Happy Face

Oh dear. Looks like a bunch of giant Jar Jar Binks are attacking the marines from Aliens.

I'll not take the NHS thread off topic again. The goal of keeping stakeholders at the table was threefold: Keep them from advertising against the White House plan Keep them from torpedoing vulnerable Democrats in 2010 so there isn't a repeat of 1994 Keep their money out of GOP coffers You can see the fingerprints in the deals that they made: the $150 million PhRMA was spending on ads for health care reform, the $2.5 million they spent helping vulnerable freshmen, and the total fury that Boehner has unleashed on PhRMA and other stakeholders for making deals with the White House. People make a mistake when they think the battle for health care reform is about ideology, because it's not. It's about who controls K Street and the cash that flows from it, which could fund a 2010 GOP resurgenece -- or not. On June 9, a lobbyist who worked for the insurance companies, hospitals, and other stakeholders said that these groups were "considering joining their Republican allies and mounting a public relations offensive to put the brakes on President Barack Obama’s overhaul plans." In response, on June 11 Sullivan and Selib fired a warning shot: On June 17, Roll Call ran an editorial crying foul, called "intimidation": And that's right at the time that Kent Conrad unveiled his faux "public plan," the "co-op" plan (June 15). It was the time I started getting really nervous. There could only be one purpose served by such a plan: pull a bait-and-switch on a public plan. Which was why when we started the whip count effort on June 23, our goal was to define a public plan as not a co-op. In short order, a series of deals were announced by Baucus and the White House. On Monday, July 6, the deal with the hospitals, whereby they'd commit to reduce projected cost increases by $150 billion over the next decade. On Tuesday, July 7, PhRMA's Billy Tauzin and 5 CEO's went to the White House to seal their deal with Rahm Emanuel, Jim Messina and Nancy-Ann DeParle, Director of the White House Office of Health Reform. On July 8, Rahm tried to float the idea of triggers -- and it went over like a lead balloon. On June 10 Obama spoke to the AMA. There was a huge push to keep these groups happy during this period, and more importantly -- keep them from aligning with the Republicans. And it seems to have worked. John Boehner recently wrote a scathing letter to Billy Tauzin saying that he had "betrayed" the drugmakers by failing to align himself with the Republicans. The GOP needs the money of PhRMA and other disgruntled businesses to fund its 2010 war chest. Just as it was during the bank bailout, the goal of the White House was clear: more important than saving the financial system was keeping the financial institutions happy and stop them from financing Republicans. Who would think that way? Whose primary objective would be to keep anyone from funding a GOP ascendancy, to sell out health care reform worth billions for a hundred fifty million in pro-reform advertising? Who would think to ask PhRMA to run ads in the districts of vulnerable freshmen, as well as Blue Dog Mike Ross, who is anything BUT vulnerable? Certainly not some policy wonk. But ask yourself -- would consider it a victory to use the "public plan" as little more than a political pawn with which to threaten stakeholders and force them to stay at the table, with no thought as to the emotional and moral consequences suffered by the people who had pinned their hope on having one? Someone who had worked as the head of the DCCC. Who remembered the 54 seat swing to the GOP in 1994 after the failure to pass health care reform. Someone whose sole goal was a "political victory," so the White House could be 14-0 not "13-1." Someone like Rahm Emanuel, who works through the Blue Dogs in the House to make the House bill conform to the deals he sets up in the Senate. Rahm wanted a public plan with "triggers" and had been pushing for it since January. Lo and behold, who is insisting that any public plan in the House have triggers -- Mike Ross and the Blue Dogs. The PhRMA deal on July 8 says that there won't be any drug price controls, and the next day, Blue Dogs Heath Shuler and Debbie Halvorson author a letter demanding -- no drug price controls: The American Hospitals Association deal was signed on July 8. The hosptals want higher medicare reimbursement rates for rural providers. On July 15, the Blue Dogs threaten to block health care reform -- if it doesn't increase reimbursement rates to rural providers. And suddenly, the hospitals are spending $12 million running positive ads about health care reform with PhRMA and the AMA. Mike Allen said earlier this week that "this weekend’s comments by White House officials simply acknowledged the long-obvious reality that the idea of a government-run insurance plan was partly a bargaining chip." If you look at the cat-and-mouse game played between the Democrats and the Republicans, support expressed by the President for a "public plan" meant "don't you dare." A commitment that the bill will be "bipartisan" (since the GOP would never agree to one) was a signal that there would be no public plan. The White House never cared about getting Republican votes -- it cared about keeping the Republicans from peeling off the dollars of stakeholders like PhRMA. Giving in to "Republican" demands was cover for writing shitty things into the bill that would keep the stakeholders happy. They didn't need Republican votes, they never did, and they never truly cared. As long as the money stayed out of their campaign coffers, it was all good. If a public plan gets into a final health care bill, it's going to be because of public pressure, because people who put Obama in office demand one. Because in the grand scheme of White House priorities, it was something that could acceptably be dealt away in pursuit of a higher political objective by the guy who was calling the plays: Rahm Emanuel. http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2009/0...itals-and-rahm/ If i read it right, basically Rahm (and Obama) knows and always knew there wouldn't be a public option, he made enough promises about it to get the private companies worried about it though and has been able to stop them running off and throwing money at Republicans by conceding it, going back on his word and retaining their bribe money for the democrats war chest in the next elections. Any flickering flame of hope you had left for Obama should now be completely extinguished, but overwhelming public support for the public plan might still see the White House defeated and forced to use the huge majority they have which could see ANY plan they wanted pushed through autonomously. Democratic members are going on the record in increasing numbers to commit to voting no on any bill without a public option.

