Such distortions
on
Ender in Exile
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Honestly, I read his essay and his blog. He makes a very basic pro-marriage case and the only harsh words he has for anyone are reserved for the government:
'What these dictator-judges do not seem to understand is that their authority extends only as far as people choose to obey them.
How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.'
He says quite clearly, 'Seen in this context, we are fools if we think "gay marriage" is the first or even the worst threat to marriage.
We heterosexuals have put marriage in such a state that it's a wonder homosexuals would even aspire to call their unions by that name.'
He's quite clearly against adultery, "no-fault" divorce, child abandonment, and cavalier attitudes towards the welfare of children as it relates to marriage. You'd find the same moral reasoning on marriage form anyone in communion with the Vatican, while you'd find the same political reasoning on government abuses by replacing "marriage" with "net neutrality" or "BitTorrent" on a random message board. He says you ought to raise your kids, they deserve a mom and a dad who believe in their marriage, and the government can take a long walk off a short pier if it wants to force people's kids to go to school and indoctrinate them into a definition of "marriage" that he sees as positively Orwellian doublespeak.
That's not a "hateful," "extreme," or "wingnut" position, unless we've truly reached the cusp of newspeak.
Just out of curiosity, if more people moved out to places like that, where would they get the water that they need? That's kind of like asking, "If we let this many people live in Boston, where would they get the food that they need?"
Boston, Manhattan, and Los Angeles couldn't ever produce enough food in their surrounding lands to sustain their populations - so why don't they starve?
The same answer applies to the drier parts of the country - you bring in what you need from a place that runs a surplus. The U.S.A. does have a surplus of water. Heck, we let our reserves evaporate or dump out into the ocean. We've got desalinization technology to boot. There just isn't enough demand right now to make it profitable to build more extensive distribution networks.
Considering that the populations that are already there are having problems with water. "Having problems with water," out here in Arizona is somebody fretting over the water bill going up $1 on 3000 gallons. When we have a real water problem, people are standing by with the technology and the ambition necessary to improve distribution.
I'm sure Minnesota and Wisconsin would be happy to trade surplus water (useless) for surplus electricity once we start putting our uninhabitable desert to work hosting a Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactor.
Having land to stand on isn't the problem. The problem is resources. People need food, water, fuel, electricity, building materials, plastic and metal for their toys, etc. Water especially is a big issue. We're living on borrowed time and resources right now. To be fair, New York, Los Angeles, and Boston have been "living on borrowed time" in terms of resources for centuries now. Our oldest, largest settlements were built as ports - none of their surrounding areas can feed their population.
We're going to be increasingly relying on desalination in the future for our fresh water, and that's quite energy intensive. This drives our energy usage up even more. You know, nature has been engaging in desalinization for a long, long time in the water cycle. We're running a water surplus in the U.S.A., but we don't pay much attention to the distribution methods. Heck, we let our water reserves evaporate regularly. Storage and distribution will finally get some attention when demand makes it cost effective to build new conservation methods.
Right now there just isn't any profit to be had moving constant water surpluses from the Midwest out to places like Arizona. Yet I still down the street from at least 4 farms here in a City District of Phoenix, AZ.
Once our fossil fuels run low, where do we get the energy? We're going to have to seriously expand nuclear and renewables to cope. I agree completely there. Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactors and Nuclear Fuel Recycling should have been implemented years and years ago. We've got some great prospects out here in Arizona and Nevada and New Mexico to provide enough electricity to provide more than enough energy to power the whole country. We just can't build squat because of legislation passed under the old "Nuclear Fission the Enemy of the Earth!" mantra of Green Peace types.
Empty desert doesn't do much to solve these problems. No land or resource solves problems on its own. If people were allowed to turn that empty desert into solar and nuclear energy plants, however, we'd be much better off than we are now.
The actual "global population" is a big number that people wave around for dramatic effect. It is so far divorced from the realities at hand that it's a joke.
"Over population" is relative to the boundaries constraining that population. If the global population drops but the population of China continues to increase then the burden of "over population" in China continues to escalate. Of course, there isn't an "over population" problem in China proper - there is a problem with Population Density near the cities the Chinese Military Dictatorship cares about.
It reminds me of how dedicated coastal city-dwelling folks complain about urban sprawl and population control from their high-rises and college dorms in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles. Take a trip out to New Mexico or Arizona some time. Visit Wyoming. There isn't a lack of land - you just can't to be away from your precious urban island. The idea of lacking having a neighborhood Starbucks, of not being able to slip down to the bistro and meet with your vegan friends to complain about the soulless carnivores, of maybe needing to own a gun - these things are so unthinkable to some.
