:D

/insert joke about moderation of that thread here/

SI

What Obama changed at the NSA: 5 takeaways - CNN.com


I like the idea. Probably needed to limit abuse of power


I don't see why this is a big deal. I do think this would help connect the dots.


Don't really know what this one is about.


Okay, lets not monitor allies. Definitely monitor everyone else.

So, let's see.. we have a double header of Republican "War on Women" stupidity.

Apparently, according to Mike Huckabee, the reason for the big push to have birthcontrol covered under the ACA is because “If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control, because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it,”

Normally, that would have the #1 on "Stupid Republican Statements of the Day" locked down. (It's basically a kinder gentler version of Rush Limbaugh's "Only Sluts want birth control").

But it got beat by the new book from Republican Representative from New Mexico , Steve Pearce, whose new book "Just Fly the Plane, Stupid!", had a section where he argued the woman's role is to voluntarily submit and the man's role is to "show up in times of deep stress, and take the leadership role".

And I'm sure the base will egg them on, but.. yeesh.. for a Party whose constantly having to fight off "war on women" arguments.. they're their own worst enemy.

It's politics and playing to a base. Stupid and ignorant comments but intended for a specific voting audience. No different than multi-millionaire Democrats in Congress and on television playing to the masses with their "war" on income inequality. Rinse. Repeat.

A new strategy in 2014. I wonder who leaked the memo.

Obama’s rough 2013 prompts a new blueprint - The Washington Post

State of the Union tonight

SI

Raising minimum wage on government contractors.

I was caught in the Atlanta snowstorm traffic fiasco so was in no mood to watch the speech, GOP rebuttal and the talking heads analysis.

Government backed private retirement plan sounds interesting. Healthcare comment funny. Although I believe we should be more welcoming of educated immigrants, leaning against pathway to citizenship but not sure. Get out of Afghanistan unless we truly have a partner. I think Iran is in good spot assuming inspections are allowed to continue freely.

In State of the Union, Obama vows to expand opportunity, with or without Congress - The Washington Post

He mentioned Punch Pizza in the speech last night, a pretty good pizza place that is within walking distance of my house.

I'm not much for politics, but had it on.

The GOP rebuttal, by Washington Rep Cathy McMorris Rodgers ...I felt like I was watching the scene in Billy Madison when Miss Lippy reads "The Puppy Who Lost It's Way"

I watched part of it while doing work. The only funny part was when he told everyone that instead of voting to repeal a law where most support the individual parts of it, maybe they should work to improve it. The part about 40 failed votes being enough that maybe they should do something different got a funny response.

I support 2008 Sen. Obama...

"The biggest problems that we're facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that's what I intend to reverse when I'm president of the United States of America."

I don't why people would buy into this. The plans centers on government bonds, correct? Bonds that pay low interest rates that lag behind inflation rates? Isn't this why we have IRAs?

Everybody hates congress. Nobody likes a hypocrite. Except when the hypocrite is being hypocritical about something everybody hates.

If you already have an IRA or 401k it isn't for you. These accounts will roll over into a traditional IRA when they reach 15K as that's when companies can break even on accounts. I don't know how many people will take advantage of these, but the idea of getting lower income people to start saving isn't bad at all.

I don't think that word means what he thinks it does...

Yeah I'm not sure why we need this. It seems like it works just like a Roth IRA and you can buy government bonds inside a Roth IRA. The only thing I can think of is that it's for people who are scared of opening a retirement account through a bank/investment company. I just think it's a bad strategy to tell a young person to invest only in government bonds. Someone under 40 should be heavy in equities.

If he wants to tackle retirement, I'd love to go after the investment companies for the severe limitations on what funds you can buy in company 401k accounts. I'd also like more transparency when it comes to fees and expense ratios. That costs middle class families more than anything.

Here's a good summary of the goal and features of the MyRA. It may not reach very many people, but as a vehicle to get lower income employees to start saving it seems pretty unobjectionable.

http://www.businessinsider.com/obama...to-know-2014-1

Haven't read much about the peace process so this was an interesting article from Friedman. Pretty one sided insights into Netanyahu but nothing on Abbas & Hamas thinking.

Log In - The New York Times

Like so much Friedman writes, he gets the surface right, but misses the fundamental points. It's laid bare in his final sentence. What, exactly, is the "next train... coming at them"?

