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Er, then why is that an overwhelming number of felons are Democrats?

Because the republicans like to make stupid ass laws that gets more americans convicted.

And if you are going to jail because of a law the republicans got passed, staying with there party is pretty stupid.

It's way too easy to get a "felon" status for the stupidess crimes these days.

And anyways, Republicans usually have their fellow republicans get them out of trouble.

Er, then why is that an overwhelming number of felons are Democrats?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/28/AR2008102803413.html

I think given that 2/3rd of Obama's campaign contributions came from opaque online fund raising, you can't really definitively say where he got his money from. There were more than a few cases (as pointed out in the article) where people circumvented campaign finance laws to donate more than the legally allowed amount. It's highly probable that corporations and PACs bypassed it as well.

You don't raise $750 million on the backs of old folks mailing in their $5 donation. That requires a corporate effort.

In any event, you are quibbling over minutia. The main point is, how in the hell can you trust the government to be a fair distributer of campaign money (given the distribution of the bailout funds which went overwhelmingly to Democratic districts, why wouldn't the same happen to campaign funds)? Or maybe that's your point...if government controls who gets a voice, and government is controlled by your people, we can usher in a Chavez-like polity of one party Democratic rule.

I don't know how long ago this letter was drafted, but in response Obama has already changed some of his plans for NASA: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/13/AR2010041304043.html

How about a slashdot story about that rather than old news?

Somewhat off-topic, but I'd like to note another first from this year's Pulitzers: Gene Weingarten became the only journalist in history to win the Pulitzer in feature writing twice. The award this year was for his piece Fatal Distraction, the previous for Pearls Before Breakfast. Both are very well done (obviously; they both won the Pulitzer), but in a completely different style each time.

Somewhat off-topic, but I'd like to note another first from this year's Pulitzers: Gene Weingarten became the only journalist in history to win the Pulitzer in feature writing twice. The award this year was for his piece Fatal Distraction, the previous for Pearls Before Breakfast. Both are very well done (obviously; they both won the Pulitzer), but in a completely different style each time.

And, according to studies, the red light cameras in Washington DC increase collisions.

From 1998-2004, total collisions in DC increased 61%. Intersections with red light cameras installed increased by 115%.

"Injury and fatal crashes climbed 81 percent, from 144 such wrecks to 262. Broadside crashes, also known as right-angle or T-bone collisions, rose 30 percent, from 81 to 106 during that time frame.
.
.
.
The results were similar or worse than figures at intersections that have traffic signals but no cameras. The number of overall crashes at those 1,520 locations increased 64 percent; injury and fatal crashes rose 54 percent; and broadside collisions rose 17 percent."

The EU ISPs aren't the first ones who suggested this.

To the ISPs who complain that Google turns you into a "dumb pipe:" Yes, that is the idea. That is the service that we, as consumers, buy from you. We would be quite happy if we could lease some relatively inexpensive, and very dumb pipe. Google doesn't pay you to ship their content, because *we pay you to allow us to fetch that content.* Last I checked, you made some decent money doing so. Stop treating our broadband connections as a revenue stream and start treating it as the service it once was.

I think much of the fear about this sort of thing is that it will be misused in the same way a fingerprint on a train in Spain were used to finger the wrong man (pardon the pun). It was a partial print, and was determined to be good enough to pass three "experts" at the FBI, and they dragged this guy's name through the mud, all to admit later that he was the wrong man. Imagine the same thing being done with this sort of info.

FBI: Hey, we have a hit on our SuperDuperTerroristCatchingProgram! They just looked for the same set of individually innocuous household items our program determined 86% of alleged terrorists look for before allegedly doing something bad!

FBI Supervisor: Well, we don't know how accurate this program is since we don't have the foggiest idea of how it works and haven't scientifically proven anything about, so let's go scoop him/her/them up and see what happens! Make sure to accuse them publicly of being a terrorist when you do it!

You've been in combat, I take it. You've been shot at. You speak from experience. You've also seen combat from a gunship.

