So do you want the NSA to break Syria's encryption about their chemical weapons attacks?
I'd like us to continue treating encryption as weapons and regulate its export accordingly. Unfortunately, it is not really possibly — any enemy worth the designation would be able to get it anyway, because moving an algorithm is much easier than a gun. And, unlike guns, you only need to move an algorithm once.
So charity or privacy? What's it going to be?
I wish I had sufficient confidence in my own government to be able to sincerely pick charity... Unfortunately, I do not. If the President can already ask the IRS to hurt opposition's finances, what's to prevent him from asking the NSA to look into the opposition's e-mails? The sort of thing, that got Nixon to resign is barely an issue with today's Americans...
This past January, Laura Poitras received a curious e-mail from an anonymous stranger requesting her public encryption key. For almost two years, Poitras had been working on a documentary about surveillance, and she occasionally received queries from strangers. She replied to this one and sent her public key — allowing him or her to send an encrypted e-mail that only Poitras could open, with her private key — but she didn’t think much would come of it.
So that's, what a particularly private person should be using for all of his communications...
A STAGGERING quantity of all our spending is eaten up by school board and administrator salaries with precious little actually getting to the teachers and students.
Well, arguably, the students should be getting precisely zero dollars to begin with, and every enterprise has some management overhead — we just don't really know, what it is supposed to be, because we are scarcely aware of the alternatives... A catchy bumper-sticker poses a false dichotomy: "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."
The real problem is that our government strongly discourages any competition to the public schools — even from other public schools... Those, who wish to send their child to a private school, must pay for it in addition to paying for the public one — one, which their child will not attend. Thus only the rich can afford it, which, no doubt, contributes to further stratification of the society and perpetuates income inequality.
That the people usually agitated about both of these societal warts are the same ones, who try their hardest to keep any competition out of the school-system (such as by fighting school-voucher programs tooth-and-nail and on the most bogus of pretexts), would've been extremely funny, if it weren't sad to an even further extreme...
Have you compared the rent in DC to the rent anywhere in Kentucky?
You don't seem to challenge my primary point... Which is that the per-pupil expenditures have quadrupled over 50 years without anything to show for it. If anything, the education quality declined. Thus, anybody complaining about "scarce dollars" for education as the GGF poster did, or "underfunded schools" — as the even more pompous Racist-in-Chief put it in his recent speech — are either awfully ignorant or scandalously demagogic. Or both...
As far as the high cost of living in DC, yes, obviously, we are fulfilling the Founding Fathers' nightmare — the residents of the Capital city are becoming unduly powerful: not just because of the sheer unavoidable physical proximity to the government, but also because that government's power over citizens' daily lives is growing much too fast — and the income of various officials growing with it. But that's another topic altogether, of course.
They should focus their energy on the "Lift 900 Million people out of $2/day" megaproject, or the "move away from an export and build a consumer economy" megaproject
Why should China bother with that, if the United States and the rest of the Western world spend their still-considerable energies on those subjects — despite not having any such poor people among their citizenry for decades?
And when we here aren't thinking of that, we work on disciplines like "Wymen's Issues" and "Social Studies"... It is like our rulers — the decision-makers in education, in particular — want to give China the time to catch-up with us...
The per-pupil cost of public school education quadrupled since 1961 (inflation-adjusted). That's points at anything but "scarcity" — yet, the education quality is slowly declining.
I submit, that neither you, nor anyone else in their right mind would continue to purchase a worsened service, that costs four times more than it used to — if they were well-informed and had a choice.
Such lack of awareness is inexcusable, but clearly, it is pervasive
The per-pupil expenditures in public-schools nation-wide has quadrupledsince 1961. That's adjusted to inflation — the nominal increase is nearly 30-fold. And yet, even the most Illiberal segment commentators — whom you'd expect to try hardest to defend the public schools — acknowledge, that mere 30% of the nation's 8th-graders qualify as "proficient" in something as basic and fundamental as reading.
In the high-population states and locales, where one would expect the high number of customers to get a better deal through the economy of scale, the per-pupil costs are, actually, even higher. District of Columbia, for example, has spent over $17k per kid in 2010, compared to Kentucky's $10k. NYC spends even more.
