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The problem with this is that what is that even going to accomplish?

Let me ask you a question: Do you really and truly believe that taking no action will make things better, worse, or will the corruption remain the same? In the best case scenario, things remain the same (being illegal and unconstitutional). Historically however, inaction more often results in things becoming worse. Inaction never results in things improving, at least for the recipients of the abuse.

Many constitutional rights violations are felonies. Convicted felons can not hold a security clearance and can not work for an agency such as the NSA in any capacity. Other agencies, such as the CIA and FBI, do have jobs that do not require a clearance, but depending on the job classification can (and often do) restrict convicted felons from filling those positions.

Any cabinet member can be impeached by Congress, and the reasons for impeachment include misdemeanor offenses. In other words, Congress can remove the head of the NSA, CIA, FBI, DOJ, etc... by vote. The primary motivation for impeachment is very sensitive to issues of Constitutional violations (see this for a reference).

The false analogy you provide, of "no punishemtn" or "go to jail" is simply not true. Being banned from working a career you have spent your life doing is a punishment, as is being barred from holding jobs or offices in the future, loss of retirement, etc...

We would probably agree that the punishment may not be severe enough. If you believe that doing nothing is a better answer, you are not thinking very clearly. Exactly why do you think we have numerous historical quotes from people telling you to take action? Like Martin Niemöller

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the
Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me

or Edmund Burke

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

most do know they lost the war between the States. 1861-65.

37% is not "most." (population of the U.S. by region)

Unless you mean that since we were both sides, there was much higher losses than if we had been fighting someone else, then yeah.

I thought the objectives of the British were to reconquer the colonies. They didn't achieve that.

The U.S. declared the war. I'd say the objective of the other side was "don't lose." Anything above that was an added bonus.

In 1970 the tuition for the University of Pennsylvania was about 4000 including boarding, books and misc fees. That's about 25k by today's dollars.
 
  Minimum wage was $1.60 in 1970. At that rate a student would have to work 50 hours a week year round to get that 4000. And that's pre-tax....
 
Care to tell me again how a student could pay his own full ride at Northeastern with just a summer job?
 
Sounds like we have a major myth as to what it took students to put themselves through school a few decades ago.
 
I seriously urge you not to just make up some dipshit and dismiss me. Please do your own research. I'd be glad if you did. There are just way too many facts and figures thrown about with no justification and when you stop and look into them you'll find that you've been buying a lie and spreading that lie. It doesn't help any of us.

Minimum wage USED to be a living wage and teens did just fine.

Here is a table of historical minimum wages. Note that the highest minimum wage in terms of constant 1996 dollars was 1968, when the minimum wage was $1.60. According to this spreadsheet from the US Census Bureau, the poverty threshold for a family of four in 1968 was $3553, which is over $200 higher than full-time pay at $1.60/hr. I used the figure for a family of four because of your reference to "making sure people can feed their kids".

Besides, one thing teens need to learn is to not sell themselves cheap.

No; teens need to learn the true value of their labor. Many of them think their time is worth more than it is actually worth.

Yes it's the closest approach, but it's still going to be 3.2 million km away. If the Earth were the size of a basketball, the asteroid would be 560 feet away and only 1/5 the size of a pixel in an iPhone retina display. The 0.017 arcsecond angular resolution requires a 6.6 meter telescope to see more than just a point of light.. And as for "hurtling past Earth" as some reports say, if it were heading straight for earth at 27,000 miles per hour it would take 73.5 hours or more than 3 days to get here. In our scaled example it would be travelling at a whopping 0.00255 km/h, under 1/10th the speed of a garden snail. The asteroid should have close to the same visibility for many hours around the time of closest approach. Right now (5 hours before) it could at most be 2% smaller through a telescope..

I think it's cool, I just wish the articles wouldn't hype so much and would include more context.

Sure, but do you really want to live in a country where there are on average 1200 people per square mile, vs the USA where there is on average 84 people per square mile? http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/... my source.

People keep blaming lackluster USA broadband options on density, but when I lived in a USA city with a density of 17,000 people per square mile, my broadband choices were Comcast with up to 15mbit (12mbit was more typical, except for when it was worse or down), or AT&T DSL (not U-Verse) which could offer "up to" 1.5mbit due to my distance from the central office. When you look at my entire metropolitan area, it encompasses 7000 square miles (about half the size of The Netherlands) and has a density of 1000 people per square mile.

So yeah, if I lived in a field in the middle of Nebraska, I probably shouldn't complain when I have limited options, but if I live in a city, why do my poor broadband choices get blamed on population density?

Certainly I was not playing games. This is the first time I've been accused of using a straw man argument, but I suspect you may be correct about it. I always thought that logical fallacies were more of a debating tactic, but now I guess they are usually just made in error. Oops. :-)

Anyway, I think my reasoning and arguments have so far been rather poor, perhaps mostly because I've been flailing around in the fog of my own opinions: something that I'm sure is more likely if you don't put enough effort into listening (or in this case reading) what is actually being said. Again, my bad.

