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The link is right there in TFA.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/business/28bizcourt.html?_r=2

Not sure that that's even legal -- would be surprised if it held up in court.

Actually, the Supreme court has already ruled that this is, in fact, legal.

Actually, the Supreme Court ruled that a contract can remove the possibility of a class-action arbitration, not a class-action lawsuit. They are not the same thing. Further, there is still wide disagreement over what rights can and cannot be removed by a EULA specifically, rather than a traditional contract.

>>>There was a recent Supreme court case that made this legal.

Which one?

Hopefully you can get through the paywall ... here. Failing that, google for "AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion".

SCOTUS ruled on this last year.

Not sure that that's even legal -- would be surprised if it held up in court.

Actually, the Supreme court has already ruled that this is, in fact, legal.

The Chinese currency is currently, artificially, kept very low. It has been for a very long while. NPR Report from 2006 on Yaun manipulation

If the Yaun were more influenced by the market like the rest of the world, it would be balancing much quicker. The issue has very little to do with what US workers are willing to work for and more to do with what corporations are willing to pay. With the current unemployment rates in the US, you could stock a factory with minimum wage, skilled laborers, without an issue. But that still can't compete on a resource cost level with a stifled Yaun.

Even so, as skilled production work moves to China, wages continue to increase due to labor shortages. NY Times article on the wage and labor issue. It is starting to even out, and we'll likely see more jobs returning to US shores as an equilibrium as reached.

If you have Netflix and consider yourself a scientist that is not afraid of new evidence, watch "Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed". I found the documentary to be disturbing and scary as well as informative and entertaining.

Fuck Netflix, fuck Ben Stein, and fuck you for misrepresenting science and trying to dupe people into paying to watch Stein's tragicomic swipe at science.

Quoth the first paragraph of the video's review by The New York Times:

One of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” is a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry.

The following link is to TPB's best-seeded torrent. Check the comments; one user has included a link to subtitles that refute the video's claims as they occur: https://thepiratebay.se/torrent/4469949/Expelled_-_No_Intelligence_Allowed_%5B2008%5D

You are an idiot. The increase is due almost entirely to additional spending on safety net programs due to Bush recession, and to economic stimulus, which was necessary and which any president would have done: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/29/the-truth-about-federal-spending/ . Keep hating, though.

According to this article, they've released 37 models since 2007. Averaged out, that means they're sitting on just over $27 million inventory per model. The problem is, when you make 37 models, that turns into insanity.

Someone elsewhere in the discussion pointed out that RIM is making the same mistake Apple made back in their dark days - releasing product after product and flooding the market. The first thing RIM needs to do is pick four or five phone models that they want to support and kill all others. That would be a good starting point. 37 models is just stupid.

NY Times

Since 2007, RIM has introduced 37 models. The company, in a statement, said it did not know how many models were on the market.

Adding to the shopping confusion are RIM’s product names, which generally rely on four-digit model numbers and sometimes have different products sharing a name. The BlackBerry Torch 9850 and 9860 are touch-screen phones that are on some shelves next to the BlackBerry Torch 9800 and 9810, touch-screen phones with slide-out keyboards. (The model number differences reflect models adapted for different cellphone systems.)

By contrast, Apple has introduced only four iPhones since 2008 and all were basically the same phone with differences in the amount of storage, or upgrades from older models.

Ironic that RIM is losing-out to the likes of Apple, by making the same mistake Apple did back in the dark days of the '90s, when it seemed like there was a new Performa out every week.

Though the cost of decoding an individual’s genome is fast approaching a mere $1,000, the difficulty of interpreting its mutations now seems much greater than before, raising doubts as to how soon genome sequencing will become a routine medical test. But Dr. Pritchard said personal genomics may soon be valuable in specific situations, like pediatric cases, cancer and the genetics of response to drugs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/science/many-rare-mutations-may-underpin-diseases.html

"but a large group of them successfully managed to block the Brooklyn bridge"

Uh, I dont live in NY so I wasnt there but the only OWS incident I remember on Brooklyn bridge the NYPD intentionally lead a protest on to the bridge so they could make a mass arrest, 700 as I recall. They herded them on the bridge so they could charge them and so no one could get away since they had both ends of the bridge blocked. Surest way to break the back of marginally committed protestors is to arrest them, give them a night in jail, court appearances, fines and a criminal record for life.

