Phi for All

I agree with CaptainPanic, this is more normal than we're led to believe. People want to know your name, smile at you, have a laugh and sing and dance with you on this pale blue dot in the Milky Way. Extremists get the attention of the press 24/7 and we end up thinking the world is full of hate. Yet when you talk to most people, they want peace. I think we should look for ways to remove the profit from disharmony. War$ are such a poor way to get peace, because it makes a lot of money for some and they'll always look for more war$ instead of more peace. And let's have more dancing, dancing is a pretty good international language of happiness.

I think you miss the point, at least my point. I'm not against US companies offshoring jobs, I'm against also giving them further taxpayer subsidies and incentives while they save money on their workforce. If you're not going to contribute to your own economic system fully, you shouldn't be able to get such assistance from it. Having your cake + eating it2 = our present economy.

Well, my jello would be GONE.

Car/home/life insurance are based on insurable values. Even life insurance is purchased this way, with the insuree deciding how much they need in coverage. Health insurance is intangible in this regard. You know how much your car or house is worth, but you have no idea how your health is going to play out. Health insurance used to be based on actuarials that were quite accurate. You paid based on your age, and the sooner you got it, the less you paid throughout your life. But managed healthcare changed all that in favor of the privilege of changing insurers as often as you liked. And when the insurers kept losing customers, they came up with the "pre-existing condition" scare to stop people jumping ship. At least H.R. 3200 stops that atrocity. Is it really, or is it because that's the way doctors practice? iNow will tell you that a cure for his Type I diabetes would stop him having to buy insulin and testing equipment and syringes and all the other stuff he has to buy, in addition to constant monitoring and injections. Can you honestly say that a cure for high blood pressure, one that you took once to actually cure you, is a better for-profit product for a business to sell than what you're taking now? Poor quality is a general market concern. My public health insurance option would compete alongside private insurers, it would simply be cheaper since it doesn't need to profit shareholders. And you're mixing the arguments. I'm saying medicine in general is a poor for-profit business for the consumer, but at least we could make it more cost-efficient if we took the profit motive out of the insurance part of it. Poor quality is not so much the issue as the conflict between focusing on profit and focusing on health. No, not really. I suppose doctors have to stay private businesspeople, it's too difficult to change that. I'm just saying that the government could model an insurance product after the best of the private insurers, but with no need for shareholder profits and ludicrous C-level salaries and bonuses, and let it compete in the market like any other insurer. And you can stop him from being too cheap if your contract says you can. He can't substitute cheaper fixtures if you've paid him for better ones, and he certainly can't tell you he's not going to include the garage in the agreed upon price because your car is a pre-existing condition.

Yeah, like you'd ever just leave it at that. Give it a few days and you'd have it hooked up to a backpack compressor dishing up insect death at 150psi. You'd be a Drosophila melanogangster! EXTREME MEASURES CAUSE SALTY PHYSICIST IN A PINCH TO REMOVE DASH!

Not at all. Most product-oriented businesses are perfect for the normal market models. Make something people will pay enough for so you make a profit. Simple. No conflict, especially because we all know what's on the table. How can you know what your health will be like for the rest of your life? But in those instances, what you as the consumer wants is perfectly aligned with what the business wants to do. You want a home, they make you one and sell it to you at a profit. You're hungry and the restaurant fixes that, and it's in the nature of hunger for it to happen on a recurring basis. Is it in the nature of health for you to keep getting sick? Blood pressure meds are a GREAT example. Do you think much effort goes into figuring out a way to fix your blood pressure problems permanently, the way you'd really like? Why would they when you'll have to take their meds for the rest of your life? That's the conflict. What you want is to fix your blood pressure without the constant costs and restrictions, and what they want is a customer for life. Of course, your doctor could insist that you stop doing the unhealthy things that are really causing your blood pressure to rise. But I understand that most people aren't willing to give up what's really causing the problems. And the doctors businessmen are smart enough to ease you into their model. Can you imagine your doctor telling you in a single consult that suddenly you need blood pressure meds, which will raise your cholesterol, so you'll need meds for that too, and you'll likely have some anxiety so you should take some of these, which will make you susceptible to arrhythmia, and the meds for that often cause seizures, so we've got another pill for that. I'll bet most people in THAT situation would start hitting the club and eating salads pretty quick. Throw a frog into boiling water.... Except health insurance through a public risk pool keeps you healthy more cost-effectively and is more motivated to fix you truly as opposed to spending the least amount possible on you.

