"I think you underestimate doctors. Some (most?) do what they do because they want to help people. "
ROFL I know quite a few doctors and all of them went into medicine for one reason. Money.
In any case, hospitals are not doctors they are for profit business. They only treat emergency patients without insurance because they are required to both as a matter of law and a matter of liability.
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,"
Last I checked we don't charge money to come here legally.
Perhaps my heart might warm to these immigrants despite the fact that their very arrival names them criminals with no respect for our nation and its laws. But I find it rather difficult when they march down our streets waving Mexican flags and claiming most of the southwest for the country whose oppression bleeding hearts would claim they flee. When they refuse to learn our language and instead demand that we provide them services in a foreign tongue.
When living in Miami I knew tons of Cubans. Not Cuban Americans mind, even the ones who were born here. They weren't good or bad, they were people like any others. But I have watched time and again as a second or even third generation Cuban would go into a store and demand service in Spanish. Local stores all accommodate in Miami, it is little cuba after all, but some of the chains don't. When they find out that there is no Spanish service they will finally give in and speak in perfect fluent American English with an American accent.
The latin immigration epidemic is a serious one. The effect is that they are taking over a large portion of our nation and instead of trying to integrate into our culture are trying to take it over. In many cases this is even a deliberate effort.
It is an invasion, not a military attack, but a cultural and social attack with an intended result every bit as chilling and with far greater consequence to any Pearl Harbor bombing.
No doubt you will dismiss everything I have said with a fallacy by calling me a racist. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don't even believe in the legitimacy of grouping traits that are common in a region together and calling it a race. I don't have anything against the latin culture over another though I have bad things to say about most all cultures including the broader american culture and its subcultures.
Attacking me or my credibility will not make the message less true. It will not change the fact of the marches of that the people of a particular culture and nationality ARE deliberately attacking our own culture and nation.
"Let me repeat that. Whether they come to the ER without coverage or are enrolled in a government subsidized insurance program, you will pay."
So lift requirements for the ER to care for illegal aliens. It isn't like they'll voluntarily do so. All they have to do to avoid dying due to an emergency medical condition is stay home.
"Perhaps, you can cite the dozens or perhaps hundreds of other programs the government has run that efficiently made things better?"
That would be hard to do since the opposition puts checks and double checks and red tape like you wouldn't believe into most government programs to try to prevent 'abuse' and limit their spending as much as possible. This bill is no doubt more of the same.
"I agree, but actually, the negative mods were for "overrated", which means they disagreed with the "+1 interesting" mods. Thats valid, is it not?"
When I posted his score he was Score:0, Troll.
"Thats valid, is it not?"
If it had been the case then yes. I would disagree though. He expressed a view (or reasons for one) that had not been previously introduced. Therefore he added to the discussion and that is what +1 Interesting is for.
If nothing else positive moderation should be left alone because the moderator guidelines say you should avoid negative mods and because leaving his post visible gives context to any insightful comments in opposition to what he said.
But just because there are abuse mods who censor opposing views (who are worse than trolls imho) doesn't mean we have to publicaly condone the practice.
"It has nothing to do with disagreeing. The guy is full of shit."
In other words:
It has nothing to do with disagreeing. I disagree strongly with this guy.
"We mod up insightful posts. Let's mod down uninsightful posts."
That is a direct conflict with the moderation guidelines. The guidelines state that moderators should try to focus on modding up posts that add to the discussion.
Insightful is a way to highlight posts you agree with, modding down posts you did not agree with (found uninsightful) is a way of censoring views other than yours.
I disagree with the guy in question and therefore would not have modded him insightful. But he did add a view (or at least reasons for a view) that had not been discussed to that point and according to the moderation guidelines that means a +1 Interesting not -1 Troll.
Now that is interesting. They prefer the tool because its operation works via a mechanism they have faith in (God's will) versus tools that work via mechanism we have faith in (empirical testing).
Fascinating. A people that seem to genuinely believe in their religion on a wide scale. Living in America where the most religious among us would fully expect total safety when we say "May god strike me down if..." no matter how guilty it is hard to imagine a people that would truly expect to be struck down.
I think I will stick with observation of empirical results and bomb detectors just the same.;)
'If you seriously think you can move several hundred thousand people 6,000 miles quickly on anything other than a schedule, share whatever you're smoking.'
Last I checked the plan was to withdraw over a term of years not a the few weeks that transportation concerns would restrict us to.
