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Old October 4th, 2012 (04:11 PM). Edited October 10th, 2012 by Khawill.
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Khawill Khawill is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: The Cave of Hymns
Age: 19
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Posts: 1,490
She held the key in her hands, admiring the shape. "Okay sis!" She went around the room and looked at the other kids. "I was told to unlock the chains!" All of the children brightened up, happy to see a salvation. Spark went around unlocking chains, each and every child smiled happily at being saved. But there was one girl who just stared at Spark in awe.

Spark looked at the girl, "Whats the matter?" she said, "Are you scared? Because you shouldn't be, I'm saving you!" Even as she undid the girl's chains the girl still looked at her in awe. The girl was much younger than Spark, maybe ten. She had brown hair going halfway down her back and blue eyes, Spark thought the girl was as cute as a doll. The girl was trembling and wore a small dress.

"Y-you're that girl who saved us before. The one I had to cut. But you're so different, I-I can't believe it." The girl took Spark's hand and looked at a cut on it. "You really are her!" The girl cowered back in fear, quiet scared of what she thought Spark would do. But spark just stood in place looking at the cut, then she picked up her glove and slipped it back on.

She reached out the hand with the cut (her right hand), "I think you are just imagining it, because I have a lot of cuts and so do other people so you can't say I'm the girl who is scary cause I'm not." Then she remembered her dream and the dead men at the house, maybe she is real. Now Spark began to get scared but she didn't show it and gave the girl a hug, "What is your name?"

The girl was still fairly untrusting of Spark, "K-Kalie" she shook her head, "I know it is you, the girl looked just like you and she saved me then abandoned me and then I got captured."

Spark shook her head, "I think I know the girl, she looks just like me and sometimes kills people, just like Aria, but the girl doesn't kill just bad people, she kills all sorts of people and I think that is her." Spark was absolutely sure, so sure that the girl began to believe it also. "Where were you going? I bet you won't get captured if you stay with me and Aria! I'll go ask."

"Sis! Sis!" she called from the room, "can Kalie come with us, I know you don't want to bring nobody with us but can Kalie go please, please!"
College Bound, Mentally Sound.

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by Barbara Connors

We all have our pet peeves about this game. One of mine happens when I’ve been getting nothing but junk hands for hours, and then I’m dealt something like 10-9 suited, or maybe a baby suited ace— something that’s just good enough to call. Full of eager anticipation at finally seeing a flop, my joy quickly turns to “Oh @#%# I have to fold again” when one of the players in front of me puts in a raise.

 In a case like this, the temptation to cold-call, that is to call for two bets when one has not yet put any money in the pot, can be very strong. I’ll confess that I have succumbed to this temptation from time to time. In this I have a lot of company, because cold-calling with inferior hands preflop is one of the most common mistakes in poker. It’s also one of the most ruinous.

 That’s partly because the opportunity arises so often. Unless you’re sitting at a table full of nits, preflop raises are a common occurrence. Quality hands, by contrast, are relatively few and far between. But more than that, every loose cold-call you make has the potential to snowball into a stack-busting disaster if—as so often happens—you catch just enough of the flop to make an expensive second-best hand. It’s this noxious double-whammy, the frequency of this mistake coupled with the nasty way it can blow up on you, that makes loose cold-calls so deadly.

 As a general rule, whenever you’re facing a preflop raise, you should be looking to either reraise or get out. The vast majority of the time, those are your best options. But there is a range of hands, a very narrow kind of no man’s land between the clear folds and the aggressive three-bets, where cold-calling becomes a viable alternative. Like everything else in poker, this range is always shifting, depending on the exact circumstances.

 For starters, always consider the preflop raiser. There’s a multiverse of difference between calling two bets cold from a tight player who raised UTG, and cold-calling the same two bets from a drunk maniac sitting in the cutoff. Before anything else you must consider the source. How much do you respect this opponent’s preflop raises? What range do you put him on? No wishful thinking allowed here, no talking yourself into believing he’s raising with the low end of his range so it probably won’t hurt to call with A-J this time. It’s rationalizations like this that can kill you in the long run.

 The next crucial question is: how many players will be in this pot? If other players have already cold-called before it gets to you, or if there were limpers in front of the raise who are likely to call again for one more bet, you know you’re looking at a multiway pot. Now you can call for two bets with some drawing-type hands, starting with big suited Broadway cards. The more opponents you know are going to play this pot, the looser you can cold-call, down to the medium suited connectors or medium pocket pairs. More opponents equals better implied odds, so with multiway action you want to cold-call with hands that have the potential to hit big. The key here is being able to get away from the hand if the flop doesn’t hit you just right. If your pocket pair didn’t flop a set or if your suited connectors only hit for a middling pair, you must be able to walk away.

 What you don’t want to do is cold-call with hands that are easily dominated, such as K-J or A-10. Even suited, these hands are always dangerous against a raiser. It’s far too easy to be out-kicked, or simply out-pipped, when you make a pair. Against a player who has already told you his hand is strong, cold-calling with potentially dominated hands is just pushing your luck. Never a good idea in poker.

 Barbara Connors is a sucker for classic old movies, science fiction, and the St. Louis Cardinals. Her life’s ambition is to figure out the unusual behavior patterns of that unique breed of humans who call themselves poker players. Contact her at fyreflye222@yahoo.com.

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Doug Wyllie, PoliceOne Editor in ChiefBe Advised...
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SC departments partner on UAVs

The Richland County Sheriff’s Department and the Columbia Police Department have launched the 'Aerial Intelligence and Response' program for surveillance, search and rescue, and SWAT operations

With the deployment of two small, remote-controlled helicopters, the Richland County (S.C.) Sheriff’s Department has teamed with the Columbia (S.C.) Police Department in an effort to enhance efforts in the area of intelligence gathering, surveillance, search and rescue, as well as special responses to critical incidents. The effort — dubbed “A.I.R.” or “Aerial Intelligence and Response” — will give these two police agencies a new edge in their fight against crime.

Both agencies will now be able to use the small UAVs to capture criminals, gather intelligence, and search for missing persons or suspects (among many other uses), according to information provided to PoliceOne by Capt. Chris Cowan in the Office of Public Information for Richland County Sheriff’s Department.

At a press event held yesterday, Richland County Sheriff Lott and members of the two participating agencies demonstrated the new equipment. Sheriff Lott emphasized that radio controlled technology has become more trustworthy, more reliable, less expensive, and allows for rapid deployment of an asset that will save time, money and lives. Lott added that the RC helicopter is very inexpensive and can be deployed very quickly — while more importantly, it can identify dangers in the community without putting human beings at risk.

From Hobbyist to Specialist
Deputy Marcus Kim is spearheading the program, having been an international consultant to RC manufacturers and a professional RC helicopter pilot for 13 years. Kim, who also serves on RCSD’s Community Action Team, will work closely with the Special Response Team and Criminal Investigations Division utilizing this technology.

Columbia Police Chief Randy Scott, quoted in a local news article about yesterday’s event, said “This is an example of where jurisdictional boundaries are broken down for a criminal...Quite simply put, they can't run.”

The cost of each machine is estimated to be below $3,000 in initial outlay, and costs for maintenance and operation is minimal, especially when compared with the valuable tactical information obtained from this airborne asset.

Many Airborne Options
There are many options available to law enforcement in the area of UAV helicopters. In October of last year I spoke with Mike Buscher, CEO of Vanguard Defense Industries, about a system his company has been selling to law enforcement for some time. The ShadowHawk is equipped with both a digital daytime camera and a FLIR system and has the capability of carrying 40mm pod-mounted less lethal rounds, 37mm flare and smoke munitions, and even can be equipped with TASER XREP.

Despite efforts by the ACLU to condemn these machines in other cities as an invasion of privacy (see mention of this in the video below), most citizens — at least those who really give it some thought — quickly recognize the value of giving law enforcement this kind of intelligence capability without busting the department’s budget on a piloted helicopter, which is thousands of times more expensive, and brings into the mix various officer safety issues.

At yesterday’s event, Sheriff Lott stated that he will continue to search for innovative ways to fight crime in his community.

About the author

Doug Wyllie is Editor in Chief of PoliceOne, responsible for setting the editorial direction of the website and managing the planned editorial features by our roster of expert writers. An award-winning columnist — he is the 2014 Western Publishing Association "Maggie Award" winner in the category of Best Regularly Featured Digital Edition Column — Doug has authored more than 800 feature articles and tactical tips on a wide range of topics and trends that affect the law enforcement community. Doug is a member of International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association (ILEETA), an Associate Member of the California Peace Officers' Association (CPOA), and a member of the Public Safety Writers Association (PSWA). Even in his "spare" time, he is active in his support for the law enforcement community, contributing his time and talents toward police-related charitable events as well as participating in force-on-force training, search-and-rescue training, and other scenario-based training designed to prepare cops for the fight they face every day on the street.

