Ummm.... You don't understand how this bill changes things.
This bill will force most of the poorer people now uninsured into Medicaid, while at the same time taking $500 billion in funding out of Medicare/Medicaid. 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. It then takes that $500 billion and spends it on subsidies while claiming the $500 billion as debt reduction. It's nothing but a fraudulent claim. Instead of reducing the deficit it increases it, and it puts Medicare/Medicaid in an even shakier financial position.
This bill also offloads a bunch of the medical costs it claims to cover on the individual states without funding them. This will raise your state taxes and increase debt at the state level. This will only lead to fewer Medicaid patients being treated, longer wait times for them to see a doctor, and more and more doctors refusing to see Medicare/Medicaid patients as they treat them at a financial loss. Where is the advantage in that?
Also, in the state of Washington pharmacies are already refusing to fill Medicaid patient's prescriptions because they aren't being paid enough by the statee to even break even on those prescriptions. This problem is now going to get worse. More pharmacies are going to refuse to fill Medicaid prescriptions. What's next? Is Obama going to force them to take that business?
This bill creates so many problems that it's worse than nothing.
Ummmm.... Have you ever dealt with a hospital's debt collection system? Going to a hospital and getting treated without insurance for something major will drive you into bankruptcy by the time the hospital is done with you. They will take you to court, then garnishee enough of your wages so that you can't pay for food and shelter, thus forcing you into bankruptcy which is a major negative.
I've had hospitals come after me when I wasn't even the one responsible for the bill. Once a hospital came after me for a niece's bill. It took months of fighting with them to get them to back off.
Another time an employer who was self-insured rather than pay for Workman's Comp sent me to a hospital for testing in a labor dispute over retraining after I became ill due to working conditions and had to change occupations. The employer went bankrupt two years later and never paid the hospital bill. The hospital came after me 5 years later and I finally had to hire a lawyer to stop them from collecting not only the original bill, but interest, fees, and penalties that more than doubled the bill. Even that didn't stop them. They came after me again 2 years later with an even larger bill and I had to go through all the same shit all over again.
This horseshit that anyone can just go to the hospital and get treated for free is ridiculous. If you don't pay there are major consequences in your life and hospitals will make sure you pay those consequences.
Now, I understand that an electronic attack could be done remotely, in theory without warning. Ok... To what end?
You're kidding, right?
What better way to hurt our military capability long term, and harm US citizen morale, than to kill our economy for a long, long time? You can take out the power grid by messing with the power distribution system--by interfering with the synchronization of different power sources. The resulting explosions would take out large numbers of high-power lines, if not a majority of the power generator hardware itself. Imagine what ruining the majority of the power generators in the dams on the Columbia River would do to the entire West Coast.... The West Coast economy would come to a halt in very short order, and most of the people would be living in 3rd world conditions. No power == no lights, no refrigeration, no heating or cooling of buildings, no gas to run your car, no computers in other than places that have large power backup generators, etc.... It would be devestating.
How do we define who's a slacker? Are you kidding me?
You really don't know what the principles are that this country was founded on? If you don't know you need to start studying the history of our government and country outside of the writings of Marxist and Socialist writers. Read what the men involved in creating our country had to say for themselves. Look into what society was like in their day, and what part of everyday life they thought government needed to play.
You can't see anything to be proud of in our history? I feel sorry for you that you have been so brainwashed by our current educational system. We are the only nation in the history of the world that has rebuilt the nations we defeated after they have attacked us. We fought a civil war to rid us of the evils of slavery, which was exported to us by England. White men killed white men by the hundreds of thousands to give black men and women their freedom. Was that the end of bigotry? Of course not because bigotry lives in the hearts of men and no war can change men's hearts. But we had leadership and people willing to fight and die to rid us of institutional slavery.
We have been the country of choice for the rest of the world's citizens to emigrate to. We are not known as "the melting pot" for no reason. Hell, we paid for most of the financial cost of WWII all by ourselves. The only nation in the world that paid off its WWII debt to us was Finland, and their part of the debt very small. We forgave the debts of the rest of the world and the US taxpayer footed the bill. In a day and age when freedom of religion was almost unknown in the rest of the world one of the founding principles of our nation was that anyone had the freedom to worship as they pleased.
I see much to be proud of in all of that. It means that even though not everyone in this nation is good, and in what nation that has ever existed has that been true, we have often stood for what is right, good, and true and have been willing to help others freely and without asking for recompense.
Do evils exist here? Of course they do. Just because someone lives here doesn't make them perfect. But, all the evils that have existed here have existed just because evil exists in the hearts of men, and they have not been accepted long term by the American people or our government.
