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Anti-Health Care Reform Protester Encourages Physical Violence, Use Of Firearms By Brian Beutler - August 7, 2009, 2:20PM Based on the news that health care events are edging into violence, an anti-health care reform protester in New Mexico named Scott Oskay is calling on his hundreds of online followers to bring firearms to town halls, and to 'badly hurt' SEIU and ACORN counter protesters. Anti-Health Care Reform Protester Encourages Physical Violence, Use Of Firearms

The conservative extremists who make up the "news" on the tube are now suggesting to the lunatic fringe to threaten violence in order to oppose policy changes wanted by at least 65% of americans. It is obviously working on the wingnut base. Folks, these are the same people who spent the last 8 years looking for violent opposition to their policies in order to demonize their opponents and looking for terrorists in everybodies' closet. "The Town Hall Mob by Paul Krugman There’s a famous Norman Rockwell painting titled “Freedom of Speech,” depicting an idealized American town meeting. The painting, part of a series illustrating F.D.R.’s “Four Freedoms,” shows an ordinary citizen expressing an unpopular opinion. His neighbors obviously don’t like what he’s saying, but they’re letting him speak his mind. That’s a far cry from what has been happening at recent town halls, where angry protesters — some of them, with no apparent sense of irony, shouting “This is America!” — have been drowning out, and in some cases threatening, members of Congress trying to talk about health reform. Some commentators have tried to play down the mob aspect of these scenes, likening the campaign against health reform to the campaign against Social Security privatization back in 2005. But there’s no comparison. I’ve gone through many news reports from 2005, and while anti-privatization activists were sometimes raucous and rude, I can’t find any examples of congressmen shouted down, congressmen hanged in effigy, congressmen surrounded and followed by taunting crowds. And I can’t find any counterpart to the death threats at least one congressman has received. So this is something new and ugly. What’s behind it? Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, has compared the scenes at health care town halls to the “Brooks Brothers riot” in 2000 — the demonstration that disrupted the vote count in Miami and arguably helped send George W. Bush to the White House. Portrayed at the time as local protesters, many of the rioters were actually G.O.P. staffers flown in from Washington. But Mr. Gibbs is probably only half right. Yes, well-heeled interest groups are helping to organize the town hall mobs. Key organizers include two Astroturf (fake grass-roots) organizations: FreedomWorks, run by the former House majority leader Dick Armey, and a new organization called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights. The latter group, by the way, is run by Rick Scott, the former head of Columbia/HCA, a for-profit hospital chain. Mr. Scott was forced out of that job amid a fraud investigation; the company eventually pleaded guilty to charges of overbilling state and federal health plans, paying $1.7 billion — yes, that’s “billion” — in fines. You can’t make this stuff up. [..]" More: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/07-1

"In the past 13 years more than 400 corporate mergers have involved health insurers, and a small number of companies now dominate local markets. The American Medical Association reports that 94 percent of insurance markets in the United States are now highly concentrated." i.e. there is little to no competition in "free-market" healthcare. "Free markets" lead to monopolies who can control prices as they wish. Once again, the proof is in the pudding, applying free-market ideology leads to anything but "free" markets.

I did the right-hand start a long while ago and I don't recall it as particularly runout or difficult so it is probably quite a bit easier than the left side you guys did but I acknowledge that my recollection of it is quite hazy. For example, I recall the buttress above the crux as a continuous slabby, around mid-class 5, runup that offered several possibilities without wandering too much. Downclimbing the grassy North Ridge seemed like the psychological crux of the trip at the time. Although, it is a super-classic line up the mountain (like for the OP it is what motivated to do the climb), the DNB on Bear is way better climbing if anyone is wondering.

It's the dry season at Mt Kenya, which offers varied moderate climbing on rock and/or ice.

There is a relationship between dose and toxicity but we shouldn't assume that we really know what is it. We certainly don't know what it is for cocktails of compounds that are today commonly found in diet, water and the environment. Numerous studies link various types of cancer and endocrine disruption (gender bending) to pesticides and other nasties. 10,000's of new chemical compounds have been introduced in our environment since ww2 for which no toxicity studies have been done. Not that short term studies are likely to tell us much about adverse effects that may demand long term exposure to reveal themselves, and the industry can always claim there isn't sufficient direct evidence (think tobacco, asbestos, ddt, PCB's, ... to appreciate the amount of direct evidence needed for anything to be done) Acceptable doses are continually lowered even though regulatory organizations and industry always claim they know what they are doing. Instead of treating populations like laboratory rats, a sensible application of the precautionary principle would be in order but it doesn't suit the needs of those who put profit before people. Precautionary Principle: The precautionary principle [..] states that if an action or policy might cause severe or irreversible harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of a scientific consensus that harm would not ensue, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action.

