ParanoiA

Maybe he means "state" as in government entity rather than specific geographical regions.

Well..somebody had to start a thread on it... Here's the story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16885997/ http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,297440,00.html And I completely agree. You cannot get away with beating folks just because you're black and they're white and they jerked your chain, racist or otherwise. Jerking your chain is not illegal, beating people is. Hanging nooses from a tree is not illegal. Beating people is. I don't understand this demonstration and calls to free 6 kids who beat some other kid unconscious. Being racist is not illegal. Practicing racism is also not illegal, depending on the practice. Obviously, denying employment, harrassment, unfair treatment by authority and etc are examples of practicing racism that is illegal. But hanging nooses on a tree - legal. There's nothing to charge them with. Why would anyone in their right mind think it's illegal to hang rope? Symbolism is not a crime. Personally, I feel no sympathy for the kid that got beat if he had anything to do with this. And I also feel no sympathy for the kids that beat him up. Idiots. I go round and round with my youngest son about this all of the time - 'don't let other people control you so easily'. Wants to fight everyone who says anything bad about him or taunts him in any way. I think a bigger deal is the fact that this school is self-segregating. The white and black kids are partitioning themselves and the school is doing nothing about it apparently. That's what the demonstration should be about. Not an OJ repeat where we let black people get away with crime because the white people were assholes.

But wouldn't that be like talking like a 8 year old and then getting irritated by people making "misconceptions" about you by the way you talk? Reminds me of Chris Rock..."you may not be a whore, but you're wearing a whore's uniform". Who's fault is that?

^ yeah, he gave himself away because everything was spelled correctly with punctuation... Yeah I would agree with that. I don't believe Bush is power hungry just for the sake of power and ego - rather I think he believes it's necessary for his war on terror. That's the excuse, and I believe any Republican following his lead will continue that theme. I don't like it, and it's not very republican of them I might add...but then, they dismiss Ron Paul as a non-republican so maybe this is the transition period for them. If so, I'm glad I jumped ship when I did. Let me ask a question...Would you still believe in granting Habeas Corpus to prisoners of war if we were in a more conventional war with soldiers that wear uniforms rather than soldiers who do not? I ask because I'm somewhat torn on the issue since I understand innocent people getting swept up in the process of fighting non-uniformed soldiers, but at the same time, it's war we're talking about and innocent people could still get swept up when fighting uniformed opponents.

Found an interesting research report by Christopher J. Conover published back in October of 2004. He's an assistant research professor at Duke University specializing, apparently, in health care related issues. Maybe you all have already seen this... http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa527.pdf This report estimates the cost of health services regulation at 339.2 billion with benefits at 170.1 billion - leaving a net loss of 169.1 billion. The cost of regulations outweigh benefits by two to one. Another interesting number crunch in the report was a comparison of deaths related to lack of insurance to regulations. Per this document, he estimates 22,000 people die each year from costs associated with regulations, while 18,000 people die each year from lack of health insurance. That implies 4,000 more people die each year from regulation than from lack of insurance. Yet we're up in arms about lack of insurance, and no one is even remotely bothered by regulation. Seems to me, reforming regulation would help two problems (cost and death) whereas promoting insurance coverage only helps one (death).

The world's going to end in 2012, so what's the point? Seriously though, that's a scary thought considering our obligation to Taiwan, particularly while we're still spread out in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not bad for 6 cents... Maybe I'm getting old and cynical, but it seems like generation after generation we incrementally sacrifice value in leadership. We don't have the same caliber of people as we used to. If we do, they're not speaking up or have been bought.

Hence nothing, this is not a free market healthcare system. Competition is practically non-existent, hence American's ridiculously expensive healthcare system.

It came from the classic position of liberal support for federal / state run education and the classic conservative position of support for private education. That video is clearly a pro-conservative conclusion. Which isn't too hard to do when examining public and private education in the country. Just about any american government program or entitlement that involves "children" is plagued with problems. Namely because children are so precious you can never spend enough money on them - no matter what you don't get out of it. It isn't popular to challenge a system for children in america or you will be cast as cruel and heartless and be left with a dead end political career. Telling the truth and demanding better will get you nowhere. Everybody knows if you want something fixed, you throw more money at it.