"Take this as anecdotal, as it obviously is, but I've heard from multiple people serving in Iraq and Afganistan that one of the largest problems the've faced with the training of some of their replacements is convincing them of the neccessity to aim things like mortars."
Well that certainly does make things interesting. It does make one wonder why they would buy 60k rods though when that sort of thinking would mean a stick would be equally effective.
Or perhaps the guy in charge of buying these 60k sticks is in bed with the guy selling them and they are exploiting the faith of the soldiers to make a bundle.
That is an interesting viewpoint. But there are no readouts from instrumentation here. And this isn't a peer reviewed journal. This isn't even a forum for science. Slashdot comments are nothing but individuals expressing their opinions and everyone is entitled to one even one most think is unfounded or ridiculous.
"Your parent pointed out facts. You want people to mod him down because you don't seem to like these facts."
No he stated his opinion of the current state of the facts. You in turn stated your own unfounded opinion of my views. I didn't say anything about my own view on the issue. But if anyone cares, I am highly skeptical to claims of dowsing.
I do however think that any previous studies on the matter aside the fact that soldiers who are literally dying in the field are finding the rods to work as well or better than other instrumentation at finding bombs merits a closer look.
Claiming that dowsing water works no better than chance is one thing since there is water all over the place. Even in Iraq bombs aren't exactly everywhere like water is. The chances of a man without instrumentation picking out the location of a bomb without knowing if one exists are plenty slim. Let alone for this to happen enough that the Iraqis are willing to bet their lives on the products.
"Of course, I don't buy into the notion that we wanted to go in and "steal" the oil. It's perfectly reasonable to have a strong interest in the stability of the unstable region that produces your energy supply."
ROFL That would imply that 'we' the politicians do things to promote the interests of the nation when in fact 'we' the politicians do things because 'we' invest heavily in companies like Haliburton and stood to personally make millions off the bloodshed in Iraq. Some of it in negotiating leverage for the family oil interests and a lot of it from selling Iraqi oil and then using the proceeds to hire american contractors 'we' invested in to rebuild Iraq (which we blew up).
"Really? Do you have a reason to think that the majority of the populace doesn't want us there?"
Well according to the philosophy on which our nation is founded. The people of Iraq democratically electing a government that in turn has passed numerous measures saying they are capable of taking care of themselves and telling us to leave means that is what the populace wants.
Thats true. Most people would think "Why not?" but they would never say it out loud.
The problem is that Bush and Co. were the ones getting the oil money. If gas were $0.50/gallon and we weren't moving on to Afghanistan you might hear a little less complaining around here.
"In any case, it's silly for you to get upset about Iraq because we've been withdrawing according to schedule for many months now. If you don't like the schedule, that's fine, maybe you can come up with an argument against it."
Actually I think the burden falls on someone to come up with a reason why we should have a schedule instead of full immediate withdrawl.
"Oh don't worry, I've got a saying for every situation. Here's one you may have heard, "leave a place better than you found it." Or at very least don't leave it worse than you found it. If we had left Iraq a few years ago and let it fall into civil war, things would have been bad."
That sounds like Iraqs problem. Seeing as they democratically elected a government and one of the first acts passed by their government was a demand that the US withdraw its invading force from their territory.
I throw a rock through your window. I then refuse to leave when you ask repeatedly because I have an obligation to disrespect your wishes and rights in favor of cleaning up the glass. Finally, I sell your car to a chop shop and pay the money to my brother to fix your window.
Thats what we are doing to Iraq... well maybe it isn't fair to compare breaking a window to murdering tens of thousands of Iraqis with no cause...
If you arrived at my home uninvited break down my door and force your way into my home at gunpoint. Refusing to leave when I repeatedly ask you to on the basis that you want to clean up the glass may not be the best idea.
We were bombing Iraq long before we invaded. We invaded with no cause and then forced them to elect their own government. That government then passed a proposal telling us to leave their country. We ignored that so we can 'rebuild'. Of course we are mostly using their money to do this rebuilding and paying that money to US contractors (what happened to the Iraqis who built the infrastructure we blew up in the first place).
The whole argument that we have to stay to clean up the mess only stands because everyone refuses to mention the fact that the Iraq democratically elected government have legally and publically asked us to get the hell out of their country repeatedly.
"While it might be a bit of a shift in the conversation, I feel that I should point out that many libertarians also support the Fair Tax [wikipedia.org] Bill which, by replacing Federal income taxes with a national sales tax, would accomplish, among other things, precisely what you suggest; taxing consumption and spending but not income from productive effort undertaken in the economy through labor, saving, or investing."