"Government is corrupt⦠Do you know how to fix it?"

Aleksei Navalny has taken an interesting approach in Russia where corruption is suffocating the country and speaking against it is a good way to get killed.

Iceland appears to be the one recent success story where people actually threw out their corrupt government and gave the finger to the bankers that crashed their economy. They suffered for a few years but they are rapidly recovering compared to places like Ireland which did what the bankers told them to do, paid off the corrupt bankers that crashed their country, and are unlikely to recover any time soon as a result. Iceland is a small place though, and the powers that be weren't entrenched to nearly the level they are in the U.S.

Americans are still largely complacent and as long as they have a job, a place to live, food to eat, a car, iPad, smartphone and/or TV I doubt they really care enough to change anything and sure aren't going to risk their well being, as tattered as it is, to stand up against a completely broken government. The one thing OWS did achieve last year was it did get the subject in to daily conversation. Now there is nothing again except a stupid horse race between two equally bad Presidential candidates.

Only way anything is likely to change in the U.S. is for another crash to occur and it for it to be so severe that it puts people out of work en masse and in to breadlines. With the nearly inevitable crash of Europe on the horizon it may not be that far off.

"The government is our servant"

Now who is being naive. Our government serves the people with the money and the power. Our founding fathers tried hard to give us a system that wouldn't go that way but they failed. Our two party system is totally broken and its only putting forward a choice between candidates who are all bad. Once you cast your meaningless vote every two years you are totally out of the loop. People vote for the person with the most money and the best attack ads, whomever the TV tells them to vote for. Any voter that bothers to become informed and vote for change is going to be disappeared by party line voters.

Me personally I would have loved to see Ron Paul win the President. He probably would have been a train wreck, but he would have caused a fire storm of change. The main stream media and his own party managed to destrot him with racism charges to make him largely disappear.

Getting rid of the Fed would be step 1 for fixing our totally corrupted economy and Paul is the only one like to attempt it.

Nope its not a stereotype, its well established that the Audi A6 is the semi official car of choice of the Chinese Communist party official.

The mistresses and princelings apparently favor Ferrari's.

If you aren't familiar with the term princeling they are the children and grandchildren of the giants of the Communist party, the comrades of Mao back in the day, the marchers of the Long March, champions of the worker, who have now suddenly all become staggeringly rich, are driving around in Italian sports cars, and have lost touch with the prolateriat.

Also, lets not forget about Apple's patent on software that would basically freeze our device unless we were demonstrably watching the ads they serve to us, making us answer questions about products featured and even using the camera to make sure that our eyes are focused on the screen.

How long will it be before we see something similar on anything with a front facing camera? I wonder if Microsoft has plans to build this into their next Kinect? This is where these assholes are going with this, and then they'll bitch and complain when even more people just pirate their shit. God, how ridiculous...

Ah, you must have seen "A Clockwork Orange".

Also, lets not forget about Apple's patent on software that would basically freeze our device unless we were demonstrably watching the ads they serve to us, making us answer questions about products featured and even using the camera to make sure that our eyes are focused on the screen.

How long will it be before we see something similar on anything with a front facing camera? I wonder if Microsoft has plans to build this into their next Kinect? This is where these assholes are going with this, and then they'll bitch and complain when even more people just pirate their shit. God, how ridiculous...

NBC and CBS have joined in as well. DISH has filed a suit themselves seeking a ruling to declare that the technology is not infringing on TV copyrights. http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/dish-seeks-ruling-on-feature-that-skips-commercials/

Imagine the machines that run 75% of the world's stock markets becoming illegal overnight. Such a decision would essentially bring the computing industry and every industry that depends on it to a grinding halt.

