likearock

Man. I've only been to Deland once and that was seven years ago. My reserve needed a repack but for some reason all the riggers were busy for the next few days. They told me at manifest that there was this guy named "Crash" who might be able to do the job. So I called him and he agreed to do it. When I dropped my rig off though I noticed he was sneezing and not at all well. "Yeah, I've got the flu," he said, "Don't worry though, I can still do the work." So he did it and I jumped the next day. Fly free, Crash.

To wit: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” said Judge Sotomayor. Now, try transposing "wise Latina woman" and "white male", put it in the mouth of someone guilty of the latter and then imagine 'human rights' advocates suffering a collective case of the vapors. (You are following the logic here, aren't you?) Oh yeah. What with all those lynch mobs of Latina women coming to string up white men, we'd better take care! Point is both sides torture logic to make bogus claims of racism. When you only see the one side but not the other your bias is showing. Your first paragraph is adolescent drivel. No, it's called sarcasm and it points out how ridiculous the charge against Sotomayor was in the first place. But if you'd rather address it by using insults that just shows how poor your argument was in the first place. That's fine then. Up to right now, you were pretty much singling out the left alone for playing the race card. Glad we agree.

To wit: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” said Judge Sotomayor. Now, try transposing "wise Latina woman" and "white male", put it in the mouth of someone guilty of the latter and then imagine 'human rights' advocates suffering a collective case of the vapors. (You are following the logic here, aren't you?) Oh yeah. What with all those lynch mobs of Latina women coming to string up white men, we'd better take care! Point is both sides torture logic to make bogus claims of racism. When you only see the one side but not the other your bias is showing.

If you armed that bouncer with an Uzi, night vision, and body armor, it might be tough to see the distinction.

That worked pretty well in the American Revolution, and many right-wing fundamentalists are quick to point it out. But I would argue, with modern warfare technology, it could not happen today. It barely happened then, and only because we had a lot of help from the French. I don't know, the Vietnamese did a pretty good job against a powerful minority armed with modern warfare technology.

First of all, I haven't seen any proposals for raising taxes attached to any of the healthcare bills. Besides which: Right, you do that. Just how easy do you think it would be to find a private insurer who will take you on immediately and pay for something your former insurer refused? Perhaps you haven't heard about their policy regarding pre-existing conditions?

What is the basis of your assumption: "You really can't opt out of it"? If you are able to switch from a private health plan, you should just as well be able to switch from a government health plan.

I doubt it'll have any impact. I agree, it probably won't have much. However, it will free up some costly prison space. The U.S. could learn from that example.

The long form is as official as it gets apparently. Interestingly enough, when you zoom in the document's title is still "Certificate of Live Birth", not "Birth Certificate". C'mon, we can't let this thread die!

The Right does that all the time with "socialism", Jim. You're doing apples and oranges. Socialism, like religion, is a belief system based on faith rather than impirical evidence, and thus deserving of critical anaysis. (As is capitalism, despite it having benefited more people than any other 'ism' in history.) Racism, on the other hand, is a pathology, and too often employed by the likes of Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to silence criticism. And how is that different exactly from members of the right making ridiculous charges of racism against Sotomayor?

QFT

Actually, he never says that private insurance will end over time, he says that employer coverage of health insurance will end over time. In fact, some Republicans are also offering a plan based on tax incentives that would also tend to undermine employer-based insurance. And when it came up for debate, the Democratic chair of the finance committee, Max Baucus rejected that plan for just that reason:

And yet, they're the ones who will most benefit from HR 3200. Curious, isn't it? Maybe they won't benefit so much if there's a public option. They might actually have to rein in those CEO bonuses to remain competitive.

Ohhhhhhh, tweak a nerve? What it tells me is the tweaked nerve is on your side of the fence. The fact you can't argue against the substance of what Pelosi is saying but have to resort to character attacks instead says you're worried about what she has to say. And well you should be - the unpopularity of health insurance companies is pretty much bi-partisan these days as can be seen, for example, here.

That's bullshit. Gates was abusive, disrespectful, and completely out of line. If it had been a white college professor in the same situation screaming like a madman at a black cop, no one would have any problem with the black cop making an arrest. When a person gets that abusive at a police officer there's no excuse for it. And Crowley did the proper thing, he warned him first he was being disorderly but when Gates refused to let it go, he was arrested. Completely justified. As I made clear in my first post up-thread, my whole agenda in this thread has been not to analyze "excuse vs. fault", but to clinically comprehend Gates's state of mind and emotion by trying to understand what it might be like to walk a few steps in his shoes. I think Powell was essentially trying to do the same thing. Powell did more than that. He definitely strayed into the area of "fault" when he said "I think in this case the situation was made much more difficult on the part of the Cambridge Police Department". I'm sorry but the police did nothing wrong under those circumstances. Crowley made a real effort to leave but Gates insisted on following him and getting in his face. It almost sounds like Gates deliberately wanted to provoke the arrest to justify his own false sense of having been profiled. It's interesting that with all this talk about racial profiling, no one seems to acknowledge the obvious fact that Gates is the one who did exactly that. Think about it. What is racial profiling if not assuming a certain behavior from someone solely based on their race. Isn't that exactly what Gates did to Crowley by assuming the worst of him? If Mr. Obama is looking for the lesson in this "teachable moment", I'd say that's a pretty good one. You don't get beyond race as a society by just calling out the racism on one side of the fence.

