Thursday February 16, 2012

TheQuestion's past comments

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    TheQuestion

    Some others wouldn't and get violent.

    And they'd go to jail. If he got a protest permit he might actually have police protection there with him. I've had atheist (and actually a few Baptist) groups outside my church on and off for years depicting all manner of images that would be considered sacrilege within my religion and out of the thousand members of my church and the thousands more in nearby Catholic churches there hasn't been a single violent exchange. So I'd say the liklihood of an outburst would be pretty low. And if there was one then the perpetrators would be taken to court, sued for all they're worth, and condemned by other Christians faster than you can say bad publicity.

    Posted in: Afghans riot as anti-foreign resentment grows over Quran burning in Florida

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    TheQuestion

    try to exercise your freedom of expression, by walking in a SM leather suit like and holding a panel claiming that Jesus is gay next to Terry Jones'a church.

    That just means you're a jerk, but a jerk that will be protected by the police. Because that's what free society means, you get to be a jerk as long as you don't hurt anybody, simplistic but thats what it boils down to. So go ahead, call the focus of my religion a homosexual, that just means you won't be getting my Christmas card...and it was going to be really awesome this year to.

    Posted in: Afghans riot as anti-foreign resentment grows over Quran burning in Florida

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    TheQuestion

    This is why airstrikes are so cowardly. You cannot properly verify who you are killing, you just make sure you are absolutely safe.

    You can't stop bullets or artillery strikes either. Not being safe is kinda the point of dropping high yeild explosives.

    And you keep pulling that coward card, it doesn't work, it will never work. The goal of any fighting force is to develop weapons that increase the probability of enemy death while reducing the risk to the user. Sending in troops for your ideal of fighting would be ineffective and grossly irresponcible.

    But the fact is those pilots dropped bombs on a convoy with an ambulance in it for God's sake.

    Ever hear of a battle wagon? Gaddafi has been sending his men out in armored civilian busses to try and sneak through the air screen. I certainly wouldn't put it past him to tack some armored plates onto an ambulance and use it as an improvised troop carrier.

    You seem to be more outraged at this than the rebels. They're probably just happy that Gaddafi can't shoot at them with old Mirage and MiG fighters.

    Posted in: Libyan rebels say NATO airstrike killed 13 of their own

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    TheQuestion

    President Hamid Karzai expressed regret for the 20 protest deaths, but he also further stoked possible anti-foreign sentiment by again demanding that the United States and United Nations bring to justice the pastor of the Dove Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, where the Quran was burned March 20.

    So instead of addressing your own failing and corrupt government, the protests, or anything remotly productive you focus your people's anger at some hillbilly that burned a book a few thousand miles away that probably can't find your country on a map. True to form the Afghan's take it hook line and sinker and do what they always do when they're mad at America...kill each other and/or the poorly equipped U.N peacekeepers because honestly, they're crazy but not crazy enough to take on a U.S base that would actually do something about it.

    The Europeans have been backing off of colonialism while the U.S. is expanding it after re-branding the product.

    Colonialism implies that the colony building nation has something to gain from the territory being colonized like mineral wealth, a cheap local production base, or at the very least the ability to send it's excess population over to reduce overcrowding. The U.S is gaining none of these possible benefits. The term is inapplicable to both Afghanistan and Iraq as no gain has been garnered (you can't even use that whole blood for oil argument as it all goes through OPEC anyway).

    Posted in: Afghans riot as anti-foreign resentment grows over Quran burning in Florida

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    TheQuestion

    This is why companies such as GE have expanded aggressively into wind.

    That has more to do with the massive production subsidies that the government pays turbine makers to build them. If you subsidized wind turbines at the same rate as other sources such as coal, natural gas, or even nuclear energy GE would drop production of them in a heartbeat.

    Posted in: Obama sets ambitious goal to reduce U.S. oil imports

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    TheQuestion

    they had more honor than those who fly predator drones by remote control or those who drop bombs from aircraft knowing no one can touch them.

    Targeted strikes on weapons positions and insurgent targets after numerous authorizations with comparatively few civilian casualties without risking your own people to bats*** crazy insurgents with bombs strapped to their chests and no reguard for human life. That's not dishonorable, it's calculated.

    Additionally, the civilian casualties are most certainly not anywhere near 'on par' given that only a few thousand troops have been killed in nearly a decade of fighting while insurgents like these have killed tens of thousands of civilians, civilians that they purposfully targeted.