Isn't medicine itself guilty of that as well? Most of what a general physician does is cure symptoms. It's partially our fault for not being willing to correct negligent lifestyles, but most doctors don't argue when we ask for quick fixes. But yeah, health insurance seems like a no-brainer. Set up a publicly-funded risk pool for health insurance and model it after the best run private insurer. Make sure it's scalable to the whole country and then let the market decide who to go with, the public option or the private one that charges 25% more for the same thing.

I was hoping it could also be used against demons and ghosts, but ideal range is only 2 feet. That's unacceptable against the supernatural. I'm not sure whether the fly or the salt is going to be worse for my jello. And for luck, wouldn't you have to shoot over your shoulder for every fly you kill? For those reasons, and an impending ban on a-salt rifles, I won't be investing.

To me, it boils down to this: Modern medicine is not a good fit for a for-profit business model. We want cures, the business model requires recurring charges. Actually cure a patient, you lose a customer. Not good business. There's no simple fixes for that, though, unless you take the profit motive away and create some sort of "Caregiver Class" that gets special privileges instead of superior wages and I'm not sure I want to pave THAT road anytime soon. Pharma is an even bigger fustercluck. As long as profit is the key motivator, Pharma is going to work harder on maintaining erections than they are on curing lucrative diseases like diabetes. I'm not even sure I like H.R 3200, but it's a step in the right direction. The simplest fix, which is also the easiest, is to provide a government risk-pool for health insurance. Health is not like a car or a house or even a life where the value can be assessed and agreed upon by both parties. We can't put a value on what we don't know will happen. Without the profit motive, the draconian contortions and the slow payments to the actual providers, health insurance would cost less and be more accepted by the medical profession. The only political stumbling block is basically doing away with a whole private sector market, but I say screw 'em. Health insurers have been screwing the public ever since Nixon approved the whole managed healthcare scam. So of course, with the kind of money and consequences involved, outright lies are necessary from those who stand to lose their fortunes. I guess you should ask yourself this, if enough experiments showed that an inexpensive shot of capsaicin administered directly into the pancreas would instantly allow the organ to start producing insulin again, do you think the procedures should begin immediately to cure diabetics, or do you think all those businesses that make a profit from artificially providing insulin and blood sugar testing equipment should be given a few years to adjust to the end of their market?

It's pretty much all outright lies. Here is a link to FactCheck.org listing many of the lies and what the bill really says. For instance, the video claims page 29 says there will be a $5000 limit on yearly individual healthcare ($10k for a family). The truth is that the $5k/$10k limit is a cap on what you'll pay out of pocket if you have the basic package. HUGE difference, right? They take a very good thing and make it sound horrible, and so many people don't check facts like these. Wizard's First Rule: People can be made to believe any lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they're afraid that it's true. (Terry Goodkind) Let me also add, rigney, that although you take a lot of flack around here for some of the things you post, I have to applaud the fact that you're here at all, trying to get differing perspectives. You've got the balls to stick your neck out there and I wish more people on every side would stop only listening to thoe who share their perspective. +1 for you. Edit: crossposted with you, good find, great minds and all....

Older revolvers don't tend to have them. Newer ones probably do because the manufacturers felt there was a demand for, you know, safety. Too many ruined pillows, I'm guessing.

I know where I am. It's a double-action revolver that's NOT fully loaded, and you have the hammer down on an empty chamber. When you pull the trigger or thumb the hammer back, it goes to a live chamber. Quite different from what you first told us, but consistent with your part time job of goalpost moving. Strawmen make great target practice, don't they? AFAICT, the argument was about you keeping the safety off while the gun is loaded but not in your hand.

Fully loaded means just that, no empty chambers, no "should contan a cartridge". Evidently, you are not too well trained in the use of fire arms. And since you obviously have a double-action revolver and not a semi-auto, why would it be quicker for you to pull the trigger over an empty chamber and then have to pull the trigger again to fire a live round than to just keep it fully loaded but with the safety on? Safety is a very important word when using firearms, rigney. Edit to add: Your description could also mean you have a single-action revolver (which probably doesn't have a positive safety lock), or a double-action that you would pull the hammer back on. Either way, I don't see how keeping the safety off gives you enough of an edge to outweigh the concerns. Last edit: Scratch the single-action hypothesis. If you can pull the trigger to engage the hammer, it's double-action.

