tvashtarkatena

Even a mom and pop grocery can afford to make and run a YouTube ad. Times are changing.

Commerce is your bag. I'm a free speech kind of guy.

On a little cross thread note, Gacy famously tried to stuff himself to the point where his head would snap off during his scheduled hanging in an attempt to avoid it, claiming such an eventuality would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. The state didn't buy it, though. Die, fatty!

The one thing that'll make you fatter than a chuffy hog is working long hours. Proposals to penalize the fat when a lot of those two ton tillies are doing exactly what the Rcunts want; workin for da man, are almost as hilarious as the complete lack of thought as to how such a clusterfuck could possibly be administered. I love what's at the core of Bug's oh-so-Christian philosophy: fat = evil. No other aspect of the person's life or contribution matters. Die, fatty. Praise the Lord. But it's not about any serious health care proposal, is it? No, it's about revenge and punishment. It's about picking a group to 'get back at'. What's at the root of this philosophy of cruelty? Who knows...everyones got their own trail of life's disappointments, it's just that some folks feel the need to pass it on and some don't. The reasonably happy folks I know never spout such punitive bullshit. Obesity is a problem, obviously. Our entire economy, work culture, car culture, and food production system is increasingly set up for it, which is why it exists so pervasively. Our 'traditional' high consumption, heavy work load, high convenience way of life, the one Rfucks love to use to drive their stock prices up with, encourages it. Personally, I believe in incentives, education, and encouragement as a way to combat obesity, not 'punishing the fat folk'. Denying people coverage is not going to solve the obesity issue. Preventative rather than punitive solutions, such as covering a health club membership would address the issue more effectively and cheaper. Plus, who's gonna be the one to tell little Lotta she doesn't get any pre-natal care because she's a bit on the heavy side? But folks like Bug and his positive-power-of-prayer club positively cream their holy jeans over imagining shit like that. Personally, I find that way of thinking repulsive and beneath me. Not just health care for all, but EQUAL ACCESS to health care for all Americans should be a basic right, as it is in almost every other civilized nation on earth. Anything else is cruelty. And fuck your pocket book. If I have to pay for your wastoid kids kids go to school, you can sure as shit pay for other people's health care. From a moral standpoint, we are only as strong as our weakest citizen. Nuff said there.

Some Adonis like you's gonna decide who gets covered and who doesn't, pudgy? I can just see it now... ..."I'm sorry Mrs. Johnson, but our records show your BMI was 5% over the limit allowable by our tables when you contracted bone cancer. Here's the number of a local shelter." Really well thought out Bug, as usual.

Actually, he got a BS in history in 2 years, (never finished high school...WWII and all that), then law school on the GI bill (so much welfare bullshit) after his military retirement. The strokes hit him shortly after he began working as an attorney. Fucking loser. This country needs more winners, not boat anchors.

Self styled body artists might do well to familiarize themselves with the concept of 'connotation' prior to inking.

And ya gotta love STD stories. Keep em coming. Or not.

Some guy with a sagging body posts a shirtless pic of himself with a tool, literally, inked on this arm. Presumably, he's looking for feedback. Well, he got some.

Yeah, why didn't Dad save more from the lavish salary he scored in exchange for serving his country all his life? Why would he expect that all his health care needs would be covered in his retirement? Sure, they told him that his entire career, but people like PP can't be expected to prop up some loser who buys everything at face value. Retiree beware! And hey, why didn't mom learn to grow her own food so she'd be OK after the money ran out 16 months later? Dumb fucks.

jeesh many socialized systems can be decribed exactly the same. Isn't that what family savings should be for? I've run the numbers for my parents and they aren't great. But why should anyone else pay for my parent's care while they still have wealth. Obviously surviving spouses complicate matters but that can easily be a welfare issue and not a healthcare issue. By the way my father fought in only two wars and wasn't particularly happy to be in the military in the first place. You're such a clueless fuck this doesn't even warrant any more response than this.

My favorite tramp stamp: a Walmart smiley face, obviously applied before Walmart got a hold of the TM. NICE.

I tend not to advertise the source of my outdoor clothing. "Goodwill" is nice sounding and all, but ranks low in the cache department.

The wearing of corporate labels, now permanent in the form of tats, started sometime in the 70s as I recall, with designer labels for disco jeans. Why anyone would willingly become a walking billboard for the shit they buy is beyond me. I suppose it goes hand in hand with the whole verbing movement. "See these window stickers? I'm seriously lifestyling dood" Probably not too hard to explain though. After all, this is a culture that laps up The Biggest Loser and Jersey Shore: tragically un-self aware human cartoons that are really only one or two steps removed from an audience that tunes in to get their wafer thin fix of superiority.

Ivan spends most of his free time watching little things hit littler things whilst his wife polices his drool.

Oops. Nazi reference. I'm slipping. Particularly emotional issue for me, obviously. There's nothing like real world experience to clarify one's position on an issue like this.