Ergo what? For days you have been waving your hands trying to tell us that for profit healthcare doesn't have greater administrative costs and I provided you with yet another example of not for profit healthcare that is considerably cheaper than the one you defend so enthusiastically.

That's propaganda. Most canadians that get care in the US are travelers.

Except that you are putting the problem on its head. Most people who go hungry (most are in developping nations) aren't starving because they don't know how to grow food or because we don't grow enough food. They are starving because industrial agriculture gets all of the financing and it has booted small farmers off the land to grow cash crops for export, animal feed and biofuels. Agribusiness isn't the solution, it is the problem. "The investments are not so much about producing more food but about changing the way food is produced and who it is produced for. Take China, for instance. Beijing has made the political decision that it wants big agribusiness, not peasants, to supply its growing market for meat and dairy. All levels of government are doing everything possible to lay out a red carpet for food corporations, both Chinese and foreign, from providing subsidies to rewriting land laws and food regulations. Investment in the Chinese dairy and livestock sectors has exploded as a result, as has the number of factory farms, which already topped 53,000 in 2003. [13] A small number of Chinese corporations and foreign joint ventures are emerging as the titans of the industry, often bankrolled by high-rolling foreign private equity firms such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR). Meanwhile, the tremendous feed requirements for these farms are supplied by the likes of Cargill and Bunge, who import GM soya from their operations in the Americas. The integration of China into the global agribusiness web is so complete that COFCO, the country’s largest grain company, is rumoured to be negotiating to take over US-based Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the world, of which COFCO already owns 5%. While agribusiness thrives in China, people are suffering, particularly peasants. Zhou Guanghon, a professor at Nanjing Agricultural University, predicts that with China’s current policies the national share of meat produced by small farmers will fall from the current 80% to 30% by 2020, and that hypermarkets will move from a 15% market share of the retail market for meat to a 40% share over the same period. [14] Millions more peasants will be driven off the land, even as the collapse of jobs in export manufacturing is sending equal numbers of peasants back to the countryside in desperation. Chinese consumers are also being hit hard. While the government has been forced to step in to keep prices of meat and dairy down, to the extent of setting up the world’s only state meat reserve, food safety problems are spiralling out of control. Last year’s melamine scandal, which left at least six infants dead and another 300,000 ill, was a direct result of the rapid industrialisation of production and supply. The growth of factory farms has also generated new, more lethal diseases, such as bird flu, that are not only deadly for humans, but hugely disruptive for China’s meat supply. The country’s poultry industry says that bird flu is a major reason why poultry numbers are down by about a third in the first quarter of this year. [15] A couple of years ago, an epidemic of a new lethal strain of blue ear disease laid waste to upwards of a million pigs in China and was seen as a key factor in the spike in pork prices. It would be unfair to single out China, though, since this is a global phenomenon. In the United States, the shining star of the agribusiness model and its modern food-“safety” system, one in eight Americans went hungry in 2007 – and that was before the current economic tailspin began. [16] Moreover, one in four Americans suffers from a food-borne illness every year, a number that does not include those whose health is affected by other parts of the industrial food chain, such as the estimated 45,000 agricultural workers who are poisoned by pesticides every year. [17] The swine flu epidemic has focused attention on how the factory farms of the US multinational meat companies are incubators for deadly human diseases. The World Health Organisation said in late June that 311 people had so far died from the swine flu outbreak, but a shocking 18,000 people in the US die each year from a “superbug” called MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), which is rampant in US pigs and pork sold to consumers. MRSA is believed to have evolved through the overuse of antibiotics in industrial pig farms. [18] Today, the same corporations are taking advantage of trade and investment agreements to set up or relocate their gigantic factory farms in poorer countries, where labour is cheap and regulations lax or non-existent – such as Mexico, Romania and China." more here: http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=607