I wouldn't trust anyone's reflexes to be top drawer coming out of a sound sleep. You take the safety off just before you shoot, no exceptions. I define first dimensional idiots as those who remove the safety from gun safety. Called a positive safety lock, and invented by Colt, iirc. I thought I said that.

I hope rigney isn't a restless sleeper. Without a positive safety lock it doesn't take much of a fall to discharge a pistol if it lands on the hammer. Whoa, Arete didn't even mention the Aurora killings! What the hell, rigney?! Reread what you quoted!

Paranoia about killers makes you go out and buy a gun so you can kill them. It's a Catch-357.

I think you've scored a bullseye. Imo, it's the media and the political spinners who've turned every issue into some quick sound bytes that polarize everyone into as few belief-camps as possible. "Welfare". "Immigration". "Healthcare". "Military spending". They don't discuss anything, they just hit the buzzwords and already everyone has their minds made up. This is not how the most cooperative, intelligent, socially organized species on the planet should behave.

It looks like she's enforcing our rules pretty well. Advertising for our members to go to your site constitutes a rules breach. Why are we supposed to be part of your marketing efforts?

We all know that creationists want to find reasons to deny the fossil record, so I suspect many of them go around to forests and pick up animal bones so they can't possibly fossilize.

No, they aren't. There are plenty of things that appear random that are predictable chains of events. Luck? You think luck is a religious concept? Well, there is that whole conscious awareness thing.... I'm unclear about what injustice has to do with believing in god(s). As for "society imprinted a wrong concept in their minds", I think you'd first have to prove that atheism is wrong. Good luck with that.

It depends on the state. We don't have a lot of executions in Colorado, unlike Texas and Florida (we have 4 inmates on Death Row, compared to Texas with 308). I think there's some sort of drive-up express kiosk available to prosecutors in Texas, where they can get their verdict and sentencing done relatively quickly. I think the DA may be worried about the suspect pleading insanity. I'm not sure what the ramifications are when you seek the death penalty on someone who is later declared insane. You can't execute someone who wasn't in their right mind at the time of the offense, but I don't know if seeking the DP and having it rejected on insanity lessens the sentencing more than seeking life imprisonment.

I don't think there's any question that having a gun in your home while dealing with a home intruder problem results in your family members being more at risk. Many intruders are unarmed burglars willing to risk getting caught stealing but not willing to risk being caught with a weapon, or they're simply thieves and not murderers. In these cases, any harm from a gun to your family is going to come from you. If there is anything misleading about that study, it's that it includes suicides. But then again, how many suicides would have been avoided if the quick and relatively certain gun-to-the-temple alternative wasn't available? In the midst of this chaos, how do you know multiple gun-wielders wouldn't be mistaken for accomplices? If you open fire, how do I know you're shooting at the bad guy instead of BEING a bad guy? At that point, paranoia often creates panic fire, especially if you're protecting family members. I don't keep these guns for home defense, at least not in the sense of stopping an intruder. They're rifles, a shotgun and a western style six-shooter for fast draw practice (I used to do some acting). I simply don't trust the concept of using a gun against an intruder. The odds that he's there to kill us are dwarfed by the odds that it's a teenager breaking in to steal something, and I don't think I could ever justify killing someone over some insured electronics just because he MIGHT be a murderer instead of a burglar. If you're protecting your home on the grounds that EVERY intruder is a possible threat to your lives, you're very much more likely to shoot and then sort things out later.

I don't think it would require an amendment. "Bearing arms" and "well-regulated" could easily be intended as a requirement for responsible, trained ownership, similar to the what we require for cars. The founding fathers didn't write "have guns", they wrote "bear arms".

Not necessarily. If you have no kids in your house, having a gun close to hand can make you feel safer. I can't afford that with my daughter, and while I've trained her how to use a knife (not for defense), gun training is a bit further down the road. Just the low probability someone may break into my house wanting to kill my family is not enough to make me want a gun for defense. I try not to do things to make mortal enemies, and I'm just not going to live in fear of the odd whack-job. I'm in a neighborhood that's very low-crime and have made my house about as safe as we can be without giving in to utter paranoia.

I think you're still listening to that 2 seconds where you thought you heard him say that business owners didn't build their businesses. He's saying that none of us would have had an easy time of it without the American system, the roads, the libraries, the schools, all of it. You seem to support all those things, but you claim it's bullshit when Obama points it out. I don't get it, rigney.