I'll give it another try. In your first reply to me you were very clear and there was no need for me to search for analogies: "Compare parts of the US to parts of the US if you want to talk about the US statistics. You cannot compare states across national lines with any credibility." That was your apples and oranges argument all along and and I should have recognized it immediately. My apologies for the lengthy and unnecessary digression.

Instead, I should have immediately pointed out to you that I see nothing scientifically wrong with making numerical comparisons like that between countries; something that is in fact done all the time. Here are more than a dozen examples:

• List of countries by HIV/AIDS adult prevalence rate
• List of countries by traffic-related death rate
• The 15 Countries With the Highest Smartphone Penetration
• List of countries by electricity production from renewable sources
• Countries with the Highest / Lowest Average IQ
• Obesity country comparison
• Cancer rates: see how countries compare worldwide
• Paid Vacation Around the World
• Average temperature in the countries of the world
• List of countries by rail transport network size
• Highways > Total (per capita) (most recent) by country
• Total Water Use per capita by Country
• List of countries by suicide rate
• List of countries by incarceration rate
• Drug Use Death Rate Per 100,000
• Teenage pregnancy (most recent) by country
• Snakebite in The Americas

Why would it be unscientific to make comparisons like these? As long as the numbers are always collected in the same way, then they are just numbers and don't attempt to explain anything about differences that may be cultural, legal, socioeconomic, etc. In all cases it's left up to the reader to explain the differences ("it's a police state", "it's probably a poor country", "perhaps they

We have more than enough food. It's a distribution problem...

I don't mean to sound like I disagree with you, but I hate hearing this arguement being made as a reason why GMO food is not needed. I wish I could remember who I originally heard express it, but I read a reply to this argument that went something like "so instead of just a distribution problem, you would rather it be both a distribution AND a supply problem?" I would rather only have to deal with one issue because of an excess of food than just barely being able to make it with the supply we have AND assholes stealing it all as well.

Africa, for example, had more than enough food in the 1960s and 1970s

This may be true, but does that take into account the population growth since then? I really don't know. According to this first link I found from Googling "world population 1970", the world population was roughly half what it is today. Whether or not our population should be increasing at that rate is a different argument, but it is the reality.

Is Alaska still part of the U.S. ?? :)
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0930150.html

A bit closer to home (I live here):
http://montanakids.com/facts_and_figures/climate/Temperature_Extremes.htm
Roger's Pass, officially -70F. It probably was colder up away from the pass itself (which is fairly sheltered).

In January 1969, KMON (Great Falls MT) radio's weather station, which was up on the hill north of town, recorded -72F.

Recently when it was a bit below zero, I needed to put some power steering fluid in my truck... had to bang it out of the bottle, cuz it was closer to a solid than a liquid. (Next time, I won't toss the bottle into the back of the truck!)

The U.S. had EVERYTHING to do with Al Qaeda! In fact the CIA were the ones who started the whole thing back in the 80'a. Back in the 80's when Russia was at war with Afganistan it was the CIA who was funding, training and arming the Mujahideen - and guess who was the leader of the Mujahideen? Yup Osama Bin Laden! The part of the Mujahideen lead by Osama Bin Laden eventually became Al Qaeda. The U.S. CREATED and for the most part has some control of Al Qaeda. Heck even Anwar Al-Awlaki (the Al Qaeda leader DINED at the Pentagon months AFTER 9/11!

References:

Al Qaeda Leader Dined at the Pentagon Just Months After 9/11
http://www.infowars.com/al-qaeda-leader-dined-at-the-pentagon-just-months-after-911/

Dining with the enemy: Al Qaeda leader linked to 9/11 hijackers 'was invited to the Pentagon for lunch after attacks'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1322397/Al-Qaedas-Anwar-Al-Awlaki-invited-Pentagon-lunch-9-11-attacks.html

Mujahideen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujahideen

Sec. State Clinton Admits U.S. Created Mujahideen that Became al-Qaeda
http://www.infowars.com/sec-state-clinton-admits-u-s-created-mujahideen-that-became-al-qaeda/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0Cc3LfhQ-o&feature=player_embedded

Mujahideen
Al-Qaeda
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=mujahideen+al+qaeda&aq=0&aqi=g1g-m1&aql=&oq=mujahideen+al&gs_rfai=C07tUp9QoTOWrHYuugATN08X2CgAAAKoEBU_Qpa0Q&fp=e0fa4b5da4f245a4

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/al-qaeda-terrorism.html

"The Mujahideen

Al-Qaeda has its origins in the uprising against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Thousands of volunteers from around the Middle East came to Afghanistan as mujahideen, warriors fighting to defend fellow Muslims. In the mid-1980s, Osama bin Laden became the prime financier for an organization that recruited Muslims from mosques around the world. These "Afghan Arab" mujahideen, which numbered in the thousands, were crucial in defeating Soviet forces"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujahideen

US, Pakistani and other financing and support
See also: Operation Cyclone

The mujahideen were significantly financed and armed (and are alleged to have been trained) by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the administrations of Carter[5] and Reagan, and also by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan under Zia-ul-Haq, Iran, the People's Republic of China and several Western European countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_assistance_to_Osama_bin_Laden
Claims have been made that the American government, and in particular the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), are responsible for enabling "Afghan Arabs," and in particular Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda.
In mid-1979, about the same time as the Soviet Union deployed troops into Afghanistan, the United States began giving several hundred million dollars a year in aid to the Afghan Mujahideen insurgents fighting the Afghan Marxist government and the Soviet Army in Operation Cyclone. Along with native Afghan mujahideen were Muslim volunteers from other countries, popularly known

Before 1913 the Federal government collected duties on good entering the country and tariffs on certain goods. However the amount of collected is very small and easily avoided by any person choosing to vote against Federal policies by not buying dutiable goods.