Well, I was thinking more along the lines of overnight obstruction of resources. Like, tomorrow morning we wake up and China sets up blockades to prevent us from getting any oil from anyone. We can't re-tool the country overnight and that would be a good reason to fight over it - the mere act of war itself notwithstanding. Nothing that is going on today comes close to this scenario. However, this new way of living you're talking about is exactly what I'd like to see. To me, we already have a long list of reasons to ditch oil altogether and start investing wholesale into alternative energy sources - environmentally friendly choices. Actually, should have been doing this for 50 years now. So, let me just clarify and say I'm willing to die for the survival of the country, but not for convention.

This is what I'm talking about. This is a discussion forum, not a suggested reading forum. While it's always impressive to include sources, you're not supposed to have the sources do your discussing for you. Otherwise, you're just spamming. Most of us have read much of those kinds of things anyway. We come here to haggle about them, not look for more.

You're kidding right? From americans, for americans and full of americans should mean something? It's bad enough trying to wade through the spin from the major media outlets, let alone to have to deal with spinsters that don't even try to hide their antics.

I'm not religious, that's why I'm trying to get you to come up with an argument rather than pasting in your propaganda articles. If I wanted to read some jaded anti-Bush right-out-the-gate articles, there are millions on the internet to choose from. But I'm not that easy, I require sources to be credible before I read their crap. If GWB did anything right, you wouldn't find it on that disinformation spam machine you're pimping...

So don't we have a duty to fix the actual problem so that every other individual can get the medical care they need? Maybe I'm missing your point, but I'm not seeing how any period of human development would benefit from faulty systems layered with band-aids. Seems to be a more intelligent society would want to fix problems at their source - even if that source isn't what I think it is. We can still be an intellectual, compassionate and healthy society with free market care. I mean, think about some of the problems everyone brings up related to healthcare. Obesity, smoking, and etc - as long as we're all paying basically the same thing, we keep making bad decisions. But when your choices start costing you money, when you're being held accountable for your choices in life, then you have a tendency to make better choices. Today, we're all paying basically the same thing. There's no one running around bragging about only spending 500 bucks last year on medical stuff, while I spent 3,000 bucks. We're all paying 300 a month. This is the problem with "pooling" approaches - it undermines the natural self responsibility check. Anytime you remove the individual accountability component in a given system - you introduce corruption and waste among other things. Seems far more intelligent to take advantage of human's innate, natural "cure" of self accountability.

Yeah, Haliburton. Don't you all get it? Iraq, terrorism, oil...it's all a cover. The american government wants Haliburton to be rich. GWB and Cheney were bought and paid for by Haliburton. All of their efforts have been to get Haliburton more rich. No other country in the world runs on money, does it Blade? Economy? Food? Shelter? Who needs it? Money and business doesn't have anything to do with quality of life anywhere - just misery, war, blood, lust, greed...right Blade? Tell 'em man...

Yes, it's right that some people don't have health insurance. Insurance is only needed because the cost of medical treatment is freaking ridiculous - which is what drives the feedback argument about lack of insurance equals lack of payment which causes prices to increase to make up for it. No one ever talks about the regulations and tax penalties/incentives - and the legal structure that undermines the whole market concept. This is a large part of the source of the cost issue. Like I've said before, it's a socialist bubble within a capitalist framework. Insurance companies have all the power - and they should only be needed for emergencies. You don't file a claim on your car insurance everytime you have a problem. You file a claim when you have a bad accident - an emergency. But medical insurance is tapped every single time you see a doctor for the sniffles or go into the ER for a severed limb. This is a big problem to me, and it's quite obvious why it's being ignored and instead our attention is directed to a "everybody deserves insurance coverage" mentallity. Watch the left hand so you don't see what the right hand is doing. We have a leaky roof and people just want to add bigger buckets. Let's fix the leak, then we'll talk about buckets. If we address the problems that add the insane cost, insurance coverage could be competitive again since it would only be used for serious medical problems. To answer your other question, the medical facilities should be free to make up their own minds to treat someone. After all, with or without insurance, I don't believe you have a right to someone else's labor - no matter how heartless it may seem.