Don't assume that our (and most other non-connected people/business) pain will be shared by our banker and government "friends". They have before [1] and probably will again, exempt themselves from horrible laws, decisions, and other externalities, while continuing to profit handsomely:

The provision, which my colleague Edward Wyatt detailed in an article ahead of the House’s vote on the bill last month, has only one purpose: to allow the banking industry to skirt paying for certain important patents involving “business methods."

They (and their bought government cronies) will simply evade disaster (and in the process bet for/against, profiting from others' misery).

[1] http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/07/04/in-a-bill-wall-street-shows-clout/

Sadly, both groups may work on Wall Street: Capitalists and Other Psychopaths.

Note that there are numerous objections to this opinion piece (probably by other Wall Street psychopaths - ha!) for using under-representative source data and an incorrect interpretation of that data - even after a correction to the article - and those objections may all be accurate, but the article somehow seems at least plausible anyway, if you ask me.

I thought everyone from that neck of the woods was claiming to be of Indian descent.

What does Russia expect to accomplish with its moon base?

Rumor has it Putin is looking for a new location where his future inaugurations can take place without the distraction of nearby protests.

when you are in Syria, where there are death squads, you should be anonymous

when you are fighting large multinational corporations or political representatives, where there is a power imbalance, you should be anonymous, like Anonymous

when you are probing the workings of spy agencies, like wikileaks, you should be anonymous

when you are posting on a national or statewide board, like slashdot, you might as well be anonymous, because your actual name doesn't matter, isn't paid attention to, and only the force of your ideas matter

but on local boards, anonymous hate is really ridiculous and highly personal:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/us/small-town-gossip-moves-to-the-web-anonymous-and-vicious.html

here you have people who hide and pick out neighbors by name and viciously lie and attack them, constantly, always carefully from hiding

you have a right in a court of law to know who is accusing you of a crime, right? well in local forums you have people hiding and hating and constantly and viciously slandering real world people in a small community. this requires that the person doing this attack be identified, do you not agree? the court of public opinion is being manipulated, someone is using anonymity to do evil

anonymity is just a tool, it can be used for good and evil. so in SOME ways, such as small local forums, anonymity is not a good thing, when it is used to attack and hide, attack and hide, constantly

ONLY in this scenario, do i support this legislation

cyberbullying is real and has real consequences. the problem can't just be ignored and it goes away. the victims might be teenagers or people on the psychological edge, and the cyberbullying has real and awful consequences. if you don't like this legislation, fine. then what is YOUR answer to cyberbullying in small local communities? ignore it? really? that's your answer? sorry, the cyberbully knows it works, the victim knows it works. you need to understand anonymous cyberbullying is a real problem in small local forums and you must find a way to stop it

"Some area's have 50+ Mbps now. "

fuck... look at the world.
and I'm not asking for everywhere like south korea is trying for, I'm asking for some areas to be competitive.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/technology/22iht-broadband22.html

"By the end of 2012, South Korea intends to connect every home in the country to the Internet at one gigabit per second. That would be a tenfold increase from the already blazing national standard --edit Each customer pays about 30,000 won a month, or less than $27.

they eat corn alright, as does most of the world, in the form of processed food. You find corn derivatives in a bewildering varieties of industrial foods.

You imply that the French, and indeed the rest of the world, eat significant amount of processed food. It's difficult to get hard data on this, but my impression (from having lived there) is that processed food is a much smaller part of their diet than in the US. This article says that Americans eat rather more processed food than other countries, but it's difficult to compare because "baked goods" and "ready-to-eat" in the US and in France are rather different.

On the other hand, "most of the world" is certainly not eating significant amounts of industrial food - in China and India it's almost unheard of.

