Slashdot Mirror

When Obama said: "If you like your plan you can keep it," — he meant to say: "If I like your plan, you can keep it." The millions, whose plans aren't, in Obama's omniscient and benevolent opinion, good enough — because they don't cover, say, obesity counseling, or contraception, or gender-changes — are out of luck...

As it turned out, a great many of the insurance plans offered to people were extremely sub-standard, covering little if anything, and would frequently drop coverage for people if they got too sick. These plans were (rightly) made illegal by the new regulations that require a base level of quality in insurance plans. Nobody is being hurt by being offered better insurance plans at a more reasonable cost.

Also, you're out of date: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-letting-people-keep-canceled-health-plans-for-another-year/

Personally, I think this is a bad move. Sure, it means less hassle for a number of people. But those people will end up paying more and getting less for their money by staying on their current plans. It's too bad, really, that Obama made that rather stupid statement about the ACA. People are going to be hurt by Obama's attempt to keep his promise.

my guess is that 60 Minutes' primary audience these days is older people. I don't know the politics, if they even have a bent one way or the other. I doubt many people under 40 watch it.

That's a pretty accurate observation. Just look at this one-sided episode where they bash people receiving disability. It's obviously geared toward people over 65.

But also, old dads produce longer living offspring due to the fact that the sperm's telomeres lengthen with age. This is compounded when father and grandfather both have children later in life.

The risk of mutation may be higher, but the reward of a healthy offspring is longer lifespan.

Hope this helps. Here is some more. Think we can find similar numbers for any other religion?

You've got two US sources for a British social issue. Sorry, but the only sources that cite Muslims want a Sharia state are factless media beat ups in Newscorp/Daily Mail or propaganda from the EDL and BNP. The reality is quite different. Most Muslims want the opposite and would like Newscorp/Daily Mail to stop printing such nonsense.

Well, he provided sources. Where are yours?

Hope this helps. Here is some more. Think we can find similar numbers for any other religion?

You've got two US sources for a British social issue.

Sorry, but the only sources that cite Muslims want a Sharia state are factless media beat ups in Newscorp/Daily Mail or propaganda from the EDL and BNP.

The reality is quite different. Most Muslims want the opposite and would like Newscorp/Daily Mail to stop printing such nonsense.

Hope this helps. Here is some more. Think we can find similar numbers for any other religion?

I take exception to this. As of 24 March 2012 we can state for a fact that Dick Cheney now has a normal human heart: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/dick-cheney-receives-heart-transplant/

it's the black's who are killing everyone.

Truth of the matter: It is the blacks. America does not have a gun violence problem, it has a black violence problem, 50%+ of the crime committed by 3% of the population (young black men.)
And here is even a cite from a fully-vetted Lamestream Media leftist libtarded source to keep the predictable squealing of "racist!" to a minimum. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/feds-49-of-murder-victims-are-black-men/

CBS Says it passed

I believe the Senate Democrats wanted to create a new, tougher bill. The bill that started in the house was passed by both the house and senate. President Obama signed the bill.

In the long run what will make the drug companies more money.

The companies are merely vehicles for the people leading them. A cancer cure would make them wealthy beyond avarice, and allow those people a generational legacy. A cure would yield an immediate massive profit for the corporate leaders than would suppressing it.

It may destroy the company (exceedingly unlikely) but if destroying the company yielded a massive short term profit, lifting the company officers into the ranks of the ultra wealthy, the company would be beached on the rocks without a blink. The company is just a logical construct, a vehicle used to enrich the officers. Look at the financial sector. Wreckage of companies but massively enriched executives. Google Joseph Cassano and AIG to see an example.

"A corporation is not capable of good and evil, capable of saving a life, or taking a life."

I have to disagree with that. Please don't tell me that some corporations aren't run be evil bastards who simply do not care about human life. The individuals responsible for the corporate dealings should be facing the death penalty. And, the corporation's assets should be liquidated, and given to it's victims. I could find a lot more like this - but I'm sure you can do it yourself, if you care to look.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/death-toll-in-bangladesh-garment-factory-fire-rises/

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/02/21714872-deadly-factory-fire-highlights-near-slavery-conditions-in-italy

How to tell if someone is a wacko: is he a medical doctor who doesn't accept the underlying principles of modern biology? If so, then yes, he's a wacko.

That doesn't mean he's wrong with regard to economic matters, but it does mean you don't want to blindly hitch your intellectual wagon to his.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-global-list-study-shows/

While the USA spends more on education, we still aren't learning better then anyone else.

Funny how Lincoln educated himself with a piece of coal and a shovel to write on (according to stories I was told in school), yet today kids have to have an tablet to learn?