To quote the post you replied to:
No instead you hear about things like 'the fair tax' a blanket income tax. This would probably catch on more quickly among the wealthy if they were sure the benefits outweighed the current racket. Of course the wealthy utilize their financial power to pay lower prices for goods and services than the rest of us so they will pay lower taxes than us in fixed tax system. The idea of rebates at the end of the year to patch this up is something only someone who has never lived paycheck to paycheck could come up with.
"personal defense, target shooting, or hunting tests"
They do when you include defense against tyranny in the 'personal defense' category and since that is the purpose of the Second Amendment...
"But a drug dealer can't get out by proving that 1 of the 100 people he sold cocaine to was a researcher allowed by law to obtain and conduct experiments on the drug."
Without federal controls and licensing, producing drugs is a crime. Selling them is a crime. And possessing them is a crime. Using them is actually not a crime.
Cable modems on the other hand are legal to produce and to sell (even in modified form) to anyone. What the prosecutor actually has to prove is the defendants intent since they are claiming he is an accomplice to the illegal activities that may or may not have been committed by his customers.
The only way (short of a confession) to prove he sold the modems with the intention they be used for illegal activity beyond a reasonable doubt is to demonstrate that there aren't legal uses for the product. Otherwise, he can claim that he believes in the goodness of people and assumed they would not use them for crimes.
"What I said was just "theoretically possible"; as prosecutors tell juries every day, "beyond any reasonable doubt" does not mean "no doubt." If I come up with a implausible scenario, that doesn't always introduce "reasonable" doubt."
Without doubt. Unfortunately, people are convicted despite plausible scenarios every day. That and judges lie to juries and tell them they must consider only the letter of the law and not the intent.
Slashdot Mirror
"I think you underestimate doctors. Some (most?) do what they do because they want to help people. "
ROFL I know quite a few doctors and all of them went into medicine for one reason. Money.
In any case, hospitals are not doctors they are for profit business. They only treat emergency patients without insurance because they are required to both as a matter of law and a matter of liability.
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,"
Last I checked we don't charge money to come here legally.
Perhaps my heart might warm to these immigrants despite the fact that their very arrival names them criminals with no respect for our nation and its laws. But I find it rather difficult when they march down our streets waving Mexican flags and claiming most of the southwest for the country whose oppression bleeding hearts would claim they flee. When they refuse to learn our language and instead demand that we provide them services in a foreign tongue.
When living in Miami I knew tons of Cubans. Not Cuban Americans mind, even the ones who were born here. They weren't good or bad, they were people like any others. But I have watched time and again as a second or even third generation Cuban would go into a store and demand service in Spanish. Local stores all accommodate in Miami, it is little cuba after all, but some of the chains don't. When they find out that there is no Spanish service they will finally give in and speak in perfect fluent American English with an American accent.
The latin immigration epidemic is a serious one. The effect is that they are taking over a large portion of our nation and instead of trying to integrate into our culture are trying to take it over. In many cases this is even a deliberate effort.
It is an invasion, not a military attack, but a cultural and social attack with an intended result every bit as chilling and with far greater consequence to any Pearl Harbor bombing.
No doubt you will dismiss everything I have said with a fallacy by calling me a racist. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don't even believe in the legitimacy of grouping traits that are common in a region together and calling it a race. I don't have anything against the latin culture over another though I have bad things to say about most all cultures including the broader american culture and its subcultures.
Attacking me or my credibility will not make the message less true. It will not change the fact of the marches of that the people of a particular culture and nationality ARE deliberately attacking our own culture and nation.
Immigrants and illegal immigrants are not the same thing. America was not built on illegal immigrant labor.
"Let me repeat that. Whether they come to the ER without coverage or are enrolled in a government subsidized insurance program, you will pay."
So lift requirements for the ER to care for illegal aliens. It isn't like they'll voluntarily do so. All they have to do to avoid dying due to an emergency medical condition is stay home.
"Perhaps, you can cite the dozens or perhaps hundreds of other programs the government has run that efficiently made things better?"
That would be hard to do since the opposition puts checks and double checks and red tape like you wouldn't believe into most government programs to try to prevent 'abuse' and limit their spending as much as possible. This bill is no doubt more of the same.
As a fellow cynical prick I can tell you that I was absolutely amazed at just how often it does.
"I agree, but actually, the negative mods were for "overrated", which means they disagreed with the "+1 interesting" mods. Thats valid, is it not?"