    Posted in: Gunmen kill 56 in grisly Iraq hostage siege

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    TheQuestion

    Air Force’s AC-130 gunship armed with cannons that shoot from the side doors, as well as helicopters and drones

    AC-130 in the air? I'm a pretty stubborn guy but with one of those in the air I'd put some serious thought into cutting my losses.

    Posted in: Air raids hit Gadhafi stronghold of Sirte

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    TheQuestion

    Better get this back up and running soon, otherwise other tobacco producing countries might start diverting their cigar crop to cigarettes. I don't care about cigarette smokers but I'll not have my Cohiba prices modified.

    Posted in: Japan Tobacco to halt domestic shipments March 30-April 10 due to quake

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    TheQuestion

    Respect the dead by celebrating life.

    Posted in: Do you think sporting, entertainment and cultural events scheduled for the next few weeks should be canceled out of respect for the victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami?

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    TheQuestion

    No such thing as a safe nuke plant.

    No energy source is safe. Even wind turbine workers require absurdly high wages to risk their necks going up for maintenance. Considering most reactors are fourty or more years old and there have been only 3 major issues since their inception I'd say thay are far safer than any other viable energy source currently available.

    Generation IV nuclear plants will be able to use waste more effectively than modern plants use actual fuel. Green sources of energy, in their current forms, are economically unsustainable with their production costs subsidized to a horrific degree. If it can't stand on it's own as an energy production system it should be considered experimental until such a time that it can. Solar and wind energy are currently too expensive to justify, geothermal and hydroelectric are better, and biomass is the best alternative but all of them require far more work before they should even be considered as viable alternatives.

    Posted in: Germany set to abandon nuclear power for good

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    TheQuestion

    Good to see a hero honored. Romero spoke out against murder and repression and would have done so no matter what form it had taken. God bless the Archbishop and those like him.

    instead of communism they got murder, corruption and repression

    In the vast majority of instances communism, murder, corruption, and repression are mutually inclusive.

    Posted in: Obama visits tomb of slain Salvadoran archbishop

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    TheQuestion

    it is U.S. policy that Gadhafi has to go

    If he had added 'down' to the end of that it could have been one of the greatest one-liners in U.S history. So very close.

    Posted in: Buoyed by strikes, Libyan rebels try to advance

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    TheQuestion

    I have solar panels and there's nothing "inefficient" about it.

    Most of the time I live in Michigan, in an area that gets decent sunlight a handful of days out of the year. Given the cost and power yeild the amount of time it would take to recoup my investment in a solar panel would be roughly twice the recommended useful life of the panel itself. So at the very least it's absurdly ineffective cost wise.

    The reason why governments won't push solar energy is because it's not "economic" which means free energy would put the power mafia out of business.

    Nothing is free. Solar panels certainly aren't and neither are commercial grade wind turbines, me and my brother rigged a couple up out of some spare parts but the best those can do is power the lights in his shed, more of a pet project that a viable alternative to oil or nuclear energy.

    It is pure propaganda because there's too much money that would be lost if energy was free.

    We continue to use oil and nuclear energy because they're the cheapest energy sources per volume available. Although a compelling case could be made for biomass.

    Anyway people are complaining about the safety of nuclear reactors, it's ridiculous. How many people died last year from a reactor explosion? None. How many people died in gas explosions? Dozens. Generation IV reactors will be out in the next few decades and will actually be able to use nuclear waste more effectively than todays reactors use nuclear fuel. That is a technology I can put my money behind.

    Posted in: Obama defends nuclear power amid Japan crisis

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    TheQuestion

    ENRON anyone?

    Always laugh when this people try to point out ENRON as a case for regulation. ENRON got approval for just about every crazy scheme they hatched from the SEC, not all of them mind you but enough to make a person lose any and all faith in the SEC. "ENRON: Smartest Guys In The Room" actually shows them playing those regulators like a fiddle.

    Private Police Station Answering Machine:

    Couple interesting facts on that. A: The Pinkertons proved that private security companies were perfectly capable of doing a dang good job at protecting their clients for the right price. B: Private security companies are contractually obligated to protect those that they serve even if they have to put themselves at risk. By contrast, police are not subject to this requirement (Warren vs. District of Columbia).

    The more probable result of your scenario would be the homeowner having a direct call button somewhere in their house that would pretty quickly lead to six or seven burly security thugs beating the invader to within an inch of his life with batons. And if service is considered unsatisfactory then the owner (or next of kin) can sue the private company for losses and/or wrongful death, by contrast you wouldn't be able to sue the police.

