FrankJL

Exactly

I still don't understand... Thompson is by far more conservative then Giuliani, McCain, or Romney. Since when did being articulate matter? Have you ever watched Bush speak?, yet he won twice. If polling is to believed, the only one of them that stands any real chance of beating Hillary is Giuliani, all the rest are far behind her.

Fred Thompson isn't a conservative?? huh??

Little insight from an education major... In my state - Pennsylvania 4 years (bachelors degree) is what you need just to get started, at 28k a year, and can get fired without any reason. After you get a teaching spot, you have 3 years to get your master's before you can get tenure and get some kind of job security. Its not a job you go into for the money, thats for sure, you do it because you like it. Just another interesting fact...if you calculate starting teachers pay in most states, per hour.....the bus drivers make more then starting teachers do per hour. Also for everyone bashing public schools you need to understand there is only so much teachers can do. The onus is the parents teach their own kids to value education, and teach them basic behavior and respect for people. There isn't a whole lot you can do with a kid when the parents don't care, and often oppose what you are trying to do. Schools do work great for kids that care, and those are ethics that come from their homes. In my most recent student teaching semester, we had a parent teacher conference day. Every single parent of the A students came in. Of the D or failing students two parents came in. Of those two, only one genuinely cared about what could be done to help her daughter. The other parent seemed to only want to cuss me out for being "too f....ing stupid to teach her kid" her words, she became so belligerent, we had to have police remove her. As she was struggling with the police, it just so happened two joints fell out of her pocket. Also if you are worried about biased views from teachers in school, please do your self a favor and don't send them to college. The liberal and anti-religious bias in college if far more then anything your kids will ever see in public schools. This is the crap we have to deal with, and get put down because "we don't do enough". Almost half of all people that go into education, quit after less then two years of teaching. Its something you really want to do, there is so much you have to put up with from all sides it just overwhelms people.

I know that constipated feeling. I had the same thing. Then after we got setup on our OP it seemed like we had beef and noodles t-rats for another 3 months. Then we got a KBR defac, that was awesome.

Didn't we already cover this, why rehash an old thread. Also.. Can't do that, we have something here in the U.S we call "Posse Comitatus"

I have a suggestion....get a paintball gun. My kitty: purebred Egyptian Mau. Beautiful little cat. Its spotted! I got it for free, my aunt breeds them. They normally sell for around $5-600 per cat.

Don't get me wrong, the battery will work fine for a few years, but if I'm going to spend 3 or 400 dollars on something, I want it to last a long time.

DON'T GET AN IPOD! I have seen so many people have problems with them. Harddrives fail easily, and the internal battery is terrible. The battery inside isn't replaceable. Well I should say that, it is replaceable, but the cost, and finding someone with the electronics know how to do it is difficult. As you use it more and more, the battery life will get shorter with use. Though this is not uncommon for any type of rechargeable battery for ipods, laptops, etc. The thing is though the battery is built into it, and you can't just replace it. You have to buy a new one, its part of apple's marketing for it. Also they are a lot more expensive, compared to other similar capacity MP3 players. Also, ipods won't play any music you have in WMA format, Itunes will convert it to some other format that only Itunes can play. All in all...I think they are just overpriced junk. I got a creative zen vision:m 30gb, was $215 at best buy, and I like it. It also works with Napster To Go, so with that service you can download as much music as you like, and its only $9 a month. It only works with certain mp3 players that support digital rights management, and no ipods don't support that either.

You say when they call you....are you talking about ring tones, or ring back tones?.. I have neither. My mom has Ozzy's "momma I'm coming home", as her ring tone for when my dad calls her. I thought that was nice..

ya...I see more then just irony in the fact his father-in-law works with this stuff at the CDC, and somehow this guy becomes one of like 3 people a year that get this infection. Something is fishy here...

Is pam a ditto head? :)

Don't care about their maple syrup. My parents make about 50-70 gallons a year, from trees on their own property. Its actually pretty simple to make...plug a tree, and boil the sap down. Thats all it is.

never heard of.. downloaded a few songs on napster.. Sounds like my chemical romance with a female singer.

If this means we can get rid of Jim Jeffords in the Senate, I'm all for it. That guy is truly an order of fries short of a happy meal.