You are a few years too late. A FISA reform bill, passed in 2007, grants telecoms immunity from civil suits for just such cases. Initially, Obama campaigned against immunity, but switched positions on it.

Personally, I can't really blame him for backing down. In this country, if you confront the shadow government or its minions, you get a limo ride through Dealey Plaza.

There are so many variables here that it isn't funny. I frequently cringe when I see social science "foo linked to bar says study" headlines. There are so many ways to cut the data, so many internal biases that influence what is published, and almost always not enough evidence to definitively prove a correlation-causation linkage (small samples sizes, poorly defined data, poorly handled statistics etc.).

Gary Gutting (Philosopher, Notre Dame) had a blog piece in the NYT last week that tackles this head on:

How Reliable Are the Social Sciences?

The NYT just posted an interesting article about it http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/22/technology/zuckerbergs-property-status-post-marriage.html?_r=1&ref=technology.

Don't be an idiot. The more people we have, the higher the rate of technological advancement will happen. Humans are the ultimate resource. Without people eventually development would stagnate or even reverse itself. It has happened before when there were large population implosions (fall of the Roman Empire, Black Death, etc).

A Brief History Of China's One-Child Policy :
"Even if China's population multiplies many times, she is fully capable of finding a solution; the solution is production," Mao Zedong proclaimed in 1949. "Of all things in the world, people are the most precious." The communist government condemned birth control and banned imports of contraceptives.

Combining rampant population growth with the disastrous industrial and agricultural follies of the Great Leap Forward , China experienced one of the largest famines in modern history -- the Great Chinese Famine of 1958-1962.

Ship it to France.

Apparently they have the facilities to reprocess it into new usable fuel for their reactors.

Apparently America is too stupid to do the same.

I think you have your Presidents confused. Bush (Part I) was the one that banned assault weapons which were foreign made. http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/08/us/import-ban-on-assault-rifles-becomes-permanent.html. Clinton's ban covered mainly domestic weapons since they were already banned by the previous administration. Bush (Part II) never pushed for it to be renewed after the 10 year expiration. In both cases the NRA fought against the bans and lost; they did win in convincing for Clinton's ban not to be renewed.

Also that money pays for their children needs

Thus explaining why they sometimes pay even when the child's mother has remarried and has no financial difficulty in raising the child. Alimony and child support laws need to be revised to take into account the circumstances of the men who are left paying for children that in some cases are not even related to them:

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/magazine/22Paternity-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Child support is supposed to help women are stuck with children whose fathers are not voluntarily helping to raise. This assumes that...

1. Women with children cannot find a husband; after all, what sort of a man wants to marry a woman who is not a virgin?
2. Men can simply find the money that these women cannot find -- it's not like men have been hardest hit by the recent recession, right?
3. Women never hide the fact that they have been promiscuous and that their children are not related to the man they say is the father -- which we now have good tests to help settle, although the courts seem not to care about that.

Sure, you can argue that DNA is irrelevant compared to the emotional bond between men and their children, but this is not about emotions. Child support is a compulsory form of parenting; it is supposed to exist for men who will not play an active role in the lives of their children; the money is a cold, numeric form of compensation, and so there should be no problem with using cold, numeric evidence of paternity. If emotional bonds cannot compare to DNA, then emotional bonds cannot compare to money either, and should be considered irrelevant to the issue of child support.

Primates don't even have wealth. They have something akin to income, and live equivalent to "paycheque-to-paycheque" lives. There hasn't been a lot of time to evolve recognition of anything beyond sustained provision of sufficient resources, nor is there really any selection pressure to do so.

I sure thought there were more recent studies like this that showed up in the news, but this is the most relevant one I can find in a quick search..

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/magazine/05FREAK.html?pagewanted=all

Maybe they don't use it in their natural habitat (or maybe they do, and we just haven't noticed it yet), but they understood how to deal with price changes in an item they want.

I guess you are right in that they don't have "wealth", since the study said he never noticed them deliberately saving money.. But I still think it shows they have a greater understanding of economics than what I infer you're implying.