Why does everyone bring up Ayn Rand on this site? Who the hell is she, and what does she have to do with our founding fathers?
You have never heard of "Obama care"? It's Obama's current push toward nationalizing health care.
What previous administrations have done with the Constituion and Bill of Rights is nothing compared to what Obama and his administration have planned for it. Previous administrations didn't even begin to say the Constitution and Bill of Rights are flawed and need to be changed. Once that starts you won't be able to even recognize what the US has historically been from looking at what it will be when they are done with it. It's a very scary proposition.
I didn't get one though for one reason only: small monitors/screens. My eyesight is getting worse as I get older, and I really need a monitor larger than 12.1". I love the 17" monitor on my current laptop. It's easy to read and doesn't strain my eyes even at 1440x900.
If tablets were made with 16"+ monitors I would have bought a tablet rather than my current laptop. I really like the capabilities of a tablet, but until/unless they are made with larger monitors I'll never buy one.
This is absolutely false. I'm unemployed, have diabetes, high blood pressure, and have suffered from disabling back pain for 10 years(the reason I'm unemployed after 30 years in the work force). I currently am getting no medical treatment for any of my health issues.
I'm against this bill for several reasons:
1. We cannot afford this with the shape our economy is in.
2. The true costs of this bill are being hidden behind a veil of lies and deceit.
3. The government here has never administered an entitlement and come in at anywhere near the estimated cost. They have always been far more expensive than what the politicians say the program will cost.
4. We are being told that much of the savings will come from getting rid of the fraud in Medicare and Medicaid. However, if that were true why haven't we gotten rid of the fraud already? We need to create another entitlement, and new huge government bureaucracy, to get rid of the existing fraud? What a raft of crap.
5. $500 million of the "savings" taken from Medicare/Medicaid that is supposed to be used for deficit reduction in the 1st 10 years is money taken from Medicare and then spent elsewhere, not applied to deficit reduction. It's as dishonest as hell to count that money twice and to say it's going to be used as deficit reduction. It's not. So, instead of a $120 billion dollar budget deficit reduction it's $380 billion added to the deficit, and that's before counting all the things in the bill that are supposed to be done later that will never get done as no Congress in the future is going to want to do what this one didn't. Too politically unpopular.
6. This has been the most corrupt political process I've ever seen in my 56 years of life. If it was all it is supposed to be the process would have been above-board and far more transparent.
There's more reasons I'm against this bill, but the above will do for starters. Yeah, I'd love to have health insurance and have my medical issues treated, but not at the expense of bankrupting my country. I'm not that selfish.
I would say nobody who runs Linux, other than the absolute Linux noob whose only computer experience has been on Windows, runs any AV other than on mail or file servers that have Windows clients. It's sole purpose is to stop viruses from spreading on Windows clients, not for protecting the server OS.
I looked at ClamAV when I first started using Linux. I spent days looking at virus definitions and there wasn't a single definition for a Linux virus. They were all for Windows viruses. That, along with leaving a fresh Debian install without a firewall connected directly to the internet for a month with no problems, convinced me that there was no need for AV on Linux. I've come across nothing in the 6 years of using Linux exclusively since then that would cause me to think any differently.
The "truth" is, the same people that want anything the Obama Administration does to fail are the same people that created the Third Largest Government Agency [dhs.gov].
What a biased, narrow, view of the world.
I'm against Obama care. I didn't like the creation of the DHS as it's just another inefficient government bureaucracy. I think the Patriot Act was nothing more than an exercise in removing our liberties. I'm against nationalizing the Student Loan Program, but not the idea of student loans. I think the FDA should stay away from regulating supplements. I also think programs that help the disabled are a good idea as in vast majority of cases they cannot help themselves out of their situation, but that with a helping hand they both can and will improve their life. I think entitlements for those who can help themselves are a waste of money, degrade the people who use them in the long run, and are dragging this country to financial ruin. I hate greed and corruption in all their forms.
We as a nation have lost sight of what made this nation great. The educational system has taught the younger generations that the US is evil rather than educating them on why and how we became the greatest nation on earth and the principles of government and personal life that made our rise to power inevitable.
I don't want "everything" that Obama does as President to fail, only those things that are contrary to the principles our nation was founded on. As he thinks the Constitution is flawed and the Bill of Rights needs to be revisited I'm naturally going to be opposed to most of what he does, but I'm not opposed to what he does just because he does it.
Now, tell me just what pigeon-hole you're going to place me in....
