So..... because 25 people died in the seventies, vaccines should not be mass produced and distributed by the government?

You must admit that as arguments go, this is pretty weak sauce, not to mention a fairly dull-witted position for a professional doctor to take. The problem is that he does not approach medical issues with the mind of a doctor, but rather with the mind of a partisan politician, conforming to a strict set of anti-government principals that are indifferent to the general well being of the public.

In reply to this comment by GeeSussFreeK:
That he doesn't oppose them, but being as they can cause harm potentially, they are best left to be negotiated by a doctor and the patient. The third party of the government isn't really needed as the side affects of certain medicines can endanger life and limb. And more over, just like pot and drugs, I should have a right over my body which includes what I don't want in it.

Personally, I'm all vaccinated, but a government crack down on putting stuff in me would be a pretty extreme thing. Though, maybe I missed your point entirely.

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
How so?

In reply to this comment by GeeSussFreeK:
This is also relivant

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
>> ^Crosswords:
>> ^BoneyD:
Who was the Republican? Ron Paul?

Ron Paul would never vote for government run/backed anything.

Not exactly true, but he would never of voted for this. Let us not forget he is Dr. Paul and not Esq. Paul, as a tried and true doctor, his words should carry a bit more weight than his lawyer and lobbyist counterparts.


If Ron Paul's opposition to vaccines is not enough to convince you that he is a quack, then nothing will.

That he doesn't oppose them, but being as they can cause harm potentially, they are best left to be negotiated by a doctor and the patient. The third party of the government isn't really needed as the side affects of certain medicines can endanger life and limb. And more over, just like pot and drugs, I should have a right over my body which includes what I don't want in it.

Personally, I'm all vaccinated, but a government crack down on putting stuff in me would be a pretty extreme thing. Though, maybe I missed your point entirely.

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
How so?

In reply to this comment by GeeSussFreeK:
This is also relivant

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
>> ^Crosswords:
>> ^BoneyD:
Who was the Republican? Ron Paul?

Ron Paul would never vote for government run/backed anything.

Not exactly true, but he would never of voted for this. Let us not forget he is Dr. Paul and not Esq. Paul, as a tried and true doctor, his words should carry a bit more weight than his lawyer and lobbyist counterparts.


If Ron Paul's opposition to vaccines is not enough to convince you that he is a quack, then nothing will.

How so?

In reply to this comment by GeeSussFreeK:
This is also relivant

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
>> ^Crosswords:
>> ^BoneyD:
Who was the Republican? Ron Paul?

Ron Paul would never vote for government run/backed anything.

Not exactly true, but he would never of voted for this. Let us not forget he is Dr. Paul and not Esq. Paul, as a tried and true doctor, his words should carry a bit more weight than his lawyer and lobbyist counterparts.


If Ron Paul's opposition to vaccines is not enough to convince you that he is a quack, then nothing will.

This is also relivant

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
>> ^Crosswords:
>> ^BoneyD:
Who was the Republican? Ron Paul?

Ron Paul would never vote for government run/backed anything.

Not exactly true, but he would never of voted for this. Let us not forget he is Dr. Paul and not Esq. Paul, as a tried and true doctor, his words should carry a bit more weight than his lawyer and lobbyist counterparts.


If Ron Paul's opposition to vaccines is not enough to convince you that he is a quack, then nothing will.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
>> ^Crosswords:
>> ^BoneyD:
Who was the Republican? Ron Paul?

Ron Paul would never vote for government run/backed anything.

Not exactly true, but he would never of voted for this. Let us not forget he is Dr. Paul and not Esq. Paul, as a tried and true doctor, his words should carry a bit more weight than his lawyer and lobbyist counterparts.

If Ron Paul's opposition to vaccines is not enough to convince you that he is a quack, then nothing will.


Interesting, his position seems pretty clear here. Vaccines good, force bad. Welcome to the new theocracy. Long live the violence of majority factions.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
>> ^Crosswords:
>> ^BoneyD:
Who was the Republican? Ron Paul?

Ron Paul would never vote for government run/backed anything.

Not exactly true, but he would never of voted for this. Let us not forget he is Dr. Paul and not Esq. Paul, as a tried and true doctor, his words should carry a bit more weight than his lawyer and lobbyist counterparts.


If Ron Paul's opposition to vaccines is not enough to convince you that he is a quack, then nothing will.

Ok Ok OK...(Lost power and having to start over for your job-losin' ass....

This should make you feel less like a time wasting dumb ass....

