rob

well, your lungs and liver are either a de facto ward of Blue Cross, or of the State. What's the diff? It's not like I can afford to go without health insurance, so functionally it doesn't really matter who I answer to, does it? Oh, wait. LIBERTARIANISM!!!!!

"More Drilling???" is an implied opinion. Don't play dumb.

Stop driving your car, Kevin. Or else STFU.

yr galdurn right it is! USA! USA! USA!

tl;dnr. However, regarding your comment on the war on drugs: I think drugs should be legal, and should also come with a warning label. Sounds pretty consistent to me. I'm not talking about prohibition, so I don't know what relevance that long-ass ramble had.

Those are NOT free.

I think charging the obese more for health insurance is a perfectly reasonable idea. Or, assuming public healthcare, charge them a "fat tax." But if we do this, I think we need to put in place regulations on selling certain types of foods. We can't allow a completely unregulated market to provide easy, cheap and toxic choices to the ignorant while taxing them for their mistakes at the same time. I don't know how this would work. Tax food that is too calorie-dense, or too much saturated fat per serving? Put a warning label on it? I dunno. But it seems weird to do nothing. I think the FDA has a responsibility to ensure that we have reasonable protection from dangerous products. When I consider how enamored Americans are with junk food, and how they seem to just eat themselves straight into disease, I wonder if maybe they're not being taken advantage of by corporations that don't really care about their well-being. Isn't that the point of government -- to protect the vulnerable from the predatory? $0.02 Ka-ching!

This is the dumbest (and most recurring) argument. Oh, he raised a lot of money for cancer and he won a lot, so he's allowed to cheat and lie. It sounds like you admit he probably doped. So, don't you get annoyed how ferociously he STILL tries to deny it? Personally, it insults my intelligence. But you apparently don't have that problem.

I'm much more interested in finding ways to fix it, then just throwing up hands and saying, "it's their choice. Fuck em!" Of course it's their fault. But, it's costing us a lot of money, so it behooves us to discuss ways to fix this problem. "Screw 'em" is the republican method of handling these sorts of problems.

and what about the dessert rat????

And carbon. Lots of carbon. CARBON FIBER EVERYTHING!!!!

I don't care about doping, really. Doping has been a part of bicycle racing since, well, probably forever. These guys are always going to be one step ahead of the tests. I just hate guys that go overboard trying to pretend how pure they are. Its like cheating on a math test and then going on and on about how hard you studied, when everybody knows you wrote the answers on your arm. Just be more laid back about it. God, what a douche.

Cause he's so goddamn self-righteous and smarmy about it. Can't he just be cool, instead of acting like a dickhead all the time? We all know he doped, just like all the other guys who win tours. Don't be such a cockhead about it, Lance. But instead, he has spent years carefully sculpting his image into some sort of fucking righteous saint, and invented this fake persona that just pisses me off. And all those fucktards that have had a huge erection for him can go suck it, too. They're the ones that have made him so fucking annoying, because there is nothing worse than having to deal with a bunch of idiots who have been tricked by a conman. It's like dealing with Scientologists, or vaccine-deniers. blah, what a load of horse semen. "Oh Lance, I love you!!!!"

I don't expect professional athletes to be upstanding people. That's why I hate lance so much, because he tries to trick people in thinking that he is, when really, by most accounts, he's a giant fucking douche. Also, I want all those whiny idiots who STILL believe he's clean to eat a bag of shit. Is that so much to ask?

our society does a good job ensuring that many of us will be economically disenfranchised and uneducated. Do you dispute this? Sure, it's all personal responsibility in the end, but that doesn't mean we can't do a lot as a functioning society to help end some of these vicious circles that accompany poverty. Just saying, "oh well, they're just making bad choices" isn't really a workable solution to the problem.

The poor are disproportionately fat when compared to those that are more well-off. And according to most people who actually study this issue (i.e. not you and me) they're less educated about how to make smart choices regarding nutrition. Surrounding these people with more opportunities to make bad choices than good ones is a recipe for disaster.

So it sounds like there is no problem, then! We'll just keep making and marketing really crappy food and sell it quite cheaply, and all the suckers who buy it and get sick -- serves them right. The brilliant part is it's yet another way to make sure the poor stay down beneath our boot, where they belong. We know the impoverished make bad choices (that's why they're poor, after all), so let's make sure they have plenty of opportunity to make lots of bad choices. It filters out all the bad genes. I like it. Ship it.

sure, eating beans and rice every day with frozen vegetables would be really cheap. I wonder why the poor aren't doing that? It's all their choice.

It's just a choice. Of course the fact that bad food is cheap (thanks farm subsidies!), more abundant, and heavily advertised has absolutely nothing to do with influencing anyone's choices.

Study after study after study is finding that it's cheaper and easier to eat poorly, and this is bolstered by data that the poor are indeed more unhealthy. But, you guys have figured it out: the poor are just stupid. I've always suspected.

Sure, a family of 4 living of $66 per week in food stamps is really going to hit up the organic section at the local Safeway when they can buy an entire meal-in-a-box for $4.99? http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/a-high-price-for-healthy-food/

How can you say it's a myth when every major study completed finds the impoverished are significantly more likely to be obese? Sure, the poor are also often less educated regarding healthy food choices. But, regardless of the cause, the correlation between economics and health is quite clear.

it sounds like you're mixing enough chemicals as it is.

I think it's really sad that the cheapest and most available food is also usually the most unhealthy. Impoverished americans suffer much greater obesity levels. I wish we could find a way to make healthier food more easily accessible and cheaper. Most people can't afford the outrageous prices they're charging for simple things like organic produce.

yeah, he's got plenty of sisters-in-law to work on