winsor

A bit more complicated; The state of Bavaria held the copyright, and refused to allow publication. But the copyright expired 2016-01-01 so it went into the public domain: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35209185 But that last line gives one pause. Even more complicated. I have an English translation, which was not covered by the Bavarian copyright - though I suspect it is every bit as dreadful a read in German. Whenever I read the basis of any 'system of belief,' whether it be the Tanakh, Dianetics, The Communist Manifesto or Mein Kampf, I catch myself wondering what kind of retard would accept this dreck verbatim. Apparently all too many do.

Mein Kampf was never illegal in Germany. "Publicly displaced Nazi iconography was systematically destroyed by the occupying allies at the end of the war, and today, the German criminal code prohibits the public use of a symbol of any “political party which has been declared unconstitutional by the Federal Constitutional Court.” This includes the swastika, the Nazi salute, and several other symbols of the Third Reich. Punishments can range from fines to up to three years in prison. Mein Kampf and other Nazi propaganda works are also banned. Slate.com JUNE 24 2015 Possession of "Mein Kampf" was not 'banned' per some sources, and its publication was recently authorized by Bavaria. It seems to depend somewhat on who you ask, and my limited experience with German authorities indicates that, if they say something is illegal, arguing the issue is a bad career move. Come to think of it, that seems to apply pretty much across the board.

It's like "be fruitful and multiply" - at what point do you qualify for a 'MISSION ACCOMPLISHED' banner?

The selectivity concerns me. I lived in Germany when National Socialism was a banned organization and Mein Kampf was illegal as a result of their track record. If we recognized Islam as a terrorist ideology and the Koran as hate speech, blocking adherents at the border would be cut and dried. In the same sense that you have Nazis that are already here but anyone new would be denied a green card or citizenship, belonging to an organization whose rule book very clearly mandates beheading for anything from verbal disagreement on up, and states quite clearly that rape and paedophelia are quite all right, should be a basis for exclusion. Don't get me wrong, I think anyone who adheres strictly to Mosaic Law (not quite as bad as Sharia, but up there) has something wrong with them, and the 'followers' of that Nazorean guy that the Romans executed are generally FUBAR, but right now the virulent Universal Ideology of concern springs from the illiterate psychopathic pervert whose ramblings are sacred to to a quarter of the world's population. Consider it an IQ test. "Does this make sense to you." "Why yes, I believe it completely!" "You're an idiot. Next!" BSBD, Winsor

Be real. The guy's a schmuck, which has long been a given. Your point?

Do you wish me to believe that you think it is in any way possible that the population can grow unchecked on the basis of finite resources without resulting in catastrophe? Surely you have an IQ above room temperature (Fahrenheit to be generous). The specifics in the article are plus or minus. The overall questions are: when and how bad? 'Climate change' is a symptom more than a problem. If we had nothing more important about which to worry, we would be in comparatively great shape.

Alarmist or Denier, the issue is on a par with worrying about the heartbreak of psoriasis on a Stage 4 cancer patient. We have real problems, and nothing Al Gore recommends can do a damned thing about it.

At this point, what difference does it make? (tee hee)

This article does a pretty good job of addressing the dynamic that resulted in the outcome of the last election. I think Trump is repellent, but he has the saving grace (such as it is) of being anything but more of the same. I hope some of his more retarded proposals, such as The Wall (with apologies to Pink Floyd), are but distractions of a master illusionist - though I doubt it. I think focusing on Global Warming or whatever is akin to someone focusing on the lumpy paint job on a car rather than the rampant corrosion that underlies it. Just because the people that perseverate on Anthropogenic Climate Change are all too often dipshits (Al Gore et al.) does not mean that one should not seek to address the underlying issues (hint: 'carbon' is a secondary factor). Even though I suspect that we are fucked regardless of what we do, I find the disruption associated with the incumbent to have some amusement value in the interim. BSBD, Winsor

The one that seems to have more only has 3/5 as many. Is that a slavery joke? It's a Congress joke. Constitutional Convention and all that.

The one that seems to have more only has 3/5 as many.

Right. I think he was saying that if he had been participating in the lottery (and they called his number) he would have gone. My number was 346, and I did not participate in the lottery. I was already a SP-4.

The problem with many laws is that the name often contradicts the content. Like the 'Patriot Act' being unpatriotic to the point of being unconstitutional, the 'Affordable Care Act' is a commitment to unaffordable care from top to bottom. The fact that it was larger than the Encyclopedia Brittanica should have been a clue. Chris Martenson has a pretty good handle on the nuts and bolts of the ACA. Boiled down, the ACA's approach to health care is that typically, for a variety of reasons, Health Care Providers charge you for a new Rolls Royce and deliver a used Yugo. To continue the analogy, the ACA mandates that everyone has to have a car, and that by spreading out the insane prices they will somehow be affordable. The "if you like your doctor..." line has resulted in Buick owners being required to drive a Yugo instead ('you'll love it, unless, of course, you're a denier with OCD'). Rather than making health care affordable, the ACA has further enabled a Lewis Carroll billing system, where a hospital bed goes for $10,000 a night and $1 worth of meds get billed for $100 (actual numbers). The economics are reminiscent of South Vietnam before the U.S. withdrew, where a prostitute on the streets of Saigon made orders of magnitude more than a Cabinet Minister. People quite rightly figured out that their best option was to get on the gravy train while they could, so they were better prepared to deal with the nasty realities that would set in when things inevitably went to hell. Similarly, people that occupy the eight or ten layers of bureaucracy atop those actually providing health care are getting as much cash as they can as fast as they can, so they set for life when the music stops playing. I have worked in and around health care long enough and in enough countries to call bullshit regarding the accepted norms in the U.S. regarding health care, and the ACA in particular. It amazes me that, given the premise that Physicians cost too much, we should task Attorneys to resolve the issue. If this is a joke, it's in bad taste. In any event, the issue has been redirected to quite who is going to get stuck with the tab rather than why on earth such mundane goods and services are so goddamned expensive. The structural flaws that result in overpricing by many orders of magnitude are left in place, and the focus is on making sure that it all gets paid - which does nothing to address the real problem. Unaffordable health care was and is a problem, and the ACA is yet another set of problems layered on top; this hardly meets any criterion of a 'solution.' As you were, Winsor

