That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about malpractice insurance. If the standards are set to high, that's the problem with the standards, not the insurance itself. No, because it is the lawsuits that are setting the "standards". They are setting De Facto standards, impossibly high standards you need to meet in order not to get sued... circumventing the democratic process which sets De Jure standards.
So do I. Unfortunately for you, that's not what I argued against. I argued against limiting damages (punishment) before even taking into account the nature and severity of the wrongdoing. No, Civil suits do not have the same sorts of protections for the accused that criminal law has... therefore, damages should be limited regardless of the nature and severity of wrongdoing. If I am accused in a criminal court, the prosecution (the state) has to pay my legal fees... I have the right to silence... I have the right to a speedy trial... I have a whole slew of rights to protect me. If you want to punish people to an extreme level, a level which can destroy the lives of the accused on par as a criminal conviction, then you should do that to the standards of criminal law - the person is innocent until proven guilty beyond any reasonable doubt first and foremost.
No, I said, "If it weren't for trial lawyers, the US would be a much more dangerous place to live." Are you saying France, Germany and Canada all do not have trial lawyers? Interesting. How do they settle civil disputes? Are you saying that the Association of Trial Lawyers of America are active in France, Germany, or Canada?
If trial lawyers are so despicable, you should vow to never, EVER, use them. EVER. But you know you would. That either makes *YOU* evil, or them not. Which is it? Do you even know who the Association of Trial Lawyers of America are? They don't represent all trial lawyers, they specificly represent plaintiff tort lawyers, especially the "Ambulance Chaser" types. They called themselves the "Association of Trial Lawyers of America", because it sounds better than the "Ambulance Chasers of America". But even then, they had some serious PR issues as the ATLA is pretty much associated with frivolous lawsuits, so they changed their name to the "American Association for Justice".
In conversations about politics, when people refer to the "Trial Lawyers", it means the ATLA or AAJ or whatever they changed their name to this month... these are specificly the lawyers who sue people. These lawyers are the single most powerful lobby group in the United States. Like I said, they give 50% more campaign funds than the entire medical industries combined! They give more money than any other industry in America. They do more lobbying than the entire Military-Industrial complex. They are the largest campaign contributor to the Democratic party, and one of the largest campaign contributors to the Republican party. If you listen to a political program, or read political blogs, or even watch CNN, you would know that when people talk about the "Trial Lawyers" in the context of American politics, they are refering to this huge political lobby group that represents ambulance chasers. I shouldn't have to be explaining this to you, you should be able to do a Google search on your own if you don't understand.
So enough of the useless "You are saying all trial lawyers are evil?" stuff. I suspect you knew exactly what I mean, and are pretending not to understand in order to push the discussion into a different direction.
Yeah, when you require such an important job be done right, *of course* it's going to cost more. At least, up front. In the long term, however, it's much, much better. Actually, doing a job to too high standards can kill people, if resources are limited. For example, if MRI machines need to be made to insanely perfect specifications, because one or two mis-diagnosis can bankrupt the company with lawsuits - And because of the extremly high standards, there is a shortage of MRI machines that leave thousands of people without the MRIs they need (as is a huge problem here in Canada) - It is protecting those one or two people at the expense of thousands. A company can't get sued for making a product too expensive for all but a handful of people to afford, but they WILL get sued, for hundreds of millions, for even the tiniest mistake... which means that companies are going to err on the side of making a few very very very expensive machines, instead of mass-production that can fill the needs of everyone. Millions of people are being harmed by this kind of thing, not only in the United States, but other countries since medical equipment is a global market.
Capping medical malpractice awards is another way of saying, "limiting the rights of the victim". Aren't you conservatives supposed to be all in favor of victim's rights? If your doctor screws up, don't you think you have rights to compensation under the law? Capping compensation is like capping prison sentences. It's like saying, no matter how bad your actions are, you can only be punished so far. For a group that so strongly supports the death penalty, being against having to pay for the damage you've caused seems absurd to the extreme. Where the hell did I say I was a conservative? I believe the rights of the accused trump any right of the alleged victim, and I oppose the death penalty. I believe what Blackstone said: "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." That includes doctors. I am all for capping prison sentences for everything but murder and rape... saying that you can only be punished so far sounds like a very fair and sensible thing to do for all but the most extreme crimes.
