Larry

Wow. If the prices (and coverage) in the exchanges are so terrible, then I bet those Republican Governors who've announced that they won't allow their citizens to see them, will be changing their minds, any day now, huh?

You're the one who tried to make them the point (without actually making a point). How about you tell us? Don't know. But I suspect that it outlaws it. But it's irrelevant. Your claim is that if gender discrimination is outlawed, then mandating that insurance companies must pay for people who want to impregnate sheep is "the natural result". And whether the ACA allows gender discrimination or not, your claim is still utter BS. Ah, moving the goalposts, I see. How traditional. But, in this case, I agree with you. If the law (any law) forbids insurance companies to discriminate on gender, and if a company covers fertility treatments for infertile straight couples, then yeah, I could see the argument that they have to cover same-sex couples for the same treatment. Whether fertility treatment is essential is a question which doesn't care about the gender of the people involved. Despite your article's attempt to divide the world into straight couples and "unnatural couples".

Somebody called 911 to complain about somebody jogging backwards?

No it isn't. But feel free to keep trying to make the claim. Oh, look! A "some lawyer in a court case has tried to claim something" article. Well, that surely must be because of Obamacare, right?

Hmmm. Let's see. Comes before the court, one twa. Bringing with him an article from FrontPage Mag. ("Insice every Liberal is a Totalitarian Screaming to get Out"). Said article claims that a bill has been introduced (not passed) in California (not for the US) which simply states that insurance companies may not discriminate in their coverage. The article leads off, before even telling us the subject of the article, by reminiscing about the last days of past civilizations. twa chooses not to mention that this article is discussing a bill which has been proposed, but not even voted upon yet, and that it's state legislation, in California. And chooses to post this material in a thread entitled "Obamacare", without mentioning that it has absolutely nothing to do with that subject. The article then goes on to pull (from the author's bodily orifices) the claims that fertility treatment is only intended for "natural couples", refers to same sex couples as "unnatural couples", that society has now determined that "gay marriage is a real thing, biology be dammed". The article then goes on to declare: BTW, the article's claim that "There is an Object Sexualist woman in the UK who is in a gay marriage with the Statue of Liberty"? Well, the article actually contains a link to an article, which says nothing of the sort. Gee, and I've always associated the trick of making a false claim, and providing a link to some other source which actually doesn't support the claim, and in fact disagrees with it, with only one person. The author then declares that anybody who actually agrees with the things he's claiming will be called a bigot. (I suspect he's correct, on that one.) :halo: (Curiously, twa, who apparently does not think that the fact that this article has nothing to do with Obamacare is important enough to mention, does think that the author's (completely delusional) claim that this law will mandate fertility treatment for people who are unable to become pregnant through sex with inanimate objects, is worth quoting in his post.) ---------- I'm shocked. Slow day?

I have to confess that, when I read about things like this (launching missiles over the country which you're trying to threaten), that the fantasy I have is of their missile being shot down before it makes it halfway there, and profuse apologies explaining that gee, the missile defense system is automatic, and fires on anything launched towards Japan. I'm smart enough to understand that actually doing that would be really dumb. No reason at all to give potential enemies (China, cough, cough) the opportunity to study our technology. But the fantasy occurs, anyway.

I feel the same way, every time I look at Congress.

NK has all the technology it needs to be really dangerous. Can they hurt the US? Not a chance. Can they invade, well, anybody (and keep whatever they take)? Saddam Hussein had a better chance. But, can they kill tens of thousands, maybe as much as a few million, civilians? Yep. I think they've got like 100,000 Howitzers in range of Seoul. Even if said weapons only fire 10 shells each before we destroy them, (And they're supposedly in really well prepared installations, which make taking them out not exactly guaranteed), that's a whole bunch of damage they can inflict in less than a minute. They have missiles. Supposedly they aren't very good missiles. Not very accurate. I think his major ones are liquid fueled. And, at least when we were using that kind of technology, fueling the things took 24 hours, could be seen by satellite, once they were fueled, they had to be launched within 48 hours, and after fueling, it took months of service before the rocket could be fueled again. They have nuclear warheads. Granted, I think they've tried to test their nukes like three times, and their success record was two complete duds and one fizzle. But, those rockets (which I think of as comparable to Saddam's Scuds), can reach Japan. With chemical or nuclear warheads. And, even if you assume that they can't target specific places within Japan, just assume that, say 2/3 of the missiles hit somewhere in Japan (assume that 1/3 of them even miss Japan), and even if you assume that they're armed with a chemical warhead, or a nuke that only partially detonates, . . . You drop a small WMD at just a random place, somewhere in Japan, and you've done a lot of damage. ---------- NK is a joke, as a military. But, as a terrorist with a whole hunch of hostages? They're a really serious threat.

My money says they aren't. Just my general opinion of politicians.

Federal furlough thread.

