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Bullshit, bullshit, BULLSHIT! Your problem is your problem, not mine

Are you suggesting that hospitals are no longer obligated to provide emergency care to uninsured/underinsured persons? Or are you deliberately misrepresenting the problem just to score points for your "healthcare bad!" side of the argument?

Just don't expect me to pay for your replacement lung or cancer treatment.

But... isn't that exactly what's been happening for decades? You're asking us to not expect business as usual, but you have not even hinted at why such an expectation is unreasonable. Hospitals provide emergency care to the uninsured/underinsured, and it's not because of Obamacare. This is an indisputable fact. Why is your argument phrased as opposition to Obamacare when it would be more clearly couched as opposition to the Hippocratic oath?

Maybe taxing the rich would help. But the rich collectively don't have all that much income.

Not sure if you know you're lying or are just a fool, but you are certainly wrong. The top 10% have ~50% of the US's income and the top 1% are generally in the 20-25% range. Feel free to find more sources. They are many.

But clever ideas for future tax scheme won't change how much money we have now.

Doing anything about what the government actually has now is impossible. Do you understand what a budget is? You don't make budgets based on how much you actually have, you make them based on how much you think you will have and how much you think you should spend, what you need, etc. Surely this is common knowledge? The future debt will be higher or lower depending on the budget and how far reality varies. Any change in budget has effects in the future, and changes nothing about today's spending, which is already committed.

Spending a bit less than you actually make is wisdom; spending what you'd like to make is folly.

No, always spending less than what you actually make is incredibly naive, stupid, and the kind of oversimplified nonsense only a Fox viewer could advocate.

Sometimes you take out loans and spend more if you think it will yield returns greater than the costs. Sometimes this works out (LA's 20th century water projects), other times it does not. But it has always been required for growth.

Your myopic obsession with spending completely blinds you from seeing that:
1) decreased effective tax rates correlate directly with increasing deficits
2) the tax burden has shifted from corporations to wealthy individuals to poor individuals
3) spending is good--it's the basis of an economy
4) US government debt fuels the entire global economy, and benefits the US far more than the cost of servicing the debt
5) your prescription for drastic and immediate spending cuts will cause a global depression
6) this has all been explained to you before, but you won't listen or learn

First US based wind farm opposed by Ted Kennedy, lifelong DNC member.

What was that again?

Basically, they tried to put it in front of a bunch of rich people's houses. Hence even though they were years ahead of anyone else in the US, they're now behind because of crazy legal battles.

First US based wind farm opposed by Ted Kennedy, lifelong DNC member.

What was that again?

You're wrong. Fukushima is still leaking fissile material into the sea: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/world/asia/with-a-plants-tainted-water-still-flowing-no-end-to-environmental-fears.html?_r=0

But the number of Americans that starve because of economic conditions is zero. The poorest region in America is the Mississippi Delta, which has one of the highest obesity rates in the world.

I don't think that you understand that obesity and hunger are not diametrically opposite concepts, as explained here, and here.

... Burton still had a "knee-jerk" response when confronted with Glass. Although his celebrity status and the resulting paranoia could have something to do with it.'"

When you have employers looking at Facebook and college admissions people looking at Tweets, um yeah, the average guy needs to be paranoid. You better be paranoid!

And it's not just self published stuff. How many of you have had friends and family post pictures of YOU without asking?

*raises hand*

It happened to a friend of mine. She wasn't drinking. The waitress was asking us to pass drinks down the table. her friend just happened to snap a photo when she had a drink in each hand - and then she posted the photo on FB.

And with editiing?

Good grief, I can video anyone and with some creative editing, make them look horrible.

And when you are say, trying to get a job, the person who's looking you up isn't going to contact you and ask what the story is! Fuck no! They are going to draw their own conclusions.

People will take any little bit of information about someone and turn it into a complete profile about someone.

It happens here all the time - people draw conclusions about others just from a single post.

True. But the sanctions were never all that impervious.

On the other hand, with reduced demand for their Oil, (due to the US being a net exporter of oil), there is more oil available on the market. Other oil importers don't need to go to Iran.