Orthodox Jews don't rape nine-year olds

Well, some of them do, and if the the act is reported to authorities, the victims and those reporting the crime are shunned, since the authorities are not kosher and the group must hold together.

"The rally in Citi Field on Sunday was sponsored by a rabbinical group, Ichud Hakehillos Letohar Hamachane, that is linked to a software company that sells Internet filtering software to Orthodox Jews. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/nyregion/ultra-orthodox-jews-hold-rally-on-internet-at-citi-field.html?_r=1

How conVEEENient.

"The problem is that there are hostile, sometimes crazy, nations that have nuclear weapons"

Like the USA? :-) If not today, maybe after the next election? What about a country that has institutionalized torture, that has about a quarter of its population food insecure, that is becoming completely dependent on other countries for consumer goods, and that is blowing up people around the world with killer robots, is sane?

You may be unable to see the forest of my point for the trees of your strategic reply, perhaps because you are caught up in short-term thinking about the rationality of military planning (each point making sense by itself) while missing the overall increasing systematic risk? That is the kind of thinking that lead to the recent global economic crisis --- every local economic decision making sense locally, but then the whole house of cards collapsing as the system collectively passes some phase change boundary (like heated water starting to turn into steam). Like pollution, increasing systemic risk is an externality often unaccounted for in local decision making (whether economically or militarily).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

The doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is based on rationality at all levels of the system (except that the whole approach is crazy for reasons I mention below). You just said there are crazy people out there. So MAD will not work. It can not keep working indefinitely for exactly the reasons you mention ("hostile, sometimes crazy"). Seriously, why should a crazy leader of either North Korea or the USA not just start nuking other countries because they think they are on some mission from god or something and everyone else is to terrified to stop them? Example:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa
"George Bush has claimed he was on a mission from God when he launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a senior Palestinian politician in an interview to be broadcast by the BBC later this month."

Another source from before Bush's election:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html
"''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.'' "

You're also ignoring the bigger issue is that WMDs is no longer purely a national problem. Like has happened so many times before, the technologies like nuclear weapons, designer plagues, nanotech, cyberwarfare, or killer robots, that once were only in the control of big countries are going to eventually filter down to the average small country or even small group or individual. Our entire military doctrine is out-of-sync with emerging 21st century realities.

Or, as George Orwell said:
http://blog.gaiam.com/quotes/authors/george-orwell
"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, is possible to carry this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

An essay I wrote on that general issue:
"Problems of the MAD doctrine, their consequences, and positive alternatives"
http://groups.google.com/group/virgle/browse_thread/thread/6b18338b6b947931
"The policy of "Mutually Assured Destruction" (MAD) wi

plumbers didn't claim 93% of income gains in the last 2 years.

And you are really, really missing my point. Seriously, if you missed it by any more you'd have shot yourself in the foot with it. So tell me, what does Meg Whitman do for our civilization that justifies her enormous wealth? What. I want an answer, not a sound bite.

1980s diesel is quite bad for your lungs compared to 1980s gasoline, I will grant.

[citation needed]

That's an incredibly stupid thing to say. Not only has it been shown (and we have discussed on slashdot) that gassers emit more soot than was previously believed and we now also know that soot is exceptionally dangerous. But what you apparently don't know is that gasoline emissions control was for shit in the 1980s, or that gasoline soot is the worst soot, with small particle sizes, and high quantities of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons actually linked to the soot. So you've got more unburned hydrocarbons and you've got smaller particles which are harder for the lungs to filter.

Meanwhile, the 80s is when fuel injection began to proliferate, with many vehicles retaining carburetion into the early nineties before the improved emissions standards made this essentially impossible. Mixture control just doesn't respond quickly enough from a carburetor. So a lot of these vehicles are even still carbureted.