You're correct. The Bible states that "the love of money is the root of all evil".
Sex is NOT a "dirty" thing in the Bible. It has many stories about sex and a complete chapter dedicated to a man describing the physical attributes of his beautiful wife.
I say we outlaw adolescence under penalty of death.
Huh? That's already done. Everyone who goes through adolescence is already under a death penalty. It's just that the execution of the sentence is delayed by varying lengths of time for each individual.
This is sort of an off topic reply, but your comment on types of fog made me think of it. Back in the early '70's I once drove in fog where the entire highway and surrounding ground was invisible to me, but I could see for miles.
It was night time and the fog lay at ground level in a blanket about 18" deep. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and with the full moon shining on the fog it looked like a big silver blanket covering the ground for as far as you could see. The headlights on my car were above the fog so it just reflected the light rather than the light penetrating the fog. It was beautiful, but I just couldn't see the road at all.
The fog was so thick that when I stopped the car and got out when I first hit the fog I couldn't see my own feet. The only way to know where the highway lay was to look at the top half of the fence posts sticking up on either side of the road and then drive as close to the middle of them as I could. Fortunately, I was very familiar with that highway and I met no other cars in the 15 miles the ground fog existed so I could stay in the middle and not have to guess where the edges of the road were.
A doctor's bedside manner is an important part of patient recovery. Familiarity, in this instance at least, builds trust and confidence, not contempt, and a patient's confidence in their doctor has a lot to do with whether or not they get well, as well as the speed of any recovery.
The above more than balances out the risk of infection.
And maybe you're an idiot because you make just as many illogical assumptions as the idiot that first called me an idiot here and the mods that modded me as flamebait.
Well, the thing to do is to ask what a person means, and what they're about, not insult and moderate to oblivion based upon assumptions.
As to the term "big government", it doesn't matter that it's a common term. It fits the situation. Both the size and power of the federal government has grown beyond belief in the last few decades. In that same time we have been declining in economic strength and political will. We have become a nation depending on government entitlements rather than remembering what made us the greatest nation on earth, and what made us THE MOST desirable nation on earth to live in. Immigration rates, while federal government size/power was much smaller, prove it.
People didn't immigrate here for government benefits. They moved here because government stayed out their way and allowed them to succeed or fail on their own merits. My great grandparents immigrated here at the turn of 20th century and my great grandfather became a successful logger. He had more than $1 worth of logs on the landing when the stock market crashed in '29. He went from dead broke to wealthy in less than 2 decades without government interference or entitlements.
Also, just fyi, I am a political independent. I'm against progressivism in all of its forms whether it comes from the Republicans or the Democrats. I'm also not a tea party member either, although I think they are correct in many of their political stances. I think for myself. I read for myself. I'm a student of history and have been fascinated by it since I was able to read. I truly believe that those who don't know and understand our history cannot understand what we came from, what made us great--politically, morally, economically, and militarily, and what will keep us a great nation.
As a nation we are leaving behind the very principles that allowed us to become great to begin with, and that's both sad and very frustrating to me.
Ahhhh.... But JFK would be vilified by much of today's Democratic party. He was NOT big government oriented or entitlement oriented. His most famous speech included the words "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country". This is the antithesis of the progressivism we see in government today that is exemplified by Reed, Pelosi, Kucinich, Obama, and the rest of the left wing of the Democratic party.
I'm sorry, but I have to call bullshit on your continued assertions that a big, progressive government is the way to go. I'll prove to you that it's a bad way to go by doing nothing more than listing current events and what has led up to it.
Here in the US we have allowed Congress to give the President the power to be able to bypass the Legislative branch to get what he wants, and the legislative branch to bypass our Constitutional protections. Now we have a President and Democratic-controlled Legislative branch willing to inflict legislation on us that more than 70% of the citizens of the US do not want. Every poll taken shows we don't want Obama care, yet the Democratic leadership and Obama say they are going to pass this bill no matter what.
This isn't a corporate-backed bill. It's a politician-backed bill. Most businessmen are against it because it will raise taxes, and will raise our deficit. Plus, we, as a nation, are about to lose our AAA credit rating if we continue going further into debt. That will raise the cost of doing business as the more the US government borrows the less money there is in the credit supply. That will raise interest rates all by itself. If Obama keeps on going down the path he has chosen, and he swears he will, he will bankrupt the US in short order.
So, who is screwing we US citizens over against our collective will? Big, European-type, progressive government.
Ummm.... How much of the economy back then was "service" compared to the 80%+ of our economy it is today?
