champu

I feel like I've had to ask you this before, and I searched but it's entirely possible the thread or our exchange was deleted, but do you ever read what you write? Here is a video I think is interesting and I think it's worth watching.

Meh, making a legal stink out of it while someone is still in the hospital kinda sucks regardless of which way the comment is directed.

Here's hoping the student with the GSW pulls through. /edit to add: here's also hoping the media doesn't research every aspect of the shooter's life, tell his story, present all of his troubles, and make him famous.

You're falling victim to the scam of the consultant who demands payment to help you navigate the constantly changing rules.

I will not buy this tobacconist, it is scratched.

If you're going to hate something, hate stupid behavior, lack of a sense of humor, and the blowing of things out of proportion. If someone inconsistently stirs up stupid shit and acts like a moron, and your only complaint is that they're a hypocrit about it, then you're just going to end up with more stupid shit and moronic behavior. "Hey, this guy over here never has any sense of perspective on any issue that's discussed!" "Well, thank god he's not a hypocrit!"

I'm fully on board with all of that. That's all also happening after the LEO has made contact with you. He or she has their lights on, you've identified them in the rear view mirror, it's clear they want you to pull over... great... make your actions count in your favor.

The primary reason I can recall the ten commandments so easily is because of the George Carlin bit about them.

Do we want more outrage over the Shomrim actions in the cases where there's really no religious law being enforced or crimes committed? More outrage in the instances where they break a law? More non-specific outrage over them in general? Do we want less non-specific outrage over muslims in general? Less outrage when muslims do something that's not illegal? Do we want less outrage when a muslim breaks a law? I'm generally tired of people who express a desire for more outrage.

My posts thus far in the thread have just been about the DA and the charges being pursued, but there are a few issues. 1) That the cops opened fire 2) That they missed and hit bystanders 3) That the DA is charging the guy for negligent failure to be hit when shot at. I've posted a couple times in the past about LEOs opening fire too readily (to much contempt), and I want to point out one of the key differences here which makes me more okay with the idea in this case. In the case of the guy who was looking for something in his back seat and the kid with the replica rifle, the police shot the person in the process of making contact with them. That is to say, if you approach someone from behind and start yelling things at someone (I don't care if it's "Hey you!" or "Police, don't move!"), there's a decent probability they will get up/turn/make some form of motion to make eye contact with you to figure out what the hell is going on. The odds only go up if they are not an actor playing a suspect in a cop drama. If you put yourself in a position where you feel you have no choice but to shoot the person for making a predictable motion like this in response to you yelling at them, then they never really had a chance, and whatever protocol you were following needs to be reviewed. As you and others have qualified I wasn't there for this incident so I can't say for sure, but it sounds like here the police had established contact with the person and it was some reasonable amount of time after the contact was made that he went for his pocket and they shot at him. So while I still may not like it, I'm less disgusted by it.

Your false equivalency is . . . false. If I pay you to mow my lawn, do I have the right to prevent you from buying a gun with the money? Irrelevant. More along the lines that even though you are mandated to supply me with guns, your beliefs are that you won't provide the bullets, rather if I want bullets I can go get them on my own. I have an idea... because we are having trouble understanding each other in a discussion regarding medical insurance and contraceptives, we can draw parallels in the less controversial gun ownership discussion to help find a common ground. /eta: alternative response... I think it's more akin to him telling you to buy your own clips.

Yeah... Seriously, unless there is a very strong wind shear, right at or before opening (8 sec ~ 1500ft) there will be zero horizontal component to the relative wind (unless induced by the jumper through tracking or similar). Indeed if you cross through a severe gradient / wind shear line that's, say, 90 degrees off heading from the direction you are facing right when you deploy then it would be similar to making a base jump with a steady cross wind. Assuming your canopy is stable in yaw, it will turn into the crosswind. It's similar if you're on final and your canopy is in full flight and there is a cross-wind gust, your canopy will yaw a bit into the gust. That's all just to say, "Yes, qualitatively that can happen." Quantitatively, on the other hand... When you're making a base jump with very little airspeed, the effect of a crosswind on heading performance can be dramatic. When your skydiving canopy is in full flight you have a fair amount of airspeed, so even strong gusts aren't likely to turn your canopy more than a small amount. During deployment at terminal you'd have to have one hell of a wind gradient to swamp out the other dominant factors of heading performance like differential loading you were putting on the sides of the canopy by not being perfectly level.

I was unaware that people were making such a big deal out of this particular quote. From the context of his speech it's pretty clear he's discussing international actions in the interests of national security. When he says the shift of this needs to be away from the military and to a civilian "force" that can mean a) Department of State b) CIA c) The Peace Corps, the three civilian "forces" that conduct international actions in the interests of national security. This interpretation is, in my humble opinion, corroborated by his actions since he was elected.

Your position seems to come from a premise that getting employer HC is some kind of right. Its not HC as part of a employer compesation plan came about because of Jimmy Carters wage freeze blunder Now here we are Any employer should be allowed to offer what ever they wish An employee can take it or leave it I'm familiar (somewhat, not an expert) for the reasons why healthcare plans started showing up in employee compensation packages, and that it was not always the case. I assure you I lament the current situation as much as you but, as you say, now here we are. If employer provided healthcare were never a thing, and employers just paid their employees more and left the purchase of healthcare coverage up to them then we wouldn't even be having this conversation. That's why it appears to me that it's the employers taking advantage of this stupid setup as an opportunity to proselytize.