Finally, diesel used to be sulphured and now they use other additives which are actually more toxic. Unburned diesel is actually more dangerous today than it was twenty years ago. Gasoline is safer in some places because MTBE has been outlawed, though; they're using ethanol, so it's not only safer but it's also cleaner.

Funny thing is: Facebook stock today closed at barely over its opening price. Why?

Because FB didn't get conned?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/opinion/21nocera.html

A huge opening-day pop is not a sign of a successful I.P.O., but rather a massively mispriced one. Bankers are rewarding their friends and themselves instead of doing their fiduciary duty to their clients.

Car analogy: If your IPO shoots up a lot, it's like you PAYING someone to list your car for sale at a good price, but instead they under-price it, their close friends buy it and immediately sell it for twice the price.

21 people suing because they were tracked DEFINITELY deserve 15 billion. I could totally see how they would have 715million in damaged each from facebook's egregious actions.

On a serious note, the government sets the value of a life at $6-9 million. So facebook could have just kill these people, and save $14.874 billion.

I'm no expert but if the shares don't go up much doesn't that mean they were valued correctly from FB's point of view? Whereas if they were valued low and shot up, FB doesn't benefit as much. It just benefits those who bought/got the stock at the start.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/opinion/21nocera.html

A huge opening-day pop is not a sign of a successful I.P.O., but rather a massively mispriced one. Bankers are rewarding their friends and themselves instead of doing their fiduciary duty to their clients.

Imagine a hybrid diesel-like OPOC engine!

Science isn't clean anymore, (if it ever was). The lab coat doesn't automatically mean the doctor's clip-board is bearing truth or that we are allowed to suspend our critical thinking facilities.

For instance, in an increasing number of cases, "USDA Organic" isn't even Organic:

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/03/19/19greenwire-usdas-organic-enforcers-let-offenders-slide-au-12233.html

I'd also be curious to know who performed and paid for the study you are quoting. And sadly, asking that kind of question isn't even hair-splitting these days. The hard fact is that if the result of a given study will have *any* socio-economic-political impact at all, then the chances are good that a closer look will reveal corrupted science.

There are statistics companies out there which openly advertise their service of spinning your figures to ensure that your boss will still like you after you submit your report. That's where we are today.

btw, I don't think vegetables are good for anybody regardless of how they were grown. But I would like my proteins and saturated fats to come from animals not fed on poisons.

But only because they were already artificially low, with China selling those things below cost just to gain market dominance.

I've heard that said a few times but it seems nuts that China would sell these things at a loss, if that's really the case they will run out of money and be forced to stop fairly soon.

That's not necessarily true. They could be exploiting a resource. In this case, I will argue that China is exploiting their local environment and exporting products that are a direct result of using up that resource to countries that will not sacrifice that resource for money. Imagine if a solar plant in the United States could dump the tailings and cuttings anywhere they wanted or lay a pipe to anywhere that disposes of water and fluids used in the mechanical processing of said solar cells, they too could sell really cheap solar cells and panels. Lead, mercury, cadmium and the production of carbon dioxide are all still a part of fabricating photovoltaic technologies for mass production.

The very weak argument of how a free market is supposed to protect the environment goes something like this: people know pollution is bad and therefore they pay top dollar for the companies that pollute the least. If people don't think pollution is bad, then they buy the cheapest stuff and deal with it. And somehow the free market is supposed to work like this. Well, I'm glad for the EPA and I'm glad that the free market hasn't been left to companies that would rather spend money on misinformation campaigns than actual cleaner technology. Nixon opened trade with China and every president since has left it that way. As a result, we've found a loophole to get our cheap shit without polluting our local environment. But with CO2 having global impact, it's about time we started taxing products from foreign countries that don't want to play by our standards of environmental ethics (and it's obvious that China's national government is either helpless or corrupt). It's funny, if we applied tariffs in IT the same way, all the people complaining about outsourcing would be satisfied as now the ethical treatment and compensation of workers would be artificially raised by the US government to make it a toss up whether or not it is exported. Indian programmers are exploited by their companies in ways that American companies simply cannot.