    Posted in: Wisconsin approves anti-union measure

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    TheQuestion

    Most of you are just jealous because a non - American is at the top.who says everyone believes in humanitarianism?

    Just noting the hypocrisy of others. Slim, Gates, and Buffett all made their fortunes but some people will gripe and demonize the two latter for not sharing their hard won money while giving Slim a free pass. I personally don't think they are obligated to donate a single red cent and the fact that they have given billions of their own money is a wonderful act of charity.

    Posted in: Mexican magnate widens leads as world's richest

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    TheQuestion

    Where are all of the activist who attack on the rich and say that they are unfairly rigging the system.

    That kind of treatment is reserved for American capitalists who made their money legitimately through investment. Demonstrating the ability to succeed in the U.S runs counter to the idea that the U.S is a virtual caste system where hope and social mobility are nonexistent, can't have that.

    Posted in: Mexican magnate widens leads as world's richest

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    TheQuestion

    A botched operation for a benign tumor for instance, or a disease caught while your body's autoimmune defenses are lowered by cancer treatments.

    You’re talking about obscenely infrequent cases among thousands of routine surgeries and nobody forces a client to have surgery, in fact many are advised against it.

    As to life expectancy, it's actually higher in non-US western countries. The US' life expectancy is below average, so much for that argument.

    That’s more due to lifestyle choice than healthcare at any rate. There's more crime in the U.S, more obesity, more smokers, and more risk taking behavior. You can't fix diabetes nor can you magically heal a gunshot wound. I've always felt that general life expectancy was a bit dated, of course I'd live longer if I didn't smoke, drink, eat garbage, sky dive, drive to bad neighborhoods for awesome food, and get lost in anti-American districts of foreign cities but where's the fun in that?

    proof of an highly inefficient system.

    Bogged down by federal requirements and the mountains of paperwork that goes into virtually every doctor visit. My doctor has 3 full time employees whose sole purpose is medical billing and filing for Medicare and Medicaid recipients.

    I've got a high deductible so I pay in cash, always have, so several of my doctors give me discounts. I only pay $80 to see my spine specialist, and $50 for my checkups. I went to the specialist three times last year, had a surgery, and got two checkups. I actually paid more into FICA last year than I paid to insurance and out of pocket combined.

    I also learn more about my conditions from my doctors because when you're paying up front they actually try to give you your monies worth as opposed to your average check, prescribe, boot assembly line that I was subjected to when I caught the flu in the UK. What the doctor there didn't think to check is that the medication he prescribed conflicted with my acromegaly meds and put me into shock. Fun times. Yeah it might be anecdotal but that's my experience

    If more people took responsibility for their own health instead of leaving it to insurance companies or the government to take care of every little thing the costs would plummet. I shop around for my doctors and because of that they give me a better rate than other people paying with insurance or on federal programs. Just look at Lasik eye surgery, it's not covered by insurance or by federal programs, yet the cost has gone down, quality has gone up, and recovery time is down to almost nothing.

    I really wish I could opt out of FICA and Medicaid payment so I could use the money for something useful, like receiving my treatments and contributing to my IRA that will actually help me when I'm old as opposed to SS which will either be flat broke or utterly useless by the time I'm old enough to collect.

    Posted in: Michael Moore rallies pro-union protesters in Wisconsin

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    TheQuestion

    Honestly, I think it's mainly that American companies mandate a lot of diagnostics, which reveal "cancers" in their first stage more often, but which may result in cancers that would have receded naturally or have never become symptomatic being needlessly treated by the different methods which damage the body at the same time.

    So early detection is a bad thing now? Also, if a tumor or other growth is benign there are a variety of options in how to deal with it that vary from patient to patient. Most of them have little to no impact in quality of life.

    For instance, since the US started screening a lot for prostate cancer, the incidence rate has jumped out significantly, but the mortality rate has actually remained more or less the same, which fits the hypothesis.

    Early detection leads to longer life expectancy. So I guess you'd rather live 2 years than 5-7 eh?

    Studies comparing Canadian and American cancer survival rates have also shown that the survival rate amongst Canadians is very similar, no matter how wealthy the people actually are, whereas richer Americans had quite significantly better survival rates than the poor.

    On average cancer survival rates among the even the poor in the U.S are pretty good but the survival rate of American wealthy blows the Canadians and Europeans out of the water.