Comparisons of organic and conventional chemical farming systems A survey of recent studies comparing the productivity of organic practices to conventional agriculture provides an excellent example of the wide range of benefits we can expect from a conversion to sustainable agricultural methods. The results clearly show that organic farming accomplishes many of the FAO’s sustainability aims, as well as showing promise in increasing food production ability. Sustainable Agriculture Farming Systems project (SFAS) at UC, Davis. An ongoing long-term comparison study, SFAS is an interdisciplinary project that compares conventional farming systems with alternative production systems that promote sustainable agriculture. The study examines four farming systems that differ in crop rotation design and material input use: a 2-year and a 4-year rotation conventional system, an organic and a low-input system. Results from the first 8 years of the project show that the organic and low-input systems had yields comparable to the conventional systems in all crops which were tested - tomato, safflower, corn and bean, and in some instances yielding higher than conventional systems (Clark, 1999a). Tomato yields in the organic system were lower in the first three years, but reached the levels of the conventional tomatoes in the subsequent years and had a higher yield during the last year of the experiment (80 t/ha in the organic compared to 68 t/ha in the conventional in 1996). Corn production in the organic system had a higher variability than conventional systems, with lower yields in some years and higher in others. Both organic and low-input systems resulted in increases in the organic carbon content of the soil and larger pools of stored nutrients, each of which are critical for long-term fertility maintenance (Clark, 1998). The most important limiting factor in the organic system appeared to be nitrogen availability (Clark 1999b). The organic system relied mainly on cover crops and composted poultry manure for fertilization. One possible explanation for a lower availability in the organic system, is that high carbon inputs associated with nitrogen to build soil organic matter, thus reducing nitrogen availability for the organic crops. During the latter 2 years of the experiment, soil organic matter levels appeared to be stabilized resulting in more nitrogen availability. This was in agreement with the higher yields of organic crops that were observed during those last two years. The organic systems were found to be more profitable in both corn and tomato among the 4-year rotations mainly due to the higher price premiums (Clark, 1999b). Farming Systems Trial at the Rodale Institute — Soybean study. Initiated in 1981, the Farming Systems Trial compares intensive soybean and maize production under a conventional and two organic management farming systems. The first organic cropping system simulates a traditional integrated farming system. Leguminous cover crops are fed to cattle and the resulting manure is applied to the fields as the main source of nitrogen. In the second organic system, the leguminous cover crops were incorporated in to the soil as the source for nitrogen before corn or soybean planting. Corn yields were comparable in all three cropping systems (less than 1% difference) (Drinkwater, 1998). However, a comparison of soil characteristics during a 15-year period found that soil fertility was enhanced in the organic systems, while it decreased considerably in the conventional system. Nitrogen content and organic matter levels in the soil increased markedly in the manure—fertilized organic system and declined in the conventional system. Moreover, the conventional system had the highest environmental impact, where 60% more nitrate was leached into the groundwater over a 5 year period than in the organic systems (Drinkwater, 1998). Soybean production systems were also highly productive, achieving 40 bushels/acre. In 1999 however, during one of the worst droughts on record, yields of organic soybeans were 30 bushels /acre, compared to only 16 bushels/acre from conventionally- grown soybeans (Rodale Institute, 1999). "Our trials show that improving the quality of the soil through organic practices can mean the difference between a harvest or hardship in times of drought" writes Jeff Moyer, farm manager at The Rodale Institute in Kutztown, Pennsylvania (Rodale Institute, 1999). He continues, "over time, organic practices encourage the soil to hold on to moisture more efficiently than conventionally managed soil." The higher content of organic matter also makes organic soil less compact so that root systems can penetrate more deeply to find moisture. These results highlight the importance of organic farming methods and their potential to avert future crop failures both in the US and in the rest of the world. Broadbalk experiment at the Rothamsted Experimental Station, UK One of the longest running agricultural trials on record (more than 150 years) is the Broadbalk experiment at the Rothamsted Experimental Station in the United Kingdom. The trials compare a manure based fertilizer farming system (but not certified organic) to a synthetic chemical fertilizer farming system. Wheat yields are shown to be on average slightly higher in the organically fertilized plots (3.45 tones/hectare) than the plots receiving chemical fertilizers (3.40 tones/hectare). More importantly though, soil fertility, measured as soil organic matter and nitrogen levels, increased by 120% over 150 years in the organic plots, compared with only 20% increase in chemically fertilized plots (Jenkinson, 1994). Organic grain and soybean production in the Midwestern United States A comprehensive review of a large number of comparison studies of grain and soybean production conduct by six Midwestern universities since 1978 found that in all of these studies organic production was equivalent to, and in many cases better than, conventional (Welsh, 1999). Organic systems had higher yields than conventional systems which featured continuous crop production (no rotations) and equal or lower yields in conventional systems that included crop rotations. In the drier climates such as the Great Plains, organic systems had higher yields, as they tend to be better during droughts than conventional systems. In one such study in South Dakota for the period 1986-1992, the average yields of soybeans were 29.6 bushels/acre and 28.6 bushels/acre in the organic and conventional systems respectively. In the same study, average spring wheat yields were 41.5 bushels/acre and 39.5 bushels/acre in the organic and conventional systems respectively. When comparing the profitability of farming systems, the study found that organic cropping systems were always more profitable than the most common conventional cropping systems if the higher premiums that organic crops enjoy were factored in. When the higher premiums were not factored in, the organic systems were still more productive and profitable in three of the six studies. This was attributed to lower production costs and the ability of organic systems to outperform conventional in drier areas, or during drier periods. The author of the report remarked: "What is most surprising is how well the organic systems performed despite the minimal amount of research that traditional agricultural research institutions have devoted to them." (Welsh, 1999). Comparison of conventional and organic farms in California. Lastly, a study which compared ecological characteristics and productivity of 20 commercial farms in the Central Valley of California gives us a better understanding of how a conversion to organic would fare in a commercial farm setting. The farms compared had a fresh market tomato production. Tomato yields were shown to be quite similar in organic and conventional farms (Drinkwater, 1995). Insect pest damage was also comparable in both cases of organic and conventional farms. However, significant differences were found in soil health indicators such as nitrogen mineralization potential and microbial abundance and diversity which were higher in the organic farms. Nitrogen mineralization potential was three times greater in organic compared to conventional fields. The organic fields also had 28% more organic carbon. The increased soil health in the organic farms resulted in considerably lower disease incidence. Severity of the most prevalent disease in the study, tomato corky root disease, was found to be significantly lower in the organic farms (Drinkwater, 1995). Much more here: http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/~christos/articles/cv_organic_farming.html