Theoretically, with less of a market for oil Iran should not need Nuclear power and could be meeting their energy demands with modern oil and gas generation facilities, Far less costly and easier to build.

Therefore, they don't NEED nuclear. And they can't make the claim that the do. If Iran was really after power production all along, they should be willing to delay nuclear. If that was never their real goal, then these talks may lead nowhere.

News reports suggest that a deal is no where near as close as this cheerleading article suggests.

So the article is a bit pre-mature. I think there are talks mostly because there was an election, and there was a change in tactics on the part of Iran, who probably realize they are inching closer to being on the receiving a preemptive strike and they see their last friend in the region, Syria, being ground into dust by civil war in spite of Iran's help).

>Get a Tesla, so as to avoid vehicle fires.

Not so fast. Those 250 million cars have been sold over the course of DECADES. There are only about 14.5 million cars that are about one year old, like the Tesla in question. Multiply your result by 250/14.5, which is 17.24. If you round that down to 16 to make the math easier, all of a sudden the answer is 4, not 0.25 -- which means you're 4 times MORE likely to be in a fire in a Tesla, not the other way around.

They actually do quite a lot of other things as well there, like research into improving cryptography for example.

Seriously? Improving it as in finding holes that they can exploit and tell no one else about? Or spending millions on research into how to create holes they can hope to get included as encryption standards?

From the link above:

The N.S.A.'s Sigint Enabling Project is a $250 million-a-year program that works with Internet companies to weaken privacy by inserting back doors into encryption products. This excerpt from a 2013 budget proposal outlines some methods the agency uses to undermine encryption used by the public.

They actually do quite a lot of other things as well there, like research into improving cryptography for example.

Seriously? Improving it as in finding holes that they can exploit and tell no one else about? Or spending millions on research into how to create holes they can hope to get included as encryption standards?

From the link above:

The N.S.A.'s Sigint Enabling Project is a $250 million-a-year program that works with Internet companies to weaken privacy by inserting back doors into encryption products. This excerpt from a 2013 budget proposal outlines some methods the agency uses to undermine encryption used by the public.

They actually do quite a lot of other things as well there, like research into improving cryptography for example.

Seriously? Improving it as in finding holes that they can exploit and tell no one else about? Or spending millions on research into how to create holes they can hope to get included as encryption standards?

From the link above:

The N.S.A.'s Sigint Enabling Project is a $250 million-a-year program that works with Internet companies to weaken privacy by inserting back doors into encryption products. This excerpt from a 2013 budget proposal outlines some methods the agency uses to undermine encryption used by the public.

Apparently this one has already passed over the Philippines and at first glance, damage wasn't as bad as they thought it was going to be, because it was moving so fast (25 mph). So it didn't linger over land like other lesser and slower moving hurricanes did; ones that caused far more damage.

Yes, I'm sure that is a big part of it. The low teacher to student ratio can't hurt either as you can easily tailor your lesson to how your child learns best and not move on until they got it. In a class room you have to move on or every body else will be held up. The converse would also be true, where you can move past a section they understand without explaining it over and over for the slow dim-wits in the class and end up making the smart ones bored. Sometimes you might even drop a subject for a few weeks and come back to it later. These things are not done in public school.

I did read an article about public schools "flipping" the class around and having great success at it. Basically they would video record the lesson for the kids to watch at home and they would do the homework in class while the teacher would spend some time with each student making sure they got it. Not sure if that will spread or take off, but the current teach to the test method seems to be failing in my mind.

You're right that Snowden didn't name any names, but he did explicitly say in an interview that he decided to leak the way he did because, from his experience, "working through the chain of command would only lead to retribution". Given that all these others stories are public, it all seems pretty clear cut to me, with the simplest explanation that he was well aware (indeed, as soon as he started even contemplating the leaks, it would be very strange indeed if he didn't go and read up on other whistleblowers' experience... unless you're suggesting that he is also a clinical idiot). The onus would be on you to prove that he was somehow unaware, given all this.

"The main issue is the way Google, which, according to comScore, handles 86 percent of Web searches in Europe, orders its search results. Regulators have been investigating whether Google favors its own services — like travel, local business, mapping and shopping — over those of competitors. Regulators have also examined whether it disadvantaged competitors by including material from other Web sites in search results and whether its advertising business complied with European antitrust law."