Whatever is wrong with the schools, "scarcity of dollars" is not it...
Tsk, tsk, tsk... Using a well-defined term as a general-purpose dirty word? Not a particularly well-organized mind, is yours? Emphasis mine:
terrorism, act of terrorism, terrorist act: the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear
Indeed, the per-capita numbers are useless and misleading — the safest country is where there are no cars at all. Much more interesting would be the number of deaths per mile (or kilometer) driven.
Well no, I explained why - it dilutes the risk pool.
And I explained, that this becomes irrelevant after the pool reaches a certain size. Certainly insurers want to keep growing — like all corporations — but a company with 200 mln policy-holders is not more efficient (per holder), than one with 100 mln.
The numbers speak for themselves: the overhead of Medicare is about 6%. The overhead of a private health insurance company is closer to 20%.
First of all, we only know about Medicare's amazing figure from the Medicare themselves. It is in the bureaucrats' best interests to bump-up their efficiency figures, and they aren't particularly motivated to fight fraud — it is not their money being stolen, while reporting too much fraud will raise the questions about their efficiency. And second, Medicare is able to squeeze care-providers into money-losing rates. The providers then recoup the losses on commercially-insured (and uninsured) patients. Those of them, who don't cut off Medicare-covered patients at all, try hard to limit their numbers.
Competition requires innovation, innovation has to operate within the constraints of physical reality. Insurance is not a technological enterprise by and large, there's no new inventions which mean someone can gain a competitive advantage
This is completely false. I'm startled, you'd make such statement in earnest — it competes with the infamous ones of the past like "Everything that can be invented has been invented" or "Nobody could possibly need more than 640Kb of memory".
There is ample innovation in the insurance industry. Less-regulated auto-insurance companies offer very different policies. Freed from overly-invasive regulation, health-insurers could've offered lower rates to healthier people for one: non-smokers should be paying less than smokers. Those with healthier BMI — less than the fatsos or anorexics. Or those living in healthier areas. Higher deductibles (and co-pays) could lower the monthly premiums dramatically (I know, I had a policy with a $10K annual deductible — spending about $500 a year out of pocket on minor things, while still insured against a truly catastrophic illness. When Massachusetts mandated the maximum of $5K, my premiums nearly doubled). Excluding coverage for elective nonsense like gender-changes is another way to lower prices for all the others.
But we wouldn't even know — because our governments try very hard to keep the competition to the minimum. As if they want us to suffer — to make the privacy-destroying "single-payer" appear palatable. The approach has certainly succeeded with you already...
... shouldn't it be a 3xx or 5xx error code? 4xx means the client screwed up.
Well, living in a country, that's sufficiently oppressive to ban you from reaching any Internet-site it is your pleasure to visit, is a client's screw-up.
Numerous Irish women are doing it now because the constitution of the country has been amended to make it legal.
Was this supposed to be a counter-argument?..
There's always freedom of movement - and an authoritarian government is far more likely to deny it.
There is nothing "authoritarian" about Romney in general nor in his views on abortion in particular. Though I don't share this opinion myself, various cultures world-wide believe, life begins at conception — heck, the entire China counts people's age from that point (however approximate).
you with your libertarian views will join the gays, the openly atheist and other "subversives" in the camps.
What camps? Michael Moore is still alive, free, and enjoying his substantial wealth made by criticizing and mocking the government... No one raised an eyebrow over calls to kill Bush, but simply mocking the President now may lead to the offender's losing his livelihood. NSA's surveillance blossoms, as does TSA's abuse of travelers (spilling already from airports to train stations). IRS is used — with Obama's knowledge if not outright direction — to suppress opposition. Are you sure, it is the Republicans, who are the "authoritarian" ones?
As for armed/disarmed, if you're not willing to use the guns to protect your liberties - and you here are explicitly arguing that you'd be willing to trade off a lot of them for lower taxes, more or less - then what use are they?
There may be a point, in a not-so-distant future, when the government is not quite yet able to openly use officers to kill, beat-up, and otherwise suppress opposition, but is already able to send pro-government "enforcers" to do the job, while the officers are ordered to look the other way. It happened in Côte d’Ivoire, it happened in Zimbabwe, it happened in Chicago, and in Philadelphia. Being able to resist that kind of threat is why citizens should be able to arm themselves without much ado.