I worked at a Xmas store back in 87 for a friend of my mother's from the hippie days...seasonal-retail...On break one day OI bought a copy of the collected "Life In Hell" Series from Matt Groening...while reading it at work, I realized that Bongo and his co-workers, represented perfectly in my own experience, just how much my life was like their hell.

I quickly and enthusiastically xeroxed a copy of my favorite workplace escapade, labeled each character with co-worker's names, esp the boss, and proudly pinned it up for all to see the next day.(You see I closed, and the boss opened, and I thought her recovering alcoholics Excedrine-addicted crazy bitch-ass would have a sense of humor!!...

She greeted me the next day with a smile, a coffee and caffeine jag from the asprinz addiction, and a piece of paper in her hand she smiled and described as my last check, my ass at the door...(she could have called, I was fucking late anyhow)

I wrote Matt.

I sent him a copy of his doctored cartoon strip and an explanation attempting to evoke some sympathy as well as tickle him because I had had enough of that place anyway ...he replied with a postcard with a "You know what they say, work is hell." and a signature on the back, and a cool autographed in marker production print glossy of him next to a marina holding a duck with a cartoon bubble for the duck quacking, "Halp, Halp! HALP!"

This was the year the Simpsons first appeared on the Tracey Ullman Show-Still got that gear, baby.....On f'sale on Ebay..... Item# 90824655..?

Okay, but now suppose that instead of one giant machine, it's actually many smaller machines that do things like move people around, generate electricity, mow the lawn, etc. Instead of the empire cruising around in it killing huge bunches of people at once, they instead just sell the machines to people, and don't mention that using the machines results in a colorless, odorless gas being released that will gradually change the chemistry of the air over time, and change the climate. Eventually, with billions of the machines operating over the course of a century, scientists eventually discover what the empire's been doing, but now they're the richest people on the planet, and will ruthlessly use their money to discredit the environmentalists as quacks and fools pulling hoaxes for political gain...

It'd be so much easier to fight the empire if it was just one big machine that the empire directly controlled, and used to kill billions of people in big showy explosions.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'obama, president, duck, quack, medical, overhaul' to 'obama, president, duck, quack, medical, overhaul, whose duck' - edited by calvados

Your video, Obama speech interrupted by quacking duck ringtone., has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Winstonfield, the scope of the damage and need WAS known ahead of time. By now everyone knows of the Aug. 28th National Weather Service bulletin with its dramatic wording:

...DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED...

.HURRICANE KATRINA...A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED
STRENGTH...RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969.

MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER. AT
LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL
FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY
DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.

THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL.
PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD
FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE
BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME
WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.

HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A
FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.

Furthermore, Bush's emergency declaration did not include any of Louisiana's coastal parishes. The freaking coastal parishes. Jeez, you'd think they want to include those when a freaking hurricane strikes. FEMA chief Michael Brown ("Brownie") lied in his testimony to Congress when he said that Governor Blanco never included those parishes in her request for aid, when she had in fact requested aid for "all the southeastern parishes including the New Orleans Metropolitan area and the mid state Interstate I-49 corridor and northern parishes along the I-20 corridor that are accepting [evacuated citizens]." She made the request on Aug. 27th, two days before Katrina hit.

You yourself state that "No other FEMA effort in a long time needed even a tenth of what New Orleans needed." In other words, Katrina was a crisis of epic proportions. Yet you also claim that disaster relief is primarily a state and local function. So if Katrina was a monster even for the Feds, then how do you expect state and local resources to be able to respond to this epic disaster? That is why we have the federal response, because local resources are easily overwhelmed in crises such as these. And that's how FEMA under Bush failed, because of the shitty response by a shitty boss appointed by a shitty President.

Yes, there is blame to go around, but because of the magnitude of the event it was primarily the Feds' job to take care of things, and they didn't. You don't get to rewrite history like Michael Brown tried to do in order to protect the legacy of your neocon quack of a President.

Quack.

Now that you're a RUBE, is it all that it's QUACKED up to be?

(...)it's about accountability. No one in government gets their job without either being elected, or being employed by someone who was elected.

How can anything be less accountable than govt? Govt is a monopoly, businesses usually have competitors. Businesses have to earn money, govt gets money through taxes. I think your logic could work if govt were small and transparent (I'd like that to be the case). When it's formed by so many agencies and departments, operates with such volume of convoluted laws and regulations, employs so much resources and so many people, this accountability you're talking about just isn't there or is extremely sluggish, I doubt anyone truly understands what happens in every level of our govt, and there's no way any majority of voters can keep track of all this. Its one of the reasons govt expands: So it can get away with abuse through obfuscation.