If people want protection, let them go to a doctor who is bonded. The surety bond is a long established concept that would be extremly popular if it wasn't so easy to sue people.
If it weren't for trial lawyers, the US would be a much more dangerous place to live. Yeah... cause you know, places that aren't lawsuit crazy, like France, or Germany, or Canada, are just sooooo much more dangerous than the United States. Please!
If they have a case, if there was fault worthy of a trial *ALL* cases go to trial. Someone sued their doctor for prescribing them drugs that "disrupted their psychic powers", and that went to trial - it cost the doctor tens of thousands to defend themself from the most rediculous claims. Since it costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend yourself against malpractice suits, preditory lawyers go after doctors for just under what it would cost to fight in court. In many cases, even though the accusation holds no merit, it is easier for the doctor to pay the $50,000 to the telephone psychic who claims she can no longer read minds than to fight it for years in the courts. The vast majority of cases that go to trial are not worth of a trial, but because the TLA have such a stranglehold on the political process (they are the biggest lobbiests in Washington), they get away with murder.
I have absolutely no doubt that if someone's actions caused you significant loss of health, *YOU'D* hire the best trial lawyer your money could buy. You are missing the point. The vast majority of medical lawsuits involves cases where someone never suffered any significant loss of health, and the doctor wasn't responsible. It is just a legal protection scheme, kinda like with the Mafia, except the extortionists are too cowardly and spineless to do it the old fashion way.
"The Bush administration largely gets it backwards, they say health care is expensive because of lawsuits. I say lawsuits are expensive because of our health care system." William M. Sage, Columbia University law professor and physician. Mr. Sage might be a law professor and physician, but he is obviosly not an economist. You have to be pretty foolish to believe that making doctors pay millions in insurance premiums, and driving thousands out of the medical field for fear of lawsuits, wouldn't make health care more expensive.
Name dropping Bush is a nice touch too... usually when people can't make a coherent arguement, they throw the word "Bush" into their sound bite, because Bush is extremly unpopular and that is enough to make people lose their ability for critical thought. I mean, why didn't he mention Hitler while he was at it? Or Satan?
Did anyone notice that insurance companies donate literally billions of dollars to campaigns over the past decades to get this passed? The Trial Lawyers of America, the political action group that represents ambulance chasers, gives 50% more campaign donations that the rest of the insurance, medical, and pharmicutical industry combined. They are the single largest donator to political campaigns in America. However many "billions" you think that the insurance companies spend, multiply that by several times and that is what the Trial Lawyers spend! http://www.triallawyersinc.com/healthcare/hc07.htm l
In a hundreds years microsoft will no longer exist so what do the historians do when they uncover a stack of magnetic tapes/dvds that contains documents in.doc format? (.doc or whatever other format you can think of.) They may have the hardware to transfer the data to newer computers and storage but the secrets to translating.DOC were lost years ago when microsoft went bankrupt.. It isn't that complicated. If historians can piece together egyptian hieroglyphics from the Rossetta Stone, then they certainly can extract some plain text from a.doc file.
And if they can't figure out a.doc file, they probably won't be able to figure out opendocument any better, because it is just as silly to believe that opendocument will be any more common 1000 years from now than microsoft word documents.
Sort of like your dollars. But, no, in fact, it exists in the aggregate of roughly 645,000 (your district). Which given the rough number of participating voters really comes out to about a power of about 1:129,000. Now, sure, that's just one seat. So, to be fair, 129k*435, your power is about 1:56M. Now, Microsoft pulls in about $44.5 billion per year. You'd have to send Microsoft $800 per year, every year, to exert that kind of power. Some people certainly do, but put in perspective, you certainly don't have much of an edge on any private corporation over your influence in government. That is, in both cases, unless you do a much larger amount of, ahem, "business" with them than the average person... I mean, let's face it, they're mutually corrupt to precisely equal degrees (for reasons that should be obvious)....and on that note: You are missing the point. I can REFUSE TO DO BUISNESS WITH MICROSOFT!!! If I don't like the policies or actions of Microsoft, I can purchase a Mac, or use Linux. If I don't like the policies of the U.S. government, I have no out.
