PN-G bamatex

  Same here.

    Are you serious? Alabama charges a crapload of money. I know Ole Miss does, too.

Wait, Texas doesn't charge to tailgate? I thought all the major universities charged to tailgate.

The strict constitutionalist in me says the federal government should be reducing its involvement in education, not increasing it.   The fiscal conservative in me says that we should be figuring out a way to turn this deficit around, not to spend more money.   The social conservative in me says that giving away more free stuff is just going to perpetuate entitlement ideology and make people appreciate things even less.   The economist in me says that educating the workforce is generally a good idea that yields a proven economic benefit if done correctly.   The pragmatist in me says that most of the vocational training that community colleges offer which actually benefits the economy should be offered at the high school level anyways, and agrees with the constitutionalist on how that's a state responsibility and not a federal responsibility.   That's four negatives and one toss-up. Any questions?

  If the Cowboys lose, will he shut down the Tom Landry Highway?  :D

  I think Texas A&M is embracing the first opportunity it's ever had to not be the little sister. They're the only Texas team in college football's most prominent conference, and they're enjoying the spotlight that comes with it. You can't blame them - it's worked out well for them so far. But, while that may be a superficial relationship right now, it will become deep-seated and ironclad over the years. I think the only teams that will ever leave the SEC already did, decades ago.   As far as your rivalry comment goes, one of the best A&M shirts I ever saw was a maroon shirt with band-aids over the horns on the Longhorn symbol that said something to the effect of, "For One Time Only, Hook 'em Horns." That was when UT was set to play USC in the national championship. So I'll admit that the phenomenon of a fan base supporting its rival in a big game isn't unique to the SEC. But I'd bet good money that if you could find a way to measure it somehow, it would be much more prevalent in the SEC than it is in other conferences. Whether or not that phenomenon has any bearing on a rivalry's bitterness is debatable. I don't think it does.

  I think I'll reserve judgment about which post in this thread is pathetic.   Yes, I saw the ESPN documentary. More importantly, I lived that documentary. And yes, I watched the national championship game from a sports bar next to Jackson Square in New Orleans with several other Alabama students, most of whom wanted Auburn to win for a combination of keeping the national championship in the SEC, and keeping it in the state of Alabama. I am personally rooting for every SEC team in a bowl game this season. I know several other Alabama students doing the same.   And yes, if you're smart (or perhaps not "pathetic"), you will root for Florida State. If Florida State beats Oregon and goes to the national championship in the first year of the playoff, that's a huge boost for your conference. Conference prestige, like it or not, plays a major role in rankings and thus bowl bids. Miami could have used all the conference prestige it could get the past few years. Don't let pettiness override your own interests.

Y'all just don't get it, do you?   The Deep South sticks together on everything. The Southern states have an almost hivemind mentality. There's a reason the SEC is only two states shy of reforming the Confederacy through college football: the South just sticks together.   You can go right now and find news articles about the Southern states getting ready to form a voting block in the 2016 primaries. They're trying to do a Super Tuesday of their own. Why? Because a bunch of Southern states voting together at the same time pulls all the presidential candidates into the South for those primaries. The political reality of Southern collective operation doesn't stop there - in fact, it's rooted in national history. You can go all the way back to the early nineteenth century, and you'll find the Southern delegations to Congress voting in lock-step on virtually every piece of legislation ever to pass through the two houses. Sometimes that produces ugly results - the preservation of slavery for decades leading up to the Civil War and then the preservation of segregation up until its bloody end during the demonstrations of the Civil Rights movement, for example - but the fact remains: the South functions as one bloc.   Why is it like this? Because collective identity built on common ground means collective strength carried into the accomplishment of common goals.   It's true economically, too. When you start to look at Southern states by their economy, you won't find much difference from state to state. They all have massive agricultural sectors, and have since they achieved statehood. When manufacturing kicked into high gear in the South during the early twentieth century, all the states got into the same areas of manufacturing - mostly textiles. Several of the Southern states got into the coal mining industry. In a handful of them, steel became a major industry. In another handful, it was oil.   That has created and sustained a culture with a singular, Southern identity. Yes, there are different groups within the South. Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia show their English roots, Louisiana is the heart of Cajun country, and Mississippi is defined by the Delta. Texas has strong Hispanic influence and is as much Western as Southern, and Missouri shows signs of Midwestern life. Kentucky and Tennessee are strongly Appalachian, and Arkansas embraces some of the mountain life, too. Florida is overrun by snowbirds, but is culturally as Spanish as the moss on the trees. But all of them are still Southern, and they have traditionally bought into the Southern profile.   That translates to college football. That's why you find tremendous conference pride in the SEC. The SEC's dominance is part of it, too, but that's secondary to the influence of the preexisting Southern collective identity. That's why you find even the most bitter rivals in the SEC rooting for each other during bowl season - yes, I did root for Auburn against Florida State last year, and most Auburn fans will be rooting for Alabama in a few days. It's all about the conference, just like it's all about the South.   So, yes, if Alabama wins the title, that means the SEC has won the title. And yes, every fan base in the SEC will celebrate, accordingly.