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Mar. 18, 2010
Driving the Conversation:

The CBO scorecard

Plus, RomneyCare in Mass. defended

Does the CBO scorecard mean a final health care vote is coming soon?

Send to a friendThe CBO scorecardPlus, RomneyCare in Mass. defended

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    Kevin Madden

    Kevin Madden Republican strategist :

    Anytime Gov. Romney is talking about health care policy, he and a Republican party looking to forge a coalition with independent voters are put at an advantage.

    Having traveled with Gov. Romney across dozens of states, having witnessed him speak before thousands of voters and after sitting through too many meetings to count with local, state and national officials I can say with a certain degree of authority that when Gov. Romney talks health care, people listen. They listen because it becomes instantly clear his experience of having worked to craft a landmark universal health care bill has given him a unique perspective when it comes to understanding how to build bipartisan consensus around an issue that is as much driven by our common values on providing care as it is by the costs associated with it.

    Gov. Romney's main critique of President Obama and the Democrats approach is quite simple: Why would we take a partisan bill crafted in Washington that is designed to radically alter 1/6 of our economy, apply it to all 50 states and then say 'well let's see if this works!'"

    Gov. Romney's approach of crafting a reform bill in Massachusetts for its unique health care population represents the most important contrast between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to health care reform. While Democrats want to design a one-size-fits-all approach out of Washington with yet another federal standard of unfunded mandates for states, Republicans believe that states - with their unique populations and tailored approaches - are the laboratories of democracy where worthwhile reforms can truly be achieved.

    The goal of achieving universal care in Massachusetts was reached by building a bipartisan consensus with a keen understanding of the unique population and market factors at work there, important items that President Obama and the Democrats have ignored with their poorly executed approach on a national level.

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    David Mark

    David Mark Moderator :

    The Congressional Budget Office has determined that the health reform plan will cost $940 billion over 10 years, but will trim the federal deficit by $130 billion in the first ten years and $1.2 trillion in the second ten years, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said. Those deficit numbers should help ease the worries of deficit hawks on the fence about supporting the bill.

    Does this bring the health care package closer to passage? When will see a vote?

    CBO releases health bill estimates
    By: Patrick O'Connor and Carrie Budoff Brown
    March 18, 2010 10:03 AM EDT

    The Democratic health care bill would cost $940 billion over 10 years and cut the federal deficit over the next two decades – figures that should help ease the worries of fiscal hawks who have been reluctant about supporting the sweeping measure.

    The bill would reduce the deficit by about $130 billion in the first 10 years, and by $1.2 trillion over the second 10 years. It will expand coverage to 95 percent of Americans, according to Congressional Budget Office figures released Thursday by House Democrats.

    The numbers allow Democrats to push ahead with a vote Sunday, even as Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) continues to search for the 216 votes needed for passage.

    "We're on track for a Sunday vote," Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters.

    Legislative language has not yet been released. But the latest changes to the bill would close the donut hole in the Medicare prescription drug program, boost subsidies for lower-income individuals to buy insurance, and push back the implementation date of the tax on Cadillac insurance plans until 2018.

    Democrats wrangled for days with the CBO to get the numbers within their targets. The bill would cost more than the versions that passed the Senate and the House, but Democrats were able to keep the deficit reduction figures at the same levels – a goal that had preoccupied them for much of this week.

    Hoyer told reporters Wednesday night that the lack of CBO numbers were a bigger problem than any internal negotiations over outstanding issues, like the Senate's restrictions on abortion.

    Hoyer said Democrats want to "make sure we have it right" and "to make sure we have the savings we said we're going to have."

    The CBO determined that the bill would reduce the annual growth in Medicare spending by 1.4 percent annually, and extend Medicare’s solvency by at least nine years, House Democrat aides said.

    • Rep. Paul Ryan

      Rep. Paul Ryan Congressman (R-Wis.) :

      “To get a jump on spinning the numbers for partisan gain, the House Democratic leadership leaked to the press a confidential CBO preliminary cost estimate of their health care overhaul. As a result, CBO was forced to make available this estimate for legislation that had not been released. This is the latest in a long series of abuses by the Democratic majority to jam through their health care bill by any means necessary.

      Now that the CBO has released their preliminary estimate, let’s review what House Majority Whip James Clyburn is so 'giddy' about: it expands entitlement spending by roughly $1 trillion; it hits the American people with over half-a-trillion in tax hikes; it uses Medicare as a piggy bank with over half-a-trillion in Medicare cuts to create a new entitlement; and includes a number of egregious gimmicks that hide the true cost of the bill.

      When you expose the smoke and mirrors and look at the reality of this legislation, it is clear that this bill will not reduce deficits and will not control costs. The American people cannot afford the costly consequences of this health care debacle.”

    • Thomas J. Whalen

      Thomas J. Whalen Professor of Social Science, Boston University :

      The Democrats couldn’t ask for better news. Unlike the intelligence community’s “weapons of mass destruction” case during the Iraq War, the CBO is using real and unbiased data to reach this conclusion. This is just the political cover wavering (read cowardly) Democratic moderates need to vote for health care reform. They can actually sell it to voters as a deficit reduction act. It looks like the GOP’s long running and obstructionist tea party is officially over.

    • Karen Kerrigan

      Karen Kerrigan President, Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council :

      Spend a trillion to save a trillion?

      Are we really to believe that spending a trillion in tax dollars on health care will save more than a trillion on the same? And where is the declaration that health premium costs will go down? Under the Senate bill, these costs will largely increase according to the CBO. This dynamic appears to not have changed. House Democrats may want to consider that before voting "yes" on the measure.

      Individual and small to mid-size businesses are looking for lower costs, not higher ones. Health coverage costs will not go down under the legislation. Unfortunately, the CBO analysis also shows increases in individual mandate penalties (up $2 billion to $17 billion total), and employer mandate penalties (up $25 billion to $52 billion total). Whacking struggling self-employed people and small businesses even harder is not a sound approach for restoring the economy.

      Here's a paragraph in the CBO letter (from Director Doug Elmendorf to Speaker Pelosi) that may produce an "oops" moment down the road:

      "Although CBO completed a preliminary review of legislative language prior to its release, the agency has not thoroughly examined the reconciliation proposal to verify its consistency with the previous draft. This estimate is therefore preliminary, pending a review of the language of the reconciliation proposal, as well as further review and refinement of the budgetary projections."

      I guess if "deficit hawks" were looking for cover to vote for the measure on Sunday, they could point to the CBO score. But its not a complete score, nor an accurate one.

    • Charles W. Calomiris

      Charles W. Calomiris Professor of Financial Institutions, Columbia :

      If a corporation tried to use this sort of argument to reassure its stockholders, its CEO would be thrown in jail, but somehow, in Congress, this Mickey Mouse arithmetic passes muster. Precisely because of our existing health care obligations, all reputable economists agree we have made unfunded future promises with a present value today of roughly $80 trillion. That means that, almost exclusively because of our government's involvement in health care (and to a much lesser extent, social security), our government is bankrupt, with a negative net worth of roughly 7 times GDP, unless we make dramatic reductions in benefits, and soon. But instead of discussing those numbers, Congress finds reassurance in once again expanding government involvement in health care, increasing the costs of health care, and pretending that it can rely on new taxes to offset those incremental costs.

      How ridiculous to justify new spending by pretending that you can increase tax revenues from people who are already bankrupt several times over because of the prior health care costs they passed into law! This Ponzi scheme stinks to high heaven, and the American people are not duped by the phony arithmetic. Even more humorously, Congress, of course, are the same people who would hold corporate America to such high standards on accounting and auditing.

      It is high time to make dramatic and substantial reductions in government health care programs, and to increase our reliance on private incentives to save money by restoring patient control in the health care system. Instead, we are moving (again) in the opposite direction. To pretend that some phony budgetary calculation could justify all of this is, in the vernacular of main street, called "lying." It is a testament to the low expectations Americans have of their elected representatives that lying is greeted without much surprise in the electorate. But perhaps it will be the politicians who vote for this that will be surprised in November.

    • Theda Skocpol

      Theda Skocpol Professor of Government and Sociology, Harvard :

      Yes, it puts it on track for a vote in the House. Hopefully, before the President gets on a plane to leave the country. After that, Republicans can obstruct in the the Senate, but all they will be doing is delaying the wrap up.