We've got room in the U.S.A. folks - no need for the current generations to go all "0 population growth" fanatic on us. That negative reproductive rate isn't helping Europe either - they are just importing more immigrants and more unsustainable reproduction in the exporting nations fills the gap. Meanwhile, they are having serious problems assimilating their immigrant population and in some ugly cases (Londonistan, some suburbs of Paris) losing their domestic tranquility and culture in unprecedented fashion.
You are correct to that extent... it is volunteer. But if anything, that puts things in an even worse light, doesn't it? Not unless you've got a poorly pre-conceived notion as to the work our servicemen and servicewomen have been doing in Afghanistan and Iraq. Our reenlistment rates for units deployed to Iraq out-pace many of our units at home and in less active foreign posts. When asked "Why?" the most common answers involve a desire to complete the mission and to help the Iraqis achieve safety and freedom in their own homes.
There are a heck of a lot easier ways to make a pay-check, but few that present such an opportunity to make a positive difference in the lives of so many people. The personal sacrifices our soldiers have made from adoptions to risking life and limb outside their regular duties show an amazing amount of empathy for regular people in Iraq.
Read some of the field reports from Michael Yon or Michael Totten some time.
So, if you insist, fine. But that turns our patriotic, good old boys (and girls) in green, ready to give their lives for their country, into an unpatriotic, underpaid commercial police force, dedicated to giving their lives if necessary for a meager paycheck. The only thing that does that is an irrational bias to reject any possibility (let alone factual evidence) that the work that coalition soldiers are currently doing in Iraq could be to the benefit of the Iraqi people as well as the U.S.A..
The overwhelming majority of our soldiers aren't monsters, they aren't victims, and they aren't mercenaries - except in the minds of some truly unfortunate individuals.
Our military is 100% volunteer. Our soldiers are adults, capable of making their own decisions - not "children," conscripts, or helpless victims being chewed up by "the war machine."
By the by, John McCain has kids in the Armed Services - some of whom have gone to the action in the Middle East. He just doesn't wave them around like trophies for his political ambitions.
Their decision to serve, to give of themselves in helping their fellow Americans and their fellow human beings in Iraq and Afghanistan speaks to THEIR credit and their courage - not necessarily John McCain's character.
It really doesn't matter that John McCain dumped his wife (who waited for him the whole time he was a POW) for a newer model. John McCain's entire personal life was basically annihilated by being imprisoned by the Communist North Korean Military Dictatorship and extensively tortured over the course of years. The man gets released and attempts to recover himself and reintroduce himself to society. His marriage didn't survive it. Not even his ex-wife holds that against him.
Trying to pass that off as "guy dumps faithful wife for younger model [because he's a shallow, lustful jerk]," robs your argument of credibility.
The only clause we need to apply to them is the BOOT.
Unless, of course, you're saying that these people (mostly eligible to vote in free elections in Mexico) have some inalienable right to cut in line ahead of those poor unfortunate souls playing by the rules while trying to escape genocide in Dafur or totalitarianism in China.
Legal immigration = Good
Criminal border-crossings and lawless subcultures = Bad
However, the historical observation of the two most prominent styles of healthcare systems is: healthcare in the US (and other private countries) has a higher cost inflation than healthcare in countries with nationalized systems. At the same time, the US has a lower life expectancy and a higher rate of preventable deaths. You'll be hard-pressed to find honest statistical analysis that justifies your position, I'm afraid.
There are some points people usually overlook when trying to make this argument:
1.) One of the leading causes of cost-inflation in health care is Liability. Lawyers carry away insane amounts of funds otherwise allocated to health care in the United States. They engage in frivolous tort claims for profit under a "throw enough stuff at the wall and something will stick" approach to business. This increases the cost of liability insurance for hospitals and doctors. They also take an approach of suing for inadequate services. If a person dies without receiving the most expensive, bleeding-edge drugs, tests, and procedures some lawyer, somewhere will come looking for a pay-day. This means US hospitals and doctors incur much higher costs for capital expenditures and patients are not really free to request more affordable drugs, treatments, or procedures.
2.) Culture is a private decision that has a lot to do with health
- Some cultures eat traditional foods that are much better for long-term health than Americans do. We eat diets based on agricultural and industrial caloric needs but we work sedentary service-based jobs. That's a health hazard - but it is also a personal decision. The State can't fix that without violating personal liberty, yet that's EXACTLY what some nations with National Socialist Health care have gravitated towards doing to control costs.
