StrangeSox

Anyone who served is a veteran. Many people serve in vital non-combat roles both overseas and state side.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 11, 2010 -> 02:25 PM) Ya know, I feel I have to defend my craft here a bit. While there are SOME cases where the rewards are out of whack, the numbers that people get on settlements or even verdicts (less so) aren't just made up figures. For example, if you get into MVA and have just soft tissues injuries, you're looking at 5k minimum in healthcare costs. Few thousand for the hospital, doctor, radiology, etc, 4-500 for your couple of follow up appointments. That case gets settled for a max of about 1500 bucks more than the medical bills for "pain and suffering." Take that basic case and extend it out, and that's what it is. The bills get higher, but the percentage of the settlement for pain/suffering and whatnot doesn't really go up. Once you bring in loss of income (or god forbid loss of life), that's when you see the big awards, but id' say 95% of the time it's justified. It's a system that requires evidence (because despite people claiming their owed a zillion dollars, the other side doesn't want to pay a dime, so they're going to fight whatever you're demanding), so you can't very well make up something that's not true. And while juries sometime go overboard, more often than not those awards get lessened on appeal. Lawsuits aren't really the problem in my opinion. It's the crazy billing. Yes. Tort reform to limit the amount of damages limits the amount of compensation for actual, legitimate victims of malpractice. Aside from not really affecting overall health costs anyway (study after study show fractions of a percent), we're punishing the victims and protecting bad doctors. QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 11, 2010 -> 02:26 PM) Another part is that we actually have a ridiculously high rate of actual malpractice in the first place. Also this.

You're going with a non sequitur again. Interpreting a misspelling of a name is not the same as changing the voting process and electoral system. It's using judgement so as not to disenfranchise voters. Where's the respect for how our legal system functions? For past case law and precedents? This isn't changing rules "mid-game" but using reasonable judgement to interpret laws. Law rarely, if ever, have a single, objective interpretation, not the least because they're written and passed by many individuals. That is why we have judges and the court system--to determine the meaning of the laws based on past applications and current judgement.

Idiots have every right to representation and to consenting to governance as anyone else. You honestly think it's good for democracy if someone who spelled her name "Murkowsky" has their vote thrown out? That isn't a disgrace to the idea of voting for representation?

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Nov 11, 2010 -> 10:28 AM) Except where you have cases of people who wrote her name wrong, on purpose. Read blogs and news stories up there. There are people who wrote it wrong thinking, incorrectly as it seems, that they could be playing with Lisa on that issue. Would suck to lose with a few hundred writeins with your name spelled wrong. So yes, I think it is a good policy to have. Spell it right, or too bad. Knowing how to spell ONE name correctly isn't too hard of a burden and doesn't imposes economic hardship on anyone. That can amount to a literacy test. I can't believe you think it's a good policy to disenfranchise voters over misspellings.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Nov 11, 2010 -> 10:12 AM) Is voter registration a technicality? Why have rules at all? Non sequitur. What does voter registration have to do with this? Throwing out the vote of someone who wrote "Murkowsky" is pretty clearly disenfranchisement over a spelling mistake. Do you think that's a good policy to have?

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Nov 11, 2010 -> 10:07 AM) Change the rules if you don't like it. Before the fact, not after. Lisa's camp knew this rule going in, that is why they stated a huge spelling bee type campaign, purchased and handed out wristbands with her name on it, made temporary tattoos, etc. They knew the rule. Now they want to have it both ways. don't courts have a history of ruling in favor of "voter intent" understanding of the law, so that people aren't unnecessarily disenfranchised over technicalities?

Why do you want to disenfranchise voters who have clear intent?

QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 11, 2010 -> 09:36 AM) Actually a how to break the law book may actually be illegal. http://www.amazon.com/Anarchist-Cookbook-C...l/dp/0962303208

QUOTE (Soxy @ Nov 11, 2010 -> 07:58 AM) I saw this yesterday on Jezebel. I went to the site, read the description of the book (which is in a very loosely defined English) and was totally skeeved out. But he has a right to write it (and a right to get investigated and put away for writing it) and amazon has a right to sell insane nutters self-published books. Won't affect my shopping there. And, yes, Amazon grocery is awesome and they do have bacon. I don't think writing a book advocating the subject is illegal.

Tea Partiers in AZ city oppose municipal garbage collection. The horror, the horror...

This is just an embarrassment. Climate change = not reality because of Genesis. This line of thought isn't uncommon among certain Evangelical groups. Nothing man can do is bad because Earth was made for man. And then he says a bunch of other inane s***, like how horrible is was for miners to loose their jobs thanks to the Clean Air Act.

