you mean like stealth bombers?

[billcoe]

..damn...Rob, I forgot the most inportant part. You need to wear a tagiyah or shemagh and say that you represent Saudi Arabia. An Italian restaurant tablecloth will work double duty for this.

 

Say "Abu Akbar" a few times or something like that as you are waving your arms around. Perhaps add a sword for authenticity. Works every time!

 

TODAYS HOT SAUDI NEWZ! Probably they first had a serious heart to heart talk about our mutual hemorrhoid: Iran. Be interesting to be a fly on that wall to see the haggling and bargaining involved. I'd imagine we got something. Bases? Communications? sumpin sumpin.

[G-spotter]

The kids of today should defend themselves against the 70s.

[j_b]

Um, conservatives aren't the ones who "found" a right to abortion in Blackmun's private library.

 

Abortion is certainly a right. Freaking jackboot wanting to control women's bodies. So much for "liberty", hypocritical liar.

[ivan]

jackie treehorn treats objects like women, man!

 

 

[JayB]

Um, conservatives aren't the ones who "found" a right to abortion in Blackmun's private library.

 

Abortion is certainly a right. Freaking jackboot wanting to control women's bodies. So much for "liberty", hypocritical liar.

 

Haha.

 

"Keep the government out of my uterus! Unless you're a comparative effectiveness research bureaucrat constructing an algorithm to determine whether an operation to remove a tumor from my uterus will generate enough quality-adjusted-life-years to justify the expenditure. Then - by all means!"

[G-spotter]

Is our fetuses personing?

[prole]

Haha.

 

"Keep the government out of my uterus! Unless you're a comparative effectiveness research bureaucrat constructing an algorithm to determine whether an operation to remove a tumor from my uterus will generate enough quality-adjusted-life-years to justify the expenditure. Then - by all means!"

 

[j_b]

Haha.

 

"Keep the government out of my uterus! Unless you're a comparative effectiveness research bureaucrat constructing an algorithm to determine whether an operation to remove a tumor from my uterus will generate enough quality-adjusted-life-years to justify the expenditure. Then - by all means!"

 

Benefits that demand access to resources have always been constrained by the size of group resources as you certainly ought to know since your main opposition to the right to a living wage is your bogus claim that we can't afford them. An abortion has little cost and no impact on anybody but the woman (and minimally on the sperm donor). Expensive medical procedures paid by the collectivity drain resources that are needed for other essential tasks and the return on such procedure unfortunately has to be part of the equation until we find a way to reduce its cost or find a way around it. Ergo, you are attempting to compare apples and oranges.

[JayB]

Haha.

 

"Keep the government out of my uterus! Unless you're a comparative effectiveness research bureaucrat constructing an algorithm to determine whether an operation to remove a tumor from my uterus will generate enough quality-adjusted-life-years to justify the expenditure. Then - by all means!"

 

Benefits that demand access to resources have always been constrained by the size of group resources as you certainly ought to know since your main opposition to the right to a living wage is your bogus claim that we can't afford them. An abortion has little cost and no impact on anybody but the woman (and minimally on the sperm donor). Expensive medical procedures paid by the collectivity drain resources that are needed for other essential tasks and the return on such procedure unfortunately has to be part of the equation until we find a way to reduce its cost or find a way around it. Ergo, you are attempting to compare apples and oranges.

 

The "collectivity" is asserting control over an individual's body in each case. The only difference is the pretext put forth for doing so.

 

 

[j_b]

your gratuitous hyperbolic assertions will get you nowhere.

[Stonehead]

[video:youtube]v=2B_SxGmSJP0

[tvashtarkatena]

Haha.

 

"Keep the government out of my uterus! Unless you're a comparative effectiveness research bureaucrat constructing an algorithm to determine whether an operation to remove a tumor from my uterus will generate enough quality-adjusted-life-years to justify the expenditure. Then - by all means!"

 

Benefits that demand access to resources have always been constrained by the size of group resources as you certainly ought to know since your main opposition to the right to a living wage is your bogus claim that we can't afford them. An abortion has little cost and no impact on anybody but the woman (and minimally on the sperm donor). Expensive medical procedures paid by the collectivity drain resources that are needed for other essential tasks and the return on such procedure unfortunately has to be part of the equation until we find a way to reduce its cost or find a way around it. Ergo, you are attempting to compare apples and oranges.

 

The "collectivity" is asserting control over an individual's body in each case. The only difference is the pretext put forth for doing so.

 

 

Put another way, one involves the state forcing a woman to bear children, the other doesn't.

 

Not a discernible distinction to some, I realize.

[tvashtarkatena]

I'd support the purchase of hyper-expensive-bombers-we-don't-need if they were cooler. The stealth line up looks like a bad kid's drawing of a Lego project.

 

With all the retro design going on - the Mini, the Bug, the T Bird, for Christs sake...you'd think we could redux the B 47 or B 58.

[JayB]

The government that can deny prostate surgery on the basis of a subjective value judgment has all the tools it needs to deny abortions on the same basis.

 

How do you square a desire to thwart government efforts to control speech with a desire to grant the same government a monopoly over all medical spending and clinical decision making?

 

"Stay away from my opinions, but I'll gladly let you determine whether I qualify for the mitral valve replacement or not."

 

 

[prole]

Holy shit! The whole "potential rationing by the government while ignoring the fact that private insurers do the exact same thing only more brutally" thing is back!

[tvashtarkatena]

"I don't brake for non-sequiturs."

 

The B-2 'Spirit'. No Christian message there, eh Haji?

 

I much prefer the cock swaggering B 58 "HUSTLER", meself. So much more honest regarding what we're really all about around here.