However, that's all irrelevant to the issue. The issue is that the manufacturing portion of our economy is much smaller than it used to be and there's good reason for it.
Where's our textile manufacturing? It's in a steep decline and has been for a long time. Imports are taking over the market.
What percentage of our domestic automobile manufacturing is left? I don't know, but I see Michigan's economy is a wreck, Detroit is a wasteland, and we import millions of Japanese, German, and Korean cars. Also, even of the cars manufactured here in the US a large percentage of the parts on those cars are manufactured elsewhere.
The same goes for the parts in major (domestic and commercial) appliances.
Now, add to that what's happened to our steel industry. The "steel belt", for all intents and purposes no longer exists. US Steel used to make 2/3 of all steel used in the US and was the largest steel maker in the world. Bethlehem steel was the 2nd largest steel company. US Steel now makes 10% of the steel used in the US and is now the 10th largest steel maker in the world. It's now about 1/5 the size of the largest steel maker in the world. Bethlehem Steel is no more. We are importing approximately $1.25 billion worth of steel a MONTH rather than making it ourselves. US manufactured steel used to be the best and it was hard to find imported steel that was worth a damn. In the 60's and 70's imported steel products were a joke. You hit a nail made with imported steel with a hammer and it bent rather than go into the wood. Now, almost all steel fasteners are imported and they are the high quality product.
All of this stuff used to be built here. Now we import a great percentage of it. Those are just some of the reasons why the manufacturing slice of the pie has not kept pace with the rest of the economy.
It is not a prevarication with statistics. It's a number showing the lessening of the importance of manufacturing in our economy. That manufacturing is a much smaller slice of the pie now than it used to be means that manufacturing growth, if it can be called as such, has been at a much slower pace than the rest of the economy. The fact that the entire pie has grown shows just how far manufacturing has fallen when the slice of the pie is now less than half of what it used to be. If manufacturing had grown at the same pace as the rest of the economy for the last 50 years its slice of the pie would be at least close to the same percentage of the economy it was 50 years ago. It's not.
The above fact is so obvious it shouldn't need to be said, but it seems the obvious is often denied.
You're ignoring the power/control of a government that tells you what you can do, what you can earn, etc.... That is far harder to overcome than anything you listed, even if I accept everything you say as true.
The more power a government has over the social, economic, and educational options of its citizenry the harder it is for the citizens to effect any meaningful change, and the fewer real freedoms its citizens have. They are completely at the "mercy" of their corrupt government officials. The actions of the Soviet, Chinese, Albanian, etc... peoples and governments prove this.
It's the apathy of US voters, and I was guilty of that apathy for a long time, that has allowed the corruption to continue. However the problem with corrupt government officials and corrupt laws can still be overcome through the electorate. The Obama care debate shows this to still be true, as the only reason he has not been able to get it passed is because of voter outrage. The Democrats have complete control of the Executive and Legislative branches of government and still can't get this bad law passed as the politicians know they will get voted out of office if it gets passed. The majority of US voters have spoken, and spoken loudly. It looks to me like a general awakening as to how much we citizens have abdicated our responsibility as citizens to govern ourselves. We're fed up and we're not going to take it any more. Either things change or we WILL throw the bums out.
Nobody said "all" our manufacturing jobs have moved offshore. However, a large number of them have. In 1953 manufacturing was 28% of our economy. In 2005 it was 12% of our economy.
Really, I ignored his "facts"? Manufacturing, as a percentage of the US economy, has decreased for 50 years. In 2006 manufacturing accounted for only 12% of the economy. In 1993 it was 15.9% of the economy. In 1953 it was 28% of the economy.
That's more than a 50% decline in percentage of the economy. So, tell me again just how healthy the manufacturing sector of the economy is....
I guess because idiots like you exist that cannot understand how anyone could possibly disagree with your arrogance, and love of big government.
Are you done with the insults and ready to actually discuss things now, or is all you can do is hand out insults because that's your only argument to what I actually said.
Selling out, screwing over, etc... constituents by corrupt politicians exists in every form of government. It is not specific to capitalism, nor required by capitalism to function optimally.... Thus Obama corruptly selling out US citizens isn't a function of capitalism.
It's a basically a law of nature though that the more power you give to politicians, the more aspects they control in a society, the greater the negative effects of their corruption are on their constituents. Thus, communism as seen in every communist country, socialistic governments, etc... are even more susceptible to the evils of corrupt politicians and the result of their corruption is even more pernicious in those societies than it is in a society in which government officials are limited in power.
Slashdot Mirror
Ummm.... You don't understand how this bill changes things.