Olmsted?

how can you tell?

Although it appears to be coming directly from the orwellian ministry of truth, don't worry folks, the commission only wanted consumers to be better informed ... (they also probably didn't consider antibiotics, growth hormone, etc ..)

Ok JayB, try to spin this. Make sure your arguments are properly referenced. Merely asserting an opinion or that of the Heritage Foundation won't do. The new england journal of medicine n engl j med 349;8 Costs of Health Care Administration in the United States and Canada Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H., Terry Campbell, M.H.A., and David U. Himmelstein, M.D. From the Department of Medicine, Cambridge Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, Mass. (S.W., D.U.H.); and the Canadian Institute for Health Information, Ottawa, Ont., Canada (T.C.). N Engl J Med 2003;349:768-75. Copyright © 2003 Massachusetts Medical Society. background A decade ago, the administrative costs of health care in the United States greatly exceeded those in Canada. We investigated whether the ascendancy of computerization, managed care, and the adoption of more businesslike approaches to health care have decreased administrative costs. methods For the United States and Canada, we calculated the administrative costs of health insurers,employers’ health benefit programs, hospitals, practitioners’ offices, nursing homes, and home care agencies in 1999. We analyzed published data, surveys of physicians,employment data, and detailed cost reports filed by hospitals, nursing homes,and home care agencies. In calculating the administrative share of health care spending, we excluded retail pharmacy sales and a few other categories for which data on administrative costs were unavailable. We used census surveys to explore trends over time in administrative employment in health care settings. Costs are reported in U.S. dollars. results In 1999, health administration costs totaled at least $294.3 billion in the United States, or $1,059 per capita, as compared with $307 per capita in Canada. After exclusions, administration accounted for 31.0 percent of health care expenditures in the United States and 16.7 percent of health care expenditures in Canada. Canada’s national health insurance program had overhead of 1.3 percent; the overhead among Canada’s private insurerswas higher than that in the United States (13.2 percent vs. 11.7 percent). Providers’administrative costs were far lower in Canada. Between 1969 and 1999, the share of the U.S. health care labor force accounted for by administrative workers grew from 18.2 percent to 27.3 percent. In Canada, it grew from 16.0 percent in 1971 to 19.1 percent in 1996. (Both nations’ figures exclude insurance-industry personnel.) conclusions The gap between U.S. and Canadian spending on health care administration has grown to $752 per capita. A large sum might be saved in the United States if administrative costs could be trimmed by implementing a Canadian-style health care system. Complete paper here: http://www.pnhp.org/publications/nejmadmin.pdf

