Heating oil, otoh...forget what it was per gallon but it was 7 hundo to fill 'er up.  Ouch.  Hope we make it till Christmas on that 7 hundo...I shoulda trained the dog to bark (or even bite) if somebody f8cks with the thermostat.  62 degrees, part of the new normal.

I think most of us here are at an age in which we at least know others who have had a child pre-decease them. I had a brother who succumbed from complications of cystic fibrosis at age 15. My mother probably hasn't visited his gravesite in East L.A. in well over a decade, but she keeps his framed 8th grade school portrait in a prominent place on her dresser, his bright blue eyes and toothy grin looking just as vibrant and real today as they did 40 years ago, when that photo was first taken.

While most parents who experience that unfortunate loss do eventually move on with their lives, it's also pretty apparent that it's something that they'll never really "get over," regardless of the passage of time. Outliving your own child is not supposed to be part of the natural order of things, no matter how hard one tries to rationalize the event ex post facto.

The problems with the economy structurally still remain and for us libertarians have only gotten worse.

Too much regulation, too much crony capitalism and way, way, way too much government spending.

Now you throw on top this whole Obamacare debacle and well, they'll probably just keep pumping.

And that this scam uses financial actions of lower and middle income people to make billions for the system.  And these middle and lower income people do not share in these profits anywhere close to the degree to which they help create them.

It really doesn't require much more training than what you've already done to get to this point, only diligence in actively maintaining your present strenuous regimen, and then perseverance once the race commences.

Oh, and not that you need reminding, but please do a lot of stretching and hydrating, both before and afterward, especially if you're over 40. Personally, as a former college athlete I've always found the warm-down period after a long run or hard workout to be the easiest part of my training regimen to simply blow off, but I learned the hard way as I got older that you really do ignore it at your peril. We're not 25 any more, and the body simply does not recover as quickly as it once did.

The 1/2 is actually one of my favorite distances as the time it takes to train for it is much more manageable than for 26.2.

The NY Marathon was my one marathon, my wife has done a dozen or so.

Biggest tip I learned from NY was you really need to moderate your pace the first 10 or so miles so you don't go out too fast.

It's tough, though, because you are running with thousands of others, and they're all full of piss and vinegar at the start, so you get carried along with the crowds at a pace that is faster than you want.

At NY my goal was 3:40, and I found myself ahead of goal pace by about 10 mins at the 1/2. I ended up with 3:42, and was happy with it, but the last 4-5 miles were reeeally tough and slow.

I've always wondered what my time would have been if I hadn't run almost a minute faster/mile than my goal pace for that first 1/2.

If you're at all interested in watching a little history unfold, here's the LINK. Just remember, we're two hours behind the west coast and five behind the east, so the broadcast will start at 12:00 noon PST and 3:00 p.m. EST.

We just learned this morning that technically, Hawaii will become the 15th state to legalize marriage equality and not the 16th. It's a distinction without a difference, really, because although the Illinois legislature passed it five days before we did, Gov. Quinn has scheduled his own bill signing ceremony for one week from today, on November 20.

It's still pretty amazing, though, to see two markedly different states legalize marriage equality in near-simultaneous fashion. It's indeed a beautiful day outside, and there's really no better day to move forward than the present. So, who's going to go next, and channel their inner diva?

The text released by Wikileaks is 95 pages long, with 296 footnotes and 941 brackets in the text, and includes details on the positions taken by individual countries.

The document confirms fears that the negotiating parties are prepared to expand the reach of intellectual property rights, and shrink consumer rights and safeguards.

Compared to existing multilateral agreements, the TPP IPR chapter proposes the granting of more patents, the creation of intellectual property rights on data, the extension of the terms of protection for patents and copyrights, expansions of right holder privileges, and increases in the penalties for infringement. The TPP text shrinks the space for exceptions in all types of intellectual property rights. Negotiated in secret, the proposed text is bad for access to knowledge, bad for access to medicine, and profoundly bad for innovation.

The text reveals that the most anti-consumer and anti-freedom country in the negotiations is the United States, taking the most extreme and hard-line positions on most issues. But the text also reveals that several other countries in the negotiation are willing to compromise the public's rights, in a quest for a new trade deal with the United States.

