They also had Eric Lerner of Focus Fusion give a talk not long after Bussard. Not sure if they invested in that either. While I would love to see more investment in fusion, it's hardly a sure thing. I consider this Ivanpah solar project to be overpriced ( note that the total cost has NOT been revealed, only the gov't loan guarantee and various other financing ) especially since it doesn't have any energy storage backing it but it least we know it will produce power. Right now, funds thrown into fusion is all research money.
Oh, I'm looking forward to those. But I see that Mitt Romney has officially joined the 2012 race. I hope he's ready to answer some questions about health care, considering his Massachutsetts bill some years back. His announcement talked up his "real world experience in the economy" but not a word about health care policy.
He's being very convincing, this time out. The pundits who were saying just a little while ago that this was just his usual self-promotion are now thinking he's serious
I have to wonder what Donald Trump is thinking, pandering to the birthers - he can't really think there's any meat to their wild speculations. I'm not a fan of his but I thought he was above this claptrap. But I can see it's a strategic move as it's put him from last place to first or second in the GOP horse race but does he really think he'll be able to sweep all this away and disassociate himself from the fringe as election day nears? And the batshit keeps dropping - a friend told me she saw someone post on Sarah Palin's Facebook page that claims Obama has paid 2 million to cover up his real birth certificate. Next we'll hear that Linda Lingle is a Democratic spy or related to Obama or something.
I wasn't digging down into detailed stats merely dollars spent. But, if you compare the US to other 1st world nations, who are also packing on the pounds, though more slowly, the most reliable numbers show almost twice as much spending for approx the same outcomes. I'm not as ready as you are to give the insurance firms a pass - in earlier days, they were pretty good at keeping costs down by (en)forcing standardization - I think it started with making sure all the steam engines and boilers met the same standard or used the same parts. But, if someone is giving the manufacturers a blank-check, then heads should roll. We fine companies all the time for price-fixing on computer parts but not medical equipment? I think the media should stop focusing on closeted politicos and imaginary birth records and chase the stories that'll change or save lives.
And that's a crying shame. I think the campaigning structure has a lot to do with that - halfway through your term, you're already on the campaign trail for the next election. How is anything supposed to get done?
Then the right are as arrogant and foolish as those who disagree with them. Single-payer options have been done for decades in other countries; they're not perfect but, on average, they get a far, far, far better return on health than America. Also, as I explained in another recent post, you have most of the infrastructure in place but doing slightly separate jobs. You should be able to collapse them, in time, into a single department. It won't make gov't smaller in the short term but it won't be a huge expansion either.
Also, based on the experience of many of my relatives, especially those who aren't so well off, your defense of insurance companies is unsupportable - for complex care, they are a huge obstacle when you're at you're most vulnerable and in need.
I agree with you up to a point but I think the way this current administration has gone clearly shows the Republicans have been near-unanimous in opposing legislation while the Democrats have been voting more according to their personal values or for some other reason. In that respect, the loss of some of the House seats wouldn't have fazed Obama as a significant number were those of Blue Dog Dems, who might as well have been Republicans anyway.
You already have the bureaucracy in place in the form of Medicare & Medicaid and VA. Having lived in a country with a universal single-payer system, I can tell you that the hue and cry about additional bureaucracy is overblown - especially since you're not starting from scratch.
And, I may not have been clear in my first few posts - I no longer support the bill in its present format nor with the public option. I want the gov't to locate their missing testicles and get the country on a SINGLE-PAYER system.
You know what - fuck the public option. If the rightwingnuts are so opposed to big government, although they've done as much to expand it as the other side, then the healthcare bill should be SINGLE-PAYER and nothing less.
One other point about the new healthcare bill - won't it reduce the amount of money that goes towards uninsured people showing up in emergency rooms? Isn't that the most expensive option ( although I have no idea what percentage of the total current bill that represents ). I know some hospitals deal with this by rejecting some of these people outright but I've also heard that INSURED folks often can't afford to go their own doctors. My Canadian relatives find this mind-boggling - not that their system is perfect but they've never heard of someone declaring bankruptcy over medical bills.
I'd heard about that revisionist reinterpretation - blows my mind. Okay, how do they spin "The love of money is the root of all evil" from the book of Timothy.