Baloney. DMCA, anyone? The charges that send you to jail will come from a corporation. Corporations lobbied HARD to make it possible for them to extend what should rightfully be mere torts into crimes--and if convicted, you'll likely end up a guest of the Corrections Corporation of America. There are more than 2 million people in prison in the U.S.. Most are there for victimless, non-violent activity (prostitution, drugs, etc.). I am willing to bet that there is no one currently incarcerated on DMCA charges... but if there are, it is certainly fewer than 10 people. Clearly, the most horrible and abusive example of corporate abuse is microscopic compared to the extent of government abuse. And the DMCA still has to be enforced by government - with a limited government (one that sticks to the functions strictly specified in the constitution), there would be no DMCA. The DMCA is GOVERNMENT REGULATION!
Strangely enough, the general thrust of this entire thread is precisely to the contrary. CERTAINLY they can censor your speech. That's precisely what the ESRB and MPAA are designed to do. Remember the Hays code? That wasn't a law, it was an industry standard -- and to say it wasn't censorship would be a stretch. Whether that's infringing on your right to freedom of speech, well, no. They can't taken away your right, but they can certainly censor you should your expression of speech require the use of their property. Both the Hayes code and the ESRB were essentially created under government pressure. In both cases, the industries were given a choice of "regulate yourself, or the government will do it for you". The ESRB is not any more independent from the U.S. government than Komsomol was from the Soviet government. The ESRB is only a proxy for the U.S. government that makes it easier to side step the first amendment.
IIRC, no land creature of over a couple of kilos managed it (though many oceanic creatures of that size did). The estimated size of the K-T asteroid was roughly 10 km wide. That's considered 'still fairly small' as far as Near Earth Objects go. It wasn't the impact that killed creatures over a couple of kilos, it was the enviornmental destruction that followed (such as blocking out the sun, thus destroying vegetation that creatures needed to survive, etc.)
It would be much easier and cheaper to set up a self-sustaining underground "space station" on earth, than to do the same thing on Mars or the Moon.
So, you're more comfortable with people you have no control over controlling your life than those over whom you exert direct control... A. I don't exert direct control of elected officials. My vote only exists in aggregate with 300 million other votes: That kind of power is too microscopic to have any real meaning. Even then, I am only allowed to select from pre-approved candidates, and those candidates must have their speech, finances, etc., carefully regulated by those in power. In modern states with huge federal governments and hundreds of thousands of regulations, Democracy is meaningless. On the huge vast national scale that Democracy now takes place, it is Feudalism.
Democracy only exists when the government is small, limited, and decentralized. Anything else is, at best, popular dictatorship. Once government is all powerful, there is no such thing as free elections... elections are just theater to keep you passified.
B. Corporations have no direct control over me. Corporations can not send me to jail. They can not send a SWAT team to invade my house. They can't invade other countries nor draft me into the military. They can not censor my speech. And I always, always have the right to boycott a company (i.e. I can choose not to give it any money... try boycotting the government and see what happens).
The only power that a corporation has over me, is the power it can exercise through the government. Which is why, if you support big government, you support big corporations.
Rating a snuff simulator Adults Only has nothing to do with Bibles. Well, the Bible is full of murder, genocide, underage sex, slavery, etc.
The bible says that owning slaves is OK, it is OK to stone people to death for eating shellfish or working on the sabbath. God told the Jews to commited genocide of the people of Jericho. Look into the old testimat, and you can find all kinds of crazy stuff.
During the McCarthy era the government actually sent letters to businesses and otherwise bullied them into toeing the party line. And the government told the video game industry to create the ESRB, and told the industry to respect those standards. The government threatened to regulate the video game industry if the video game industry didn't adhere to the standards.
And incidentally: no, you don't have a sacred right to make a profit at all cost. There's a difference between freedom of speech, which is what the McCarthy era was infringing on, and the right to make a profit by selling ultra-violent games to kids. I mean, what next? The right to open a cocaine stand in a school? Actually, McCarthy era blacklisting infringed on your right to make a profit. At no time where the people blacklisted forbidden from speaking, publishing political material, etc.. At no time where they thrown into prison. They weren't even forbidden from having normal jobs like factory worker, lawyer, etc - they where only banned from lucrative things such as writing hollywood scripts, producing movies, etc.
Of course, threatening someone's profit is the same as censoring their work, since everyone needs money to survive. When you are threatening people's profit, you are threatening their livelyhood, and essentially forcing them into poverty unless they shut the hell up. It is absolutly censorship.
