LukeinNE

I'd say my biggest worry, opposing QB-wise at this point, would be going down to Fresno and having their guy run wild.

It's nice that we're up against a crappy slate of quarterbacks this year, but getting thrown on isn't what scares me (we basically never get cut up through the air). Defensively, it's about winning the battle for the trenches and having good gap discipline by the linebackers. Offensively, limit turnovers. Special teams, stop sucking on punt returns (and pray Drew Brown pans out). Limit mistakes, win games.

Reassigned to Moscow.

CNN's probably going to be light a field reporter in the coming weeks.

The British newspapers have their minds made up this morning.

Egypt proposed a ceasefire plan. Israel accepted it, Hamas rejected it. Any blood that is shed is necessarily on Hamas's hands. In any case, the damage to the hospital is obviously collateral in nature. If Israel wanted to destroy it, it wouldn't be standing right now.

Ukraine says they have phone intercepts proving it was the rebels. The nice thing about that is that it's verifiable. No link but the front webpage of the WSJ is saying that US intel confirms it was a surface to air missile. Wreckage is in rebel hands.

Not sure if related, but.... Aside from this being the worst year for an airline since 9/11, I think we can agree that the chance of a passenger jet crashing on its own on the Ukrainian-Russian border of all places is pretty much zero. It was shot down. But by who?

we spy on friends Everyone spies on everyone. My guess at this point is that Germany is just having to put on a show of outrage for domestic political reasons.

SEC West vs. B1G East Alabama (SEC West 1) vs. Ohio State (B1G East 1) Auburn (SEC West 2) vs. Michigan State (B1G East 2) LSU (SEC West 3) vs. Michigan (B1G East 3) Ole Miss (SEC West 4) vs. Penn State (B1G East 4) Texas A&M (SEC West 5) vs. Maryland (B1G East 5) Mississippi State (SEC West 6) vs. Indiana (B1G East 6) Arkansas (SEC West 7) vs. Rutgers (B1G East 7) SEC East vs. B1G West Georgia (SEC East 1) vs. Wisconsin (B1G West 1) South Carolina (SEC East 2) vs. Nebraska (B1G West 2) Florida (SEC East 3) vs. Iowa (B1G West 3) Missouri (SEC East 4) vs. Northwestern (B1G West 4) Tennessee (SEC East 5) vs. Minnesota (B1G West 5) Vanderbilt (SEC East 6) vs. Illinois (B1G West 6) Kentucky (SEC East 7) vs. Purdue (B1G West 7) 12-2 bad guys? Yikes.

If we can keep winning all year that hopefully would be our only 11 am this year. I thought Iowa was also in the 11 AM start?

I don't have a particular problem with crop insurance subsidies. The farmer shares in the expense, and it acts as a safety net for a very important but unpredictable industry (see what happened to farmers near Gibbon and Heartwell last week). Direct payments are a dumb idea, price supports are largely forbidden by the WTO, and the ethanol mandate is a really, really bad idea. The effect on food prices tends to get overstated, but it's my experience that using an E-10 blend will reduce mileage in my Camry by 15% or so.....so what's the point? Regarding SNAP, it's a necessary program, but it needs to be narrowed in what it can be used to purchase. It's a bit of a kick in the groin as a taxpayer to see a woman whip out her EBT card to pay for frozen pizzas and potato chips while her kid stands behind her texting on his iphone. My inclination is to make it more of a coupon system, e.g. you can buy 4 gallons of milk, 6 loaves of bread, etc. per month. I don't know, 6 frozen pizzas for $10 is a pretty good deal. The problem is the cheapest food is also crappy for you. I'd love to say we should make people using SNAP assistance buy fresh fruits, veggies, and meat. But that stuff isn't cheap. The idea of complaining about someone poor using a cell phone is also really shortsighted too. Sure, maybe their kid has a cell phone... but who has a home phone these days? My in-laws do and it is cheaper for me to have a two cell phone plan for my wife and myself, than it is for them to have a single landline. So... how is a person using SNAP having a cell phone actually a bad decision? It's going to end up on the taxpayer's tab one way or another. Moderately more expensive food now, or lots of taxpayer-funded healthcare to treat complications from obesity, high blood pressure, and heart disease later. My calculation is that the better food now is the cheaper option. There would need to be price allowances built in though. I have no interest in paying for people's organic plantains at Whole Foods. The point of welfare is to keep a person alive and in good health, not to live better than rank and file taxpayers.

