Buying is Voting

I've heard rumors that the OS 4 upgrade will be free for those who already have an iPhone. Is this true?

I'm trying to decide whether it would be worth it to wait it out a little longer.

Thanks.

Was he walking around with his most recent psych eval stapled to his jacket?

The police are still in the process of questioning him, we don't know his name or what he looks like, but we automatically know he has a history of mental illness?

Oh wait, Berlusconi was a media mogul before becoming a politician.

Take a look at a human population graph covering the last few hundred years and tell me if you see a striking trend. At what point do we determine that, yes, it's time to start discussing voluntary reproduction control?

So far, it doesn't seem like the masses will take it upon themselves to stop reproducing. And people would march on their respective capitals in most countries if their governments tried to implement it. How can we warm ourselves up to discussing this, what will eventually be the most important decision in our species' existence?

Also, please save the "Okay, you start by killing yourself" or "too bad your mom didn't have an abortion" comments. Very clever and all, but this is an honest question.

Let's simplify it to this: A war can be fought (and likely won) if everyone agrees to be taxed specifically to fund it. If we don't agree to be taxed to fund it, the war will not happen, and will not be "won." Which way would you go with it?

In the event that you would choose not to be taxed, how do you distinguish yourself from those lazy liberals who support their own agenda so long as somebody ELSE pays for it? How do you suppose a nation of people with your "don't-make-ME-pay" attitude on this matter will ever contain its government's spending?

http://rawstory.com/2009/11/white-house-met-lobbyi...

How is anyone supposed to feel good about health insurance industry lobbyists shaping government health care policy?

Why do agribusiness and pharmaceutical executives run the FDA and USDA?

Why does our current president's administration appoint the foxes to guard the chicken coop?

Why don't liberals care? Why didn't conservatives care when Bush was corrupting the nation? Why are any of us defending either party?

http://rawstory.com/2009/11/white-house-met-lobbyi...

I think it is important to really agree on what terrorism is, what qualifies as an act of terrorism and what does not.

Does terrorism always involve murder? Is murder always terrorism?

Let's say you murder 50 people. Is that an act of terrorism?

I believe I know what terrorism is, but I want to see what others think. The most cogent answer will be the best, even if I don't entirely agree with it.

Current food policy: Subsidize surplus crops (like corn and soybeans), make the most calorically dense foods available at the cheapest possible price. This is why a McDonald's hamburger costs as much as a pear.

Low income Americans are at a higher risk of obesity than middle or upper income earners. Why is that? It's because you can buy more junk food calories with a dollar than healthy food. It currently requires 10 calories of oil energy to cultivate 1 calorie of food energy, but government subsidies allow that to continue, so that big companies keep getting rich and funding our politicians' campaigns. Big Ag and Big Pharma control the government agencies that are supposed to regulate them (e.g. Michael Taylor, Linda Fisher, Tom Vilsack, it goes on and on).

I do not propose that the government decide what we eat. I simply suggest that the government stop interfering with our agricultural markets, giving companies like Monsanto a monopoly over our food supply.

Whether you support new health care legislation or oppose it, can we all agree that 1) we are the fattest country on Earth and 2) that is adding to our health care costs? Our problem is not only unaffordable insurance. Obesity is quite clearly an epidemic. Don't we need to look at both issues at the same time?

Do you agree or disagree with any of the following general statements?

1) The U.S. has the highest obesity rate in the world.

2) Obesity is an unhealthy condition... it leads to a number of severe health problems such as heart disease, strokes, some cancers, and other conditions which are expensive to treat.

3) The unhealthier the country, the more expensive it will be to keep them all insured.

4) Food policy (e.g. no regulations on advertising junk food to kids, permitting vending machines in schools, subsidizing the unhealthiest foods) as well as, for example, No Child Left Behind forcing schools to cut physical education, and other failed policy has something to do with why we're the fattest country in the world, which has something to do with why we can't afford our health insurance.

If you don't have major disagreements with those statements, then why do you suppose we spend so much time worrying about who gets insurance and so little time worrying about food policy's relationship to our country's poor health?

Books: Food Politics, The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food

Movies: Food Inc., Killer at Large

We are not unhealthy because of unaffordable health insurance. We have unaffordable health insurance because we are unhealthy. What is going to wake us up and get us off our asses?

What about wanting there to have been an independent, thorough investigation of the WTC collapses automatically makes me a conspiracy theorist? I wanted something to happen and it didn't happen, and the fact that it didn't happen was illegal. Where is the conspiracy in that? Where is the theory?

If the steel HAD been formally and independently investigated, wouldn't there then be solid public evidence to refute those crazy whackjob controlled-demolition conspiracy theories?

That's what I wanted. Proof that the buildings failed the way it was originally suggested to us. Public record evidence that those conspiracy theories are, irrefutably, whackjob and loony.

Where is the conspiracy in that? That's the only legal way to go about it.

Why are people so angry that I demanded an investigation of our generation's most serious and devastating crime?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/11/02/new.york.ship/ind...

Forgive me, but I just don't understand how removing and destroying evidence from history's biggest crime scene and then proudly sending it back in the form of a new Naval vessel is an honor to victims of those attacks.

Can someone explain it to me?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/11/02/new.york.ship/ind...

