scandal

Really good piece. Well worth reading and pondering.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/opinion/seven-billion.html

Naah, we didn't. That was the Romans. They were killing many of us at the time. Perhaps you've heard of Rabbi Akiva, Bar Kochva, two of the more famous Jews tortured and put to death by the Romans? Jesus was just one of many thousands of Jews they persecuted.
But do go on with your slander, we expect nothing other from you.
Pffft.

It might, but it needn't.
The only reason for ugliness is if the haterz want to create it.
I'd be fine with a thread about rainbows and unicorns, personally.
Unfortunately this isn't really that kind of website....

He's in prison, right? Right??? For all the calls for his release, he's not released, right?
Like Goldstein, I agree with you Popper ought to spend the rest of his life in a dank cell and never see freedom again. No argument on that score. Condemned and be damned, he should.
Is this all you do? Tell me that there are horrible mass murderers among 6 million Israelis?
I have news for you. America has mass murderers, England has mass murderers, every society does.
Some of them even have fan clubs - Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, the Unabomber. Bizarre as it may seem.
But what a civil society does with such people is arrest them, imprison them. They're dangerous, they shouldn't be on the streets.
What a civil society doesn't do is praise them, cheer them, encourage them, allow them to influence the young.
Do you want me to tell you Israel is an imperfect society? Fine, done.
I'm still hearing deafening silence about what these released criminals did.
Are you not afraid to have such known murderers walking around in Palestine? They're dangerous. I wouldn't want them in my neighborhood. You're ok with them walking around freely in Palestinian towns?

Visa Journey is ugly. Very ugly.
The Internet is ugly. People who give a sh!t about facts vs lies could cower in our corners, ignore it, and hope it all goes away by itself. Or, we could stand up and challenge the the obscenities. History teaches that acquiescence to bigotry, intolerance and lies is more bigotry, intolerance, and lies. And worse.

http://adl.org/ADL_Opinions/Anti_Semitism_Domestic/20101210-Oped+.htm

The biggest problem America faces is clear from this chart.
It's not al Quaida terrorism, or the housing market, or deficits and taxes, or entitlement programs.
It's those unsightly spikes on this chart at 1990, 2000, 2010. We really need to stop having the Census every decade.

It's a theory in precisely and exactly the same way that we have a Theory of Gravity, a Theory of Relativity, and a Theory of Electromagnetic Radiation. We are still searching for a Grand Unified Theory that will link the elemental forces of nature together: Gravity together with the electromagnetic/weak/strong, all in a system that fuses General Relativity with Quantum mechanics. That is the quest of modern physics.
Calling Evolution a theory is simply what scientists in a working paradigm do. It doesn't demean it or lessen it. It certainly doesn't make it untrue or questionable.
We are here.
We are living creatures on planet Earth, some 4.5 billion years after the formation of the planet, some 500+ million years after the Precambrian explosion and emergence of multicellular life.
We are carbon based. We have at our core a double helix strand of DNA, composed of amino acid chains formed of A, C, G, T. Adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. So is every single other organism ever existent on this planet.
We got to be here through a painstaking and lengthy process of mutations and adaptations. Generation upon generation who with mutated genes was found slightly more fit and better adapted to their surroundings, and thus produced slightly more offspring to the next generation, thereby slightly increasing the concentration of this gene mutation in the gene pool. Some of these successive mutations, in populations isolated and cut off from others by geographical features such as mountain ranges, oceans, islands, etc. - led to new speciation. As a result we, ** sapiens, emerged from primates and in turn from earlier mammalia, and from reptiles, and from earlier vertebrates, and from invertebrates, and from single celled creatures, and from the same primordial protein soup that all life emerged from.
This is not supposition, or rumor, or fantasy, or heresy, or possibility. Call it theory, again in the sense that gravity is theory. The fact is, it is fact.
Natural selection.
Genetic mutation.
Environmental adaptation.
Speciation.
That is Evolution. And that is us.
Fact.

Visa Journey is ugly. Very ugly.
The Internet is ugly. People who give a sh!t about facts vs lies could cower in our corners, ignore it, and hope it all goes away by itself. Or, we could stand up and challenge the the obscenities. History teaches that acquiescence to bigotry, intolerance and lies is more bigotry, intolerance, and lies. And worse.

http://adl.org/ADL_Opinions/Anti_Semitism_Domestic/20101210-Oped+.htm

That's fine. How about we just let his words speak for themselves.
In a thread entitled "Germany reopens hundreds of Nazi probes", he responded:
http://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/332849-germany-reopens-hundreds-of-nazi-probes/page__view__findpost__p__4937398
Readers can draw their own conclusions about who this person really is and what his beliefs are, about Nazis and about Jews.

As a human being I am disgusted with the filth just above.
As a Jew, I am glad to be living breathing evidence that Hitler failed, that the Third Reich failed, and that the Final Solution failed, and that apologists for it, like the poster above, prove themselves to be naught but filth. You fail. You failed, and you still fail. We live.
I hope these 80 and 90 year old men are terrified, truly terrified, at the prospect of facing the charges against them.
And I hope those found guilty are removed from their homes and families and comforts to live the rest of their few years left incarcerated.

You do need capital to start and grow a business, true.
And rich people are often a source of that capital, particularly as angel investors or in VCs.
But plenty of non-rich people are part of the story of providing capital to America's businesses and entrepreneurs. We provide that capital through direct investment in stocks and funds in our 401(k)s and IRAs. And indirectly through our pension and college savings and other investment vehicles. The largest institutional investors remain funds such as CALPERS and TIAA-CREF which represent the pooled investment dollars of millions of middle-class - not rich- investors.
I have nothing against the rich, or wealthy investors.
But it's a myth that they are solely responsible for investment and economic activity in America.