"Socialist" countries with more personal liberties - like Western Europe - are doing far better than authoritarian countries with more economic liberties, in terms of how well off their citizens actually are.
Oh I have no problem with managers per-se, - I just believe they should have some experience working on the factory floor so they know what they're actually asking of people
There is a good reason, most of the military officers have never been enlisted men. Being a good worker and a good manager are completely different things...
I just don't trust someone who has never in their life experienced even a hint of poverty to run a country with consideration for a population where roughly 1 in 4 people is unemployed or underemployed.
Trust? If anything, I'd trust a politician like Romney or Bloomberg — who became independently wealthy before entering politics — than the guys like Obama, who became rich as a result of being politicians. Do you honestly and sincerely believe, Michelle Obama would've obtained the position with $273k annual salary in Chicago hospitals-system, if her husband weren't a US Senator by then?
Just what makes you trust Obama? He never worked on a factory floor either, nor successfully managed anything of note, nor ever created anything other people were willing to pay their own money for.
His governing for four years was a nightmare — or should've been, if you were paying attention. He turned Bush's detentions of alleged terrorists into killingsof the same people. TSA's abuse of travelers blossomed, as did NSA's surveillance. IRS is used to suppress oppostion — under Obama's direction. You may not consider Obamacare to be bad, but it is poised to fail — was designed to fail — which is very likely to lead to a renewed push for "single-payer" setup giving the government complete and utter control of our health. Whereas calls to kill Bush were brushed off as an exercise of free speech (though such calls are felonies, strictly speaking), mere mocking of the President today can cost a person their career and livelihood. Foreigners still dislike us, while the unemployment figures remain far above, what Democrats themselves condemned as "jobless recovery" only a few years earlier.
And you willingly ignored all of that because of Romney's personal views (which he was not even promising his supporters to turn into policy) on a freaking abortion? Wow...
Romney is modern nobility through and through
I bet, you supported Al Gore despite these reasons... I have no problems with nobility rising from the merchant and industrialist class. Their ancestors made their wealth be creating and selling things, that other people wanted to buy — not through warfare or even politics. I'll take that nobility over a fatherless child of an ignoblephilanderer, who traveled around the world "marrying" local comfort women and siring children with them only to divorce them a few years later without bothering about the kids' welfare or upbringing.
As for abortions - that's great for your daughter. But a massive slice of the population is struggling just to get by
And that is exactly my point. Personal wealth — which Romney's government would've be
What makes you think they can't make abortions performed abroad illegal as well?
Even if they do — which is even more far-fetched than outlawing abortions to begin with — being reasonably well-off we would still be able to pull it off. As numerous Irish women are doing every year with the authorities being non the wiser.
But the poor (and disarmed, BTW) citizens are far more at the government's mercy...
I'm not saying, personal liberties aren't important. But they are less important than economic ones...
That in no way gives him a perspective on what it means to be a normal citizen of this country
Obama has even less of such perspective. Born in Hawaii (if not Kenya:), growing up in Indonesia, going from law-school to work for a charity and then into politics.
hell he could have retired straight out of high school and still lived better than the vast majority of this nation's population.
But he did not retire. By the time he inherited his father's wealth, he was had enough of his own to donate the entire inheritance to charity... That's quite remarkable — Joe Biden's father, for example, pissed his inheritance. And Joe Biden himself is worth less today, than he owes to various creditors.
Your disdain for managers is quite telling — and stupid. "Tells others what to do" is a very good description of what a President is doing every day — and Romney has a pretty good resume showing, he can do that rather well. Both as a head of private companies and of Executive government. Obama, on the other hand, had not been an executive of anything until becoming President. No, scratch that, he did run a small charity in Chicago — which failed.
That is, what's making me state, that Romney would've been far more likely to accomplish, what he wanted and promised to accomplish by now.
As for misogynistic - I suppose I was referring mostly to his utterly one-dimensional perspective on abortions and female reproductive health.