3.) The USA is a Union of States
- National Health Care is an anathema to our Federal system. There is no reason Massachusetts needs to have the same health care as Texas. Competition between states is integral to preserving the Public Interest. Of course, the Federal Tax Incentives for Employer Health Insurance runs afoul of this basic principle.
4.) Subsidies and Rationing obscure statistics
- Ever tried to get an MRI in Canada in the last 3 years? Want to get a tooth pulled in the U.K.? Meanwhile, you have countries that put forth the illusion of "free" or "cheap" health care. When doesn't come out of your pocket at the counter comes out of someone's pocket when the tax man comes to call. In most cases, it comes from the U.S. tax-payer (even if you happen to be getting your drugs from Canada).
- Oh, we're also providing health care for roughly 1-in-10 persons born in Mexico at the moment.
- We're also one of the leading donors (mostly in private funds) purchasing health care services for people suffering in Africa and Asia.
- On top of that, if someone wants to spend their personal fortune trying to buy another week of hospice life at the end of an incurable illness, they are welcome to do so in the USA. Someone will take your money. Extraordinary life-extension treatments contribute to our health care spending to the tune of hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars per incident without increasing our quality of care in any meaningful way.
How is paying more to die younger after a less capable life not an infringement on liberty? How is that not economic damage? How is that not human misery? Socialism fails to grasp something basic about Liberty - it includes the freedom to make bad choices and suffer their consequences.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;
And if you read the document in any sort of historical or legal context, you'll find it very clear that the "general Welfare of the United States," refers to exactly that - the general welfare of the union of states - not the specific welfare of individual citizens and residents of those states. The fortunes of those people are provided for under the rights reserved in the 9th Amendment - rights reserved to the Individual Citizens and States.
Specifically, almost every instance of National Socialism implemented by the Federal Government (don't confuse it with the State or Local governments) has been back-doored into Constitutionality by means of the 10th Amendment by arguing that just about everything that goes on in the United States is a matter of Interstate Commerce - a terrible precedent set during FDR's failed attempts to Nationalize the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression. He took it so far as to attempt to add seats to the Supreme Court to overturn rulings against his obviously Unconstitutional abuses.
If you want someone to eat, give them good. If you want someone to prosper, give them education and familial support. If you want to build something great, collaborate with like-minded individuals. If you need government support for an initiative, try working at the Local or State level as appropriate. If your proposal is rejected by the democratic process then try, try again. Do not attempt to circumvent Democracy with abuses of Federalism or the Judiciary (also known as "slot machine" social control - eventually some jury or bureaucracy will pay out).
Stop giving exclusive tax incentives for insurance to Employers.
Give the full capacity to purchase medical insurance to the Citizens - not the businesses.
Right now, even if you entered an identical pool of insured individuals, you'd have to pay through the nose compared to what you would through your employer with the same pool. That's because businesses get tax incentives for providing insurance to employees while private citizens trying to purchase insurance themselves (even in groups) have access to an over-priced, second-class market.
That's completely unacceptable.
Private citizens have formed groups that purchase Life Insurance at reasonable prices for over a hundred years in this country - even in hostile environments. Look at the Knights of Columbus Life Insurance program some time. Health Insurance should have the same competitive market, but it does not. Prices are higher and choices poorer due to Government Interference in the first place. More Government Interference isn't going to fix it. It will just give bureaucrats, lawyers, and politicians more power over the citizenry and give incumbent hacks something to trumpet as "evidence" that they "feel your pain."
For the poorest Americans, school lunches are the only real meal they get. So they get five squares a week. We should make sure they don't count. You fail to provide any sort of rational argument as to why this is a Federal matter. Frankly, you'd be hard pressed to make a compelling argument as to why this is a State matter either. Maybe, just maybe, you could argue that it is a matter left to Counties and Municipalities, but you'd still be hard-pressed to explain why it isn't the responsibility of individual School Districts, Schools, or even (heaven forbid) Parents.
Providing adequate nutrition to your children is one of the most fundamental obligations of parenthood. Failure to do so is evidence of someone being an unfit parent - not evidence that there is a need to rob law-abiding neighbors to subsidize unfit parents.
If you want to remove children from the home of parents who can't feed them to protect the individual rights of the child or if you want to argue that there is a Public Interest in providing education and training to struggling parents you might be able to make a case.
But just saying that you need to take tax-payer money and buy school lunches with it to sooth your conscience by having the Government perform your charity for you in abstentia isn't going to cut it.
