You really believe that people who can't afford or can't get insurance (due to pre-existing condition, etc) wouldn't seek health care if it was available to them? That's a pretty bold claim, not to mention a pretty dismal outlook on people in general. Got any evidence to back it up?
I offer as evidence the millions of people who DO have insurance who STILL do not go to the doctor. Everyone forgets about them.
We're making generalizations here, to be sure, but typically the kind of person who can't get group insurance doesn't have a lot of money. This will mean that they can't pay their counter fees, or where they can, it will hurt to do so. They're not going to voluntarily elect to do so unless they absolutely have to. That's just basic humanity. Everyone assumes that if only they had insurance they would go to the doctor instead of the emergency room. I ask you WHY this would be necessarily so?
By the way, what exactly is the Republican plan for fixing the problems of people not being able to get health insurance due to pre-existing conditions? Health care can't be left to charity, because it'll end up costing all of us anyway. We've already decided as a country that we'll have universal health care, because we don't want to let people die in the streets by denying them access to emergency rooms. We just have the least efficient form of universal healthcare imaginable, and that needs to be fixed.
The gap exists wherein you can't have things go both ways. You cannot have a for profit system, such as a hospital, and allow everyone to fully utilize it at zero cost. That is bad logic, and there's simply nothing other than hope that people will change to back it up.
I implore you to imagine a system where people don't really change that much. Imagine hospitals that screw their patients over for every dime they can. Imagine people who don't want to deal with being sick, and will ignore it for as long as humanly possible. Design a system that works for these entities and we'll talk.
You did ask that the Republican answer is, and as I'm not familiar enough with them to provide it, I can give you my own instead. We need to select ONE of the following options:
A) The Federal government takes over all medical care at every level for every citizen, period. Any licensed medical professional is now a state employee. Everyone's care is free, paid for by the tax rolls.
B) The government allows market forces to decide where medical care winds up. This includes things like pricing, treatment types, insurance plans, etc, etc, etc.
Obama's option is to prop up the greedy hospitals while assassinating the insurance industry. It doesn't make sense to corrupt one organization at the expense of another.
I won't belabor on this any longer other than to say we're already paying for healthcare for the uninsured though E/R treatments. Of course covering the uninsured will cost money, but it's money we're already spending.
YES! Except in our new future we'll be spending that same money twice. First because people won't really change, and second, now, because the law will mandate that we do so.
When people with poor health management skills find their mandated government insurance lacking, will they suddenly cease going to the emergency rooms? Their insurance isn't going to cover them when they refuse medical advice and just keep doing what they feel is best, and a great many of them won't see the value in paying for the follow up visits, running the prescriptions all the way out, etc - and they will be back. IF, that is, they aren't completely disenfranchised by the process and decide that the free emergency room care really was better at meeting their needs.
Again, you're assuming the best in people when you should be assuming something more realistic.
Secondly, nearly all hospitals "used" to be not-for-profit. It's only in the last 20-30 years that many have become corporate "for-profit" entities (the rise in for-profit hospitals curiously follows the trajectory of the rise in healthcare costs).
That's likely true, but completely irrelevant. The laws aren't being passed retroactively. They need to be applicable to the hospitals of TODAY. Those are businesses which seek to profit at every scenario. This will include the preventative approaches to medicine, and abuses of the system will go up. There's no reasonable expectation of the otherwise outside of making Obamacare budget neutral. That is the ONLY setting where everyone acts in the best interests of the public rather than in their own selfish interests.
Besides all that, any decent society owes it's members, at a minimum, the right to live (especially a country that claims to be based on Christianity).
Advocate for charity outside of government and you'll get no complaints out of me. As you said, there used to be more, but as our government forces more and more people to comply with its will, we're seeing less actual benefit.
I have no desire to punish the rich, in fact I'd like to BE rich one day, but I can promise you this: If I ever am, I won't begrudge providing comfort to the sick and poor. I wasn't brought up that way.