There's no realistic way for the U.S. to put enough pressure on Israel and the Palestinians at the same time to come to agreement, if they don't want to. Successive administrations have found this to their cost. What has changed now, Tom? Nothing that I can see.

The fact of the matter is that both sides still feel they have more to gain by hewing to their unilateral positions than actually negotiating. Netanyahu has created a coalition and state that retains an identity based on a siege mentality (i.e. "we also don’t want another state that will start attacking us"). The Palestinian leadership continues to be supported by other middle east states who want them to permanently be a thorn in Israel's side.

What Friedman gets right, potentially, is that if Kerry puts forward a clear "here's what you have to do to even get started" plan, and has it rejected, it shows that there's no real daylight for a deal right now. What he gets wrong, however, is that this won't presage some sort of "train... coming at them", it'll just result in the business as usual we've had for the past how many ever years.

The best result, to me, aside from the relatively small possibility of a negotiated settlement, would be the failure of the "Kerry plan" to be adopted resulting in the U.S. administration deciding not to spend any more resources there trying to broker a settlement, and thus focusing resources elsewhere. Given that almost every U.S. president in his second terms tends to spend inordinate resources trying to solve this particular problem, and usually to little effect, that would really be something.

I'm obviously not a fan of the president, but that interview between he and O'Reilly during the pre-game show yesterday was several minutes that I can never have back. No reason for all those political retread questions in an interview. That thing should have started with, "Mr. President, I know we have our differences, but we're here to talk football today!" and then gone on to some light-hearted banter from there. Both the president and O'Reilly had some really painful moments and it did no one any good.

Friedman actually mentions it in the paragraphs above that:


I don't think it necessarily means anything right away, but Friedman is right that without a two-state solution, either Israel has to do it by abandoning the West Bank or it becomes a one state solution, eventually.

The end of the two-state solution would change the calculus decidedly - that's the train coming act them.

I guess I just don't see it as particularly realistic, to be honest. While it's certainly possible that Kerry might say "you both suck, and because of that the two-state solution is never going to happen" and focus on something else for the rest of Obama's administration (and I think that would be great), there's nothing to keep the Israelis and Palestinians from mooting the topic again in a few years and starting the charade all over.

Friedman is a fan of big pronouncements, but the world does not tend to move on account of big pronouncements, nor does it tend to switch from black to white and stay there. That's the problem I have with him.

Interesting read on the minimum wage debate.

Almost Everything You Have Been Told About The Minimum Wage Is False - Forbes

Well, it's /a/ read, anyways- not so "interesting", tho. His cited study that he builds a lot of the article on (the 63% figure that he uses to basically show that most minimum wage earners don't really need the income) was funded by the Employment Policies Institute, a conservative think tank. Never mind that the study was mostly garbage: it's simulations based loosely on only 4 years of data (they only use March data for some reason).


http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2012tbls.htm
It's not that he's playing too little fast and loose with the numbers (it's 43%). But then he says "well, since it's almost half, we can say it's true for the whole". And then jumps to this conclusion:



So, yeah, if 43% of a faulty 63% (based on only 4 sets of data, that I'm sure were not chosen with any partisan bias) are true, it must be true!

And never mind that the article keeps using liberal in the pejorative.

When did Forbes become so openly partisan?

SI

Flick back and look through some of his previous articles - going by the titles I'm fairly certain he has a fixed viewpoint and is looking for evidence to substantiate it (as is often the case with both liberal and republican commentators):

Previous articles
Retail Wages Are Market Wages, Not a Welfare Program
Income Redistribution's Logical Conclusion Is Communism
White House Report Proves White House Is Wrong On Extended Unemployment Compensation

Oh the irony...

Can't say I'm surprised and am still supportive of the law as a whole.

They quit their jobs, thanks to the health law - The Washington Post

Wouldn't this open up 2.5 million jobs that now will have lower demand and thus increase wages? Sounds good to me.

Yep. People no longer feeling tied to their current job is a benefit of the ACA as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not sure it reads like that. It's not that they feel tied to their current job, it's that if they work more (or make more) they lose their subsidies. So they'd rather not work and get free healthcare than work and risk having to pay more. Isn't that what the article says?

What I've read is that the decrease in hours worked comes from a number of sources.

I don't think this issue will hurt the GOP as much as the Immigration reform stance. I do feel it needs to end sometime.

Log In - The New York Times

I think the subsidies is a contributing factor but not the whole story. People work for more than just healthcare. Nevertheless, ACA does make it easier for people to leave jobs ... suspect more so for older workers not yet eligible for SS/Medicare eligibility.