In European Antitrust Fight, Google Needs to Appease Competitors

There is the glaring privacy hole.

At some point, the physical package will be shipped from Point A to Point B.

It's obvious that carriers like UPS and FedEx already track every detail of a package from pickup to delivery. You can get those details from their web site with the tracking number.

Shipping using USPS seemed "safer". It came out a few months ago that it isn't.

A private courier is more expensive, and adds the ability to track the package closer, especially if the feds are the sending party.

Even in the case of the Dread Pirate Roberts hiring a hitman, there is a real-world endpoint. They know who has the contract on their head, they'd only have to investigate why to find out who ordered it.

So even if TOR was perfectly anonymous (It's good, but...), and if bitcoins were anonymous (again, good, but...), it's still easy to catch one or both ends of the transaction.

France?

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/14/news/14iht-spy_.html?pagewanted=1

Notice the article is from the NY Times and quotes NBC news, two ultra liberal media outlets that normally slobber all over France's ass and any other socialist country. I mention this just to avert the all so common "Faux News" diatribe.

Brazil wasn't upset with the US spying on its own citizens. Brazil got upset that the US spied on the Brazilian president and administration, with the Brazilian president postponing a trip to the US as a way of expressing anger. (Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/18/world/americas/brazils-leader-postpones-state-visit-to-us.html?_r=0).

lets just leave all our allies dangling,

Maybe our allies should start picking up their portion of their defense tab rather than relying on the U.S. taxpayer to constantly foot the bill.

and leave our defense wide open.

Like what, goatse? The danger now is rarely military in nature but electronic. The military industrial complex even admits this. They are more worried about state-sponsored electronic infiltration than they are about some nation developing jets or missiles.

Take a look at the 2011 proposed budget and how much national defense gets. You mean to tell me we couldn't cut that budget by 10% and still be secure?

Considering that is 20% of our total expenditure, and is nothing but a money sink since we get almost nothing in return, I think we can cut the fat a bit and still have a juicy steak.

Reduces but does not eliminate the problem:

Old nuclear fuel assemblies -- highly radioactive, elongated packages of metal rods that once energized some of France's 58 nuclear power plants -- are gripped by large mechanical arms. They are hoisted by cranes and placed on belts that move them along in the dim orange light. The machinery works to prepare the assemblies to be lowered into four giant pools.

There they will sit, with about 13 feet of demineralized water above them, a bath to shield and cool them, for about three years. Then more machines will lift them out, chop them up and put the pieces to be dissolved in vats of nitric acid. The fissioning of the fuel in the power plant, or the splitting of uranium atoms to release energy, has created a large family of elements, called fission products. The goal of this process is to find and recycle the ones that still contain more energy -- the plutonium and the uranium.

Spent fuel rods also contain elements that have relatively little energy, but plenty of long-lasting radiation. These include americium, curium, cesium and iodine. They are sent off to be immobilized -- hopefully for thousands of years -- by imbedding them in glass logs. Employees here monitor and operate their robotic helpers from a bank of computers housed in lime-green metal coverings.

You can't fire or "not hire" somebody for doing something perfectly legal that has nothing to do with the job, if it isn't happening on the job.

Incorrect. More and more companies are refusing to hire tobacco users. I believe it SHOULD be illegal to not hire someone for doing something entirely legal, but that is not the law.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/us/11smoking.html

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/health/UPenn-Health-System-to-Stop-Hiring-Tobacco-Users-191852991.html

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/story/2012-01-03/health-care-jobs-no-smoking/52394782/1

I think this could be a hoax. It's not a scientific paper, not in a peer-reviewed journal's letter section. It appears via a Google circles posting from Kerry Emanuel who is a well-known, though partially reformed, climate denier. It looks like the Google+ account the letter is published in was just created. Plus, the facts are either skimpy & wrong. Saying we cannot ramp up solar & wind power fast enough, but can ramp up nuclear, is directly in opposition to what's happening. Solar installations are going up by double-digit percentage points each year, and meanwhile we haven't had a new nuclear power plant in over 40 years. The only pair that is underway (which is pictured in the Yahoo! story) is years from completion. There are only 19 permit applications active for new nukes in the US, and the power industry (which is notoriously risk-averse) has for decades shied away from their huge liability and expense.