The nation had few taxes in its early history. From 1791 to 1802, the United States government was supported by internal taxes on distilled spirits, carriages, refined sugar, tobacco and snuff, property sold at auction, corporate bonds, and slaves. The high cost of the War of 1812 brought about the nation's first sales taxes on gold, silverware, jewelry, and watches. In 1817, however, Congress did away with all internal taxes, relying on tariffs on imported goods to provide sufficient funds for running the government.

Read more: History of the Income Tax in the United States | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005921.html#ixzz2mwDj6t23

Under some circumstances the Federal income was collected from the individual States, such as:

The direct tax of 1798 imposed taxes on “lands, houses and slaves” totaling $2 million over the next two years, apportioned to states in amounts according to representation (as measured in the U.S. census).

http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/history/item/14268-before-the-income-tax

States placed taxes on real property some of this money was apportioned to the Federal government based on the population of State, hence the need for the census. Along with the money collected each State was represented by two seats in the US Senate. It is important to note that before 1913 these Senators were chosen by each States elected body not necessarily by general election. While congress has always been directly elected and always the origination of bills of appropriations.

The people are taxed and in return the people ask for stuff. The State which took the money with difficulty attempts to limit spending via the Senate which can only approve or deny an appropriations bill. Hence money collected with difficultly and spent with difficultly designed to naturally limit unnecessary spending.

Before 1913 taxes on Income (or any direct tax) was seen as unconstitutional because the Founders felt it was important for people to have a way to protest a government in the only meaningful way: deprive the government of income.

In addition the Founders were distinctly against a privately held central bank such as the Federal Reserve which was also approved in 1913. This has additionally provided the Federal government an essentially unlimited supply of money with which it can enforce any position without any realistic opposition of the individual States.

Post 1913 we can clearly see what happens in a democracy with the effective restraint on spending removed.

Does the CIA still raise that money by selling drugs into the US like it was caught doing previously, or do they just sell weapons on the black market to "Axis of evil" type countries. Such a credible and upstanding extra-govermentmtal organization, a shining beacon for protecting democracy... *sigh*.

Population density is only part of it

Population density is none of it. Sweden has a population density lower than America. Finland and Norway have a density less than half of America. Iceland has a density less than a tenth of America's. Yet they all have much cheaper Internet.

Population Density per Square Mile of Countries

No, the overall number of active Navy ships is actually shrinking. Personnel number have fluctuated somewhat but have remained relatively lower after a shrinkage in the early 90's.

Unless they're sitting with a torch up their ass (either US or UK definition works for this, though in the UK it'd be up their arse) or their pants are splitting open (stretching it), they are not "sitting on flare". The transitive verb form has a definition that could be related, but I'm pretty sure you can't sit on it.

Sorry. Wrong link. Damn copy and paste on a phone.

This should be correct: http://www.infoplease.com/us/government/presidential-pardons-1789-present.html

Bush pardoned 179 people vs. Clinton at 456. I was a little shocked to see that FDR pardoned almost 3400. Usually pardons are granted when a president is leaving office. Since FDR died in office during his 4th term, I was surprised it was so many.

I also see a lot of people bitching that Bush pardoned Scooter Libby, which isn't true. He commuted his sentence, which means he's still a felon and is supposed to pay a $250K fine.

MLK's legacy has largely been decimated by those who claim to support him the most.

One of his most famous sayings was that he had a dream that his four children would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

People like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who are now seen as civil rights leaders, basically threw that out completely.and shit on it at almost every turn. Groups like the NAACP are pushing for criminal prosecution of, for example, the rodeo clown who made fun of Obama, even though people in much bigger areas of the limelight have done much worse things to make fun of other presidents.

Jackson and Sharpton are a mixed bag, like many public figures. Some of the causes that they pick up are more noble than others. I agree that hate speech ought to be protected where it doesn't directly incite violence. The NAACP is wrong to try and criminalize mockery of the president; that's one of the things that separates the United States from countries like Russia, where mockery of the leader is verboten.

George Zimmerman would never have seen prosecution if he was black or Trayvon was white; guilty or not the evidence just wasn't there which is why they originally chose not to prosecute, and only did so after pressure from racial groups, which goes to show that in America, now the only requirement for prosecution is that public opinion be against you regardless of whether or not you can be proven guilty.

I don't think you can say this. There have been numerous other Americans tried when they murdered another person and claimed self-defense. Trying Zimmerman was not a race thing. Not trying Zimmerman was what many of us felt was a race thing. Maybe there was enough evidence to convict and maybe the prosecution did a poor job; maybe there wasn't enough evidence and the verdict was correct. However, Zimmerman was charged, as he should have been in a case where there was some doubt as to how valid his self-defense claim was.