You do need capital to start and grow a business, true.
And rich people are often a source of that capital, particularly as angel investors or in VCs.
But plenty of non-rich people are part of the story of providing capital to America's businesses and entrepreneurs. We provide that capital through direct investment in stocks and funds in our 401(k)s and IRAs. And indirectly through our pension and college savings and other investment vehicles. The largest institutional investors remain funds such as CALPERS and TIAA-CREF which represent the pooled investment dollars of millions of middle-class - not rich- investors.
I have nothing against the rich, or wealthy investors.
But it's a myth that they are solely responsible for investment and economic activity in America.

That's fine. How about we just let his words speak for themselves.
In a thread entitled "Germany reopens hundreds of Nazi probes", he responded:
http://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/332849-germany-reopens-hundreds-of-nazi-probes/page__view__findpost__p__4937398
Readers can draw their own conclusions about who this person really is and what his beliefs are, about Nazis and about Jews.

You do need capital to start and grow a business, true.
And rich people are often a source of that capital, particularly as angel investors or in VCs.
But plenty of non-rich people are part of the story of providing capital to America's businesses and entrepreneurs. We provide that capital through direct investment in stocks and funds in our 401(k)s and IRAs. And indirectly through our pension and college savings and other investment vehicles. The largest institutional investors remain funds such as CALPERS and TIAA-CREF which represent the pooled investment dollars of millions of middle-class - not rich- investors.
I have nothing against the rich, or wealthy investors.
But it's a myth that they are solely responsible for investment and economic activity in America.

Not you, of course. You're much smarter than the rest of America.

Yeah, I don't think so.

You do need capital to start and grow a business, true.
And rich people are often a source of that capital, particularly as angel investors or in VCs.
But plenty of non-rich people are part of the story of providing capital to America's businesses and entrepreneurs. We provide that capital through direct investment in stocks and funds in our 401(k)s and IRAs. And indirectly through our pension and college savings and other investment vehicles. The largest institutional investors remain funds such as CALPERS and TIAA-CREF which represent the pooled investment dollars of millions of middle-class - not rich- investors.
I have nothing against the rich, or wealthy investors.
But it's a myth that they are solely responsible for investment and economic activity in America.

Good lad.
As for me, I hang around near schoolyards and hand out smokes to the kiddies.

I've lived in two countries that have universal coverage - Canada and Israel, and one that does not - the USA.
In Canada I was covered by the province of Ontario's OHIP plan. There were mandatory payroll contributions to pay for it, similar to FICA taxes in the US. It covers all legal residents, regardless of whether they are employed or not. If you lose your job there's no need for anything like COBRA since your coverage continues uninterrupted regardless of whether you are working. You lose it only if you stop maintaining the residency requirements (e.g. snowbirds who spend 6 months out of province in Florida have to pay attention not to lose OHIP).
In Israel I was covered by the Kupat Holim system, similar to HMO and PPO coverage in the US but required for all residents. Again, paid for through payroll contributions but job loss does not imply loss of coverage.
In the US of course I have health coverage through my employer.
I think the main benefits of universal coverage systems are:
1) Everyone is covered. Status, income, pre-existing conditions, irresponsible behavior are not factors in ensuring that all who need care receive it.
2) Loss of employment does not jeopardize coverage, or trigger pre-existing conditions clauses to deny future coverage
3) It's much more efficient. Administration and processing costs are lower. In the US each provider (doctor, clinic, hospital) needs to maintain bilateral relationships with every possible insurance carrier, who each have their own forms and procedures and pre-treatment plans. That often requires a dedicated staff person for even small offices just to handle insurance billing. That overhead evaporates in a universal delivery system.

Not only that. This is clear evidence that 'brown' people got here before 'white' people and were a highly advanced society with expert toolmaking abilities, and managed to wipe out multiple large animal species......

Wow what a sense of deja vu I had reading those words above. Where have I seen such a justification of terrorism recently? Oh, I remember!

I've lived in two countries that have universal coverage - Canada and Israel, and one that does not - the USA.
In Canada I was covered by the province of Ontario's OHIP plan. There were mandatory payroll contributions to pay for it, similar to FICA taxes in the US. It covers all legal residents, regardless of whether they are employed or not. If you lose your job there's no need for anything like COBRA since your coverage continues uninterrupted regardless of whether you are working. You lose it only if you stop maintaining the residency requirements (e.g. snowbirds who spend 6 months out of province in Florida have to pay attention not to lose OHIP).
In Israel I was covered by the Kupat Holim system, similar to HMO and PPO coverage in the US but required for all residents. Again, paid for through payroll contributions but job loss does not imply loss of coverage.
In the US of course I have health coverage through my employer.
I think the main benefits of universal coverage systems are:
1) Everyone is covered. Status, income, pre-existing conditions, irresponsible behavior are not factors in ensuring that all who need care receive it.
2) Loss of employment does not jeopardize coverage, or trigger pre-existing conditions clauses to deny future coverage
3) It's much more efficient. Administration and processing costs are lower. In the US each provider (doctor, clinic, hospital) needs to maintain bilateral relationships with every possible insurance carrier, who each have their own forms and procedures and pre-treatment plans. That often requires a dedicated staff person for even small offices just to handle insurance billing. That overhead evaporates in a universal delivery system.