When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that person is crazy. ~Dave Barry, "Things That It Took Me 50 Years to Learn" I think Trump fills the bill in spades. We're all stocked up on popcorn, let the show begin!

"Pop Goes the World" by Men Without Hats

Keep that in mind when you renew your driver's license. NASA is rather an outlier; the bulk of Government employees exemplify the Lowest Common Denominator.

I was referring, of course, to the Federal Government. It did OK with the Manhattan project and Apollo. A broken (analog) clock is right twice a day.

I was referring, of course, to the Federal Government.

Says the guy who can afford health care in the US. Canadian public health care is pretty decent. Is it as good as the best US health care I can spend fortunes on? No. Is it better than average care in the US? Yes. Don't get me wrong - the U.S. system of health care - such as it is - is FUBAR. My point is not that the problems are not glaring and overwhelming, but having 'the Government' pay for everything is not the solution. The basic principle goes something like this: there is a service that everyone needs but that almost nobody can afford (health care, higher education, etc.), but somehow, by giving an affordable amount of money to the most inefficient and incompetent organization anyone has ever seen they will be able to bargain on our behalf and obtain for us the services we could not originally afford - with the portion of our funds they have not yet wasted. What am I missing? I will admit that enough time has lapsed since I lived in Canada that my take on the system of health care is not at all current. It did strike me that the state of Canadian health care at the time, added to the horror stories regarding the NHS provided by English physicians, made the prospect of nationalizing health care in the U.S. rather unattractive to me, at least. I can think of a few rule changes that I would prefer to either the out of control 'private' health care we had or to the socialized variant, but it is not going to happen so the issue is moot. BSBD, Winsor

I recently heard about an insane example of this. Medicare will pay for a kidney transplant (about $100,000), but by law they can cover the anti-rejection drugs needed to keep the kidney viable for only three years. After that the patient has to come up with as much as $950/month for the co-pay for anti-rejection drugs. Medicare pays about $15,000/year for the anti-rejection drugs. Medicare also pays the full cost for dialysis (about $90,000/year) with no limit on the duration of treatment. Dialysis requires 3 sessions of 3-4 hours each/week, making it difficult for patients to hold down a regular job. So patients with failed kidneys get dialysis ($90,000/year) until a kidney becomes available at which time they receive a transplant ($100,000) and drugs for three years ($15,000/yr x 3 = $45,000). At the end of three years many patients cannot afford the anti-rejection drugs, even if they have insurance, as the co-pay is so high. So they skip doses to make the drugs go farther, which doesn't work and trhe kidney is rejected, or they just stop taking the drugs altogether and let the kidney fail. Then they go back on dialysis ($90,000/yr) until a new transplant is available and start the process all over again. In other words, to prevent so-called "freeloaders" from getting their anti-rejection drugs for "free" (costing taxpayers $15,000/yr) the government would prefer to pay $90,000/yr for dialysis and perhaps another $100,000 for another transplant. Also you can factor in that people on dialysis generally can't work because they have to spend so much time getting dialysis treatment, so they are not paying taxes and are often also collecting disability payments. On the other hand after a successful transplant people don't need dialysis and so they can work and pay taxes. Cutting people off from the drugs they need to keep their transplant viable is beyond stupid, it is insane! Don Public health care is to health care what public housing is to housing.

No sweat, the alternative was an equally repugnant piece of shit who managed to fuck up everything she touched, so he was the lesser of two evils by a RCH. I again submit that Hillary makes Dick Nixon look like Solon by comparison; the only things she has done successfully is get elected or appointed and to line her pockets. About the only thing Trump has going for himself is that he's not an Ivy League Attorney - though it blows me away that he'd lie about Wharton (like nobody would notice that he never actually went there?). I've also been to Wharton (as well as Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge, etc.), but I was never a STUDENT there either. Let's just hope that he's simply pretending to be an out of control idiot as well, eh?

With all due respect, this has to be among the dumbest things I have seen of late. Okay, if your kid wants a pony and you have a St. Bernard turned into a 'pony' by means of vivisection (and the 'pony' is cool with it), fine. If the 'pony' then has a litter of puppies, it is hardly newsworthy. If a pedigreed St. Bernard foaled a Shetland Pony with no surgical intervention, that should raise the odd eyebrow. The 'man' that just happened to have a uterus handy and thereby managed to get pregnant really did nothing of note. It's on a par with 'Mr. Prostitute' from Yellowbeard getting knocked up - but at least that had redeeming comedic value. Then again, most of the what passes as 'progressive' is a bad joke, so what the hell. BSBD, Winsor

It's a matter of demographics, not so much as armament. The partial depopulation of either Rwanda or Cambodia took place by means other than firearms.

I know a Barry Bichler. Different guy?

SJWs are understood, which is precisely why they are subject to universal loathing and well earned contempt.