The rockets that the IDF admits a are psychological, not military, threat? In Israel, you are more likely to die by being hit by a bus than from a quassam rocket. No, not car accidents overall, but accidents involving buses.
And, the greatest barrages in recent years (in between Obama getting (re)elected and being sworn in, funny how that works) have followed an Israeli violation of a cease fire or assassination of Palestinian officials who are busy negotiating a cease-fire.
Concerning about Israel, I am very proud of the Czechs.
From your link:
Sixty-five years ago, on November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) voted to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish states and on that same day in 2012 the Palestinians pushed UNGA to resurrect the very state they refused to accept in 1947, simply because it would have meant accepting a Jewish state as well.
Palestinians rejected the proposal for a Jewish state not because it was for Jews, but because it was giving 2/3 of the land to 1/3 of the population. Who were almost entirely immigrants from Europe. It would have been like the Cuban population of Florida claiming 2/3 of the state in 1970. "Accepting a Jewish state" means accepting land theft and ethnic cleansing.
Yeah. It is more embarrassing when you decry other countries for their lack of freedom, while re-affirming endless military detention of American citizens and warrantless wiretapping in direct violation of your own Constitution. It is more embarrassing when you have more prisoners in both raw numbers and as a percentage of your population, when most are locked up for petty Prohibition offenses. It is more embarrassing when you're fighting corrupt theocratic governments because they give their suspects too many rights.
The USA makes an effort to provide a decent standard of living for everyone.
You misspelled "socialist Europe", since the U.S. stopped pretending to do any such thing when Dems and Republicans got together to gut welfare back in the 90's. In other countries, the poor have the right to secondary education, housing, food and health care. Here, they have the right to purchase junk health insurance.
Wow, only one sentence, but a huge pile of bovine fertiliser.
Whoa, Slick. You might want to slow down before you make a fool out of yourself. Whoops, too late.
These poor people pay premiums for health insurance, so they're now covered. So they do get healthcare.
Health insurance is not health care. Deductibles. Co-pays. Heard of them? Before the Health Insurance Profit Protection Act:
Working poor can chose not to fork over $5000+ a year to the insurance companies, and pay for their health care bills directly. If they have a full time job, they could take $5000 in flex benefits for greater savings.
After the HIPPA:
Working poor are mandated to buy junk insurance. That $5000 goes first into the pockets of the insurance industry. And even after they make their monthly insurance payment, the person still has the further costs of deductibles and co-pays. Or does a $1000 annual deductible, $50 office visit co-pay + 20% treatment co-pay not count in dumbass math?
It's almost pointless to respond to people who have so little experience of reality as to consider North Korea is comparable at all to the US or any Western Democracy.
It's almost pointless to respond to people so willfully obtuse as to be attacking a straw man, but here it goes:
The point isn't to say the U.S. == N.K., dumbass. It's that you shouldn't throw "xyz country cannot be praised until it stops mistreating abc" stones if you live in a glass house.
The fact of the matter is that in North Korea, you would not be having this conversation, because you wouldn't have an Internet, but if you did happen to have Internet access, you'd be arrested and sent to a prison camp a short time after expressing that.
Utterly irrelevant to the point. Bushies liked to deflect from anyone questioning the Bushco torture program by asking if people thought it was better in Syria or under Saddam. Except, that's not the fucking point, and anyone who pretends that's the case is being willfully obtuse to derail the conversation.
That's just American exceptionalism bullshit. Since you skipped it the first two times:
The logic is the same - "how can you say xyz country is great when their people are suffering from abc". That the scales and variables are different does nothing to change the core formula.
The people of NK would almost to a person kill or risk death to have a chance to live in the US.
Batshit irrelevant. That deflection crap was old when Bushies were using it to defend Cheney's torture regime - "what, you think you'd have it better in Syria?" Of course things are worse in Syria. That's not the fucking point, dumbass. If North Korea, a third world dictatorship, cannot be praised until they start taking better care of their people, then the United States, a first world democracy, cannot be praised until it takes better care of it's poor, stops bombing the shit out of other countries, and stops treating the Bill of Rights as a list of suggestions instead of a list of requirements. That's not saying that the U.S. == N.K.
Say it with me now, the CANAANITES ARE THE NATIVES. History AND Archeology both prove this.
Funny how you "ancestral homeland" guys leave that part out of the storyline. If the Palestinians had to GTFO because the Jews lived there 2,000 years ago, then the Israelis can GTFO for the descendants of the Canaanites from 3,000 years ago.
I want to see Israel coexist in peace with Palestine, but these days it is Israel who are the abusive partner in that relationship.