    • Rory Cooper

      Rory Cooper Dir., Strategic Communications, Heritage Foundation :

      The CBO Score must be viewed with two things in mind: 1) It is based off of the assumptions it is given by Democratic leaders, and 2) Nobody in America believes those underlying assumptions. For example, the cost of the health care bill doesn’t include the Doc Fix which is passed annually.

      Where did those trillions go? And the bill assumes government will do a better job eliminating fraud and abuse than it has ever done. A low bar since the federal government has never eliminated any fraud or abuse. It adds millions of Americans to welfare programs and asks states to pick up the bill. This bill, complete with sweetheart deals for members and favored labor unions is paid for by tax hikes, premium hikes, and increased costs for the middle class. If this preliminary CBO score is used as a basis to jam through a vote on Sunday when Americans are watching basketball, not C-SPAN, it will be a tragedy. Nobody has even seen what is being voted on. Nobody. Read the bill, if there is a bill.

    • Steve Steckler

      Steve Steckler Chairman and founder, Infrastructure Management Group (IMG) :

      There are circumstances in which the CBO's budget scoring analysis is credible and those in which they are not. In the case of the Senate bill, which makes preposterous assumptions about future congressional actions, and which sets into motion a variety mechanisms with secondary and tertiary cost effects that CBO's methodology is obligated to ignore, it is not.

      Max Baucus crafted this legislation with both eyes trained on the limitations of CBO's abacus. It's not that hard to hide a trillion dollars in red ink when you know your auditor is obligated to ignore your footnotes or institutionally reluctant to take your foundational assumptions at anything more than face value. Enron, too, knew that auditors do accounting and not economics, and so used tainted accounting assumptions to swindle their investors. This bill does the same.

    • Rep. Paul Ryan

      Rep. Paul Ryan Congressman (R-Wis.) :

      “The Congressional Budget Office has confirmed that there is currently no official cost estimate. Yet House Democrats are touting to the press - and spinning for partisan gain - numbers that have not been released and are impossible to confirm. Rep. James Clyburn stated he was “giddy” about these unsubstantiated numbers. This is the latest outrageous exploitation by the Majority – in this case abusing the confidentiality of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office – to pass their massive health care overhaul at any cost.”

    • Tom Korologos

      Tom Korologos Former ambassador, consultant and Republican strategist :

      Bernie Madoff would be proud.

    • Victor Kamber

      Victor Kamber Vice-President American Income Life Insurance :

      These numbers help the wavering Democratic deficit hawks. It should give the leadership the 216 needed votes with 2-3 to spare.

    • Michael F. Cannon

      Michael F. Cannon Cato, Dir. of Health Policy Studies :

      That’s not the real cost of the legislation. The voters are being misled.

      As former Congressional Budget Office director Donald Marron has explained over and over again, the cost figure that Democrats cite for their bills is only the cost of federal spending related to the expansion of health insurance coverage. It is not the full cost to the federal government, because each bill also spends taxpayer dollars on other items.

      Marron examined the CBO’s March 11 score of the bill that passed the Senate on Christmas Eve, and found an additional $96 billion of spending over 10 years. If the most recent iteration is similar, then new federal spending in that bill would be approximately $1.036 trillion, pushing the total over the president’s target.

      Moreover, the on-budget costs of the legislation account for only 40 percent of the total costs. The other 60 percent come from the private-sector mandates. But Democrats have systematically suppressed any estimates of those implicit taxes, which would most likely reveal the full cost of the legislation to be $2.5 trillion over the next 10 years.

      It has been 272 days since Democrats introduced the first complete version of the president’s health plan, yet we still haven’t seen a complete cost estimate. The ObamaCare Cost-Estimate Watch maintains its lonely vigil…

    • Bradley A. Blakeman

      Bradley A. Blakeman Republican Strategist, CEO, Kent Strategies LLC, Georgetown Professor :

      It is absolutely impossible to predict the savings that would be realized 20 years from the date heath care is implemented. You have a better shot at buying a lottery ticket and winning the jackpot. Democrats have said, that should they be successful in passing health care, it would just be the first step in a goal of implementation of universal government mandated and paid for health care for all.

      Just look at what government incompetence, mismanagement, fraud and abuse has done to Medicaid and Medicare and you can see where this is going. Government-controlled health care provided to our poor and elderly is about to go bust and now Democrats seek to expand that incompetence to all Americans. Americans at a time of deep economic uncertainty, high unemployment, record foreclosures, and high taxes are now going to be asked to pay into a expanded government health care bureaucracy that they will not get a single benefit from for years.

      The president and the Democrats were clever to make sure that any new health care programs will not have a start date until well after the 2012 presidential elections. This is governing under the principle that “it will be someone else’s problem” to make it work, or, not work as the case may be. The president and Democrats in Congress are blinded by ideology and the exercise of raw power. Instead of concentrating on jobs and the economy they have hijacked America on an agenda the people do not want or need.

    • David Biespiel

      David Biespiel Poet and writer, Attic Writers Workshop :

      The CBO giveth and the CBO taketh away. For wavering House Democrats, their Irish luck came a day late. But it's not a dollar short. It should certainly help several Blue Dogs come home. Slate puts Speaker Pelosi's whip count at 208. Those undecideds who've said they "need to see the CBO report" should move to Yes promptly. Republicans will howl, of course, as they should, being the loyal opposition. They're gearing up for their own brand of arcane procedural challenges in the Senate (I don't oppose that - the arcane is to civilization as the shim is to construction). But no Republican plan offered by a single congressional Republican came even close to this sort of deficit reduction. That's a fact. Besides, CBO tends to project conservatively. So the deficit reduction may prove even greater. Finally, I would expect the vote to come late Sunday night. It may be a tough vote for some now, but over time it could well prove to be the best vote a Democrat of this generation ever cast.

    • Thomas E. Mann

      Thomas E. Mann Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, Brookings :

      The CBO score is the final piece of the package needed by the Democrats to bring health reform home. The House will almost certainly vote on Sunday and it is very likely to pass.

    • Darrell M. West

      Darrell M. West Vice President, Governance Studies, Brookings :

      This CBO report should clear the way for congressional passage of health care reform. Its deficit reduction numbers makes it easier for fiscal hawks to support the bill and Dennis Kucinich has paved the way for progressives to support the legislation. The vote still will be close because there is no need for the speaker to have vulnerable members take a tough vote if their support is not needed for final passage.

    • Timothy Stoltzfus Jost

      Timothy Stoltzfus Jost Law Professor at the Washington and Lee University :

      Yes it does. It still reduces the budget deficit twice as much as the Republican plan, and covers 10 times as many uninsured. We will see a vote on Sunday (unless it is Monday, or later).

  • close
    Grover Norquist

    Grover Norquist President of Americans for Tax Reform :

    Grover Norquist details in excruciatingly insightful prose the damage passage of government run health care will do to the Obama Administration and its credibility. When he was campaigning for president, Obama promised no tax hikes on Americans earning less than $250,000 and that is broken several ways by the legislation. This was to be a transparent process and it has been deliberately opaque. Obama promised bi-partisanship and he refused to work with Republican concerns about costs and tort reform for a year and then held a Potemkin Village pretend meeting while the real legislation was being written and rewritten in secret by labor union bosses, paid up corporate supporters and Democrat congressmen.

    Bye-Bye Mezvinski made the case for the glories of political martyrdom. She gives advice to her fellow Democrats a Republican must have written.

  • close
    Cesar Conda

    Cesar Conda Former domestic policy advisor to Vice President Cheney :

    On the policy substance, ObamaCare isn't the Massachusetts health care plan, as I've written here and here. It's not even close.

    Will it benefit or hurt Gov. Romney politically if he does decide to run for president again, in 2012? No, because Romney isn't proposing national health care mandates. Instead, he has called for giving the States more flexibility and incentives to implement their own health care reforms; expanding Health Savings Accounts and allowing full tax deductibility of qualified medical expenses; bringing market dynamics and modern technology to health care, and implementing medical liability reform among other things.

  • close
    Cameron Lynch

    Cameron Lynch Republican Strategist and President The Lynch Group, LLC :

    A good friend of mine who served as a close advisor to Gov. Romney during his 2008 presidential bid likes to proclaim "anytime Mitt can talk about health care is a victory for Mitt." While that may be true if Romney wins the GOP nomination, it's beginning to look as if "Romneycare" could prove a liability during the 2012 Republican Presidential primaries.