Reference please. I want to see a refrence on that too.I know illegals do contribute to identity theft, but that 50% seems way too high. can anyone say scurvy?

I could cite you a hundred sources that show illegal immigrants, are a net drain on our government. Whatever little bit they do contribute to the tax base they get back 10 fold in social services. That is for those that do pay taxes, most illegals are paid under the table and thus are immune from tax withholdings in the first place. Also most of them don't own vehicles or houses so they don't contribute funds for schools or highways. No House = No Property taxes (60-70% of most school districts funding is from property taxes) No Car = No federal gas taxes (Gas taxes provide well over 90% of funding for major highways) Of course not all the illegal immigration coming into this country is low skilled Mexican workers, but the vast majority is. Even those that are not Mexican, are still using the weak Mexican boarder to cross over. This has become common enough that the INS even has a term for them "OTMs", people caught crossing the boarders that are not Mexican, or even hispanic for that matter, they are coming from Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Those that do have good marketable skills can come here on a special visa for tech industry workers, without illegally crossing our boarders. Its the H-1B visa that I was talking about in an earlier post. It allows them to come here, with their families, to work for 6 years while they apply for citizenship. umm...we are not in a recession right now. In 2000 we had a few quarter of slight negative economic growth, though nothing to serious. So far we have only had two mild recessions in this century, after 9/11, and in 00-01 after the collapse of the dot.com bubble. The dot.com collapse though didn't really effect much outside of tech specific firms, and those that traded heavily in tech stocks on NASDAQ. Neither one of these really had much affect on common people, but only served as interesting study cases for people who study economics (like me, its my minor).

My animal stories from childhood. When I was like 5, we had a huge like 60 gallon aquarium, full of all sorts of fish in the living room, and on the other side of the room we had a little aquarium with just one fish in it. My little 5 year old logic, wondered why this fish was all alone. So i got the little net from under the kitchen sink, and proceeded to take the lonely fish, and let it make friends with the fishes in the big aquarium. Thing was... At 5, I didn't understand what a Siamese fighting fish was... . That didn't go so well. My parents will never let more forget that incident.

Asylum seekers are a whole different topic, then immigration. I'd say let them in. Most of them end up being very productive and good people.