Abortions are a red-herring. They really don't matter. Much as I don't want it to become illegal, even if it ever does, I'll be able to afford my daughter's trip to Canada, should she ever want the procedure. Unless, that is, obamas and pelosis are allowed to keep running the country into ground (under NSA's careful oversight), in which case, having a 24x7 abortion clinic (free — just bring your own blanket) next door will be of very little consolation.
I am just saying that the insurance companies have made everything worse, pushed prices outrageously
You can be angry at them, but the anger is (largely) misplaced. For example, auto-insurance has not pushed the prices of auto-repairs through the roof — because plenty of people still pay for repairs out of pocket.
The problem with the health-insurance situation was created — and is maintained — by the government's tax-incentives given to employers to buy insurance for the employees. This eliminates (or severely impedes) the consumer's choice of health plans — or to whether even carry a health insurance vs. just paying the doctors as most Americans used to until only a few decades ago.
Very few health-plans today are created for an marketed directly to consumers — the actual users of them. This distorts the competition as the people demand "the best" while being insulated from the costs of it. And the competition is further compounded, by the government's efforts to prohibit sales of insurance plans across state-lines...
As long as the payers for service and consumers of it are different entities, this sort of nonsense will keep happening.
Does your scheme include room for the risk-pooling functions
Yes, of course. If the users of the health-insurance were the same entities, that pay for it, one of the layer between the consumers of health-care and payers for it would've been eliminated... It is a peculiarly US phenomenon, that our health insurance is tied to our employers — because the government gives them tax-breaks for buying the plans for us. McCain proposed abolishing these tax-breaks, which would've made insurance companies create and market plans to individuals and families, but he was mocked by the "Change" crowd, which continues to stall any attempts to introduce competition into the health-insurance market.
All of these problems you describe are a result of exactly that: of regulation being used instead of competition:
You aren't entirely correct here: in addition to deductibles, there are also co-pays — each doctor visit does cost something, which creates some incentive not go there for overly whimsical reasons. But insurance companies aren't allowed — by regulation — to charge unhealthy people (such as smokers over overeaters) more...
Hospitals do get away with this, because — as I pointed out from the beginning — the consumers of their care are not the same entities paying for it. I do see, that my "medical grade" foo should not cost so much, but — because it is not me paying for it — I'm neither going to make an issue of it, nor pick a different hospital because of it.
Same reason — payers are distinct from consumers.
Insurance companies are in it to make a profit. The only thing that would keep them from using those contracts you complain about is competition from other insurance companies.
Because government-guaranteed loans pay for education, medical schools have no incentive to curtail the costs of education. All education — not just medical schools... With doctors the problem is further compounded by the government-maintained monopoly — unlike for foreign programmers or engineers, it is practically impossible for foreign-educated doctors to get licensed in the US. I know several, who tried (very hard) with only one succeeding — and only after taking several years of that same, through-the-nose expensive medical school education here.
The majority of bankruptcies in the United States are for medical reasons, and the majority of *those* are by people who had health insurance at the time they got sick.
That may well be true, and the only way to fight the problem is by increasing competition — among insurers, doctors, medical schools, and hospitals. But the noisiest proponents of "change" are dead-set on the exact opposite course. Not only aren't foreign insurers allowed to sell policies to Americans, for example, even American companies aren't allowed to compete across state lines.
Removing the tax-incentive for employers to pay for the employees' "health-plans" is another much-needed step — it would make insurance companies sell directly to consumers of care, rather than to their employers. McCain was proposing just that in 2008, but was ridiculed and mocked for his efforts. And thus the peculiar tie-in between employment and health-insurance remains.
It is as if making things worse is useful for somebody... Given the drive towards "single-payer" — which would give our humble rulers even more control over our lives (to an extent, NSA can't even dream about) — I think, I know, who wants to make things so bad, the disastrous "single-payer" monopoly will begin to look appealing to the sufficiently large number of voters...
the best possible insurance scheme for a country is single-payer, where everyone is part of the same risk pool
If this were really true, why stop at insurance industry? Why not leverage the awesome economy of scale by getting rid of the petty competition between Coca-Cola and Pepsi? Ford and GM? This was, actually, attempted already — to miserable results.
It only works, if the people in charge of that monopoly you wish created are not only benevolent, but also omniscient and all knowing... Given that there are no such people in existence (present company excluded, of course), the second best choice is competition...
