Also the ACA was also ruled not at tax by the supreme court so that there was standing. What has confused me about the ruling was the first and 3rd portions (the second being the part about removal of federal medicaid or medicare dollars). The first part of the ruling was to decided if the ACA individual mandate penalty was a fine or a tax since if it was a tax there wasn't standing. At this point the court ruled it was not a tax and thus the lawsuit could proceed. Then later in the 3rd part of the same ruling the court finds that it actually isn't a fine but is a tax and therefore allowable by the taxing power of congress. My question since this has been did the court overturn their own ruling within the same ruling or have we now entered a state of quantum law where things can exist in a superposition where depending on how you look at them you get the outcome you are looking for?

These 2 parts of the ruling did manage to accomplish one thing though which is I now have no faith in the supreme court to make logical well reasoned decision that is even coherent within the same ruling. This becomes most clear on pages 31 and 32 or the ruling where the court felt compelled to treat it as a tax for the purpose of ruling it constitutional yet somehow wasn't compelled to at the same time to rule it was a tax for purposes of standing. This line of reasoning I find rather disturbing since it basically states that if there is a way or reading or interpreting a law that might make it constitutional then the law must be ruled constitutional. There are 2 previous examples where this was done and any legal mind arguing before the supreme court would be wise to make use of this to ensure all laws government writes get ruled constitutional since there is a very long running president of this now (about 180 years).

A backhoe.

With my 3 year old replace those with things with the trips up to the iron range, the threshing shows, and the railroad museum in Golden, CO. The kid would talk for hours if you let him.

Nice, most people don't know that much about their vehicles. Posi is fairly rare on vehicle but is great if you have it and getting the 4 wheel disk is always a worth while upgrade if not standard. Also good job on maintaining the oft neglected diff fluid

While the purpose of a burnout is in part to remove the debris from the tires it is mostly to heat the slicks up so they are good and sticky so you can get a good launch off the line and not spin the tires as much. If it were just about scraping the crap off there wouldn't be a need to keep going beyond the first couple of revolutions until they smoke. Some drag races do like the big burnouts which as you stated really wastes tires, while others (like my father) do them until they see the smoke out the rear view, or enough to get the tires hot and sticky but not waste them. Also most of the drag I've seen are running 4.10 or 4.11 gears so it is even easier to break them loose. There still is the difference between drag slicks and street tires with street tires offering no where near the traction of the traction of even cold slicks.

That is the parking brake which doesn't do much of anything except help stop you from rolling when parked on a hill. As mentioned elsewhere it is a steel cable that basically pulls the shoes or pads of the rear wheels so they press against the drum or rotor. This is different from the hydraulic system that produces the majority of the braking power.

Congratulations you have successfully mastered the art of the burn out with one wheel (I doubt you have a limited slip diff in that thing) on street tires. Now depending on what the vehicle has for rear brakes this this might be somewhat impressive to someone (4 wheel disk) or is just meh (rear drum). You also didn't mention that the front wheels stay put during this exercise. To be fair I did similar things in my '97 BMW 540i but that had 4 wheel disk brakes with an aftermarket posi diff but even then the front wheels would stay planted.

Speaking of burnouts I take it you haven't seen a real drag race. Even with some nice extra wide hot drag slicks on the back with the small pizza cutter tires in front the braking action only cause the car to slide forward very slowly.

I guess I should save some of those used gift cards instead of tossing them. This sounds like a great idea.

I have attempted to report them to my state's Attorney General but she is too busy being a political hack to do anything about them. It would be nice if our government actually decided to investigate and stop interstate and international wire fraud but that doesn't seem to be a high priority for them. Maybe more people need to start reporting them. Also wasting their time and reporting them aren't mutually exclusive although wasting their time seems to produce better results.

Sounds like a great job to me with the compensation on the side probably paying more then the day job. From my understanding the street value of kilos of explosives or various narcotics is in the 10s of thousands of dollars or that is what the nightly news would have me believe.

Sounds like what I did to the "your car's warranty is about to expire" people about 3 months after I got my jeep. I figured they got a dump of people who had recently purchased a used vehicle. I was mostly polite but would string them along. With that Jeep there was no way they would ever offer a warranty (at the time it was 15 years old and only had 368,XXX miles on it) but would act interested. Eventually they would want vehicle information and telling them it is a '96 with that mileage they would inform me that it didn't qualify for a warranty. At this point I knew the conversation was over but once I did get it "escalated" to a "supervisor", the guy one phone over, and got to do it again.

I also like giving the phone to one of my children. It is down right hilarious to hear a 3 year old get fed up with these scammers, mine really likes to tell stories and eventually tell the scammer to "Stop talking now! I'm trying to tell you something!". My 6 year old is a much better communicator but is very inquisitive and will ask them all sorts of questions.

All the more reason to get rid of these rats with wings.

True and I wasn't trying to imply there was. I just hadn't thought about yours a possible solution. I think the next time I write my elected officials on the subject I will offer both, especially since one of my Senators was responsible for the introduction of legislation that would have automatically bumped up the number of H1Bs if the cap was met up to some ridiculous amount.

I doubt that your field is so specialized that there exists no American who could do any of the three jobs, but maybe you have other things working against you like:
A shit work environment
A shit location that no one wants to live in
Shit compensation
Made up shit job requirements (looking at you 10+ years Java experience in 2000, or 5+ years experience with Win2k3 in '04)

So maybe the answer is to improve one or more of the above until someone actually wants to work for your company. Then again you are AC so for all I know you are Sergey Brin shilling for you next quarterly report to increase shareholder value.

Sounds similar to a call from a recruiter I got about a year ago. The requirement was the laundry list of technical skills but in a highly specialized area with a requirement to move from my low cost area to a high cost area where I doubt I would have been able to ever afford what I currently have for less than a quarter million a year. When the recruiter gave we the wage a they were offering I stuttered and stammered at which point I was asked if that was good. I replied with a no as I was currently making about 2.5 times as much and was in a better (lower crime, better schools, less crowding, less polution) and cheaper (food, property, energy) area.

I like your idea as it is an interesting difference to my opinion in that if the H1Bs are so critical to a company that all H1B holders should be the individuals in the company with the highest total compensation (including benefits, retirement packages, relocation packages, company provided vehicles/drivers, etc). This holds true given the premise (probably false) that this is a particularly rare skill set that they couldn't find anyone in the US to do the job and couldn't train someone into the position in time since it is so critical. For cases where this is truly a critical unique skill set that is needed to complete a project or task this shouldn't be much of a problem, yes I do realize that such cases will exist, since huge companies that import vast quantities of H1Bs can eat the cost since we hear that CEO compensation isn't a problem, and tiny companies there more than likely isn't a huge spread in compensation.

Either way making your change or mine would do wonders for showing how critical these people actually are to the company instead of being a method to save some money. It needs to be clear that H1Bs are a more expensive route. Also why don't we see any H1Bs in management since it seems finding highly qualified competent management is truly a rare thing?