The United States and other countries have defended the secrecy of the negotiations in part on the grounds that the government negotiators receive all the advice they need from 700 corporate advisors cleared to see the text. The U.S. negotiators claim that the proposals need not be subject to public scrutiny because they are merely promoting U.S. legal traditions. Other governments claim that they will resist corporate right holder lobbying pressures. But the version released by Wikileaks reminds us why government officials supervised only by well-connected corporate advisors can't be trusted.

An enduring mystery is the appalling acceptance of the secrecy by the working news media.
[...snip...]
Access to Medicines

The trade agreement includes proposals for more than a dozen measures that would limit competition and raise prices in markets for drugs.

Anyway, it's not 1994 again and the country is dead set against the GOP. I mean the same people complaining about how Obamacare is the end of the world actually strapped on their suicide vests and wanted to blow up the entire country.

Let me be clear, I don't blame the pro sports teams.  They are a business and as any business will do they take the best deal they can get.   It is the governments, state and local, that fall prey to this mindless spending and borrowing that give little to no civic benefit.

Do you realize when they tore down Giants stadium to build the new Jets stadium it wasn't even paid for?   They still owe money on the bond?

Atlanta is a particularly alarming example because it was left over from the ultimate sports scam....The Olympics.   What a bunch of fiscal baloney that scam is.

Millions of people could literally have been fed for the money wasted building arenas and facilities for two weeks of games.

"It is absolutely necessary the (transportation) solution is all about moving cars in and around Cobb and surrounding counties from our north and east where most Braves fans travel from, and not moving people into Cobb by rail from Atlanta." (Emphasis is mine.)

It should be noted in context that while Atlanta itself is a majority black city, suburban Cobb County is a wealthy and predominantly white enclave to its immediate northwest. Its county seat is Marietta, where some 98 years ago, Leo Frank -- a native New Yorker and a Jew -- was brutally lynched after having been convicted under highly dubious circumstances of murder in one of the more notorious race-based trials in Georgia history. Marietta is also the home of Mulligan's Food & Spirits, whose owner Mike Norman is certainly no stranger to stirring up racial animus and controversy.

Given that bit of background, Ed Kilgore over at The Washington Monthly explains Dendy's remark in further context:

"When I was in high school in Cobb County, my state representative (a Dixiecrat/Democrat) offered as his perennial campaign slogan: "Stop Atlanta at the River!"(i.e., the Chattahoochee River, which divides Cobb from Atlanta). Everyone knew exactly what he was talking about. Years later, when there was very brief talk of Cobb County joining the regional MARTA rapid transit system, bumper stickers sprouted in Marietta and Acworth and Kennesaw that said: "Take MARTA To Cobb and Rob." Again, everyone knew exactly what that was about.

Now I don't live in Georgia any more, but I am reasonably sure no one thinks MARTA is going to be expanded into Cobb County any time in the near future. So Dendy's statement was a gratuitous racial slur aimed at assuring his constituents he and the GOP were ever-vigilant about protecting Cobb from those people.

(Sigh!) I think there's good reason why prior to the Braves' 1966 relocation to Atlanta from Milwaukee, the city's AAA minor league baseball team was called the Crackers. And as Charlie Pierce noted today about the none-too-subtle racial references behind the Braves' move to Cobb County, no doubt with tongue firmly planted in cheek, "This is not about race because nothing is ever about race."

BTW, go look at the fed's explanation of the money supply and try not to call bullsh*t within minutes. It's hocus-pocus in the service of graft.

I think you are sorely mistaken if you think there are going to be people here cheering the enrollment of anyone in a health insurance plan, whether it's one person or 100,000, considering that, as things currently stand, that's the only way one gets access to care.

Just curious, though - is the administration's definition of an enrollee as "someone who has selected a marketplace plan" the same thing as actually being a subscriber?

Health insurance plans only count subscribers as enrolled in a health plan once they've submited a payment. That is when the carrier sends out a member card and begins paying doctor bills.

When the Obama administration releases health law enrollment figures later this week, though, it will use a more expansive definition. It will count people who have purchased a plan as well as  those who have a plan sitting in their online shopping cart but have not yet paid.

"In the data that will be released this week, `enrollment' will measure people who have filled out an application and selected a qualified health plan in the marketplace," said an administration official, who requested anonymity to frankly describe the methodology.