This bill will force most of the poorer people now uninsured into Medicaid, while at the same time taking $500 billion in funding out of Medicare/Medicaid. 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. It then takes that $500 billion and spends it on subsidies while claiming the $500 billion as debt reduction. It's nothing but a fraudulent claim. Instead of reducing the deficit it increases it, and it puts Medicare/Medicaid in an even shakier financial position.
This bill also offloads a bunch of the medical costs it claims to cover on the individual states without funding them. This will raise your state taxes and increase debt at the state level. This will only lead to fewer Medicaid patients being treated, longer wait times for them to see a doctor, and more and more doctors refusing to see Medicare/Medicaid patients as they treat them at a financial loss. Where is the advantage in that?
Also, in the state of Washington pharmacies are already refusing to fill Medicaid patient's prescriptions because they aren't being paid enough by the statee to even break even on those prescriptions. This problem is now going to get worse. More pharmacies are going to refuse to fill Medicaid prescriptions. What's next? Is Obama going to force them to take that business?
This bill creates so many problems that it's worse than nothing.
Ummmm.... Have you ever dealt with a hospital's debt collection system? Going to a hospital and getting treated without insurance for something major will drive you into bankruptcy by the time the hospital is done with you. They will take you to court, then garnishee enough of your wages so that you can't pay for food and shelter, thus forcing you into bankruptcy which is a major negative.
I've had hospitals come after me when I wasn't even the one responsible for the bill. Once a hospital came after me for a niece's bill. It took months of fighting with them to get them to back off.
Another time an employer who was self-insured rather than pay for Workman's Comp sent me to a hospital for testing in a labor dispute over retraining after I became ill due to working conditions and had to change occupations. The employer went bankrupt two years later and never paid the hospital bill. The hospital came after me 5 years later and I finally had to hire a lawyer to stop them from collecting not only the original bill, but interest, fees, and penalties that more than doubled the bill. Even that didn't stop them. They came after me again 2 years later with an even larger bill and I had to go through all the same shit all over again.
This horseshit that anyone can just go to the hospital and get treated for free is ridiculous. If you don't pay there are major consequences in your life and hospitals will make sure you pay those consequences.
Now, I understand that an electronic attack could be done remotely, in theory without warning. Ok... To what end?
You're kidding, right?
What better way to hurt our military capability long term, and harm US citizen morale, than to kill our economy for a long, long time? You can take out the power grid by messing with the power distribution system--by interfering with the synchronization of different power sources. The resulting explosions would take out large numbers of high-power lines, if not a majority of the power generator hardware itself. Imagine what ruining the majority of the power generators in the dams on the Columbia River would do to the entire West Coast.... The West Coast economy would come to a halt in very short order, and most of the people would be living in 3rd world conditions. No power == no lights, no refrigeration, no heating or cooling of buildings, no gas to run your car, no computers in other than places that have large power backup generators, etc.... It would be devestating.
How do we define who's a slacker? Are you kidding me?
You really don't know what the principles are that this country was founded on? If you don't know you need to start studying the history of our government and country outside of the writings of Marxist and Socialist writers. Read what the men involved in creating our country had to say for themselves. Look into what society was like in their day, and what part of everyday life they thought government needed to play.
You can't see anything to be proud of in our history? I feel sorry for you that you have been so brainwashed by our current educational system. We are the only nation in the history of the world that has rebuilt the nations we defeated after they have attacked us. We fought a civil war to rid us of the evils of slavery, which was exported to us by England. White men killed white men by the hundreds of thousands to give black men and women their freedom. Was that the end of bigotry? Of course not because bigotry lives in the hearts of men and no war can change men's hearts. But we had leadership and people willing to fight and die to rid us of institutional slavery.
We have been the country of choice for the rest of the world's citizens to emigrate to. We are not known as "the melting pot" for no reason. Hell, we paid for most of the financial cost of WWII all by ourselves. The only nation in the world that paid off its WWII debt to us was Finland, and their part of the debt very small. We forgave the debts of the rest of the world and the US taxpayer footed the bill. In a day and age when freedom of religion was almost unknown in the rest of the world one of the founding principles of our nation was that anyone had the freedom to worship as they pleased.
I see much to be proud of in all of that. It means that even though not everyone in this nation is good, and in what nation that has ever existed has that been true, we have often stood for what is right, good, and true and have been willing to help others freely and without asking for recompense.
Do evils exist here? Of course they do. Just because someone lives here doesn't make them perfect. But, all the evils that have existed here have existed just because evil exists in the hearts of men, and they have not been accepted long term by the American people or our government.
