Tags for this video have been changed from 'nutritional, supplement, magic, pill, weight, loss, senate, hearing, FDA, june 22' to 'nutritional supplement, magic pill, weight loss, senate hearing, FDA, june 22' - edited by xxovercastxx

Pharmac (go look it up) here in NZ has a big part to play in our overall lower health costs for medicines.

It's a crown owned entity that works out what drug is the best for a particular purpose and then says, "hey big pharma wanna have all the NZ'ers get cured of shitty disease x with your magic pill number 4? Well then gives us the generic brand and here's what we will pay." And then drives a sweet deal for all us kiwis.

It's that big of a thing that it's upset all the corporate fuckers that are driving the whole Trans Pacific fuck the little guy Partnership.

Then there is the ACC (Accident Compensation Corporation) - It's not perfect by any means. But say for example you are playing football on the weekend and your blow your hamstring, well you rock on up to the local A&E, afterhours or medical centre etc, pay a fee of around $30-50nz, get checked over, if you need xrays/scans these maybe fully subsidised or again you may have to pay up to $50-80, get cheapo drugs from the pharmacy (thanks Pharmac) and go home and put your feet up. You're in the system now buddy!

Now have to put your foot up at home for the next 4 weeks, - what about work? I gotta get paid dog!! Don't worry homie ACC has got your back.

If your claim is approved (they pay first and ask questions later, after all you need to get better) you'll be paid 80% of your income while your at home working on your TV tan! ACC was created for workplace injuries, but falling of the ladder home still gets covered.

ACC works by all employers paying into the scheme via levies based on your wage/salary, also the higher risk of injury the workplace is the higher the levy the employer has to pay.

The pay off for ACC is that no-one is allowed to be sued. The govt will drop the hammer on the company, you get looked after by ACC. This has caused the odd issue here and there but overall. Sweet!

Disclaimer - This may all be a complete bunch of ass, but it's pretty close to the way it is.

>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:
I think you may have missed my point a bit. =/
Of course if this somehow transforms Barack into the president I was hoping (and voted) for then awesome!
I understand that, to some, this marks an international "holding his feet to the fire".
My point is, more then likely, it won't.
In other words, awards praise and hope do not make the forces subduing real change flee.
If so:
Bush would have been impeached.
Cheney would be in jail.
We'd have begun reversing melting icecaps.
And we all would only have to work one job while driving tesla sportscars.
The second part was to acknowledge the absurdity and question the validity of awarding someone a PEACE prize when their actions obviously don't promote True PEACE.
Are those observations without merit? Am I deranged for contemplating something other then roses and sunshine?


There's a big difference between saying "It probably won't work but I can see why they tried" and saying "It's not a magic pill. It won't fix anything."

I would like to encourage those who push Obama towards peace, while your words seem to imply that we should all just give up. Or at the very least you seem to be claiming knowledge that giving him the Nobel Prize can't possibly help. Why should we not use all available resources to encourage him to make his actions suit his words?

I know that there are people pulling the president's strings, but I believe he has the ability to resist them and guide the world back to a state of peace if we keep putting pressure on him.

>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:
The point still stands that he's failed at all his promises ( gitmo, don't ask don't tell, stopping corporate crooks).
Just because people hope he'll stop sucking and be the best president he can be doesn't guarantee he will.
The Nobel Peace prize isn't some magical pill that makes foreign policy perfect and rainbow shoot out of your hands. It doesn't fix anything.
Let's not forget that the abuses at Guantanamo Bay have NOT stopped. He continues two pointless unending wars. And he endorsed the Israeli invasion which massacred 1500 Palestinians last January.
..And we should, by any reasonable measure, be proud he was awarded a - PEACE - prize???
Yay, hope! I'm sure the Iraqis with no power or phones, the Afghan refugees with no parents, and the blind burnt Palestinian children are filled with hope and international pride over this. -_-


What's with the 'FAILED' rhetoric the right is spewing lately? HOnestly, I cannot help but be surprised and sadly impressed at how well the ENTIRE CONSERVATIVE CONSTITUENCY OF THE UNITED STATES can start using the same phrasing and marketing speak on the exact same day. Seriously, have you guys all signed up for a newsletter or something?

FYI, he hasn't failed unless he is no longer president and his promises haven't materialized. The guy has been president for barely ten months. He has THREE YEARS to go. Conservatives have FAILED at keeping the trust of the American people, and they have FAILED at keeping the country on the right track, they have FAILED to end abortion despite six years having majorities in all three branches of government, in fact, conservatives have FAILED at everything they've tried.

