PN-G bamatex

I think the cowbells are bringing back bad memories of longhorns for the Ags.

[Hidden Content]   Some of the questions Kelly asks here aren't appropriate for a State Department spokeswoman, and should really be posed to the White House Press Secretary or someone who actually represents the president, not just his administration.   That said, there are also some points Kelly put nicely where I wouldn't have been so nice. Psaki kept saying that Panetta's account of the circumstances surrounding our removal of forces from Iraq wasn't "consistent with the facts." The direct follow-up question that should have been asked was whether Psaki was calling Panetta, as well as Robert Gates, a liar. Essentially, she was, and Kelly tries to call her on that very tactfully, but this is a necessary line of questioning where tact isn't as important as getting to the heart of the issue.   In any case, this interview only underscores a larger point, which is that the president is more concerned with politics than he is doing what's best for the nation's security and the stability of the Middle East. The position Iraq is in today is a direct result of that misguided order of priorities.

I can't speak to the individual post on Facebook because I haven't seen it.   As for an extracurricular group with religious undertones, I don't see how that can be considered unconstitutional. Students aren't required to be part of an extracurricular group. As long as participation is voluntary, I don't see the rationale in banning it.

  No, I mean preseason. As in, the results of previous seasons and preseason polls do not count. Non-conference play is accounted for in his program.   He's been refining the poll for three seasons now. The week one rankings are typically way out of wack, but by the end of the season, his poll starts to make a lot more sense, and it's been known to predict an upset or two. Wouldn't surprise me if he turned it into something someday.

A buddy of mine actually built a ranking system of his own for a statistics research project. It does not factor in preseason bias. And it still ranks Texas A&M in the top 10 with the win over South Carolina.   Interestingly enough, his program also ranks conferences and conference divisions. It has the SEC ranked the best conference and the SEC West ranked the best conference division. Ironically, it has the SEC East ranked the worst conference division in the Power 5.

I haven't heard about this one yet. Links?

Teams like South Carolina are why I say Florida might be a dark horse pick to win the SEC East.

  SECond to none.

I don't think A&M's defense is bad so much as inconsistent. But still, that's a problem Sumlin needs to address. Someone will come along and exploit that weakness if he doesn't.

If Bo Wallace plays a good game, this could be scary. Ole Miss is the first team we've played that I think can make effective enough use of our secondary issues to actually beat us, but only if Wallace has his head in the game. It may become a shoot out. I'm glad we got two weeks to prepare for this one.

For a moment, I thought Kevin Sumlin was facing his upset at Alabama in 2012 come back to haunt him. Then I left to get food and A&M put together the comeback of the season so far. I was rooting for the Aggies. I'm glad they came back. Now I hope Sumlin learns something from this and recruits a defense.

This is why you have to have a team and not just an offense. I honestly thought A&M would figure things out and win this conference. Maybe I was wrong.

  And then did the most effeminate dance scene you could possibly have a football team do in a movie about a whorehouse.

Not sheep, chickens. I hear they live on a ranch near La Grange.

  Good point, but the operators aren't the only permanent jobs that refineries create. How many more contractors are they bringing in for maintenance and whatnot afterwards?

If I didn't know any better, I'd say this thread is chocked full of sexual tension....

  I'd say pretty low. The Senate has to confirm him. They need 51 votes, and the Democrats currently hold 55 seats. Even if an appointment was made after the elections and the Republicans manage to take the Senate, the opposing party typically gives the president his way when it comes to his cabinet appointments. 15 Republicans actually contributed to the 75 votes that confirmed Holder himself.   What it really depends on is how quickly the president wants to replace him.

[Hidden Content]   Considering that the last census pegged the Beaumont-Port Arthur Metropolitan Statistical Area as one of only two stagnant MSAs in the more than thirty in the state, it's about time.

Wait, is this why Aggies are so obsessed with the ring?

At least it wasn't an analogy about a scared dog with an abusive owner....