    It would be inaccurate to undertake an "apples to apples" comparison of the 2006 Massachusetts health care plan with the one currently fracturing the U.S. Congress. (Tim Murphy's piece in POLITICO makes a compelling argument to that extent). However, the recent populist uproar over the Democratic health reform bill will certainly provide Romney's GOP primary opponents fodder to score populist, anti-government points on the issue.

    That being said, should Romney survive the primaries, he can cite Romneycare as an important executive accomplishment that shows he is capable of pragmatic problem solving. Undoubtedly, this tactic and issue will garner him support with moderates and independents, where Presidential general elections are won or lost.

  • close
    Steve Steckler

    Steve Steckler Chairman and founder, Infrastructure Management Group (IMG) :

    While Massachusetts did indeed provide a structural model for Obamacare, it is the replication of Massachusetts' admitted flaws that should cause any thoughtful legislator to recoil from shoving it down the throats of the rest of the country. These include, in former Massachusetts health secretary Tim Murphy's words, "overreaching social planning" and its fiscal consequences. In fact, the bulk of Murphy's commentary is devoted to what went wrong, which Obamacare replicates nearly point by point. His basic message is this: we got the reform part right -- Republicans and Democrats pretty much agree on that anyway --but the insurance subsidization part was a government expansion disaster.

    Subsidizing and mandating insurance coverage for non-catastrophic care, as this bill does, is not a laudable goal; in fact, it exacerbates the greatest threat to both health care and the government's fiscal health: medical inflation. On the other hand, making health care service -- not just insurance -- cheaper and more competitive, insurance more flexible and portable, and consumer choices smarter, is essential. But Obamacare, like the worst of the Massachusetts experiment, takes health care in the opposite direction and beyond by crudely throwing trillions in taxpayer dollars at the problem. Moreover, it does so at a time when the consequences of its consumer price inoculation and fee-for-service reimbursement are well-demonstrated in the insolvency of Medicare. Accordingly, any congressman who spills his blood on behalf of this bill will only see it sopped up by a bulging metastasis. Some legacy.

  • close
    Julian E. Zelizer

    Julian E. Zelizer Professor of History and Public Affairs, Princeton :

    Both sides are getting ahead of themselves. It is far too early to predict what will happen after this bill. Given that millions of Americans would receive coverage from the program and that this will give Americans more options when purchasing their insurance, it is not difficult to imagine how this could benefit Democrats in November. Moreover, a victory could create momentum for more victories and give Democrats a strong platform upon which to run. Politicians who are trying to game the outcome should remember that contingencies that always surround the political impact of bills before their passage.

  • close
    Rory Cooper

    Rory Cooper Dir., Strategic Communications, Heritage Foundation :

    The Massachusetts plan is not Obamacare. Besides the plan specifics, the main difference is that one is a state plan, and one is federal. This is not an ignorable point. If all 50 states wanted to pick parts of the Massachusetts plan that worked and decline parts that didn’t, that would be great. Let states be the laboratories for health care innovation. In a state, if something doesn’t work, it is much easier to alter or repeal. Federally, we all know, and nobody can deny, that once President Obama has built a new entitlement, with higher taxes, higher premiums, higher costs and lower quality care, there will be no going back. It will only expand over time. The federal government unfortunately never gets smaller. Ever.

    Gov. Romney was smart to use free market principles to attempt universal coverage for his state’s citizens. There is nothing free market about Obamacare. It’s a government takeover, pure and simple. Pelosi, Reid and Obama should stop trying to find legislative tricks to jam through an unpopular bill (unpopular in their own caucus) and return the burden of innovation back to the states.

  • close
    Timothy Stoltzfus Jost

    Timothy Stoltzfus Jost Law Professor at the Washington and Lee University :

    Grover Norquist telling Democrats what to do to get reelected? I am sure he has only their best interest at heart. Does anyone other than me suspect that all the Republicans who are telling Democrats to vote against the bill in fact don't want them to win in November? In fact, the worst thing that Democrats can do if they want to control Congress is to sink health care reform. Who wants to vote for a party that can't govern?

    Some Democrats will undoubtedly lose their seats this fall. They cannot hold their super majority forever and historically the party in power loses seats at the midterms. For these, I concur strongly with Margolies. Do what is right, not what is popular. But more will lose seats if the Democrats stumble at the finish line.

    As to Tim Murphy's take on Massachusetts, it is important to remember that the Senate bill is modeled on the Massachusetts plan in part, but not in the whole. Murphy admits that Massachusetts has done a great job of expanding access using the same approach found in the Senate bill - an individual mandate and subsidies. But the Massachusetts legislation intentionally did not address cost control in its first iteration (it is working on it now). The Senate bill, by contrast, contains a number of cost control provisions not found in the Massachusetts bill, such as the Independent Payment Advisory Commission and a host of pilot programs for Medicare payment. Congress in fact learned from the Massachusetts experiment and has improved on it. The limitations of the Massachusetts plan are no reason not to vote for health reform.

  • close
    Greg Dworkin

    Greg Dworkin Contributing Editor, Daily Kos :

    The idea that a single person has crafted health reform idea (RomneyCare, ObamaCare etc) is the first sure sign there’s an unserious right-slanted discussion on the merits of a health care program about to happen. Why this labeling would be acceptable for a fair and balanced media can only be attributed to marketing and not news driving the discussion. In that vein, while Massachusetts has issues of expense to deal with, 430,000 people have gained insurance they didn’t have. That represents two-thirds of those who didn’t have it before.

    It’s not the bogey man the right wing tries to paint it as, any more than other countries’ experiences are, even if you can’t simply glom what they do on to what we do (we have size and diversity issues Europe does not.) No reform is perfect, and each has winners and losers, but on the whole Massachusetts residents would not give up what they have. At the same time, it’s not clearly applicable for the rest of the country, because states like Texas and California have so many more uninsured that the finances of applying the Massachusetts plan in those states would be problematic.

    Massachusetts could have benefited from more honest financing discussions back when it was implemented, along with the realization that everything in the world can’t be covered and still keep costs down. Oregon limits things for their state program in an very innovative way that seems to work for them. An honest discussion and a hard look at what the states have done that’s successful really ought to be driving the discussion (OregonCare, MassachusettsCare), not politics. But not in this world and not at this time.

  • close
    Martin Frost

    Martin Frost Attorney, former Democratic congressman :

    Marjorie is right...there are some votes that are important enough that a politician should be willing to risk their career. However, Marjorie should never have been put on that position. President Clinton's own Congressman Ray Thornton of Little Rock hid in the House cloakroom and refused to cast the deciding vote in favor of Clinton's budget bill so Marjorie had to step forward.

  • close
    Dean Baker

    Dean Baker Co-director, Center for Economic and Policy Research :

    The Massachusetts health care plan is the model for the Obama plan. Is there anyone who does not know this? The two plans have all the same essential features and many of the same architects.

    The fact that Romney put the ObamaCare in place in Massachusetts probably dooms him in the Democratic primary. However, it would probably help him in a general election campaign if he could somehow morph back
    into the moderate governor who supported this plan.

  • close
    David Mark

    David Mark Moderator :

    There's a grab bag of health care topics to discuss. In a POLITICO Ideas piece the architect of the Massachusetts health care overhaul under then-Gov. Mitt Romney defends the Bay State's 2006 plan. Should the Massachusetts system be a model for a nationwide overhaul of the health care system? Will it benefit or hurt Romney politically if he runs for president again, in 2012?

    And contrasting views about the politics of the health care debate can be seen in op-eds by former Rep. Marjorie Margolies (D-Pa.) and Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform (and Arena contributor). In a Washington Post op-ed the one-term lawmaker says wavering Democratic members of Congress should vote for the health care package even if it costs them re-election, as happened to her in backing President Bill Clinton's 1993 budget act. In POLITICO Norquist argues the health care proposal is a massive tax hike that will strangle the American economy and doom the re-election bids of many members of Congress. What's your take?

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The Arena is a cross-party, cross-discipline forum for intelligent and lively conversation about political and policy issues. Contributors have been selected by POLITICO staff and editors. David Mark, Arena's moderator, is a Senior Editor at POLITICO. Each morning, POLITICO sends a question based on that day's news to all contributors.

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Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell argued on Thursday night over Senate rules. | AP Photos

Dems change rules; Senate in chaos

The Senate descended into procedural chaos Thursday night as Democrats forced a change in Senate rules and shut down a GOP effort to bog down a Chinese currency bill with a series of unrelated amendments.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s move to suddenly overhaul a key Senate rule without warning infuriated Republicans and put an already bitterly divided chamber on edge as senators from both sides of the aisle traded angry accusations over whether the fight would fundamentally limit the rights of the minority party.