You are right in that size does matter for insurance companies. But only to a point. A company with 200 mln customers is not appreciably more efficient, than one with 100 mln. Having such companies compete with each other is much better for all the 300 mln, than to force them all into a single 300 mln-customer monopoly — governed charlie rangels and nansy pelosies to boot.
And then there is of course the whole matter of allegations vs something that might hold up a court of law (whether you're going to use one or not), and terrorism vs resistance.
You are absolutely right. Which brings us right back to where I pointed out, that the only two alternatives to detaining such alleged terrorists, are to either shoot them on the spot, or release them. And Obama — the Nobel Peace Prize winner — has picked the former option years ago.
If you were honest with yourself, you would've written a personal apology letter to George W. Bush by now...
Generally, after the war is over, the prisoners get to go home.
That's only true about Prisoners of War — and we did release all of the captured Iraqi soldiers shortly after the invasion succeeded in 2003, for example. The detainees in Gitmo don't qualify as Prisoners of War however:
they did not have uniforms nor other obvious markings;
they weren't part of a chain-of-command responsible for their actions;
I'm pretty sure one could try them in civilian courts, considering 'terrorism' is a criminal act, not an act of war. But that would be hideously inconvenient, considering how many of them ended up there.
Not just inconvenient — impossible: we don't even have jurisdiction in most of those cases. Consider pirates for another — less politically-charged — example... Whenever NATO captures them — off the coast of Somalia, primarily — they are let go...
an obvious sellout who's also a raving misogynistic looney that's utterly out of touch with what it means to work for a living
I don't think, either of the major candidates last year were misogynists. Both had lovely families — and full backing of their wives. Romney's wife, in particular, did not even have her own political ambition as an incentive to appear backing her husband.
There was nothing "loony" about either candidate, but Mitt Romney would've followed the law in question — and done a number of other things right by now...
utterly out of touch with what it means to work for a living.
I'm confused here... I thought, your wrath was directed at Romney — who did work for his living before becoming a politician — but now you appear to be angry at Obama, who moved into politics straight out of college and whose biggest Executive position before Presidency was running a (failed) small-time charity...
Slashdot Mirror
I'd like us to continue treating encryption as weapons and regulate its export accordingly. Unfortunately, it is not really possibly — any enemy worth the designation would be able to get it anyway, because moving an algorithm is much easier than a gun. And, unlike guns, you only need to move an algorithm once.
I wish I had sufficient confidence in my own government to be able to sincerely pick charity... Unfortunately, I do not. If the President can already ask the IRS to hurt opposition's finances, what's to prevent him from asking the NSA to look into the opposition's e-mails? The sort of thing, that got Nixon to resign is barely an issue with today's Americans...
However, according to an earlier article about Snowden's interaction with journalist(s), PGP (with sufficiently large keys) is still unbreakable even to the NSA — at least, as far Snowden was aware:
So that's, what a particularly private person should be using for all of his communications...
Well, arguably, the students should be getting precisely zero dollars to begin with, and every enterprise has some management overhead — we just don't really know, what it is supposed to be, because we are scarcely aware of the alternatives... A catchy bumper-sticker poses a false dichotomy: "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."
The real problem is that our government strongly discourages any competition to the public schools — even from other public schools... Those, who wish to send their child to a private school, must pay for it in addition to paying for the public one — one, which their child will not attend. Thus only the rich can afford it, which, no doubt, contributes to further stratification of the society and perpetuates income inequality.
That the people usually agitated about both of these societal warts are the same ones, who try their hardest to keep any competition out of the school-system (such as by fighting school-voucher programs tooth-and-nail and on the most bogus of pretexts), would've been extremely funny, if it weren't sad to an even further extreme...
You don't seem to challenge my primary point... Which is that the per-pupil expenditures have quadrupled over 50 years without anything to show for it. If anything, the education quality declined. Thus, anybody complaining about "scarce dollars" for education as the GGF poster did, or "underfunded schools" — as the even more pompous Racist-in-Chief put it in his recent speech — are either awfully ignorant or scandalously demagogic. Or both...