Then again, the most expensive healthcare in the world is also the country where the government doesn't pay for it. Government paid healthcare is not perfect, and it's not a panacea, but it certainly seems to do a better job than privately funded healthcare does, and does so for less money. Which I think means that it lowers the cost? Rationing and price controls lower at-the-counter dollar costs. They also increase costs measured in human misery, deprivation of liberty, and economic damage. National Socialism is a parasite - an anti-growth, anti-liberty system that is self-destructive - sustaining itself by preying upon other nations and lowering the overall standard of living for the citizenry in the medium and long terms.
"1) More mercury enters the environment through the burning of fossil fuel to generate electricty than is contained in a CFL."
"Entering the environment," is not the issue. Even without any burning of Coal (no, not just ANY fossil fuel contains significant levels of Mercury) you have Mercury in the environment. The issue is whether or not the CONCENTRATION of Mercury around HUMANS is unhealthy. When you break a CFL in your home it requires immediate clean-up as it released threatening levels of Mercury DUST into the room.
While you can probably mop with disposable paper towel on solid surfaces (tile, hardwood, etc), if you get it into carpet (the most popular form of flooring in rooms containing lamps) you are hosed. You've basically got to cut up that piece of carpet and replace it unless you want to hire an expensive cleaning service that is insured to handle such materials.
"2) An old mercury thermometer has up to 100 times the mercury as a CFL."
Yes, but it wasn't DUST that you can INHALE. Liquid mercury is also dangerous, but you don't accidentally inhale the stuff by walking around in a room where a thermometer was broken.
Let's face it, CFL's are just a bad (and toxic) product whose producers are trying to leverage government regulation and consumer gullibility to gain artificial market penetration before LED lighting gets to a point where their window of opportunity is closed. It is just big-business profiteering with a green veneer.
Let's tackle this point-by-point, shall we?
> 1) More mercury enters the environment through the burning of fossil fuel to generate electricty than is contained in a CFL. 2) An old mercury thermometer has up to 100 times the mercury as a CFL.
Yes, but it wasn't DUST that you can INHALE. Liquid mercury is also dangerous, but you don't accidentally inhale the stuff by walking around in a room where a thermometer was broken.
Let's face it, CFL's are just a bad (and toxic) product whose producers are trying to leverage government regulation and consumer gullibility to gain artificial market penetration before LED lighting gets to a point where their window of opportunity is closed. It is just big-business profiteering with a green veneer.
It is a pity you ignored the entirety of the post you replied to.
The assertion that because there are only 125 soldiers killed you can not have more than 125 people who are killers of those soldiers is false. Period.
Whether particular individuals or groups of individuals have actually killed people is distinct matter of facts to which I am not speaking. I merely take issue with the flawed logic presented in one particular assertion - nothing more and nothing less.
It doesn't really matter what the student's opinion of the teacher's instruction was.
The teacher is a contracted agent of the school to whom the hardware and software belongs.
The student has no right to refuse to comply with an instruction to cease operating the school's computer system. It doesn't belong to him.
He or she can certainly lodge a complaint with the administration if he feels that running the software in question is normally permitted by the school's use policy. It may be that the teacher was in the wrong. It may be that the schools systems only allow the SysAdmin to add executables to the system images and FireFox was not supposed to be part of that system - for whatever reason. It is certain, however, that the student deserved detention.
While I won't speak to the validity of your core claim, I want to point out a fundamental flaw in your attempt at logical proof:
"Killing a U.S. Soldier" does not get credited like "making a sack" in football. When a two-man team makes a kill they aren't each "credited" with "having killed half-a-person." When a gang of 3 hoodlums all brutally beat and stomp a victim to death, they can all justly be convicted of murder and punished as severely as it they'd committed the murder independently. If a team of Jordanians with AK-47s manage to kill 1 member of a squad deployed in Iraq before 6 of them are captured at the conclusion of a fire-fight, then you've got 6 prisoners on your hands who would be accurately described as "having a killed a U.S. Soldier" while you only have 1 dead U.S. Soldier. Similarly, a team that assembles and deploys a road-side bomb can give you a 1-to-many relationship of casualty-to-killer.
So the claim that you can't have 250+ prisoners who "have killed a U.S. Soldier" when you only have 125 KIAs is simply untrue.
An often-overlooked core issue is that some current reckless methods of IFV are already unethical - creating a surplus of viable humans with that knowledge that a significant population will be destroyed / discarded. These sorts of IFV treatments are already treating human lives as if they were a commodity - just a resource to be bought and sold. The use of "surplus" embryos in stem-cell research just opens up an additional market and creates a supply chain - generating more revenue from the creation and destruction of human lives. It offends the very notion of "human dignity," espoused by religious and non-religious alike.