Is the above true, and if so don't the victims deserve to know, not be used as an example?

We'll never know if it's true based on the above -- a little birdie told Kevin Drum that "[t]here's something fishy going on here." Really?

You would hope that people around here would be particularly sensitive to the folly of apples-to-oranges comparisons. The devil is truly in the details with respect to comparing two different health insurance policies, given that there are so many variables that people just don't think about, e.g.:

• Deductible
• Out-of-pocket max
• Actual age (The author bases his haughty conclusion on his assumption that "Deborah looks to be around 45" -- really?)
• Smoking status
• Provider network
  • This is one of the most diabolical ways these exchange plans are able to offer superficially lower rates, and right now it's difficult to impossible to really understand which doctors actually will accept any of these plans.
  • The secondary consequence here is that plans are paying, e.g., 70% not of out-of-network providers' actual fees, but what your insurance company deems to be the "usual and customary fee" for that service. That sounds great until you receive a bill from the out-of-network provider for your 30% of the usual/customary fee, plus the remainder of the difference between that fee and the provider's actual fee. As an added bonus, this "balance billing" does not count toward your plan's out-of-pocket max.

Not a single one of those variables is analyzed in your linked article, or the article it links to. Their superficial analysis (along with every single other piece like this I've seen) is akin to saying, "that greedy car dealer was trying to sell you a 'full-sized sedan' for $X, but look--over here you can get a 'full-sized sedan' for $X/2!!!"

Engineers are among the most unbiased people you will find.

Sorry to burst your bubble:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/extremist-engineers
http://atheism.about.com/b/2009/08/04/engineers-terrorism-and-creationism.htm
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jan/02/extremism-engineering
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/magazine/12FOB-IdeaLab-t.html?_r=0

You on the other hand strike me as someone who has read far too much people who have no education in mechanical engineering related to power generation and just shoot off beautiful political slogans. Most of which aren't rooted in reality, but are based on wishful thinking, which is why there's a massive coal build up going on in "we're transitioning to wind!" Germany. Because people cannot face reality, and instead base large plans on wishful thinking. Which ends up doing the exact opposite of what it's supposed to achieve.

Finished? Nice strawman. As a scientist, I'm merely debating technicalities. I do have an opinion on sustainable energy, of course, but it's quite nuanced. You will see below that it's very different from what you're assuming it is.

My opinion? Stop the bullshit, quickly push research into fission, build thorium reactors and update the current older generation nuclear plants to modern standards to avoid Fukushima-style failures. At the same time massively overfund the material research facility in Japan that is working on solving the fusion's material problems to expedite functional deuterium-tritium fusion reactor's arrival.

As mentioned in our other discussion, material science is not what is holding fusion back. I don't understand where that bizarre materials obsession of yours comes from - are your family members working on materials, perhaps?

Anyhow, the exact thing you're accusing me of actually apply to you. Yes, funding for fusion research should be a multiple of what it is now, but I'm not so naive as to think this alone (coupled with building fission plants based on not-yet-mature technology) will solve all our problems overnight. Fusion still has significant fundamental milestones to pass, and no-one can predict when that will happen. What can be reasonably predicted is that from the reaching of these milestones onwards, it will be 30 more years before a significant fraction of the world's energy needs are met by fusion; that's just how things go in any kind of industry (ask your family members). So we need something in the intervening time. Thorium is not ready for prime-time either (though I could see it beating fusion), and its economic profitability is unclear. What's ready for prime time are some of the newer generation uranium-based fission reactors, but the political and financial (including insurance) costs are not as favorable as they were in in the nuclear boom period. Compared to that, alternative energy sources are available right now, and are advancing at a steady and rapid pace. If you compare their complete lifecycle cost to the current lifecycle cost of a new nuclear plants, they're pretty close. They each have their weak spots, but those are largely complementary, so from a pure availability perspective, an all-of