It's not like that AO rating came from some oppressive congressional comission. The ESRB came down from some oppressive congressional comission. Congress demanded video games be regulated, and gave the ESRB the choice of doing it themselves or having the government do it.
Not only that, AO games are pretty much banned in the U.S., because AO games are considered "pornographic" in most areas, and so if a store wanted to sell it, in most areas it would have to register as an "adult buisness", which means that you can't legally sell them at normal video game retailers. For all intents and purposes, AO games are illegal.
And let me say that again: I'm a gamer too, but I _don't_ think it sounds like a game I'd buy for my kids. Then don't buy it for your kids.
While both Europe and the U.S. have a pretty retarded policies when it comes to censorship (neither violence nor sex are appropriate things for the government to censor), the idea that sex in media is worse than violence does make sense. It is very, very, very unlikely that someone is going to commit murder. It is very, very, very likely that someone is going to have sex.
How many people do you know who have killed other people (aside from soldiers or police officers or something like that)? How many people do you know have had sex? The risk of a teenager having risky sex is astronomicly greater than the risk of the teenager commiting murder.
You really shouldn't brag "our censorship is better than your censorship" though. It is like bragging that your diarrhea is better. The truly civilized countries are the ones that trust parents to decide what they want their children to see and don't get involved.
In anycase that idea of freedom is seriously lacking. What if the other doesn't want to have sex? Seems like you aren't so free after all. There is nothing weak or oprressive about consenting adults engaging in a sex act. If you want to, do it. If you don't want to, don't. Freedom comes from the ability to choose, not the choice you make.
When those Islamic nutters threaten the West with being conquered because "you are so weak and soft", unfortunately they are correct. Those "Islamic nutters" as you call them (I am assuming you mean the Islamic fanatics, I hope you aren't stereotyping all Muslims as "nutters") like to talk a lot of shit, but there is zero chance of them conquering the West. They can't even run Palestine lately without a civil war. When you compare them to the Nazis or Communists or other enemies that the West has faced, they are a joke.
I forgot to add: the statement above is pretty silly. If a fellow says to enother : "Go on, rape her", then I don't think much more than common sense, however slippery a concept that is, is needed to see that the fellow is inciting the other. But you just SAID "Go on, rape her", and no one got raped. If I argued that you should go to jail, because you were "inciting rape", that would be pretty silly.
For instance, I think that fencing off land violates my natural right to walk around wherever I choose. In your trite little desert isle scenario, I can go wherever I want without hindrance. What gives you the right to keep me off your land? Ah, I see, natural right. Ownership and property are legal concepts... created by governments as an abstraction of people's natural right to preserve the fruits of their own labor. For the most part, you have the natural right to walk around wherever you want. However, if you want to do donuts on your neighbors corn crops in your monster truch, then you would probably be pushing the line of reasonable behavior.
Exactly. You want to take away everyone's right to use your private property (not personal property, like a house or clothes, or anything made by human labor: private property. Land.) And you have some convoluted reasoning involving some supposed arbitrary "nature," and the concept of "retaliatory force." When did I ever say I believe in a natural right to own land? I believe in people's right to the products of their own labor, and sometimes with the restrictions of gravity and the nature of natural resources such as soil, that might overlap with land.
Most advocates of the concept of natural rights would disagree. They would say that because property rights are natural, land owners owe nothing to the landless. The kind of situation that you are fearing... where a handful of barons (or whatever you want to call them) own the land and most people are serfs without land, existed in history only because barons origionally took the land from others by force, and exercised rigid social, religious, and economic control through violence. These great disparities in wealth only exist with the sort of rigidly enforced heirarchies that are in conflict with the basic rule of "do whatever you want, so long as you don't harm others".
And none of your arguements have any bearing over freedom of speech, which is information and not bound by any real scarcity. Speech can't infringe on anyone elses rights.
No it isn't: it is who is free and who isn't free. You've changed the subject. The person who is free is the person who is allowed to choose to have sex or not have sex. Neither option makes them more or less free. I explained that.
I don't recognise being free to incite violence as a valid freedom. Except the only way to know if something incites violence is to wait and see if it incites violence.
Who is stronger : the one who gives in to desire and loses their virginity or the one who resists and waits for the arrival of the beloved? The question isn't who is stronger. The question is who is happier. The people who are modivated by approval from their religious group will be happier conforming to the ideals of that religion. The people who aren't modivated by the approval from their religious group will be happier having sex before marrage.
