HauteHippie

Chief out

Checked it out. Wow the thing is huge. That's what she said anyhow. But I gotta agree - the screen should have more pixels. Still, I think it's a go go. The HTC doesn't touch the Sammy screen vividness.

Ya, and all indications are that it won't let up. You've got a pizza guy beating a sitting pres head to head in polls now. Then again any republican to be named later is ahead of him so that's not saying much!

The "Tea Party" candidates have actually delivered on what they were selling, insofar as they've been able to do so being in the minority (at this point). We voted against never-ending spending, and the notion that the solution to our debt problems are never-ending debt ceiling increases. They put up one hell of a fight, but simply didn't have the strength in numbers that the deficit spenders still have. Me thinks, however, that's short lived. I see no indication in polling numbers that anyone is happy with the status quo, and suspect all establishment politicians are very much at risk. Heck, the guy who used to run a few pizza parlors is more popular than the sitting president!

It is not opinion. And I don't read right-wing blogs. I would encourage you to expand your factual repertoire beyond the internets.

Canada is a nice place to visit.

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SS, the Federal Highways fund, among others. I still believe Clinton was the better choice in '92, and don't think I made the wrong choice - given the choice at the time. He had the potential to be a great president; but he wasn't a great president. The budget surplus was an illusion created by "creative" book-keeping adjustments to intragovernmental holdings, by neglecting the needs of our military, by illusory tax income projected to be created by the illusory wealth of a tech bubble economy, and by "growth" from spending time bombs scheduled to detonate after his departure - a.k.a. mostly fiction. The national debt never came down under Clinton. Not once; not in any year during his term. And by the way, take a look at the Constitution some time, and see who has budgetary authority under our form of government... Hint: it ain't the Prez. So if you think the budget chicanery of the Clinton years is commendable, then Congress (mostly Republican controlled during that era) deserves the credit. I, however, would say the blame. No, all said an done, there was nothing special that happened during the Clinton term worth noting other than his impeachment. The tech bubble was exactly that - an artificial bubble, and certainly not of Clinton's making. He made a major blunder by ignoring the power vacuum created by the collapse of the Soviet Union while trying to spend a fictional peace dividend and failing to anticipate the likelihood that an Islamo-Fascist movement would fill that void. He can point to no important, even if fictional, foreign policy triumph like the Camp David accords. Janet Reno was an utter disaster, as was Jocelyn Elder. And monetary policy was (as is always the case) controlled solely by the Federal Reserve. So, what did he bring to the table other than a world class ability to lie through his teeth, take credit for the work of others, and deflect blame for his failures? While these may be admirable and formidable qualities in a politician, posterity doesn't tend to reward them.

Ya... that and these types of conversations usually just happen spontaneously, rather than under explicit direction.

It's definitely not the government's job to do so. And the government generally makes a mess of things when it tries. The problem with Obama isn't that he hasn't done enough.... quite the opposite, in fact. They're not your type, but there are plenty of them out there.

The sex part or the Social Security part? The former was a dumb joke, the latter is simple to verify. Oh and by the way, I voted for Clinton in '92, so don't think I'm biased when I tell you that he didn't do any of the things you mention.

I'm not going the iPhone route, but I'd considered waiting for ice cream sandwich too. But the release schedules here in the US have lagged. Folks I know in India have had the SGS2 for months already. Who knows when we'll get the Ice Cream Nexus here. Plus if you sit around waiting forever, you'll never get anything. This SGS2 has what I think I want. At this point I don't even know if there's any reason to prefer Ice Cream Sandwich over Gingerbread anyhow.

Thinking about upgrading from the ole crap Blackberry to one of these newfangled Samsung Galaxy S II phones. Pros / cons? Opinions?? It's the dual core 1.5 GHz A9. Gingerbread OS. Nice and snappy.

:wub: :wub: :wub:

A friend I went to graduate school with established a financial services company several years back. He now employs roughly 160 people worldwide, most of which are in the USA. I do some work for him from time to time, and have gotten to see first hand how all this is directly affecting his business. He has been fined by regulators for things like hiring too fast, and has spent well over $1M defending himself in court over the last 5 years and now has to employ a team of lawyers full time to deal with FINRA compliance issues. And because of all this he has had to: (1) cut back on hiring even though he has been very eager to hire, (2) open offices offshore. In fact, the barriers to entry today are so much higher due to all the new regulations now in place compared to when he first established the business, that if he were trying to start it up today he'd simply be unable to do so. So the overhead is simply astounding. And on the issue of taxes, health care mandates, and whatever else might be coming down the pipe... there's no doubt in my mind that he's not too far from the breaking point and could be closing up shop in the US if much more gets piled on at this point. There are a few choice tropical islands where we could easily relocate and operate. And he's FAAAAAR from the only one. Demand for labor in the US is down (i.e. unemployment is high) in large part because the cost of labor is high. Simple economics. And this is precisely the message consistently coming from America CEOs. i.e. get government out of the way so we can hire.