I think if you consider the standard of living and what we'd do without, our very survival actually, some would die for oil - I know I would. The thing is, our acquisition of oil is not in jeopardy, so there's no need. The middle east is not the only place in the world to buy oil, and it's not the only place to drill for it. And now that we have warred for oil, at the very least perceived that way, our acquisition of oil might just be in jeopardy.

Had to share this. Supposedly it's the actual recording the Pacific Palisades High School - California staff voted unanimously to record on their school telephone answering machine. Apparently they've had some problems with excessive absences and parents demanding passing grades despite that fact. I don't know if it's true or not, but it's funny at least: I have a hard time believing that was actually recorded, but isn't it so appropriate for just about any area of the country? Edit: This merged with my previous post from a couple of days ago so I didn't think anybody would see it.

I don't see how it improves everything. It's a massive profit dump to insurance companies. Compulsory insurance is guaranteed business, and it's flat out wrong. This is not the way to fix healthcare. It's not fixing any of the problems, just addresses some symptoms. But everybody's all happy about it because it's close enough to socialized medicine that incrementalism will finish the job in a few decades. Meanwhile, we fix nothing. Still stuck with an insurance dictated scheme. And after everyone's content that "everyone is covered", it will continue to be the corporate owned and twisted mess of crap it is today.

You never stood a chance...

If that's a source' date=' then I'll put together a source for you today that will prove all of my arguments correct... Oh I love this. Yes, we work more hours BECAUSE WE ARE LAZY. Have you seen a union worker in america? I wish you could see the jack offs I work with everyday that make 30 bucks an hour to do less work than a McDonald's fry cook. And these people are still bitching. Stuffing their faces with chips, and candy bars and washing them down with 30 different flavors of soda and sugar water crying about how the company is screwing them. Blows my mnd. They do an hour's worth of work in 8 hours and the company is screwing them? Blade, get real. American workers cannot compete. There are many reasons that are out of their hands - like standard of living and so forth. But there are many reasons well within their grasp, but like you, they'd rather screw the rich and pretend it's the other way around. Class envy...proven wedge between logic and emotion. That's because there isn't any. You'll find like minded crybaby's and losers that blame all their problems on everything but themselves. But you won't find any enslavement. Oh, they'll carry on and whine as if they were, because some people don't think you should have to do something in order to survive and any government that forces you to do something to feed yourself, cloth yourself, provide shelter for yourself or etc is cruel and "enslavement". It's an insult.

Hillary Clinton: I have passed a law, solving the problem of americans not covered by health insurance...it says "all you mother@&$!ers got to have health insurance...HaHaHa!!! - gotcha' bitches! Told you I'd fix it!" Mandatory coverage...what an obvious insult... Actually, I thought the massachusettes idea got tossed out in the supreme court. I'll have to go dig into that I guess.

Job performance...just like the rest of us. Voting record is a good source of ideology and viewpoints which also matters in this case. Personal life is irrelevant. Sexual orientation is irrelevant. Looks are irrelevant. Pretty much everything they talk about on the corporate news business concerning candidates is irrelevant really.

But that's what I said in the second paragraph - accepting his example as a metaphor and assuming tails is not known: We're saying basically the same thing. We both realize that predictivity is faith. To say gravity will work tomorrow is a statement of faith. I accept that. What I'm differing with you about is what kinds of predictive faith is reasonable and what is not. Some kinds of faith is the result of previous observation of the phenomena. Some kinds of faith is no observation of anything, rather supposition of possibilities. In my opinion, the former is reasonable, the latter is not. Ie..anything is possible and nothing is impossible, so conclude with what is. It's only reasonable to go with what you've observed rather than to unreasonably believe in all possibilities. Could you expand on this or throw in an example? I think I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure. I mean I agree with that last line, but I suspect the heart of your reasoning is in the first part of that paragraph and I'm not quite getting you...