I'm pretty sure that you've never seen combat, and you have little idea what you're talking about. You've swallowed the propaganda handed out along with the video, hook, line, and sinker.

Evidence? American troops were fired on, and the response was swift and deadly. That is as it should be. It's possible and quite likely that those people in the video actually are the ones who shot at Hotel 26.

Try reading this interview/discussion. Reuters admits that the reporter was embedded with an enemy unit. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2010/04/06/DI2010040600750.html The clueless, like yourself, don't even know that much.

I'd also add that you should not be able to "contribute" to more than one candidate in any given race, on the grounds that that's briberey plain and simple.

Where did the idea that money equals speech come from, anyway? Money is NOT speech. But like you say, good luck ever getting that implimented in our plutocratic pseudo-republic.

What do you consider acceptable political speech and what don't you? How do you make the distinction? If I have a means to promote a candidate (time, money, whatever), wouldn't restricting my means (in this context) constitute restricting my political speech?

Something else you seem to miss out on is that voting is bribery. You give something (a vote) in exchange for something (the candidate of your choice has a better chance of getting elected). Whether with short term or long term goals in mind, people do not naturally vote against their own perceived-best interest. Politicians know this and pander to their constituents, "bribing" citizens for their votes. Like it or hate it, it's how it the system is designed.

To quote George Will, "Politics in a democracy is transactional: Politicians seek votes by promising to do things for voters, who seek promises in exchange for their votes."

... it takes a moderate or right-wing news source to critically look at public education, the Unions and administration. Reason will look at it, so might the Atlantic but the New York Times sure isn't going to.

The Washington Post can be rather left leaning, but the education columnist, Jay Mathews, wrote a book on Jamie Escalante and often refers to his methods in his column. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/30/AR2010033003629.html?sid=ST2010033003904

Yes, no, for a while, all depending on exactly when you are talking about it seems.

Or maybe it's an admission that the NHTS doesn't have experience in embedded computer systems and grabbed some from elsewhere.

They don't:

NHTSA, meanwhile, was woefully unprepared to decide whether engine electronics might be at fault, Waxman and Stupak said. NHTSA officials told investigators that the agency doesn't employ any electrical engineers or software engineers.

"the angry tea partiers, with their brick throwing and insane murderous anger"

Cite please. I've driven by a couple "Tea Party" crowds and they tend to be fairly well behaved and orderly. A bit older as well. The DC stuff last week ("N word" and spitting) has been thoroughly debunked as a politically convenient lie by the congressmen involved.

The only brick throwing lately has been the opposite: GOP offices have had bricks through the windows (cite: Detroit Free Press) in the past couple of weeks, and one Republican Congressman's office was shot (Cantor, a Jewish GOP guy from VA had a death threat that was verified and resulted in an arrest yesterday). Also Harry Reid supporters were deliberately misdirecting people going to the Tea Party rally last week, and threatening a guy who was reporting and pelting the charter buses with eggs. If you like, search for Kenneth Gladney, a black man who was beaten by SEIU union thugs for supporting the Tea Party outside a rally.

If you go to the net, instead of the MSM or politically tilted blogs, you can see the preponderance of physical violence has primarily been on the statist or anarchist part.

They sued Apple a year ago with essentially the same complaint about the iPhone, iPod Touch, and MacBook.

A public policy, existing through the years, and derived from a profound knowledge of human characteristics and motives, has established a rule that demands of a corporate officer or director, peremptorily and inexorably, the most scrupulous observance of his duty, not only affirmatively to protect the interest of the corporation committed to his charge, but also to refrain from doing anything that would work injury to the corporation, or to deprive it of profit or advantage which his skill and ability might properly bring to it, or to enable it to make in the reasonable and lawful exercise of its powers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guth_v._Loft_Inc.