That's the way it should be. Charity should be voluntary, rather than compulsory. I truly hope you are rich, and I also genuinely hope that no one possessing your current set of opinions seeks to take away from you more than you're willing to give. Because you then, as with the 'rich' now, are the only one in the position to decide how much is 'enough'.
I just don't see the progressive tax system with a 39% top tax rate (it was 50% under Reagan and 35% now) that much of a burden to those that fall into the income brackets affected.
That's also irrelevant, because you're only really entitled to decide what happens to your own money.
You can call me self-righteous if you choose, but I'm just speaking my mind. How I choose to support the less fortunate of the world is my own concern (though I can promise you I do my part) and I won't question what you do to help. However, if through the (long) day's worth of postings today I've managed to change one person's point of view, or at least made them think about it, then I suppose it was a day well spent.
You're absolutely right about time well spent, but you're undermining your desired goals (of seeing people's needs met) by aligning them with a more malignant, populist bend.
Charity is one thing, but the nanny-state is something entirely separate. In my view, less of the compulsory giving will ultimately lead to more voluntary effort. And the reverse is true as well. The more you 'force the rich' to pay more than they feel is fair, the more they will squeeze the middle class to make up the perceived gaps.
Obamacare is not charity. It's about control and punishment.
'Preventative care vs emergency care' is deeply flawed. It operates on a huge number of assumptions that have never been measured:
A) It assumes people will participate in the preventative care.
B) It assumes that medical practitioners will not raise their prices
etc, etc, etc
It looks good on paper, but there's no such creature in the real zoology of the business world, period.
But even if it were true, tax-funded things cannot, by definition, pay for themselves. The alternative, which does not involve redistributing wealth, means never collecting the taxes in the first place. In THAT plan, the government could simply make all the cuts and not tax us, and we'd keep the money.
I get how you'd rather talk to the uninformed than to tangle with actual details. That's totally normal. And to humor you, I can go to the trouble of looking up your user profile. Let's peek, shall we?
I'm sorry if the additional tax burden will prevent joe moneybags from purchasing that new Ferrari and will have to settle for a Corvette, but if that prevents average joe's child from dying from a perfectly preventable illness then I say it's completely fair.
I find it completely fair that those who have enough wealth to enjoy the luxuries and pleasures this country has to offer should pay a larger percentage of their income as compare to those who work 80 hours a week their entire life just to feed their families.
And that's all well and good, but you're only advocating the right to redistribute Joe's wealth, because you've determined that he doesn't deserve to keep it. Considering you've never even met him (or her) this is a deeply flawed leap to make.
So clearly, you're making a moral argument rather than a logical one, but in the post I replied to you made a logical-incongruence complaint. Does not follow, friend.
Also, if this is the case, then feel free to lead the way. Donate all your posessions and go live in a hut in Africa, because to them, dear sir, YOU are the Moneybags, and yet it doesn't seem to slow down your righteousness even a little bit.
I'm all for doing away with income tax altogether and going to a national sales tax where the amount of sales tax would be graduated based on the category of item purchased (i.e. food would be taxed at a much lower percentage rate than a yacht).
This doesn't follow with what you're saying elsewhere. You want to PUNISH those evil rich, not treat them fairly. If you wanted to treat them fairly, you'd advocate for flat income taxes as well.
First, I don't agree that providing care to the uninsured is taking ANYTHING from another person. It is not a zero-sum game. Just because a person with the flu can get treatment for their condition before they wind up in E/R with pneumonia does necessarily mean that Steve Forbe will pay any more for his green fees. In fact, it likely will result in all of us paying LESS for healthcare.
You're completely ignoring the profit motives of the modern healthcare economy. To assume that their profits from preventative care will cause the hospitals to become altruistic is a complete fallacy. They will seize the opportunity to squeeze every last drop out of the available sources of income. They always have, and will continue to do so because they are businesses.
