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Can someone here link me/find the old stories about Rossi beating his mother up?
I’m in an argument with my rightie relatives about it, and for the life of me I can’t find any links to the thing now. Did it get eaten up?
edit: yes offtopic;
By the way, for anyone still delusional enough to plan to not vote for Gregoire because they are mad the Sonics are leaving….
It seems that at least one NBA team has found their new sports arena in serious jeapordy because financing for the construction has collapsed due to the current credit crisis.
Jay-Z Has 99 Problems: Arena Financing is One
The article notes that the investment firm handling the financing is Goldman Sachs, which has it’s own concerns right now, and all firms currently are being very tight-fisted in order to keep liquidity. Also, the naming rights are at risk (bidders are backing out), and the right to use imminent domain for the project is being contested in court. And if the Treasury Dept. doesn’t rule favorably on the use of tax-exempt bonds, “the cost of financing the stadium will rise significantly”.
All problems which we could be facing here now with the Sonics, except under Clay Bennett’s proposed deal, the taxpayers would all be on the line for the cost overruns, including financing costs.
In other words, the cost of funding a stadium right now might be double or triple the original projections, and there might be delays of two to three years in completion. Can you imagine what that would do to Rossi’s projected deficit calculations?
Thank your luck stars that Gregoire and other local politicians had the guts to tell Bennett to go take a hike, and to not let the door hit him on the way out.
2 Our accountant (who’s a staunch conservative) observed around the beginning of this decade that for a company to put its name on a sports facility was an even more reliable predictor of its impending demise than an office full of Aeron chairs.
Also, let’s thank the Republican Party for protecting America’s family values from the evils of “socialized” medicine:
Rudy and Emilie Friece disolved their 38 year marriage with divorce, because it was the only way for her to get chemotherapy treatment. It wasn’t covered by their insurance, and the only way she could qualify for Medicare was if she was indigent, which would require them to sell their home and spend all the money first (leaving none for retirement).
But despite sacrificing their marriage for her health, she died anyway – perhaps in part due to the delay in getting chemotherapy while they tried every other option for treatment other than getting a divorce.
Source: Medical Costs End 38 Year Marriage
Yep, great system we have here. John McCain wants to “improve” it by substituting employer-paid health care with a tax credit which can be used to buy private insurance – or not. Of course, we saw how well private insurance helped the Friece family.
(Technically, McCain only wants to tax your health insurance benefits, but who here seriously believes that employers would continue to provide it if they had to pay employment taxes on the benefit?)
Not one of those retards have bothered to
research what caused the meltdown. If they
did they would vote for McCain. The truth
eludes so many and it’s not that hard.
Unfuckingbelievable!
I’d like to see some serious discussion of McCain’s health care proposal.
(1) First of all, how much money would be raised by taxing employee’s health care benefits? Will it match the amount of the tax credit he offers instead? If not (and I’m sure it won’t), how does he justify saying that he won’t increase taxes on working people?
(2) Does he really expect employers to continue to offer employee health insurance after being required to pay payroll taxes on the benefits?
(3) Can health insurance be realistically obtained by the great majority of workers for themselves and their families for the amount of tax credit he is offering (not unless you imagine, as he apparantly does, that health insurance premiums would magically drop by several orders of magnitude by the miracle of “more competition”).
(4) How does he propose to handle people who can’t get insurance at any price, once employer-paid health insurance is no longer available?
(5) How does his plan make sure the tax credit actually goes towards health insurance (it doesn’t). What affect would that have on state governments and charities (their budgets would explode with costs for uninsured/indigent care).
Look, I’m not a great fan of the current employer-provided health care system. It’s got a lot of problems including larege numbers of working uninsured, huge gaps in coverage, and an incentive to cut benefits at the expense of employee care. But killing it off under McCain’s plan is just plain nuts, until you have a reasonable alternative in it’s place.
Remember that McCain has never been forced to rely upon insurance he received as an employee of a private company, or through private insurance which he had to pay through regular wages. As a serviceman and a Congressman, his medical care was always provided by the federal government.
Hmmm..
For all of our wingnuts complaining about “attacks” on Sarah Palin, how about if you mount a defense of her well-nigh imcomprehensible statements? I mean, pick a site you rely on for accurate transcription, select a question and answer, and then TELL US IN SOME DETAIL HOW IT MAKES FUCKING SENSE.
I am SOOOOO waiting.
@1 I think you’re referring to David Irons Jr.
I’ve never heard of Rossi being physically abusive.
Mark @ 5 is still trying to sell that snake oil. Everybody here has already gone through that with Cynical & Troll, and realized that jumping to research every such claim is a fool’s errand.
WORKING THE REFS:
The wingnut and Faux News mill is already trying to “work the refs” with respect to the moderater of the Palin debate.
For those of you unaccostomed to sports terms, “working the refs” means complaining loudly and often about officiating, so that the refs (or umpires) will be self-conscious about making calls against your team, invariably tilting judgement calls in your favor.
So now they are claiming that the NPR moderator of the Vice-Presidential debate is biased against Palin – even though the debate hasn’t happened yet.
The tactic has several benefits to them. First, it puts the moderator on the defensive. Second, it gives them a ready excuse when she fouls up in the debate. Third, if she doesn’t completely foul up, then they can claim a great victory against overwhelming odds. And finally, when Biden, the moderator, audience, and TV cameraman find it impossible to keep from laughing at her responses, they can accuse them of being “smug”, “elitists”, and “rude”.
Nothing like planning for the consequences of failure, I guess.
So lets’ see – in terms of “diminished expectations”, they couldn’t get Palin any lower. Not only is she expected to speak incomprehensivly and fold under pressure, but now they want us to believe that the moderator is gunning for her, also.
The only way Palin could NOT exceed those greatly diminished expectations if for her to throw up and then fall to the floor and quack like a duck.
A nice Obama campaign add:
(Fades in with a video of John McCain promising to cut taxes)….
Voice Over: John McCain says he is going to cut taxes by making the Bush tax cuts permanant. But what about his health care plan? He plans to tax the health insurance benefits many middle-class taxpayers receive from their employment. He wants you to buy private health insurance instead. But his promised tax credits won’t pay the premiums for most family’s health insurance.
How is that not a tax on the middle class? Maybe John McCain has gotten too used to receiving fully paid government health care while a member of the Senate, that he doesn’t realize the difficulty families face in buying private health insurance?
(Fade out with photo of a smug McCain).
damn, it was irons.
Thanks for the tip, altho it makes me feel stupid :)
wrong empty suit :(
Speaking of socialized medicine, rhp666, you need some. You’ve got a bad dose of Rabbit fever. Symptoms: Pointless pelletizing, projectile farting in electronic ‘print,’ and the heartbreak of satyriasis.
Or maybe you can make a movie. Call it Fatso. Show us how very spiffing fine healthcare is in Havana.
Masterdebater Gwen? Biased? Just because she wrote a prObama book?
Those Fox Noise people are so twisted … not a bit like you, Gwen, and Sister Mary Monica Immaculata Goldstein. Or Roger Maggot.
Yep, what we really need is a national healthcare system that runs like a well-oiled government machine. Also known as Medicare.
NPR, in a rare excursion into fair & balanced reporting, has some of the story here and here and here and here.
Of course, fraud’s just the proverbial icing. The real story is about Medicare’s unfunded liabilities, mere tens of trillions of dollars.