By a 51-48 vote, the Senate voted along party lines to change the precedent and limit how amendments can be considered once a filibuster is defeated. Under normal procedure, the Senate has 30 hours of debate after 60 senators agree to end a filibuster. Amendments can be considered during those 30 hours if each side agrees by unanimous consent to schedule a vote — or if a senator moves to waive the rules, which would then require the support of 67 senators in order to succeed.

But under the new procedure, senators can no longer move to waive the rules once a filibuster is defeated — a battle that threatens to further inflame partisan tensions and stymie legislative action at a time when frustration with Congress is at an all-time high.

While the rules change may not seriously affect the substance of pending legislation, the process employed by Democrats could be replicated in the future to overhaul bedrock rules like the filibuster. For that reason, both parties have tried to avoid employing such tactics to change the rules over the last several congressional sessions, including in a fierce 2005 battle that nearly limited the use of the filibuster.

In this case, Democrats made the change after the presiding officer, Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), ruled against Reid’s point-of-order that “motions to suspend” were considered out of order after a filibuster is defeated. By a narrow majority, the Senate then voted that the decision by the presiding officer was incorrect, thus creating a new precedent in the body.

Democrats said the move was needed to limit dilatory tactics that essentially amounted to a “filibuster by amendment” even after the chamber votes to end debate on a bill.

Outraged Republicans, who serve in the minority, lashed out at Reid (D-Nev.), accusing Democrats of squeezing them out in a body designed to protect the rights of the minority. Republicans also warned that future Senate majorities would be more apt to change the chamber’s rules by a simple majority.

“We are fundamentally turning the Senate into the House,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), pacing on the floor, with his voice rising, referring to the other body’s rules that can limit floor debate.

“The rules of the Senate will be effectively changed to lock out the minority party even more.”

Democrats rejected the concerns, saying that efforts to waive the rules are similar to the stall tactics Republicans have employed time and again. A motion to suspend the rules has not succeeded since 1941, they noted, meaning that such efforts typically amount to political messaging more than anything else. And nothing would preclude them from offering amendments agreed to by both parties before or after a filibuster is defeated.

“If I were in the minority, I wouldn’t do this, I think it’s dilatory and wrong,” Reid said on the floor.

The frustration has been building for months, with Democrats accusing the GOP of slow-walking their agenda to hurt President Barack Obama and Republicans saying they can’t get their amendments considered because Democrats are concerned about taking tough votes.

“The Senate has been completely dysfunctional this year, and this is just one more step in that [direction],” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who earlier this year introduced a plan to overhaul Senate rules to ease partisan gridlock. “There is a great deal that has to be done to restore the functionality of the Senate.”

Manu Raju is senior congressional reporter for Politico.


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Tammy Baldwin waves to supporters after making her a victory speech. | AP Photo

'My campaign was about the struggle of the middle class,' Tammy Baldwin said. | AP Photo

Baldwin: It's more than being gay

Tammy Baldwin, who became the first openly gay U.S. senator when she won in Wisconsin on Tuesday, said that her campaign was about much more than LGBT issues.

When CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien asked her Wednesday morning if she felt “a personal burden to push forward with a gay agenda,” the Democrat said she didn’t run to make history but to make a difference.

( PHOTOS: Election Day 2012)

“You know, what I would say in terms of crashing through that glass ceiling is, you know, if you’re not in the room the conversation is about you. If you’re in the room, the conversation is with you. That does transform things. But as I said last night, I didn’t run to make history. I ran to make a difference,” said Baldwin, currently a Wisconsin congresswoman.

She continued: “And my campaign was about the struggle of the middle class, retirement security for seniors, doing right by our veterans when they return home from war. That Wisconsin selected me to face those challenges is historic. But I think it was much more about confronting the very significant challenges that our nation faces right now.”

But she did say that she thinks winning has made the Senate “more reflective of America.”

( Also on POLITICO: Baldwin tops Thompson in Wisconsin)

“I do think having a seat at the table matters. And I think that we will see a Senate that is more reflective of America. We’re certainly not there yet,” Baldwin said. “But this will be a change that will move us forward and will have the life experience of more women in the United States Senate.”


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Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Rep. Trent Franks, Rep. Tom Marino, Rep. Doug Collins, Rep. Raul Labrador, Rep. Ted Poe and Rep. Trey Gowdy wait for the start of the House Judiciary Committee for a hearing on immigration. | AP Photo

GOP Judiciary Committee members used Tuesday's hearing to discuss border security. | AP Photo

House GOP: Do immigration bit by bit

House Republicans on Tuesday suggested Congress take a piecemeal approach to immigration reform and work on everything but a pathway to citizenship.

GOP members of the Judiciary Committee used the year’s first hearing on immigration to discuss border security, background checks and the possibility of giving illegal immigrants a permanent legal status without granting full citizenship.

There also was talk of working out how to attract and keep higher-skilled workers with advanced degrees in the science and technology fields. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the former chairman of the committee and a longtime immigration hard-liner, said allowing these workers to stay would be “a much easier lift” for members than a more comprehensive bill, pointing to legislation he sponsored that previously passed the House, which would have granted such workers permanent U.S. residence.

Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho), an immigration lawyer before coming to Congress, said he believed there could be a solution to the immigration issue without including a pathway to citizenship.

“What they want is to come out of the shadows, they want to be able to be legal, they want to be able to work, they want to be able to travel, they want to be able to feel like they are being treated with dignity,” Labrador said. “Not very many people told me: I want to be a citizen, I have to be a citizen in order to feel like a dignified person.”

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) was concerned about immigrants coming in and using federal health care programs. The conservative congressman joked that he was sitting “to the far right” of the chairman of the committee, but floated the idea of requiring farmers who employ temporary workers to purchase health insurance for their employees.

But Democrats said breaking out parts of the immigration debate into separate measures would ensure the larger issues and the fate of 11 million undocumented workers are never addressed.

“[The GOP] is asking, why can’t we just get the skilled labor part done first?” said Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.). “Well politically, and just being very practical about it, if we got the skilled labor part done first, do you think we would ever come behind it and finish the job?


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Meghan McCain is pictured. | AP Photo

'I still really love politics. I just don’t consider myself a pundit,' McCain says. | AP Photo

McCain on politics: 'I really miss it'

Meghan McCain’s new TV show, “Raising McCain,” on the Pivot network, touches on politics but not nearly as much as you might expect from the daughter of a U.S. senator (her father is Sen. John McCain).

Should there be a second season, McCain says she’ll bring back the politics.

“When I was going into Season One, I was really rejecting politics in the way I was focusing on it before,” McCain told POLITICO. “And, now, I really miss it. I think I would make Season Two a lot more political. … There’s a lot of really interesting things going on in politics right now, and I’d make it a little bit more of the moment. The government shutdown would have been a really interesting thing to talk about on my show.”

( WATCH: Meghan McCain talks about "Raising McCain")

The show currently features McCain (and, occasionally, her friends and other guests) exploring a range of subjects she’s interested in, from bullying to feminism to sex.

“I still really love politics. I just don’t consider myself a pundit.”

Of course, for McCain politics has always been a double-edged sword; she’s proud and outspoken about her beliefs as a socially liberal fiscal conservative, but she earns herself detractors, as well.

“I don’t mind criticism. I don’t mind constructive criticism. I mind when it’s about your weight or my hair or the epithet of my voice — stupid things, superficial things.” And she rejects any suggestion of being a daughter of privilege.

( PHOTOS: Meghan McCain’s life)

“I get strong hate and strong love, but I think what pisses people off is the fact that I’m still here. I think I was supposed to go away and die after the 2008 campaign, and I’m really not supposed to be here at 29, still working in the media, still having fun and having a voice. People just seem pissed off that, if you have a famous parent, you’re not allowed to be ambitious and want a career. Just go away and live off your parents’ fame and be quiet, and I think that’s such BS.”

“People project onto me what they want me to be. If they want me to be this spoiled, crass senator’s daughter, then they will create that and say that to be on Twitter and write articles on me.”

But she’s also not willing to accept the opposite view: that she represents the future of the Republican Party.

( PHOTOS: John McCain’s life and career)

“Some people think I’m the second coming of the new wave of Republicanism,” said McCain, who says that’s not a “fair” description. “I don’t think it’s fair to either demagogue me or put myself up on a pedestal.”

“I’m not speaking for all young Republicans. There are some very conservative Republicans out there. I just speak for whoever wants me to speak for them.”

McCain says that her Pivot show, which has run seven episodes, is “a work in progress” but adds, “I’m really happy with it.”