Maybe the idea of "fair" doesn't enter the equation, but I guess my point is, "maybe it should".
This is false. You're only in favor of your own version of 'fair'. A true 'fair' would mean that everyone pays the same, period. After all, we're all participitating in the same government, we each get one vote, etc. Fair is fair, but that's not what you're discussing at all.
Anyway, I'll stop here. You're clearly exhausted. Have a great evening.
Ah, but a certain Mr Lincoln would beg to differ with you. You know the one, President Obama's hero? In the late eighteen hundreds it was decided that the only way to 'end slavery' was to shred the Constitution and establish a Federal power as the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong. Never mind that there were actually dozens of ways that the stated goal could have otherwise been accomplished - it was a Civil War and a complete rewrite of our political structure that had to be conducted in order to allow for this (ultimately very modest) societal change. And further disregard that the Federal powers never got around to actually freeing those slaves. They waited nearly a hundred years for a certain Dr King to finish that work for them. Until THAT time, they were second class citizens at best, with little-to-no hopes of any form of true citizenship within this Union. I'd also like to casually point out that the economic harm would have been less for the Fed to simply buy every slave in North America at that time from the Confederacy, and avoid the over-two-million dead. But those poor suffering people instead got used as political capital for a Federalist upheaval, and were summarily discarded.
At any rate, while they never changed what the words on the sheepskin says, they don't play by those rules very often any more.
Huh? How is providing healtcare to those that can't afford it wealth redistribution?
Here's your test:
Is healthcare free? Or expensive?
Because if the latter is true, than it requires some application of wealth to receive treatment.
Here's a bonus test:
Did Obamacare do anything at all to make healthcare free? Or did he just find a way to make someone else pay for it?
Because if he was serious about 'healthcare being a right', then the hospitals would be government run overnight. They're still private entities, so he clearly doesn't really believe what he says. He simply hates insurance companies. Probably due to how they treated his mom. Period. The end.
And while we're on that topic, why is always considered a bad thing when wealth redistribution benefits the lower-middle income, but it's a good thing when it benefits the upper 2% (e.g. tax breaks for the wealthy)?
How is a tax break, as in 'you get to keep your own money' any sort of 'redistrobution' of wealth? They have it and you want it, but you'd really rather not bother with earning it or actually solving any problems, so you just vote it away from them. Yes, it works as a political platform, but it is a bit disingenuous to expect those inflicted to actually LIKE it. You wouldn't care much for it either.
In any case, it appears as if your logic device is broken. Please take it back to Walmart for a full refund...
You're retarded. You've voted in two presidential elections, so you make this statement? Really?
When my 80 year old grandfather makes that statement, it means something (he's an unreasoning moron who checks the R box without thinking).
Actually, I guess it means the same thing when you say it. It just also happens to be pathetic when you say it, as if two election cycles of blind party loyalty was noteworthy.
I'd be inclined to blast you for being such a jackass to that 'retard', but you're inclined to show that same level of disrespect to your own grandfather.
You seem to be the one who's pathetic, in your pathological disrespect for people who disagree with your political views.
Partisanship is a mental disease, and it just make you say abhorrent things about your own grandfather in a public place. Seek help.
I'd rather have an elected representative that actually gets things done that better my life.
If I want to idolize someone who clings to sometimes bizarre principles at the expense of doing something useful, there's always the Pope. I don't need my Congressman to be that guy, too.
Then YOU are to blame for the state we're in, because if you'd rather have someone without principles then you definitely deserve the bread and circuses you were complaining about a page or so above here.
Nope. At best, the public thinks they want freedom, period, until someone else wants to do something with their freedom that they don't like. Then it's: "I like freedom, but X is just wrong."
Because people like you have no principles, period.
It's not the size of government that matters so much as the quality of government.
To me the emphasis on quantity and not quality shows how stupid people are.
Making all that effort to solve the wrong problem. What good is it if you have achieved a government of size X, but it's still bad?