Too soon to tell (but in 10-15 years time?), interesting to read the analysis of how ACA shaped the workforce re: older workers, under skilled workers, corporation benefits packages, Insurance companies, cost of drugs etc.

I wish the article would have noted how it was going to be paid for.

"“We’ve given them everything they wanted. Paid for,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, flashing his irritation at Republicans who blocked the bill."

Interesting piece on this topic:

Yes, Obamacare will probably downsize the workforce. Economists explain why.


Another article on the Middle Class and affordability:

For 3 million, 'affordable' health care might not be

Pension smoothing.

Senate fails to extend unemployment benefits for the third time - CBS News

First article...
Why use Tennessee instead of Massachusetts? What do the numbers say there?

The article makes no mention of the size of the workforce. Boomers are retiring ever single day and they were going to retire eventually. You don't find an increase in labor until you get to the Millennial generation. So a decrease in overall labor isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's more of a transition for the next few years until Millennials really take over the base of the labor force. Until then there will be articles touting lost jobs all over the place with no mention of the demographics of the labor force. It's a very valid data point for analysis.

Second article...

A really shitty article written with the only from the perspective of insurance today. No mention of what the self insurance costs would have been prior to the law. The focus on the affordable part is absurd.

The guy they use in the article had no insurance before so sure having to pay for it sucks, but welcome to responsible life. So where are the articles talking about the stemming of the costs of healthcare for the rest of us who have been watching is skyrocket for the last 10 years? Where were these articles 10 years ago?

They didn't exist. Money was being made by too many people in the right places. On the backs of the rest of us who carried insurance.

My last job I was making 22k a year (before I was bumped to 50K a few months later) for a family of 5. I had company insurance that was costing me $400 a month with no help from the government. I made it work because I had a responsibility to my family to protect them and to protect our families finances. You tell me. How am I supposed to feel sorry for someone who didn't have insurance who now has to have it?

Per the article:
That could take a substantial bite from their budgets — potentially as much as $600 a month for a family of three earning $58,590 to $78,120.

It's more than fair and affordable for this income range, 3 people and cost.

I've been supporting 5 people for 11 years never making more than 50k per year and always had insurance. Not having it would have been a gigantic failure of my responsibilities to my family. Oh I priced other plans. And the the ones that the insurers were offering were horrid, weak, expensive for what my family needed. But I don't recall seeing any articles about those plans anywhere.

It's BS.

Re: Obamacare & Jobs:


Obamacare as job-killer: How the CBO thinks it'll work.


CBO Updates Analysis of Obamacare Effect on Jobs | New Republic

Why?

For some perspective, if the government were to end, or even suspend, America's largest corporate welfare project - the F-35 boondoggle - you could pay for assistance to the long-term unemployed for decades.

It's all about priorities. A plane that can't fly near Thunderstorms? Or food for those unable to work or find work?

I'm sure they'll be able to fix that issue sometime but your point is taken, there are other examples out there for sure.

See below exhibit C

http://www.urban.org/uploadedpdf/412...unemployed.pdf

Food for those unable to work - 6.5%. I think there was a study that said more people are on disability now due to the easier eligibility. Granted there is a percentage that is legitimate and they should be cared for.

Unable to find work. Is it unable to find work or unable to accept their cheese has moved and they need to do something different, accept lower pay etc. If this group cannot find a new job in 73 to 99 weeks, do you believe this group can find a new job with another 3 months extension? How long is long enough? (I don't know myself).

It was on npr.

http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/

The long term unemployed have it especially tough. The unemployment rate for this group is far higher than the national average. I'm fine with asking firms to stop discriminating and with creating retraining, but the only way that group sees significant improvement is if we get much closer to full employment. As long as companies can hire without reaching into the pool of long term unemployed, they won't.

Until unemployment is below at least 6% we need a lot more stimulus, not less.

The difference of course, is that eventually we realize that the F-35 program (to take your example) was way to expensive to sustain and we cut it and move on.

Yeah, call me when that happens.

Only an estimated 1.45 trillion and counting...

I realize this was my doing, but I refuse to debate with you.

Pumping/printing more money into the economy while increasing the debt isn't going to fix things.