    I might also point out that systems that take the burden off of patients are much more humane than those where the patients have to constantly worry about how their treatments will impact on the inheritance they may leave to their family or about the likelihood of bankruptcy.

    I'd rather have complete control over my healthcare needs and I'd rather have treatments as fast as money can buy. Between my acromegaly, arthritis, and other related conditions and my job related travel I need to be able to switch doctors and treatment often. Fortunately most of the procedures I needed were completed a while ago, procedures I have come to find out are exceedingly difficult to get in Europe.

    I don't see where you get that experimental treatments are illegal in Europe, I think you're talking with zero knowledge of the situation and with your prejudice.

    No, I know for a fact that the particular surgery that I had to remove the tumor from my pituitary gland would not be performed in the EU until I was in my 20's.

    So much for your idea that only the US innovates.

    I said advancement was infrequent. You can test all you want but getting it approved as a treatment is a legal Mt. Everest and many drugs don't even pass the first testing hurdles. Without approval the state won't pay for it and because the state won't pay for it there's little incentive to market it. So if you have a condition that only affects a few people in every million I guess you drew the short straw because there's no way those few people are going to have enough money to get it properly tested.

    Posted in: Michael Moore rallies pro-union protesters in Wisconsin

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    TheQuestion

    So Americans are more likely to survive 5 years after a cancer is found, but just as likely to die of cancer than citizens of other countries who in fact are on average older and thus should theoretically have higher cancer rates.

    So what? People with cancer should just get on with it and kick the bucket? I think most people would spend all their money for a few extra weeks and the U.S offers years.

    It should be mentioned also that since cancers tend to happen in older people, a disproportionate amount of Americans facing cancer are on Medicare, which is an universal, publicly-administered health insurance.

    And Medicare doesn't cover any cancer treatment program that doesn't involve nuking the body with chemotherapy. By contrast many insurance companies allow clients to use experimental treatments that Medicare doesn't support and that are illegal in most of Europe.

    Sicko works well as an argument against the for-profit system of the US, where high quality of treatments can be found but aren't available to many Americans.

    What it fails to point out is that many healthcare treatments that used to be only available for the rich have become common practice in the U.S because the companies that make them are constantly trying to reach more and more customers (=more money). Bypass and brain surgery used to be reserved for the rich but became more affordable through private competition between doctors and companies that sold the equipment.

    Government regulation and the FDA actually hamper medical innovation in the U.S and in Europe those advances are even less common because of the absurd amount of money it takes just to get a treatment or drug approved.

    The question we ought to ask ourselves is: how should medical systems be judged, by how they treat the average person or by how they treat the rich elite?

    How about both? The rich finance new medical systems with the wealth they've accumulated. Because businesses want to make money they will naturally look for ways to reduce the cost and expand the number of clients. Vaccinations, bypass surgery, modern prosthetics, and cancer treatments all followed this line in which the rich got it first and it ended up benefiting the average person. By contrast I'm hard pressed to think of a single medical advancement that started off cheap and affordable. Heck, even soap and antibacterials started off expensive.

    What shows through these polls is that those with a lot of means get really, really great care in the US, so more Americans think their care is "excellent" as opposed to "good" when compared to Canadians or British, whose richer folks still get the same quality of care as middle class or poor people, but the difference is small overall.

    My insurance is pretty cheap and it covers several of my more unique (ie expensive) conditions that require specialists. So color me biased. I looked it up and many of the treatments I went through when I was younger aren't even allowed in Europe and are not covered by Medicaid or Medicare.

    In my case 'good' wasn't enough nor is that the case for many people. I needed fast, highly customized treatments that social systems do not provide.

    Progressive Democrats have tried for years to pass anti-predatory lending laws, which would have cracked down on people who convinced people to borrow more than they needed.

    They what few attempts there were existed to target very specific loan practices, practices that had already fallen out of favor because there was more money to be made elsewhere. Not a damn thing about CDO's and now that the industry got smacked down for it when they collapsed they moved on to something else. Regulation is, and always has been, reactionary.

    Anybody with enough intelligence to think of these practices wouldn’t be caught dead working for the feds, they're out in the private sector making money. Meanwhile you have the washouts and failures in the SEC that never fail to be utterly dumbfounded when the next legal but oh so unethical money making fad comes and goes.

    Posted in: Michael Moore rallies pro-union protesters in Wisconsin

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    TheQuestion

    Sorry - your credibility has already been shot.

    Cause, you know, the internet is some serious stuff.

    Posted in: Michael Moore rallies pro-union protesters in Wisconsin

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