These days? It's always been that way, since before Israel was "recognized" by the U.N. Most of the Jews in Palestine in 1948 were either immigrants or first generation children of immigrants. Israel was "created" by taking land from the majority native population, and giving it to a minority via land theft and conquest.
Samsung has never been the patent aggressor against any competitor; it has always defended by counter-suing.
Nevermind that Samsung and Apple were suing each other at the same time.
Apple, on the other hand... have gone thermonuclear with no heed or regard to the consequences.
Like getting their home country to pass protectionist trade laws, getting the Galaxy banned for two years in the United States? Oh wait, that was South Korea banning the iPhone.
50 million without healthcare, or without insurance? Big difference.
No, there isn't a big difference for the working poor. Thanks Obama's health insurance mandate (that he ran against), people who would have been able to pay for basic bills or with flex benefits will now have $5000 of their income sucked into junk insurance. Obamabots like to talk about all the people that will now be covered - what they don't like to talk about is how many will actually be denied care because what little income they have will now be sent to the insurance companies.
Since you falsely and ludicrously skipped over it the first time, here's the point again:
The logic is the same - "how can you say xyz country is great when their people are suffering from abc". That the scales and variables are different does nothing to change the core formula.
Now, we can complain about inequality, hunger, a political system which favors an elite, etc.
Which is why it's more embarrassing for a first world democracy, not under an international embargo, that happens to be the richest nation on the planet when it fails so spectacularly for so many of it's citizens.
No, China will use NK to destabilize the region in order to "re-stabilize" it in a configuration more to China's liking. Unfortunately for the world, there is no such stable configuration.
Sort of like how the U.S. has spent the last 10 years "reconfiguring" Southeast Asia by arming various nasty people and is now busy deploying troops and carrier fleets around the pacific?
The logic is the same - "how can you say xyz country is great when their people are suffering from abc". But yes, different scales - so shouldn't it be more embarrassing for the U.S. that it has 50 million+ people regularly going without health care? Half of it's children going on food stamps at least one point in their lives?
An obvious one. If Exxon, BP et all could just go out and increase prices by X% to make more money, they would go ahead and do so. Why would corporations just sit around on a big boost to their bottom lines? Did you spend.00002 seconds thinking about this before posting?
that's like saying cars that get better mpg lower gas prices. we all know it does not even if the demand goes down they will just raise prices to make up for the lost demand.
No. If they could arbitrarily raise prices to increase profits, they would go ahead and do so. Prices are always set at the highest the market (or regulators) will bear.
If your experience includes any time working at non-unionized shops, you've seen plenty of employees stick around despite their best efforts to be fired. Since you want to argue argument-by-anecdote, I worked at a place that made Wal-Mart look pro-union. One of the older workers said to a young woman, "I'd like to rape the shit out of you." Nothing happened because he was buddies with the plant manager. Obviously that's an indictment of all non-union shops which should promptly be banned!
You're making selective arguments and ignoring the issue of due process, that and the fact that unions bring better wages, benefits and working conditions. Are you also against the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th amendments because they are "inconvenient" for management, I mean law enforcement?
Iran has funded and controlled terrorists in Argentina, Israel, India, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia.
You mean accused of funding terrorists. There's a big difference between claims and proof - or have you forgotten about "Nigerian yellow cake" and "aluminum tubes?"
But, lets go ahead and say that the worst things you claim about Iran are true - they'd still be the molehill next to the mountain of U.S. and Israeli aggression. Iran hasn't launched two bogus wars of choice in the last ten years or set up a world wide torture regime. Iran isn't running an apartheid state against half it's population.
As for terrorism again, wake us up when giant banks that have laundered money for Al Queda aren't granted sweeping immunity from prosecution, along with American shills for the terrorist group MEK.
The Crusades.....you mean a defensive war waged against muslims by christians?
By burning and sacking the Christian city of Constantinople?
Palastine was settled by christians and muslims came and took it over (ie, the muslims invaded).
Hundreds of years beforehand. So does mean you'd support a Chinese invasion of the U.S. in order to return it's land and wealth to the Native Americans, since they cover similar amounts of time?
With right-to-work, people don't want pay for a union because they don't want to join the union. They don't want to be covered by union rules or union agreements. They just want to be completely left alone by the union.
Workers want to make less money, earn less benefits, and be fired for any reason or no reason at all, or laid off so the CEO who made money-losing decisions for the company gets to keep his annual double digit increase in salary?
Right-to-be-fired-for-any-reason laws are about union busting, period.
But I didn't say 'prevents' I said 'make it very difficult' which is true
Not if there's probable cause, but that's the point. Contrary to another piece of anti-union propaganda, union workers are no more happy to coddle and shoulder a slacker than non-union employees. Because then they'll end up having to do the slacker's work without getting a share of the slacker's pay.