maybe the team members didn't like contador, because he wasn't a good leader and didn't treat them well. that's certainly what it's seemed like based on his comments. I don't believe that Contador is any more a "good guy" than Armstrong is, but unlike Armstrong, Contador didn't talk his mouth off during the race. Once the race was over he did say what happened within the team when Armstrong tried to undermine his status as the leader. I don't believe he can be blamed for it. I am not blaming Arsmtrong for doing what he felt was in his best interest either but if anyone undermined team cohesion, it is him and not COntador.

1) Why would Astana organize a chase when ALL of the other GC riders missed the break? Basic team strategy - don't reel in one of your riders when he's up the road. 2) Lance backed up off as soon as it was apparent that Contador was the stronger rider and declared his support for Contador, which he demonstrated the way he rode through the Alps. 3) Contador had Astana support the entire time except when he attacked his own team. Kloeden was fully committed to Contador and the team, but Contador attacked and dropped him for no reason when they were out with the Schleck's. 4) What happened before the ITT? Haven't seen that. 1) You don't reel in a breakaway when one of your riders has a chance of winning the stage, which wasn't going to happen with Cavendish in the lead group, and when it doesn't put your leader in deficit. Unless of course you want one of your riders to gain time over other GC contenders. Note that the 3 Astana riders in the breakaway rode to extend the lead. 2) It was evident way before the race that Contador was the better rider. Even JB said so. 3) Contador didn't attack Kloden despite what Lance said after the stage (note that Lance could have said Contador made a mistake instead of "attack his own team"[paraphrase]). Contador tried to break away and failed, dropping Kloden in the process, and he extended his lead over most other GC contenders. Note that it happened on stage 17, i.e. after 19 days of tension within AStana. So, when Kloden dropped back to pace Lance instead of staying with Contador, it was for the good of the team? 4) Apparently, Contador left the hotel last because he was riding last and there was no team transport left to drive him to the race start (several kms away). Contador claims that Lance sent all remaining transportation to pick up his family at the airport. Contador called his brother to pick him up. Pretty funky business to forget to provide transportation to the yellow jersey on the day of the ITT.

because Armstrong was working for the team when he challenged Contador for leadership? when did he challenge contador? he never did anything to compromise contador's lead. the only thing was the over-dramatized move that lance cued onto in stage 2, which contador wasn't in position for. there were plenty of times that lance could have attacked, but instead stayed back w/ wiggins, schlecks, etc. From my armchair, it looks to me that 1) Astana didn't try to bring Contador back (or limit the damage to their official leader) in the lead group on stage 2 but rode with the breakaway, 2) Armstrong said several times he was racing to win even though he didn't have the gas to do it by attacking and was probably going for a tactical win (keeping it close enough with Astana controlling the race, then hope for something like the bordure of stage 2 or Contador making a mistake, etc ..), 3) how many times did we see no Astana rider in support of COntador unless Lance was in that group versus how many time did we see Kloden pacing Lance when he was in trouble, 4) contador was isolated within Astana with most team members rallied around Armstrong and Lance poking jabs at contador from the get go (plus all the details that are surfacing now about what happened before the ITT), ... show that a power strugle was taking place between Contador and Lance even though Contador was the official team leader.