“Like every single thing I do, people really love it and people really hate it.”

( PHOTOS: Republican 2016 contenders)

One person who’s not such a fan? Gov. Chris Christie, who recently refused to respond to McCain’s criticism of him. (“Meghan McCain has no standing to be critiquing me other than as a citizen, and as a citizen, since she doesn’t live in New Jersey, I’m not responding to her.”)

McCain, who is leaning toward Sen. Marco Rubio out of the 2016 GOP presidential possibilities, didn’t appreciate Christie’s comments.

“From a personality standpoint, I find him too aggressive — and this is me saying that. I’m quite an aggressive personality. … To sort of say that young women shouldn’t have a voice, I think that’s so dismissive, so ridiculous. And, whether or not he likes it or not, there are young people in this country, some young people, who will listen to what I have to say.”


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Lisa Murkowski Received $400,000 from Oil and Gas in 8 Years

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On Thursday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) blocked a bill that would have raised oil companies' "responsibility cap" -- the maximum amount in damages companies must pay for their accidents -- from $75 million to $10 billion.

On Friday, Murkowski's office was rebutting critics who were asking whether her opposition to the measure had anything to do with the fact she is a major supporter of offshore drilling who has received $426,989 in campaign donations from the oil and gas industry over her eight-year Senate career. Murkowski is the top Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

"You can't be sure what her motivation is -- it could be a lot of things. But the fact that she receives so much money from oil and gas does make people wonder," said Adam Smith, a spokesman for the Public Campaign, a campaign watchdog group. "I think that's the problem with the current system is that members have to spend their days regulating these industries, and then at night take money from them at fundraisers."

Smith said he estimated that members of Congress on the committees dealing with the oil spill had received a combined $12 million from the oil industry.

Robert Dillon, Murkowski's spokesman on the energy committee, said Friday he did not believe Murkowski's campaign money was relevant to her vote against the measure. Dillon said the senator supports raising the liability cap, but wants to give Congress time to come up with a reasonable amount, as the $10 billion figure is arbitrary and "probably too high."

He also said the senator supports raising taxes on each barrel of oil to increase the size of a federal spill response fund, and would not set any limits on the punitive damages BP might have to pay for the Gulf of Mexico spill.

Earlier this month, a group of Democrats proposed the "Big Oil Bailout Prevention Liability Act" to change a 1990 law that set oil companies' liability cap at $75 million. In a vote Thursday, Murkowski halted the bill from progressing further.

Murkowski argued the bill would hurt smaller, independent U.S. operators and inadvertently help global operators. She said smaller companies could not afford the increased liability costs associated with offshore drilling and would be forced from the market. Small operators now provide one-third of domestic oil production and two-thirds of domestic natural gas.

Murkowski also spoke
at length about the Exxon-Valdez oil spill that devastated Alaska's coast in the late 1980s, assuring her Democratic colleagues that she understood the "economic and social impact" of oil spills. She said she believed the cap should be examined and possibly increased, but that "picking a number" could have "unintended consequences." It could "give all of America's offshore resources to the biggest of Big Oil."

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), one of the Democrats who supported the bill, dismissed Murkowski's idea that victims of the recent BP oil spill along the Gulf Coast could recoup their losses through their own suits. "I know my distinguished colleague from Alaska knows what happened in the Exxon Valdez case -- that took 20 years for claimants to try to get their just response, and some of them fell off along the way because they couldn't hang in there and they lost everything," he said.

President Obama on Friday called finger pointing and blame-shifting over the oil spill a "ridiculous spectacle." But the president criticized the "cozy relationship" between oil and gas industries and federal regulatory agencies and called for "top to bottom reform."

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Sunday, August 30th, 2015
Rhode Island voters are moving away from the Democratic party to non-affiliation

Anthony Gemma on Monday, June 28th, 2010 in a speech at the state Democratic convention

Gemma says Democrat ranks are thinning as voters shed party ties

Anthony Gemma, one of four Democrats running for the 1st Congressional District seat being vacated by Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, was vying for the party's endorsement on June 28 when he spoke about the percentage of registered Democrats and suggested that the party's share was declining.

"What's at stake for the Democratic party in the upcoming election and beyond? Today 41 percent of Rhode Islanders are registered Democrats. Forty eight (percent) are unaffiliated. It is the common political wisdom that the trend away from the Democratic party to non-affiliation will continue and intensify. But I have the courage to be your congressman. I will lead the fight to reverse that trend, to reinvigorate [the] populism that has never left the heart of the Democratic party."

It certainly seems that more voters are unwilling to sign up with a party these days. But is the trend really there?

So we checked with the secretary of state's office.

The numbers provided to us by spokesman Chris Barnett seem to show that Gemma misspoke a bit. He should have said that 41 percent of registered voters are registered as Democrats. Not all Rhode Islanders are registered to vote.

The actual percentage as of June 18: 40.9 percent of the 701,180 registered voters are declared Democrats. Unaffiliated voters make up 48.6 percent and Republicans have 10.4 percent. (The Moderate Party had 312 registered voters, or 0.044 percent.)

But we were interested in the trend.

Barnett supplied numbers going back to Sept. 12, 2006. Looking at those, it's hard to see where Democrats have been losing ground.

On Sept. 9, 2008, Democrats essentially made up the same percentage of voters: 40.8 percent. The percentage of unaffiliated voters was also a bit lower than today, at 48.2 percent.

Two years before that, on Sept. 12, 2006, 35.2 percent of the voters declared themselves as Democrats, a significantly lower ratio. The unaffiliated made up 54.5 percent of the voting population, higher than today.

So, if anything, the popularity of the state Democratic party has grown since 2006 and the share of unaffiliated voters has declined.

When we asked the Gemma campaign about the claim, spokesman Ray Rickman, who served as deputy secretary of state from 2001 to 2002, said Gemma's staff was harking back to an earlier era. "Two or three of us have been around forever and we remember when 60 percent of everybody, or even higher, were Democrats and the number of unaffiliated was 12 percent, or whatever," he said.

He said the campaign was unable to find earlier numbers, a problem Barnett in the secretary of state's office had also brought up. Until the last several years, "they didn't collect it because it changes almost weekly," Rickman said. "And people only wanted to know what the vote was, not what the registration was."

The only way to get such numbers would be to compile historical records from all 39 municipal canvassing boards, which would be cumbersome, he said.

So we dug a little deeper, and found a Providence Journal story from March 7, 2000, reporting that then-Secretary of State (and now Congressman) James Langevin tracked the number of eligible voters going back to 1970. The story included a breakdown of the 2000 numbers by party. The data: fewer than 9 percent were Republicans, 56 percent were unaffiliated (far higher than today) and 35 percent were Democrats (significantly lower than today).

Gemma is citing a trend that doesn't exist -- not in recent history, not going back 10 years. So we rate his statement as False.


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News Date: 5/29/2012

 School Crossing Guards to be Removed from Three Lakeland Locations

The school crossing located at Kathleen Road and Kathleen Pines is no longer being utilized by elementary students walking to Kathleen Elementary school; therefore eliminating the need for the crossing guard at that location.

The school crossing guard located at Lime Street and Montgomery Avenue (Philip O’Brien Elementary) and the guard located at E. F. Griffin Road and Finger Lane (Spessard Holland Elementary) will be removed due to adequate gaps in traffic and low traffic volume; therefore eliminating the need for the crossing guard at those locations.  This decision was made by the School Crossing Guard Committee following a traffic survey of the locations and a confirmation that students can safely cross without assistance.

The School Crossing Guard Committee is comprised of representatives from the Polk County School Board, the Florida Department of Transportation, the Board of County Commissioners Traffic Engineering Division, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, and a number of the municipalities within Polk County.

As a matter of procedure, Sheriff’s School Crossing Guard supervisors communicate with the principal of the affected school to inform them of the action taken.  In addition, the principal is reminded to notify the supervisors if the situation changes and children require assistance.  In that case, the crossing would again be staffed by a crossing guard, or some alternative method for ensuring the safe arrival of children at the school will be determined.

The school crossing guards at these locations will be removed at the end of this school year, June 7, 2012.

Deputies patrol school zones daily as a reminder to motorists that caution is critical.  Please remember that fines are doubled in school zones and that all law enforcement members take the safety of children very seriously.  As a responsible motorist, so should you.

Please Help Us Keep School Zones Safe.


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Old 11-20-2012, 09:03 PM
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SourGirl SourGirl is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: South of an Igloo, North of a Desert.
Posts: 885

Just a thought,..but while you have found a key trigger, for your husband to work on to help you feel better, you might want to re-examine your thoughts towards flirting.