As far as the high cost of living in DC, yes, obviously, we are fulfilling the Founding Fathers' nightmare — the residents of the Capital city are becoming unduly powerful: not just because of the sheer unavoidable physical proximity to the government, but also because that government's power over citizens' daily lives is growing much too fast — and the income of various officials growing with it. But that's another topic altogether, of course.
Why should China bother with that, if the United States and the rest of the Western world spend their still-considerable energies on those subjects — despite not having any such poor people among their citizenry for decades?
And when we here aren't thinking of that, we work on disciplines like "Wymen's Issues" and "Social Studies"... It is like our rulers — the decision-makers in education, in particular — want to give China the time to catch-up with us...
The per-pupil cost of public school education quadrupled since 1961 (inflation-adjusted). That's points at anything but "scarcity" — yet, the education quality is slowly declining.
I submit, that neither you, nor anyone else in their right mind would continue to purchase a worsened service, that costs four times more than it used to — if they were well-informed and had a choice.
Well-spoken, yet completely misdirected words...
The per-pupil expenditures in public-schools nation-wide has quadrupled since 1961. That's adjusted to inflation — the nominal increase is nearly 30-fold. And yet, even the most Illiberal segment commentators — whom you'd expect to try hardest to defend the public schools — acknowledge, that mere 30% of the nation's 8th-graders qualify as "proficient" in something as basic and fundamental as reading.
In the high-population states and locales, where one would expect the high number of customers to get a better deal through the economy of scale, the per-pupil costs are, actually, even higher. District of Columbia, for example, has spent over $17k per kid in 2010, compared to Kentucky's $10k. NYC spends even more.
Whatever is wrong with the schools, "scarcity of dollars" is not it...
Indeed, the per-capita numbers are useless and misleading — the safest country is where there are no cars at all. Much more interesting would be the number of deaths per mile (or kilometer) driven.
And I explained, that this becomes irrelevant after the pool reaches a certain size. Certainly insurers want to keep growing — like all corporations — but a company with 200 mln policy-holders is not more efficient (per holder), than one with 100 mln.
First of all, we only know about Medicare's amazing figure from the Medicare themselves. It is in the bureaucrats' best interests to bump-up their efficiency figures, and they aren't particularly motivated to fight fraud — it is not their money being stolen, while reporting too much fraud will raise the questions about their efficiency. And second, Medicare is able to squeeze care-providers into money-losing rates. The providers then recoup the losses on commercially-insured (and uninsured) patients. Those of them, who don't cut off Medicare-covered patients at all, try hard to limit their numbers.
This is completely false. I'm startled, you'd make such statement in earnest — it competes with the infamous ones of the past like "Everything that can be invented has been invented" or "Nobody could possibly need more than 640Kb of memory".
There is ample innovation in the insurance industry. Less-regulated auto-insurance companies offer very different policies. Freed from overly-invasive regulation, health-insurers could've offered lower rates to healthier people for one: non-smokers should be paying less than smokers. Those with healthier BMI — less than the fatsos or anorexics. Or those living in healthier areas. Higher deductibles (and co-pays) could lower the monthly premiums dramatically (I know, I had a policy with a $10K annual deductible — spending about $500 a year out of pocket on minor things, while still insured against a truly catastrophic illness. When Massachusetts mandated the maximum of $5K, my premiums nearly doubled). Excluding coverage for elective nonsense like gender-changes is another way to lower prices for all the others.
But we wouldn't even know — because our governments try very hard to keep the competition to the minimum. As if they want us to suffer — to make the privacy-destroying "single-payer" appear palatable. The approach has certainly succeeded with you already...
Well, living in a country, that's sufficiently oppressive to ban you from reaching any Internet-site it is your pleasure to visit, is a client's screw-up.
Was this supposed to be a counter-argument?..
There is nothing "authoritarian" about Romney in general nor in his views on abortion in particular. Though I don't share this opinion myself, various cultures world-wide believe, life begins at conception — heck, the entire China counts people's age from that point (however approximate).
What camps? Michael Moore is still alive, free, and enjoying his substantial wealth made by criticizing and mocking the government... No one raised an eyebrow over calls to kill Bush, but simply mocking the President now may lead to the offender's losing his livelihood. NSA's surveillance blossoms, as does TSA's abuse of travelers (spilling already from airports to train stations). IRS is used — with Obama's knowledge if not outright direction — to suppress opposition. Are you sure, it is the Republicans, who are the "authoritarian" ones?