Why does everyone bring up Ayn Rand on this site? Who the hell is she, and what does she have to do with our founding fathers?
You have never heard of "Obama care"? It's Obama's current push toward nationalizing health care.
What previous administrations have done with the Constituion and Bill of Rights is nothing compared to what Obama and his administration have planned for it. Previous administrations didn't even begin to say the Constitution and Bill of Rights are flawed and need to be changed. Once that starts you won't be able to even recognize what the US has historically been from looking at what it will be when they are done with it. It's a very scary proposition.
I didn't get one though for one reason only: small monitors/screens. My eyesight is getting worse as I get older, and I really need a monitor larger than 12.1". I love the 17" monitor on my current laptop. It's easy to read and doesn't strain my eyes even at 1440x900.
If tablets were made with 16"+ monitors I would have bought a tablet rather than my current laptop. I really like the capabilities of a tablet, but until/unless they are made with larger monitors I'll never buy one.
This is absolutely false. I'm unemployed, have diabetes, high blood pressure, and have suffered from disabling back pain for 10 years(the reason I'm unemployed after 30 years in the work force). I currently am getting no medical treatment for any of my health issues.
I'm against this bill for several reasons:
1. We cannot afford this with the shape our economy is in.
2. The true costs of this bill are being hidden behind a veil of lies and deceit.
3. The government here has never administered an entitlement and come in at anywhere near the estimated cost. They have always been far more expensive than what the politicians say the program will cost.
4. We are being told that much of the savings will come from getting rid of the fraud in Medicare and Medicaid. However, if that were true why haven't we gotten rid of the fraud already? We need to create another entitlement, and new huge government bureaucracy, to get rid of the existing fraud? What a raft of crap.
5. $500 million of the "savings" taken from Medicare/Medicaid that is supposed to be used for deficit reduction in the 1st 10 years is money taken from Medicare and then spent elsewhere, not applied to deficit reduction. It's as dishonest as hell to count that money twice and to say it's going to be used as deficit reduction. It's not. So, instead of a $120 billion dollar budget deficit reduction it's $380 billion added to the deficit, and that's before counting all the things in the bill that are supposed to be done later that will never get done as no Congress in the future is going to want to do what this one didn't. Too politically unpopular.
6. This has been the most corrupt political process I've ever seen in my 56 years of life. If it was all it is supposed to be the process would have been above-board and far more transparent.
There's more reasons I'm against this bill, but the above will do for starters. Yeah, I'd love to have health insurance and have my medical issues treated, but not at the expense of bankrupting my country. I'm not that selfish.
I would say nobody who runs Linux, other than the absolute Linux noob whose only computer experience has been on Windows, runs any AV other than on mail or file servers that have Windows clients. It's sole purpose is to stop viruses from spreading on Windows clients, not for protecting the server OS.
I looked at ClamAV when I first started using Linux. I spent days looking at virus definitions and there wasn't a single definition for a Linux virus. They were all for Windows viruses. That, along with leaving a fresh Debian install without a firewall connected directly to the internet for a month with no problems, convinced me that there was no need for AV on Linux. I've come across nothing in the 6 years of using Linux exclusively since then that would cause me to think any differently.
The "truth" is, the same people that want anything the Obama Administration does to fail are the same people that created the Third Largest Government Agency [dhs.gov].
What a biased, narrow, view of the world.
I'm against Obama care. I didn't like the creation of the DHS as it's just another inefficient government bureaucracy. I think the Patriot Act was nothing more than an exercise in removing our liberties. I'm against nationalizing the Student Loan Program, but not the idea of student loans. I think the FDA should stay away from regulating supplements. I also think programs that help the disabled are a good idea as in vast majority of cases they cannot help themselves out of their situation, but that with a helping hand they both can and will improve their life. I think entitlements for those who can help themselves are a waste of money, degrade the people who use them in the long run, and are dragging this country to financial ruin. I hate greed and corruption in all their forms.
We as a nation have lost sight of what made this nation great. The educational system has taught the younger generations that the US is evil rather than educating them on why and how we became the greatest nation on earth and the principles of government and personal life that made our rise to power inevitable.
I don't want "everything" that Obama does as President to fail, only those things that are contrary to the principles our nation was founded on. As he thinks the Constitution is flawed and the Bill of Rights needs to be revisited I'm naturally going to be opposed to most of what he does, but I'm not opposed to what he does just because he does it.
Now, tell me just what pigeon-hole you're going to place me in....
You're correct. The Bible states that "the love of money is the root of all evil".
