Four words for cell phone drivers: SHUT UP AND DRIVE!

Around here, if a law like this was passed, it'd be the cops that would be hardest hit. Most any time I see a cop driving down the street he's talking on a cell phone. And that's with a city ordinance already on the books banning city employees from using a cell phone while driving as part of their job.

Mmmmm... Sausage...

Not to pick nits, but this cave isn't a "church" any more than the house I live in is a "family". The church, strictly speaking, is the people, not the building where they meet.

To see a man lay a brick.

Adam said it; who is the jackass who put a gun down with a shell in the chamber and the safety off? Just asking for an accident.That's just stoopid.

"C’mon.. you’re just robbing peter taxpayer to pay paul. Not acceptable."

Not necessarily; for most outfits whose employees drive as part of their job, any fines for offenses incurred while on the job are payable by the employee, out of his/her personal funds. The employer can't be held responsible for a speeding or parking ticket.

I'd like to see someone step up like that around here. There is a city ordinance forbidding city employees from using a cell phone while driving, yet it's rare to see a cop driving without a phone stuck to his ear. Then there are the crosswalks; nobody stops. My kids go to a pool that's within walking distance but have to cross a busy street to get there. Yesterday even a cop blasted by them without stopping.

Alex, you're such a pup.

In one place I worked we used a computer the size of a Honda Civic for testing microwave oven controller boards. The "drives" on that thing were as big as a jumbo pizza at Godfather's. Held about 100MB if I remember correctly. Or was it 10MB.

The first true PC I bought was an ancient PC XT. The hard drive had a problem where it wouldn't spin up when you first powered it on; a little percussive prompting (a whack to the side) would usually get it going. The first Mac I bought for home use was a second (or third) hand SE. It had 2MB RAM in it and a 20MB HD. I ran QuarkXPress on that thing, doing multi-page color layouts for commercial printing. Yes, multi-page color on a 9" grayscale monitor. No wonder my eyes are the way they are.

Before those two I had an Amstrad Word Processor -- basically an all-in-one computer with a green-on-black monitor, a floppy drive and a dot matrix printer. Ran some variant of C+ (I think) and used a weird proprietary floppy disk design. It got me through college though. And before that I had an Atari 2600 (I think); attempted some programming on it, but because I couldn't afford the floppy option, I used a cassette tape for data storage instead. Slow, slow, slow, then wait, wait, wait, then slow...

Another random memory... We had a Mac LCII, and I found a stellar deal to max out the RAM on that thing for $65. It had 4MB, and I added another 8MB (even though it'd only recognize 10). Just the other day I bought a 1GB stick of RAM for way less than that. One of the first things I had to do in my first tech support job in a print house was buy a replacement drive for a Mac Quadra 950. That 1GB SCSI drive cost well over $1,000.

Oh, also, I have an old Mac clone that I was able to rescue before my old employer sent it to the recyclers. It's a 68000 dash 30fx, basically a hot-rodded IIfx in a large case. That thing, when purchased new with a 19" CRT, a scanner and interface card and 96MB RAM cost over $40,000.

Cheaper, faster, more compact.

Drill here, drill now. A huge deposit was recently discovered in North Dakota. No pristine wilderness to spoil, and no pesky Cannuks to worry about. Just drill & refine and watch the prices go down. Not for a while, but down it will go.

And speaking of refining, this last Tuesday we just got a step closer to having the first new oil refinery built in the US in 30 years, in southeastern South Dakota. An election was held whether to allow the area to be rezoned to allow the refinery to be built, and it passed by a 60/30 margin. (Rueters article)

@rayray: So Obama CO-sponsored a bill with McCain; big flippin deal. You say "he’s actually done quite a bit of bipartisan legislation"? Let's see a list, and show that it's meaningful legislation. Good luck on that.

You also say you're "also not concerned about Obama’s ability to defect criticism"... (I'll assume you meant "deflect criticism".) But the point is that anyone who aspires to the presidency can't blow off the media the way that Barack has and expect to get away with it for long. Tough questions are part of the job. If he doesn't answer them, there are always aspiring Woodwards & Bernsteins waiting in the wings to take him down. The man seems to have the patience & tolerance of a spoiled two year old. And the belligerence of a surly teenager at times.

I think it’s awesome that you're so naively innocent. I'll give that about six months of an Obama administration before reality sets in and you see how much of a stuffed shirt he really is.

@jonk thinks that because Obama's got an economist on staff that he can't be a socialist? That's laughable. A leftist is a leftist, and Goolsbee wears the colors proudly. He's been working for the DNC, and that speaks volumes about his ideology. From what I've read of him, he sees nothing wrong with the income redistribution the left is always pushing. Obama is on record saying that he understands that lowering capital gains taxes ends up increasing tax revenue (a Reaganomics concept, by the way), but he plans on raising them anyway, out of "fairness". I haven't heard a reversal on that, so either Goolsbee agrees with him, or isn't paying attention to what Obama says. I think it's the former.