There's also Dodge v. Ford Motor Company, but Many say that it's not useful law anymore, but I think that's because the primacy of shareholder wealth maximization has been internalized into corporate law and culture. Shareholders sue corporations all the time for not maximizing shareholder value. There seem to be no doubts about the primacy of this practice in the journals:

This essay, "In Defense of the Shareholder Wealth Maximization Norm, appeared in the Symposium on New Directions in Corporate Law published in volume 50 of the Washington & Lee Law Review. This essay was written as a reply to an article in the same symposium by Professor Ronald M. Green - "Shareholders as Stakeholders: Changing Metaphors of Corporate Governance," 50 Wash. & Lee. L. Rev. 1409 (1993) - in which Professor Green criticized the dominant view of corporate governance, according to which directors have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder wealth. In sharp contrast, this essay argues that the principle of shareholder wealth maximization is both a valid positive account of corporate law and also a legitimate normative proposition.

link

Alas, I have no LexisNexis account.

Toyota shareholders sue over fallen stock price
Shareholders Sue the Pants Off Yahoo

Directors and officers are obligated to maximize shareholder value. Shareholder value is largely perceived as the current stock price. Current stock price is largely based on the latest quarterly profit report. I think arguments to the contrary are rather naive.

As I have pointed out many times, any nation can, at any time, withdraw from a treaty they are a part of.

Not if they want to remain members of the World Trade Organization

If any nation decided they wanted shorter limits they simply have to change any applicable national laws, then withdraw from the treaty.

That only affects works copyrighted in your own country. You still have to respect the whole life + 50 for every work produced abroad.

A nation could also just ignore the treaty as well. (Very few countries place treaty agreements higher than national laws like the US does. In most nations when a treaty is signed, it has no force of law until the member nation creates a set of national laws covering the agreement.)

And you can suffer penalties, like the US already did for violating the WTO agreements.

Yes, China has a bubble.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/10/AR2010031002636.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/25/AR2010032503777.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/business/global/05yuan.html

Yes, China has a bubble.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/10/AR2010031002636.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/25/AR2010032503777.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/business/global/05yuan.html

http://www.ap.org/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/
http://online.wsj.com/home-page
http://www.nytimes.com/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
http://www.cnn.com/
http://www.c-span.org/
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/
http://www.scientificamerican.com/

Need I go on?

China's instructions on reporting on Google
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"Even the poor are starting to turn against him."

citation?

"His attempt a couple of years ago to amend the constitution to allow him to run for president forever turned out to be an embarrassing failure."

Not true. He won the referendum on the second try.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/15/AR2009021500136_pf.html

When right-wing US friend Uribe in Columbia tries the same thing, there's complete silence about it in the western mainstream media.

Is Colombia's Uribe pulling a Chávez on term limits?
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2009/0902/p06s05-woam.html

Biran Krebs, the former "Security Fix" blogger for the Washington Post, recommended this approach back in October 2009: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/10/e-banking_on_a_locked_down_non.html

I'm sorry, but taking over the media, rewriting the constitution to remove term limits so he can stay in power indefinitely and possibly attempting to assassinate the democratically elected president of a neighboring country (see the first link) are not the actions of a democratic leader. Combined with the allegations of vote fraud and voter suppression in opposition neighborhoods, the man has crossed that line that divides "pompous but legitimate ruler" from "dictator in all but name."

Again with the obsession with term limits. What about Uribe? Is he a dictator too?

Thursday, 29 April, 2004 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3670385.stm
Colombia's main opposition Liberal Party says it will reject a bill aimed at giving President Alvaro Uribe the chance of four more years in power.
The party said it opposed changing the law to let Mr Uribe run again in 2006.

February 26, 2010 http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100227/ts_nm/us_colombia_uribe
BOGOTA (Reuters) – A court blocked Colombian President Alvaro Uribe on Friday from running for re-election, making his former defense minister the favorite to succeed the Washington ally in a May presidential election.

