News Apr 27, 2014 at 9:09 am

Comments

1
Sad that Americans haven't figured out that driving a vehicle at highway speed takes all of one's concentration.
I bet they wonder how today's senior citizens managed to drive their cars without taking selfies and texting.

What a relief she didn't take innocent victims with her.
2
234 young women were kidnapped from a physics test in Nigeria almost two weeks ago, probably by Boko Haram, probably to keep them from getting educated, to pathetically little outrage on a global scale:
...At the time of the kidnapping, every other school in the area was shut down due to security concerns, but this school was kept open specifically to take final exams, with over 100 taking a physics test. Their parents say that if they'd done well on their exams, many of the women were hoping to pursue higher education...

The Nigerian government is doing less than nothing – at one point they announced that the girls had been found and rescued, but the parents revealed that was a lie. The parents are spending their own money to hire motorcycles and cars to trek into the forest, and coming back empty-handed.
(Credit to TJJr and @jbouie for making me aware.)
5
The sad cause of that woman's crash is the need for young people today to constantly update themselves in social media - as if they can't enjoy solitary moments of pleasure - such as driving along listening to music.
7
Darwin award goes to dead texting chick. Probably best that people like that are removed from the gene pool.
8
Sad nevertheless. Glad the other driver wasn't hurt.

This story sounds like one of those blurbs that Ripley's Believe It Or Not would turn out.
9
I wonder if Charles Darwin would have liked people who don't understand his arguments and who pigheadedly attach other people's eugenics theories to his good name to be removed from the gene pool. Probably not.
10
All those tech yuppies are really ruining the CD. Can't they settle their disputes with lawyers instead of guns?
11
I wish there were a Slog weekly "Pro-life death count" of all the people needlessly dying in Texas because of Rick Perry's refusal to expand healthcare coverage through the Affordable Care Act.
12
@9 - You're a good candidate yourself.
13
@11
I'm the Genie, and have granted you 3 Wishes.
14
@11: I would've thought the Pro-life death count would be the count of people killed by the state. Executions, cop killings, etc.
15
@12

I knew one of you guys would get angry and defensive if anyone pointed this out to you. There's some kind of personal identification with this Darwin Award misuse of Darwinism.

Darwin's cousin Francis Galton thought we should try to improve the gene pool. Darwin disagreed and said every single human life had value with no consideration of fitness.
16
@7

This was somebodies daughter, girlfriend, friend.

And you're a repellent human being. Well, sort of human.

@11

Easy, but boring. That number would be zero. Some people made poor health care choices, possibly, and those choices turned treatable illness into fatal illness. But Perry didn't make them do so, and isn't accountable for their sad deaths.

Unless of course you're still believing Grayson's lies? You know, when the authors of the study he misquoted denied his conclusions about 40,000 deaths from lack of insurance? You are? Oh. I'll give you this, Peabrain, you picked an apt moniker!
17
Well, she died happy. (Inappropriate)
18
Weep not. She died doing what she loved.

@5 True!
19
@15 Maybe @12 was objecting to your anti-porcine slur.
20
I'll just leave this here. http://cdn.onegreenplanet.org/wp-content…
21
@16: Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong -- oh what the hell, I gotta stop doing this. You're just so wrong that by the time I finish telling you how wrong you are, the word "wrong" as written has lost any meaning to my eyes, and I might as well be saying "uninformed sanctimonious hypocrite" over and over again. Which is also what you are, but let's not get off-topic.

Here's the situation:
Uncle Sam and his proxies tell Rick Perry, essentially, "Hey, we'd like to pay for a bunch of poor Texans to have health insurance." He and his legislature say "No, we won't let you help pay for them to have health insurance." And then some people can no longer afford health insurance, and some of those people die from ailments that could be easily treated if they had proper insurance like they'd been offered. Do you understand how Mr. Perry's actions contributed to their demise?
As for your wild allegations regarding Mr. Grayson, the study was NOT misquoted. The conclusions from the study were actually presented quite accurately and honestly. The ACTUAL problem with the study is that it used a rough metric to estimate a number that is very hard to accurately measure. There are other studies on the topic, some of which lend credence to the figure and some of which contradict it. The author of the study did NOT repudiate Mr. Grayson's statements, contrary to what you claim. Again, you prove yourself a liar.