And how are programs like affirmative action following in that spirit? They tell you that, for example, if you have slanted eyes then you immediately deserve lower preference than anybody, but if you have black skin then you automatically get to be first in line.

What a joke the civil rights movement has become.

How does affirmative action make the civil rights movement a joke? It was one of the movement's crowning achievements. You do realize that affirmative action was instituted to counteract widespread institutional discrimination against African-Americans, Native-Americans, Hispanics, women, and so on, right? Are you claiming that institutional discrimination no longer exists, and that the need for affirmative action is no longer there? I totally disagree, and I think information such as this supports me.

There will come a day when AA is hurting more than it is helping. I don't believe we have reached that day, yet.

What most people don't realize is Obama is as much a republican as Reagan, Nixon, and both Bushes. His policies are in direct line with theirs.

About the only policies of President Obama that are in something like a "direct line" from the previous administration are the general form of some of the anti-terrorism policies. That is a result of a general political consensus among the President and Congress that allowing terrorists to kill large numbers of American citizens is a bad thing. Many on Slashdot question that political consensus for some reason, usually related to traffic accidents. I expect they would also question the wisdom of declaring war against Japan in 1941 since 13 times more Americans died in traffic accidents than were killed at Pearl Harbor, and polio was still a scourge. Hmmm

We didn't need the cabinets before World War II Why don't we eliminate them?

Presidents certainly did have cabinets before WW2. Here is President Wilson's cabinet, for example.

I could be reading this wrong, but it looks like life expectancy is trending upwards since the 50's. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005148.html

You could be reading it wrong. Note that it explicitly says "life expectancy at birth". There has been a lot of criticism of this sort of things from statistics-enabled researchers, who point out that almost all of the life-expectancy gains in the past century have been through elimination of most early-childhood deaths. Life expentancy at birth has increased, but the life expectancy of someone 30 or 60 years old hasn't actually changed much.

There has been a bit of publicity around related topics lately. Thus, there has been a lot of discussion of the apparent fact that the increase in mammograms has produced no measurable increase in lifetime, just an increase in medical bills for the testing (and the "treatment" of false positives ;-). Similar statistical problems have been reported for prostate-cancer screening, and for an assortment of other medical tests.

Another statistical trick used to make things look better than they are is the common practice of giving cancer survival rates in terms of survival 5 years after diagnosis. This means, for example, that if you were to come up with a new test that diagnoses a cancer 5 years earlier than any existing test, your test would result in a 100% "cure" rate even with no further treatment, and no change in the death statistics. I've heard a couple of interviews in which the interviewer points out this problem, and the interviewee just continues talking about the same "5-year survival" figures.

In general, it seems that if you're over 10 years old, modern medicine really hasn't done much in increase your (statistical) lifespan, though it is sometimes fairly good at extracting money for treatments that don't increase lifespan.

(Perhaps some of the treatments improve quality of life, but the statistics for that don't seem to be widely studied or reported. It might be interesting to be shown wrong in this regard, however. OTOH, there has been a bit of media coverage lately of the problems with "treatment" of false positives.)

(And a more general problem here is that the general public -- and the media -- is generally ignorant of even the most basic statistical concepts.)

I could be reading this wrong, but it looks like life expectancy is trending upwards since the 50's. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005148.html

The 440,000 would be employees and volunteers of the VA. The VA itself actually handles a lot more than that. There's 21.5 million veterans, of that 3.5 million receives disability compensation. Every veteran is eligible for health care in the VA system. So for 444,000 users of the VA information technology, 900,000 devices isn't that far fetched to handle the date for 3.5 million + veterans.

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/veteranscensus1.html
http://www.va.gov/opa/publications/factsheets/fs_department_of_veterans_affairs.pdf

Nice way to pick the highest minimum wage of the past 6 decades.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0774473.html

Not that I'm happy with it at $7.25, but arbitrarily picking 1968 is the sign of some bias.

And you make the point nicely that the entire rest of the EU is more populated that the US.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0934666.html

Which makes it more difficult for lots of issues that lead to more pollution - transportation among the top ones.

What you say sounds quite nice and appealing to many of your fellow compatriots, but is really based on a lack of historical knowledge. Not only is it hard to detect any decline of morality in the US - in fact, the opposite is true if you look at civil rights of e.g. ethnic minorities or women -, the sometimes extreme immorality of intelligence agencies and other federal institutions during Cold War is well-documented by now. These were crazy times, some high-ranking officials really thought communists put something in the tap water to make Americans gay and sick. They weren't joking about it, they really thought so. And the CIA contemplated how they could kill Castro with a poisoned cigar. Poisoning political enemies is considered immoral throughout history. Or, to give another example, the CIA experimented with drugs, sexual abuse and psychological torture on (often unsuspecting) US citizens. Want more? How about intentionally not treating the syphilis of hundreds of black patients for 'scientific reasons' (1932-1972)?