Some really convenient editing, there. Like, taking one sentence, then skipping a few, then taking a different sentence. However, I seem to be having trouble selecting and copying text from the document. I assume that the document is an image, rather than a text document. And I'm too lazy to type the whole thing in. (It's the first paragraph, on the second page of the pdf, if anybody wants to go look at the source.) Here's what it says: (My summary of their summary.) 1) The effects of Obamacare on the long-term budget mostly depends on whether the cost containment parts of the bill, work. 2) Two projections were done in January of '10 (before Obamacare was passed), and in the Fall of '10 (after it was passed). Each projection looked at a "baseline" scenario (in which all existing laws remain), and an "alternate" projection (in which we assume that a lot of laws that are on the books, won't really happen) 2a) The January '10 projection was pre-Obamacare. The baseline projection, for example, assumed that all temporary tax cuts would expire on schedule, and that things like the Medicare payment reductions would take effect. The "alternative" projection assumed that all tax cuts except for the SS tax cut would be made permanent (and, in fact, that as the economy grows and natural progression tends to make taxes a higher percentage of GDP, that other, unspecified, tax cuts would be passed, to keep tax revenues from exceeding the historical average percentage of GDP). It assumed that the "doc fix" would continue. (That Medicare payments would not be automatically reduced, but would actually increase.) 2b) The Fall 2010 projections also produced two projections. The "baseline" again assumed that all existing legislation (which now includes Obamacare) continue. The "alternative" projection makes all of the assumptions that the previous alternative projection makes (that tax cuts would continue, that "doc fix" would continue.) AND it assumes that all of the parts of Obamacare that increase costs (things like increasing insurance coverage) continue, but that all of the parts that reduce costs get phased out after a few years. 3) Comparing the "with Obamacare baseline" and the "without Obamacare baseline", The Obamacare version shows "notable improvement" (their words). (Obamacare makes the long-term budget situation notable better, if all of the assumptions work.) 3) However, that "baseline" projection assumes that the cost-cutting provisions of Obamacare will remain in effect, and that they will work. There is some question about this. It may be a bad assumption. 4) If we compare the "pessimistic assumptions, and no Obamacare" projection, to the "pessimistic assumption, and we assume that all of the parts of Obamacare that cost money, cost money, but we assume that all the parts that save money, don't exist" projection, then things get worse, by a slight amount. "Slight amount" is my characterization. If you'd rather have just numbers, then I will observe that, looking at the pretty picture just below the summary paragraph, and just applying Larry's eyeball (because I can't find actual numbers), It looks to me like: The "pessimistic scenario, including the parts of Obamacare that cost money, but without the parts that save money" projection says that, along about 2029, the national debt will be 200% of GDP. Whereas, with pretty much the same assumptions, but no Obamacare at all, the projection shows it as more like 195% of GDP. No, it says we have unsustainable deficit problems. What the GOP says is "whenever somebody talks about the deficit, pretend that they said 'spending', because we wouldn't want people to get the impression that the lowest taxes in 70 years might be part of the problem". Uh, could you quote me that part? (Cause the part you selectively edited sure doesn't say that. But I'll confess I haven't read the whole thing.) The opening paragraph that you cherry picked parts out of, says that in their baseline scenario Obamacare shows "notable improvement" compared to without Obamacare. And it says that the parts of Obamacare that cost money, if you eliminate all of the cost-reducing parts makes things slightly worse.

Just looking at a few things in the report. 1). Observing that the title of the report is well, I don't seem able to copy and paste, but it's basically that their projection hinges on whether it pushes costs down or not. 2). Observing that, as the pretty picture and the text on the second page of the PDF says, under their "baseline" projection (which assumes that existing laws remain in effect), the long term budget, while still not good, is considerably better than projected 2 years ago. Whereas their "alternative" projection, (which assumes that lots of laws will be changed, like assuming that the "doc fix" gets applied, that all temporary tax cuts become permanent except for the SS tax, AND THAT ALL OF THE OBAMACARE COST SAVING MECHANISMS ARE PHASED OUT), got slightly worse. 3). I haven't seen anything whatsoever that even implies that this study even looks at the effects of Obamacare. This study does not look at "budget with Obamacare vs budget without Obamacare". It looks "what we predicted, with Obamacare, two years ago, vs what we predict, with Obamacare, now".

Discussing the federal bureaucracy.

Deleted post

Predicto on Elizabeth Warren.

deleted post. Didn't notice the dates.

Is it possible that a precedent is being established? That governments are accountable to the people? (Crossing fingers.)

If I read their page correctly, their "free preview" feature will let you watch one minute, live. And then you have to pay. And you can only do it once per day.

I just installed a (free) app on my iPad that supposedly lets me watch.

Somebody on Facebook posted this. Lunar Recon Orbiter: Question Answered! The Lunar Recon Orbiter has photos which they claim show that the flags planted on the Moon by the Apollo missions are still standing. (Except, apparently, the one for Apollo 11. As the site explains, Buzz Aldren claimed that when they lifted off from the Moon, that the exhaust from the LM ascent engine blew over the flag. And that's the only landing site where they don't see the shadow of a flag.) ---------- Post added July-31st-2012 at 08:13 PM ---------- Somebody on Facebook posted this. Lunar Recon Orbiter: Question Answered! The Lunar Recon Orbiter has photos which they claim show that the flags planted on the Moon by the Apollo missions are still standing. (Except, apparently, the one for Apollo 11. As the site explains, Buzz Aldren claimed that when they lifted off from the Moon, that the exhaust from the LM ascent engine blew over the flag. And that's the only landing site where they don't see the shadow of a flag.)

Not in the House. First thing the new, Republican, Tea Party ("The most important thing in the world is the deficit") Congress did when they took office, was to change the pay as you go rules of the House. Now, all proposals that increase the deficit have to be paid for except: 1) Repealing Obamacare. 2) Tax cuts.

That sounds a lot like an idea I've had for years. (So it must be a great idea.) I'd been looking at the problem of feeding the poor, and I'd observed that it would be vastly cheaper to set up soup kitchens and hand out free food to anybody who shows up, than it is to hand people cash (or things easily convertible to cash), and tell then to go to the grocery store and pay retail. Now, in the health care soup kitchen situation, we all know that there will still be rationing. You can't give away anything for free and not have demand exceed supply. I would assume that the rationing mechanism would be time based. Demand would rise until people weren't willing to wait in line for (however long it is.) But yeah, that does sound, to me, like an idea that would be a whole lot cheaper.

Why would you chose not to be insured, when pre-existing conditions are covered?