mawilson

No thanks. These loans are guaranteed by the taxpayer, so in effect the losses
are socialized, yet the profits remain private. Might as well socialize the
whole thing.

Not all of us. Some of us strive for success and excellence and financial
freedom, while others are content working 9-5 jobs earning an average
paycheck and spending all their time with their family.

Health care does not cost $0 and neither does any university education. Just because the payment path for things becomes convoluted and full of middlemen doesn't make things free. As people become divorced from the real cost and value of things, progress is not being made.
Look at public schools. A huge percentage of students treat it like a joke and don't value the education they are getting. Yet in reality, we spend directly almost $11,000 per year per student on public schools. The numbers are higher if you consider the overhead of getting the money there.

What a sanctimonious condescending #######.

My interpretation of the story is that Mrs. Twigg still hasn't learned to think for herself and still is voting along party lines. She just has someone else whispering in her ear.

Serves them right...China that is.

No. Bicyclists should just be shot.

Waving a chromed semiautomatic pistol, the robber pushed into the building in the bustling Five Points neighborhood of Columbia, S.C., just before 11 p.m. on April 11, 2009. “Gimme what you got!” he yelled, his gun hand trembling.
Attorney Jim Corley was one of four people in the room, the lounge area of a 12-step recovery group’s meeting hall. “He said, ‘Give me your wallet,’” Corley recalled. “So I reached around to my back pocket and gave him what was there.”
Unfortunately for the gunman, later identified as Kayson Helms, 18, of Edison, N.J., that was Corley’s tiny Kel-Tec .32, hidden in a wallet holster and loaded with a half-dozen hollow points. Corley fired once into the robber’s abdomen. The young man turned. Corley fired twice more, hitting him in the neck and again in the torso. Helms ran into the night and collapsed to die on a railroad embankment 100 feet away.
Reports filed by officers who arrived at the scene a short time later called it an “exceptionally clear” case of justifiable homicide. Following South Carolina’s “Castle Doctrine,” which allows the use of deadly force in self-defense, police did not arrest Corley. They did not interrogate him. Corley was offered the opportunity to make a voluntary statement, which he did.
Helms’ friends and relatives were left to mourn, barred by the same Castle Doctrine from filing a civil lawsuit.
Jim Corley became an unintentional spokesman for a burgeoning movement of millions of Americans who secretly and legally pack pistols in waistbands, under jackets, strapped to ankles, stashed in purses or — like Corley — tucked in hip pockets.
From its beginnings in the 1980s, the “right-to-carry” movement has succeeded in boosting the number of licensed concealed-gun carriers from fewer than 1 million to a record 6 million today, according to estimates from gun-rights groups that are supported by msnbc.com’s research. And while hotly debated, the effect of this dramatic increase is largely unknown.
Gun enthusiasts claim a link between more private citizens carrying concealed weapons and the nation’s dramatic decrease in violent crime. Gun-control activists argue that concealed-carry permits are being handed out to people who should never get them, sometimes resulting in tragic, needless shootings.
Effect on crime is hotly debated
But even with the push to expand concealed-carry rights now in its third decade, no scientific studies have reached any widely accepted conclusions about the movement’s effect on crime or personal safety.
Statistics from the national Centers for Disease Control do indicate that the murder and mayhem predicted by many opponents of concealed-carry laws have not come to pass. But even that point, while celebrated by gun-rights activists and conceded by some concealed-carry opponents, is disputed by others.
Both sides do agree on one thing: More Americans than ever are carrying hidden guns.
Firearms laws have been growing more relaxed across the United States for years. Gun-control activists have failed in efforts to re-enact the nationwide ban on certain semiautomatic rifles they call “assault weapons.” They were unable to block a change in federal law, signed by President Obama this year, which allows guns to be carried in national parks. And they watched in dismay as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2008 that the Second Amendment grants residents of Washington, D.C., the right to own and keep loaded handguns in their homes.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34714389/ns/us_news-life/
and, of course, the obligatory poll:
http://world-news.newsvine.com/_question/2010/03/23/4036468-how-safe-do-you-feel-knowing-there-are-people-around-legally-carrying-concealed-guns
78.5% of respondents feel very safe with concealed carry.