Maybe the kids could do a high tech film about how throwing money at technology doesn't actually improve education.

The 47% number is nearly dead-on the 46.4% number for 2011, as stated by the Tax Policy Center. The numbers on that page now are for 2012 and it looks like 44.3% didn't pay income tax last year. Supposedly, according to a quote from the video attached to this article, they're looking to push that number down below 40% by the end of the decade. That article also contains some other numbers you may find interesting (including the 2011 numbers from the Tax Policy Center page I linked to).

Are you sure you're not confusing Medicare and Social Security with Income Tax? I paid those, too, for the entire decade that I was making $16k/yr, but those don't go into funding general welfare programs and, so, aren't relevant to the topic Romney was commenting on.

I wouldn't go so far as to assume that the FDA is completely overrun. A little under 50% of drugs fail FDA approval on their first application. FDA rejection is costly, and companies have been increasingly been aggressive about doing their own testing first in order to make sure that they don't languish forever in a nightmarish backlog like the one that the USPTO suffers from. I used to know someone who had exactly the sort of near-executive-level pharmaceutical responsibility; as far as I could tell, a lot of the collaboration between FDA people and companies is actually about trying to expedite testing and safety.

On top of that, you have competitive pressures. Nothing is better for a company if they can discover that their competitors have cheated regulations or produced an unsafe product; the battlefield is aggressive and collaborations usually end in backstabbing. If you can produce evidence that another company lied to the FDA or that their products pose a health risk, it can potentially destroy that company. This is one case where a competitive market can be a positive force if the rules are set up right.

That all being said, the FDA does have corruption issues. The Wikipedia article on on regulatory capture lists some much more perverse cases, though, like how the agency responsible for cleaning up after oil spills was renamed and then restructured into oblivion in the days following the Deepwater Horizon spill.

oh wait, they don't exist: "This new study is destined to raise more questions than it answers," he said. But at this point, a few things are clear. It is outrageous and shocking that this is the first long-term feeding study, even though genetically engineered foods have been on the market for nearly 20 years." source: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/study-says-genetically-modified-corn-causes-tumors-but-other-scientists-skeptical-about-research/

According to the WikiLeaks/Manning revelations, the French are the worst industrial spies in Europe. "France is the country that conducts the most industrial espionage on other European countries, even ahead of China and Russia, according to leaked U.S. diplomatic cables, reported in a translation by Agence France Presse of Norwegian daily Aftenposten's reporting."
Another quote, "In October, 2009, Berry Smutny, the head of German satellite company OHB Technology, is quoted in the diplomatic note as saying: "France is the Empire of Evil in terms of technology theft, and Germany knows it.""
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/wikileaks-france-leads-russia-china-in-industrial-spying-in-europe/

People do rent you know.

Okay, fine.

Let's assume your argument that home buyers tend to have higher incomes than renters is correct. In that case, the median household income among renters must be significantly less than the $50,054 I mentioned before. Using the common "30% of income" housing affordability rule-of-thumb, that means the median renter can afford "significantly less than" $1251 per month.

Unfortunately for your argument, the average US rent is actually $1,231 per month -- pretty damn close to the amount above above. That means somebody -- either the home buyers, the renters, or a combination of both -- has to be overspending!

(By the way: if you want to complain about "median" vs. "average" then you can go find the damn statistics yourself. I did the best I could.)

...from becoming a hemispheric disaster..
Even the laughable freeze-the-ground-around-it plan seems to have been hatched to mollify Olympic commission voters who still gave Japan the 2020 games as the 'safe' choice over Istanbul and Madrid.

And if you try your case in certain places, you'll win. With Apple, apparently even if you lose, you win.

Apple's legal research team are working on splitting the Litigon, a particle with quantum spin which is capable of detecting where and when someone has violated their Intellectual Property.

And if you try your case in certain places, you'll win. With Apple, apparently even if you lose, you win.

Here I googled the names for you because I'm a nice guy.

I think the singular rule that stopped hijackings of substantial significance was enacted far later than the other provisions that represent a significant step backwards for freedom.

What stopped hijackings is the fact that the 9/11 hijackers crashed their planes.

I think the singular rule that stopped hijackings of substantial significance was enacted far later than the other provisions that represent a significant step backwards for freedom.

I thought the NHTSA data ultimately showed that the incidence of "run-away vehicles" was pretty much entirely mappable to the incidence of "old or confused person stomping on the wrong pedal", and that this incidence rate was in line with the average for all passenger cars?