But most reasonable people would respect people's right to choose to have sex or not.
Freedom isn't as simple as you think. Freedon isn't simple to the guy who wants to oppress others. It is pretty damn simple to the people being oppressed. Wanting to purchase a video game and play it is simple enough to the people who want to purchase it and play it... it is only a complicated thing to those who want to ban the video game.
No, people have no natural rights. The concept of rights wouldn't exist without society. There would only be power: And the power of free speech and expression exists until someone takes it away, because all people have the ability to express themselves, inherently. If you were trapped alone, on a desert island, with no society whatsoever, you would be able to freely express yourself.
We both give up the right to hit each other in the face in exchange for not getting hit in the face. We *DO* have the right to hit each other in the face... so long as it is done with the consent of both individuals. You can't punch someone in the face involuntarily, because you are infringing his natural right not to get punched. If someone was alone, on a desert island, with no society whatsoever, they would have no fear whatsoever of being punched.
I mean, if I say I have the right to free speech, but no one will uphold my right, do I have it or don't I? Sure, you do have that right. The laws of physics aren't standing in your way, and presumably no physical or mental handicap is keeping you from expressing yourself. The only thing keeping you from using free speech is the artificial restriction on speech placed by other people.
The whole concept of natural rights is a kind of dodge or con. It is simply an appeal to authority designed to shut down debate around rights. "Oh, sorry. That's a natural right, end of discussion." The thing is, if there were such a thing as natural rights, they would be clear and self evident to all. Therefore the discussion of natural rights would never need to take place because we would all know them by instinct. Yet we do need to discuss them, and there is no clear consensus on what rights should be included in the hallowed list of 'natural' rights. We do know natural rights, by instinct. The rule of "do whatever you want, so long as it doesn't hurt anyone else" is pretty much universal in humans, until you start organizing them into opposing tribes or religions or political groups. Individuals then exploit those conflicts to control other members of the group. It takes years of "education" and social conditioning to get us to feel good about punishing and restricting other people.
The only people who want to "debate" human rights are the people who are interested in taking them away. The people who support free speech aren't interested in debating what free-speech means, because free speech is the natural human state by default. I have free speech until someone threatens to take it away. People want to initiate debate about rights because they want to find some convoluted reasoning for taking away the basic freedoms and abilities that people have by their very nature.
Free speech is a natural human right. Everyone has the right to free speech, unless some outside force takes it away. Just because the UK government doesn't recognize the right to freedom of speech, doesn't mean that the UK government isn't abusing human rights by restricting speech.
Governments don't GIVE people rights... people have the rights, and government can choose to either take those rights away or not take those rights away.
Freedom is dangerous. Free speech is dangerous. Whenever you have a free society, there is an inherent danger that someone might do something risky and/or undesirable.
However, if you look at history, authoritarian government is much more violent and dangerous that petty street criminals. And authoritarian governments usually do a poor job of controlling street crime for what it is worth.
So you are really making a deal with the devil. Enjoy the "safety" that fascism brings.
Dude, which is why is should be totally illegal for anyone to buy from, or sell from any other city. It should be illegal to leave the city you are born, because you could buy and sell while you are gone! Only when we are living in tiny economicly isolated enclaves like people did in the 1600, can our economy survive!
How does that contradict the fact that Castro is a dictator? Or that you would most likely be deemed an "enemy of the state" if you lived in Cuba?
People who defend the Castro dictatorship love to point out the abuses of the U.S. government, as if that has any bearing on the fact that Castro is a dictator, or that Cuba is a miserable Communist hellhole.
It is totally possible to be against *BOTH* the Communist dictatorship in Cuba, and the ever-increasing dictatorship like behavior of the U.S. government. In fact, the relationship between Castro's Cuba and the United States is pretty symiotic... The U.S. embargo gives Castro a scapegoat to blame the Cuban economic disaster on, and Castro's occasional anti-American threats are a useful propoganda tool for the U.S. government to get people to support more military spending. Both governments benefit greatly from each other.
Sony paid Rockstar for exclusivity for the GTA franchise for years. That kind of thing is not uncommon with console games.