I've got no beef with socialism in general, but what Chavez is doing isn't socialism. I'm perpetually annoyed by socialism supporters like Sean Penn who defend Chavez, claiming he is not a dictator. I'm sorry, but taking over the media, rewriting the constitution to remove term limits so he can stay in power indefinitely and possibly attempting to assassinate the democratically elected president of a neighboring country (see the first link) are not the actions of a democratic leader. Combined with the allegations of vote fraud and voter suppression in opposition neighborhoods, the man has crossed that line that divides "pompous but legitimate ruler" from "dictator in all but name."

Chavez is the biggest coward the world has as a leader of a country. Ok, maybe there are others who are worse. I just cannot think of any in present time. Maybe Iran's jack#ss.

Since this is Slashdot, I'm assuming "our country" is the United States. If not, I apologize.

The only example which I found on a Google search was one from today, when Fidel Castro praised the new US Health care plan. I hardly would call that "praising the direction our country is heading" - are there any other examples. Everything else I found was generally negative.

I've got no beef with socialism in general, but what Chavez is doing isn't socialism. I'm perpetually annoyed by socialism supporters like Sean Penn who defend Chavez, claiming he is not a dictator. I'm sorry, but taking over the media, rewriting the constitution to remove term limits so he can stay in power indefinitely and possibly attempting to assassinate the democratically elected president of a neighboring country (see the first link) are not the actions of a democratic leader. Combined with the allegations of vote fraud and voter suppression in opposition neighborhoods, the man has crossed that line that divides "pompous but legitimate ruler" from "dictator in all but name."

1. vitriolic hatred is pretty much all of the tea party consists of,

Incorrect. It's frustration, not hatred. Frustration is the fruits of tolerance being pushed past its limits. Hatred is the fruit of intolerance. Democrats show hatred toward the tea party. The tea party shows frustration toward the Republicans and the Democrats. Republicans just haven't caught on to that yet.

I would say that these types of acts:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/24/AR2010032402122.html?hpid=topnews
have passed frustration and moved into hatred. Quotes:

"A propane gas line at the Charlottesville home of Rep. Tom Perriello's brother was severed Tuesday after a self-identified "tea party" activist posted what he believed to be the Virginia Democrat's address on a Web site..."
"Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), whose last-minute negotiations to bar federal funding of abortion helped secure the bill's passage, received a fax with a drawing of a noose and an anonymous voice mail saying: "You're dead. We know where you live. We'll get you." "

The protesters shouting the 'n word' at African American lawmakers have also crossed that line to me.

Huh...Revisionist history?
She was criticized for using personal yahoo email account to do state business.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2008/09/17/palins_yahoo_account_hacked.html

Here's a tool from the Washington Post which lets you put your current income & family situation in and get back exactly what impact the legislation will have on you: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/what-health-bill-means-for-you/

No-one gets a 200% increase in premiums, in fact for anyone with a low enough income to "barely afford it", the maximum premium you will pay will be capped by law, and you'll get tax credits to make up any difference as well as receiving subsidies to help with deductibles and co-pays.

The only way I can see your premiums rising by 200% next year is your employer has decided to reduce their contribution to your insurance (passing the cost directly to you) and is using the passage of this legislation as an excuse to do so, and is assuming you won't do the research to find out that the legislation has nothing to do with it. However, between now and when the relevant parts of the legislation actually take effect (much of the bill doesn't kick in until 2014) there's nothing to stop them screwing you over like this.

Actually, they're making new high risk pools, scheduled to be in effect in 90 days.

""Explain to me how the subsidies work. It’s tied to income. At 100 to 133 percent of poverty – some of those folks might be in the exchange rather than Medicaid – they will pay up to 2 percent of income. From 133 percent to 150 percent, they’ll pay 3-4 percent. At the upper reaches, at 300 percent to 400 percent of poverty, it goes up to 9.5 percent of income.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/03/ron_pollack_explains_how_the_b.html

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/03/ron_pollack_explains_how_the_b.html#comments

It's a well known fact, has been publicised all over the place, and it took me a good 30s of googling for you to find this; not the exact same numbers but the rough ballpark.