He has to do something since his pay package was not approved by shareholders today. Out of the 1.6 Billion shares that voted for his pay he owns 1.1 Billion... He made $78 Mil last year (Fiscal Year ended in May) I guess this government deal will generate some license fees and the shareholders definitely sent a message to the board that you can't keep paying this sleeze that kind of money unless he produces results.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/10/31/oracle-shareholders-oppose-compensation-for-ellison/?_r=0

"Cocaine is undoubtedly bad for the fetus. But experts say its effects are less severe than those of alcohol and are comparable to those of tobacco — two legal substances that are used much more often by pregnant women, despite health warnings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/health/27coca.html?_r=0

I'd love to see a blind person try to use touch screen phone.

Touch screen phones may well be the best tech to come along for helping blind people ever.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/disruptions-guided-by-touch-screens-blind-turn-to-smartphones-for-sight

Since that might be pay-walled, here's a copy:

Disruptions: Visually Impaired Turn to Smartphones to See Their World
September 29, 2013, 11:00 am

In recent years, many smartphone apps that are aimed at blind people have appeared.

Luis Perez loves taking photographs. He shoots mostly on an iPhone, snapping gorgeous pictures of sunsets, vintage cars, old buildings and cute puppies. But when he arrives at a photo shoot, people are often startled when he pulls out a long white cane.

In addition to being a professional photographer, Mr. Perez is almost blind.

"With the iPhone I am able to use the same technology as everyone else, and having a product that doesn't have a stigma that other technologies do has been really important to me," said Mr. Perez, who is also an advocate for blind people and speaks regularly at conferences about the benefits of technology for people who cannot see. "Now, even if you're blind, you can still take a photo."

Smartphones and tablets, with their flat glass touch screens and nary a texture anywhere, may not seem like the best technological innovation for people who cannot see. But advocates for the blind say the devices could be the biggest assistive aid to come along since Braille was invented in the 1820s.

Counterintuitive? You bet. People with vision problems can use a smartphone's voice commands to read or write. They can determine denominations of money using a camera app, figure out where they are using GPS and compass applications, and, like Mr. Perez, take photos.

Google's latest releases of its Android operating systems have increased its assistive technologies, specifically with updates to TalkBack, a Google-made application that adds spoken, audible and vibration feedback to a smartphone. Windows phones also offer some voice commands, but they are fewer than either Google's or Apple's.

Among Apple's features are ones that help people with vision problems take pictures. In assistive mode, for example, the phone can say how many heads are in a picture and where they are in the frame, so someone who is blind knows if the family photo she is about to take includes everyone.

All this has come as a delightful shock to most people with vision problems.

"We were sort of conditioned to believe that you can't use a touch screen because you can't see it," said Dorrie Rush, the marketing director of accessible technology at Lighthouse International, a nonprofit vision education and rehabilitation center. "The belief was the tools for the visually impaired must have a tactile screen, which, it turns out, is completely untrue."

Ms. Rush, who has a retinal disorder, said that before the smartphone, people who were visually impaired could use a flip-phone to make calls, but they could not read on the tiny two-inch screens. While the first version of the iPhone allowed people who were losing their vision to enlarge text, it wasn't until 2009, when the company introduced accessibility features, that the device became a benefit to blind people.

While some companies might have altruistic goals in building products and services for people who have lost their sight, the number of people who need these products is growing.

About 10 million people in the United States are blind or partly blind, according to statistics from the American Foundation for the Blind. And some estimates predict that over the next 30 years, as the vast baby boomer generation ages, the number of adults with vision impairments could double.

Apple's assistive technologies also include VoiceOver, which t

Dare to point out that being cynical isn't particularly daring; prepare to make good on all those promises of moving to Canada. (It's worth it! We don't have this, for example.)

Oh yes it is. Why else would this exist or this be so aggressive? If you're a programmer, then you are a witch and you are suspicious; end of story. No one with any lawmaking responsibility knows what you might be capable of, but it's probably at least as bad as this. Therefore, this happens. How does it feel to be branded a potential enemy of the state just because of an aptitude for creative problem-solving?