The path to meet market demands for test-subject embryos should certainly be barred on ethical grounds, and on the same grounds that source of the market supply should be shut down as well. There are plenty of alternative paths that don't require creating so many "surplus" embryos - even if they do cost more time and money to perform.
That's why you only focus on killing the effective terrorists - the ones who are akin to the vital organs of the body. It takes a long time to get a good communications coordinator, logistics man, or operations manager up to speed. Sure, the ranting loons that claim to be "Spiritual Leaders" can be replaced at the drop of a hat - they aren't the biological "head" of the beast, so to speak - but not the folks that manage group infrastructure (who are akin to the eyes, ears, and lungs of the monster).
Yeah, I hate it when those damn Ambulances, Fire Engines, and Police Cruisers just tear through the neighborhood with their sirens blaring and those damn lights flashing. Where do they get off driving ninety miles an hour, ignoring stop signs, refusing to yield the right of way, and cutting off pedestrian traffic?
How dare they! I mean, it isn't like anyone's life is on the line, right?
Is it really that different tax-and-spend policy?
on
eBay The Vote
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· Score: 1
Paying someone cash up front is totally wrong, but feeding people thinly-veiled kick-backs after the election with tax-payer dollars perfectly acceptable?
Seriously, they are both vote-buying scams of the highest order. The difference is that buying votes with pre-election funds means spending privately owned money, while buying votes with post-election funds means you get to rob Peter to pay Paul via "appropriations."
Remember, "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury." - Alexander Tytler
It doesn't always pan out, but the English translations tend to be very rough compared to say, Spanish or Italian.
The King James Version set a rough precedent which even impacted Catholic translations into English. The KJV did a great job with poetics, but a poor job with linguistic accuracy. Frankly, the small committee that worked on it weren't exactly the world's leading authority on the source material languages like Hebrew. Considering the antagonism between the Church of England and the Holy See at the time, it wasn't like they were going to stoop to consulting "Papists" - even if they did have much better translation resources.
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly, I read his essay and his blog. He makes a very basic pro-marriage case and the only harsh words he has for anyone are reserved for the government:
'What these dictator-judges do not seem to understand is that their authority extends only as far as people choose to obey them.
How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.'
He says quite clearly, 'Seen in this context, we are fools if we think "gay marriage" is the first or even the worst threat to marriage.
We heterosexuals have put marriage in such a state that it's a wonder homosexuals would even aspire to call their unions by that name.'
He's quite clearly against adultery, "no-fault" divorce, child abandonment, and cavalier attitudes towards the welfare of children as it relates to marriage. You'd find the same moral reasoning on marriage form anyone in communion with the Vatican, while you'd find the same political reasoning on government abuses by replacing "marriage" with "net neutrality" or "BitTorrent" on a random message board. He says you ought to raise your kids, they deserve a mom and a dad who believe in their marriage, and the government can take a long walk off a short pier if it wants to force people's kids to go to school and indoctrinate them into a definition of "marriage" that he sees as positively Orwellian doublespeak.
That's not a "hateful," "extreme," or "wingnut" position, unless we've truly reached the cusp of newspeak.
Boston, Manhattan, and Los Angeles couldn't ever produce enough food in their surrounding lands to sustain their populations - so why don't they starve?
The same answer applies to the drier parts of the country - you bring in what you need from a place that runs a surplus. The U.S.A. does have a surplus of water. Heck, we let our reserves evaporate or dump out into the ocean. We've got desalinization technology to boot. There just isn't enough demand right now to make it profitable to build more extensive distribution networks. Considering that the populations that are already there are having problems with water. "Having problems with water," out here in Arizona is somebody fretting over the water bill going up $1 on 3000 gallons. When we have a real water problem, people are standing by with the technology and the ambition necessary to improve distribution. I'm sure Minnesota and Wisconsin would be happy to trade surplus water (useless) for surplus electricity once we start putting our uninhabitable desert to work hosting a Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactor.
I'm not really worried about this number.
The actual "global population" is a big number that people wave around for dramatic effect. It is so far divorced from the realities at hand that it's a joke.
"Over population" is relative to the boundaries constraining that population. If the global population drops but the population of China continues to increase then the burden of "over population" in China continues to escalate. Of course, there isn't an "over population" problem in China proper - there is a problem with Population Density near the cities the Chinese Military Dictatorship cares about.