When I posted his score he was Score:0, Troll.
"Thats valid, is it not?"
If it had been the case then yes. I would disagree though. He expressed a view (or reasons for one) that had not been previously introduced. Therefore he added to the discussion and that is what +1 Interesting is for.
If nothing else positive moderation should be left alone because the moderator guidelines say you should avoid negative mods and because leaving his post visible gives context to any insightful comments in opposition to what he said.
I would probably mod you +1 sad but true.
But just because there are abuse mods who censor opposing views (who are worse than trolls imho) doesn't mean we have to publicaly condone the practice.
"It has nothing to do with disagreeing. The guy is full of shit."
In other words:
It has nothing to do with disagreeing. I disagree strongly with this guy.
"We mod up insightful posts. Let's mod down uninsightful posts."
That is a direct conflict with the moderation guidelines. The guidelines state that moderators should try to focus on modding up posts that add to the discussion.
Insightful is a way to highlight posts you agree with, modding down posts you did not agree with (found uninsightful) is a way of censoring views other than yours.
I disagree with the guy in question and therefore would not have modded him insightful. But he did add a view (or at least reasons for a view) that had not been discussed to that point and according to the moderation guidelines that means a +1 Interesting not -1 Troll.
Now that is interesting. They prefer the tool because its operation works via a mechanism they have faith in (God's will) versus tools that work via mechanism we have faith in (empirical testing).
Fascinating. A people that seem to genuinely believe in their religion on a wide scale. Living in America where the most religious among us would fully expect total safety when we say "May god strike me down if..." no matter how guilty it is hard to imagine a people that would truly expect to be struck down.
I think I will stick with observation of empirical results and bomb detectors just the same. ;)
'If you seriously think you can move several hundred thousand people 6,000 miles quickly on anything other than a schedule, share whatever you're smoking.'
Last I checked the plan was to withdraw over a term of years not a the few weeks that transportation concerns would restrict us to.
"but privately and legally they asked us to stay for a while."
Citation please.
"Take this as anecdotal, as it obviously is, but I've heard from multiple people serving in Iraq and Afganistan that one of the largest problems the've faced with the training of some of their replacements is convincing them of the neccessity to aim things like mortars."
Well that certainly does make things interesting. It does make one wonder why they would buy 60k rods though when that sort of thinking would mean a stick would be equally effective.
Or perhaps the guy in charge of buying these 60k sticks is in bed with the guy selling them and they are exploiting the faith of the soldiers to make a bundle.
'Either you have facts, or you have nothing.'
That is an interesting viewpoint. But there are no readouts from instrumentation here. And this isn't a peer reviewed journal. This isn't even a forum for science. Slashdot comments are nothing but individuals expressing their opinions and everyone is entitled to one even one most think is unfounded or ridiculous.
"Your parent pointed out facts. You want people to mod him down because you don't seem to like these facts."
No he stated his opinion of the current state of the facts. You in turn stated your own unfounded opinion of my views. I didn't say anything about my own view on the issue. But if anyone cares, I am highly skeptical to claims of dowsing.
I do however think that any previous studies on the matter aside the fact that soldiers who are literally dying in the field are finding the rods to work as well or better than other instrumentation at finding bombs merits a closer look.
Claiming that dowsing water works no better than chance is one thing since there is water all over the place. Even in Iraq bombs aren't exactly everywhere like water is. The chances of a man without instrumentation picking out the location of a bomb without knowing if one exists are plenty slim. Let alone for this to happen enough that the Iraqis are willing to bet their lives on the products.
"Of course, I don't buy into the notion that we wanted to go in and "steal" the oil. It's perfectly reasonable to have a strong interest in the stability of the unstable region that produces your energy supply."
ROFL That would imply that 'we' the politicians do things to promote the interests of the nation when in fact 'we' the politicians do things because 'we' invest heavily in companies like Haliburton and stood to personally make millions off the bloodshed in Iraq. Some of it in negotiating leverage for the family oil interests and a lot of it from selling Iraqi oil and then using the proceeds to hire american contractors 'we' invested in to rebuild Iraq (which we blew up).
"Really? Do you have a reason to think that the majority of the populace doesn't want us there?"
Well according to the philosophy on which our nation is founded. The people of Iraq democratically electing a government that in turn has passed numerous measures saying they are capable of taking care of themselves and telling us to leave means that is what the populace wants.
Thats true. Most people would think "Why not?" but they would never say it out loud.
