TomAiello

Interesting article on CNN.com today. I know a lot of doctors. Most of them would prefer to leave medicine. What if they did? Now, there's a healthcare crisis. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Heber J. Grant, President of the Mormon Church until 1945, practiced polygamy. How is that the "early 1800's" ? The point I'm trying to make here is not that polygamy is bad--I honestly don't care about that. The point I'm trying to make is that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. The LDS church castigating others about marriage is clear hypocrisy. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Do you think marriage should be defined as a relationship between one man and one woman? Or can it also be between one man and lots of women? Or can it be between one man, one woman, another man, and all of his other wives (and some of their husbands), too? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

If Mormons are Christians, then Christians are Jewish. They believe that there is a newer holy book that overrides the previous one (the Bible for Christians, the Book of Mormon and the Doctrines and Covenants for Mormons). They believe that there were additional divine events that are not recognized by the older religion (Jesus as son of god for Christians, Jesus coming to America and Joseph Smith as a divine prophet for Mormons). They add significantly divergent dogma to the older tradition (the whole body and blood thing for Christians, the whole celestial marriage thing for Mormons, just as two examples). -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Would the merchant vessels be allowed to dock in port (to offload their actual cargo) while armed like that? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Source: http://www.talkaboutcuringautism.org/health-insurance/health_ins_reimbursement_tips.htm So yes, insurance companies spend a great deal of time and money rejecting claims. Wow, dude. Way to take someone's overgeneralization (which they admitted was an estimate, without giving any indication of how it was estimated or by who) about a very specific sub-sector of patients (children with autism) and try to make it look like that was somehow a fact about the entire system. In fact, I can say that it is absolutely true that 100% of the insurance claims I've ever had have been paid in a timely fashion. That must mean that 100% of all claims are paid immediately, right? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Where is that? If an insurance claim is denied the doctor makes zero...zilch...nada...zip...that's nothing. Most of the doctors in the US have a payment rate hovering around 50% (it depends greatly on the specialty, obviously, with ER visits getting paid a much lower percentage of the time and some things like laser eye surgery approaching 100% reimbursement). Honestly, it sounds to me like you made up some weird caricature of the US healthcare system so that you could attack it on the grounds you chose. The US healthcare system has lots of problems. I do not believe that a government sponsored healthcare program is the solution--rather, I think that less government regulation (healthcare is just about the most regulated portion of our economy) would benefit us all. If you have time, and care to read something with paragraphs, that isn't put together in a slick package by a film producer who wants to tell everyone else how to solve all the world's problems, grab a copy of The Cure, which does a good job of explaining where the problems in our health system came from (primarily, from wage restrictions during the second world war), and recommends some approaches to fixing parts of it. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Does anyone have the statistics for Switzerland handy? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

A lot of innocent people could get blamed for something they had nothing to do with, if you stereotype them as those responsible as "christians." Look at the nastiness that ensues when we stereotype responsible parties as "muslims", for example. I'm always in favor of peeling back some of the labels to see what's really under there. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I think that the LDS church is not even remotely "christian" in the commonly understood sense of the word. Are you familiar with their teachings? Pinning this on "christians" is not very fair, since the primary proponents (the LDS church) aren't actually a christian denomination. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Guys, you realise that a lot of you (helped by JohnRich's editing) are misreading the story, right? Here's a paragraph that he snipped; You're saying that although they discovered that the guy who told them wasn't actually who he said he was, they're pretty sure it's still true? Or is it that they don't know who told them, but they're pretty sure it's still true? Either way, sounds like the veracity of the original claim ought to be in question. If you can't even identify the source of it, how can you possibly say that you still believe it? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Sure, but what's going on here is more important. The President of the US is going to have more impact on things going on here (in the US) than overseas. Imagine how much more people would hate GWB if he was President of Europe, too. Of course it's important. But, as I said, I place a higher priority on the things that will directly effect me, most of which are domestic. For example, the National Park Service reports to the president, so the right president could just wave his hand and allow BASE jumping in Yosemite. Don't take this to mean that I think Bush is great. I haven't been particularly impressed by him, particularly his foreign policy. But from my standpoint, I think Obama will be worse. Bush wasn't a particularly impressive president, but then again I don't think he was the worst we've had. And I know that I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be the guy sitting in that seat during 9/11, or Hurricane Katrina, or the current financial crisis. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