In this case, GTA4 will be available on several platforms (Windows, PS3, 360), and only the downloadable content will be exlusive. And even then, Sony doesn't really have a proper online marketplace to sell downloadable content the way Microsoft does, so the "exclusivity" is pretty much academic.
In any case, this deal is far less exclusive or restrictive than previous deals Rockstar has made... it is actually a step in the right direction.
Just after Columbine, there was a copycat in canada. Except that, being in canada, gun access was... inconvenient: he tried it with a knife. He managed to injure six people, including himself. There was a school shooting in Canada the day after Columbine that killed 3 kids. It didn't kill as many people because it wasn't as well planned and there was only one kid, but the kid had no problem getting his hands on a high powered rifle. There was a shooting at a school in Toronto just a couple weeks ago. And another one in Montreal about 6 months ago.
Of course, you could argue that gun control laws in the U.S. and Canada are very similiar. It is far easier to legally purchase a gun here in Toronto Canada than it is in Washington DC, or New York City, and Toronto has the toughest gun control laws in the country. I don't really know the point you are trying to make comparing the U.S. and Canada gun control laws. If you watched Bowling for Columbine you would have saw that Canadians love guns.
The point of gun control is that it stops most hothead idiots. You still have to deal with cold blooded planners, but at least you're not allowing any narcissic functional idiot access to a point and click murder interface. Imagine having to face a bureucracy to commit murder. That is why you need restrictions on gun acquisition, just for the extra safety hurdle. The gun rampage person could buy a gun on the black market just as easy (if not easier), than purchasing one legally. Cheaper too. Where do you think gang members buy their weapons?
Do you think it is easier for a 14 year old to buy a pack of cigarettes, or a bag of weed? Why do you think it would be any different for a gun?
No, Michael Moore supports gun control, because if he didn't his lefty fans would turn on him. Either support gun control, or else. But even Michael Moore doesn't pretend that gun control would have a major effect on the murder rate in the U.S..
Well I guess Moore was wrong, it WAS videogames and Marilyn Manson that were responsible, not bowling.
If you actually watched the movie, Michael Moore was trying to make the point that it is a "culture of fear" that causes gun crimes, not the availability of the guns themselves. Of course, even though Michael Moore openly admits that gun control would have very little effect on gun violence, he supports gun control because to not do so would make him a pariah in lefty circles.
The problem here is that the idiot law students somehow believe that Internet forums provide anonymity. The internet forum DID provide anonymity. The forum software kept no record of IP address, and didn't require any sort of email validation. They haven't been able to track down the people who made the "malicious" postings at all.
Slashdot Mirror
In conversations about politics, when people refer to the "Trial Lawyers", it means the ATLA or AAJ or whatever they changed their name to this month... these are specificly the lawyers who sue people. These lawyers are the single most powerful lobby group in the United States. Like I said, they give 50% more campaign funds than the entire medical industries combined! They give more money than any other industry in America. They do more lobbying than the entire Military-Industrial complex. They are the largest campaign contributor to the Democratic party, and one of the largest campaign contributors to the Republican party. If you listen to a political program, or read political blogs, or even watch CNN, you would know that when people talk about the "Trial Lawyers" in the context of American politics, they are refering to this huge political lobby group that represents ambulance chasers. I shouldn't have to be explaining this to you, you should be able to do a Google search on your own if you don't understand.
So enough of the useless "You are saying all trial lawyers are evil?" stuff. I suspect you knew exactly what I mean, and are pretending not to understand in order to push the discussion into a different direction.
If people want protection, let them go to a doctor who is bonded. The surety bond is a long established concept that would be extremly popular if it wasn't so easy to sue people. If it weren't for trial lawyers, the US would be a much more dangerous place to live. Yeah... cause you know, places that aren't lawsuit crazy, like France, or Germany, or Canada, are just sooooo much more dangerous than the United States. Please! If they have a case, if there was fault worthy of a trial *ALL* cases go to trial. Someone sued their doctor for prescribing them drugs that "disrupted their psychic powers", and that went to trial - it cost the doctor tens of thousands to defend themself from the most rediculous claims. Since it costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend yourself against malpractice suits, preditory lawyers go after doctors for just under what it would cost to fight in court. In many cases, even though the accusation holds no merit, it is easier for the doctor to pay the $50,000 to the telephone psychic who claims she can no longer read minds than to fight it for years in the courts. The vast majority of cases that go to trial are not worth of a trial, but because the TLA have such a stranglehold on the political process (they are the biggest lobbiests in Washington), they get away with murder. I have absolutely no doubt that if someone's actions caused you significant loss of health, *YOU'D* hire the best trial lawyer your money could buy. You are missing the point. The vast majority of medical lawsuits involves cases where someone never suffered any significant loss of health, and the doctor wasn't responsible. It is just a legal protection scheme, kinda like with the Mafia, except the extortionists are too cowardly and spineless to do it the old fashion way.