I'm not saying that the US is inherently more immoral than other countries, atrocities can be found everywhere. However, it is ludicrous to claim that moral standards were higher in the US intelligence and military community formerly than now. If at all, the opposite is true, thanks to the fact that the Cold War is over.

Actually slightly less than half of us will.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005083.html
http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/usa/life-expectancy-male

Those stats are for the general population. He was talking about us.

Right, only Europe has nearly three times the population density, and Japan has nearly ten times the population density. Have you ever been in a train? They're slightly better than a cheaper airline, but I just can't imagine comparing the cramped quarters to an actual office.

high speed trains have worse seating than the old trains over here.. because the seats are weight optimized and cheap(not much cushion..), this is in europe with european made trains(italians though, so they break every fucking winter).

taking a train with complimentary drinks is bound to be more expensive than flying anyways, it only makes sense if you can get the company to pay for both the trip and your time spent doing the trip(provided train trip lenght would be more than 2 hours, at less than 2 hours it's superior to flying).

Right, only Europe has nearly three times the population density, and Japan has nearly ten times the population density. Have you ever been in a train? They're slightly better than a cheaper airline, but I just can't imagine comparing the cramped quarters to an actual office.

Well, I just went to Wikipedia for five minutes, but it's not really helping you. The "crime in canada" article says:

"The number of murders dropped to 594 in 2007, 12 fewer than the previous year. One-third of the 2007 murders were stabbings and another third were by firearm. In 2007, there were 190 stabbings and 188 shootings. Handguns were used in two-thirds of all firearm murders."

So, really hard to say if "blunt force trauma" is most of the remaining third, but probably is, along with strangling and eye-poking and whatnot. So it's basically one-third each to clubs/hands, knives, and guns.

OK, so how do Americans bump each other off? Googling "by weapon" got me: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004888.html

For that same 2007, it says 10,086 by gun, 1796 by cutting and stabbing, 647 by blunt object, 854 by hand, 130 arson, 1016 all other reasons.

Dividing by ten to get those numbers in Canadian proportions, your 1797 stabbings become 180, about our 190 stabbings; your blunt-object+hand becomes about 150, same neck of the woods, anyway.

Only the gun numbers are really proportionally higher. Over FIVE TIMES higher.

Not my area of expertise, or a political topic I care much about, but simple stats are easy to look up. They say that while you may denigrate the source of this statistical analysis as a "cartoon", the information appears to be quite correct and your "the same murder rate just shifts to other weapons" thesis is not supported.

Look at a map!
South Korea would make a lovely island with an amazing view of the new seafront. It would even glow at night. Very romantic.

Oh and while you are at it do something about malpractice tort reform - the major cause of excessive medical costs.

No matter how thin you slice it...

Life Expectancy at Birth by Race and Sex, 1930---2010

White Male, Born 1930, 58 Years
Black Male, Born 1930, 47 Years

White Male, Born 2010, 76 Years
Black Male, Born 2010, 72 Years

-----

US Census Data

US Population 1930, 122,775,046
US Population 2010, 308,745,538
US Population 2020, 337 million (est.)

"In 2019, when the last of the baby boomers (those born between 1949 and 1964) have reached age 55, nearly twenty-nine percent of the total United States population will be age 55 and older." Source: Government Accountability Office, "Older Workers: Demographic Trends Post Challenges for Employers and Workers," 2001

-----

The time isn't far off when we will have 100 million seniors to care for.

Then there is the problem of providing medical care to the poor of all ages. The politics of health care. Red and Blue.

Best and worst states on unmet health needs

The states with the highest percentages of residents who had unmet health care needs due to cost in 2010 were in the South, according to a new study.

Five highest

Mississippi: 26.0%
Texas: 25.3%
Florida: 25.1%
Louisiana: 23.9%
Georgia: 22.6%

Five lowest

North Dakota: 8.2%
Massachusetts: 8.7%
Hawaii: 9.7%
Iowa: 9.9%
Vermont: 10.5%

Source: ''Virtually Every State Experienced Deteriorating Access to Care for Adults over the Past Decade,'' Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Nearly every state showed health access declines in 2010

Hmmm... Looking at the list, for Europe it's Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden, Finland) and Estonia who have lower population densities than the US. Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Austria all have 3X or more the population density of the US. Yes, we have a few crowded areas (LA basin, BOS-DC corridor, SF area), but those have trains and light rail already working. Between cities, it's REALLY far compared to Europe. When I lived in Brussels, it wasn't a big deal to go to Paris or Cologne (200-300 km). To go from one "big city" in the NW (Portland, OR) to the nearest in CA (San Francisco) is over 1000 km. We're really spread out.

I guess we all share an awful lot of contempt for human life.

Yes, we do. We do in fact consider peanut butter, home lighting and easy transportation worth certain number of deaths. This is an ugly truth about the world: everything has a price, and it's often paid in blood.

Which is why this "guns don't kill people oh yes they do" is pointless: of course guns kill people, as does everything else. The questions are: how many gun related deaths are an acceptable price for whatever benefits there might be for lax gun laws? Is it possible to meet that target without losing the benefits? If not, could an acceptable benefit/dead kid ratio be had through compromise?