He puts the Medicare overhead at nearly 6%, but I disagree on one major point, citing that premiums collection is done through the IRS and trying to put a price on this collection. But the point is that the IRS is already doing that kind of things, and it's very likely that if it wasn't collecting Medicare premiums it would still be doing almost the same amount of work and costing the same while not providing that service.

And it agrees that private insurers are wasting up to 30% on administrative costs, on individual plans, and he notes that the larger the pool, the smaller the overhead. From there it logically follows that single payer has even smaller overhead, and that's what we see in Europe.

One point he makes is interesting: But none of those wags, I'd wager, would prefer the small-group market to the large-group market. Others have argued that the difference in administration is that private insurers do an excellent job ferreting out fraud. unless you believe that only holds true for small business insurers, there's no evidence for that claim.

"Medicare is already guaranteed to be unable to pay its obligations in just a short time and this bill guarantees it will run out of money even sooner."

.

That is not true. The bill actually extend's the expected life-span of Medicare by 9 years. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20000691-503544.html.

Come on, man, how naive are you? "The CBO also expects the bill to reduce the annual growth in Medicare expenditures by 1.4 percentage points per year, Democrats say, and extend Medicare's solvency by at least 9 years."

That's based on NO "doc fix", which drops Medicare's payments by 20%, which means doctors STOP taking Medicare payments. Of course they are going to pass the "doc fix", expanding costs. There will be *some* new money because the have added new Medicare taxes and payroll deductions, no way it will last 9 years, not when they are adding 3-6 million NEW medicaid people.

" It then takes that $500 billion and spends it on subsidies while claiming the $500 billion as debt reduction."

Also untrue. This is a tired claim that has been debunked again and again. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/03/paul_ryan_and_the_true_cost_of.html goes through this step by step.

"According to Ryan, there's about $124 billion in double-counted money in the bill. Assuming his math is correct (and no one I talked to said it wasn't), that's a fair critique. What isn't fair is to suggest that this is about the health-care bill. This is how the government does its accounting."

How is that a "debunking"? It's still an accounting trick that means they are hiding the costs.

.

That is not true. The bill actually extend's the expected life-span of Medicare by 9 years. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20000691-503544.html. " It then takes that $500 billion and spends it on subsidies while claiming the $500 billion as debt reduction."

Also untrue. This is a tired claim that has been debunked again and again. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/03/paul_ryan_and_the_true_cost_of.html goes through this step by step.

"This bill also offloads a bunch of the medical costs it claims to cover on the individual states without funding them. "

Also untrue. The "Cornhusker kickback" was extended to the other 49 states in the reconciliation bill. The federal government picks up pretty much all of the tab on the Medicaid expansion.

Human behavior is a product of many things, genetics, parenting, history, nutrition, community, environment, and others...

As I see it, you are asking, what do we do about psychopaths, and their lesser cousins, bullies?
"[p2p-research] The psychopath as peer?"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005499.html

As Jacque Fresco suggests in the following two videos, you can change the physical and social environment, and that will change a lot of human behavior in a healthier way, which is much better than passing laws:
http://www.youtube.com/user/jacquefresco#p/a/u/2/pbtbGcKiLiM
http://www.youtube.com/user/jacquefresco#p/a/u/1/PSbKfdOTRpY

And as you suggest, today's prisons in the USA create criminals. The USA has many times more people in prison than other industrialized countries,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States
in large part because the sentences are way longer (part of that is that the prison industry is profitable to many who lobby for harsher laws or prevent removing harsh laws). For example, in New York State:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/27/AR2009032702834.html
"Then in November, Democrats captured the state Senate for the first time in years. The State Assembly in the past had proposed repealing the drug laws, but the effort was always blocked by Senate Republicans, many of whom represent largely rural, Upstate districts where most of the state's prisons are located."
And consider what was recently discovered in Pennsylvania:
"Pennsylvania rocked by 'jailing kids for cash' scandal"
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/23/pennsylvania.corrupt.judges/index.html
Where else in the USA does this happen?