Post didn't work right...ignore this. using bold for your quotes...the quotes thing isn't working right for me. Well as I said, with the other items enacted, it would take care of itself. If you take away their free ride, their housing, and their jobs... then they are going to get the heck out of here and fast No they won't. Even without access to our social safety nets (or should I say hammocks), they can still make much more here then they can in Mexico, in low skilled manual labor jobs. Not that it matters anyways. Liberals in congress see the illegals as a way of expanding the welfare state, and the Republicans in congress are too weak in the knees to even care. Neither party cares about what happens to the country, as long as they can try and vie for a few hispanic votes, by being soft on immigration. Even our supposed conservative President is bending over to appease the illegals. I really wish you would have read what I said before making an accusation that I am just "dreaming up pipe dreams". I did read your post. All of it is either wishful thinking, or in some cases doesn't need to be made into law, because it already is law. Its just we don't enforce the laws we have on the books, so making new laws will solve nothing. Since you insist I read your post lets go line by line here, and point out the flaws. 1. Deport all illegals. Already answered this, not logistically feasible. They won't leave themselves, regardless of legislation passed, they broke the law coming, what makes you think they will respect any of our other laws. 2. Allow employeers to check legal status of workers before hirring (illegal to do now) This isn't illegal now, its just not enforced. Supposing it was inforced though, there is a whole black market dedicated to creating false SSNs and other credentials for illegals. Also most employers know they are hiring illegals in the first place, and in some cases even help them get bogus documents. 3. Prosecute those who hire illegals. Too difficult to do, esp with illegals using fake SSNs and papers. All the employer has to do it prove they checked the documents and they looked real. Several employers got away with hiring illegals at 2 companies in NM, which where busted by INS, got away because of this. Many of these companies that knowingly hire illegals are also large financial backers of many Republicans in congress, so you can count of them not to do nothing in regards to this. 4. Prosecute those who house illegals. This doesn't make sense on the surface; we are not going to turn this country into a police state. It simply isn't a landlord's responsibly to check this kind of information. This was tried in a small town here in PA, and was struck down by the courts very quickly, its clearly unconstitutional, and puts to much of a burden on landlords to try and verify documents, something they have no experience in doing. 5. Deny all governemt services to illegals (School, medical, food, etc...) Goes with the landlords responsibility. The job of a school is to teach children, the job of hospital is to heal people, not to play wanna be INS agents. Are you really telling me a doctor's first question to someone who was just in a car wreck should be "can I see your green card". This is America, not the Soviet Union. 6. Deny children born in the US by illegals to be citizens. (New years day baby was an illegal.) As stated before, no law could change this. This would require amending the constitution. 7. All legals MUST learn English How about we start teaching our own people proper English, then we can worry about our immigrants. After all of the above is enacted and enforced then... 1. Look at a guest worker program that allows people to come and work from all over the globe. Thats what we are doing right now, and its a joke. The guest worker / amnesty program congress passed in 1964, caused a four fold increase in the amount of illegal immigration, and did nothing to help them become legal. 2. Look at our current immigration limits and look for improvments. This one I agree on. We need to at least triple or quadruple the amount of H-1B visas we allow in the country. The current bill Bush and Kennedy drafted actually decreases the amount of annual H-1B visas, and this will seriously hurt our high tech industries. 3. All possible immigrants/guest workers must learn and pass a test on English, US History, and our founding prinipals. They must agree to become a part of our melting pot if they plan to stay. Again, we shouldn't make immigrants do something most of our own citizens couldn't do. Also the metaphorical "Melting Pot" is an archaic idea that hasn't applied to our nation since the early 1900's, almost every major group coming to his country balkanize themselves into various little enclaves around most of our major cites. 4. All possible immigrants must be able to offer some skills that they can provide to our society. Since when did an immigrant’s skill set determine their eligibility? We didn't even do then when we ran Ellis Island as our open immigration hub. 5. Enact a nation ID card system. Those of us who wish to drive get it upgraded to a drivers license at the DMV. Perhaps it could also work as a passport. Forget immigration, the national ID is a horrible idea. This is the United States, not the Soviet Union, a national ID is too much a police state "show me your papers" type idea. Amendment 10 of the Constitution states "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." , as such it is the states responsibly to handle laws regarding licensing of drivers, laws regarding voter registration and such. 6. Require ID card to vote. This is the other thing I agree on, but don't see how it really has to do with immigration.

I really wish conservatives would stop with ideas that start like this and try something that might actually work instead of dreaming up pipe dreams like this. Do you have any idea the logistics that would be involved in a task like this? I have yet to see anyone show a concrete plan of how we could realistically export an estimated 8-20 million people (depending on what estimates you want to believe) from this country. This would require amending the constitution, or at least modifying the wording of the 14th amendment, both would be very difficult to do. The supreme court ruled in Plyler v Doe that the legal status of an immigrant has no bearing on the wording of this amendment, and has held that as precedent in several other cases. perhaps we could start this with citizens already legal.... This is already taken care of with the H-1B visas.

Its not a snap decision. A conviction is a result of 12 people deciding that a person's actions warrant their execution. In a death penalty recommendation, all 12 jurors must make that unanimous descion. If 12 distinct individuals can be persuaded a person deserves to be executed, I wouldn't question that. To get 12 random people to agree on anything is very difficult, let alone to decide on something as serious as recommending a death verdict.

It hopeless.. Quit thinking we are even going to try to do something about illegal immigration. Our elected officials, in both parties, could care less. Or at best give it lip service, and do nothing about it. Bush's amnesty program, shows just how hopeless the situation is. He's trying to hard to be loved by the likes of Ted Kennedy, and La Raza, and giving the bird to those that worked to get him in that office. Glad he can't run again. I wouldn't vote for him again, after this garbage he's pushing now.

yeah I know....I can still remember using a 4800 baud modem to connect to BBS's Question though about the bandwidth on cable....how will more and more HD channels being added affect that maximum potential cable bandwidth? Also if everyone has a oc/ds-3 speed connection at home, how it that going to affect, IPXs? It is my understanding that even with current average home internet speeds current IPXs can barely handle the traffic load, as is, right now..