The people we are waterboarding, on the other hand, have demonstrated both the desire and the ability to do us harm

Except for the innocent.

A cursory search reveals:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/former-state-department-official-team-bush-knew-many-at-gitmo-were-innocent/275327/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/notes-from-a-guantanamo-survivor.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8471907/WikiLeaks-Guantanamo-Bay-terrorist-secrets-revealed.html
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/19/ex-bush-official-guantanamo-bay-innocent/
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=1997083
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-files-wrong-place-time
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/25/wikileaks_documents_reveal_us_knowingly_imprisoned
And many more.

You've never experienced the fanatical hatred these "people" have for those who don't share their ideology.

I lived in Israel from 1973 to 2000, 7 of those years I spent in the IDF (mandatory + standing army) and then did reserve service (as Captain) before emigrating.
I have experienced the hatred of people that would bomb a school-bus just to make headlines and I still find your attitude toward torture despicable.

Good point, but

On December 24, 2009, the Senate passed an alternative health care bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590).[2] In 2010, the House abandoned its reform bill in favor of amending the Senate bill (via the reconciliation process) in the form of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.

Affordable Health Care for America Act

After that the Democrats got masacured in the midterm elections of 2010 making it impossible to get anything through the House of Representatives that the Republicans opposed. Many law suits were filed against Obamacare, finally making it to the Supreme Court which rulled;

“The Affordable Care Act’s requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness.”

At the same time, the court rejected the argument that the administration had pressed most vigorously in support of the law, that its individual mandate was justified by Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce. The vote was again 5 to 4, but in this instance Chief Justice Roberts and the court’s four more conservative members were in agreement.

Supreme Court Upholds Health Care Law, 5-4, in Victory for Obama

No the rub is all of the teeth in Obamacare is in the individual penalty which the SCOTUS ruled a tax, but

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills. Origination Clause

which makes the SCOTUS ruling seem much less of a upholding and much more a mudding the waters. AHA is either constitional or unconstitutional depending on how you squint your eyes and twist your head. Seems the AHA is less likely to be struck down by the courts if enough people voluntarily opt-in.

This article http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/03/opinion/03isbell.html?pagewanted=print seems to have a bit more justification and answers some of the questions from the comments above. In short, primates that evolved in regions with venomous snakes have distinctly better vision than those that evolved elsewhere.

Here is how Mr. Moffett looks at the costs of the plan that Verizon has announced for FiOS. Through 2010 the company will pay an average of $817 to run the fiber past the 19 million homes, on poles or under the ground. It will also incur $172 per home passed in other costs related to the video infrastructure. He assumes that 40 percent of the customers passed will buy at least one FiOS service. If you allocate the cost of running the fiber past the homes that don’t buy FiOS to those that do, that makes the cost of building the network $2,473 per home. (That cost would be less if more than 40 percent of the potential customers sign up. Or it could be higher, if sales don’t achieve the 40 percent level.)

... it seems to me the Israeli government uses Judaism as a weapon against their detractors, since nobody can say anything about Israel's bad behavior without being accused of anti-semitism.

Many people use anti-Zionism against Israel as a cloak for anti-Semitism.

The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews

Are you trying to prove him right? Because FYI, you're doing a stellar job of it.

Many people use anti-Zionism against Israel as a cloak for anti-Semitism.

The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews

Do you agree they are separate things though? Would you say it is possible to be opposed to Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and illegal annexation of land, because of the facts rather than their Jewishness? Because otherwise you're just saying "all criticism of Israel is actually anti semitic", period (let's put aside the fact that Palestinians are Semites also).

I tend to think that true anti Semites, of which there are a few but not nearly as many as Abe Foxman would have you believe, don't bother with cloaks. Conversely most critics of Israel who refrain from slurs probably, in my estimation, don't secretly hate Jews for being Jews.

There's a documentary you might find interesting, link, on the subject of how charges of anti semitism are used as rhetoric device.

With any luck I'll find time to read the linked article. NYT isn't actually known for fairness on this topic though, for instance it's been decades since they had a reporter there who even spoke Arabic. It's difficult to accurately report both sides of a conflict when you rely on one party to supply translators when interacting with the other.

