Rob's House

You don't have to keep repeating it. Everyone gets it. Saying it over and over again doesn't make it any less retarded. The fact that you find it so insightful and persuasive says quite a bit about you. Let me explain why it's retarded: Say I buy a lawn mower for $200 and I agree to rent it to Harry for $10/yard to start a lawn mowing business. Harry charges $40/ yard. After mowing 20 yards Harry has paid me what I paid for the mower. But it's still my mower. If he mows 20 more yards with it I'll double my investment and retain ownership of the now depreciated mower. According to your silly little theory I've exploited Harry and I should no longer be allowed to rent my mower to him because he's paid me the value. However, we made a deal, we both got what we wanted, and if he chooses to voluntarily continue to rent my mower he is receiving utility for it. You can hardly say he's being exploited. He could buy his own mower if he would like. And if he's not able to then the only reason he's in business is because of the value of my capital. We're both better off for the arrangement. If he wasn't he wouldn't do it. A liberal in anarchist's clothing would stick his nose into other people's business and prevent Harry and I from engaging in a mutually beneficial enterprise of our choosing because it offended his busy-body sensibilies. Then when we called him a dick for doing it he'd assume it was because I was a greedy capitalist and Harry was an ignorant stooge who needed a do-gooder lib, er um anarchist, to protect him from getting exploited.

1. The two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. By forcing coverage you increase the aggregate cost of medical care which in turn raises the cost of insurance. 2. If everyone needs expensive procedures they can't pay out of pocket, where will the money come from? The idea of insurance is that you probably won't need an expensive procedure but you pay into a risk pool just in case. 3. I couldn't agree more

Which ultimately leads to the same end. I've gotten an earful of anarchist theory on an occassion or two, and the flaw is that someone has to enforce agreements and initiatives or you can have no societal cooperation. If you cede enforcement power to a body you cease to have anarchy. To do otherwise will lead to mob rule and the strongest mob's leader becomes dictator. Those who assume dictatorial power are seldom into the whole personal autonomy thing.

Without doing the research to get the specifics, I know there are laws that determine all that which must be included in a policy for it to be considered "credible coverage." This is a big one as it requires all manner of costly additions that the average Joe doesn't necessarily believe society should be coercively forced to provide. Also, there are laws (and these may be state or federal, I'm not sure) that require employers to provide levels of access and contribute certain amounts to health care plans (dude touches on the employer aspect briefly). I'm not sure what the law requires of insurance companies regarding end-of-life care, but I'd be willing to bet that they are required to cover all manner of procedures that may be of questionable value and that if the customer had the choice at the outset of getting such coverage would often opt out of it. For example, if you could opt out of coverage for procedures x, y, and z, which are extrememly costly and of questionable value in order to reduce your premium by 30% you might go with that. But if the government forces all insurance companies to cover x, y, and z, and therefore every customer that is covered has and pays for that coverage...

Can you explain how "stand your ground" differs from "classic" self-defense? What about people who attack or mistreat people just because they get off on it?

Isn't it funny how two ideologies that are diametrically opposed to each other ultimately amount to the same thing?

1. Rather than looking for legislation that fixes the issue I look to removing the legislation that causes the issue. 2. I don't consider this new health insurance legislation to be "reform" in any since of the word, but rather quite the opposite of reform. 3. If high-risk people, or those with pre-existing conditions, want insurance they have to pay the premium commesurate with the risk they represent. Otherwise it's not insurance, but medical welfare. Some people may be fine with that concept, but the idea that every person is entitled to the best health care science can offer is a fantasy. Those people need to get insured ahead of time or rely on public services like medicaid. 4.a. For end of life care you may be S.O.L. That may sound callous but it's more callous to expect the rest of the population to suffer so that you can get a few extra weeks tacked on at the end. If you can show you have significant assets to put against it then fine, but death is part of life and you don't get $100s of thousands of other people's money to make every last ditch effort to secure a little more time. It sucks, but that's just the way it is. 4.b. Creditors get first dibs on the estate. 5. Those people are the one's for whom social programs exist. Our society can afford to accommodate the truly unemployable among us. If we stop diverting resources to absurd government contracts, obscene pensions, ridiculous compensation packages for government employees that produce little to nothing, and stop giving a free ride to anyone with the audacity to demand it, we'll have more than enough to treat these people more than adequately.