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong go piss up a flagpole.
22
Next:
Seattleblues pounds on the keyboard a bunch of times and in the process calls venomlash young a few times.
23
@20:
>2014
>presenting claims without so much as citing any supporting evidence/research
ISHYGDDT, BYGD
24
Uber got blockaded all over capitol hill last night

http://gerardlebovici.wordpress.com/
25
Also, Assad continues to have WMD's. It may be time to take out Russia's client state.
27
I like when Venomlash flips upside down.

Run away Subhumanblues you'll get your ass handed to you.

28
I like when Venomlash flips upside down.

Run away Subhumanblues you'll get your ass handed to you.

29
@26 thank you for sharing your desires.
30
@21

Shorter-

The government (liberal code for responsible tax PAYING citizens who will foot the bill) is morally responsible for every poor choice non tax paying citizens make, as well as financially responsible for same. Oh, and a governor who objects to this bizarre conclusion and resists bad policy is a murderer.

Got it.

As to the study, I'm going by memory. Liar Grayson lost his bid for re-election, in part due to an egregious lie about his opponent at the time. Like all liberals truth, integrity and responsibility are punch lines in a joke on the American people (whom they dislike and to whom they condescend.)

But by your own admission the study Liar Grayson relied on was guessing. That's what we adults call it when we apply 'rough metrics' to hard numbers. Know what else we call studies whose conclusions aren't consistently supported by other academic work? Inconclusive. Personally I'd be loathe to bandy murder around on such a weak basis, but hey, I'm a conservative.
31
Aww, isn't that cute? Machiavelli etc was given use of the computer by her mommy and daddy! Nice name they came up with for you, if you understood it.

Good job typing, kiddo! Now beside the computer is a 'dictionary....'

No? Oh, well that explains a lot about the words you use, little one! Go tell your mom that any used bookstore will have one and than you can actually understand some of what you're writing. Won't that be fun?!
32
@30: You said it, not me.
I'm not talking about whether it's objectively WRONG or RIGHT to provide the poor with access to affordable health care. Sure, it's objectively BENEFICIAL to taxpayers, since it's much cheaper to subsidize health insurance than to foot the bill for expensive emergency room visits that the poor have no hope of paying off. And yes, it's objectively BENEFICIAL to anyone seeking medical care, since people with insurance are more likely to seek preventative care, thus freeing up emergency services for people with serious conditions (such as thrombosis and traumatic injuries) that actually need what the ER provides. But issues of morality? Those are harder to talk about, although both your religion (Christianity) and mine (Judaism) require that we care for those less fortunate than ourselves.

Now if we can stick to what I actually wrote, rather than what you interpreted it as (possibly involving some sort of abstract dance routine?), I'll explain to you why you are an uninformed sanctimonious hypocrite. I mean, why you are wrong.
The federal government offered to pay for people making up to $15,856 a year (for a single person) to receive Medicaid coverage. You think that's people who are lazy and don't pay taxes? News flash, numbnuts: EVERYONE pays taxes, be it income tax, sales tax, Social Security withholdings, whatever. And if you're working your ass off for forty hours every week and making minimum wage, you'll earn less than that 15k-and-change limit. I know, I know, it's easier for you to just pretend that poor people are lazy and don't deserve any help, but that's just not the case.
This Medicaid expansion was approved by majorities of both Houses of Congress and signed into law by the President of the United States; every official involved was fairly elected by his or her constituents (or in rare cases, appointed by elected officials) under the laws of this great nation. It was upheld as Constitutional by the highest judicial body of the land. And Rick Perry, along with his state legislators, were offered properly-allocated money to pay for their constituents to have better access to life-saving care. And they refused it.

Let's have an allegorical story. Suppose I'm waiting at a bus stop and I see a homeless man huddled under an awning. He is shiftless and indigent, and has for whatever reason long since given up on finding a job. But because I have a few extra dollars in my pocket, and because I hate for people to suffer without reason, I decide that he should be given a sandwich. Now, I need to catch my bus, so I see you walking past and say: "Can you do me a favor? Here's five bucks; please take that homeless guy into yonder eatery and buy him a sandwich."
Now, because you don't think that it's right that the unemployed homeless man should profit at my expense, you shove the money back in my face and run off. Would I be correct in saying that you bear responsibility for him going hungry? EVEN THOUGH he did nothing to earn the sandwich, he was OFFERED one all the same, but YOU PREVENTED him from accepting it.