Keep in mind, I'm not arguing for these tariffs, I'm just urging you to shift your point of view instead of assuming that the only thing the Chinese are losing in this proposition is a net loss on their sales. On the contrary, they're losing their environment and abusing human resources so much so that they are making a killing by their standards in profit. As such, it shall continue ad infinitum.

If that basic catastrophic insurance is currently over-priced compared to the cost of providing the care, try a non-profit insurance co-op.

The problems:

1: Health insurance is incredibly overpriced. Prior to "obamacare" insurance companies had a lifetime maximum payout of $3M to $5M. Very few people suffer long enough to hit that. A healthy 20 year old could easily get a million dollar whole (ie they WILL pay as long as you don't kill yourself or they find some other way out of it) life policy for about $150/mo. For $450-$750/mo your survivors could get more money from your life insurance company than you'd ever hope to get out of your health insurance company.
2: What passes for "Catastrophic" insurance these days is itself catastrophic. After your thousands-dollar deductible, you're on the hook for 20-50% of the rest. About 60% of personal bankruptcies cite medical problems, 75% of those were insured at least until they were too sick to work and lost their job. http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/insured-but-bankrupted-anyway/

Perhaps care providers are being forced to accept too much of the risk involved in medical advise and treatment (suggesting tort reform),

It's too late to turn back now. Malpractice has taught doctors that if they do 5 times the number of tests to keep from being sued, they make 5 times as much. Stopping the suits now won't change a thing. Also, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all After tort reform, doctors' malpractice rates went down, and the docs spent the savings on new testing equipment.

we're systematically over-paying (and need more competition)

Barrier to entry: hundreds of thousands of dollars of med school bills aren't going to pay themselves. At least for Doctors. Nurse-Practitioners are sprouting up all over and can see you for a discount. Unless you want to see a real doctor.

or perhaps we're simply expecting more health care than we can really afford.

But then little Timmy will die! How can you call yourself a good parent if you don't spend your retirement fund, your other kids' college funds, sell your house, and live in a gutter just to keep little Timmy alive another month?! If the government can't let little Timmy die for religious reasons, how the hell do you expect it to let him die because you're too cheap? http://www.imperfectparent.com/topics/2012/05/10/court-over-rides-parents-decision-to-refuse-treatment-for-infant/

His point is that there is no evidences that any of t is getting into the water table

If it can't possibly affect the water table, why do drilling companies end up shipping water to people such as Mr. Ira Haire, who live near their fracking sites?

Why are the horses and pets in Dimock, PA, losing their hair?

Why is the EPA detecting fracking chemicals in the aquifers of Pavillion, Wyoming?

How about this Oklahoma Geological Survey report (PDF) that suggests the recent uptick in earthquakes were caused by fracking?

What about waste treatment plants that fail to successfully reduce the levels of contaminants before discharging the water into a river?

How about the President of the Marcellus Shale Coalition admitting that fracking has contaminated the drinking water in PA?

And what happens to the chemicals *after* they're pulled out of the ground? Sometimes they just dump it, like the case of Josh Foster.

Fracking can be done right. But it's expensive and requires the cooperation of many disparate companies and enforcement of regulations (or any regulations at all; I'm looking at you, Halliburton Loophole). And expensive is not profitable.

It's a Centrist circle jerk. There are no moderate Republicans left.

Ask RIchard Lugar.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/us/politics/lugar-loses-primary-challenge-in-indiana.html?pagewanted=all

RADIO: CBS News reported two weeks ago that tax laws changes (US) recently created onerous reporting burdens, to the tune of thousands of dollars in paperwork fees. I can't find a link to that news article, but NYTimes (ref below) also reports,

• “The administrative costs of being an American and living outside the U.S. have gone up dramatically,” said Marnin Michaels, a tax lawyer with Baker & McKenzie in Zurich. (and...) After Congress sharply raised taxes this year for many Americans living abroad, some international tax lawyers say they detect rising demand from citizens to renounce ties with the United States, the only developed country that taxes it citizens while they live overseas. Americans abroad are also taxed in the countries where they live.“

Increased citizens fleeing, passport returns, well darn it--it has been reported--they are objecting to unfair taxation. In a Foghorn leghorn voice, "I says un-fair tax-ation!