I want the SSN cameras there live the day Ashley goes to witness some local radgies burning their "boycoutt" blankets, pulling down that sign like a Saddam statue and hitting it with their shoes.

Turnover £256.2 Debt £699.0 Wage Bill £121.1 Profit -£44.8 Interest £69.0

44,000 people turned up last night....and will do for 4 more games than they did last year....at the same price. He's made £24M in the transfer market this window. He's got a £20m parachute payment. He's taken £40m off the bank He still has a £50m+ commodity if he is serious about selling at any point.

I'm now convinced everything is going as planned for Ashley (or change of planned once keegan went). Over 3 months without looking close to a sale. He's clearly saying one thing (I'm gonna sell) and doing another (not selling) like he always has. As fans, we want to be up there with Chelsea or Man U. But look at the operating loss they've most recently posted (07/08), £85m and £44m respectively. Does an owner, using his own money want that? Being succesful costs, and is all about the gamble of maintaining success until you can sell a high revenue company (not necessarily a profitable one) in a stronger market than you bought it. Which club should you try to emulate to make a profit without any risk? Only 5 clubs reported a profit in the most recent accounts. Blackburn (7th), Spurs (11th) and Fulham (17th) all earned about £3m. But West Brom earned over £11m...in the Championship. If you want to be profitable, you just have to maintain a championship squad that can occasionally go up and guarantee a pay day and a parachute when you fail to invest again.

Of course, it'll also give just as much encouragement to Ashley that he could afford not to sell. Championship wage bill, Premiership attendances. The most profitable clubs in football are the ones that yoyo between the top two divisions.

Someone mentioned to me last night how Shearer highly recommended Bassong to Redknapp. The lad telling me took it as a turncoat thing to do, but i suppose it could equally be seen as driving for a high price.

Swan Lake - A hand at Dusk I like pianos

not really a freedom issue, more along the lies of politicians pay. So are for or against overtime, Chris? I hadn't realised there was an overriding theme to your anti-police threads. Fop the freedom fighter. I'm against the abuse of overtime.

Pretty much agree with that. ..having not seen it of course.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics...h-overtime.html

"Are you gonna bark all day little doggy? Or are you gonna bite?"