Sex is NOT a "dirty" thing in the Bible. It has many stories about sex and a complete chapter dedicated to a man describing the physical attributes of his beautiful wife.
I say we outlaw adolescence under penalty of death.
Huh? That's already done. Everyone who goes through adolescence is already under a death penalty. It's just that the execution of the sentence is delayed by varying lengths of time for each individual.
This is sort of an off topic reply, but your comment on types of fog made me think of it. Back in the early '70's I once drove in fog where the entire highway and surrounding ground was invisible to me, but I could see for miles.
It was night time and the fog lay at ground level in a blanket about 18" deep. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and with the full moon shining on the fog it looked like a big silver blanket covering the ground for as far as you could see. The headlights on my car were above the fog so it just reflected the light rather than the light penetrating the fog. It was beautiful, but I just couldn't see the road at all.
The fog was so thick that when I stopped the car and got out when I first hit the fog I couldn't see my own feet. The only way to know where the highway lay was to look at the top half of the fence posts sticking up on either side of the road and then drive as close to the middle of them as I could. Fortunately, I was very familiar with that highway and I met no other cars in the 15 miles the ground fog existed so I could stay in the middle and not have to guess where the edges of the road were.
A doctor's bedside manner is an important part of patient recovery. Familiarity, in this instance at least, builds trust and confidence, not contempt, and a patient's confidence in their doctor has a lot to do with whether or not they get well, as well as the speed of any recovery.
The above more than balances out the risk of infection.
And maybe you're an idiot because you make just as many illogical assumptions as the idiot that first called me an idiot here and the mods that modded me as flamebait.
He had more than $1 worth of logs
That should be: He had more than $1 million worth of logs....
Well, the thing to do is to ask what a person means, and what they're about, not insult and moderate to oblivion based upon assumptions.
As to the term "big government", it doesn't matter that it's a common term. It fits the situation. Both the size and power of the federal government has grown beyond belief in the last few decades. In that same time we have been declining in economic strength and political will. We have become a nation depending on government entitlements rather than remembering what made us the greatest nation on earth, and what made us THE MOST desirable nation on earth to live in. Immigration rates, while federal government size/power was much smaller, prove it.
People didn't immigrate here for government benefits. They moved here because government stayed out their way and allowed them to succeed or fail on their own merits. My great grandparents immigrated here at the turn of 20th century and my great grandfather became a successful logger. He had more than $1 worth of logs on the landing when the stock market crashed in '29. He went from dead broke to wealthy in less than 2 decades without government interference or entitlements.
Also, just fyi, I am a political independent. I'm against progressivism in all of its forms whether it comes from the Republicans or the Democrats. I'm also not a tea party member either, although I think they are correct in many of their political stances. I think for myself. I read for myself. I'm a student of history and have been fascinated by it since I was able to read. I truly believe that those who don't know and understand our history cannot understand what we came from, what made us great--politically, morally, economically, and militarily, and what will keep us a great nation.
As a nation we are leaving behind the very principles that allowed us to become great to begin with, and that's both sad and very frustrating to me.
Ahhhh.... But JFK would be vilified by much of today's Democratic party. He was NOT big government oriented or entitlement oriented. His most famous speech included the words "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country". This is the antithesis of the progressivism we see in government today that is exemplified by Reed, Pelosi, Kucinich, Obama, and the rest of the left wing of the Democratic party.
I'm sorry, but I have to call bullshit on your continued assertions that a big, progressive government is the way to go. I'll prove to you that it's a bad way to go by doing nothing more than listing current events and what has led up to it.
Here in the US we have allowed Congress to give the President the power to be able to bypass the Legislative branch to get what he wants, and the legislative branch to bypass our Constitutional protections. Now we have a President and Democratic-controlled Legislative branch willing to inflict legislation on us that more than 70% of the citizens of the US do not want. Every poll taken shows we don't want Obama care, yet the Democratic leadership and Obama say they are going to pass this bill no matter what.
This isn't a corporate-backed bill. It's a politician-backed bill. Most businessmen are against it because it will raise taxes, and will raise our deficit. Plus, we, as a nation, are about to lose our AAA credit rating if we continue going further into debt. That will raise the cost of doing business as the more the US government borrows the less money there is in the credit supply. That will raise interest rates all by itself. If Obama keeps on going down the path he has chosen, and he swears he will, he will bankrupt the US in short order.
So, who is screwing we US citizens over against our collective will? Big, European-type, progressive government.
Ummm.... How much of the economy back then was "service" compared to the 80%+ of our economy it is today?