Actually, there's a fair amount of evidence that a Republican Congress is a stimulus package in itself, and has been since 1945.   [Hidden Content]

The only bad thing about Jeb Bush is that his last name has already been slandered by the media. He was a good governor and he'd be a good president.

  At the point of attack, I wholeheartedly agree with that. If a person has endangered my life, whether or not that person has a mental condition is of no concern to me, and it can't be because of the circumstances of the situation.   I was writing from a broader perspective than that, in a way meant to be analogous to a trial. In other words, my point was that society is going to impose a penalty against a person who commits a crime regardless of maturity level, unless that person has a debilitating mental condition that impairs judgment.

Alright, that's enough of the comments about Biggirl's son.   This argument is silly. Is every 18 year old mature enough to assume all the responsibilities of adulthood? No. Are most 18 year olds mature enough to assume at least most of those responsibilities? Yes. Is every 18 year old that hasn't lost his or her mind capable of figuring out that theft, assault, rape and murder are wrong? Is that really a question?   Every kid grows up at a different rate. Obviously, based on their life experiences, some are going to become mature, responsible and disciplined enough to be considered an adult at a higher age than others. But the fact of the matter is, for our society to function, we have to set some sort of cutoff age at which point everyone is considered, at a bare minimum, capable of carrying out the basic functions of adulthood. In most respects, we consider that age to be 18 in the United States, as established by the massive body of local, state and federal law which pertains to such issues. There are exceptions - 21 is the age at which all 50 states believe people are adult enough to handle alcohol, and 16 is the age at which several states think its appropriate to allow criminals to be tried as adults in certain instances - but the general conclusion is that 18 is the age of adulthood.   There's a reason 18 is the dividing line. That's the age at which most people graduate high school, it's the age at which most people, traditionally, have moved out of their parents' homes, it's an age by which most people have held some sort of job, and it's generally an age at which the overwhelming majority of people are smart enough to determine basic right from basic wrong.   Was Michael Brown experienced and mature enough to determine basic right from basic wrong? Well, given that he had just robbed a store, I suppose the evidence indicates that he wasn't, but the truth is, we don't know for sure and we have no way of ever knowing for sure. But it doesn't matter. That question, in truth, is irrelevant. The truth is, whether or not Michael Brown was mature enough to be considered an adult, society expected him to be. By statute, his local community expected him to be, his state expected him to be and his nation expected him to be, the same as they would expect every other 18 year old to be in absence of some sort of debilitating mental condition.   If we stopped to ask ourselves if someone was mature enough to distinguish right from wrong in every single case, we would slowly start to lower the bar, and we would start letting people off in greater and greater numbers until the point came where we were no longer holding anyone accountable for anything. "Immaturity" would become a defense to prosecution in every case where a criminal, regardless of age or mental condition, just "wasn't grown up enough" to understand what he was doing.   The fact of the matter is that no true, blue criminal is grown up; if they were, they wouldn't be criminals to begin with. But that has no bearing on whether they should be held accountable under the law, and rightfully so. Therefore, this conversation is irrelevant to the issue at hand.

[Hidden Content]   This was the scene at a protest led by Al Sharpton in New York City a week before this weekend's executions.

  That seriously surprises me. One of my professors went to UW Madison. I have a good friend there right now getting her Ph.D. in Political Science, and she already has a serious offer on the table to go to Georgetown to do her post-doc and begin her teaching career.

  Really? Wisconsin has some outstanding programs. They're a Top 50 university.   [Hidden Content]

  He may have been on board when it was signed, but he wasn't on board when the negotiations started. And my understanding is that those negotiations took a significant turn when the sudden change occurred.

If I understand it correctly, there was some fishy business going on with the AD position at CSU when that contract was signed. I don't know details, though.

Awesome pick for Florida. He'll do a heck of a job there.

Aside from leaving Amari Cooper in single coverage a few too many times, I didn't really see a problem with Johnson. I thought he did alright. Didn't see this coming.

I've never been to a UAB game, so I can't say from experience. I remember watching one on local TV once, and the attendance may have been in the neighborhood of 25,000. Can't recall who they were playing.

I'll be in Atlanta rooting for the Tide.

  ... which is why money was the excuse, not the real problem. The real problem here was that the Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama System wanted one football team to represent the entire system and one football team alone. That's the Crimson Tide, not the Blazers.   What's really sad about this isn't so much that UAB is losing its football team, it's that one of the last uses for Legion Field is its service as UAB's home stadium. Now the only thing there is the BBVA Compass Bowl and the occasional high school playoff game. I'm afraid that stadium's days are numbered.

  You have no room to talk. Your conference has West Virginia.

As a longtime scifi nerd, I have serious reservations about the new Star Wars. JJ Abrams is not known for paying much attention to canon (I'm still frustrated about several issues with the Star Trek reboot) and I've already spotted some inconsistencies just in the trailer.

  Yes, the Republican Party, with all the tens of millions of dollars Republican candidates receive from the major oil companies in every election cycle and the massive number of Republicans who hold office in districts where oil is a major part of the local economy, would be against the Keystone Pipeline if it had simply been the president's idea. That makes total sense.