That's bullshit. Gates was abusive, disrespectful, and completely out of line. If it had been a white college professor in the same situation screaming like a madman at a black cop, no one would have any problem with the black cop making an arrest. When a person gets that abusive at a police officer there's no excuse for it. And Crowley did the proper thing, he warned him first he was being disorderly but when Gates refused to let it go, he was arrested. Completely justified.

There's no way of really knowing that without meeting the guy. Agreed. The man was confronted inside his own home, and then he plain lost his temper. Who has never lost his temper? Who has never acted like an asshole when doing so? When Christ lost his temper at the moneylenders in the temple, some of them probably said "Gee, what an asshole." And that was Christ, mind you. Losing your temper is one thing. Making up a charge of racism and trashing someone as a racist in order to cover your ass is quite something else. Find us something in the the New Testament that shows Christ doing that. As is abundantly clear now, especially after hearing those 911 tapes, race was not an issue in this incident except in Gates' mind.

CNN overview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np0hMW4yENQ Police report: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0723092gates1.html Interview with other arresting officer who is black: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYR4HQGnMgQ My take: First, while racial profiling is definitely a real problem in the country, this incident was just as definitely not an example of it. The police were responding to a report from a neighbor - they would have acted identically had the people involved been white. It sounds like from the very beginning of the encounter, Gates was treating it as a racist act when the police were just doing their job. Gates was abusive, even bringing Crowley's mother into the mix. Furthermore, he wasn't even cooperative with the simple request to establish his claim of residency - he only provided a Harvard ID with no address when a driver's license would have settled the matter right away. So why was he arrested? In order for police to function effectively, they must be afforded a modicum of respect from the public, especially when they are just doing their job. If they happen to be confronted with someone who is as abusive and disrespectful as Gates was, it's perfectly proper to arrest him for disorderly conduct.

I have proof!

In reality, it's actually a little of both. But you also demand the opportunity to buy a gun. If guns were not available or for some reason they were incredibly expensive, that would make a mockery of the right, wouldn't it? Same goes with health care. As you say, you have a right to contract for it, but it must be available and affordable.

No. There are lots of things I have no right to do, even if my life (or my child's life) is in the balance. If you offered to pay for the procedure if I killed someone else's child, would it be right for me to do that? What if I had the opportunity to embezzle the money to pay for the procedure? Would that be justified because my need was so dire? What if the only way to save my child's life was to enslave another human being and force them to work my fields, planting cotton, that I could sell to pay for the procedure? Would that make it ok for me to enslave someone? You realize of course, your argument is the straw man taken to the nth degree. No one is asking you to kill or embezzle to save your child. We are discussing whether access to affordable health care should be considered a right. Again, there is no advocacy for any particular policy to be implemented. Suppose you were discussing the right to own a gun. Would it be legitimate for someone who is anti-gun rights to say you might have to kill or enslave someone to secure that right - therefore, it shouldn't be considered a right? Of course not. The same goes with your "saving a thousand people from starvation". It's a false choice. The choice was never between feeding a thousand people and saving a life. It's a simple profit calculation made by an insurance company. I guarantee if they deny your claim, they're not going to be sending the money they saved to feed starving children.

Is it right that someone should starve, just because they can't pay for food? Why not address simple (and inexpensive) hunger first, before moving up to $200,000 medical procedures? How many starving children could you have fed for that $200,000? How greedy are you to take the food out of their mouths for your bone marrow transplant? Don't the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? What if you were in the position of needing an expensive procedure to save your life and your health care provider said "Sorry, not covered." Would you be making the same argument? Nope. I'd be taking out a line of credit on my home or my future earnings. Or, if I thought that wasn't worth the expense that I'd saddle my children with (if I was older, for example), I'd be having some good parties and visiting all my friends and family. My bad, I should have made the assumption clear: the procedure and followup care you need are too expensive, even if you mortgaged your house and took out a dozen loans. There's just no way you could afford it. If you think it couldn't happen to you, you haven't been keeping track of how fast the price of health care has been skyrocketing. Let's make it even more personal. It's not your life that's in danger but the life of your son or daughter. The only thing that stands between your child's life and death is the decision of some health insurance bureaucrat. Under those circumstances ask yourself, should there be a right to affordable health care or not? BTW, in case it's not clear, I'm not arguing for any particular plan. The sole question I am addressing is whether access to affordable health care should or should not be a right. Sorry I thought that was the sarcastic part, complete with Star Trek reference. I'd they're both important, neither more important than the other. Life is important. But while I believe it's generally recognized that human beings have a right not to starve, they also have a right to affordable health care.

Is it right that someone should starve, just because they can't pay for food? Why not address simple (and inexpensive) hunger first, before moving up to $200,000 medical procedures? How many starving children could you have fed for that $200,000? How greedy are you to take the food out of their mouths for your bone marrow transplant? Don't the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? What if you were in the position of needing an expensive procedure to save your life and your health care provider said "Sorry, not covered." Would you be making the same argument?

What if someone doesn't have enough food, and dies of hunger? Or is homeless, and dies of exposure? It's not equivalent. There are low-cost options to food and housing but if someone needs a bone marrow transplant to live and there are no genetically identical donors, it could cost up to $200,000 (source). Is it right that someone should die simply because he can't (or his insurance company won't) pay?

Where do you think your right to free health care, paid for by someone else, comes from? Some would point to the DOI: If someone does not have enough money to treat a terminal illness and dies because of it, what happened to their right to life as described above? Granted, it's not the Constitution but it is a pretty strong indication that the founding fathers did consider it a right.