Even in a monogamous world, in many types of social circles, monogamy does not mean 'dead'. It simply means there is a line, you do not cross. In many circles flirting is fun, and complimentary. As long as everyone knows who's bed they are obligated to each night, that defines the 'taken' aspect in many monogamous lives.

Soooo to answer the question of why they are hitting on a man they think is married and mongogamous,... it's not to disrepect you, but because it feels 'safe' to flirt with someone already 'taken'.

Of course there is always the ready-and-willing kind, but that's their problem, not yours,..jealousy and anger, make it your problem.

I know,..easy to say, harder to do.
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Old 08-14-2010, 05:47 AM
AliS AliS is offline
Join Date: Aug 2010
Posts: 14

i am the girlfriend to the married guy. I know this is right for me but i am just trying to find my way in a world that everyone frowns upon. I so much want to be part of their life, yes his, his wifes and her boyfriends....but its just so new to me.... Am I just thinking too much??
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red blood cell and a lymphocyte.x 15'000 blood cells. coloured scanning electron micrograph (sem) of a human red blood cell (erythrocyte, red) and a white blood cell (leucoocyte, blue). these are the two main cell components of blood. erythrocytes are carriers of oxygen and carbon dioxide. their biconcave surface provides maximum surface area for the exchange of gases. the lymphocyte is involved in the immune system's defence mechanisms, protecting the body against the invasion of foreign pathogens in the blood and lymph system, and involved in antibody production. magnification: x15,000 when printed 10cm wide.

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Pentair Challenger Front Housing - 355468 (See more products by Pentair) PAC-101-1459 69.90 USD

355468, pentair challenger front housing, slip suction

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Quick Overview

The 355468 Pentair Front Housing fits the Pentair (PacFab) Challenger High Flow and High Pressure swimming pool pumps. On one end this part goes over the diffuser and impeller and connects to the seal plate with a large band clamp. It connects to the strainer pot on the other end. The discharge port accepts a standard 2" Threaded Male PVC fitting.

Compatible with the following products

Pentair Challenger Pool Pump Parts

Key Number In Diagram: 8

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  • Challenger Front Housing
  • Pump Union, Threaded 2" MPT x 2" Slip - CPVC
  • Front Housing O-Ring
  • This item: Challenger Front Housing - $69.90
  • Pump Union, Threaded 2" MPT x 2" Slip - CPVC - $15.20
    15.20 USD
  • Front Housing O-Ring - $11.84
    11.84 USD
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Challenger Front Housing
7 Reviews
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OEM vs aftermarket
- Verified Buyer
Tue, Aug 04, 2015
While I thought the price was a good prIce for the OEM part. What arrived was an after market one. Upon questioning, I was told that Poolzoom did not want me to be down while they had to wait for the manufacturer to send out parts to them. The charged me less for the substituted part which works just as well and ending up costing me less than any other company I found online. Poolzoom is my go to for parts now. Dramatically less than Leslie's. Also very quick delivery too.
Very pleased
- Verified Buyer
Sat, Nov 08, 2014
Good price, Received correct part as expected.
Quick and accurate
- Verified Buyer
Mon, Sep 22, 2014
The website was easy to navigate and the part came in quickly. It also saved me money.

Additional Information

Name Challenger Front Housing
Manufacturer Part Number 355468
Substitute Part Numbers No
Brand Pentair
Obsolete No
Substitute available No
SKU PAC-101-1459
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Arqspin ID N/A
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Michael Keefe is a freelance music journalist, an independent bookstore publicist, and a singer/guitarist/songwriter in a band. Raised on a record collection of The Beatles, Coltrane, Mozart, and Ravi Shankar, Michael has been a slave to music his whole life. At age 16, he got a drum set and a job at a record store, and he's been playing and peddling music ever since. Today, he lives in Oregon with his wife (also a writer, but not about music), two cats, and a whole lot of instruments and CDs.

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The bias toward positive reviews

by Rob Horning

24 November 2008

Tyler Cowen linked to Peter Suderman’s post at Culture 11, “In Praise of Negative Reviews,” a response to Joe Queenan’s funny essay about useless, gushy book reviews and awkward amounts of unearned praise. Suderman observes that when it comes to incoherent praise,

the critical medium that suffers most is pop music criticism, which skews toward generally positive reviews of most everything, no matter how bland or terrible. Scan the sidebar of Metacritic’s music page. Nearly all of the review averages are positive or very positive, and almost none of them are straightforward pans. In fact, right now I don’t see a single album with a review average that gets a score categorized “generally negative reviews.” Contrast this with the movies page, which contains more than a dozen films with low averages. Even the limited release indies — the “artsy” films — are often given low marks.
Is contemporary pop music really that much better than contemporary mainstream filmmaking? I think not. Instead, it’s just that the music reviewing culture has developed in such a way that most everything scores a “pretty good” or a “not bad.” (Witness Idolator’s ongoing mocking of Rolling Stone for the rock mag’s tendency to give pretty much anything a three-star review on its five-star scale.) There are a handful outlets like Pitchfork and The Village Voice which regularly publish tough music criticism, but these are the exceptions.

Suderman has no real explanations for the surfeit of positive reviews. I had some theories back when I was writing more music reviews and was trying figure out why anyone bothered. Unlike films, many many records get released, and just noticing one and running a review of it already marks it as significant. The substance of the review itself is almost beside the point. Acknowledging its existence is already an admission that it’s “pretty good,” so it would be strange for the review to suggest otherwise.

In general, it’s hard coming up with compelling descriptions of music, and with readily accessible sound files, reviewers are competing with the songs themselves, which are easier to sample for oneself than ever. Many review editors try to compensate for this by urging writers to craft tightly wound prose explosions with lots of active verbs and implausible metaphors. The poetic quality of the review has to make up for its inability to beat the music, which basically speaks for itself. Generally, explaining whether the record is good or not is secondary to the writer’s making the reader laugh or think, Wow, that was cleverly phrased. And if all else fails, reviewers can work a variation on the formula of “sounds like artist A plus artist B doing some crazy thing”: e.g., “sounds like Bob Dylan making a pass at Joan Armatrading while landing a helicopter in a minefield.” (Here’s a good example from Klosterman’s review of Chinese Democracy: “It’s like if Jeff Lynne tried to make Out Of The Blue sound more like Fun House, except with jazz drumming and a girl singer from Motown.”) These descriptive conglomerates typically come across as positive but don’t really help readers, unless they have a clairvoyant capacity to get on the reviewer’s wavelength.

When I first started reviewing music, I used to receive boxes of discs from a fledgling website and had to write 150 words reviews of everything in the box. On top of that, I had to single out at least one out of every 10, if I remember correctly, for 300-word recommendations that would receive more prominent play on the site. I used to think this was a terrible way to go about things, because often there weren’t any CDs that warranted recommendation, and I didn’t think reviewers should be rewarded with prominent placement for shilling for bands. But it wasn’t hard to figure out the logic for this way of doing things. When people read CD reviews, they want to find out about something they should go listen to. They don’t want this: “Hey, here’s something you never heard of. Take a few minutes to read about why you were far better off that way.”

It might amuse some readers to see well-established artists attacked, but who wants to read negative reviews of stuff they haven’t heard of? There’s no point, and the reviewer just comes across as mean. I certainly felt this way about myself when I was writing the negative reviews. It seemed dumb for me to be discouraging these performers, who had no chance of making it, really, no matter what I wrote about them. It’s no fun pissing on people’s dreams. In fact, it made more sense to try to champion all bands, so I could potentially claim some of the glory for helping one of them make it. (I was too cynical to think that actual musical talent had anything to do with future success; success in popular culture has mostly to do with promotion and relentless networking.)

Readers often want hype, not evaluation, because it gives pop culture a sure-fire context, whereas a review that traces musical influences and parses lyrics only helps a select few readers. Besides, there are no established criteria for what’s good beyond popularity or fidelity to genre expectations. Maybe Suderman thinks it’s possible that music reviews could be objective evaluations of quality, as defined by some unimpeachable universal standards, but I don’t believe these exist for pop music (or for much of anything in culture—aesthetic criteria are political creations). The pop music people consume is typically a tribal thing or a means to participate in the zeitgeist, and it’s hard as a reviewer to shape the zeitgeist from the margins. But that doesn’t stop many of them from trying.