The problem is that Bush and Co. were the ones getting the oil money. If gas were $0.50/gallon and we weren't moving on to Afghanistan you might hear a little less complaining around here.
"In any case, it's silly for you to get upset about Iraq because we've been withdrawing according to schedule for many months now. If you don't like the schedule, that's fine, maybe you can come up with an argument against it."
Actually I think the burden falls on someone to come up with a reason why we should have a schedule instead of full immediate withdrawl.
"Oh don't worry, I've got a saying for every situation. Here's one you may have heard, "leave a place better than you found it." Or at very least don't leave it worse than you found it. If we had left Iraq a few years ago and let it fall into civil war, things would have been bad."
That sounds like Iraqs problem. Seeing as they democratically elected a government and one of the first acts passed by their government was a demand that the US withdraw its invading force from their territory.
I throw a rock through your window. I then refuse to leave when you ask repeatedly because I have an obligation to disrespect your wishes and rights in favor of cleaning up the glass. Finally, I sell your car to a chop shop and pay the money to my brother to fix your window.
Thats what we are doing to Iraq... well maybe it isn't fair to compare breaking a window to murdering tens of thousands of Iraqis with no cause...
If you arrived at my home uninvited break down my door and force your way into my home at gunpoint. Refusing to leave when I repeatedly ask you to on the basis that you want to clean up the glass may not be the best idea.
We were bombing Iraq long before we invaded. We invaded with no cause and then forced them to elect their own government. That government then passed a proposal telling us to leave their country. We ignored that so we can 'rebuild'. Of course we are mostly using their money to do this rebuilding and paying that money to US contractors (what happened to the Iraqis who built the infrastructure we blew up in the first place).
The whole argument that we have to stay to clean up the mess only stands because everyone refuses to mention the fact that the Iraq democratically elected government have legally and publically asked us to get the hell out of their country repeatedly.
Probably because a few of our troops don't make up for the tens of thousands of their people that we murdered so Bush and company could get richer.
'Democracy works when reasonable people come together and are willing to make decisions and sacrifices for the betterment of all the people.'
Ahhh... so thats why democracy hasn't shown any sign of being a successful form of government.
Please down mod the parent. People do not get down modded because others disagree with them. There is no -1 I think this guys beliefs are a crock.
A recommendation that the moderation system be abused to censor opposing viewpoints is certainly a troll at the very least.
Anyone who gets the chance to meta mod needs to fix this. Disagreeing with the parent does not make him a troll.
"While it might be a bit of a shift in the conversation, I feel that I should point out that many libertarians also support the Fair Tax [wikipedia.org] Bill which, by replacing Federal income taxes with a national sales tax, would accomplish, among other things, precisely what you suggest; taxing consumption and spending but not income from productive effort undertaken in the economy through labor, saving, or investing."
To quote the post you replied to:
No instead you hear about things like 'the fair tax' a blanket income tax. This would probably catch on more quickly among the wealthy if they were sure the benefits outweighed the current racket. Of course the wealthy utilize their financial power to pay lower prices for goods and services than the rest of us so they will pay lower taxes than us in fixed tax system. The idea of rebates at the end of the year to patch this up is something only someone who has never lived paycheck to paycheck could come up with.
"personal defense, target shooting, or hunting tests"
They do when you include defense against tyranny in the 'personal defense' category and since that is the purpose of the Second Amendment...
"But a drug dealer can't get out by proving that 1 of the 100 people he sold cocaine to was a researcher allowed by law to obtain and conduct experiments on the drug."
Without federal controls and licensing, producing drugs is a crime. Selling them is a crime. And possessing them is a crime. Using them is actually not a crime.
Cable modems on the other hand are legal to produce and to sell (even in modified form) to anyone. What the prosecutor actually has to prove is the defendants intent since they are claiming he is an accomplice to the illegal activities that may or may not have been committed by his customers.
The only way (short of a confession) to prove he sold the modems with the intention they be used for illegal activity beyond a reasonable doubt is to demonstrate that there aren't legal uses for the product. Otherwise, he can claim that he believes in the goodness of people and assumed they would not use them for crimes.
"What I said was just "theoretically possible"; as prosecutors tell juries every day, "beyond any reasonable doubt" does not mean "no doubt." If I come up with a implausible scenario, that doesn't always introduce "reasonable" doubt."
Without doubt. Unfortunately, people are convicted despite plausible scenarios every day. That and judges lie to juries and tell them they must consider only the letter of the law and not the intent.