And just for the record, don't assume that because I don't like Obama that I'm a McCain fan, because I'm not. McCain is almost as much a leftist as Obama, but if the choice I have for a vote is between him and Obama, McCain is the lesser of the two evils. Either way this next election goes, we're still gonna have a rough ride the next few years.

How about BHO post entitled, "How Obama Did It and How the Fawning Media Helped Him"? It's been hilarious to see how the left-wing dupes in the media bent over backwards to protect Obama, and how he'd get riled any time they crossed his line. How many other politicians could get away with, "I've already answered like 8 questions for you guys..." when the questions start getting tough at a press conference? Do you think he'll be any more accessible if he's elected president?

I still can't get over how quickly the media dolts got over all of the skeletons in this guy's closet; Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Father Pfleger, Michelle Obama (and her anti-white comments), etc... If it were a Republican who had associations like that, the media would be all over that like flies on sh1t, and he'd likely have been forced to drop out of the race. But Obama... A few too many questions before he finishes his waffle, he throws a fit, and the media lackeys back off. It's downright sickening.

He's run his campaign on flowery speeches filled with empty promises of "change" and getting Washington politicians to work together... He's got nothing in his background to show that he's capable of delivering on anything he's promised. If he had an R behind his name, I think even rayray would call him an empty suit.

Note to site admins... What's up with the Cocomment doodad? I get an error trying to post through Safari almost every time, even though my cookies setting is correct.

"... run our campaign like a business," says Myers. And in a good business, the customer is king."

Leading with a finger in the air. What a novel concept.

This guy is like a combination of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter; Carter's failed policies with Clinton's spin machine. Yeah, this guy is going places; with any luck he'll be going right back into obscurity.

Hey Barack; say hi to your buddy Tony for me.

Very much not neat.

So much has been made of race and gender in the Dem's joke and sham of a primary campaign (who the heck thought up superdelegates in what is supposed to be a democratic party? Isn't that a little oxymoronic, or at least moronic?), but to me, I could care less about the color of a candidate and what equipment is carried between the legs; what matters is what the candidate offers in the way of verifiable experience and shows solid economic, foreign and domestic policy stances that will keep the country's economy going and protect the country from outside threats.

Obama shows nothing but naivete in all those areas. He's a horrible candidate that has run his campaign on empty promises of "hope" and "change", specifying nothing, other than the same old tired Democrat mantra of redistributing wealth. If he makes it into office, he'll see a mandate to initiate change, just for the sake of change, whether anyone in the country supports it, least of all those who voted for him.

If that weren't enough to disqualify him for the job, he determines his stand on everything -- even whether to stay in his 20-year church home -- by sticking his finger in the air. If he's the best the Democrats can offer as a candidate, I'd say that party is in big trouble.

I find it interesting that no mention has been made of how the primary race has been drawn out to this point, at least partly due to the efforts of Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos, where Republicans were urged to vote for Hillary just to keep her in the running so that Obama would lose some of the sheen that the media tried to put on him early on. The Clintons did what they do so well, and Barack has been properly bloodied, ready for the general election. The trouble is that McCain will likely go after him with kid gloves (a gentleman's race) and will either lose or narrowly defeat him.

All that said, I almost hope that Obama wins in November, because when the office is going to either him or McCain, our country is going to see a very tough four years following. McCain is running on a platform that seems to be designed to cater to liberals and moderates and to piss off the Republican base. He talks more like a Democrat running against Bush than a Republican running against Obama. Because of that, I don't see a McCain presidency being any less harmful to the economy than an Obama presidency.

And with the continued downward economic slide that we're bound to see, I'd much rather have a socialist liberal like Obama at the helm to take the blame for it. I've heard several commentators comparing our present time to the years leading up to the Jimmy Carter presidency, and the malaise he ushered in. Most of you reading this thread probably have only read about Carter, but I lived through those times and can tell you that if it's true, we're in for it, and it won't be very pleasant. And if you remember your history lessons, you'll know that Carter's Malaise led to the election of Ronald Reagan in a landslide. A repeat of that, I think is our only hope.

For the next four years though, hang on to your butts, because it's gonna be a rough ride.

Now, @hooper; isn't it the Dems who are eating each other in this glorious primary season? Can't wait for the convention. It's gonna be a blood bath!

@Ali S.: "Humans. It’s the next best meat you can have."

I heard they were a little on the fatty side, especially the Americans. :)

News Flash; did you know it costs no more in the long run to fill your tank when it hits the half mark than to wait until the idiot light tells you to fill it up? (I guess there's a reason it's called an idiot light.)