No, I remember that Contador was clearly the favorite and declared team leader by Bruyneel 4 days before the race started. It seems as if history is being rewritten to justify Lance's behavior (irrespective of his outstanding perf). Contador leads Astana Article By: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:08 Astana have named former yellow jersey champion Alberto Contador as their leader for the Tour de France, which begins in Monaco and will run from 4-26 July. Contador, who won the 2007 Tour de France but did not compete last year, is the pre-race favourite to succeed Spaniard Carlos Sastre. Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong will be one of the key riders in the Kazakhstan-sponsored team, making his return to the race since he retired in the wake of his seventh consecutive victory in 2005. As well as Armstrong, fellow American Levi Leipheimer and German Andreas Kloden have been included in the nine-man team which, on paper, looks one of the strongest in the race. Leipheimer is on his seventh Tour appearance and finished third in 2007. Kloden is a two-time podium finisher on the world's toughest bike race, and wins selection despite allegations in Germany last month that he was involved in doping at the 2006 Tour, when he finished second while racing for T-Mobile. Also included is one of Contador's closest team-mates, Portuguese Sergio Paulinho. Kazakh Dmitriy Muravyev, Ukrainian Yaroslav Popovych, Swiss Gregory Rast and Spaniard Haimar Zubeldia make up the team. Last year Contador became only the fifth rider in history to win all three three-week Tours of France, Italy and Spain when he won the Giro d'Italia in June and the Vuelta a Espana in September. However as doubts linger over who the real leader of the team is - much of the media focus has centred on Armstrong's bid for an eighth crown - the Spaniard was featured second in line on a video presentation shown on Astana's website on Thursday. The first rider to feature was Armstrong, who tuned up for his big return by racing the Giro in May and June. "After three-plus years away from competition I'm very happy with where Lance's form is leading up to the Tour," said team manager Johan Bruyneel, who helped orchestrate all seven of Armstrong's wins, and Contador's victory in 2007. "I think racing the Giro was a very smart decision and really prepared him for July. He's worked very hard during his comeback season and I know he is extremely motivated for the Tour de France." On Contador, Bruyneel said: "After winning the Tour in 2007 and then becoming the fifth cyclist in history to win all three Grand Tours, it's hard to find a better stage race rider than Alberto. "He has worked very hard, earning the right to represent our team as the leader this July." http://sport.iafrica.com/cycling/news/1770980.htm

because Armstrong was working for the team when he challenged Contador for leadership?

I am not an expert either but the difference between healthcare costs in the US and other developped nations is staggering (on average OECD nations pay 1/6 the amount we spend) while 1/4 of our population is under-insured or has no coverage, so irrespective of spin and hair-splitting it's easy to see that something can be done. Small business owners have great incentives to support a public insurance/single payer since benefits are so important in securing/retaining competent employees.

False! For example, anybody has the right to emergency care regardless of ability to pay. Note also that healthcare is cheaper than emergency care.

If true, does this figure including the time private companies must spend filing government paperwork etc etc? Doesn't account for the cost of generating revenues via the IRS, [...] Rightwing spin isn't supported by the evidence (some of it is nonsensical because most healthcare dollars are already paid by taxes): "These administrative spending numbers have been challenged on the grounds that they exclude some aspects of Medicare’s administrative costs, such as the expenses of collecting Medicare premiums and payroll taxes, and because Medicare’s larger average claims because of its older enrollees make its administrative costs look smaller relative to private plan costs than they really are. However,the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has found that administrative costs under the public Medicare plan are less than 2 percent of expenditures, compared with approximately 11 percent of spending by private plans under Medicare Advantage.16 This is a near perfect “apples to apples” comparison of administrative costs, because the public Medicare plan and Medicare Advantage plans are operating under similar rules and treating the same population. (And even these numbers may unduly favor private plans: A recent General Accounting Office report found that in 2006 Medicare Advantage plans spent 83.3 percent of their revenue on medical expenses, with 10.1 percent going to non-medical expenses and 6.6 percent to profits—a 16.7 percent administrative share.)" http://institute.ourfuture.org/files/Jacob_Hacker_Public_Plan_Choice.pdf

Watch out people, the commies are taking health care from the elderly to give it to illegals. Wingnut fear-mongering at its best.

Thank you for showing once again that you have no ability to tell (or couldn't care any less) when you actions impact others. Playing on the jungle-gym is a personal decision whereas one has no choice in the driving habits of other drivers. Your concept of "freedom" can be resumed to your "right" to do what you want whatever the cost to others. Nothing new there. "Nation of pussies" LOL what a moron.

Like your benign "freedom" to drive drunk? Have you ever considered getting help to deal with your asocial personality disorder?