There may be a point, in a not-so-distant future, when the government is not quite yet able to openly use officers to kill, beat-up, and otherwise suppress opposition, but is already able to send pro-government "enforcers" to do the job, while the officers are ordered to look the other way. It happened in Côte d’Ivoire, it happened in Zimbabwe, it happened in Chicago, and in Philadelphia. Being able to resist that kind of threat is why citizens should be able to arm themselves without much ado.
Citation needed.
There is a good reason, most of the military officers have never been enlisted men. Being a good worker and a good manager are completely different things...
Trust? If anything, I'd trust a politician like Romney or Bloomberg — who became independently wealthy before entering politics — than the guys like Obama, who became rich as a result of being politicians. Do you honestly and sincerely believe, Michelle Obama would've obtained the position with $273k annual salary in Chicago hospitals-system, if her husband weren't a US Senator by then?
Just what makes you trust Obama? He never worked on a factory floor either, nor successfully managed anything of note, nor ever created anything other people were willing to pay their own money for.
His governing for four years was a nightmare — or should've been, if you were paying attention. He turned Bush's detentions of alleged terrorists into killings of the same people. TSA's abuse of travelers blossomed, as did NSA's surveillance. IRS is used to suppress oppostion — under Obama's direction. You may not consider Obamacare to be bad, but it is poised to fail — was designed to fail — which is very likely to lead to a renewed push for "single-payer" setup giving the government complete and utter control of our health. Whereas calls to kill Bush were brushed off as an exercise of free speech (though such calls are felonies, strictly speaking), mere mocking of the President today can cost a person their career and livelihood. Foreigners still dislike us, while the unemployment figures remain far above, what Democrats themselves condemned as "jobless recovery" only a few years earlier.
And you willingly ignored all of that because of Romney's personal views (which he was not even promising his supporters to turn into policy) on a freaking abortion? Wow...
I bet, you supported Al Gore despite these reasons... I have no problems with nobility rising from the merchant and industrialist class. Their ancestors made their wealth be creating and selling things, that other people wanted to buy — not through warfare or even politics. I'll take that nobility over a fatherless child of an ignoble philanderer, who traveled around the world "marrying" local comfort women and siring children with them only to divorce them a few years later without bothering about the kids' welfare or upbringing.
And that is exactly my point. Personal wealth — which Romney's government would've be
Even if they do — which is even more far-fetched than outlawing abortions to begin with — being reasonably well-off we would still be able to pull it off. As numerous Irish women are doing every year with the authorities being non the wiser.
But the poor (and disarmed, BTW) citizens are far more at the government's mercy...
I'm not saying, personal liberties aren't important. But they are less important than economic ones...
Obama has even less of such perspective. Born in Hawaii (if not Kenya :), growing up in Indonesia, going from law-school to work for a charity and then into politics.
But he did not retire. By the time he inherited his father's wealth, he was had enough of his own to donate the entire inheritance to charity... That's quite remarkable — Joe Biden's father, for example, pissed his inheritance. And Joe Biden himself is worth less today, than he owes to various creditors.
Your disdain for managers is quite telling — and stupid. "Tells others what to do" is a very good description of what a President is doing every day — and Romney has a pretty good resume showing, he can do that rather well. Both as a head of private companies and of Executive government. Obama, on the other hand, had not been an executive of anything until becoming President. No, scratch that, he did run a small charity in Chicago — which failed.
That is, what's making me state, that Romney would've been far more likely to accomplish, what he wanted and promised to accomplish by now.
Abortions are a red-herring. They really don't matter. Much as I don't want it to become illegal, even if it ever does, I'll be able to afford my daughter's trip to Canada, should she ever want the procedure. Unless, that is, obamas and pelosis are allowed to keep running the country into ground (under NSA's careful oversight), in which case, having a 24x7 abortion clinic (free — just bring your own blanket) next door will be of very little consolation.
You can be angry at them, but the anger is (largely) misplaced. For example, auto-insurance has not pushed the prices of auto-repairs through the roof — because plenty of people still pay for repairs out of pocket.