If Republicans so despise the plague of big government, they've had ample opportunity in the last hundred years to reduce its size. Which one of their Presidents has done so to any significant extent?
I might be wrong but I think Obama's biggest mistake was really trying for a bi-partisan solution. He clearly didn't understand the kind of opposition what he was up against
Those people were under the impression that Obama was going to kill Medicare. From what I'm hearing now, it seems that the Republicans are toying with that idea. I'm not supportive of the bill because he caved on the public option - without that, and with the requirement that everyone has to buy insurance, he gave a hell of a boost to the insurance industry. But, if there's less power to them to deny treatments agreed on by doctor and patient, I can live with it until something better comes along.
Did you see some of these people in the town halls with their wheelchairs and oxygen tanks? I'm pretty sure the current health system is not in their best interests.
That confounds the heck out of me - why aren't the Christians aligned with the poor? Didn't they read the Bible? "It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven"
"For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows"
The real problem are the voters - how can they be so stupid? Much as I think the Republicans are venal, their ability to convince the sheeple to vote against their best interests is truly astonishing.
The right-wing would like him just fine if he wasn't black - by and large, his policies haven't been a radical shift away from Dubya. But while they could overlook Bush being an idiot, they can't seem to get past Obama being a nigger.
I've heard plenty to the contrary, but I'm still learning about it so I won't make any claims without reference. What gets me is that no matter which way you lean on nuclear technology, it seems that any option apart from the tech that is currently in place is 15-20 years from likely deployment. By then, we just might finally have a workable fusion reactor. ; )
The project used several fuels in its life, of which one was U233, bred from Th232, which is not fissile. While you do need something fissile to kickstart a Th-based reactor, the Thorium fuel cycle is inherently safer and more proliferation-resistant than that of Uranium. An MSR running solely on Uranium/Plutonium would generate considerably more was and troublesome actinides.
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They also had Eric Lerner of Focus Fusion give a talk not long after Bussard. Not sure if they invested in that either. While I would love to see more investment in fusion, it's hardly a sure thing. I consider this Ivanpah solar project to be overpriced ( note that the total cost has NOT been revealed, only the gov't loan guarantee and various other financing ) especially since it doesn't have any energy storage backing it but it least we know it will produce power. Right now, funds thrown into fusion is all research money.
Oh, I'm looking forward to those. But I see that Mitt Romney has officially joined the 2012 race. I hope he's ready to answer some questions about health care, considering his Massachutsetts bill some years back. His announcement talked up his "real world experience in the economy" but not a word about health care policy.
He's being very convincing, this time out. The pundits who were saying just a little while ago that this was just his usual self-promotion are now thinking he's serious
I have to wonder what Donald Trump is thinking, pandering to the birthers - he can't really think there's any meat to their wild speculations. I'm not a fan of his but I thought he was above this claptrap. But I can see it's a strategic move as it's put him from last place to first or second in the GOP horse race but does he really think he'll be able to sweep all this away and disassociate himself from the fringe as election day nears?
And the batshit keeps dropping - a friend told me she saw someone post on Sarah Palin's Facebook page that claims Obama has paid 2 million to cover up his real birth certificate. Next we'll hear that Linda Lingle is a Democratic spy or related to Obama or something.
I wasn't digging down into detailed stats merely dollars spent. But, if you compare the US to other 1st world nations, who are also packing on the pounds, though more slowly, the most reliable numbers show almost twice as much spending for approx the same outcomes. I'm not as ready as you are to give the insurance firms a pass - in earlier days, they were pretty good at keeping costs down by (en)forcing standardization - I think it started with making sure all the steam engines and boilers met the same standard or used the same parts.
But, if someone is giving the manufacturers a blank-check, then heads should roll. We fine companies all the time for price-fixing on computer parts but not medical equipment? I think the media should stop focusing on closeted politicos and imaginary birth records and chase the stories that'll change or save lives.
And that's a crying shame. I think the campaigning structure has a lot to do with that - halfway through your term, you're already on the campaign trail for the next election. How is anything supposed to get done?