3%ish over 4 years is too small to make an impact. Especially when you consider its essentially 3% reduction of projected future spending you're talking about. Most "slash-and-burn" proposals are straw man propaganda trumpeted by the left to make Tea Baggers look ridiculous. By and large they're just a group of run-of-the-mill fiscal conservatives who got a little freaked out by a guy who never saw a government project he didn't like and want to increase funding for, get the Presidency with a super majority. Most understand that reforms have to be gradual, and many were protesting proposed increases rather than demanding massive cuts immediately. I don't think the % of overall costs coming from uninsured is as staggering as we're lead to believe. I'd like to see some hard #s on the issue, but as I understand it the overwhelming majority of costs goes to pay for old people. The true objective of this bogus mandate is to get young people to subsidize the health care costs of old people. If it were merely an issue of getting uninsured to pay their bill, giving a line of credit that can't be bankrupted and can only requite a max of 10-15% of your wages in repayment (similare to student loans) would make more sense. Further, and again, none of this does anything to address the real issue, which is cost. You're just collecting more fuel to pour into the leaky furnace because its easier right now than fixing the leak.

I don't see how this is a solution or why it is necessary. Forcing more people to pay into a system whose problem is inefficiency doesn't do a thing to fix the problem. It's like having a leak in your heat ducts so instead of replacing the faulty duct you just burn more fuel. I've been uninsured and known dozens of uninsured people. Most of my best friends are or have been uninsured at some point in time. Many of us have had unforeseen injury/sickness during that time, but somehow managed to get the care we needed without going into crippling debt. As far as problems with the medical system go, the plight of or drain caused by uninsured people is a few notches down the list. Sometimes compromise is surrender. Going along with a ****ty idea, or giving concessions just to get a deal made is how you end up with disasterous results. See Versailles Treaty. Paul Krugman is an anti-economist

What does this mean?

I don't get the Stossel bashing, unless it's just a knee jerk reaction to villify someone for posing facts and logic that kills off someone's sacred cow. I don't watch him often, but I read a book (Give Me a Break) a few years back. It wasn't a deep nuanced exploration, but rather a simple, interesting look at some ridiculous regulations with a common sense approach. Although I've found that some find common sense to be too common for them. As to Zakaria, I'd say he is left of center, but far more reasonable than anything you'd see on MSDNC. http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/26/zakaria-how-to-save-american-health-care/ He does a good job of laying out some of the pitfalls of the current system. I don't agree with the assessment that laws of market economics don't apply to health care. Just because people don't necessarily know what or when they'll need health care does not make the industry unique. People don't often know when their transmission will drop or when they'll need a new HVAC system, but usually when it happens they either have money set aside or they finance. If we can make sure everyone with a pulse can get a six-figure student loan to study early Hungarian cabinet making, I'm sure we could find a way to make sure the people with unexpected illness/injury have a safety net w/o upending the whole system (which he somewhat alludes to himself). I'll give him credit for being one of the first left of center guys to recognize that Obamacare does dick to address costs and that the innefficiency of our system has mainly to do with the convoluted incestuous relationship between markets, employers, and government where we have this quasi-free market cluster !@#$ where the customers and providers are essentially cut out of the loop thus distorting/obscuring the forces of supply and demand that would otherwise lead to a more optimal level. Although I suspect his solution would involve more government programs, agencies, and regulations, while I would prefer and simplified, scaled down, common sense government approach. His take on "death panels" seems somewhat sensible, but inconclusive. The problem here is who makes the decision. In his hypo the question is only whether its covered, but assumes you could pay if you had the resources and felt so inclined. This leads to the emotional tampon argument (where Keith Olbermann bursts a blood vessel) that it is somehow immoral to recognize that there is a price at which we should decide not to give grandma an extra week. While it might be worth it to me to drop $100k to prolong my mom's life a few weeks, it's not worth it to me to prolong a stranger's life for that time. So when someone asks how you put a price on someones life and time, I say it depends on who's paying.