I don't have a particular problem with crop insurance subsidies. The farmer shares in the expense, and it acts as a safety net for a very important but unpredictable industry (see what happened to farmers near Gibbon and Heartwell last week). Direct payments are a dumb idea, price supports are largely forbidden by the WTO, and the ethanol mandate is a really, really bad idea. The effect on food prices tends to get overstated, but it's my experience that using an E-10 blend will reduce mileage in my Camry by 15% or so.....so what's the point? Regarding SNAP, it's a necessary program, but it needs to be narrowed in what it can be used to purchase. It's a bit of a kick in the groin as a taxpayer to see a woman whip out her EBT card to pay for frozen pizzas and potato chips while her kid stands behind her texting on his iphone. My inclination is to make it more of a coupon system, e.g. you can buy 4 gallons of milk, 6 loaves of bread, etc. per month.

we were pretty lucky against osu. i mean, bauserman wasn't winning a heisman anytime soon. We had already cut their lead from 21 to 7 by the time Bauserman took over (aside from the third and long right after Miller was injured). We already had the momentum (and Braxton Miller didn't play defense). The injury just made our victory inevitable.

Doane - Really enjoyed it, top notch professors, small, tight-knit campus, easy to get involved in things. But I needed a job after graduation and they didn't have any B.S.'s in business so.... UNL - Eh. Lots of opportunities to do stuff. Our teachers seemed to be either research professors who didn't like teaching or TA's. Much easier to get lost in the crowd. Cheap Husker tickets were nice though. I really feel like it came down to me being an introvert and because of that I did better at Doane. Professors were more attentive to academic progress, all the student groups were smaller. I felt like at UNL you have to make much more of an effort to put yourself out there, and that's something I've always been bad at. So for my part, I liked Doane better than UNL (though Crete is a crap town).

Ohio State. We won that one by pulling ourselves together and kicking their butts over the last 20 minutes of the game. Northwestern was marked largely by our own incompetence from start to finish and we got lucky.

Objectively, Texas Tech. Bigger loss, worse opponent. Which one stung worse? Wisconsin, for all of the reasons mentioned.

The Farm Bill is a classic case of bipartisan interest group backscratching. The red state reps want the pork for their farmers. Liberals want their food assistance. So they pass it all in one package.

Foreign policy is tough. It's also tough to analyze because of a lack of information available, but we can measure dumb claims. -Israel and Hamas are in a shooting war -Syria is in civil war -Iraq is in civil war -Libya is in turmoil -Germany is pissed at us -North Korea is still launching sh#t at the South -China and Japan are playing chicken in the East China Sea -Part of Ukraine is under Russian occupation, Russia is claiming Ukraine shelled Russian territory and killed people I'm not really interested in assigning blame (in several cases I think it's stuff completely out of our control)....but come on guys. 'Tranquility' isn't a word that should be used with any part of the non-western world right now.

Rolling Stone tries to weigh in and......oh dear. I think my favorite part was the revelation that pistols are popular among handgun owners.

It seems like a clear cut case of collateral damage to me. Especially in light of the fact that Israel warns civilians to get clear before the bombs start dropping.

FWIW, "countless billions" actually aren't countless. It comes to about $120 billion since Israel was founded, fairly comparable to our food aid to the poor of this country last year alone. Glad you clarified.

Stealing money. PeLLLLini means no fewer than 8 regular season wins.

I don't know that many are calling for that. What we do know is that giving Israel all carrot and no stick is certainly not having the desired effect. How would you classify "knock it off, or else...." then? Israel is already a cornered animal in the Middle East. I just don't see how threatening to stop feeding it if it doesn't stop biting its attackers will improve the overall situation at all.

Boehner's actually being a fairly smart politician on this one. He's caught between the traditional role of leading the opposition, which he prefers, and the hard right wing of his conference. A lot of conservatives want him out as Speaker. Many of these same people want Obama impeached. He knows that's a nonstarter, and a politically damaging one for Republicans should they go forward with it. So he came up with this lawsuit. Assuming the case gets dismissed for lack of standing, he can say "well I tried" to his conservative wing, while the rest of the country forgets about it. I think it is too close to the election for Obama to not make political hay out of this. There are a few rules I have strong faith in when it comes to politics. One of them is: 99/100 times, a current event isn't going to matter nearly as much as you think it is. If no one cares about this lawsuit now, who will in 4 months? Boehner calculated this move to shore up his standing among House Republicans while having little to no effect in November. On the latter issue, I think he almost certainly calculated correctly.