greg1647545532

Wow, I had no idea they were trying to CONTROL MY LIFE! I thought they were just trying to prohibit some really damaging practices that have evolved in the health insurance marketplace. Must be the lizard people in Washington again. Or the Jews. Or the lizard Jews. Either you're trolling me or you've jumped off the deep end. Not that you'll care, but you're probably right that the real reason politicians are so bent on reforming health care doesn't have much to do with actually helping people. IMO, it has everything to do with Medicare and Medicaid and how those are programs that, like them or not, are never going to go away, and yet are unsustainable. Every new president comes in and probably gets the same "status update" that basically says "social security, medicare and medicaid are going to bankrupt the country." Bush's efforts to reform social security were commendable, but doomed to failure because the Democrats stonewalled any Republican initiative and the result was an overly complicated bill that was probably insufficient to actually fix the problems anyway. It was doomed to failure. Likewise, this bill was born of an effort to solve a problem that will basically never be solved. The idea is that we need more people paying into the system if we expect it to be sustainable. Single payer would solve that problem exceedingly well -- everyone has to buy insurance, you buy it from the government via taxes, problem solved. But Republicans throw a goddamn hissyfit about socialized medicine and stamp their feet, and the result is the same thing that happened with the social security bill -- an overly complicated and probably insufficient bill finally went forward. Only this one somehow made it through. I've said in other threads here that I don't know how I feel about this bill. I think it's going to add a lot of overhead and probably won't fix the financial situation entirely. Single payer would be better. I could even be convinced that nothing might be better. A lot of people say "it's a step in the right direction," and I can kind of see that, but that's basically admitting that health care in America is still gonna be a problem even after this bill, until we finally are overcome with the costs and move to a single payer system. So I guess we'll just keep biding our time. In any case, what this bill is definitely NOT is a doomsday, end of the world, lizard people will control our lives scenario. You're just being ridiculous, and you've either let the right-wing hate machine drum you up into an unnecessary fervor, or you're just naturally prone to unnecessary fervors.

Do you have any original thoughts or do you just quote people all day?

"Health care freedom" isn't a defined thing. This bill no more strips you of any "health care freedom" than the recent credit card reform bill stripped you of "banking freedom." Or were you mad about some essential freedom you lost because credit card companies aren't allowed to change rates on existing balances. "But what about my RIGHT to get a credit card from a company that wants to do that!?!?" It's silly. This bill increases taxes and enacts regulations on the health insurance industry. Odds are your insurance, if you have it, won't change. So, your "freedom" to buy health insurance from a company that is allowed to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions has been infringed. That's not exactly an essential freedom. Your "freedom" to keep whatever tax money this bill will cost you is not an essential freedom. So, pretty much, yeah, this health care bill doesn't infringe on any of your rights. Sorry.

I've not stated my opinion on the subject of this health care bill. All I'm saying is you picked a stupid quote to throw out there. If you don't see a problem with replacing intelligent discussion with irrelevant quotes during a debate like this, that's on you.

I'd hardly call it essential, but even if I granted you that, this bill doesn't really provide any "safety" in the intended sense of the word, and if it were temporary you wouldn't be complaining so... still not a relevant quote.

Franklin's actual quote, which is much less sweeping than the oft-used misquote, is "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." You'll see that it's much less relevant here in its original form.

The bill passed the house and then went to the senate, where it was expected to pass. It did, but with a few amendments. So, since it's different now, it needs to go back to the house before going to the pres. It's unlikely that the house will object to the amended bill. Still, politics is politics, who knows.

Oh my god, you mean blacks and whites are gonna have to use the SAME WAITING ROOMS?!?!?! Where's my sharpy, I need to go protest.

What do you mean, people like me? White guys? That's just ignorant. Racist.

What's that? Why is blue and underlined? Seems short, too.

Post up some more of the constitution for me, that was awesome.

Read it, "Joint Strike Fighter" doesn't appear even once. I swear. My freedom to be protected by a military devoid of Joint Strike Fighters is being infringed!!!!!

Joint strike fighters are not spelled out in the constitution. It's an outrage! Every dime in taxes you pay go towards the privilege of being alive in the US. If you want to live in the US and be alive and earn income, you have to pay taxes. This is nothing new.

It's kind of a silly link. 1. Want to spend your money on dirt roads? Tough, the government thinks it knows better than you and is building them out of "concrete" and "asphalt." 2. Think your military is overgrown and should be fighting with muskets again? Well the government is taxing YOUR MONEY and making you spend it on things like joint strike fighters. The outrage! etc. That's all the list is. You lose the freedom to have no health insurance and/or shitty health insurance. Another way to look at it is that the government is going to tax people in order to pay for increasing the standards in the health insurance industry. If you already have health insurance, you get a tax break. This bill robs people of their freedom to keep that tax money for themselves, just like, oh, every other bill involving taxation ever passed.

Hi there.

Snopes covered this a bit this morning: http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/fishingban.asp Includes an apology from ESPN for the editorial posted above.

Oh, yeah, my post was in regards to errors. If the information is negative but accurate, then you just need to wait a few more years.

Try going through the companies that are reporting negative information first. The reporting agencies tend to trust what the creditors say as gospel, so if you're in a situation where the creditors will vouch that the negative information is erroneous, you've got a leg up on the situation. I had this happen with a Discover card I "closed" about 8 years ago. A couple years after that some 3 year credit watch plan that I never signed up for auto-renewed, the account went into delinquency and was closed, all without me ever knowing. I called Discover when I pulled my credit report, they immediately admitted their error and sent letters to the credit reporting agencies to get the information removed. And even then, I took 3 letters over the course of 2 years for the reporting agencies to finally believe them. That's my 2 cents. There's lots of good info on creditboards.com if you have the time.

Yeah, people were telling me the T-6 was in many ways more fun than the T-38, but I figured the latter was more of a once-in-a-lifetime shot. It was very different than I expected, and the thrill was definitely more of "holy shit" rather than a "stupid grin on face". I imagine it'd be like the difference between getting a ride in a top fuel dragster versus a good driver taking you out for a few laps in an Atom. (And yes, I know the T-38 is a baby plane, don't take this away from me )

No wai, Volvos are awesome. I've also had a hankering to drop a Honda powerplant into the back of a Fiat X1/9, but I don't think my marriage would survive it.

Volvo 240.

I got a T-38 ride for knowing the right people and asking nicely. As I went through the whole orientation thing, people kept asking, "So, what'd you do to get this incentive flight?" "Dunno, I asked." Nobody believed me. I later found out it's exactly as you described... you either need to be a maintainer or jesus. No idea what it would cost a civilian. The fuel alone for a 45 minute flight is probably a grand.

OK, I lolled.

Dude, he was so angry/flustered that he broke a door trying to get at his guns and had to be stopped by his wife. I'm sure we've all had urges to cheat on our significant others, but I've never been so tempted to tag the babysitter that I broke a door and had to be stopped by my wife. I'm pretty sure I'd be getting divorced at that point. "What, I wouldn't really have done it. Don't judge me from your pedestal. Honey? Where are you going. What's for dinner? Honey?"

Sent tinman a PM, thanks for the reco.