I don't really get any tattoo. I know they're a form of social marking...a substitute display because we no longer have fur (OK, som of us no longer have fur), but an anecdotal survey of tattoos comes up with the conclusion that most folks would do better to stamp the word UNORIGINAL or UNFORTUNATE on their forehead. They seem to me to be a tragic attempt to display inner uniqueness in what is almost a completely overused and cliche outward manner. If you look at nearly all the tattoos out there, most fall into only a handful of categories: faux bad ass biker gang skulls and snakes n shit (often displayed on skinny, pasty white barristas who might aspire to own a moped one day), 'Enter the Dragon' style (no kung fu training required), celtic (particularly popular among those who obviously are not), PNW Indian (ditto), the beloved tramp stamp. There is so often a painfully obvious disconnect between wearer and symbolism. I once read than in Maori culture, a shaman studies a subject for a long time before applying tattoos that reveal that person's unique spirit. Um...yeah. If that were true here, a whole lot of folks would be sporting a Big Mac or X Box on their torsos. Every once in a couple of years or so I do see a cool tattoo, though. The last one, about 2 years ago, was a series of physics equations on a guy's arm.

Is there anywhere that this doesn't happen - outside of a ghetto anywhere in the world including the U.S.? Do you think our elder care system (languishing in nursing homes) is particularly humane for the individual involved or their families or one in which someone isn't making such decisions now? This is probably the most disingenuous, specious argument put out there by the Right; the assumption that old people in the US enjoy unlimited access to health care while their counterparts in other civilized countries are selected for life or death by the state. First, all systems ration, one way or the other. Ours does by a) refusing coverage b) not covering certain conditions c) capping coverage and d) not providing affordable health care at all. It does not, like most other countries, provide EQUAL ACCESS to health care for all. Here, if you can afford it, you live. If not, bye now. It is absolutely the cruelest system in the civilized world. JayB's obviously insulated from the reality of our system. He's married to a doc living in NZ. I'm surrounded by people who can't afford coverage or who are inadequately covered. My own father, a 30 year military veteran who fought in 3 wars for this country, was one of the latter. There was no system available to him to cover his required home health care, which had to be paid out of pocket. He was considerate enough to die before the family savings were exhausted. Fuck you, JayB. You're completely out to lunch here, and I think a large part of you knows it. Frankly, you remind me of the good little Nazi family man who pets the dog, kisses the wife and kids, and dutifully goes off to work gassing Jews. How an asshole like you can sit back and support what's going on when you, of all people, should know better, is completely beyond my moral understanding.

The ruling advertises what it allows and does not allow. What actually happens remains to be seen. The ability of a corporation to exercise the 1st amendment by independently funding an ad that is not directly coordinated with a campaign, PAC, or party hardly constitutes 'control'. What liability protection has to do with this issue is beyond me. Thats seems to be an irrelevant entanglement of two completely unrelated issues.

When I get a moment I'll post the chart that shows the OECD figures adjusted for stuff that doctors and hospitals can't prevent - murders, suicides, drownings, motorcycle-building collisions, etc. That might not address the major unstated premise of your argument and that chart, which is that longevity stats are an accurate proxy for the quality of healthcare. I think the literature shows pretty well that once a country is wealthy enough to get nutritition, sanitation, and vaccination online the way people live is every bit as important as the standard of say - cardiothoracic surgery - where they live. There's another dimension to quality that also never seems to make it into these discussions, which is alleviation of pain, suffering, inconvenience, etc. You can live to a ripe old age with a harelip, vaginal fistula, gimpy knee, mortifying acne, urinary incontinence, etc. The folks in the NZ health district that I lived in that were using long courses of medication to treat their gall bladders while they were waiting years for surgery are/were probably going to live as long as they would otherwise, but I suspect that they'd concede that it had an adverse affect on their quality of life. The other thing that surprises me coming from a liberal of the highest order is what seems to be an implicit concession that the state - while having no legitimate role in determining what happens to a first or second trimester fetus - should have the authority to say whether or not, when, and how an octogenarian well past his 240th trimester gets treated or not. How, exactly, are the over 50 or so MILLION people with no health care whatsoever living more 'pain free' lives than their fully covered counterparts in other countries? None of the evidence I've read points to American system producing less suffering...the overwhelming evidence is to the contrary, due to the problem above and medically related bankruptcies...both of which should never happen in any civilized nation.

FW is now an ACLU donor, and therefore untouchable. That bastard.

Also, the fact that 30% or more of this country are out and out morons should come as no surprise to anyone. The teabagger movement is a manifestation of a stale party that, after sitting on the shelf WAY too long at room temperature, is separating, with the shit not-so-gently settling to the bottom. Bottoms up! It's all good for the Democrats.

You're celebrating the success of a third party that's in the process of splitting your own. Perhaps you qualify for membership.

Um...OW, that's a graph of the growing approval of the teabagger movement among independents v their disapproval of Obama with the labels changed. There's absolutely nothing wrong with our health care system. Nice try.

Who wouldn't want to see a Prius racing, out of control, towards a bridge guardrail?