Now I realize that last sentence may be factually incorrect, and I invite any conservative talking heads to show me any major point that conservatives have succeeded on in the last ten years.

>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:
Just because people hope he'll stop sucking and be the best president he can be doesn't guarantee he will.
The Nobel Peace prize isn't some magical pill that makes foreign policy perfect and rainbow shoot out of your hands. It doesn't fix anything.

>> ^EndAll:
It's damaging to the peace prize as an institutional device and a foolish decision by the Nobel committee that I was surprised to see them make.


It's amazing to me when intelligent people can miss a point so completely.

The awarding of the Nobel Peace prize is like a slap in his face. It says, "We've heard all the pretty words, Mr. President, and they were inspiring. Now are you going to follow through on those words?"

He doesn't pass laws, but he sets the tone and direction of what is probably still the most powerful country on the planet. As such, he is perhaps the single most powerful person in the world. If you had the ability to give him a shove and remind him of everything he has said about prioritizing peace in the past few years, wouldn't you do it?

If this award helps to re-commit our president to the pursuit of peace, then will you still have such disdain for their award decision?

The point still stands that he's failed at all his promises ( gitmo, don't ask don't tell, stopping corporate crooks).

Just because people hope he'll stop sucking and be the best president he can be doesn't guarantee he will.
The Nobel Peace prize isn't some magical pill that makes foreign policy perfect and rainbows shoot out of your hands. It doesn't fix anything.

Let's not forget that the abuses at Guantanamo Bay have NOT stopped. He continues two pointless unending wars. And he endorsed the Israeli invasion which massacred 1500 Palestinians last January.

..And we should, by any reasonable measure, be proud he was awarded a - PEACE - prize???

Yay, hope! I'm sure the Iraqis with no power or phones, the Afghan refugees with no parents, and the blind burnt Palestinian children are filled with hope and international pride over this. -_-


written by MaxWilder

It's amazing to me when intelligent people can miss a point so completely.

If this award helps to re-commit our president to the pursuit of peace, then will you still have such disdain for their award decision?


I think you may have missed my point a bit. =/

Of course if this somehow transforms Barack into the president I was hoping (and voted) for then awesome!
I understand that, to some, this marks an international "holding his feet to the fire".

My point is, more then likely, it won't.
In other words, awards praise and hope do not make the forces subduing real change flee.
If so:
Bush would have been impeached.
Cheney would be in jail.
We'd have begun reversing melting icecaps.
And we all would only have to work one job while driving tesla sportscars.

The second part was to acknowledge the absurdity and question the validity of awarding someone a PEACE prize when their actions obviously don't promote True PEACE.

Are those observations without merit? Am I deranged for contemplating something other then roses and sunshine?

>> ^bcglorf:

Thank you for your reply.

You made it clear that I may have made an error in my previous comment. I think I should clarify that what I meant by "personal transport" was light vehicles for personal uses, as is the minivan or motorcycle used to get to work, the store, not transportation in general, which I view as a different, though not unrelated, problem. Moving freight, airplanes and battleships requires different solutions (in my opinion) then the problem of getting your kids to the hockey game.

I think we agree that the transition from oil is an important issue. You seem to believe that better batteries (and electric engines) will solve every facet of every issue facing the end of oil, and that this will result in little or no social or political change or turmoil. While I deeply wish that the next century comes to be shaped after your expectations, I do not believe it will be so. I do not believe that batteries alone will solve the coming crisis. Even if energy storage technology was to rapidly become what we would need it to be, where would the energy come from if the source for more then half of our current use was to vanish? Replacing that energy by renewable means will require a huge amount of investment and several decades to implement.

What I see coming, is a myriad of interwoven problems of which the central spine is energy use. All of them are have energy use at the at the root of their problem. This is because oil has done more then just let people drive their cars around cheaply. Cities are no longer shaped after people's needs, but to suit the demands of the automobile. There has been a great deal of optimism in investing in electric cars to allow people to continue to access modern cities as they have been constructed.

"When people say that they want to go to the electric car, I love it! But remember, they say 'car' not 'truck.' A battery won't move an 18 wheeler. The only thing that will move an 18 wheeler is foreign oil, diesel and gasoline, and our domestic natural gas." -T. Boone Pickens (on The Daily Show)

However continuing to access these cities will get more difficult when costs of energy begin to come down from the bubble of cheapness that I and most of the people I know have grown up in.

