There's only one minor flaw in the seeds in your brackets, which is going to hurt the entire tournament:

They're all Bush's fault.

This was an overriding thought for me as well.  And I have to say that I'm certain there were a few situations in which I misread signals in the other direction and some young lady thankfully applied this criterion on my behalf.  Which makes me wonder what our society has wrought, in tearing down all social conventions concerning this primal urge, giving us nothing to replace it but fear, guesswork, identity politics and victimology.  It's a wonder that lonesome souls still navigate these dangerous straights and strike up lifetime romances.

A favourite of mine was writing himself into all (or at any rate, most) of the presidents' bios on the official WH website, so that the glories of all the past presidents could be seen in their proper context:  namely, how they relate or compare to the Obama presidency, the standard against which all others are measured ... and then, after attention is called to the edits, they are wiped.  Can you get that on one line?  The compact description of each title is the central genius of your piece.

I've been scanning this thread because Denise's post promised to be a bit of fun, but it's been shamefully short on double-entendre and sexual innuendo.  You guys ought to be ashamed of yourself.

But, ok, I'll play the serious game.  I guess rape and sexual assault aren't all that funny anyway.

Midge's story (#92) brings me to mind of a very similar thing that happened to me.  Yeah, I'm a guy.  And, ok, no Robert Redford.  Still, a slightly older co-ed invited me to her room, socially one evening.  I learned it was for (quite a) bit more than that, and skedaddled.  Fortunately, as a guy I suppose I'm a winner of the muscle mass lottery and she could not, at any rate, hold me down once I determined I was getting out.  Made for some awkward moments for the rest of the term in the cafeteria -- I just chose to avoid her.

I don't think I sent out signals and I couldn't be accused of dressing provocatively.  But social signals are enigmas for us guys, so perhaps I'd better profess naivete on that point.

That's it, everybody back to their own barracks.  From now on, boys will fight with boys, girls with girls.  Every unit will be single-gendered.  The women will fight the Taliban in the North, and the men in the South.  May the best men ... or women ... as the case may be ... experience success first.

Cool.  Libertarian as back-to-nature flowerchild naturism.  I can dig it.  With this metaphor, and the right approach, you might also win over half the environmental movement, Fred.

The very definition of "soft drink", mind you.

Double D would definitely be oversize.

Well, the term "self-interested" is helpful, because of course that's a more accurate representation about the driving motivation of free market activity, and I was under the impression that the term wasn't in a lot of these folks' vocabulary.

But it would be interesting to replace the term here with the classic socialist slur "greed".  They would have, then, that rich strong guys are greedy, and so are poor strong guys, and that this greed is expressed in the form of supporting redistribution when the other guy has more than you.

Actually in the latter case, "envy" and "covetousness" are more apt terms.

Every conservative pundit going on an MSNBC show should obtain a copy of the MMFA talking points prior to the interview, review it, research a thorough rebuttal to every point and, if the interviewer misbehaves by talking over your answer, derail the show by pointing out they're just reading off distributed reading points from an Obama admin mouthpiece organization, tell them what their next question is going to be, and generally mock them for being puppets of someone else.

We must be clear on one thing:  Laws (enforced) can kill freedoms.  But laws can also create liberty where there was none.  The power to legislate is not a wedge; it is a two-bladed axe.

For example, consider the law concerning which side of the road one drives on.  In which case do you have more freedom to drive:  with that law in place and enforced, or without it?

Lack of regulation is not synonymous with freedom.  In some case it is simply the regulation of society and the enforcement of well-structured rules of civic intercourse that makes it possible for free people to carry on their lives in freedom.

And there needn't be a "right" law.  Sometimes the mere fact that there is a rule for something suffices.  In America we drive on the right.  In England they drive on the left.  Both conventions provide the public liberty to drive in safety; neither is necessarily "the right" rule, but one or the other is needed.

I hear they're thinking of changing to Right-side driving in England.  But not all at once.  For the first year it'll only be the lorries...

I'm deeply involved in Math Education advocacy ... in Canada.  However, I am in touch with the "coalition" side in the U.S. (as in daily).  For the most part we're agin it.

Not touching the political problems, the implementation process, trampling on states rights, data mining and so on -- just considering the content of CC math, the basic standards are a huge improvement on the so-called "reform" (we call "fuzzy") curricula and resources like TERC Investigations.  It did shore up standards somewhat, ensuring (for example) that standard algorithms are taught.  Some of "our" folks even participated in drafting the standards.

However, there are serious problems.  In no particular order:

• The standards have become de facto upper bounds for participating states.  Since they are weak, compromise standards, this effectively prevents local programs encouraging excellence.
• "fuzzy" methodology has been insinuated on top of the "pretty good" content standards, essentially undercutting them.  This happened a decade ago in California, with predictable results.  Coalition folks who were involved in the process feet betrayed.
• There is a system of perverse incentives in place

...and more.  A good site to visit on the core math issues:  nychold.com

Read the 2008 NMAP report.

Roberto, if all of the anomalies in this situation are answered satisfactorily  then you may be right.  But with the level of obstruction these folks are facing and the extreme deviations from operational policy, and the number of lives lost, there is a high probability that it is worse then Benghazi.  I believe that is simply the default assumption in a case like this.  Let the administration prove otherwise.

Ah, May. 

Ah-choo!

The moment I saw this post I knew someone would make that comment.

Amazing, I know.

Pretty bad, and this isn't the worst of it.  We've been fighting these issues here now for many years.  It appears we've finally won against the hateful Section 13 of the Human Rights Act, but these commissions still exist and are still pursuing their discriminatory, ideological agenda.

Interestingly, although few Americans know this, the U.S. has had its share of Publicly funded Human Rights Commissions that carried out similar star chamber activities.  In fact, an early pioneer of HRCs in the U.S., long before the Canadian HRCs was Jimmy Jones.  You know, the famous Koolaid distributor?  None other.