Sad really that so many supposedly smart people are that stupid.
Inefficiency is intrinsic to the very definition of 'government'. Size is a common cause of inefficiency. You're being dense on purpose by assuming that government is self-sizing or that it serves a purpose greater than justification of its own existence. It isn't, and largely it doesn't.
If you didn't have such a low UID, I'd accuse you of being too young to realize this. As it is, I can only conclude that your naivety is forced. You've clearly had dealings with your local government by this point, and could easily understand how bloat and bureaucracy are key parts of the issue.
However even if it doesn't it shows that Julian is a jackass who uses people for personal gain.
Even if he was married and cheating on his wife, he' still done no worse than many US politicians of the past decade. As a single guy, not in a relationship, I couldn't give a flying fuck who he sleeps with, and I scoff at any US politico who would make something of it.
Ted Kennedy, for example, was cheating on his wife, driving drunk, killed his mistress in a wreck and fled the scene - and he was a Democratic hero up until his death.
Assange didn't use a condom. It rather pales in comparison.
Has Apple trademarked Jobs' image? Or is there some kind of international law that covers selling the likeness of someone without their permission?
I'm not being snarky, I genuinely don't know.
I had this same thought, and further, I'm pretty confident that there's no trademark issue here. Apple doesn't make figurines. The whole thing is a caricature and doesn't threaten the computer business in any way. Now, if Apple WERE in the action figure business, or had entered into a contract with someone who was, then we might have an issue of greater importance.
Agreed. If your package isn't packed well enough to withstand at least a 3ft drop onto concrete, and at least 20kg of pressure without breaking, you're doing it wrong.
And I'd have thought that you were doing it wrong by using standard units for distance and metric for pressure.../duck
Does Windows Steady State work on Wine, or is there some linux version that your link doesn't mention?
Oh wait! You weren't suggesting loading Windows on the machine? Sheesh! That's worse than leaving him alone while you go shopping.
A) 'Windows sucks' is a tired, tired troll, even on slashdot.
B) You failed to mention achieving the same results via LiveCD-style boot to distro of choice, which could have at least been trolling disguised as being helpful.
All rights are natural rights, given to us at birth. We have every bit as much of a right to use a public service as everyone else who is allowed to use it.
It is not mandatory that I have testicles to be groped in such a search. The government could remove them and I'd survive it. Are you going to specify that I have no right to keep my testicles? It isn't written down anywhere that I have that right, so I must not have it - per your view?
Not quite the way it works. We have every right. Every single one, except those that we voluntarily surrender in order to make this a better society, through the force of law.
The government is barred from conducting unreasonable searches. Period. This is not about the 'right to fly', rather the power of the government to restrict exercising that god-given right.
You can drag on all you want about how the Nazis are dead and who cares any more, but if the ideas and symbolism have outlived their progenitors, then clearly, it's very much alive.
My point would be, then, that the people keeping that fear alive are the ones doing the modern evil.
Man I would love to see the reaction on Fox if Obama did something like that. Just how fast can they switch from "Obama invading your rights" to "Obama making you vulnerable to terrorists" without causing cognitive dissonance in their audience. Actually, I'm not sure their audience is capable of cognitive dissonance.
Slashdot Mirror
You really believe that people who can't afford or can't get insurance (due to pre-existing condition, etc) wouldn't seek health care if it was available to them? That's a pretty bold claim, not to mention a pretty dismal outlook on people in general. Got any evidence to back it up?
I offer as evidence the millions of people who DO have insurance who STILL do not go to the doctor. Everyone forgets about them.
We're making generalizations here, to be sure, but typically the kind of person who can't get group insurance doesn't have a lot of money. This will mean that they can't pay their counter fees, or where they can, it will hurt to do so. They're not going to voluntarily elect to do so unless they absolutely have to. That's just basic humanity. Everyone assumes that if only they had insurance they would go to the doctor instead of the emergency room. I ask you WHY this would be necessarily so?