Why do I STILL get THIS nervous before a match. I'm 30 for christs sake. Grow up

Get to fucking fuck you fucking piece of fucking fuck I fucking hate fucking shite like this fucking shite. GaaaaAAAAAAAAAAHRGH!!!!

On the other hand.... http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/aug/19...entin-tarantino

Japandroids - Post-Nothing loud

Which in itself is a display of intelligence though. Some people work their arses off for 2 years and come out happy with a B.

Cheers, looks like a good range and very reasonable. We have a winner.

They serve Steer in Manchester? Where where where? Gaucho Grill Ooooh! We're booked in there a week on Saturday. Anyway, anyone got any suggestions for Newcastle. Blackfriars is closed, Francescas is too far out and The biscuit factory has been poo-pooed.

Is the job is surrounding a castle to prevent attack?

Who'd have thought they'd bash state education, when they provide private fee-paying schooling. A monkey can be trained to answer ANY question. They trained one to fly rocket ships. Ban resits...are they for real? While we're at it lets limit people to a single driving test. If at first you don't succeed, give up, you're fucking thick. What's the position now with resits though? It used to be you could only resit once every 6 months, and this entailed repeating everything, all in written-exam format. Now I get the impression you can resit individual aspects or course work, just to improve your grade? Surely that's not right, you can't do that in your final year of your degree, can you? Somehow this grade inflation has to stop. It's simple really, test students against their peers rather than lower the bar or make exams easier, year in, year out. It's not about criticising students, it's just common sense. Either that or in 30 years we'll be having students achieving 10 A***s at A level, what does that achieve? All they've done is move the bell right along the x-axis. C used to be the average grade so the majority got a low pass while the outliers were either excellent (A), or not (E or worse). Now the average grade is a B, A* is excellent and D or worse is shit. The way it should work is that the grades are set once all the papers have been scored, in order to retain the old school A-E grades which are, after all, arbitrary. But the government have moved every pupil up a grade just so they can say they've improved schools. I don't see why this precludes university's from distinguishing between the top performers or highlights any drop in standards other than from a government addicted to the numbers game. Because of top end grade pile up. C could do better. Grades have been awarded on marks rather than on proportion of candidates for 25 years now. So I don't think that's a new problem. Though I can see it would only get worse with time. Changing the existing percentiles might sort it, but only temporarily (like A*). I can't fathom why they went this route in the first place. Like Renton says, you have to be graded in comparison to your peers sitting the same exam.

That's the term that was on the tip of my tongue.

Who'd have thought they'd bash state education, when they provide private fee-paying schooling. A monkey can be trained to answer ANY question. They trained one to fly rocket ships. Ban resits...are they for real? While we're at it lets limit people to a single driving test. If at first you don't succeed, give up, you're fucking thick. What's the position now with resits though? It used to be you could only resit once every 6 months, and this entailed repeating everything, all in written-exam format. Now I get the impression you can resit individual aspects or course work, just to improve your grade? Surely that's not right, you can't do that in your final year of your degree, can you? Somehow this grade inflation has to stop. It's simple really, test students against their peers rather than lower the bar or make exams easier, year in, year out. It's not about criticising students, it's just common sense. Either that or in 30 years we'll be having students achieving 10 A***s at A level, what does that achieve? All they've done is move the bell right along the x-axis. C used to be the average grade so the majority got a low pass while the outliers were either excellent (A), or not (E or worse). Now the average grade is a B, A* is excellent and D or worse is shit. The way it should work is that the grades are set once all the papers have been scored, in order to retain the old school A-E grades which are, after all, arbitrary. But the government have moved every pupil up a grade just so they can say they've improved schools. I don't see why this precludes university's from distinguishing between the top performers or highlights any drop in standards other than from a government addicted to the numbers game.

Who'd have thought they'd bash state education, when they provide private fee-paying schooling. A monkey can be trained to answer ANY question. They trained one to fly rocket ships. Ban resits...are they for real? While we're at it lets limit people to a single driving test. If at first you don't succeed, give up, you're fucking thick.