It may get confusing :p

We could create a lot of jobs doing productive work right now, but we're too obsessed with the potential crisis to notice the current and very real crisis millions of unemployed are facing right now. We've half-assed this recovery for years now, delaying the time when growth allows us to deal with the structural deficit. How many more years of high deficit and high unemployment should we go through? WOuldn't it be better to put people to work and jumpstart growth?

I agree - ironically one of the biggest causes of the deficit increase is unemployment and spending money and increasing employment could actually help the deficit long term (if done right and for the right reasons - ie. rebuilt the infrastructure, which in itself will create more jobs).

Its ironic that when borrowing cost money the 'deficit hawks' were silent and happy to spend money, since its become cheap (even 'free') they're reluctant to do so ... its almost like they don't really have the countries best interests at heart and are looking out for themselves and their wallets ;)

What would you propose to do? I agree with you on the half-assing part of the recovery (both parties are to blame).

What do you think about the disability article that Edwards posted?

Reinstate long term unemployment extension/benefits for people if either they're disabled or over 60 (ie. nearing retirement) or willing to train for specific jobs.

Create jobs based around the areas being trained for by starting a government program to repair the countries infrastructure - thus the money being invested will partially be returned because you're generating more jobs and paying less in unemployment benefits.

The improved infrastructure itself once completed should make the country more productive and competitive and in turn create yet more revenue.

I'm kind of a fan of anything that will reduce the amount of people looking for work, as long as its gradual. I don't know if that's the intention of this or if it will really happen. But you hear so much about automation and how there will never be as many jobs. If that's really true THIS time (as opposed to all the other times this was predicted back to the Industrial Revolution), then it doesn't have to be a bad thing at all. Computers doing our work so we don't have to do as much? That is not at all an inherently bad thing. Actually, it's kind of awesome. Our government and economy will have to adjust some, but, not really that much. And it's not the end of capitalism either, as long as the decreased number of jobs still offer more cash and benefits than the government does for doing nothing. It will cause a lot of cultural crises that we'll have to get through (or just wait for people to die out), like people who don't like the government giving so many benefits to people without jobs, and people who regard the "rich" with suspicion (in a shrinking workforce, those on top ARE more valuable to society, because they will fund more and more of the government, we should value them, and also tax them.)

The big problem is unemployment amongst the lesser skilled. The government could fund all sorts of projects that need doing to get these people back to work. Just off the top of my head jobs could be created by fixing roads and bridges, replacing water lines, running higher capacity internet lines, repairing school buildings, painting urban roofs white, lead abatement, and brush removal in high fire areas. I'm sure there are lots of other possibilities, too. All of this needs doing, will have long term benefits and will employ lots of low skilled workers.

But we've chosen to do none of that.

So... the Republicans, as expected, cannot get 218 votes behind any hostage plan.. er.. plan to attach anything to the debt limit. So, like responsible adults, they will send out the only thing that can pass. A clean debt limit increase.

This has enraged the Teahadists so much that they won't get to wreck the economy and shut down the government (AGAIN), that they're going after Speaker Boehner.

Tea party group: Replace Boehner as speaker

The tide must be turning some if my representative, Raul Labrador, was one of the Republicans that encouraged Boehner to pass a clean debt ceiling bill. He wants more power, and he seems to think moving from the tea party side to the middle of Republicans is the way to get it.

Yeah, and put some higher-paying people out of jobs. I'm not saying that what you mentioned is a bad idea, but you have to anticipate the ripple impact. For example, every person who is repairing a bridge puts a higher-paid construction worker out of a job.

Then again, some of the most useful and long-lasting projects were done by the CCC, so maybe there's a way.

More like some of the more.. able to learn Republicans had their "burn the hand on the stove" moment in the government shut down and don't want to repeat the thing. They'll let the OTHER side do all that governing stuff, because that keeps them free for raging about the EVULS of government.

I forget who it was says "The Tea Party is like a member of the Anarchy Party.. their platform is Government doesn't work, and then when elected they actively try to make government not work"

If the government would have invested in a modern CCC back in 2009 I believe the economy would be much better off today. The Dems have few ideas and no spine and the GOP has bad ideas, so we're in year six of unemployment rates that should be considered a crisis.

Interesting story (warning, biased site)... GOP really putting the hammer down on tea party groups, telling donors that if they fund groups like FreedomWorks, they'll lose access to Republican leadership.

How The GOP Plans To Crush The Tea Party Revolt

IF (and again, I will be the first to say TPM has a vested interest in portraying Republicans in a negative light) this is the situation, then the GOP has slipped deeper into a near-Civil War.. could they be imploding at a time where they could most take advantage?