  ... so you're saying A&M is an ex-battered wife?

  I don't see how it's relevant, but my top choice for law school is Texas. I believe I've said that here before.

This thread is less a political discussion than it is a historical and social discussion. Hence why you find it on this board and not the political forum. Mods, feel free to move it if you feel it necessary.   [Hidden Content]   The link above leads to the text of the address delivered by Booker T. Washington to the Cotton States & International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 18, 1895. The overall point of the address is summed up in two paragraphs in particular:     Washington essentially states in the address that the black population of the South can never truly achieve equality via artificial means - that in order for blacks and whites to truly be equal, blacks must achieve parity in their skills, vocations and abilities as a means of achieving economic equality first, and then social equality thereafter. In essence, Washington is advocating for the black population of the south to develop itself via education and vocational training with white assistance, as a means of earning social and economic equality for itself, rather than being given it via legislation after continued white oppression.   This, of course, never came to be. Rather than take a proactive step toward the building of a better South, Southern whites made Jim Crow the norm, which led to continued notions of racial superiority, the perpetuation of stereotypes and a social, educational and economic gap between the black and white populations arguably as large at the end of Jim Crow as it was at the beginning.   When the end of that oppression finally came, just as Washington suggested, many tried to find the solution to the inequality it engendered. However, they did not follow Washington's advice; indeed, they did the exact opposite. Rather than seeking to improve black education and vocational training, they sought to create parity through the exact artificial means that Washington clearly stated would never work. Instead of providing blacks in the South with the means to attain the same skills as whites entering the workforce, affirmative action legislation sought to give blacks special consideration in the hiring process to make up for previous oppression. Instead of providing black communities with a better quality of primary and secondary education as a means of making higher education, and thus professional careers with higher wages, a more attainable goal, legislators and university officials alike sought to, often unconstitutionally, make under-represented minority status an objective credential in the application process.   These measures did not eliminate the disadvantages blacks faced as Washington sought to do, they merely compensated for them, and arguably perpetuated them by accident in the process.   Indeed, five decades after the "Great Society" legislation was passed, what do we have to show for it? The black population in particular suffers the worst rates of high school and college graduation, unemployment, incarceration and social disintegration of any demographic in the country's population. This comes after trillions of dollars spent through countless legislative efforts on more social programs than could be listed at a single sitting to eliminate these statistical gaps.   This presents us with a question: is the "new Jim Crow" really the set of policies put in place to deal with the effects of the old Jim Crow? Was the fundamental mistake in the "Great Society" its paternalistic approach? That is, would the "Great Society" goal of achieving economic and social equality across racial lines be better served by an approach that focused on the development of the black population economically and educationally to eliminate that inequality, as opposed to the mere provision of sustenance to compensate for that inequality? Could it not be said that this paternalism is the direct result of the racial superiority complex mentioned earlier, rather than a solution presented by a white Congress that truly considered black citizens their equals? And further, is that provision of sustenance, which has obviously only served to stagnate or undermine the black demographic in every statistical category over half a century, not a new form of oppression carried out through pacification instead of forced servitude?

I'm a college student who doesn't have the money to pay for a membership on the Alabama forum. That said, you can bet your oversized ego that if I did have an account there, I'd be saying the same thing.

A&M won't make the same mistakes K-State did, and they'll make much more effective use of our secondary's issues than Florida did. They get LSU at home, and if Sumlin doesn't let the Tigers get on a roll the same way Miss St didn't let them and the same way Nick Saban has put a stop to it for the the last four LSU games, they'll beat LSU. The biggest problem I see for the Aggies is another potential shootout with Ole Miss. I don't think Miss St can beat them and I'd bet Arkansas and Missouri can't.   I think its the Aggies' to lose. The biggest thing that Alabama, LSU and Auburn have working for them against A&M is plenty of time to get ready. Conversely, all three may be pretty beat up by the time they play the Aggies.