By the way, what exactly is the Republican plan for fixing the problems of people not being able to get health insurance due to pre-existing conditions? Health care can't be left to charity, because it'll end up costing all of us anyway. We've already decided as a country that we'll have universal health care, because we don't want to let people die in the streets by denying them access to emergency rooms. We just have the least efficient form of universal healthcare imaginable, and that needs to be fixed.
The gap exists wherein you can't have things go both ways. You cannot have a for profit system, such as a hospital, and allow everyone to fully utilize it at zero cost. That is bad logic, and there's simply nothing other than hope that people will change to back it up.
I implore you to imagine a system where people don't really change that much. Imagine hospitals that screw their patients over for every dime they can. Imagine people who don't want to deal with being sick, and will ignore it for as long as humanly possible. Design a system that works for these entities and we'll talk.
You did ask that the Republican answer is, and as I'm not familiar enough with them to provide it, I can give you my own instead. We need to select ONE of the following options:
A) The Federal government takes over all medical care at every level for every citizen, period. Any licensed medical professional is now a state employee. Everyone's care is free, paid for by the tax rolls.
B) The government allows market forces to decide where medical care winds up. This includes things like pricing, treatment types, insurance plans, etc, etc, etc.
Obama's option is to prop up the greedy hospitals while assassinating the insurance industry. It doesn't make sense to corrupt one organization at the expense of another.
The inquiring party can compare two engines and decide which on they prefer. Nothing else really matters.
Markets can only work with information. What I'm thinking about is a way to provide meaningful information to consumers of search engines.
What information would people be lacking, exactly?
They put a search term in Google and either find what they expected or they do not. Repeat the test with another engine and compare.
This doesn't seem all that difficult to me.
I won't belabor on this any longer other than to say we're already paying for healthcare for the uninsured though E/R treatments. Of course covering the uninsured will cost money, but it's money we're already spending.
YES! Except in our new future we'll be spending that same money twice. First because people won't really change, and second, now, because the law will mandate that we do so.
When people with poor health management skills find their mandated government insurance lacking, will they suddenly cease going to the emergency rooms? Their insurance isn't going to cover them when they refuse medical advice and just keep doing what they feel is best, and a great many of them won't see the value in paying for the follow up visits, running the prescriptions all the way out, etc - and they will be back. IF, that is, they aren't completely disenfranchised by the process and decide that the free emergency room care really was better at meeting their needs.
Again, you're assuming the best in people when you should be assuming something more realistic.
Secondly, nearly all hospitals "used" to be not-for-profit. It's only in the last 20-30 years that many have become corporate "for-profit" entities (the rise in for-profit hospitals curiously follows the trajectory of the rise in healthcare costs).
That's likely true, but completely irrelevant. The laws aren't being passed retroactively. They need to be applicable to the hospitals of TODAY. Those are businesses which seek to profit at every scenario. This will include the preventative approaches to medicine, and abuses of the system will go up. There's no reasonable expectation of the otherwise outside of making Obamacare budget neutral. That is the ONLY setting where everyone acts in the best interests of the public rather than in their own selfish interests.
Besides all that, any decent society owes it's members, at a minimum, the right to live (especially a country that claims to be based on Christianity).
Advocate for charity outside of government and you'll get no complaints out of me. As you said, there used to be more, but as our government forces more and more people to comply with its will, we're seeing less actual benefit.
I have no desire to punish the rich, in fact I'd like to BE rich one day, but I can promise you this: If I ever am, I won't begrudge providing comfort to the sick and poor. I wasn't brought up that way.
That's the way it should be. Charity should be voluntary, rather than compulsory. I truly hope you are rich, and I also genuinely hope that no one possessing your current set of opinions seeks to take away from you more than you're willing to give. Because you then, as with the 'rich' now, are the only one in the position to decide how much is 'enough'.
I just don't see the progressive tax system with a 39% top tax rate (it was 50% under Reagan and 35% now) that much of a burden to those that fall into the income brackets affected.