Setting all of the prerequisite groundwork for Jeb 2016. Jeb isnt a TP Repub, but the likely best chance the GOP has to win a general election. If they don't start doing something, Jeb gets killed in the primaries & never makes the GE. Yeah his last name is something, but that only goes so far when you get down to an actual campaign.

He's by all standards (not related to his last name) the most capable Republican to win a general election.

I don't think America is ready for another Bush, we're still recovering the recession the last one got us into.

I don't think anything is going to happen for the betterment of humanity as a whole until the status quo is violently uprooted. Then we'll go another couple hundred years before that group of people develops the same problems. Eventually our new god technology will save us from ourselves and turn us into willing slaves at our bidding, even though we won't ever know that we were asking for it at all. Then we'll have our utopia.

What needs to happen is that the "leadership" needs to be gone completely. At this point they're virtually as much as the enemy of a nation worth having as the f'n D's.

I'm not sure if you meant to put this here, in the anarchy thread, or in the apocalypse thread, but I like how it kind of works for all three.

On the surface that makes sense but Jeb is no GWB, and voters will see that. Plus by election time Americans will blame Obama equally for the economy by not doing enough to pull the economy out of the ditch (whether fair or unfair).

He is a seriously smart political figure and the savviest person in that family (a family of 2 Presidents is saying something no matter the meme on how dumb one of them is). And whether you agree with his politics or not, he has a way of putting aside partisanship (or the appearance of it) in ways that will appear refreshing to a lot of people who have seen this country devolve into this hyper-partisan and hyper-pessimistic society.

Whether you blame that on the Tea Party, Repubs (if you make a distinction), Dems, Obama, Bush, Clinton, the tooth fairy, or some combination of those elements....this country will go for (and has historically) the candidate that displays genuine optimism while not appearing to be a lunatic. And that is what Jeb is good at regardless of his last name.

Can't wait for Clinton vs. Bush in 2016.

And by "can't wait" I actually mean "OMG NO".

Yeah kinda looks like the odds on matchup right now. I doubt Hillary runs though if the Dem field looks weak (and by weak I mean any star power candidate), hard to rule it out.

I actually don't remember it that way. GWB came in after the post-Y2K boom, the dot-com bubble/crash was well underway, and after 9/11 the economy was going to tank regardless of who was in the WH.

Er, I believe there were two recessions during GWB's administration. Most people are probably going to remember the second one.

I will never vote for a Bush, never, ever, never, ever...

Much as I love to kick Mr Bush around, blaming a President for recessions because they occur on 'their' watch is foolish - often they take a lot of time to occur and are a cumulative effect over several terms; often the initial effect which causes the recession is seen as a 'positive' in society.

For instance in England Maggie Thatcher privatized all profit making government owned industry, this gave the country a huge windfall which made society initially prosperous for a short period - however once that windfall was spent (years later and at least a couple of elections) many things had to be cut back because there was no longer sufficient government income to support it (ironic that one of Mrs Thatchers most popular quotes is about 'socialism spending other peoples money' when she spent future generations income by privatizing industry).

Care to elaborate and why you don't think 9/11 is the major factor in the recession?

What's worse....articles that tell women to bring back the bush, or the thought that the US could elect another Bush. Both are potentially tragic to this nation.

Hard to imagine a much more tragic presidency than the one we've been enduring lately. For only the second time in my lifetime I've reached the point of being embarrassed by what we've become.

That said, the next Bush certainly offers no guarantee of much improvement. I suspect he'd be much more the mediocre disappointment that the last Bush term was than the much more solid first term by the same.

It's precisely because of 9/11 that of the two recessions in Bush's administration, people are more likely to remember the second one as an actual recession, if that makes sense. I would imagine to most people there's a more clear economic causal line between the financial system collapse and subsequent recession than 9/11 and its subsequent recession.

And having said that, as I recall things, the economy was already well on its way to bubble-bursting recession when 9/11 came along.


You are me 8 years ago.

I hope that makes you feel dirty. :p

Yep. A huge segment of America was just plain embarrassed by what went on under W.

Disgusted is a better word...

I think people are going to generally blame/credit presidents for economic stuff based on their party inclination going in. Obama's approval rating ain't that great (even with the middle) and those who are inclined to, are blaming him for the stagnant economy. Bush maybe has somewhat more dislike in the middle, but the Obama disappointment they have is more recent, so I think it's just about a wash when it comes to 2018. Either party can blow it by nominating a dud.