As for Mr. Grayson, I defy you to show me one lie he told during the 2010 electoral campaign. His campaign was opinionated and incendiary, perhaps even a bit misleading, but nothing he told was flat-out false. You're doing that thing again where you post your opinions without even availing yourself of Google.

With regard to the study, I honestly can't believe what you posted. I mean, really? I use the word "estimate" in a sentence, but you point to "rough metric" and say, yup, THAT means 'guess'! Are you familiar with the word 'estimate'?
Because you sure as hellfire and damnation aren't familiar with empirical observation, or with science in general. Every number you see regarding nationwide statistics, or even citywide statistics in some cases, is a 'guess'. See, it's not possible to measure EVERY SINGLE PERSON in a nation of 300,000+ souls. So what we do is we select people at random, make sure that the overall characteristics of our sample pool match the overall characteristics of the population as a whole, and base conclusions on the measured sample.
That's just how things work, you know. Men are more aggressive than women? Estimate based on a sample! There was a sharp drop in biodiversity across the K-T boundary in sediments from ~65 MYA? Estimate based on a sample! Certain alleles at the BRCA2 locus are responsible for early-onset breast cancer? Estimate based on a sample! States with higher rates of gun ownership have higher rates of suicide? Estimate based on a sample! (Eat it, fairly.unbalanced.)
Now, some guesses are better than others. As I alluded to, it's pretty damned hard to determine just how much more likely people are to die if they don't have insurance, given the huge number of confounding variables. But what do you call it when it's unclear, based on the evidence, whether people are more likely to die under certain conditions? You call it "inconclusive". What do I call it? I call it "meriting further investigation". See, this is how we do things in the scientific realm. If the facts are unclear, we don't just call it a day and assume whatever we want to; we go out there, gather more evidence, and FIGURE. THAT. SHIT. OUT. This is why it is scientists who drive the world forward, and willfully-ignorant spuds like you who hold it back.
33
You could have saved yourself some time, kiddo.

Just typing 'I want a government which steals from some to benefit others, and really to be on the given to end of the spectrum' would have been more concise.

All the rest is facile rationalization of that premise.

And quit saying everyone pays taxes. It's objectively provably false, as any brief research will show. A good (well, a bad) half of US citizens pay no federal taxes, even factoring in Social Security. That's because in direct payments like EITC, WIC, housing assistance and, now, medical care paid for by others they get far more than they pay in every year.
By any metric, rough or otherwise, little fella.
Okay. So far all they've done is take what's offered. But when these thriftless layabouts living on my dime complain they aren't getting enough? Well, that just makes me angry, junior.
35
@33: This is what we call a "strawman". You have no rebuttal to my argument, so you claim that I'm saying something else and then call me un-American. Classic, if ineffective and dishonest.

You honestly believe that there are people who don't pay any taxes? You're telling me that there are people with negligible income who don't purchase anything at all? Seattleblues, such people fall into two categories: children and the deceased. Since neither group purchases health care coverage, why are you yammering on about them?
And heck, just looking at FEDERAL TAXES, you're badly misinformed. Half of American citizens pay no federal taxes, you say? Actually, only one fourth of taxpayers have no federal tax burden. (Excluding Social Security, which everyone who earns a single dollar pays 6.2% into...unless they make a lot of money, in which case they pay less.) See, you are woefully ignorant of PAYROLL TAX. Here is the evidence; read it and weep, or if you prefer, read it and then pretend it doesn't mean anything and you were right all along. And in case you're wondering, about 80% of filers younger than 60 DO pay federal tax; those with no federal tax burden are usually retired, meaning that they've earned it! (source)

Finally, you're unclear on what exactly the Medicaid expansion did. Provisions of the ACA raised the maximum income level for people to qualify for Medicaid due to poverty. It's not giving more money to poor people! It's just giving (roughly) the same amount of money to people who are slightly less poor. Now if you'll bear with me, Old Man Grumpus, you'll see that nothing you've written thus far has made much sense, jibed with the evidence, or held any water. You've failed to address any criticism of your positions and chosen instead to dismiss any points you don't like. You claim that the facts support you, and that proving your points would be trivial, and yet you can't muster a shred of evidence to back up a single thing you say. It's all empty rhetoric with you.

You're really quite bad at this.

Please wait...

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