However, that's all irrelevant to the issue. The issue is that the manufacturing portion of our economy is much smaller than it used to be and there's good reason for it.
Where's our textile manufacturing? It's in a steep decline and has been for a long time. Imports are taking over the market.
What percentage of our domestic automobile manufacturing is left? I don't know, but I see Michigan's economy is a wreck, Detroit is a wasteland, and we import millions of Japanese, German, and Korean cars. Also, even of the cars manufactured here in the US a large percentage of the parts on those cars are manufactured elsewhere.
The same goes for the parts in major (domestic and commercial) appliances.
Now, add to that what's happened to our steel industry. The "steel belt", for all intents and purposes no longer exists. US Steel used to make 2/3 of all steel used in the US and was the largest steel maker in the world. Bethlehem steel was the 2nd largest steel company. US Steel now makes 10% of the steel used in the US and is now the 10th largest steel maker in the world. It's now about 1/5 the size of the largest steel maker in the world. Bethlehem Steel is no more. We are importing approximately $1.25 billion worth of steel a MONTH rather than making it ourselves. US manufactured steel used to be the best and it was hard to find imported steel that was worth a damn. In the 60's and 70's imported steel products were a joke. You hit a nail made with imported steel with a hammer and it bent rather than go into the wood. Now, almost all steel fasteners are imported and they are the high quality product.
All of this stuff used to be built here. Now we import a great percentage of it. Those are just some of the reasons why the manufacturing slice of the pie has not kept pace with the rest of the economy.
It is not a prevarication with statistics. It's a number showing the lessening of the importance of manufacturing in our economy. That manufacturing is a much smaller slice of the pie now than it used to be means that manufacturing growth, if it can be called as such, has been at a much slower pace than the rest of the economy. The fact that the entire pie has grown shows just how far manufacturing has fallen when the slice of the pie is now less than half of what it used to be. If manufacturing had grown at the same pace as the rest of the economy for the last 50 years its slice of the pie would be at least close to the same percentage of the economy it was 50 years ago. It's not.
The above fact is so obvious it shouldn't need to be said, but it seems the obvious is often denied.
You're ignoring the power/control of a government that tells you what you can do, what you can earn, etc.... That is far harder to overcome than anything you listed, even if I accept everything you say as true.
The more power a government has over the social, economic, and educational options of its citizenry the harder it is for the citizens to effect any meaningful change, and the fewer real freedoms its citizens have. They are completely at the "mercy" of their corrupt government officials. The actions of the Soviet, Chinese, Albanian, etc... peoples and governments prove this.
It's the apathy of US voters, and I was guilty of that apathy for a long time, that has allowed the corruption to continue. However the problem with corrupt government officials and corrupt laws can still be overcome through the electorate. The Obama care debate shows this to still be true, as the only reason he has not been able to get it passed is because of voter outrage. The Democrats have complete control of the Executive and Legislative branches of government and still can't get this bad law passed as the politicians know they will get voted out of office if it gets passed. The majority of US voters have spoken, and spoken loudly. It looks to me like a general awakening as to how much we citizens have abdicated our responsibility as citizens to govern ourselves. We're fed up and we're not going to take it any more. Either things change or we WILL throw the bums out.
Nobody said "all" our manufacturing jobs have moved offshore. However, a large number of them have. In 1953 manufacturing was 28% of our economy. In 2005 it was 12% of our economy.
Really, I ignored his "facts"? Manufacturing, as a percentage of the US economy, has decreased for 50 years. In 2006 manufacturing accounted for only 12% of the economy. In 1993 it was 15.9% of the economy. In 1953 it was 28% of the economy.
That's more than a 50% decline in percentage of the economy. So, tell me again just how healthy the manufacturing sector of the economy is....
I guess because idiots like you exist that cannot understand how anyone could possibly disagree with your arrogance, and love of big government.
Are you done with the insults and ready to actually discuss things now, or is all you can do is hand out insults because that's your only argument to what I actually said.
You're calling me an idiot? LOL.
Selling out, screwing over, etc... constituents by corrupt politicians exists in every form of government. It is not specific to capitalism, nor required by capitalism to function optimally.... Thus Obama corruptly selling out US citizens isn't a function of capitalism.
It's a basically a law of nature though that the more power you give to politicians, the more aspects they control in a society, the greater the negative effects of their corruption are on their constituents. Thus, communism as seen in every communist country, socialistic governments, etc... are even more susceptible to the evils of corrupt politicians and the result of their corruption is even more pernicious in those societies than it is in a society in which government officials are limited in power.