Then the right are as arrogant and foolish as those who disagree with them. Single-payer options have been done for decades in other countries; they're not perfect but, on average, they get a far, far, far better return on health than America. Also, as I explained in another recent post, you have most of the infrastructure in place but doing slightly separate jobs. You should be able to collapse them, in time, into a single department. It won't make gov't smaller in the short term but it won't be a huge expansion either.
Also, based on the experience of many of my relatives, especially those who aren't so well off, your defense of insurance companies is unsupportable - for complex care, they are a huge obstacle when you're at you're most vulnerable and in need.
I agree with you up to a point but I think the way this current administration has gone clearly shows the Republicans have been near-unanimous in opposing legislation while the Democrats have been voting more according to their personal values or for some other reason. In that respect, the loss of some of the House seats wouldn't have fazed Obama as a significant number were those of Blue Dog Dems, who might as well have been Republicans anyway.
You already have the bureaucracy in place in the form of Medicare & Medicaid and VA. Having lived in a country with a universal single-payer system, I can tell you that the hue and cry about additional bureaucracy is overblown - especially since you're not starting from scratch.
And, I may not have been clear in my first few posts - I no longer support the bill in its present format nor with the public option. I want the gov't to locate their missing testicles and get the country on a SINGLE-PAYER system.
That still comes down to a voter problem - why do they keep voting for them?
You know what - fuck the public option. If the rightwingnuts are so opposed to big government, although they've done as much to expand it as the other side, then the healthcare bill should be SINGLE-PAYER and nothing less.
One other point about the new healthcare bill - won't it reduce the amount of money that goes towards uninsured people showing up in emergency rooms? Isn't that the most expensive option ( although I have no idea what percentage of the total current bill that represents ). I know some hospitals deal with this by rejecting some of these people outright but I've also heard that INSURED folks often can't afford to go their own doctors. My Canadian relatives find this mind-boggling - not that their system is perfect but they've never heard of someone declaring bankruptcy over medical bills.
I'd heard about that revisionist reinterpretation - blows my mind. Okay, how do they spin "The love of money is the root of all evil" from the book of Timothy.
and also rotary-based. They're claiming 125hp from a 10-inch, 66 cu-in, 100 lb engine
http://www.regtech.com/Radmax_Technology/
http://www.regtech.com/download/radmaxbrochure_trifold.pdf
If Republicans so despise the plague of big government, they've had ample opportunity in the last hundred years to reduce its size.
Which one of their Presidents has done so to any significant extent?
I might be wrong but I think Obama's biggest mistake was really trying for a bi-partisan solution. He clearly didn't understand the kind of opposition what he was up against
Those people were under the impression that Obama was going to kill Medicare. From what I'm hearing now, it seems that the Republicans are toying with that idea.
I'm not supportive of the bill because he caved on the public option - without that, and with the requirement that everyone has to buy insurance, he gave a hell of a boost to the insurance industry. But, if there's less power to them to deny treatments agreed on by doctor and patient, I can live with it until something better comes along.
Did you see some of these people in the town halls with their wheelchairs and oxygen tanks? I'm pretty sure the current health system is not in their best interests.
That confounds the heck out of me - why aren't the Christians aligned with the poor? Didn't they read the Bible?
"It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven"
"For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows"
The real problem are the voters - how can they be so stupid? Much as I think the Republicans are venal, their ability to convince the sheeple to vote against their best interests is truly astonishing.
The right-wing would like him just fine if he wasn't black - by and large, his policies haven't been a radical shift away from Dubya. But while they could overlook Bush being an idiot, they can't seem to get past Obama being a nigger.
Oh Boston, you're my home!
Love that Standells song!
So far, they've tested using water from the Charles River, presumably unfiltered. Next they'll try using seawater. Stay tuned.
I've heard plenty to the contrary, but I'm still learning about it so I won't make any claims without reference. What gets me is that no matter which way you lean on nuclear technology, it seems that any option apart from the tech that is currently in place is 15-20 years from likely deployment. By then, we just might finally have a workable fusion reactor. ; )
The project used several fuels in its life, of which one was U233, bred from Th232, which is not fissile. While you do need something fissile to kickstart a Th-based reactor, the Thorium fuel cycle is inherently safer and more proliferation-resistant than that of Uranium. An MSR running solely on Uranium/Plutonium would generate considerably more was and troublesome actinides.