But then again, that has been said of US mainstream media generally.

Paul Krugman had a column about Konczal's blog.

Krugman said that Obamacare is complicated because political constraints made a straightforward single-payer system unachievable. It keeps private insurance companies in the mix and holds down government outlays through means-testing. That means, it holds down government outlays by making the insurance buyers pay more.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/26/why-is-obamacare-complicated/
Why Is Obamacare Complicated?
Paul Krugman
October 26, 2013
So does this mean that liberals should have insisted on single-payer or nothing? No. Single-payer wasn’t going to happen — partly because of the insurance lobby’s power, partly because voters wouldn’t have gone for a system that took away their existing coverage and replaced it with the unknown. Yes, Obamacare is a somewhat awkward kludge, but if that’s what it took to cover the uninsured, so be it.

It was voided by the courts, but they dd try to ban private insurance. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/10/international/americas/10canada.html?_r=0

... it seems to me the Israeli government uses Judaism as a weapon against their detractors, since nobody can say anything about Israel's bad behavior without being accused of anti-semitism.

Many people use anti-Zionism against Israel as a cloak for anti-Semitism.

The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews

Yes, but it's also true that many people who claim that anti-Zionism is a cloak for anti-Semitism use it as a club to bash Israel's detractors, regardless of the legitimacy of the complaints.

Basically, there are bad actors on both sides of the fence. Point being, just because someone points out the bad behavior of the Israeli government does not make them defacto anti-Semites.

... the corporatist warmongering pigs and the crypto-Zionists pulling their strings.

I've heard things like that before. You think the ^wJews Zionist are behind it all? Yes, I think I hear music, I'm just not sure if it's from a play like this, or a parade like that.

The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews

If you are the real "Ethanol-fueled," it's time for treatment.

... it seems to me the Israeli government uses Judaism as a weapon against their detractors, since nobody can say anything about Israel's bad behavior without being accused of anti-semitism.

Many people use anti-Zionism against Israel as a cloak for anti-Semitism.

The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews

I do in fact consider France a legitimate target. They spy on the U.S. as well.

"L'Express, the French news magazine, citing intelligence sources in both Paris and Washington, disclosed the French spying operation. It described the cases involving IBM and Texas Instruments, which reportedly took place between 1987 and 1989. The report said that much of the spying was aimed at helping France's Groupe Bull. "
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/14/news/14iht-spy_.html

The description of the project: An attempt to explain the current period of warming without considering human contributions sounds like a repeat of the Koch brothers funded project "Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature" (BEST).

I'll let the founder of BEST, Richard Muller, summarize their findings:
"Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause."
Richard Muller

Funny you should mention that:

To Catch Up, Walmart Moves to Amazon Turf

October 19, 2013
" The country's largest retailer, which for years didn't blink at would-be competitors, is now under such a threat from Amazon that it is frantically playing catch-up by learning the technology business, including starting @WalmartLabs at Walmart Global E-Commerce, its dot-com division.

The two retail behemoths, one the king of the physical store and the other the conqueror of the online world, are battling over e-commerce -- competing for the most talented engineers, trying to gain the upper hand in the new frontier of same-day delivery and warring over online pricing. "

Probably paywalled, but the NY Times paywall is like swiss cheese.

You make it sound like my doctor can't treat me. That there is some procedure he would recommend but can't because of the evil insurance company.

It happens all the time. In fact, it seems to be so unextraordinary that most of my search results are turning up questionairs about how to deal with it rather than news stories about how outrageous it is. A good doctor will consider your coverage when they make a recommendation, so they'll try not to recommend something that you won't be able to pay for, but it doesn't always work out that way.

This is how it's been for a long time, and it won't change with the Affordable Care Act. The only difference is that private insurers are required to provide a certain level of coverage. So there'll be fewer surprises.

Speaking of that level of coverage, there's also this. One of the biggest features of the Affordable Care Act is the requirement that people with preexisting conditions can't be excluded.

Your other points are supposition. What I've seen so far are stories about how the health care exchange is cost-effective (once you can get past the technical glitches), and stories like this one. But these are just anecdotal. The Affordable Care Act is expected to save us money in the long run, but we won't know exactly how much for a while.

