Because metered SMS is THE MOST expensive service they offer. It costs more to text than it does to send data to the International Space Station. With (really) unlimited SMS I saved on hundreds of call minutes otherwise. We use 4000 text messages a month on average. For $20 it's the best deal out there.

Their high prices are the result of taxes for which ostensibly, they get something back. We do not. All we get is a broken down highway system and falling down bridges. You could tax gas in the US $10/gal if you like, all you're doing is stealing $10/gal from people. It goes nowhere.

The couple who had to pretend to tend to a teenager wound up 'divorced'. That is the ultimate truth. Teenagers suck. Even they think so.

Eating less does a lot more than working twice as hard but you have to do a bit of both. The simple biological reality is that if you're sucking in hundreds of more calories than you burn you will get fat. Anything else is an excuse to be fat. So be it, and be fat. But stop complaining about our failure to over analyze it for you.

We need a beneficent dictator to do the right thing in spite of what people want or think.

We don't need markets to do their job. We need to ratchet down consumption.

Khameni himself said in 2006 that oil at $140/bbl is unsustainable and unwise for everyone. Iran today imports more than 80% of their own refined product. Iran is rationing gasoline. Iran has 25% unemployment and 25% inflation. Iran is diverting billions of dollars it can't afford, into an ill advised nuclear program instead of building refineries or maintaining their upstream oil infrastructure. An oil infrastructure they've let let decay since 1979. French oil concern ELF Aquitaine said several years ago, 2001-2 that Iran then needed to invest more than $20 billion in the next 5-8 years in order to keep their oil economy running. They have not done this. Oil fields in constant production since the 1930's are starting to play out. Getting more and better oil out of them requires more expensive high tech methods like steam injection.

Like any other dictatorship, jobs are handed out as political favors to ensure loyalty and curry favor. The energy portfolio in Iran is run by ideologues who need to suck revenue out of it in order to fund The Islamic Revolution, Hezbollah and regional terrorism. This is not an ideal organization for maintaining the oil infrastructure.

Iran sees its role, its destiny as being THE regional super power. They will spend and spend to that end. Now they are realizing that oil alone cannot fuel the revolution. Oil alone failed to wrest control of Iraq from the US. Oil alone hasn't eradicated the Jew Menace. THAT's why they're at the table, however pointless that exercise is. And all parties already agreed that Iran came with no reasonable intention to accomplish anything but a stalling manuever. Nothing in fact was accomplished.

How's that identity theft going?

It's quite another to have extremely specialized skills, several advanced degrees and years of experience on a civil service employee's grade. An living in and around Washington, NOVA or Maryland.

Johnson alludes to this a few different times. The government hires contractors because it can't pay them as civil service employees. I'm sorry if that pisses people off but that's just reality.

Just because a firm is a contractor to the Federal government, doesn't mean or prove on its face that there's waste and fraud. If you work in private industry, your firm's payroll is probably done by ADP. Does this mean that by definition there was some sweetheart deal and money under the table in an effort to do it LESS efficiently? No probably not. Similarly, the Federal government would have a hard time hiring and keeping the PhD's at the NRO (Chantilly VA, one of the most expensive places in the US). So the mere fact that they're provided by Lockeed or some other contractor is by itself, representative of nothing.

Day 1557 of I promise, I guarantee, bet the whole farm that we absotively no doubt 1 billion percent for sure we're going to bomb Iran tomorrow morning 8am sharp. And fuck the Jews.

Never mind reality.

Salaries and benefits and the imputed costs of them are forever. Contracts are not. Am I the only person here who's ever had to deal with contracts in the real world? I'll give you a real world example. The Federal government cannot afford me. My employer has a 3 year contract with a Federal agency with penalties and bonuses on both ends. At the end of 3 years it's open for renegotiation. If the Federal government took that work in house they'd have to pay me for the next 20 years.

So what?

Or Starbucks. Or Apple. Or the Jews. Or Bush. Or Google. Or someone. Anyone.

Candidates who don't pander to penises and pop shock shit won't get the gigantic empty screaming head of Mancrush Matthews paying any attention to them at all. As it is, everyone is talking about this add. There is no such thing as bad PR.

Or was there some other point you were trying to make?

It's probably a toss-up.

It was in NYC and there was a protracted transit strike. Women started wearing Nikes and thick fluffy socks to hoof it over the Brooklyn Bridge.

That's an insanely broad statement. Do you believe that the guys who are awarded contracts under minority ownership set-asides are all criminals? All of them? Everyone from the firms that cut the grass at Federal monuments to the Sedexo Cafeteria services in the Pentagon basement? The USPS IT environment is almost entirely outsourced as is AMTRAK. Are you saying that the reason they came to private industry to cut their overhead by 40% was in reality a secret plot to steal money?

C'mon save the soapboxing for your weekly Marxist kaffeklatch.