Funny, no one ever apologized for Bush, except to other countries.
Looks like somebody's already high....what about all the apologia for reading The Pet Goat while the nation was under attack? An attack he was warned about point-blank days beforehand? And all the "no one could have predicted" crap after Katrina, when he was again warned of the danger days beforehand, to his face?
As a physician, I really don't want Marijuana scheduled as a Schedule III drug (like marinol). I want it either decriminalized or legalized and controlled like (the much more dangerous drug) alcohol. I really don't want to spend my day writing out pot prescriptions - although I understand that one can make a reasonable living in Colorado writing out medical marijuana scripts.
Cart, horse. The war on drugs is costing us billions, was used as civil-rights destroying excuse long before the war of terror came along, is destroying hundreds of thousands of lives with pointless incarceration, and killing thousands in Mexico. Moving cannabis to Schedule III would establish facts on the ground that we're at least 50 years late to get past the boogeyman of "reefer madness".
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The rockets that the IDF admits a are psychological, not military, threat? In Israel, you are more likely to die by being hit by a bus than from a quassam rocket. No, not car accidents overall, but accidents involving buses.
And, the greatest barrages in recent years (in between Obama getting (re)elected and being sworn in, funny how that works) have followed an Israeli violation of a cease fire or assassination of Palestinian officials who are busy negotiating a cease-fire.
From your link:
Palestinians rejected the proposal for a Jewish state not because it was for Jews, but because it was giving 2/3 of the land to 1/3 of the population. Who were almost entirely immigrants from Europe. It would have been like the Cuban population of Florida claiming 2/3 of the state in 1970. "Accepting a Jewish state" means accepting land theft and ethnic cleansing.
Probably, in the same way Apartheid used to come up when South Africa was mentioned before the 90's. For the same reasons.
Yeah. It is more embarrassing when you decry other countries for their lack of freedom, while re-affirming endless military detention of American citizens and warrantless wiretapping in direct violation of your own Constitution. It is more embarrassing when you have more prisoners in both raw numbers and as a percentage of your population, when most are locked up for petty Prohibition offenses. It is more embarrassing when you're fighting corrupt theocratic governments because they give their suspects too many rights.
You misspelled "socialist Europe", since the U.S. stopped pretending to do any such thing when Dems and Republicans got together to gut welfare back in the 90's. In other countries, the poor have the right to secondary education, housing, food and health care. Here, they have the right to purchase junk health insurance.
Whoa, Slick. You might want to slow down before you make a fool out of yourself. Whoops, too late.
Health insurance is not health care. Deductibles. Co-pays. Heard of them? Before the Health Insurance Profit Protection Act:
Working poor can chose not to fork over $5000+ a year to the insurance companies, and pay for their health care bills directly. If they have a full time job, they could take $5000 in flex benefits for greater savings.
After the HIPPA:
Working poor are mandated to buy junk insurance. That $5000 goes first into the pockets of the insurance industry. And even after they make their monthly insurance payment, the person still has the further costs of deductibles and co-pays. Or does a $1000 annual deductible, $50 office visit co-pay + 20% treatment co-pay not count in dumbass math?
It's almost pointless to respond to people so willfully obtuse as to be attacking a straw man, but here it goes:
The point isn't to say the U.S. == N.K., dumbass. It's that you shouldn't throw "xyz country cannot be praised until it stops mistreating abc" stones if you live in a glass house.
Utterly irrelevant to the point. Bushies liked to deflect from anyone questioning the Bushco torture program by asking if people thought it was better in Syria or under Saddam. Except, that's not the fucking point, and anyone who pretends that's the case is being willfully obtuse to derail the conversation.
That's just American exceptionalism bullshit. Since you skipped it the first two times:
The logic is the same - "how can you say xyz country is great when their people are suffering from abc". That the scales and variables are different does nothing to change the core formula.
Batshit irrelevant. That deflection crap was old when Bushies were using it to defend Cheney's torture regime - "what, you think you'd have it better in Syria?" Of course things are worse in Syria. That's not the fucking point, dumbass. If North Korea, a third world dictatorship, cannot be praised until they start taking better care of their people, then the United States, a first world democracy, cannot be praised until it takes better care of it's poor, stops bombing the shit out of other countries, and stops treating the Bill of Rights as a list of suggestions instead of a list of requirements. That's not saying that the U.S. == N.K.
So fucking what.
Funny how you "ancestral homeland" guys leave that part out of the storyline. If the Palestinians had to GTFO because the Jews lived there 2,000 years ago, then the Israelis can GTFO for the descendants of the Canaanites from 3,000 years ago.