That gets very tricky. Clearly the press sucked in the lead up to Iraq. But the press sucks on many issues. We don't discount public opinion because the press was bad.

At the time of the Iraq war there most certainly were good quality counter cases being made and readably available. A person choosing to be informed would easily be exposed to the counter arguments. The evidence for the Intelligence tampering wasn't known prior to Iraq but it certainly was prior to Bush being reelected. For example from July of 2003: What I didn't find in Africa

The public was at least as well informed as they were on most issues. Absolutely there was disinformation as well, but I'm not sure how we can even talk about democratic consent if disinformation in the presence of correct information is seen as nullifying the validity of public opinion.

How are we, the U.S., different from East Germany?

Easy. The US is using its national intelligence agencies to obtain intelligence on terrorists trying to kill people.

Except when they entrap people who are too stupid to find their way to the bathroom and lead them by the hand into a Hollywood terrorist plot that they never would have come up with on their own. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/nyregion/16terror.html http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/dec/12/how-terrorist-entrapment-ensares-us-all

more than HALF of the country does not have health insurance,

I really hate to do this, because it always sounds dorky, but I'd like to know where you're getting that figure. Wikipedia says around 16%, which is much less than a half (and more like the remainder past a standard deviation). The NY Times gives about the same figure. Medicare covers another 16% or so, which is the other past-one-standard-deviation end of the curve, and the big lump in the middle (around 64%) has private insurance. If adults have a 16% non-insurance rate, children have an even lower rate of non-insurance, under 10%.

I'd contend that there is no crisis of the uninsured in America, but rather a demographic crisis, in which the elderly are living much longer (in no small part thanks to increasingly expensive medical care) and the younger generation is smaller, leading to a social affordability crisis for old age: the institutions set up to pay for old age (pensions, social security, medicare, private insurance) can't handle the output (payment) load with so little input. This is worsened by a zero-interest-rate environment that deprives those institutions of interest from bonds and a hyper-inflationary medical price environment (far above normal inflation rates and on par only with education prices). ACA seeks to prop up the support for a generation that will live far longer than their parents, at the expense of their children (who are being forced to sign up for insurance).

You're right that the insurance companies should shoulder some blame for the ACA; straight-up nationalization of the health-care industry would have been cheaper and more efficient in the long run than this bastardized not-quite-capitalist-but-not-quite-socialist hybrid, and the less southerly nations of Europe have made socialized medicine work well. But demographics are the elephant in the room, and the bankruptcies of municipalities by pension/healthcare costs is that elephant blowing his horn.

Something similar will have to happen with social security (and public pension plans too); it'll need some sort of prop before the decade is out, because it was designed with a retirement age higher than the mean life expectancy in the 30's but much lower than today's. Expect to see the retirement age raised and social security withholdings increased in line with European austerity programs. Or, confiscate private pension funds and make them part of social security (Poland just down that path).

What makes you think US-passed laws have anything to do with Antigua and Barbuda, a foreign nation with its own laws? US laws aren't being "overruled", they simply don't apply outside the US.

There are international organisations such as the WTO and WIPO that set trade rules that both these nations have each agreed to abide by. The US is free to lodge a dispute with them, but they might not get very far considering it was the US who violated those rules in the first place.

And of course, the US has no power to "shut down" the WTO. They can continue to ignore it and keep violating WTO rules where it suits them, but then more nations will do simply the same and follow in Antigua/Barbuda's footsteps.

If the US wants others to follow the rules and respect its copyrights, it will have to follow the rules itself.

There are more lines of code in Healthcare.gov (500m!) than Google Chrome, the Linux kernel, XP, Facebook, Mac OS, and the Debian 5 packages combined:

http://www.alexmarchant.com/blog/2013/10/22/healthcare-dot-gov-lines-of-code-comparison.html

Alexmarchant cites a NYT article in which the author wrote:
"According to one specialist, the Web site contains about 500 million lines of software code. By comparison, a large bank’s computer system is typically about one-fifth that size."

I, for one, find this claim difficult to believe, especially when the actual source cited is "one specialist" who remains nameless.