The number of people trolling loudly about taxes owed by people who use United States' elite infrastructure--please be properly grateful to citizens living abroad and not "using up" any of that 1337 infrastructure!

Reference: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/18/world/18expat.html?_r=1&ex=1182312000&en=a0208f4fcc1484bc&ei=5070

He lives in a county where the population gets over 42% of their income from government sources, including food stamps, medicare, welfare, and other social programs. Sure, he can point his finger at "big government" in Washington because that will get him elected. Pointing out to his fellow Lewis County residents how much they get from the government will probably piss them off.

FTFA - "Massie has been targeting waste, fraud, and abuse, starting with questioning electric bills, phone bills, contracts, and fees for things that don’t apply anymore. Like the county being charged rental fees for property that had long been sold, paying for phone lines that had been disconnected for years, or buying stuff from a magistrate’s store."

Eliminating bills for services that no longer apply seems like a no-brainer. It sounds to me like the county government was corrupt, and based on the location (Lewis County KY) and demographics (98.2% white) he probably unseated a conservative when he was elected to county office.

Interesting to note that Lewis County KY gets 42.9% of it's income from the government (US national average is 17.6%). Seems like he should keep focusing on his home county before aiming higher.

They should change their name from IRAN to IRAA. Then we would be scared of their threats. Next thing North KORAA will be taking legal action against the New York Times for referring to them as a "Stalinist dictatorship " [1.]

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/02/international/asia/02CND-KORE.html?ex=1380513600&en=a29d7f1e49aabee0&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND

Obama has gone along with the Republican agenda in the name of "compromise". If he were actually honest and principled, he would have opposed them at every turn, even if it meant getting nothing done and not getting re-elected.

1. Why didn't he close Guantanamo? It was his campaign promise. It doesn't matter what Congress says, he's the executive. He's enforcing an unconstitutional law in holding people there without trial, and that deserves impeachment. If he has to just let them go, even onto American soil, that's better than violating the Constitution and peoples' rights.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/notes-from-a-guantanamo-survivor.html?_r=1

2. The healthcare bill was his and Pelosi's baby, not the Republicans', and it's a pile of corporatist horseshit that enriches giant insurance companies instead of providing healthcare. If he couldn't get a real reform bill passed, he shouldn't have done anything at all, or just tried and pointed out he was prevented by the Republicans.

3. What's Obama doing about the TSA? Nothing, they're totally out of control with him in charge of them. It isn't Congress that's directing them to set up roadblocks and molest small children.

The problem is that they expect people to pay over $600 per year to watch ads. That's what television is: an advertising machine. It's like a highway billboard ad, but right in your living room. They don't even try to hide it anymore. You get about 10 minutes of advertising in a 30 minute tv show, and that doesn't even include the product placement inside the show itself, and it doesn't include the banner ads the network overlays during the show.

Total revenue = subscription revenue + ad revenue and honestly they don't care where the money is coming from. If you're seeing ads it's because you sell your eyeballs cheaper than your wallet. If you were willing to watch an additional $600 or more of ads they'd send it for free. If you were willing to pay $600 + more than the ad revenue for a completely commercial free product, they would offer it. If they offer one people go "Waaaaaaah, way too many ads" and the other then "Waaaaaaah, way too expensive" so you get copay. According to this article:

In the United States, ad sales make up at least 50 percent of revenues.

So the question is, are you ready to pay $1200-1500/year for ad free television? Or would you just like to pay $600 with no ads and get a free pony? Because that's what your eyeballs are worth and you need to make them a better offer.