That's also irrelevant, because you're only really entitled to decide what happens to your own money.
You can call me self-righteous if you choose, but I'm just speaking my mind. How I choose to support the less fortunate of the world is my own concern (though I can promise you I do my part) and I won't question what you do to help. However, if through the (long) day's worth of postings today I've managed to change one person's point of view, or at least made them think about it, then I suppose it was a day well spent.
You're absolutely right about time well spent, but you're undermining your desired goals (of seeing people's needs met) by aligning them with a more malignant, populist bend.
Charity is one thing, but the nanny-state is something entirely separate. In my view, less of the compulsory giving will ultimately lead to more voluntary effort. And the reverse is true as well. The more you 'force the rich' to pay more than they feel is fair, the more they will squeeze the middle class to make up the perceived gaps.
Obamacare is not charity. It's about control and punishment.
Amazon deciding to stop hosting your site doesn't infringe upon your rights.
Unless they broke their contract under duress from the government. We do have the right to enter into contracts unimpeded by undue influence.
I honestly thought it was government(s) behind the DDoS.
Well, I still do. There's zero expectation that our government is above farming this out to an idiot.
I also feel that that entire Lamo debacle was a sting operation.
Maybe that's just what I would do, so it makes perfect sense to me.
'Preventative care vs emergency care' is deeply flawed. It operates on a huge number of assumptions that have never been measured:
A) It assumes people will participate in the preventative care.
B) It assumes that medical practitioners will not raise their prices
etc, etc, etc
It looks good on paper, but there's no such creature in the real zoology of the business world, period.
But even if it were true, tax-funded things cannot, by definition, pay for themselves. The alternative, which does not involve redistributing wealth, means never collecting the taxes in the first place. In THAT plan, the government could simply make all the cuts and not tax us, and we'd keep the money.
I get how you'd rather talk to the uninformed than to tangle with actual details. That's totally normal. And to humor you, I can go to the trouble of looking up your user profile. Let's peek, shall we?
I'm sorry if the additional tax burden will prevent joe moneybags from purchasing that new Ferrari and will have to settle for a Corvette, but if that prevents average joe's child from dying from a perfectly preventable illness then I say it's completely fair.
I find it completely fair that those who have enough wealth to enjoy the luxuries and pleasures this country has to offer should pay a larger percentage of their income as compare to those who work 80 hours a week their entire life just to feed their families.
And that's all well and good, but you're only advocating the right to redistribute Joe's wealth, because you've determined that he doesn't deserve to keep it. Considering you've never even met him (or her) this is a deeply flawed leap to make.
So clearly, you're making a moral argument rather than a logical one, but in the post I replied to you made a logical-incongruence complaint. Does not follow, friend.
Also, if this is the case, then feel free to lead the way. Donate all your posessions and go live in a hut in Africa, because to them, dear sir, YOU are the Moneybags, and yet it doesn't seem to slow down your righteousness even a little bit.
I'm all for doing away with income tax altogether and going to a national sales tax where the amount of sales tax would be graduated based on the category of item purchased (i.e. food would be taxed at a much lower percentage rate than a yacht).
This doesn't follow with what you're saying elsewhere. You want to PUNISH those evil rich, not treat them fairly. If you wanted to treat them fairly, you'd advocate for flat income taxes as well.
First, I don't agree that providing care to the uninsured is taking ANYTHING from another person. It is not a zero-sum game. Just because a person with the flu can get treatment for their condition before they wind up in E/R with pneumonia does necessarily mean that Steve Forbe will pay any more for his green fees. In fact, it likely will result in all of us paying LESS for healthcare.
You're completely ignoring the profit motives of the modern healthcare economy. To assume that their profits from preventative care will cause the hospitals to become altruistic is a complete fallacy. They will seize the opportunity to squeeze every last drop out of the available sources of income. They always have, and will continue to do so because they are businesses.