"Consequently these (cities) will be places that nobody wants to be in. These will be places that are not worth caring about. We have about 38,000 places that are not worth caring about in the united states today, when we have enough of them we will have a nation that is not worth defending. -James Howard Kunstler on "The greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world."

Even if cities are reshaped for the new economy of energy, there is debate on what that will be. Some people believe that there will be a magic-pill cure, like super batteries that will allow life to continue as normal. This will not be the case.

"The central delusion that we're seeing right now is the idea that we can magically come up with a rescue remedy to continue running the interstate highway system and all the other accessories and furnishings of the happy motoring system. I happen to think that we're going to be very disappointed about that. In fact there are a lot of intelligent thigns we can do, but one of the least intelligent things we can expect is that we can continue happy motoring. You can demonstrate that you can run cars on hydrogen, cow shit and fried potato oil, but can run 230 million cars and trucks on it? Forget about it.

And then you get into political questions, like if driving becomes something only for the elite. Right now 4% of americans can't drive for one reason or another. What happens when that number becomes 13% or 27% of the people do you think that's going to be politically okay? It would create huge resentments and grievances against the people who can still do it." - James Howard Kunstler

But when I said that personal transportation is not the biggest issue, I meant it. People will be less concerned with their car or the "happy motoring system" if they are hungry.

"Food prices are rising and they're about to soar. There have been a lot of rising grain prices that have not been passed on to the consumer, they're about to be. High food prices always create political peril, as we've known since the French revolution at least.

The era of cheap food is over in this country, just as the era of cheap oil is over as well. (...) The old fix, ramping up production is not going to work this time, because cheap food depends on cheap energy, something we can no longer count on. Without reforming the American food system, it will be impossible to make progress on the issues of energy independence, climate change and the health care crisis because the way we feed ourselves is that the heart of all those three problems.

Let me explain. The food system, uses more fossil fuel and contributes more greenhouse gas to the atmosphere then any other industry. Between 17 and 34 percent. Meat production alone is 18 percent." -Michael Pollan, on The End of Cheap Food.

So when faced with the choice between fuel for their cars and fuel for their bodies, some will choose to fuel the car, leaving others to go hungry. And when people are hungry, they turn to first to the government for solutions. Governments know that they will need to bring resources to appease a population and avoid that political peril they have known about since the French Revolution. Remember that wars are always about resources.

"How curious, that the First World War is never taught in our schools as an invasion of Iraq. (...A reaction to) the Berlin-Bagdad railway, which commenced construction in the years leading up to the first world war," with the goal of bringing oil from Iraq to Germany. (-Robert Newman, A History of Oil)

"Oil is what drives the military machine of every country. It provides the fuel for aircraft, the ships the tanks for the trucks. The control of oil is indespensible. When you run out if your army stops." -Chalmers Johnson, Why we fight.

Oil is more then just a transportation issue. Riding the bus won't help much. The bus runs on gasoline, just like your car.

So what is your view then of how to handle the current situation? Immediate withdrawal? Would all the lives lost in un-checked sectarian violence and the creation of a new theocracy be excusable because now the horrible Americans are gone? Arguements labeling converatives aside, since I've found that not all liberals or conservatives really agree on this, what really is your view on how this can be remedied? I personally see it like this. We have already entered the country and destabilized the place. Sectarian violence that was kept mostly bottled up by a brutal regime is now spilling out. Not only are we now fighting local terrorist cells, but people from neighboring regions as well. Iraq is now the place to be if you want to take a shot at America. Leaving immediately will stop the US military from being directly involved any further in causing casualties, but what will happen to their newly forming government? I think, given the current circumstances, another like Saddam or Pol Pot taking the reins is highly likely. I don't really care if they decide on keeping a democracy modeled after ours or not, just as long as they don't get another guy that's going to harbor and fund the people that like to convince others to detonate themselves for Allah. I've seen the current state of their army first hand and they sure as hell will get rolled over by a determined extremist force bent on taking over. I think that there are merits to leaving, but there are also consequences. Just as there are merits to staying as well as consequences. There will be death either way. There is no magical pill that cures all the ills set in motion. There are no pleasant solutions in war. I'm interested in hearing peoples opinions on this. One thing I want to clear up though. I'm not defending the initial decision to go to war or even the way it's currently being handled, so don't bother with complaining about Bush and all that tired nonsense. I couldn't care less about the spineless twit. I do, however, support staying in some capacity until they are capable of defending their own borders and stopping internal conflict.