As I said, I'm not personally very concerned with it--just as I'm not too concerned about those things on the other side of the aisle. If you want to start digging up (or, in this case, inventing) gaffes and missteps, you're going to find plenty for anyone. Which is more worrisome, a governor who someone (lied and) said couldn't identify Africa as a continent, or a con law professor who can't identify the century of the 15th amendment's ratification? It seems to me that if you're going to nitpick at either side, you ought to be fair and do it to both--and it seems to me that the nitpicking in this case is pretty unbalanced. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I generally vote based on policy, rather than personal story, just because of the nature of our government. I'd rather have an incompetent who I agree with than a highly efficient, organized leader who greatly advances a policy agenda I'm opposed to. In general, I don't care too much about a lot of those things. Mostly I want to know what people think about the issues I care about (Obama fails that test 99% of the time--Palin fails it about 75% of the time). On those terms, the only one of the four candidates in the last presidential election (McCain, Palin, Obama, Biden) who I could even get close to was McCain. As an aside, I'd be more impressed with Obama's resume if I thought he was doing a good job at those things. But a constitutional law professor who can't place the 15th amendment within 30 years? Sounds like a position based on politics and connections, rather than competence, to me. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

You mean the one where he was a community organizer, or the one where he was a law professor? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

You and I must be looking at different paper. How so? Representing Chicago (yes, that's intentional, no I don't think Chicago is a continent) in the US Senate makes you better/worse qualified than being governor of Alaska, day per day? One is an executive position, so that's probably better preparation. One is a federal position, so that's probably better preparation. On balance, I think it's pretty much a wash. Honestly, I'm more interested in the quality of the candidates than their qualifications, but if you want to focus on something that has less importance than say, their policies, then yes, I'd say Palin is as "qualified" as Obama. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

What do you mean by "good"? Was she qualified to be Vice President? On paper, I'd say she was just as qualified a the guy we elected to be President, so yes. Was she a good "tactical" choice for McCain in the election? Again, I'd say yes. She energized the part of the Republican alliance that McCain doesn't connect well with (moral majority religious types), and she had youth, energy and charisma (and good looks) to balance Obama. Do I agree with her politics? No, but if that was the standard by which I judged a candidates qualifications, most of the elected officials in this country would be "bad candidates." In fact, I have trouble telling whether it's Sarah Palin or Barack Obama who is further from my own views, although I think I give the edge to Obama in that regard. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

When you're out on the street sometime, approach a total stranger and ask him: "Hey, buddy, got a spare twenty five hundred bucks? We need to bail out wall street." -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

The whole purpose of the Kalashnikov was to arm the peasants. It's cheap, easy to manufacture, and requires very little skill to put a lot of lead in the air. It's not intended to give the user any kind of accuracy. The same thing is actually true of the M-16. Modern assault rifles trace their lineage back to the sturmgeweher. The whole point is just to put as much lead in the air as possible--not to actually hit anything. After WWII the US DOD did a study, in typical singleminded military fashion, to determine what factors decided the outcome of a battle. The study showed, in typical statisticians fashion, that (big surprise here) the side that put the most rounds downrange had won virtually every major engagement in the war. Their conclusion, then was that military weapons ought to be engineered to put as many rounds downrange as quickly as possible. Using small (light) bullets, so that soldiers could carry more ammo, and fully automatic fire, to put the ammo downrange in a hurry, was their solution. Accuracy and stopping power never factored into their decision. Honestly, given what they were looking at, large scale engagements between largely conscripted, poorly trained adversaries, often (usually, on the Western European front) at ranges under 100 meters, that makes quite a lot of sense. When you're talking about either individuals with real training, or people who you individually care about not getting killed, then a hunting rifle starts making a lot more sense than an assault rifle. Charging in with a blazing full auto looks good on TV, but isn't actually a good way to survive to fight another day. How did Aggie Dave put it in this thread? It's almost as bad as being attacked by a Ninja? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

And then, when we can't pay off our debts, we should complain that it's not fair, and ask the UN to bail us out, because we are too big to be allowed to fail. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I think that ideologically driven foreign policy (pretty much all of US foreign policy since the second world war) is (a) expensive, and (b) doomed to failure. I believe we need to take a serious step back to reality, and engage in some Realpolitik (for those who are unaware of the term, try googling Klemens von Metternich). We should identify our goals realistically (making the entire world one happy democratic family is not realistic) and take the most expedient steps to meet them. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

The primary thing that the government could do to strengthen the currency is to stop spending money it doesn't have. Unfortunately, this is politically inexpedient, so everyone pretends that we can somehow make the problem (too much debt) go away by spending money we don't have and calling it "stimulus" or "bail out" or "foreign policy" depending on who the folks wanting the loans are. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Calling the dollar "strong" is a little misleading. The reason the dollar is back up relative to other currencies is that the other currencies are now "weak" as well. The US fundamentals haven't improved--it's that everyone else is declining now, too. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

No, of course not. God only hates the Dems. Well, them and the foreigners. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Actually, when posts are removed from the forums, they go into a holding forum called the Recycle Bin, so that (a) they could be cut and pasted back in, and (b) the site administrators can check what content was removed in the event of complaint about it. Posts aren't actually deleted completely. Understand that cutting and pasting back in removed replies is time consuming, and sometimes moderators just don't have time to do it. The best way to make sure that your reply is not removed is to attach it to the first post in a thread, rather than attaching it to a post that might be removed. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com