It reminds me of how dedicated coastal city-dwelling folks complain about urban sprawl and population control from their high-rises and college dorms in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles. Take a trip out to New Mexico or Arizona some time. Visit Wyoming. There isn't a lack of land - you just can't to be away from your precious urban island. The idea of lacking having a neighborhood Starbucks, of not being able to slip down to the bistro and meet with your vegan friends to complain about the soulless carnivores, of maybe needing to own a gun - these things are so unthinkable to some.
We've got room in the U.S.A. folks - no need for the current generations to go all "0 population growth" fanatic on us. That negative reproductive rate isn't helping Europe either - they are just importing more immigrants and more unsustainable reproduction in the exporting nations fills the gap. Meanwhile, they are having serious problems assimilating their immigrant population and in some ugly cases (Londonistan, some suburbs of Paris) losing their domestic tranquility and culture in unprecedented fashion.
What a total pile of 1960's hold-over horse shit.
Our military is 100% volunteer. Our soldiers are adults, capable of making their own decisions - not "children," conscripts, or helpless victims being chewed up by "the war machine."
By the by, John McCain has kids in the Armed Services - some of whom have gone to the action in the Middle East. He just doesn't wave them around like trophies for his political ambitions.
Their decision to serve, to give of themselves in helping their fellow Americans and their fellow human beings in Iraq and Afghanistan speaks to THEIR credit and their courage - not necessarily John McCain's character.
Yeah, trying to juggle two articles - one of modern North Korea and one on Vietnam from 30 years ago is a breeding ground for terrible typos.
The only clause we need to apply to them is the BOOT.
Unless, of course, you're saying that these people (mostly eligible to vote in free elections in Mexico) have some inalienable right to cut in line ahead of those poor unfortunate souls playing by the rules while trying to escape genocide in Dafur or totalitarianism in China.
Legal immigration = Good
Criminal border-crossings and lawless subcultures = Bad
There are some points people usually overlook when trying to make this argument:
1.) One of the leading causes of cost-inflation in health care is Liability. Lawyers carry away insane amounts of funds otherwise allocated to health care in the United States. They engage in frivolous tort claims for profit under a "throw enough stuff at the wall and something will stick" approach to business. This increases the cost of liability insurance for hospitals and doctors. They also take an approach of suing for inadequate services. If a person dies without receiving the most expensive, bleeding-edge drugs, tests, and procedures some lawyer, somewhere will come looking for a pay-day. This means US hospitals and doctors incur much higher costs for capital expenditures and patients are not really free to request more affordable drugs, treatments, or procedures.
2.) Culture is a private decision that has a lot to do with health
- Some cultures eat traditional foods that are much better for long-term health than Americans do. We eat diets based on agricultural and industrial caloric needs but we work sedentary service-based jobs. That's a health hazard - but it is also a personal decision. The State can't fix that without violating personal liberty, yet that's EXACTLY what some nations with National Socialist Health care have gravitated towards doing to control costs.
3.) The USA is a Union of States
- National Health Care is an anathema to our Federal system. There is no reason Massachusetts needs to have the same health care as Texas. Competition between states is integral to preserving the Public Interest. Of course, the Federal Tax Incentives for Employer Health Insurance runs afoul of this basic principle.
4.) Subsidies and Rationing obscure statistics
- Ever tried to get an MRI in Canada in the last 3 years? Want to get a tooth pulled in the U.K.? Meanwhile, you have countries that put forth the illusion of "free" or "cheap" health care. When doesn't come out of your pocket at the counter comes out of someone's pocket when the tax man comes to call. In most cases, it comes from the U.S. tax-payer (even if you happen to be getting your drugs from Canada).
- Oh, we're also providing health care for roughly 1-in-10 persons born in Mexico at the moment.
- We're also one of the leading donors (mostly in private funds) purchasing health care services for people suffering in Africa and Asia.
- On top of that, if someone wants to spend their personal fortune trying to buy another week of hospice life at the end of an incurable illness, they are welcome to do so in the USA. Someone will take your money. Extraordinary life-extension treatments contribute to our health care spending to the tune of hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars per incident without increasing our quality of care in any meaningful way. How is paying more to die younger after a less capable life not an infringement on liberty? How is that not economic damage? How is that not human misery? Socialism fails to grasp something basic about Liberty - it includes the freedom to make bad choices and suffer their consequences.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;
And if you read the document in any sort of historical or legal context, you'll find it very clear that the "general Welfare of the United States," refers to exactly that - the general welfare of the union of states - not the specific welfare of individual citizens and residents of those states. The fortunes of those people are provided for under the rights reserved in the 9th Amendment - rights reserved to the Individual Citizens and States.Specifically, almost every instance of National Socialism implemented by the Federal Government (don't confuse it with the State or Local governments) has been back-doored into Constitutionality by means of the 10th Amendment by arguing that just about everything that goes on in the United States is a matter of Interstate Commerce - a terrible precedent set during FDR's failed attempts to Nationalize the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression. He took it so far as to attempt to add seats to the Supreme Court to overturn rulings against his obviously Unconstitutional abuses.