A basic income could remove much petty theft and physical crimes of mugging and armed robbery:
http://www.usbig.net/whatisbig.html
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html

Being non-violent does not mean being passive. We can actively work to create a better society that works for most everybody as an active process, especially in a democracy:
"Social Movements and Strategic Nonviolence"
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_nonviolence.html

The same as with terrorists, you may not be able to prevent individuals from planning to do harmful things, but what you can do is take away their social support network that enables them and provides cover for them to plan large scale harm. That goes for whether the terrorists are alienated fundamentalist extremists pursuing some radical cause, or ostensibly mainstream elected government officials invading other countries to remain in power and to create business opportunities for their friends.

Again, Voyage from Yesteryear is one picture of such an alternative society (even if it is not the only possible one).
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary

Because we live in such a schooled society, where most people have been broken and trained

Yahoo news reporting the new bill will save billions of dollars.

That's according to the preliminary findings of the Congressional Budget Office. Which was an okay source when it was reporting that the old bill would be more expensive.

Again, Fox can't seem to bear the weight of the truth.

this is not true. take a look at this http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/votes/house/finalhealthcare/?nav=rss_email/components If you sort by amount of contributions, you will see that health care industry spread its $$$ almost evenly between Dem and Rep. Also, you will see that amount of contributions from healthcare industry does not really correlate with Yes/No vote on HCR.

Dr.Dr. Larry M. Wortzel is president of Asia Strategies and Risks, LLC. He provides consulting services on defenses, security, political and economic issues related to China and East Asia. Wortzel has 37 years of experience assessing events and working in the Asia-Pacific region. He is the author of two books on China’s politics and military affairs. In addition, he has edited and contributed chapters to eight other books on China’s military forces. Wortzel has lectured in and contributed his expertise to newspapers, magazines and government officials in China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand. During a 32-year military career he served in China, South Korea, Singapore, and Thailand. Wortzel has been a strategist for the Pentagon and was director of the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. He was vice president for foreign policy and defense studies at The Heritage Foundation, a Washington, DC, think tank. He is a commissioner on the Congressionally-appointed US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

(from his webpage)

The guy is a member and servant of the circle of elites who profit, and enjoy enormous social success from their support of our militarized social and economic system. Pursuading a population of relatively free and relatively educated person to support an political system which can afford to spend $3 trillion dollars (washington post estimate) on an injust, unjustified terrorist war against an impoverished nation, against a dictator we incidentally empowered and supported through the worst of his crimes, and over the objections of its own citizenry, but quails at spending $1 trillion to ensure health care said citizens.

Wortzel enjoys a position of prestige and wealth for his support of the forces of that are destroying us, as do the reporters and editors of the New York Times for parading his observations without the criticism they deserve.

For anyone with a certain amount of research background, or even basic knowledge of network security and stability issues (in this case network in question is power network), the appropriate response to the paper would be analysis, and investigation and applicatoin of measures to improve the stability. The U.S. power grid has in recent years suffered from such cascading network failures several times in the last decade, and we Americans should be grateful that someone is investing the resources to investigate these issues. By publishing his results in a peer reviewed scientific journal, Mr. Wang has done us a service, and deserves our gratitude. Instead he's getting caught up in this policy wonk's latest search for enemies.

It's like saying that your microwave oven is broken because a can of tomato soup sitting on the counter isn't getting hot. You have to open the can of soup and put it in the microwave, and then turn the microwave on, before you can expect the soup to get hot.

There's a big, huge, massive difference between them. You have to put the can in the oven, then watch it explode. Teens on the other hand have to agree to abstinence, which most will not. Even those who sign an abstinence pledge don't keep the pledge. Studies support this:
Final Nail in the Coffin
"In the most recent study, researchers compared teens who had taken the virginity pledge to those who had not taken a pledge. The researchers found results similar to the aforementioned studies.'