Maybe the idea of "fair" doesn't enter the equation, but I guess my point is, "maybe it should".
This is false. You're only in favor of your own version of 'fair'. A true 'fair' would mean that everyone pays the same, period. After all, we're all participitating in the same government, we each get one vote, etc. Fair is fair, but that's not what you're discussing at all.
Anyway, I'll stop here. You're clearly exhausted. Have a great evening.
Because people like you have no principles, period.
Bitch, don't even talk like you know me.
lol
I judge you by your own words, and encourage you to do likewise.
Ah, but a certain Mr Lincoln would beg to differ with you. You know the one, President Obama's hero? In the late eighteen hundreds it was decided that the only way to 'end slavery' was to shred the Constitution and establish a Federal power as the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong. Never mind that there were actually dozens of ways that the stated goal could have otherwise been accomplished - it was a Civil War and a complete rewrite of our political structure that had to be conducted in order to allow for this (ultimately very modest) societal change. And further disregard that the Federal powers never got around to actually freeing those slaves. They waited nearly a hundred years for a certain Dr King to finish that work for them. Until THAT time, they were second class citizens at best, with little-to-no hopes of any form of true citizenship within this Union. I'd also like to casually point out that the economic harm would have been less for the Fed to simply buy every slave in North America at that time from the Confederacy, and avoid the over-two-million dead. But those poor suffering people instead got used as political capital for a Federalist upheaval, and were summarily discarded.
At any rate, while they never changed what the words on the sheepskin says, they don't play by those rules very often any more.
Huh? How is providing healtcare to those that can't afford it wealth redistribution?
Here's your test:
Is healthcare free? Or expensive?
Because if the latter is true, than it requires some application of wealth to receive treatment.
Here's a bonus test:
Did Obamacare do anything at all to make healthcare free? Or did he just find a way to make someone else pay for it?
Because if he was serious about 'healthcare being a right', then the hospitals would be government run overnight. They're still private entities, so he clearly doesn't really believe what he says. He simply hates insurance companies. Probably due to how they treated his mom. Period. The end.
And while we're on that topic, why is always considered a bad thing when wealth redistribution benefits the lower-middle income, but it's a good thing when it benefits the upper 2% (e.g. tax breaks for the wealthy)?
How is a tax break, as in 'you get to keep your own money' any sort of 'redistrobution' of wealth? They have it and you want it, but you'd really rather not bother with earning it or actually solving any problems, so you just vote it away from them. Yes, it works as a political platform, but it is a bit disingenuous to expect those inflicted to actually LIKE it. You wouldn't care much for it either.
In any case, it appears as if your logic device is broken. Please take it back to Walmart for a full refund...
Never voted Democrat in my life
You're retarded. You've voted in two presidential elections, so you make this statement? Really?
When my 80 year old grandfather makes that statement, it means something (he's an unreasoning moron who checks the R box without thinking).
Actually, I guess it means the same thing when you say it. It just also happens to be pathetic when you say it, as if two election cycles of blind party loyalty was noteworthy.
I'd be inclined to blast you for being such a jackass to that 'retard', but you're inclined to show that same level of disrespect to your own grandfather.
You seem to be the one who's pathetic, in your pathological disrespect for people who disagree with your political views.
Partisanship is a mental disease, and it just make you say abhorrent things about your own grandfather in a public place. Seek help.
I'd rather have an elected representative that actually gets things done that better my life.
If I want to idolize someone who clings to sometimes bizarre principles at the expense of doing something useful, there's always the Pope. I don't need my Congressman to be that guy, too.
Then YOU are to blame for the state we're in, because if you'd rather have someone without principles then you definitely deserve the bread and circuses you were complaining about a page or so above here.
Nope. At best, the public thinks they want freedom, period, until someone else wants to do something with their freedom that they don't like. Then it's: "I like freedom, but X is just wrong."
Because people like you have no principles, period.