Okay, this prompted me to poke around again on the NHTSA page for Additional Information on Toyota Recalls and Investigations. Of particular note on the NHTSA-NASA Study of Unintended Acceleration in Toyota Vehicles page and the executive summary of the report linked from there:

...NASA did not find an electronic cause of large throttle openings that can result in UA [unintended acceleration] incidents. NHTSA did not find a vehicle-based cause of those incidents in addition to those causes already addressed by Toyota recalls.

...NHTSA's vehicle characterization analysis and testing supported NASA's review. NHTSA found no previously unknown defects in the test vehicles and determined that their braking systems were capable of overcoming all levels of acceleration, including wide open throttle.

Those "other causes" appear to be primarily related to floor mats blocking free motion of the accelerator pedal. There was a recall related to this, to replace the driver's floor mat with a new mat cut differently to avoid the possibility of getting stuck under or behind the pedal. It sounds like Toyota were asshats about that, and they paid sizable fines for failing to tell the authorities about the problems. But a lot of the bad press about runaway cars turned out to be BS, such as these two incidents covered by CBS News.

This is mostly a divergence from icebike's point about PR, which I think is mostly valid. I simply wanted to address what sounded a bit like misinformation about runaway cars. I happen to own a Prius, so I followed up on the stories and investigations in an effort to better understand my own risk.

Cheers,

' Feinstein told CBS' Face The Nation.

Here's the link to the transcript: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57610589/face-the-nation-transcripts-november-3-2013-feinstein-rogers-hayden/

This part of the interview should be a clip on an upcoming issue of the Daily Show:

First of all, this is an American, he was a contractor. He was trusted. He stripped our system. He had an opportunity, if what he was was a whistleblower to pick up the phone to call the House intelligence committee, the Senate intelligence committee and say, look, I have some information you ought to see.

Call the oversight committees on the phone to report that the NSA is collecting phone call record metadeta.... WTF? Is she that clueless?

(Posted as A/C as to not undo mods.)

Slightly off-topic, but this reminded me of how yesterday 20000 people were evacuated in Dortmund (one of Germany's larger cities). And it didn't even need a full-fledged volcano to prompt this: a mere 4000 pounds, ~70 years old air mine was enough. Stuff like this is (still) daily business in Germany, though. They are still far from having cleared up all duds.

It was Dick fucking Cheney who coined the damn phrase! "You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter."

I get that Eisenhower is a communist by current Republican standards.

I get that Reagan would barely fit into the current GOP.

But they're already to the right of Cheney? Really?

Sue them? And watch as they use state sovereign immunity to brush you off?

I am not a lawyer. this is not legal advice but of course you can sue the Feds for unlawful arrest, and even win.

So what? The unions own the schools, the kids, and the politicians. There's nothing you can do about it.

There's nothing in your little rant that has anything to do with school funding. Or anything to do with reality, for that matter, given the bipartisan war on public schools.

Talk to your local Tea Partier about that. Maybe you'll find out you have an opponent in common.

LAMO. If somebody showed up at teabagger event arguing for equal school funding, and higher taxes to pay for it, he'd be tarred and feathered on the spot.

Funny, cause the Tea Partiers and fiscal conservatives in the GOP were doing that. Though they didn't have enough strength to, they got the spare engine program defunded.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20032313-503544.html

Funny, cause the Tea Partiers and fiscal conservatives in the GOP were doing that. Though they didn't have enough strength to, they got the spare engine program defunded.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20032313-503544.html [cbsnews.com]

but after Al Qaeda showed everyone how infiltration can really be done,

Except that isn't true.

Every one of the 9/11 terrorists fit a profile that should have sounded alarm bells at the border. Finding guys like that is easy if you are looking and it doesn't require reading every grandmothers email, or recording every phone call or feeling every crotch.

Russian operatives were far more successful, some escaping detection for multiple decades.

It's actually even worse than that. The CIA was tracking two of the hijackers before the attacks and just didn't tell anyone. Other hijackers were living with an FBI informant. When the 9/11 commission asked to speak with that informant, the FBI hid him away and did not let him appear. Further, 15 of the hijackers were granted visas in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia with help from the CIA.

Of course, little of this has made its way into the public consciousness. See my sig for more insight. At any rate, it seems clear that the government did not need more surveillance powers to be aware of the presence of the hijackers in the US.

A physician who rejects the basic principles of modern biology is like an electrician who doesn't believe in Ohm's Law. I'm not going to hire them, and I'm damned sure not going to vote for them.

I'm pretty sure that 2.5% of my income will more than cover any emergency room visits I'll be making in the long run.