FJM can finally RIP.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 9, 2010 -> 09:46 AM) You've done nothing to alleviate my fears that they will rip the space time continuum which will undoubtedly cause disastrous consequences to either the entire universe or, more probable, to our localized galaxy. Well, if it happens, you won't be around to notice.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 9, 2010 -> 09:32 AM) Oh, I get that, I'm merely saying that playing with such things can create unexpected side effects. Exact science is not an exact science, after all. I know it's mostly sensationalized, as we love to think the worst of these types of experiments, but as they cannot be certain about what these experiments may render, it's scientifically impossible to say it's a safe/controlled environment. What if that temperature is enough to rip the space time continuum and create a pocket of anti-time that would move backwards through space time? What then? 50 years ago that bunker didn't exist...and what about the people 500 years ago running into that pocket of anti-time, they could destroy everything! TELL ME WHAT THEN? But they can predict this sort of stuff based on the math. It's not any more impossible to say it's a safe or controlled environment than it is to be absolutely sure of the truth of anything. The Standard Model would have to be pretty well broken for anything catastrophic to come from this. eta: Here's CERN's press release: http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleas...0/PR21.10E.html A little more low-key.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Nov 9, 2010 -> 09:23 AM) I didn't think we had the technology to control anything that was ten trillion degrees. We're talking about very, very small amounts of matter (sub-atomic particles) reaching those temperatures for infintisimally small amounts of time.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 9, 2010 -> 08:43 AM) This process took place in a safe, controlled environment, generating incredibly hot and dense sub-atomic fireballs with temperatures of over ten trillion degrees, a million times hotter than the center of the Sun. While I feel this is cool to the Nth degree, I cannot explain my uneasiness about what they're doing here. Recreating mini versions of a universal phenomenon that we can't even scratch the surface of explaining or understanding the immense power of to even a billionth of a degree seems dangerous to a level I can't even grasp. A controlled environment? Laugh worthy. If you accidentally create something in that environment, it would undoubtedly destroy that controlled environment in it's unending quest to remain uncontrollable. Full story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101...big-bang-in-lab It's more sensationalized reporting of science than anything. It's really nothing dangerous. It's recreating the energy levels seen at that time, but not the density of mass or anything.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 8, 2010 -> 07:17 PM) You don't think sending money to Washington to send it back to its place of origin to be spent is going to result in waste? Regardless of the level of government it gets spent at, does the economic theory work well for all goods? Hypothetically, let's remove all state and federal government. Only counties and cities/townships/municipalities/etc. Would all public spending on items typically viewed as public services, such as roads and education, be less efficient than public spending--by definition?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 8, 2010 -> 07:04 PM) Honestly, a decent survey of this stuff is something that comes in an intermediate level college macro-economics class that involves lots of fun calculus. Its not really easy to explain, and Krugman is being ingeniousness as an economics professor by pretending otherwise. At the end of the day, sending money to the government means that instead of a $10 meal, you are paying $11 for the same meal you could have just bought yourself, but instead had to hire someone to buy for you. That is the very simple definition of waste, or inefficiency. Also, until you posted this, I had completely forgotten that I actually did take an intermediate macroeconomics course.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 8, 2010 -> 07:04 PM) Honestly, a decent survey of this stuff is something that comes in an intermediate level college macro-economics class that involves lots of fun calculus. Its not really easy to explain, and Krugman is being ingeniousness as an economics professor by pretending otherwise. At the end of the day, sending money to the government means that instead of a $10 meal, you are paying $11 for the same meal you could have just bought yourself, but instead had to hire someone to buy for you. That is the very simple definition of waste, or inefficiency. But how well does that work for "goods" like roads and education?

QUOTE (lostfan @ Nov 8, 2010 -> 06:50 PM) I was trying to say, whether that money is collected through taxes and distributed by the government (I'm not arguing that this isn't ideal because this obviously means people get to keep less of what they earned) or whether it's spent by consumers or goes to mortgage payments or whatever, all of it eventually makes its way into "the economy." It doesn't just get burned up, it goes to a cop, or a teacher, or a construction worker and then they spend that money on goods and services like anyone else does. I've always wondered about this myself but assumed that I'm obviously missing something. There would be no waste or inefficiencies regardless of what money was spent on. But I don't think you can look at things like infrastructure or public education and say private dollars would have been spent "better" or more efficiently. Without an educated populace or roads, we'd be little more than another developing economony with resources that are exploited by foreign companies.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 8, 2010 -> 04:45 PM) To most of the extent yes...the States decide based on their own rules when and how to send credentials for a Senator to Washington. However, the Senate does have a role; the Senate itself can decide to refuse to accept the credentials of a Senator. They wouldn't do that for a guy legitimately elected, but there was some talk about refusing to seat anyone Blagojevic nominated back when that all went down. I think what NSS was driving at is that this isn't some partisan delay. It would have been the same for Alexi G.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Nov 8, 2010 -> 12:13 PM) And each judge that ruled in favor of gay marriage has been pushed out this last election. QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 8, 2010 -> 12:42 PM) That is a shame. This is why I'll never understand judges being elected partisan positions.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Nov 8, 2010 -> 07:10 AM) We should even think about cutting back on the biggest welfare program on the planet known as the military industrial complex.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Nov 7, 2010 -> 10:15 AM) I thought that was common knowledge. Rasmussen usually favors Republicans or some conservative idea by about 4-6 points ahead of everyone else. They still do show the same trends as the other polls, though. They did pretty well in 2006 and 2008. But since that election, they've tilted very heavily Republican, to the point where it was almost comical. Nate points out how high of a disapproval rating they had, basically double anyone else's, within the first month or two of Obama's term. This election they were biased and it caused them to be wrong on a lot of races. It's important to point out their problems (ideological or methodological) on election polls since we can compare them with the real results--not something you can do with issues polls.