This is all extremely callous, of course, but unfortunately the alternatives are to either lie ("guns don't kill people") or react with feel-good gestures without considering the consequences ("think of the chiiiildreeen").

Or maybe even if we consider each human life to be particularly sacred, things that account for 0.000001% of our mortality rate just are not worth making major sacrifices to prevent, and if we did bend over to address each possible threat at that scale, life would not be worth living in the first place.

There were 12,632 homicide gun deaths in the US in 2007, while the total death rate was about 2,4 million, making the actual rate 0.5%. True, not that much, but also 5 million times your number. Which means that you simply pulled a number from your ass to make your argument seem more convincing - in other words, lied.

So, can you live with the actual rate of 0.5%? I don't know, but please understand that anyone who swallows your lie might turn on you any moment - they might learn the truth, they might have been willingly deceived but have a chance of heart the next time there's a mass shooting, or whatever. Lying to influence public policy is ultimately a bad tactic, since you can never be secure in what you've got but must always be pulling more bullshit from where your number came from, and even then reality is going to crush you like a bug - it's just a matter of time.

Or perhaps you simply tried to appear tough, in which case you failed miserable because toughness starts by being able to look into mirror without pretending you're six orders of magnitude less ugly than you actually are.

what obscenely high murder rates? your popular perception has little to do with reality. rates are down, and have been going down for years. crime, including homicide, in the US is at quite possibly the lowest point in the country's entire history.

Nearly but not quite - according to FBI uniform crime reporting data, the preliminary figures for 2012 homicides are around 4.2 per 100,000, which almost matches the lowest figures recorded - 4.0 in the late 1950's. While definitely trending in the right direction, it is still "obscenely" high compared to other comparable western democracies - which vary around 1 per 100,000.
Just as an example, the last time the UK homicide rate was as high as it is currently in the USA was at the end of the 17th century.

The cancer rate is increasing, not decreasing

Wrong. Cancer rates peaked in 1990 and have been decreasing steadily since then.

Let go back to the good old days when an employee that lost a hand in a machine could be shown the door and children were allowed to work 60 hours a week.

Nothing like a false dilemma to start off the day.

There are other solutions for those problems, most notably lawsuits.

However, if for the child, a job that pays in exchange for 60 hours a week, represents a financial boost, that could be a good thing. It's better than languishing in poverty.

Even the the good old days of the 1950s where life expectancy was 20 years less so there was no need to take care of those useless old folks.

Life expectancy mainly rose because of medical improvements, and I think it's only about ten years since 1950.

It has never been illegal to neglect people and allow them to die.

Let's go back to the days when business was allowed to dump TCE and dioxins into aquifers and people had no recourse. Let's all wax nostalgic over the days when the Cuyahoga river could support a good fire.

This is probably better handled through expensive high-profile lawsuits. They are damaging and tend to force companies to pre-emptively avoid infraction. I am not opposed to regulation in this area but feel it could be better handled than the red-tape snarl that is today's regulation. I might be in favor of an agency that did for-profit lawsuits...

In 2008 (the newest data I could bother finding), in the US alone, 23,000 transplants were done (source) If this stays at a steady rate, in another 93 years another 2 MILLION transplants will have been done. Well played, that man,

A nonsensical argument if I ever heard of one.

How exactly does society become more secure when you have 11% percent of the population (65 and older) collecting checks from the government? Yes, they paid into the system when they worked but they get back more than they put in, paid for in part by people paying in today. It's basically an IOU system.

Also, Social Security was implemented back when life expectancy was, get this, 61.7 years. The earliest you can claim payouts is when you're 62 years old, and typically 65. In it's first year implemented there were only about 50,000 beneficiaries, compared to 50 million today.

Life expectancy is creeping up to 80 years and the retirement age has only been been increased to 67. It feels good to do nice things for old folks who managed to successfully not die, but this isn't being free of worries at the sunset of your life, it's more like being free of worries at 3 in the afternoon. In fact, compared to back then, retired people today are more able bodied than ever. The workforce is no longer dominated by back-breaking farm jobs. There's no reason why people can't continue to work into their 70s. And if you want to retire? You should have socked away something to live on, I don't see why it's the government's job to make sure you're all set. If anything it should be your offspring, and if you have none, that's what you get for trying to violate the most basic law of nature: if you want to be taken care of when you're old, have kids.

Now consider children: Nearly 20 years of non-work, but nobody has a problem with the parents being financially responsible for their children until they can enter the work force and be productive for society. By your argument, that's bad for EVERYONE since clearly the government should be taking care of them.

Social Security was a grab at emotions, plain and simple, and has nothing to do with good sense at all.

In 2000, Al Gore had 50,999,897 votes vs George Bush with 50,456,002. More people voted for the guy who lost the election than the guy who won. That's an example of how the system does not work properly.

Source: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0876793.html

That's half a million voters whose votes basically did not count, and THAT is why the electoral college system is a problem.

You views tend to run contrary to what the facts and common sense suggest.

It would if their neighbour who they are currently at war with didn't already have nuclear weapons.