Name dropping Bush is a nice touch too... usually when people can't make a coherent arguement, they throw the word "Bush" into their sound bite, because Bush is extremly unpopular and that is enough to make people lose their ability for critical thought. I mean, why didn't he mention Hitler while he was at it? Or Satan? Did anyone notice that insurance companies donate literally billions of dollars to campaigns over the past decades to get this passed? The Trial Lawyers of America, the political action group that represents ambulance chasers, gives 50% more campaign donations that the rest of the insurance, medical, and pharmicutical industry combined. They are the single largest donator to political campaigns in America. However many "billions" you think that the insurance companies spend, multiply that by several times and that is what the Trial Lawyers spend! http://www.triallawyersinc.com/healthcare/hc07.ht
And if they can't figure out a
The estimated size of the K-T asteroid was roughly 10 km wide. That's considered 'still fairly small' as far as Near Earth Objects go. It wasn't the impact that killed creatures over a couple of kilos, it was the enviornmental destruction that followed (such as blocking out the sun, thus destroying vegetation that creatures needed to survive, etc.)
It would be much easier and cheaper to set up a self-sustaining underground "space station" on earth, than to do the same thing on Mars or the Moon.
Democracy only exists when the government is small, limited, and decentralized. Anything else is, at best, popular dictatorship. Once government is all powerful, there is no such thing as free elections... elections are just theater to keep you passified.
B. Corporations have no direct control over me. Corporations can not send me to jail. They can not send a SWAT team to invade my house. They can't invade other countries nor draft me into the military. They can not censor my speech. And I always, always have the right to boycott a company (i.e. I can choose not to give it any money... try boycotting the government and see what happens).
The only power that a corporation has over me, is the power it can exercise through the government. Which is why, if you support big government, you support big corporations.
The bible says that owning slaves is OK, it is OK to stone people to death for eating shellfish or working on the sabbath. God told the Jews to commited genocide of the people of Jericho. Look into the old testimat, and you can find all kinds of crazy stuff.
Should we give the Bible an "Adults Only" rating?
Of course, threatening someone's profit is the same as censoring their work, since everyone needs money to survive. When you are threatening people's profit, you are threatening their livelyhood, and essentially forcing them into poverty unless they shut the hell up. It is absolutly censorship. It's not like that AO rating came from some oppressive congressional comission. The ESRB came down from some oppressive congressional comission. Congress demanded video games be regulated, and gave the ESRB the choice of doing it themselves or having the government do it.
Not only that, AO games are pretty much banned in the U.S., because AO games are considered "pornographic" in most areas, and so if a store wanted to sell it, in most areas it would have to register as an "adult buisness", which means that you can't legally sell them at normal video game retailers. For all intents and purposes, AO games are illegal. And let me say that again: I'm a gamer too, but I _don't_ think it sounds like a game I'd buy for my kids. Then don't buy it for your kids.
While both Europe and the U.S. have a pretty retarded policies when it comes to censorship (neither violence nor sex are appropriate things for the government to censor), the idea that sex in media is worse than violence does make sense. It is very, very, very unlikely that someone is going to commit murder. It is very, very, very likely that someone is going to have sex.
How many people do you know who have killed other people (aside from soldiers or police officers or something like that)? How many people do you know have had sex? The risk of a teenager having risky sex is astronomicly greater than the risk of the teenager commiting murder.
You really shouldn't brag "our censorship is better than your censorship" though. It is like bragging that your diarrhea is better. The truly civilized countries are the ones that trust parents to decide what they want their children to see and don't get involved.
And none of your arguements have any bearing over freedom of speech, which is information and not bound by any real scarcity. Speech can't infringe on anyone elses rights.