[JayB]

Holy shit! The whole "potential rationing by the government while ignoring the fact that private insurers do the exact same thing only more brutally" thing is back!

 

You can have an interesting discussion about which method of rationing is more brutal than the other, but the central issue with granting the state monopoly over anything is the extent to which it extends the state's power over individual citizens.

 

It is literally impossible to argue that giving the state the sole discretion over how medical care is delivered and funded dramatically increases the power that the state exercises over the citizenry. The state that can influence, let alone absolutely determine, whether or not I get a heart valve repaired or whether or not my premature child is worth saving has far more direct and meaningful power over me than a state that can, say, intercept e-mails that terrorist suspects overseas send to my inbox.

 

Yet the same folks that absolutely reject the arguments for granting the government the power to intercept e-mails from terrorist suspects on the basis that they infringe on inviolable individual liberties, that the government can never be trusted with such powers, etc - are literally begging for the same government to be granted sole discretion over their medical care.

 

Don't get it.

[prole]

Cut the Big Brother-dystopian-death panel-nightmare scenario horseshit. That other countries with state-run health care systems are delivering better care for less cost to larger percentages of their populations without falling into a New Dark Age of goblins, orcs, and evil wizards is a fact. Get over it. It's done.

[prole]

Jesus Christ, who needs a tin-foil hat again?

[tvashtarkatena]

Hustler. Supersonic. Delta Wing. Four Big Engines. Big Ass Belly Tank.

 

FU, here comes da JUDGE.

[JayB]

Cut the Big Brother-dystopian-death panel-nightmare scenario horseshit. That other countries with state-run health care systems are delivering better care for less cost to larger percentages of their populations without falling into a New Dark Age of goblins, orcs, and evil wizards is a fact. Get over it. It's done.

 

You're confusing the way that people live vs how well effective their doctors and hospitals are.

 

Life expectancy variation in developed countries has much more to do with lifestyle choices, social forces, and accidents than it does clinical efficacy.

 

The connection between something like insurance coverage and longevity is loose enough to lead to outcomes like the fact that hispanics outlive whites by ~ 2.5 years despite being three times a likely to lack coverage. The Danes live like 9 months longer than Bulgarians despite spending something like 20X more on health-care than Bulgarians in real terms. The proper conclusion to draw from these figures isn't that the Bulgarian health system is 20X as clinically effective as the Danish system, but that once you bring sanitation and vaccination up to a certain standard the aggregate effects of health spending on longevity are quite marginal at the population level.

 

Variations in infant mortality have more to with registration artifacts that get introduced when different countries use different standards to determine what constitutes a live birth. A super-premie that dies in the US counts as an infant death, but it's a mulligan for most of the rest of the world. Ditto for quite a few babies that die anywhere between 24-72 hours after birth.

 

Even direct comparisons of clinical efficacy are difficult because the standards that determine who get into a study are different, and can easily be biased by a population that's younger and healthier going into the study. Having said that, produce some studies of clinical efficacy and we can have fun parsing those stats, which are the only meaningful ones to use when determining how effective a medical system in a developed country is.

 

I find your assertions about how government rationing works in practice amusing, since in every system where the government is the sole payor the government can and does draw the line between who gets treated and who doesn't.

 

 

[prole]

Cut the Big Brother-dystopian-death panel-nightmare scenario horseshit. That other countries with state-run health care systems are delivering better care for less cost to larger percentages of their populations without falling into a New Dark Age of goblins, orcs, and evil wizards is a fact. Get over it. It's done.

 

You're confusing the way that people live vs how well effective their doctors and hospitals are.

 

Life expectancy variation in developed countries has much more to do with lifestyle choices, social forces, and accidents than it does clinical efficacy.

 

Would the 47 million Americans without health insurance be a social force or an accident?

 

 

 

[Crux]

We 47 million would be those for whom the insurance companies can and do draw the line for who doesn't get treated.

[Hugh Conway]

Cut the Big Brother-dystopian-death panel-nightmare scenario horseshit. That other countries with state-run health care systems are delivering better care for less cost to larger percentages of their populations without falling into a New Dark Age of goblins, orcs, and evil wizards is a fact. Get over it. It's done.

 

You're confusing the way that people live vs how well effective their doctors and hospitals are.

 

Life expectancy variation in developed countries has much more to do with lifestyle choices, social forces, and accidents than it does clinical efficacy.

 

The connection between something like insurance coverage and longevity is loose enough to lead to outcomes like the fact that hispanics outlive whites by ~ 2.5 years despite being three times a likely to lack coverage. The Danes live like 9 months longer than Bulgarians despite spending something like 20X more on health-care than Bulgarians in real terms. The proper conclusion to draw from these figures isn't that the Bulgarian health system is 20X as clinically effective as the Danish system, but that once you bring sanitation and vaccination up to a certain standard the aggregate effects of health spending on longevity are quite marginal at the population level.

 

Variations in infant mortality have more to with registration artifacts that get introduced when different countries use different standards to determine what constitutes a live birth. A super-premie that dies in the US counts as an infant death, but it's a mulligan for most of the rest of the world. Ditto for quite a few babies that die anywhere between 24-72 hours after birth.

 

Even direct comparisons of clinical efficacy are difficult because the standards that determine who get into a study are different, and can easily be biased by a population that's younger and healthier going into the study. Having said that, produce some studies of clinical efficacy and we can have fun parsing those stats, which are the only meaningful ones to use when determining how effective a medical system in a developed country is.

 

I find your assertions about how government rationing works in practice amusing, since in every system where the government is the sole payor the government can and does draw the line between who gets treated and who doesn't.

 

 

"damnit stop encroaching on my income stream, I'm supposed to benefit from the free market, not feel it's effects"

 

the proper conculsion is Bulgaria's fucking poor, dolt