ikol

This is me updating this thread.

Actually I think we should go back to the time when there was no health insurance. (There was a time!!) That way ikol can trade his services for whatever meger funds or other types of barter he can get for treating his patients. In those days doctors weren't so rich. They were esteemed, but not wealthy. Sometimes they didn't get paid at all or people died because they didn't have money. Yea, that was the good old days.

 

I find it humorous that the very folks who make out like bandits under this system are the first to criticize it. Tom Lehrer had a great line about treating diseases of the rich.

 

LouieB

I think just going back to a system where the recipient of a service pays something, regardless of how little, would be a good start.

I would prefer to not die regardless of whether I have health insurance.

this

Not this.

I know I'm not getting Social Security or Medicare and am perfectly fine with it. I just wish the government would make it official instead of acting like everything can continue as it is. You can raise taxes on the rich all you want, and it's not going to make a dent in that problem.

I predict I will not care about Wilco's Presidential endorsement.

I bet Wilco will throw their support behind Michelle Bachmann.

I bet most Arkansas Democrats are opposed to interracial marriage.

I mostly use the freedom press, but I also have one of these:

So basically, we could get rid of all those tax breaks, only barely be able to save those little programs, and still have the impending Social Security/Medicare doom to deal with?

You didn't have to post the whole book, Sparky.

Well, there has to be some middle ground between firing every public school teacher and making it virtually impossible to fire any of them.

(Oh yea..slaverly...that was all about states rights too...I guess some states would want that back also if they could.)

Yeah, but that was like 20% of the teachers I had. The coach that "taught" my sophomore biology class was overpaid if he was making minimum wage.

I don't think my career is unionized, so I guess I'll just have to be competent to stay hired.

So why don't all employees have the right to tenure?

The big problem here is that the term "climate change" could mean almost anything. The climate has never been static. So when someone refers to "climate change" do they mean natural cycles, abnormal change, man-made change, or Al Gore recently ate at Chipotle? It's such a vague term to be used to refer to a specific scientific theory, and one that relies largely on computer models that have not been validated so far.

Which proponents are these?

I could name names, but they'd all be made up. Except Al Gore. It seems like he attributes every foul wind and dead polar bear to global warming.

Point being, we are behaving out of character: machines have only existed for 200 out of millions of years, and the earth wasn't really intended for them otherwise engines would have grown on trees.

If the earth wasn't intended to have machines, that was pretty dumb of it to evolve us.

It doesn't help that proponents of global warming have pointed to nearly every change in the weather as evidence of global warming.

Atheists attempt to approach everything scientifically.

That must make their day-to-day life very tedious.

They didn't air Monsters of Folk here last week, and for a lot of the episodes last year, they only aired 30 minutes of it. Luckily, they put the full episodes online.

Fine, I'll post only the part that contradicts your conclusion:

 

The MSM would have been blatantly irresponsible not to make the connection - if only to note the irony and tragedy, if not to assert an empirical, causal link.

That was actually in your original quote, and my conclusion is not affected by bolding and enlargment. The tragedy was not any political statements made by talking heads unaware of what would later happen, but the fact that several people were senselessly killed or injured by a mentally ill guy who fell through the cracks. I didn't realize the media's responsibility was to point out irony. Maybe they could stick to reporting facts, and if they ever master that, they can move to higher forms of analysis. And it wasn't just that those kind of things were brought up, but also that they became the main focus in assigning blame. When people should be coming together to support the victims and their families, we instead get all this finger pointing from both sides.

That’s not what he’s saying at all. Here’s the link to the article in its entirety – should you read it, I think you’ll come to a different conclusion.

 

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/01/the-politicized-mind-of-gabrielle-giffords.html

I did, and my conclusion is pretty much the same.

Who's this Andrew Sullivan character and why does he have so many thoughts?

He has cranial diarrhea caused by irritable brain syndrome.

Andrew Sullivan makes a good point with respect to the media's initial reaction:

 

But how could they not when Giffords herself had noted the map at the time and worried about what it might portend? The MSM would have been blatantly irresponsible not to make the connection - if only to note the irony and tragedy, if not to assert an empirical, causal link. David is right to call out those who flatly and crudely drew a direct link without any substantive information. But to raise the question and explore it? How could we not?

So it was actually responsible to immediately link the shooting to political rhetoric, because Skygod forbid the media actually wait until they have any solid information to report? They've gotta fill the airwaves with speculation and play the blame game immediately. And the whole "I'm just asking questions" while making unfounded accusations sounds eerily similar to how Glenn Beck excuses his crazier rhetoric.

...and that pretty much proves the point. There's evidently one obscure left-wing nutcase out there who says a lot of stupid shit, plus a few random quotes from less obscure nutcases (you obviously liked the Montel Williams quote so much that you included it twice).

 

The rhetoric from the right is featured prominently on mainstream outlets (Fox News, etc.). One does not need to search very deeply to find it.

 

There are morons with violent fantasies on both sides, but the right has let many more of them ascend onto platforms that give them nationwide exposure.

Are you unaware of some the things Olbermann has said or do you just think that depicting Rush Limbaugh getting shot or suggesting the President kick Mitch McConnell's ass are not violent rhetoric? I think everyone here agrees that hateful rhetoric needs to stop on both sides, but that will never happen if people like Olbermann are taken seriously by the left. And again, this probably has nothing to do with the Arizona shooting (despite the media almost immediately and irresponsibly making the connection before they knew anything about the shooter). If this guy is psychotic, society likely has little to no influence on him. It is impossible to talk schizophrenics out of their delusions.