It just fills me with patriotism. Instead of bothering to save all the steel and investigate exactly where and how it failed, they made better use of it by immediately shipping it off to be melted down to make a big new ship that we can be proud of.

I love our government. Don't you?

Over 4 million births per year (CDC, 2006)

Prenatal appointments- $100-$200, 15-20 visits = $1500-$4000

Lab Work and fees- $200

Ultrasounds- $300-$1000 per

Total care for premature deliveries: $26 Billion per year

Cost of C-Sections: $13.8 Billion per year ($11,500 avg per)

Uncomplicated vaginal birth: $2,600 per birth, not including extra procedures, stays, etc.

How many families foot the entire bill for the prenatal care and birth of their kids? How many can afford it? Every family that does not pay for it in full contributes to higher premiums for everyone else.

Considering having children is voluntary, why should prenatal and delivery care ever be covered by health insurance?

Sources:

http://www.managedcaremag.com/archives/0602/0602.b...

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsite...

Let's brainstorm. I'll start.

Premature births in the U.S. have reached historic highs in the last several years. http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsite... Putting kids in the NICU is expensive. Really expensive. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in some cases over a million. Wouldn't that push up premiums? The overall cost of premature births on the health care industry is estimated at $26 Billion. http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsite...

Why should we be saving premature babies on the consumer dime? Because they're cute and innocent? They may be, but that doesn't make it any cheaper to incubate them into viablity, and how can you place babies at higher importance than other humans when it comes to insuring their outrageous medical needs? Maybe we'd be better off if they were chalked up to a late miscarriage. You can always try again.

Also worth exploring: People who eat themselves fat and get rushed to the ER/CCU after heart attacks and strokes. Why should the system spring for all these people.

WHERE in God's name does individual responsibility kick in?

http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/23/news/economy/bank_...

That seems pretty intense. Who knows a lot about these trends in banking? Do you think the failures of hundreds of small banks could somehow benefit the large banks? Does anyone out there have an incentive to see to it that smaller banks fail?

What exactly is going on here?

The internet and TV stations are down, grocery and other stores have been looted, the dollar is literally worthless... and there is no reliable information as to what triggered it, just rumors.

Who or what would you be most likely to assume is to blame?

a) Barack Obama and the Democrats (with help from intelligence and security agencies)

b) G.W. Bush, Dick Cheney and other neo-conservative Republicans (with help from intelligence and security agencies)

c) Another country's government/military

d) Radical Muslim terrorists

e) Elite international bankers

f) A divine force/being/power

g) A geological or climate-related event

h) Other: ____________________

Please explain.

Totally random example (taken from HR 3200 - Health Choices Act of 2009):

Quality.

‘‘(8) CONFLICTS OF INTEREST.—

‘‘(A) IN GENERAL.—In appointing the members of the Commission or a clinical perspective advisory panel described in paragraph (2)(H), the Secretary or the Commission, respectively, shall take into consideration any financial interest (as defined in subparagraph

16 (D)), consistent with this paragraph, and develop a plan for managing any identified conflicts.

Wait, who's "the Secretary" again? And who oversees him/her?

And what's the "clinical perspective advisory panel?"

And what's "the Commission?"

Every paragraph refers back to some other paragraph, using vague language to define other vague language. It's endless.

How can citizens participate meaningfully in civic affairs if they cannot themselves glean an ounce of meaning from the laws that govern them? We elect rich people to positions where they write the law, and then we have to wait for them to tell us what any of it means?

Maybe I'm just "not smart" in the lawyer sense of the word. But whether there's any legitimate reason for legislation to look like this or not, isn't the fact that the public has no real way to grasp any meaning from legislation a problem in itself?

1) Google the course of Afghanistan's opium production prior to the Taliban coming to power in 2000, and then look what happened after they banned it outright and burned the fields in 2001, and then look what has happened since we invaded the country.

Look into the widely publicized evidence that an invasion of Afghanistan had been planned prior to Sept. 2001.

The Bush Family, who made their billions in oil, invaded Iraq, one of the world's oil-richest nations, both times that a family member was in the White House. And Dick Cheney, CEO of Halliburton, a war-profiteering corporation, was a high official in both administrations.

I am usually called a conspiracy whacko for even bringing up these absolutely bizarre coincidences.

WHY do people find these coincidences to be immaterial? Does part of their brain shut off? What is the deal?

Associated Press -- updated 10:43 a.m. AKT, Fri., July 31, 2009

WASHINGTON - The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a far-reaching food safety bill requiring more government inspections and imposing new penalties on those who violate the law, reacting strongly to an outbreak of salmonella in peanuts that killed at least nine people.

"Americans are dying because the Food and Drug Administration doesn't have the authority to protect them," said Michigan Rep. John Dingell, the bill's sponsor."

We are trying to wrap our minds around why health care is so expensive and problematic while the corporatocracy pounds the last nail in the coffin to make natural food production financially nonviable.

The number of people dying from heart disease, stroke, cancer or diabetes is 155,677 times greater than the number of deaths being used to justify this Orwellian food legislation. This is not about safety. It's about profit.

Have you become frightened enough to surrender your right to produce your own food? Do you want to be entirely dependent on agribusiness biotechnology corporations and the government for your food?