Florida State Seminoles

[sardis]

ATM can't even get time change right on this popsicle stand...

[sardis]

A couple of observations:
1) This is getting out of hand, and
2) Can't the UN pay for their speakers' travel?

http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2014/11/04/ ... eak-at-un/

[bluetick]

How the country's most unhealthy state turned out to be the lowest adopter of the Affordable Care Act...

The first year of the Affordable Care Act in Mississippi was, by almost every measure, an unmitigated disaster. In a state stricken by diabetes, heart disease, obesity and the highest infant-mortality rate in the nation, President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare law has barely registered, leaving the country’s poorest and perhaps most segregated state trapped in a severe and intractable healthcare crisis.

To piece together what had happened in Mississippi, I traveled there this summer. For six days, I went from Delta towns to the Tennessee border to the Piney Woods to the Gulf Coast, and what I found was a series of cascading problems: bumbling errors and misinformation ginned up by the law’s tea-party opponents; ignorance and disorganization; a haunting racial divide; and, above all, the unyielding ideological imperative of conservative politics. This, I found, was a story about the Tea Party and its influence over a state Republican Party in transition, where a public feud between Governor Phil Bryant and the elected insurance commissioner, both Republicans who oppose Obamacare, forced the state to shut down its own insurance marketplace, even as the Obama administration in Washington refused to step into the fray. By the time the federal government offered the required coverage on its balky Healthcare.gov website, 70 percent of Mississippians confessed they knew almost nothing about it. “We would talk to people who say, ‘I don’t want anything about Obamacare. I want the Affordable Care Act,’” remembered Tineciaa Harris, one of the so-called navigators trained to help Mississippians sign up for health insurance. “And we’d have to explain to them that it’s the same thing.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... pi/382313/

Jesus, what a depressing article. Mississippi is helpless...and hopeless.

[BigRedMan]

IB is right.

Bitches need to loosen up.

[Bklyn]

Jesus, what a depressing article. Mississippi is helpless...and hopeless.

Yeah, it's packed with shameful shit. This passage was so sad in its mentality, that its truth made me laugh (if that makes sense)...

Many of Lewis’ friends and customers didn’t earn enough to buy insurance on the federal exchange as he did – they fell into the Medicaid gap. “I know guys who wash cars every day, and it’s hot,” he explained. “They fall down and have a stroke or somethin’, they don’t have any health insurance. And where’s the money gonna come from? His family is depending on him.” Lewis had followed the news about Bryant’s opposition to the Medicaid expansion. To him, it made sense that white conservatives wouldn’t want people like him—blacks—to have Medicaid; people in Mississippi have learned to deal with bigotry. But it surprised him that Republicans in the state were leaving white people in the Medicaid gap, too. “As long as you don’t step on my shoes, and I don’t step on yours, man, we can live and coincide,” he said. “But when you’re white and do that to other white people? Man, that’s mean-spirited.”

[Bklyn]

Oh, and...

The big winner in last night's election results was Hillary Clinton.

[hedge]

"All I do is connect the dots that others leave."

I'd like to dot both your eyes and then connect the dots with a chainsaw...

[hedge]

"The big winner in last night's election results was Hillary Clinton."

No doubt. 2 years is plenty of time for voters to get pissed at repubs (whether they have reason to or not), and with a shoe-in (probably landslide) presidential candidate on the tickets, any gains the pubs made in an off-year election can be reversed and even gained upon. Being in "power" in DC these days is akin to playing hot potato...

[hedge]

This is one of the stories on the main yahoo page. Nice pic...

Obama picks NY prosecutor Lynch to be next attorney general

[eCat]

This is one of the stories on the main yahoo page. Nice pic...

Obama picks NY prosecutor Lynch to be next attorney general

I guess a white guy wasn't qualified

[Jungle Rat]

Green hair?

[innocentbystander]

IB is right.

Bitches need to loosen up.

They need to OBEY their fathers until they marry. Then they need to OBEY their husbands. That will loosen them up.

[eCat]

you know the joke "what does a husband tell a woman with two black eyes? nothing, he's already told her twice?"

IB doesn't realize that's a joke

[Bklyn]

I guess a white guy wasn't qualified

Obama's preference for his appointments aren't racial, they are gender-based. That is clear by a mile. I think Michelle and his mother are big influences on that (conscious, or not) predilection.

[Bklyn]

I recently read a couple of good pieces about our obsession with Chinese educational gains and the state of the American student. Now, I do think we have room to expand in how we educate our children in the US. I've also posted articles in here about the Chinese tutoring method allowing kids an edge in the college admission process and how I would be open to exploring that as a supplement to my kids' education. However, one of my earliest observations as this East v West education comparison picked up steam were that for all of the Chinese's proficiency in math and test taking, their biggest innovative accomplishments are all gained by accessing technology secrets through computer espionage. Also, anecdotally (sp?), I found that the best quants in finance were oftentimes asian but they did not have a great ability to marshall the masses and set a vision...qualities one needs to successfully run a large organization. Those things made me dubious on whether the Chinese way of educating was really onto something. Then this article came out and it reinforced my thinking...

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archive ... r-schools/

And this (much shorter piece) bookends the issue with some statements about creativity and how it is rewarded (or not) by teachers:

http://time.com/author/eric-barker/#355 ... -creative/

[eCat]

yea, I think we've realized that for whatever reason, innovation is missing in the Chinese culture - clearly that is not the case with Japan.

another issue with China is they really haven't grasped the idea of quality control and I suspect much of that stems from the same issues the Americans have with it - and that is the people actually making the stuff aren't paid enough to care (and in China's case it may be prison or slave labor doing it)

despite that, the Pentagon ran a series of simulations where we were at war in some variation with China or a proxy of China and in all the simulations, America was at a distinct disadvantage as the Chinese (currently) had much more liquidity to pour into the infrastructure of war then we did. China would win in a war of economic attrition.

[Bklyn]

yea, I think we've realized that for whatever reason, innovation is missing in the Chinese culture - clearly that is not the case with Japan.

The key lies in the word "culture." The article goes into it, a bit. Chinese loves the shortcut (supposedly). It would also explain why they have built up whole cities that are empty because they measure their GDP by production, not factoring in consumption.

[Bklyn]

Current Harvard students take 1964 Louisiana literacy test (used to qualify for voting privileges) and fail...

http://thegrio.com/2014/11/07/literacy-test-harvard/

[eCat]

wow

I can believe it though

Today I think Gerrymandering is the biggest threat.

Clearly, Republicans believe they have little chance to win just going head to head

[Bklyn]

and it's true...only because the fringe is driving the discourse and qualifications.

Gerrymandering is a threat, but it's been practiced this way by the ruling party doing the drawing for ages. Another shift in the migration pattern over the next 20 years will render some of those "safely" GOP districts today, less so. The biggest controversies (to me) today centers on the hoops poor people, students and the (poor) elderly have to jump through in order to vote. That's where the travesty comes from, in my view.

The other thing the GOP hopes for is general voter apathy during an election year. That's always a nice tailwind for Republican candidates. One thing the GOP knows how to do, it's make their voter blocs mad as hell on the way to the polls. Dems make their people mad as hell at social gatherings and Starbucks.