"First, the rate of the teens taking part in sex was the same. Those taking the virginity pledge were just as likely to have intercourse. The only positive, statistically small, was that those taking the pledge had 0.1 fewer sex partners over the five year study than did those who did not take such a pledge. "

Here are more:

• Many Teens Who Take 'Virginity Pledges' Substitute Other High-Risk Behavior for Intercourse, Study Says.
• The Problem With Virginity Pledges"
  "...The problem is that even when these sex ed programs are effective in encouraging teens to remain virginal, "effective" may only mean that the programs have convinced teenagers to avoid vaginal intercourse. But vaginal intercourse is not the only sexual activity that can be hazardous to a person's physical and emotional health; oral and anal sex may not lead to pregnancy, but they can spread sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) such as gonorrhea, herpes, and HIV."
• Are virginity pledges effective?
  "Although they were once the sole province of religious organizations, many secular groups and schools now host events where students sign "virginity pledges" as a way to promote pre-marital abstinence. Today, virginity pledges are also part of most abstinence-only-until-marriage curricula and programs. Research has found that under certain conditions these pledges may help some adolescents delay sexual intercourse. When they work, pledges help this select group of adolescents delay the onset of sexual intercourse for an average of 18 months--far short of marriage. However, the studies also found that those young people who took a pledge were one-third less likely to use contraception when they did become sexually active than their peers who had not pledged. These teens are therefore more vulnerable to the risks of unprotected sexual activity such as unintended pregnancy and STDs, including HIV/AIDS. Further research found that, among those young people who have not had vaginal intercourse, pledgers are more likely to have engaged in both oral and anal sex than their non-pledging peers. In fact, among "virgins," male and female pledgers are six times more likely to have had oral sex than non-pledgers, and male pledgers are four times more likely to have had anal sex than those who had not pledged. And, the research has confirmed that, although some students who take pledges delay intercourse, ultimately they are equally as likely to contract an STD as their non-pledging peers. In fact, researchers found that the STD rates were higher in communities where a significant proportion (over 20%) of the young people had taken virginity pledges. Clearly, virginity pledges are not an effective strategy for keeping young people healthy."

There's plent

Uproar? true, some polls have shown widespread opposition to the current bill, but in many (most?) cases the polls don't distinguish the reason for the disapproval. one may oppose the bill because it goes to far, or because it doesn't go far enough. for example here is a poll (admitedly rather old at this point) showing 57% of Americans in favor of a public option.

I practice internal medicine near Los Angeles (http://drgagne.com). It's clear to any physician currently in practice that the health care system is broken and falling apart rapidly. If reform fails to pass, unless you work for a Fortune 500 firm, you will almost certainly lose your insurance within the next few years. Opponents of reform are using FUD to scare you, but almost all of their claims are lies. For example, there NEVER were any "death panels." Here are some great descriptions of what's in the bill and what's not: 1. Quick summary from the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/health-care-reconciliation/ 2. Nice graphic of how much it costs and why it lowers the deficit: http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-031910-sc_health_care_costs-g,0,6098627.graphic 3. Fabulous answers to "twenty questions" about what's REALLY in the bill: http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-oe-kmiecweb19-2010mar19,0,6451390.story ---Jim Gagne, MD---

I'll use your order :)

5. I guess I'd like to see more numbers on the actual $$$ that emergency rooms spend on the uninsured. I'm sure it's high, but if the argument is that they go because it's free then why don't we hear about all the Americans running to Canada for the free healthcare? Again, I think you have some valid concerns about illegal immigrants, perhaps a solution would be a co-op program between hospitals and INS. Seems like illegals would avoid hospitals if they thought they might be deported.

4. Okay see, that is the type of system I don't mind. Although, I am curious as to who is holding your $2000 for you. Because whoever is holding it is making a ton of money on the interest. My other concern with this type of system is that it encourages the "wait and see" mentality. People hold off on trips to the doctor because they want to save money. Maybe they get better on their own, but maybe they get worse. And then they find out they now need an expensive procedure that could have been solved cheaper and easier if they'd have caught it early. But I can see the appeal to this type of system.