If you want someone to eat, give them good. If you want someone to prosper, give them education and familial support. If you want to build something great, collaborate with like-minded individuals. If you need government support for an initiative, try working at the Local or State level as appropriate. If your proposal is rejected by the democratic process then try, try again. Do not attempt to circumvent Democracy with abuses of Federalism or the Judiciary (also known as "slot machine" social control - eventually some jury or bureaucracy will pay out).
Stop giving exclusive tax incentives for insurance to Employers.
Give the full capacity to purchase medical insurance to the Citizens - not the businesses.
Right now, even if you entered an identical pool of insured individuals, you'd have to pay through the nose compared to what you would through your employer with the same pool. That's because businesses get tax incentives for providing insurance to employees while private citizens trying to purchase insurance themselves (even in groups) have access to an over-priced, second-class market.
That's completely unacceptable.
Private citizens have formed groups that purchase Life Insurance at reasonable prices for over a hundred years in this country - even in hostile environments. Look at the Knights of Columbus Life Insurance program some time. Health Insurance should have the same competitive market, but it does not. Prices are higher and choices poorer due to Government Interference in the first place. More Government Interference isn't going to fix it. It will just give bureaucrats, lawyers, and politicians more power over the citizenry and give incumbent hacks something to trumpet as "evidence" that they "feel your pain."
Providing adequate nutrition to your children is one of the most fundamental obligations of parenthood. Failure to do so is evidence of someone being an unfit parent - not evidence that there is a need to rob law-abiding neighbors to subsidize unfit parents.
If you want to remove children from the home of parents who can't feed them to protect the individual rights of the child or if you want to argue that there is a Public Interest in providing education and training to struggling parents you might be able to make a case.
But just saying that you need to take tax-payer money and buy school lunches with it to sooth your conscience by having the Government perform your charity for you in abstentia isn't going to cut it. Then again, the most expensive healthcare in the world is also the country where the government doesn't pay for it. Government paid healthcare is not perfect, and it's not a panacea, but it certainly seems to do a better job than privately funded healthcare does, and does so for less money. Which I think means that it lowers the cost? Rationing and price controls lower at-the-counter dollar costs. They also increase costs measured in human misery, deprivation of liberty, and economic damage. National Socialism is a parasite - an anti-growth, anti-liberty system that is self-destructive - sustaining itself by preying upon other nations and lowering the overall standard of living for the citizenry in the medium and long terms.
Richard Garfield was the original Game Designer.
Wizards of the Coast, then run by Peter Adkinson, published the commercial game product.
Peter Adkison owns GenCon.
Hasbro owns Dungeons & Dragons.
Hasbro bought Peter Adkison out of Wizards of the Coast (who owned D&D) over half a decade ago.
Let's tackle this point-by-point, shall we?
"1) More mercury enters the environment through the burning of fossil fuel to generate electricty than is contained in a CFL."
"Entering the environment," is not the issue. Even without any burning of Coal (no, not just ANY fossil fuel contains significant levels of Mercury) you have Mercury in the environment. The issue is whether or not the CONCENTRATION of Mercury around HUMANS is unhealthy. When you break a CFL in your home it requires immediate clean-up as it released threatening levels of Mercury DUST into the room.
While you can probably mop with disposable paper towel on solid surfaces (tile, hardwood, etc), if you get it into carpet (the most popular form of flooring in rooms containing lamps) you are hosed. You've basically got to cut up that piece of carpet and replace it unless you want to hire an expensive cleaning service that is insured to handle such materials.
"2) An old mercury thermometer has up to 100 times the mercury as a CFL."
Yes, but it wasn't DUST that you can INHALE. Liquid mercury is also dangerous, but you don't accidentally inhale the stuff by walking around in a room where a thermometer was broken.
Let's face it, CFL's are just a bad (and toxic) product whose producers are trying to leverage government regulation and consumer gullibility to gain artificial market penetration before LED lighting gets to a point where their window of opportunity is closed. It is just big-business profiteering with a green veneer.