The idea that I would simply write up a fair evaluation of a record was of course out of the question. My taste is pretty eclectic and idiosyncratic. That was by design. I took pride in the idiosyncrasy because I used to think it made me special, unclassifiable. So my opinion was of no use as a guide for people with more “average” tastes, and I sometimes went out of my way to be contrarian. Most reviewers are similarly in it for the self-definition, seeking to prove to themselves that their tastes are unique or trying to secure tangible proof of their influence on the world. The parasitic positive review is as much a will to power as the nihilistic negative one. And I think pop-music reviewers generally have a disproportionate amount of respect for musicians and want to mystify what musicians do, turn it into magic. This justifies the amount of time they spend under the musicians’ thrall, thinking about the musician’s efforts instead of making efforts of their own.

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'Faster' Just Cares About Looking Good

by Jesse Hassenger

24 November 2010

Through all the winding plot connections, the film's use of Dwayne Johnson remains a constant puzzle.

cover art

Director: George Tillman, Jr.
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Billy Bob Thornton, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Carla Gugino, Maggie Grace, Moon Bloodgood

(CBS Films)
US theatrical: 24 Nov 2010 (General release)
UK theatrical: 25 Feb 2011 (General release)

As Faster begins, we’re immediately introduced to Dwayne Johnson, although he looks an awful lot like his former wrestling self, The Rock. Pacing in a jail cell and hulking with muscle, Johnson looks like a caged beast. He’s into the warden’s office for a final meeting, and his first line of the movie is a sardonic “Where’s the exit?” Upon leaving prison, he wastes no time, immediately breaking into a run.

It’s easy to read this scene as Johnson getting free, too, from the lucrative kid-movie mill and back to the action-heroics of his earlier career. The shots of Johnson running down the empty road hold promise of a physical specimen even less stoppable than a Tony Scott-piloted runaway train, but the movie screeches to a halt when he reaches a dusty lot and ducks into a waiting muscle car with a gun in the glove box. In an instant, the revenge business becomes less interesting: why cast the Rock and fetishize the hardware?

Delaying the inevitable, the film cuts between Johnson, seeking revenge for the murder of his brother, and story threads involving a burnt-out junkie cop near retirement (Billy Bob Thornton) and a glamorous hit man (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). Captions refer to them as “Driver,” “Cop,” and “Killer” in place of proper names, a pointless exercise in faux-simplicity for a movie only interested in the archetypiest of archetypes. Cop, as played by Thornton in sad sack mode, fares the best; his scenes with his estranged lover Marina (Moon Bloodgood) and especially their little son Tommy (Aedin Mincks) have a weary honesty amidst all of the clichés.

Cop and Killer both stick to Driver’s tail, requiring remarkably time-consuming police work and technology to track a guy who shoots hand cannons and squeals tires in every major location he visits. All three trackers are positioned on their last jobs—last burst of vengeance, last case, last thrill-seeking hit—combining to form a single mega-cliché as well as an empty, perpetual promise that the movie is almost over.

Through all the winding plot connections, the film’s use of Johnson remains a constant puzzle. It casts him as a brooding, gun-toting antihero who only throws a handful of punches. Other characters comment on his imposing physique, but the movie all but ignores it in favor of posturing distractions: fast driving and slow-motion gunplay. Despite the charismatic physicality that he brought to better B-movies like The Rundown (2003) and Walking Tall (2004), scene after scene in Faster consists of shooting, staring or staring while deciding whether or not to shoot. The action has no conflict, no sense of danger. It’s obligatory in the worst way.

To his credit, director George Tillman, Jr., doesn’t smash-cut this limited action to pieces; he prefers skewed angles and stylized sunburnt lighting. Faster is less an action movie than a gritty meditation on the price of revenge, the difficulty of forgiveness, and so forth. Unfortunately, the screenplay’s critique of revenge has no more weight than any other hypocritical genre picture that wallows in sudden violence, reconsiders the motivations behind said violence, and then goes ahead and wallows some more, following some Biblical references.

If the movie imagines itself as a successor to low-down revenge movies of the ‘70s, it plays more like a third-generation copy of Quentin Tarantino’s references to same. At the same time, the R-rated Faster is weirdly skittish about sex and language, and even includes a bad guy uttering the immortal PG kiss-off, “Screw you.” Dwayne Johnson’s Driver, like Uma Thurman’s similarly no-named Bride, looks good in a pre-violence pose. Unlike the Bride—or, for that matter, The Rock—looking good is just about all Faster does.

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David Beckham Talking About Harper Beckham Dating

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I'm Karli Bulnes. David Beckham is already dreading the day Harper has a boyfriend, but he's got a plan to protect her. Find out what it is in PopSugar Rush. "I've got three boys who are so protective over her already, by the time she's dating the boyfriend's gonna have no chance whatsoever." In an interview with Ryan Seacrest this morning, David Beckham said sons Brooklyn, Romeo, and Cruz will be the buffers between Harper and any potential boyfriends once his daughter is ready to date. Of course, that time is a ways away since Harper is only four months old, but David revealed that another Beckham child, 12-year-old Brooklyn, has already started testing the dating waters. "You know he's starting to notice girls, he's starting to dress differently. I'm a lot more comfortable with the boys doing it than obviously when Harper's bigger and she's dating." One boy Mr. Beckham is comfortable having Harper be around? Justin Bieber! David recently surprised all four kids with a trip to the music studio where Justin was working. "He literally picked up Harper and wouldn't put her down the whole time we were there." The Beckhams have more family time coming up. David said that even though they're British, they've adopted Thanksgiving and will celebrate at a friend's house this year.

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Is Teri Hatcher the next American Idol? We love watching all of our favorite celebrities pitch in for Idol Gives Back every year, and we're already gearing up for the special charity episode next week. In addition to A-listers like Reese Witherspoon and Brad Pitt, Teri Hatcher will also make an appearance — performing on stage. We don't normally think of scary Teri as a singer, so we want to know — do you want to hear Teri sing?


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Lost Season 4 Premiere Preview

TV Tonight: Fourth Season Premiere of Lost!

All this week there have been things to whet your appetite (as though you needed it!) for tonight's the return of Lost. You took my Season Three quiz, voted in my poll and perhaps watched the special re-aired finale from last season, "Through the Looking Glass," all leading up to tonight when Lost returns!

Tonight's episode "The Beginning of the End" will continue where we left off at the end of Season Three: The Losties believe that rescue is imminent, though they're still puzzled by Charlie's message that the people rescuing them aren't who they say they are. That's about all the information we're going to get until tonight, so to watch a preview clip of the premiere,

Photos copyright 2008 ABC, Inc.

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Travel Style: Anne Hathaway

Anne Hathaway rocked a striped Tory Burch sweater and light denim while checking in at LAX with boyfriend Adam Shulman. Anne layered up with a black thumb hole tee, navy blazer, and leather booties while toting a travel satchel and extra coat. Shop now to get Anne's exact sweater and Elizabeth and James shades to copy her nautical look.

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Regardless to what the reviews say, I always have a special place in my heart for Marni. But yes, when surveying this eclectic look, I can be objective. The stiff white top is a little boxy for my taste, but the frilly navy undercarriage is quite pretty and unexpected. The jury's still out on those black satin you have a verdict?

To post your selections go to the Love It or Hate It? group. And if you want to learn how to do a blog post click here.

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There is nothing like a precious pooch purse for those who like to tote around their little "Annabelle's" all day long. These fashionable and luxurious dog carriers are sure to make both you and pup look absolutely adorable. Please beware and shop with caution: although these three fabulous purses will carry your wallet, they will also put a hefty dent in it.

Jamie Broder, owner and creator of Lucy's Luxuries, a collection of high-end dog carriers has designed dog carriers that are made to look like purses for stylish women who crave versatility. The unique quality of these bags lies in the additional side zippered pocket.

Other dog carriers fall short of having that extra compartment for your personal belongings. The Lucy is her signature bag and is terrific for travel. It is the largest of her four styles and is intended to hold dogs up to 12 pounds. It has a drawstring front pocket, a back pocket and a side zippered pocket. Buy it here on sale for $839. It is available in three color combinations. To see the rest of her styles, click here.

A couple more, so

This Gucci Dog Carrier comes in a beige/ebony combination and has the Gucci GG signature logo on it. The web handles are nine inches long and everything in this bag is removable and washable. Buy it here for $590.

The classic yet chic Louis Vuitton Monogram Sac Chien is still as hot as ever. Stars like Mischa Barton and Jessica Simpson (funny enough they are both captured here at the Ritz in Central Park) stick with this logo embellished beauty for their pretty pups. One side of this bag is made from breathable mesh, making it ideal for travel. Buy it here for $1,620.

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Renee Zellweger in Hollywood Wearing Black Blazer and Tod's Crossbody Bag

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Image Source: WireImage
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