What're you talking about? They're doing a masterful job. They've got a young mind of mush they've sculpted to parrot their inane sociological theory (which normally can't survive outside the laboratory of academia and dies on contact when exposed to reality) and he's vitriolically spewing it like the faithfully fundamentalist true believer he is. He swallowed it whole and isn't looking back. He thinks he's figured it all out, gets something the rest of us (and everyone outside his little college circle) seem to miss, and it's now time for him to stop learning and start educating.

Although this thread makes me want to eat my brain, it is a little nostalgic. It takes me back to when I was a young college know-it-all and thought my friends and I were brilliant because we could do mental gymnastics and make the absurd sound plausible and make arguments no one else did. Of course I grew to realized that no one else was making those arguments because, although clever, they were substantively retarded. Those were good times though. Young, reckless, and stupid is a good time.

it all comes together at the end. Post back after you watch it again.

Miller's Crossing is definitely a tough act to follow. IMO it's the best gangster movie I've seen, and I formed that opinion before I knew who the Coen brothers were. I'm surprised a movie that good has flown that far under the radar for so long. I thought about bringing it up in the obscure movies thread.

I thought Barton Fink was excellent, but it's one that's better the second time around.

These aren't necessarily my favorite summer songs, but one's that make me think of sandy tropical beaches and fruity cocktails with umbrellas, going down to the James in July, or cruisin with the top down: Everything by Jimmy Buffet Blondie - The Tide is High Clint Black - Summer's Coming Clay Walker - Then What Violent Femmes - 36-24-36 Everclear - Santa Monica Guns N' Roses - Paradise City Joe Jones - California Sun Dr. Dre (& Snoop) - Nuthin but a G Thing 3rd Eye Blind - Semi-Charmed Life Los Umbrellos - No Tengo Dinero (don't ask)

Unless you're trying to sell cheap junk, or your town is so small that all it can support is a Wal-Mart, this should never be an excuse. Who goes to Wal-Mart to buy their bike? Honestly, this kind of defeatest attitude is the biggest hurdle to success. And as far as capital goes, my buddy wanted to own a restaurant but didn't have any capital. He found a place he could afford and rented it, lived in a shed (nice shed w/ electricity) behind the building for a year waiting tables at night and putting it together piece by piece, then he brought on a partner for the remaining capital he needed, and it's been smooth sailing ever since. If you really want to make it work you'll find a way.

I actually went back and added "by and large" because I thought of you. I know you take a lot of flack around here for fence-sitting, but unlike the people I described, I see you more as someone focused on issues and trying to weigh both sides of the argument. I see them as intellectually lazy and disinterested but still wanting to feel like their opinions matter.

There was a short w/ Billy Bob by the same name & involving the same basic story that is different from the Oscar nominated movie that I've never heard a negative review of outside of this thread. Perhaps that's what you saw. The real movie is actually very good.

This just reinforces my belief that "independents" are, by and large, wishy-washy simpletons who haven't educated themselves on the issues and go with whoever has a catchy slogan, nice haircut, or who they think they'll be more popular for supporting. Seriously, what logical thought process could lead anyone down this path? The thought process of a moderate: Sure his policies seem better and Obama's really **** the bed, but Romney is being negative, and that makes me sad. I'll take incompetence over a big meanie any day. And I can tell the drones at work, whose approval I desperately seek, that I'm above the fray and I'm just turned off by the negativity. Then I'll splash in a few lines about how they're all the same anyway and, voila, I'm Super Centrist, the most level headed and compromising person you could ever hope to meet. Unlike all these wacky partisans I like a little bit of tyranny, a little bit of liberty, my other penis is a vagina, and my answer to everything depend on how it's polling. And as a bonus I can still show how not racist I am because I support the black guy. These people are why everyone is so adamant about pushing bogus poll numbers. It actually affects their opinion on the issues.

You didn't address me at all. But you came in talking **** off the bat so I put you in your place. I didn't know you were going to cry about it. You were rude and some guy on an anonymous chat board called you an ass hole. I think you'll be okay.

Just giving you a little of your own.

Who needs evidence when you have righteous indignation

It feels so good to hear someone echo my exact sentiments on True Blood. My wife forced me to sit through far too much of that one. W/o my iPhone & TBD to get me through those episodes I'm not sure I could have taken it.