Whose fault is it that they are at war? Israel and Iran had good relations into the 70's, until the Islamic revolution. Iran didn't go to war along with the Arab countries in Arab-Israeli Wars of 1948. 1956, 1967, 1973, and so on. Iran declared themselves an enemy of Israel after the Islamic revolution of 1979 - it is a matter of religious hatred. Iran wouldn't be threatened if it didn't threaten Israel and train, fund, and equip terrorists attacking Israel with thousands of rockets and other weapons. Even now, Iran is sending assassination teams all over the world to try to kill Israeli diplomats.

Iran doesn't want nuclear weapons to defend itself from Israel, it wants them to throw its weight around in the nations along the Arabian Gulf, and to help provide either means or cover for destroying Israel.

Aren't you against "wars of choice"? Shouldn't you oppose genocides of choice? Why do you not oppose Iran's naked hatred?

Again and again Israel has shown its willingness to attack Iran and other neighbouring states with conventional weapons.

You have it backwards. What are all these attacks on Iran by Israel that you speak of - when did the Israeli army cross into Iran? Iran played no part in the Arab-Israeli wars. Iran and Israel were on friendly terms until Iran declared Israel its enemy after the Islamic revolution of 1979. In fact it is Iran that is the aggressor, training and arming terrorists and guerillas to attack israel with rockets and suicde bombers. Shouldn't you be opposing hatred and the wars and terrorism of choice of Iran?

Of course Israel has had to defend itself against Arab armies in this century - since the Arabs have tried to destroy Israel time after time. The Arab nations invaded Palestine within hours of Israel's existence. When Israel was the attacker it was only after the actions and intent of the Arab nations was made clear, such as in 1967:

The attack follows a build-up of Arab military forces along the Israeli border.

The Arab states had been preparing to go to war against Israel with Egypt, Jordan and Syria being aided by Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Algeria.

On 27 May the President of Egypt, Abdel Nasser, declared: "Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight." - - 1967: Israel launches attack on Egypt

The Arab leaders made their intent known. Do you not oppose genocide, especially when it is open announced?

Apparently the fault you find with the Israelis is that they do not wait meekly for execution by those who have made their hatred and intent clear.

Since they are backed by the US the only realistic defence is mutually assured nuclear annihilation.

The US has never fought alongside Israeli troops, so that is nonsense. Furthermore, Iran could do what Egypt and Jordan did - sign a peace treaty with Israel. You would think that it would be easier for Iran that Egypt and Jordan since Iran wasn't part of the Arab-Israeli wars, and used to have good relations with Israel until the revolution and the self-declared war against Israel and, in fact, the Jews. Israel would have no interest in hostilities with Iran if Iran left Israel alone.

Why do you not urge Iran to seek peace instead of nuclear weapons?

North Korea is in the same boat. The US doesn't like them, . .

This isn't quite true. A quick Google search turned up the figure of 62% for the 2008 election, while this site puts it at 57%, the highest turnout since 1968. Of course, you'll also notice that the off-years (2010, 2006, etc.) were much worse as those years didn't have Presidential elections.

Quantity of plant life does equal quality of plant life, much less diversity of plant life. Simply saying we have "X" isn't that terribly helpful without context.

So I'll provide some context and let's put a twist on this story which is being spun for political gain. In the year 1980 we had 4,453,831,714 people (the study starts in 1982 but close enough) In just 30 years the world's population grew 6,848,932,929.

Over the course of three decades, the observed plant growth on dry land has been about 53.6 petagrams of carbon each year

In other words, we have grown the population of the world by 50% in thirty years and we still kept just as much plant life. Job well done with planting things to compensate for a growing population! We don't need to change a thing, we doing everything right. Neither answer is right of course, they are both ways of spinning a set of meaningless facts.

Point of the matter is that any given set of statistics can be twisted for a given political agenda with ease. The only thing this study does is show how easily meaningless data can be slanted for gain political purposes when the data is without merit. All it does is measure quantity without context. Might as well say a ranchers supports incredible wildlife, there's 200 cows and a dozen field mice.

Here are the figures for 2002: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0930884.html

That's great, but where does it say that includes private assistance?

I never claimed that the U.S. beat Sweden on government assistance only.

And as noted it's far from your many orders of magnitude you were claiming.

Not really, as the Defense portion of the Budget is about $700 billion annually and the appropriations for the two wars is about $170 billion annually.

What is an interesting dodge is not accounting for the indirect military spending. Also, if you assign the associated interest payments on all that where they belong instead of a category by themselves you get a different picture.

Then military spending comes in at about 35% of the total budget.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2011.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0933935.html

Finland has half the density of the USA (source) but still better broadband offerings, I'm told.

Well, our government does have a history of spying on Americans.

Giving diseases to Americans

And then there are the countless accusations of spying against peace activists.

And the whole thing about warrants - there is no oversight or transparency. All an agent has to do is go to a judge and say that they are a suspect and need to be under surveillance - especially if they have an Arabic name.