Who would be, you know, Palestinians.
These days? It's always been that way, since before Israel was "recognized" by the U.N. Most of the Jews in Palestine in 1948 were either immigrants or first generation children of immigrants. Israel was "created" by taking land from the majority native population, and giving it to a minority via land theft and conquest.
Nevermind that Samsung and Apple were suing each other at the same time.
Like getting their home country to pass protectionist trade laws, getting the Galaxy banned for two years in the United States? Oh wait, that was South Korea banning the iPhone.
Haterz gotta hate.
No, there isn't a big difference for the working poor. Thanks Obama's health insurance mandate (that he ran against), people who would have been able to pay for basic bills or with flex benefits will now have $5000 of their income sucked into junk insurance. Obamabots like to talk about all the people that will now be covered - what they don't like to talk about is how many will actually be denied care because what little income they have will now be sent to the insurance companies.
Since you falsely and ludicrously skipped over it the first time, here's the point again:
The logic is the same - "how can you say xyz country is great when their people are suffering from abc". That the scales and variables are different does nothing to change the core formula.
Which is why it's more embarrassing for a first world democracy, not under an international embargo, that happens to be the richest nation on the planet when it fails so spectacularly for so many of it's citizens.
My other west. Southwest Asia, sorry.
Sort of like how the U.S. has spent the last 10 years "reconfiguring" Southeast Asia by arming various nasty people and is now busy deploying troops and carrier fleets around the pacific?
The logic is the same - "how can you say xyz country is great when their people are suffering from abc". But yes, different scales - so shouldn't it be more embarrassing for the U.S. that it has 50 million+ people regularly going without health care? Half of it's children going on food stamps at least one point in their lives?
Only if you tend to be upper middle class to wealthy. Lifespans are actually shrinking for the poor.
An obvious one. If Exxon, BP et all could just go out and increase prices by X% to make more money, they would go ahead and do so. Why would corporations just sit around on a big boost to their bottom lines? Did you spend .00002 seconds thinking about this before posting?
No. If they could arbitrarily raise prices to increase profits, they would go ahead and do so. Prices are always set at the highest the market (or regulators) will bear.
If your experience includes any time working at non-unionized shops, you've seen plenty of employees stick around despite their best efforts to be fired. Since you want to argue argument-by-anecdote, I worked at a place that made Wal-Mart look pro-union. One of the older workers said to a young woman, "I'd like to rape the shit out of you." Nothing happened because he was buddies with the plant manager. Obviously that's an indictment of all non-union shops which should promptly be banned!
You're making selective arguments and ignoring the issue of due process, that and the fact that unions bring better wages, benefits and working conditions. Are you also against the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th amendments because they are "inconvenient" for management, I mean law enforcement?
You mean accused of funding terrorists. There's a big difference between claims and proof - or have you forgotten about "Nigerian yellow cake" and "aluminum tubes?"
But, lets go ahead and say that the worst things you claim about Iran are true - they'd still be the molehill next to the mountain of U.S. and Israeli aggression. Iran hasn't launched two bogus wars of choice in the last ten years or set up a world wide torture regime. Iran isn't running an apartheid state against half it's population.
As for terrorism again, wake us up when giant banks that have laundered money for Al Queda aren't granted sweeping immunity from prosecution, along with American shills for the terrorist group MEK.
By burning and sacking the Christian city of Constantinople?
Hundreds of years beforehand. So does mean you'd support a Chinese invasion of the U.S. in order to return it's land and wealth to the Native Americans, since they cover similar amounts of time?
Workers want to make less money, earn less benefits, and be fired for any reason or no reason at all, or laid off so the CEO who made money-losing decisions for the company gets to keep his annual double digit increase in salary?
Right-to-be-fired-for-any-reason laws are about union busting, period.
Not if there's probable cause, but that's the point. Contrary to another piece of anti-union propaganda, union workers are no more happy to coddle and shoulder a slacker than non-union employees. Because then they'll end up having to do the slacker's work without getting a share of the slacker's pay.
Looks like somebody's already high....what about all the apologia for reading The Pet Goat while the nation was under attack? An attack he was warned about point-blank days beforehand? And all the "no one could have predicted" crap after Katrina, when he was again warned of the danger days beforehand, to his face?
Cart, horse. The war on drugs is costing us billions, was used as civil-rights destroying excuse long before the war of terror came along, is destroying hundreds of thousands of lives with pointless incarceration, and killing thousands in Mexico. Moving cannabis to Schedule III would establish facts on the ground that we're at least 50 years late to get past the boogeyman of "reefer madness".