birdog1960

i'm saying conservatives don't much care about universal coverage. and everyone buying insurance isn't a viable solution to achieve univesral coverage. they'd be happy to see costs come down overall but realize that covering 30 - 50 million more people may decrease per capita cost but not overall cost. that's not a tradre most conservatives are happy to accept especially if it means their own coverage suffers the least bit.

is it? according to conservatives? not what i hear...left to their own devices this would never occur through the hands of conservatives. the aca is just the first step towards these goals for liberals.

you realize that the ACP is the largest specialty organization and the second largest physician group (to the ama) in the us, right? does this piece not tell you anything about the diversity of opinions re the aca among docs. there will be plenty of comments but this opinion is far from fringe.

not gonna get off that easy. no chemical enhancement unless you mean endorphins...had a pretty good day.

i was following pretty well til the 3rd paragraph and then.. a quantum leap... of reasoning. what exactly is our (liberals) brand of tolerance? toleration of any but conservatives? toleration of any but the intolerant? should we tolerate assad? stalin? pol pot? no, you are correct there are iimits. but various liberals and conservatives will define those limits differently and we generally have more questions than answers. i believe that's the nature of things. we look for the answers, realizing that some may be unknowable but worth pursuing nonetheless. my impression is that, in general, many conservatives don't accept that basic truth...that truth can sometimes be relative. gray is often the answer and not black or white. it's a fundamentally different approach. sometimes we need to be satisfied with gray. that's my definition of tolerance. yours is very likely different. i can tolerate that without liking it.

wow...now that's passion! agreed, great band. their set at floydfest convinced me.

not exactly what i was aiming at but, um, ok

one of the most thoughtful and analytical summaries on the subject that i've read: http://annals.org/ar...ticleid=1558549

loved that show. can't help but compare it to kid's shows today. we need more commander toms. i still remember a few lines from from davy and goliath too: "what about the man with the polka dot pants" and "gee davy, god doesn't love dogs" or something like that. don't know what strangeness makes me remember those though.

that guy was as annoying as george plimpton. what was it he had stuck up his butt? what was i thinking? some people disagree with me? i never knew! wasn't defending you just scoring with a few layups.

they do if one who breaks ranks is lambasted by nearly everyone else. does it happen among liberals? sure, but in general tolerance is considered an important quality. not so much among conservatives, at least here....

the groups you mentioned don't have anyone with the power and influence over the entire organization that people like norquist and ryan do. it's just a much less homogeneous group of beliefs in my opinion. people from billionaire industrialists to coal miners and everyone in between consider themselves liberals, often with very differnt ideas of what that word means. you can't seriously be proposing that conservatives embrace diverse thoughts and beliefs similarly to liberals? when's the last time you read liberals on this board name calling each other?

this is a really nice example of the big tent that is a group like CPAC. you're acceted til you're not. there really aren't many issues where differences of opinion are welcomed much less tolerated. yet, somehow, republicans, comprised to large degree by this enlarging and disproportionally vocal group is planning on appealling to a more diverse demographic?

or does it? might there be a biologic basis for your cravings and inability to remain "on the wagon"? why do mammals perceive hunger at all? what is the reason for it from an evolutionary perspective? is it vestigial and actually harmful in modern society? then again it could be you're just a glutton. things are rarely as simple as they initially seem. witness this discussion on the minimum wage.

didn't you say you gained some of your loss back? are you weak willed? geez, we don't need no stinkin studies, don't need no endocrinologists or cardiologists. people just need more willpower! when a smoker comes in with chest pain next time maybe i'll try that one- brilliant! hmmm, could probably use that with std's too. guess what, human beings make mistakes and don't live perfect lives like i'm sure yall do.

have you ever met anyone that's done all that and still not lost more than 10% or lost more and gained it back? now you know why.

<p> have you ever noticed that snake oil salesmen sell stuff for ailments conventional medicine can't effectively treat? like baldness, hangovers and obesity. look at the industry that's developed around obesity. how many could stay in business if there truly was a simple fix? maybe you didn't understand my synopsis of the lecture: weight loss programs, even involving diet and exercise, are inherently contradictory to innate feedback mechanisms developed evolutionarily. any currently available method is fighting the bodies natural tendencies. can it be done? yes, but the vast majority that attempt it fail.

it isn't working when 50 million people are on food stamps. it isn't working when over 1 million school kids are reported by their schools to be homeless. it isn't working when millions more go hungry on a regular basis. it isn't working when all this is going on and wealth is becoming even more concentrated.

congratulations, you're an outlier. yes, i've seen success at weight loss attempts but many more failures. i'm from a middle class family.

to your first point, just attended a lecture by a renowned expert in the field of obesity ( i won't mention the university as i'm confident it would be ridiculed as a bastion of liberalism, but rest assured you've heard of it and he was brought in by another renowned university to give the talk). the needed caloric intake for a human to sustain life is 800 cal/day. americans consume on average 2800 cals. our bodies adjust metabolic rates to regulate supply and demand to within a few cals/day. still, the balance is on plus side, so to speak, which results in weight gain. when we decrease the caloric intake, the body decreases the metabolic rate resulting in disappointing weight loss. the trick is to reset the thermostat and no one knows how to do that. exercise is promising but far from a panacea. to your second point, it's working for the winners. there are far too many losers and that doesn't bode well for even the current winners. to borrow a few bullets from the documentary (which i highly recommend): the greatest determinant of wealth in the us is the wealth of ones parents. upward mobility in the us is among the lowest of the developed world. so much for the american dream. i won't repeat the numbers on poverty as appeals to compassion are largely ineffective here.

it's like i tell people trying to lose weight....anybody that says they have the answer is a damn liar. but what i do know, is what were doing isn't working.

indulge me and look at the graph at 2:20. do you dispute it? i ask in all seriousness as i'm no tax expert. while you're at it check out trump's face at about 1:30, it's worth it just for giggles. this has actually been banned on TED's site. i checked it out. if you search this guy you'll just get a thread complaining about it and some limp explanation that the presentation was mediocre and wasn't thought provoking. censorship documented here under "controversies" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TED_(conference)

watching the documentary "american winter" on hbo and this venture capitalist is interviewed: "if it were true that lower taxes for the rich and more wealth for the wealthy led to job creation, today we would be drowning in jobs". seems logical to me. where's the flaw in his reasoning?

what took so long? i thought an attack on economists and academics would come much sooner. ok, lets replace academics with evidence. where is the evidence, data,historical precedents, whatever you want to term it that supports your position? until you come up with some, "because i said so" remains your argument.

progress! there must be quite a few workers making minimum wage if it's estimated to cost business $11b. might be as simple as $11b divided by ($1.75/ hour increase X 40 hours) fair to say, many workers. and i think you meant to say most of those funds wouldn't be saved and recycled back to the economy. fundamentally, i don't think the objections over this are about negative effects on the economy. it's about concern for negative effects to a few businesses (that are not likely to be big based on history) and lack of (or much less) concern for the poor. it's that simple. ah, there it is. it's not the practical concerns, it's the principle.