Basically what you're saying is, you'd prefer to believe, without proof, allegations that the NSA is illegally dragnet-spying on ALL Americans, and has been doing so for more than a decade, which would involve at the very LEAST hundreds, and more likely thousands, of civilian and military NSA employees, all of whom don't mind that they're directly violating the Constitution, but only one guy who hasn't been at NSA in over a decade is telling you "the truth"? That really seems plausible to you?

Absolutely it is plausible. Google (almost )does it. All the NSA has to do is order ISPs, cell phone companies, google, amazon, yahoo!, etc .... to hand over their data. Your storage is free. Computing power? Dirt cheap.

It would be nothing to do what folks accuse the NSA of doing.

The burden of proof is on the Government -NOT its citizens. Period.

Lastly, I don't believe you. You have no proof and you just posted links to speeches - BFD.

If the NSA or their representatives say something; it's a lie until proven otherwise - that's what spies do: lie, cheat, and be subhuman douche bags.

According to this, voter turnout only barely gets over 50% during presidential elections. During off-years, it's down below 40%. I'm guessing voter turnout is even lower for primaries, which is, of course, where most of the decision-making for most elected positions are made.

Violent revolution is the only way to get rid of the corruption? I don't see how you can say that. We haven't really given voting a fair shot. Furthermore, if we're too lazy to bother voting, I don't really see us doing a revolution right. I'm dead certain we'd end up at the exact same place in a few years, just short a good chunk of the population.

--Why would anyone consider it responsible to have children when they don't have a year's expenses in savings?

http://www.moneyrelationship.com/retirement/the-average-net-worth-of-americans-where-do-you-stand/

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005074.html

Correlate the above data and you will see that people have children before they have money. Most people don't have a net worth of their yearly costs until they are 35. Now is this because so many people have children in their 20's? Also remember that the risks with childbirth increase with age

http://www.babycenter.com/404_what-are-the-risks-of-having-a-baby-if-im-35-or-older_3127.bc

but that said, with the advances in medical care, the outcomes are good, again having to use the medical advances to have a baby will increase expenses and lead to longer absences from an existing career.

You need to convince just over 50% of the _voting_ population, and sometimes not even that. This tends to be much less than half of the population for most countries. Turnouts rarely break 80% in most countries, in US presidential elections it doesn't exceed 60% these days - http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html - so really it's about 30% of people you actually need to convince strongly enough to actually vote for you.

In some systems it can seem fairly ridiculous: The UK 2005 General Election was won comprehensively (in terms of seats, and hence power) by the Labour party. They had 56% of the seats with just 35% of the vote. The turnout was around 61%, meaning that just 20% of the electorate voted for them. http://www.ukpolitical.info/2005.htm

Your father of 87 remembers taxes before 1913?

Inaccurate unscientific ramblings, sound bites and clichés do not support your argument. That not only goes for hkmwbz but also Soulskill (the author of this topic who so brazenly declares the science is all but settled), JD, Shavano and Blueg3 below. Global Warming / Climate Change is NOT scientific fact, it is THEORY presently being developed and there is still much to learn. Blind supporters of global warming make outrageous claims and forget that all of this is THEORY which must be backed up with evidence. There are no 'denialists' - that is not even a word! You offer NO LINKS to scientific studies to back up your outrageous claims, so I will.

Urban Heat Islands are definitely real, especially in rapidly growing countries like China. See this paper published by the Journal of Geophysical Research:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/28/new-paper-uhi-alive-and-well-in-china/

So hkmwbz you are certifiably wrong there. Then you persist with your clichés

there's a huge amount of evidence that the warming is caused by humans.

Really? Show us your evidence. Where are your links? What is definitely an undisputed scientific fact is how little scientists know and how much they are still learning today.

Then we have JD (below) making ridiculous statements like:

The current imbalanced rise in CO2 is much more troubling because studies show that plants do NOT like massive levels of CO2 unless they come combined with massive levels of O2.

JD what makes you think CO2 is presently imbalanced? Where is the evidence for your statement? Do you actually know what the present percentage of CO2 in our atmosphere is??? It presently is around 0.039445%. Do you have any idea how the increase in CO2 has increased during the last 50 years? It has increased from 0.032 to 0.0395, or by approximately 25%. Here is the data:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

Look at that graph. Its a fairly straight line over a period of 50 years. Fairly straight line despite the dramatic jump in CO2 emissions since the mid-1800's (PDF). Even though human population has more than doubled during the last 50 years! Even though the number of cars has increased 800% from 122 Million in 1960 to over 1 Billion today. And yet somehow our planet's climate just keeps on balancing things out and the rate of increase of CO2 is fairly constant. But wait, JD definitely said "imbalanced rise".

JD continues:

CO2 rises alone, without any other alteration to the environment, will cause plant growth to decline and is eventually toxic.

Really? Where is your scientific evidence? The reality is CO2 is a fertilizer to plants. Plants LOVE CO2, even without a corresponding rise in O2 (wrong again). Even in high concentrations CO2 continues to act as a fertilizer. Here are some links from climate change advocates which you seem to blindly trust:

http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/fertilizationeffect
http://www.good.is/post/rick-santorum-thinks-carbon-dioxide-isn-t-harmful-to-plants-tell-that-to-a-plant/