Ya, I wonder if the money Clinton borrowed from Social Security that drove up the national debt was used to pay for sex?

Please do get started, and tell us more about the adult entertainment and escort businesses. In a new thread if needed.

I see it for sale for about $6k. Wow. A $6k cal. 2500 co-axial escapement. Seems ridiculous. The liquid metal bezel thing is seriously cool though. Seems like rep makers could achieve the same look far more easily and on the cheap. . . .

Bingo!!!!!

Gorgeous (and cold) looking!!

Ya, get it to Zig for an actual service. Who knows what they're calling a "servicing" over in mainland China these days. The second @12 movement may be serviceable, but from what I understand, can't be expected to be terribly reliable over the long run.

That's a big chuck of the cost. Date window position fixing requires a genuine dial, and a LWO 283 movement. The LWO 283 movement requires the crown position to be moved. These additions require costly case modifications which really add up. So once you get that far, IMO, just go ahead and get genuine hands. You can save a bit by staying with rep crown and pushers, but you're still looking at a major franken project in terms of cost.

Post #40 wasn't a hijack, it was a reply to a previous post and a relaying of conversations with CEOs that have been playing out on financial networks and in print for months. Politics had nothing to do with it. One such example: http://video.foxbusi...olding-us-back/ You can disagree all you want and confuse correlation and causation, but you can't refer to fiction as fact.

What does that statement even mean? Right, and yet the national debt increased every year during the 1990's despite these "surpluses"! http://www.treasuryd...debt_histo4.htm Hint: the debt can't increase during a year with a real surplus. Not so. Enron's actions, known as fraud, were still illegal and the SEC simply failed to review their filings year after year. It was only a private hedge fund manager who exposed them. Why did you go there? I thought you didn't want to get political. Really? America would force the "rich" to stay in America? Wow, I thought he was nuts, but maybe Ron Paul actually had a point when he claimed that building a wall between America and Mexico might some day serve to keep Americans in!! Unfortunately the recession is necessary. Sometimes the medicine tastes bad, but you have to swallow it. We need less borrowing and spending, more savings. We need to liquidate all the malinvestments that have been made over the last 10 years, and start to reallocate resources as we build capital. It takes time, it's called a recession or depression depending on duration, it's the result of living beyond our means for far too long, and it's the only cure. And all the attempts by all the politicians on both sides of the aisle to attempt to avoid it are simply further distorting market forces and are only going to make the eventual depression that much worse.

No, what caused the dotcom crash was the artificial dotcom boom itself, a result of monetary recklessness in the 1990s which led to all sorts of imbalances. The budget surplus was a myth as one can note that the total national debt increased every year during the 90's. The Clinton administration created the illusion of a surplus by touting the decreased public debt while conveniently not mentioning that the money being borrowed from Social Security was ever-increasing along with the total national debt itself. They *almost* created a real surplus in 2000, but not quite. They came $18B short as I recall. What we have to do is assume that before long we'll have to return to a sane, logical, and sound monetary system. Under such a system, the inflation-driven booms such as those of the 1990's and 2000's that created unsustainable bubbles in the stock market and the housing market respectively, and along with them distortions throughout the economy, would no longer be possible. And then simple economics can play out. In an environment where money isn't printed at will and created out of thin air, government regulations that make hiring more difficult, risky, and costly serve to reduce demand for labor in the aggregate, i.e. create higher unemployment. And taxing the "rich" (a.k.a. the job creators, as our current crop of presidential hopefuls correctly identify them) does create a greater hunger - but unfortunately it's a hunger to leave the high tax, high regulatory climates for those more favorable, and in the process of doing so taking their jobs with them. The US desperately needs a cutback in spending, and major tax reform. Elimination of corporate taxes, elimination of minimum wage laws and public sector unions, large cuts in personal income taxes, and the institution of a national sales tax would be excellent starts. We need to be taxing people not when they accumulate wealth, but when they spend it. We need to encourage productivity, and tax consumption. And then, of course, we must live within our means.