So hypothetical... we let the actuaries at the insurance company price out the cost of a plan that includes all the mandated coverages, and then they price out a plan that excludes coverages that the employer objects to. The employer pays the insurance company the latter, and then the employee uses money from their wages (which is also provided to them by their employer) to pay the difference* to the insurance company, and then the employee gets the full coverage. If this scratches the itch, then I think it would be workable. I would suggest, however, that if it does scratch the itch then the employers religion has melted their fucking brain. *NB: depending on what is excluded (e.g. preventative services) this difference could theoretically be negative.

From the article So he wasn't otherwise committing a felony, which makes charging him with felonies by association rather bizarre to me. I guess there's the "felony murder" rule and this is the "misdemeanor assault" rule. Really this is just a bullshit transference of responsibility. Hell, with this and the felony murder cases where one of the criminals is killed as precedents, police could come up to you for loitering, beat the shit out of you and then charge you with your own assault as a felony. "But for the defendants loitering, the crime of assault would never have occurred!"

My point is that nobody is walking into their boss's office and demanding birth control and abortions. They are going to their doctor for those things. The doctor is then billing the patient and the insurance company to pay for it in whatever ratio the plan states. (The ACA is saying contraceptives belong in the "preventative" bucket in health plans, making them covered with no co-pay, but this discussion is larger than that as I think the employers are saying they want the plans to offer no coverage for these things.) So what's happening is that employers are demanding that insurance companies offer them plans for their employees that exclude certain things, and for the government to waive/lift any regulations that would prevent such a plan from being offered. They want a tailored form of compensation that they can provide their employees that allows them, in their view, to religiously firewall themselves from employee behavior they deem immoral. So what I'll ask again is, what is the difference between the dollars given to the employee and the dollars given to the insurance company to cover their employees' health care? If they're worried about providing heath insurance that covers immoral things, how can they provide their employees money? I don't know if you know this, but money covers the purchase of anything.

There are just some claims by the nutty right that don't even deserve to be looked into. This being a perfect example: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/12/03/photo-shopped-picture-obama-sasha/ And yet... the article you linked to dives into a detailed photoshop critique between the original and the doctored image. No one ever said debunking stupid crap like this was glamorous, but if they're going to make it the charter of their webpage then the pages they post should be as thorough as possible. Snopes posting a page about something where they just dismiss the claim out of hand doesn't really help anybody.

I have health insurance. I went to the er recently. I was prescribed antibiotics and pain killers. I paid for them out of pocket. Everyone else can do the same. OR - they are or can be covered by medicaid. Medically necessary BC Pills can be covered by the patient. Just like I covered my 80 dollars worth of prescriptions. I didn't ask anyone to pitch in for mine. I don't want anyone to. I don't steal from people. The argument that all coverage of prescription medication by heath insurance plans is stealing from people is orthogonal to the argument that employers have a right to demand plans free of coverage for particular things they deem immoral under the pretense that it's because they are not medically necessary.

The point is that there are indications for the prescription of oral contraceptive drugs besides, "desire for child-free sex." The options if you want to prevent covering birth control if you disagree with doing so for whatever reason are to a) don't cover the meds outright and tell people who would use the drug to control abnormal menstrual issues, "too bad, so sad." or b) get the insurance companies more intimately involved between doctor and patient so they can be sure of the reason for the prescription and deny accordingly. As an aside, I'm assuming people who are against covering prescribed birth control are against coverage for any form of prescribed pain medication (including anesthetic drugs administered during a procedure.) on the grounds that they're optional.

Snopes is in the tank for Obama, and it's doubtful that the original leftwing hippies actually own it anymore. They may work there, but that's all. Who pays them to protect Barack Hussein Obama is the big question? That would make for a pretty funny Snopes article: "Claim: Snopes receives funding to suppress negative information regarding President Obama." I like Snopes and FactCheck and the like, I think in general they compile a lot of good information, but like any resource you need to read what they present and make up your own mind. Particularly with FactCheck there have been situations where I didn't disagree with any information presented, but their overall rating/conclusion seemed way out of line. In the case of this article I think Snopes is right, but I think this is one of the lazier offerings they've dished up. They could potentially submit a FOIA request to get some info about turnover in the ranks and use that to more concretely counter this claim, but instead the page really just says, "Nah, we highly doubt it. False." Again, I think Snopes is right, but presenting that page as though it's some kind of definitive proof isn't correct.

If the weapon was imaginary and you forgot what it was, can you be charged with destruction of evidence?

But anyway, back to the article... I blame equal parts stand your ground laws and The Hunger Games. Not to go completely magazine-vs-clip on this guy, but even if the bow and arrow had consisted of more than the air between Johnny's hands, it still would not have been a firearm.

Let's be clear on this though, just because something dates back to biblical times doesn't make it right. Slavery for instance. Are you going to equate tattle tale kids with slavery? Seems a little harsh. Wow, you two are really no good at having a conversation with each other.

On the bright side, at least the school police consultant didn't come into the classroom and shoot two other students and then charge Johnny with felony assault.