2. I'm sure that a leg does net you more than a finger these days. But this goes back to the topic of the $30 aspirin, if you want this all nicely planned out with a $ amount for each item/procedure then someone has to be in charge of picking the pricing. It's a matter of who you want to do the pricing. The insurance company? the doctors? The patients? The government? The first 3 entities have a personal stake in the matter. The government does in the case of Medicare/Medicade and Veteran Health programs. So really unless we have some completely unbiased organization come in and set those levels, you will never get the 4 groups to agree.

Plus once you set those levels, you've eliminated the ability of the capitalist principles or supply and demand to dictate pricing. At that point, why not just implement a single payer system?

1. Well as I said, why would an insurance company continue to operate in a state that required they cover a long list of conditions when they can move to a state that doesn't? Perhaps after they moved they would then be forced to compete with each other on price, but the more likely scenario would be informal price setting. It would be like the gas stations in your town. They all charge the same price (usually within a 10 mile radius). When one changes prices, the others do as well. The best explanation I've seen of this can be found here: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/02/selling_insurance_across_state.html

Plus the current heath care reform proposal does a version of the "buy across state lines" via the health exchange. The difference is that it is a national standard. Which is good. That way the companies can't just offer the crap plan in the least regulated state only.

You also mention that each state has it's own insurance commission office. This, to me, is another reason for a nation system. Think of the cost savings in government spending if each state didn't need a full department just to deal with insurance regulations.

As such under the new plan you'll still be able to choose from a variety of plans, and in fact will have more choice since insurance companies will be able to sell across state lines.

With mandates for particular types of coverage to be included, it's still less choice than you have now. As for selling across state lines, I have no problem with that. Too bad most of you libs do, including the House leadership.

I've heard morons in your party call the tort-reform plans in the bill socialism too.

That's one of the most asinine assertions I've ever heard. The only people opposed to tort reform are the scumbag ambulance chasers who'd be put out of business by it. Here's a newsflash for you: they're mostly Democrats, which is why it's not in either of the bills under consideration.

Who the frak are you to make those sorts of decisions for me?

A responsible person who carries health insurance and foots the bill when people like you end up in the emergency room.

You must've missed the part where I said I paid my own bills at the urgent-care clinic (which, BTW, was not the local ER) and the pharmacy. Want to talk about responsibility again, asswipe? Doctors and pharmacists still take money directly from patients. It's apparently become rather uncommon, but they don't care too much how they get paid so long as they do get paid.

FWIW, I'm currently paying for PPO coverage arranged by my employer. It's my choice to do so. At this point, it's cheap enough to be a might-as-well type of purchase. Still, I have the choice to purchase it or not. Fascists like you would deny me that choice.

So yeah, I have no problem with you paying your bill at the end of the year if you choose not to carry health insurance. I either want socialism

Scratch a liberal, find a fascist. Here's a better idea: since you hate freedom so much and prefer big-nanny government, why don't you quit trying to ruin my country and go move somewhere else that you liberal fascists have already ruined?

Actually the Wallstreet bail out was signed into law by George W. Bush.

But I do agree that this health care reform bill is shady. If we wanted real reform, it would be NOT FOR PROFIT insurance. It would be a single payer government program where we all pay into... and all benefit from without the middle man (insurance company) in the middle with their excessive profit and administrative costs.

This bill is corporate welfare at its worst.

I dont trust either party. Both simply represent the corporations. The American citizen has no representation.

The health insurance industry spent 1.4 million dollars PER DAY on lobbying against reform. That is the kind of access corporations have. We the people do not have this access. There are two Americas.

The odd thing is... that 1.4 million per day... comes from our insurance payments. ITS OUR MONEY... and Instead of it being used to care for the sick... its being used to maintain the disgusting practices of the insurance industry... which now includes, spending 1.4 million a day while trying to enslave Americans for profit based on their sickness and desperation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/05/AR2009070502770.html

"Those problems included Boeing's use of inappropriate commercial software, designed for use by police dispatchers"

Well.. Except for the americans now and then, no. Not really.