But most reasonable people would respect people's right to choose to have sex or not. Freedom isn't as simple as you think. Freedon isn't simple to the guy who wants to oppress others. It is pretty damn simple to the people being oppressed. Wanting to purchase a video game and play it is simple enough to the people who want to purchase it and play it... it is only a complicated thing to those who want to ban the video game.
The only people who want to "debate" human rights are the people who are interested in taking them away. The people who support free speech aren't interested in debating what free-speech means, because free speech is the natural human state by default. I have free speech until someone threatens to take it away. People want to initiate debate about rights because they want to find some convoluted reasoning for taking away the basic freedoms and abilities that people have by their very nature.
Free speech is a natural human right. Everyone has the right to free speech, unless some outside force takes it away. Just because the UK government doesn't recognize the right to freedom of speech, doesn't mean that the UK government isn't abusing human rights by restricting speech.
Governments don't GIVE people rights... people have the rights, and government can choose to either take those rights away or not take those rights away.
Freedom is dangerous. Free speech is dangerous. Whenever you have a free society, there is an inherent danger that someone might do something risky and/or undesirable.
However, if you look at history, authoritarian government is much more violent and dangerous that petty street criminals. And authoritarian governments usually do a poor job of controlling street crime for what it is worth.
So you are really making a deal with the devil. Enjoy the "safety" that fascism brings.
Dude, which is why is should be totally illegal for anyone to buy from, or sell from any other city. It should be illegal to leave the city you are born, because you could buy and sell while you are gone! Only when we are living in tiny economicly isolated enclaves like people did in the 1600, can our economy survive!
IBM knows where they delivered the equipment... IBM doesn't know what happened to it after it was delivered.
How does that contradict the fact that Castro is a dictator? Or that you would most likely be deemed an "enemy of the state" if you lived in Cuba?
People who defend the Castro dictatorship love to point out the abuses of the U.S. government, as if that has any bearing on the fact that Castro is a dictator, or that Cuba is a miserable Communist hellhole.
It is totally possible to be against *BOTH* the Communist dictatorship in Cuba, and the ever-increasing dictatorship like behavior of the U.S. government. In fact, the relationship between Castro's Cuba and the United States is pretty symiotic... The U.S. embargo gives Castro a scapegoat to blame the Cuban economic disaster on, and Castro's occasional anti-American threats are a useful propoganda tool for the U.S. government to get people to support more military spending. Both governments benefit greatly from each other.
Sony paid Rockstar for exclusivity for the GTA franchise for years. That kind of thing is not uncommon with console games.
In this case, GTA4 will be available on several platforms (Windows, PS3, 360), and only the downloadable content will be exlusive. And even then, Sony doesn't really have a proper online marketplace to sell downloadable content the way Microsoft does, so the "exclusivity" is pretty much academic.
In any case, this deal is far less exclusive or restrictive than previous deals Rockstar has made... it is actually a step in the right direction.
Of course, you could argue that gun control laws in the U.S. and Canada are very similiar. It is far easier to legally purchase a gun here in Toronto Canada than it is in Washington DC, or New York City, and Toronto has the toughest gun control laws in the country. I don't really know the point you are trying to make comparing the U.S. and Canada gun control laws. If you watched Bowling for Columbine you would have saw that Canadians love guns. The point of gun control is that it stops most hothead idiots. You still have to deal with cold blooded planners, but at least you're not allowing any narcissic functional idiot access to a point and click murder interface.
Imagine having to face a bureucracy to commit murder. That is why you need restrictions on gun acquisition, just for the extra safety hurdle. The gun rampage person could buy a gun on the black market just as easy (if not easier), than purchasing one legally. Cheaper too. Where do you think gang members buy their weapons?
Do you think it is easier for a 14 year old to buy a pack of cigarettes, or a bag of weed? Why do you think it would be any different for a gun?
No, Michael Moore supports gun control, because if he didn't his lefty fans would turn on him. Either support gun control, or else. But even Michael Moore doesn't pretend that gun control would have a major effect on the murder rate in the U.S..
Well I guess Moore was wrong, it WAS videogames and Marilyn Manson that were responsible, not bowling.
If you actually watched the movie, Michael Moore was trying to make the point that it is a "culture of fear" that causes gun crimes, not the availability of the guns themselves. Of course, even though Michael Moore openly admits that gun control would have very little effect on gun violence, he supports gun control because to not do so would make him a pariah in lefty circles.