I couldn't care less whether mandating individuals to buy health insurance is constitutional or not. It's plain wrong. Private insurance companies are an inefficiency designed into the system and to feed such an inefficiency is simply inept, until you factor in the amount of money the pharmaceutical lobby threw into backing this Bill, after cutting a deal with the White House, when it smacks of being corrupt. Private insurance companies exist for one reason and that is to make money for their shareholders. This takes money out of the healthcare system and thus is an inefficiency. Ah, but pre-existing conditions are now covered, you say. That doesn't preclude insurance companies employing legions of "healthcare claims specialists" (I'm sure you've heard the radio ads), to analyse each claim in detail and generating a denial of coverage at every opportunity. The whole existence of private insurance companies is an overhead, and therefore an inefficiency in the system. This Bill just means the government is mandating we feed it some more and that's plain wrong.

Awesome post.
From what I read, SCOTUS typically won't hear a case about a new law until it's actually in effect and has had a "ripening." It could be 2014 before we hear any decision on the constitutionality of it.

I fail? What sort of idiotic response is that? I don't care if you think my arguments fail or not, what I care about is people who have congenital defects given access to health the same as those who are born perfect. Does that not bother you that some people have to pay because they are born different and not because they have done something wrong?

Various factors may make men more susceptible to disease than women and it may be true that immune defense is more important evolutionarily for men than for women. But I find the assertion that men with stronger immune systems are disadvantaged to be erroneous, not only intuitively, but also logically.
My main reason for this is that the ability to have sex is only a small component of the evolutionary fitness of male humans. Other factors include the ability of the man to attract mates, the ability to gather resources to provide for mates and offspring, the ability to protect mates and offspring, the ability to survive long enough to raise offspring, and the basic ability to survive until sexual maturity. All of these are critical to evolutionary fitness and are very negatively affected in the event of disease.
It seems to me that the major fallacy of this argument is that even if men are programmed to "live fast and die young," fast is a relative term. We are talking about a minimum of 20 years. More realistically, a man's fitness increases as he survives longer at least until the age of 40 and probably until 60 or more. The reality is that an inability to fight off an infection means death. Death causes a drastic decrease in evolutionary fitness.
The article seems unclear, but perhaps the assertion is simply that for men, the ability to continue to function while sick is more important than the ability to recover to full capacity quickly. That may be true, but eventual recovery is still an essential component to evolutionary fitness.

I don't blame them - this health care bill is sickening. Pun intended.

You might want to re-think that statement otherwise you will look foolish.

Wait, I'm confused...
Didn't the Dems spend the last year telling us how bad the evil health insurance companies were? Didn't they change the name of this plan from "Healthcare Reform" to "Health Insurance Reform"? Now they're telling me that in 4 years I'm going to be required by law to to buy insurance from these evil companies?
Something else that's confusing me...
Didn't I hear someone say that the fine for not buying insurance is going to be around $700 per year? That works out to about $60 a month. Can anybody really get health insurance for only $60 a month, even with a government subsidy? Didn't I also hear someone say that the insurance companies won't be able to deny me coverage, even if I've got a pre-existing condition? Wouldn't it be cheaper just to pay the fine until I get sick, and then pay for the insurance until I'm well again?
Wait, I think I'm beginning to understand...
If the only people actually PAYING for health insurance are sick, then the insurance companies are going to be paying out a lot more than they're taking in. We'll punish those evil insurance companies by putting them out of business!
But wait... who will provide our health insurance after that? What sort of business can afford to operate in the red indefinitely without going out of business?

I don't blame them - this health care bill is sickening. Pun intended.

Currently we only pay for emergencies. With this great piece of legislation, we will pay
for every little sniffle and sneeze.

Living in a democracy is great, unless it's dominated by fvcktards.

As someone too busy to read 2300 pages of legalese that changes on a daily basis, I'm still trying to figure out how this bill can possibly reduce premiums for the majority of Americans who already have insurance. If you want to sell this bill as social justice to get insurance for those Americans that don't have access to it, I can understand that.
But can someone explain how this bill is going to make things better for anybody who already has private insurance, medicare, or medicaid?
The way I see it, this bill makes the situation worse for 90% of Americans.

Name one.

What if they choose to get dropped from the exchange?
Who's going to be left in the exchange if all insurers drop out?

Or how many Mexican gardeners do you own??

I hate this new interface... it feels heavy and slow.
Why... WHY.... WHY????????
Why do people upgrade their software for the sake of upgrading? Just because there's
a new version available, doesn't mean you HAVE to upgrade.
Back to the topic... good advice, Amby!

I hate this new interface... it feels heavy and slow.
Why... WHY.... WHY????????
Why do people upgrade their software for the sake of upgrading? Just because there's
a new version available, doesn't mean you HAVE to upgrade.
Back to the topic... good advice, Amby!