is against gay marriage and Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act (I saw Bill Maher make that rant on THE SAME SHOW where called Obama a "perfect" candidate and said he wouldn't have anything to talk about for 4 years if he were elected). This is not intended to apply to "all" or "most" Obama supporters, or the ones in this thread, who are largely intelligent and rational, and for the most part (and to varying degrees) objective, as evidenced in, for instance, the Middle East War thread; however, there is a HUGE block who think that Obama can do no wrong, and if he ever appears to, then see Rule #1.

"21st Century Progressive Democrats" would be more valid. Far more charismatic leader - one of the key components for any cult. The thing is he's got a LOT more going for him than just charisma, as opposed to say Dubya or Palin or Limbaugh or Beck. Democrats like a herd of cats, Republicans purity tests, 'dittoheads', etc. Your point fails. They're the cultists...we follow the one true leader.