It's not the size of government that matters so much as the quality of government.
To me the emphasis on quantity and not quality shows how stupid people are.
Making all that effort to solve the wrong problem. What good is it if you have achieved a government of size X, but it's still bad?
Sad really that so many supposedly smart people are that stupid.
Inefficiency is intrinsic to the very definition of 'government'. Size is a common cause of inefficiency. You're being dense on purpose by assuming that government is self-sizing or that it serves a purpose greater than justification of its own existence. It isn't, and largely it doesn't.
If you didn't have such a low UID, I'd accuse you of being too young to realize this. As it is, I can only conclude that your naivety is forced. You've clearly had dealings with your local government by this point, and could easily understand how bloat and bureaucracy are key parts of the issue.
It's entertainment not politics.
There's a difference?
Yeah. Entertainment is funny.
But so is politics...
However even if it doesn't it shows that Julian is a jackass who uses people for personal gain.
Even if he was married and cheating on his wife, he' still done no worse than many US politicians of the past decade. As a single guy, not in a relationship, I couldn't give a flying fuck who he sleeps with, and I scoff at any US politico who would make something of it.
Ted Kennedy, for example, was cheating on his wife, driving drunk, killed his mistress in a wreck and fled the scene - and he was a Democratic hero up until his death.
Assange didn't use a condom. It rather pales in comparison.
Has Apple trademarked Jobs' image? Or is there some kind of international law that covers selling the likeness of someone without their permission?
I'm not being snarky, I genuinely don't know.
I had this same thought, and further, I'm pretty confident that there's no trademark issue here. Apple doesn't make figurines. The whole thing is a caricature and doesn't threaten the computer business in any way. Now, if Apple WERE in the action figure business, or had entered into a contract with someone who was, then we might have an issue of greater importance.
Agreed. If your package isn't packed well enough to withstand at least a 3ft drop onto concrete, and at least 20kg of pressure without breaking, you're doing it wrong.
And I'd have thought that you were doing it wrong by using standard units for distance and metric for pressure... /duck
Does Windows Steady State work on Wine, or is there some linux version that your link doesn't mention?
Oh wait! You weren't suggesting loading Windows on the machine? Sheesh! That's worse than leaving him alone while you go shopping.
A) 'Windows sucks' is a tired, tired troll, even on slashdot.
B) You failed to mention achieving the same results via LiveCD-style boot to distro of choice, which could have at least been trolling disguised as being helpful.
Why Nazi symbols, and not others?
Are we to believe that the Third Reich has Xbox Live accounts? Wouldn't any surviving Nazis be a tad old for such games?
'standards' and 'arbitrary' do not equate, and you well know it.
All rights are natural rights, given to us at birth. We have every bit as much of a right to use a public service as everyone else who is allowed to use it.
It is not mandatory that I have testicles to be groped in such a search. The government could remove them and I'd survive it. Are you going to specify that I have no right to keep my testicles? It isn't written down anywhere that I have that right, so I must not have it - per your view?
Not quite the way it works. We have every right. Every single one, except those that we voluntarily surrender in order to make this a better society, through the force of law.
The government is barred from conducting unreasonable searches. Period. This is not about the 'right to fly', rather the power of the government to restrict exercising that god-given right.
There's a gap between the bevy of proper responses and the topic here - banning a person from a service.
We're not discussing 'frustration'...
Staying home is a false choice, and everyone knows it. Flying and rape are not necessarily related.
You can drag on all you want about how the Nazis are dead and who cares any more, but if the ideas and symbolism have outlived their progenitors, then clearly, it's very much alive.
My point would be, then, that the people keeping that fear alive are the ones doing the modern evil.
Man I would love to see the reaction on Fox if Obama did something like that. Just how fast can they switch from "Obama invading your rights" to "Obama making you vulnerable to terrorists" without causing cognitive dissonance in their audience. Actually, I'm not sure their audience is capable of cognitive dissonance.
Ron Paul.