The problem with the health-insurance situation was created — and is maintained — by the government's tax-incentives given to employers to buy insurance for the employees. This eliminates (or severely impedes) the consumer's choice of health plans — or to whether even carry a health insurance vs. just paying the doctors as most Americans used to until only a few decades ago.
Very few health-plans today are created for an marketed directly to consumers — the actual users of them. This distorts the competition as the people demand "the best" while being insulated from the costs of it. And the competition is further compounded, by the government's efforts to prohibit sales of insurance plans across state-lines...
Yes, of course. If the users of the health-insurance were the same entities, that pay for it, one of the layer between the consumers of health-care and payers for it would've been eliminated... It is a peculiarly US phenomenon, that our health insurance is tied to our employers — because the government gives them tax-breaks for buying the plans for us. McCain proposed abolishing these tax-breaks, which would've made insurance companies create and market plans to individuals and families, but he was mocked by the "Change" crowd, which continues to stall any attempts to introduce competition into the health-insurance market.
That may well be true, and the only way to fight the problem is by increasing competition — among insurers, doctors, medical schools, and hospitals. But the noisiest proponents of "change" are dead-set on the exact opposite course. Not only aren't foreign insurers allowed to sell policies to Americans, for example, even American companies aren't allowed to compete across state lines.
Removing the tax-incentive for employers to pay for the employees' "health-plans" is another much-needed step — it would make insurance companies sell directly to consumers of care, rather than to their employers. McCain was proposing just that in 2008, but was ridiculed and mocked for his efforts. And thus the peculiar tie-in between employment and health-insurance remains.
It is as if making things worse is useful for somebody... Given the drive towards "single-payer" — which would give our humble rulers even more control over our lives (to an extent, NSA can't even dream about) — I think, I know, who wants to make things so bad, the disastrous "single-payer" monopoly will begin to look appealing to the sufficiently large number of voters...
Citation needed.
If this were really true, why stop at insurance industry? Why not leverage the awesome economy of scale by getting rid of the petty competition between Coca-Cola and Pepsi? Ford and GM? This was, actually, attempted already — to miserable results.
It only works, if the people in charge of that monopoly you wish created are not only benevolent, but also omniscient and all knowing... Given that there are no such people in existence (present company excluded, of course), the second best choice is competition...
You are right in that size does matter for insurance companies. But only to a point. A company with 200 mln customers is not appreciably more efficient, than one with 100 mln. Having such companies compete with each other is much better for all the 300 mln, than to force them all into a single 300 mln-customer monopoly — governed charlie rangels and nansy pelosies to boot.
You are absolutely right. Which brings us right back to where I pointed out, that the only two alternatives to detaining such alleged terrorists, are to either shoot them on the spot, or release them. And Obama — the Nobel Peace Prize winner — has picked the former option years ago.
If you were honest with yourself, you would've written a personal apology letter to George W. Bush by now...
That's only true about Prisoners of War — and we did release all of the captured Iraqi soldiers shortly after the invasion succeeded in 2003, for example. The detainees in Gitmo don't qualify as Prisoners of War however:
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Not just inconvenient — impossible: we don't even have jurisdiction in most of those cases. Consider pirates for another — less politically-charged — example... Whenever NATO captures them — off the coast of Somalia, primarily — they are let go...
As long as the payers for service and consumers of it are different entities, this sort of nonsense will keep happening.
There are only two alternatives to detaining prisoners in Gitmo:
Guess, which of the two Obama has chosen to expedite closing of the camp? All things considered, I prefer Bush's approach — it is far less bloody.
I don't think, either of the major candidates last year were misogynists. Both had lovely families — and full backing of their wives. Romney's wife, in particular, did not even have her own political ambition as an incentive to appear backing her husband.
There was nothing "loony" about either candidate, but Mitt Romney would've followed the law in question — and done a number of other things right by now...
I'm confused here... I thought, your wrath was directed at Romney — who did work for his living before becoming a politician — but now you appear to be angry at Obama, who moved into politics straight out of college and whose biggest Executive position before Presidency was running a (failed) small-time charity...
What's wrong with you, people? How could over a half of you be so wrong less than a year ago?