Let's tackle this point-by-point, shall we? > 1) More mercury enters the environment through the burning of fossil fuel to generate electricty than is contained in a CFL. 2) An old mercury thermometer has up to 100 times the mercury as a CFL. Yes, but it wasn't DUST that you can INHALE. Liquid mercury is also dangerous, but you don't accidentally inhale the stuff by walking around in a room where a thermometer was broken. Let's face it, CFL's are just a bad (and toxic) product whose producers are trying to leverage government regulation and consumer gullibility to gain artificial market penetration before LED lighting gets to a point where their window of opportunity is closed. It is just big-business profiteering with a green veneer.
It is a pity you ignored the entirety of the post you replied to.
The assertion that because there are only 125 soldiers killed you can not have more than 125 people who are killers of those soldiers is false. Period.
Whether particular individuals or groups of individuals have actually killed people is distinct matter of facts to which I am not speaking. I merely take issue with the flawed logic presented in one particular assertion - nothing more and nothing less.
It doesn't really matter what the student's opinion of the teacher's instruction was.
The teacher is a contracted agent of the school to whom the hardware and software belongs.
The student has no right to refuse to comply with an instruction to cease operating the school's computer system. It doesn't belong to him.
He or she can certainly lodge a complaint with the administration if he feels that running the software in question is normally permitted by the school's use policy. It may be that the teacher was in the wrong. It may be that the schools systems only allow the SysAdmin to add executables to the system images and FireFox was not supposed to be part of that system - for whatever reason. It is certain, however, that the student deserved detention.
While I won't speak to the validity of your core claim, I want to point out a fundamental flaw in your attempt at logical proof:
"Killing a U.S. Soldier" does not get credited like "making a sack" in football. When a two-man team makes a kill they aren't each "credited" with "having killed half-a-person." When a gang of 3 hoodlums all brutally beat and stomp a victim to death, they can all justly be convicted of murder and punished as severely as it they'd committed the murder independently. If a team of Jordanians with AK-47s manage to kill 1 member of a squad deployed in Iraq before 6 of them are captured at the conclusion of a fire-fight, then you've got 6 prisoners on your hands who would be accurately described as "having a killed a U.S. Soldier" while you only have 1 dead U.S. Soldier. Similarly, a team that assembles and deploys a road-side bomb can give you a 1-to-many relationship of casualty-to-killer.
So the claim that you can't have 250+ prisoners who "have killed a U.S. Soldier" when you only have 125 KIAs is simply untrue.
An often-overlooked core issue is that some current reckless methods of IFV are already unethical - creating a surplus of viable humans with that knowledge that a significant population will be destroyed / discarded. These sorts of IFV treatments are already treating human lives as if they were a commodity - just a resource to be bought and sold. The use of "surplus" embryos in stem-cell research just opens up an additional market and creates a supply chain - generating more revenue from the creation and destruction of human lives. It offends the very notion of "human dignity," espoused by religious and non-religious alike.
The path to meet market demands for test-subject embryos should certainly be barred on ethical grounds, and on the same grounds that source of the market supply should be shut down as well. There are plenty of alternative paths that don't require creating so many "surplus" embryos - even if they do cost more time and money to perform.
That's why you only focus on killing the effective terrorists - the ones who are akin to the vital organs of the body. It takes a long time to get a good communications coordinator, logistics man, or operations manager up to speed. Sure, the ranting loons that claim to be "Spiritual Leaders" can be replaced at the drop of a hat - they aren't the biological "head" of the beast, so to speak - but not the folks that manage group infrastructure (who are akin to the eyes, ears, and lungs of the monster).
Yeah, I hate it when those damn Ambulances, Fire Engines, and Police Cruisers just tear through the neighborhood with their sirens blaring and those damn lights flashing. Where do they get off driving ninety miles an hour, ignoring stop signs, refusing to yield the right of way, and cutting off pedestrian traffic?
How dare they! I mean, it isn't like anyone's life is on the line, right?
Paying someone cash up front is totally wrong, but feeding people thinly-veiled kick-backs after the election with tax-payer dollars perfectly acceptable? Seriously, they are both vote-buying scams of the highest order. The difference is that buying votes with pre-election funds means spending privately owned money, while buying votes with post-election funds means you get to rob Peter to pay Paul via "appropriations." Remember, "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury." - Alexander Tytler
It doesn't always pan out, but the English translations tend to be very rough compared to say, Spanish or Italian.
The King James Version set a rough precedent which even impacted Catholic translations into English. The KJV did a great job with poetics, but a poor job with linguistic accuracy. Frankly, the small committee that worked on it weren't exactly the world's leading authority on the source material languages like Hebrew. Considering the antagonism between the Church of England and the Holy See at the time, it wasn't like they were going to stoop to consulting "Papists" - even if they did have much better translation resources.