Average cost of a heart attack is one million dollars. If that's "more than covered" by 2.5% of your income-- well, I envy you.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505146_162-39940799/how-much-would-a-heart-attack-cost-you/

Especially as they'll be paid out of my credit card.

Yep, that's how people do it-- they charge medical care on credit cards, and then go bankrupt. 60% of American bankruptcies are due to medical expanses.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/05/bankruptcy.medical.bills/

We all end up paying, of course.

The typical approach is "we need more time/money". And Nancy Pelooney says that the cupboards are dry and there are no more cuts to make. Because obviously the government does not wast money.

Riiiiiiiiight...

I'd venture to say 95% of politicians have lost complete respect for taxpayers' money.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505269_162-57606633/obamacare-website-looks-like-nobody-tested-it-programmer-says/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/some-say-health-care-sites-problems-highlight-flawed-federal-it-policies/2013/10/09/d558da42-30fe-11e3-8627-c5d7de0a046b_story.html?hpid=z3

http://www.elpasotimes.com/politics-national/?third_party=many-tried-to-warn-officials-of-obamacare-website-jam

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/10/09/3-million-obamacare-website-may-face-months-glitches-experts-warn/

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/debbie-wasserman-schultzs-shocking-insufficient-rambling-response-to-msnbc-on-obamacare-enrollees/

I'd argue that the people responsible for the mess don't actually work in congress or government. Off topic, I know, but everyone seems to be afraid to actually point fingers for the shutdown beyond hand waving like "Oh congress!" Failure to identify the specific problem will ensure nothing changes.

In my opinion, it's the tea party, which is in turn ordered by the Koch brothers and other rich elites, over health care. That's who I blame for the shutdown. And obviously they're going to continue to get paid: they've played the game very well. So well, in fact, that I'm suspicious the obamacare website problems are intentional. No evidence to support that at all, just that so much money and effort is being thrown against Obamacare that I suspect it's intentional. The website is critical to that.

To go further into speculation, I think it's because the existence of a middle class depends increasingly on health care being paid for. Medical bills contribute to many bankruptcies, having the middle class saddled down with medical bills is an easy way to erase it and have another third world nation you can exploit easier. Obamacare will fail in the long-term if enough young people don't enroll in it. It has been suggested that the shutdown is basically just to get rid of the news cycle that it's starting.

I think the reluctance to point fingers is due to not wanting to sound partisan or biased, and disgust with both parties. So realize that I'm not saying "republican/conservative bad, democrat/liberal good." The tea party is an entirely different beast, they're not conservatives, and they're only republicans in name. I blame both parties for being incapable of stopping them. But the blame for the shutdown should be squarely on the tea party.

Sounds like a good argument for a strong 2nd Amendment and a well-armed society. Remember, when trouble shows up: the police are only 15 minutes away. Good luck with that cell phone.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/05/us/bikers-attack-video/

"It was Lien's wife who made the last of three 911 calls the family placed during the incident."

In that particular case the truth is leaking out that Police were on the scene immediately. As many as 6 of the bikers were off duty police officers and at least 3 were On Duty (undercover) officers.

Protect and serve my ass!

Half the current congress does want to fund it. So does the executive branch. Sorry, you do not get to whine and throw tantrums every time you don't get everything you want.

If things were reversed and the Democrats decided... say not to send any funds to any state that votes for a Republican in the next election would that be ok with you? Or maybe decided not to pass a budget or CR unless gay marriage is made legal nationwide?

By the way, polls show that 72% of Americans say this is the wrong way to go about things. That includes 49% of Republicans, with only 48% approving. So not even the people you claim to represent go along with you.

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57605822/poll-americans-not-happy-about-shutdown-more-blame-gop/

The transition to electronic health records was part of the 2009 stimulus package.

Records being electronic is not a problem. Records being centralized is the problem. Centralized and overseen by morons.

I work for a F500 right now and when I tried to bring up my own concerns with the security measures I was told to implement, I was met with blank stares, followed by, "So, how long will it take for you to [implement the flawed measures]?"

Because I don't care, I am moving forward with implementing the flawed measures. God help them if a real hacker wants to pwn them and appropriate their data.

It may well be more complicated than global warming and / or overfishing, although both are likely to be an issue.

To preempt right wing whining, I refer to Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on Latinos: "there's another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert." http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57598020/rep-steve-king-stands-by-divisive-immigration-comments/ By the way, this asshat thinks he has a shot as the next Republican President.

You know, if you're going to resort to bald-faced lying by misrepresenting what someone says (hint: that comment was not about "Latinos" in general), you probably shouldn't link to a source that includes the quote in context.