I don't disagree with you. My original comment was below. I contend you cannot blame GWB for the either the post 9/11 or the financial crash.

Did the recession last longer than it should have? Who knows.

Eh, we're both used to that happening by now ;)

More seriously though, it kinda illustrates why I really don't see much future for the country (at least not one I want any part of) & I'd really rather hit a sizable lottery & find me an island somewhere. (Nothing personal, you're just a handy jumping off point for a much larger thought, which I believe you'll understand)

The fairly short-term post-911 portion of the Bush admin is, in many respects, what I consider America at her best. That's the country I want to see, the one I want to be a part of. What's left today, honestly, is more misery inducing for me than much else.

Cruz is good at this political stuff. Win, lose, draw, whatever ... this is quality work from a political standpoint afaic.

My Way News - Cruz's demand ensnares GOP leaders on debt vote

I tend to agree with those who say you can't really give a President a lot of credit, good or bad, for the way the economy goes, especially when it goes fast in either direction.

But that's not to say you can't give them any credit at all.

When I read Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big to Fail about the crash, the thing that stood out to me was the complete and utter lack of meaningful oversight for the financial industry. And bear in mind Sorkin has been accused (probably rightly) of being in bed with the Wall Street folks, so many think the book soft-pedals the negative parts (for the full negative, read Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone, for instance).

So, it's somewhat damning.

Where's Bush in this?

A financial system circa 2008 without any meaningful oversight is the product of a very laissez-faire approach to regulation, which, obviously, has its drawbacks. Was that Bush's direct fault? Well no, because he's not the regulator. But Bush wanted to cut regulations in every industry, and the crash of 2008 is one of those consequences. Inasmuch as anything caused the resulting recession, the financial crash did. So the causal line is drawn, IMO.


But anyway, back to your original reply. While I don't know which recession NobodyHere was referencing, I'm going to assume it was the 2008+ one. That's the one people will put on Bush and, as I've explained, somewhat rightly so. Just as rightly to not put the post-9/11 recession (which was well underway before 9/11) on him. He could have done more to try and arrest the slide of the dot-com bust but yes, after 9/11 the economy was going down regardless.

Agreed.

And, from my point of view, it's also awesome in that it prolongs, and possibly even escalates, the GOP Civil War. :D

I'm actually okay with that too.

One way or another, it's time for the brand to figure out what it is.

I do.

Or Taibbi's Griftopia. It's just depressing but a good read.

SI

Plenty of blame to go around.
Financial Crisis Was Avoidable, Inquiry Concludes - NYTimes.com

Everyone effed up with Gramm-Leach-Bliley:


SI

Idle rant I guess ...

A tiny hospital in rural south Georgia shut down last week. Today I've seen that story make the rounds with one side blaming "reduced payments due to Obamacare" and the other side blaming the state legislature "for failing to expand Medicare"

Reality check: it's a county of less than 10,000 people, with double-digit unemployment & more than a quarter of the population below the poverty line ... of COURSE it can't fucking support a hospital, I'd be surprised if it could support a small Hardee's.

I know a tea partier here in LA who's posting that story as his proof that Obama is a disaster in every way. Not shocked he's not up on the local information.

I've seen this one slowly but surely going viral this evening. It's mindblowingly stupid to read the shit from both sides on this one, a complete disconnect with some fairly simple reality.

We have too many f'n counties in this state (159, second most in the U.S. IIRC), this particular place would have to grow to become a wide place in the road. Yes, it's ~30 miles to the nearest hospital ... but it's probably 30 miles to the nearest f'n Waffle House too.

I thought I saw Georgia had the most counties in the U.S...?

I wanna see a reality show where you try to eat at this Hardee's once a week.

Nope, it should only take one guess which state has the most, nearly 100 more. :)

Yeah, but 12 of those are actually smaller than our smallest ... so they kinda don't count afaic

:D

I remember back in the third grade, my teacher told me that if I made up a list of all 72 Wisconsin counties and the county seats, she would give me a 1/2 point extra credit for every county. I asked if she would extend that to other states and she agreed. I pulled out the encyclopedia and got to work on Texas. It took a while, but when I was done I turned in the several sheets of paper (think large, 3rd grader handwriting) with every Texas county and county seat and announced that I would not be doing any homework for the rest of the quarter.

Then you might need a hospital nearby (Hey-o!)

SI