So if you have a relatively homogenous population of Western Europeans, a high standard of living and a major banking sector that is known internationally as a haven for corrupt money, your paranoid fear centers around the idea of someone will invade and take all that money away. It's guilty knowledge: your situation was not fairly earned, it results from bad behavior. Therefore, the guilt is turned outward and ascribed to hypothetical predatory French economic terrorists who plan on looting Switzerland, or refugees overwhelming your homeland.

This should be familiar to anyone listening to US political rhetoric: it's the Republican attitude towards immigration. You know, all those inferior (i.e dark skinned) people who can't do OK on their own, so they are coming here to steal from all the decent hard working people (i.e. white Christians) who made the country great.

To preempt right wing whining, I refer to Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on Latinos: "there's another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert." http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57598020/rep-steve-king-stands-by-divisive-immigration-comments/ By the way, this asshat thinks he has a shot as the next Republican President.

Although not quite as blatant, the looming government shutdown over Obamacare/Affordable Care has a similar foul stench. Republicans support Social Security and Medicare for white conservatives (it's not welfare for them), but will wreck the economy to keep them damned minorities from laying their filthy paws on "our government" i.e. federal spending.

That's what the Tea Party types were saying when they spouted "I want my country back." Ask yourself "back from who?" The best response I heard was: "You can't have your country back since the South lost the Civil War."

Ultimately that's what it's about: is the US a country for everyone, or only for white Christian conservatives?

And young unemployed lawyers, true to form, have started suing the law schools they graduated from for deceptive recruiting practices. In any other field the unemployed graduates would complain about their sad fate. Unemployed law grads are putting their training to work.

I'd say the law school graduates are smarter than most university and college graduates because the defendants trained the plaintiffs in the skills necessary to successfully sue them.

And young unemployed lawyers, true to form, have started suing the law schools they graduated from for deceptive recruiting practices. In any other field the unemployed graduates would complain about their sad fate. Unemployed law grads are putting their training to work.

"... Just to make sure that their government is free of ties to terrorism... "

Do you mean terrorism like the kind that involves killing unknowing bystanders? The U.S. doesn't do that. Oh wait...

The general tendency, somewhat magnified recently, of government to tell us that for our own good (obesity, for the good of the planet, whatever is the issue of the day) we must modify our behavior, when our leaders have no intention of following suit. [1] The thought process appears to be, we should ride bicycles so there's plenty of gas for our leaders' armored SUVs. We should eat grasshoppers so there's plenty of steak for our leaders. And we should all reduce our energy consumption so our leaders can splurge.

Mind you, I've not had meat (except for fish) since the 1970's, my home is partially solar powered (with more to come as I can afford it) and my transportation gets substantially better gas mileage than a Prius. These efforts are worth while. What supremely annoys me is our fearless leaders telling us to cut back when they themselves have no such intention of doing so, except for the occasional photo op.

[1] Yes, Bill Clinton is the exception, being mostly vegan. (He admits to occasionally eating eggs and fish.) In his case, I think it was the triple bypass that decided him, rather than any particular concern about the planet, but he still deserves credit for the decision.

I don't see anybody calling the Syrian insurgency "terrorists"

I certainly do.

Android gizmos have average build quality, good specs, lower quality software and poor long term support. Apple iPhones have better build quality, good specs, higher quality software and excellent long term support. Apple takes usually years to 'orphan' an older device. IOS 7 runs on iPhone 4, while that device is only three years old, in the Android world getting a 3 year old device to run the latest version of Android usually does not happen.

If you're the proud owner of a new iPhone 5S or iPhone 5C -- or if you're thinking about buying one -- be sure to handle it with care. Durability tests suggests the new models are more likely to break if you drop them, compared to previous iPhone models.

The new phones were tested by SquareTrade, a provider of protection plans for gadgets. They also tested several other competing smartphones to see which ones best withstand drops, dunks under water, and other common hazards. Its finding: The latest iPhones aren't as durable as last year's iPhone 5.

The biggest loser, however, was Samsung's Galaxy S4, which failed to work after being submerged in water and being dropped 5 feet off the ground, according to San Francisco-based SquareTrade.

The phone that withstood SquareTrade's torture test best was Google Inc.'s Moto X. The Moto X is the first phone designed with the Internet company as Motorola's new owner. Released in August, the Moto X is also the first smartphone assembled in the U.S.

"We were expecting that at least one of the new iPhone models would up its game, but surprisingly, it was the Moto X that proved most forgiving of accidents," said Ty Shay, chief marketing officer at SquareTrade.

Officials from Apple Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. and Google Inc. didn't immediately return email messages for comment.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57604082/new-iphone-5s-iphone-5c-may-be-more-likely-to-break/