If you're desillusioned about banks, I hear ya. Banks would compete a lot more for your money if govt wasn't into banking, tieing up the market with so many regulations and stifling any incentive to compete. People and banks in general would be a lot more responsible with their money, because there wouldn't be any morally backwards federal institutions promising to bail them out, they wouldn't automatically trust any bank or investor just because a govt agency says they're OK.

I just don't think it's possible to have a market that is both unregulated and beneficent to ordinary people.

I don't think it's possible to have a market that is both highly regulated and productive.

Who are these ordinary people you think the market wouldn't benefit? People are generally required to be more productive in a free society than in a govt regulated society, so I guess you're talking about mostly unproductive and unadaptive people? Why should they be benefitted at all, specially at the expense of others?

With freedom comes responsability. Our society grew accustomed to being irresponsible because of govt slowly taking away many of our freedoms. Besides, in a growing and productive economy, the general improvement in quality of life leaves whoever is left behind a lot better off than most people in a stifled underdeveloped economy.

I also don't think we can count on charities to take on the problems of the poor adequately (...) People are too selfish to really worry about it.

Yikes, to me that phrase sums up a whole lot of misunderstanding about the nature of charity. What is the alternative, let the govt take care of poor people? By definition, that's not charity, I mean, you're not doing charity if you *must* pay taxes. If you're obligated to provide charity, then it's a duty, like as if you owe money to poor people, they can *demand* money from you. So, morally, you're either responsible for their condition or for pulling them out of it. Doesn't that feel backwards to you? Charity only works if it's voluntary.

If you think society is obligated to help poor or unproductive people, then you have a twisted understanding of how a society should work. Talk about moral hazard.

I'll be writing off Keynesians as being quacks if we wind up in a situation with high unemployment and high inflation, unless we have some sort of supply shock (e.g. OPEC decides to stop selling oil to us), or we wind up scaring the world into dumping the dollar before we recover.

How nice of you, cutting the keynesians so much slack. Deep down I think you know the world will dump the dollar before we recover because keynesians miscalculated how screwed up our economy is and how screwing up the dollar won't do us any good whatsoever. To me, keynesians are quacks already because they didn't see this blatantly obvious result to their policies. Reality will just confirm this when it happens.

It's not that government gets a free pass, it's that a corrupt government happens because of businesses influence.

I TOTALLY AGREE ABOUT GOVT BEING CORRUPT DUE TO BUSINESS INFLUENCE, YAY! If govt were smaller and didn't have any stake in the economy, businesses wouldn't bother entangling themselves with govt in the first place.

It's like back in the day, when the state and the church were in bed together, all sort of things would go haywire, society would lose freedoms of expression, religion, sexuality, the state would legislate morality and persecute dissidents, etc. Today we all know better: State and church should be separated. Society has yet to realize that the *state* and the *economy* should be separated for very similar reasons as well.

I guess what I don't understand is why you would trust government with nuclear missiles, police, courts, etc. but not control of currency.

When you talk about currency, you're actually talking about govt establishing a monopoly over the currency, which is completely unnecessary and detrimental to society, that shouldn't happen to begin with. It's like you asking me why I don't trust govt dictating who I can or cannot marry.

I cringe at the entire conservative "we must make policy about maximizing business growth, period" philosophy of governance. Mine is "we must make business growth beneficial to society".

So, society is a helpless victim to businesses, and you want govt to step in and help out. Even though govts, throughout history, with tyranny, warfare and welfare, have caused much more damage in terms of property and lives than any private business ever could.

Are you sure you know who the bad guys really are?

>> ^gtjwkq:
Banks are given money voluntarily , that means they'll tend to receive less money if they're careless with it (reputation?). You might ask, "So why would banks be careless with money given by govt? Don't they know that govt might not give them more money if they're careless too?".

It's not really about the usual libertarian focus on voluntary vs. authority, it's about accountability. No one in government gets their job without either being elected, or being employed by someone who was elected. If tax money is misspent, you can elect someone else.

But I also think there are plenty of people who excel at their profession because they like to be good at what they do, not because they think their ass is on the line if they screw up.

I also question whether people who're primarily motivated by bonuses given for high short-term investment returns have the right kind of incentives.

But I have no control over that at a bank.

Well, just look at the bailouts. Govt gave these banks billions even after they lost copious amounts of it. Either these banks are evil geniuses or, at the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I'd say there is some collusion between govt and big investment banks, wouldn't you agree?

I'd say a little of both. I doubt the big asset bubble was a plan that the banks and government colluded on. I think the banks screwed up, and I think the strength of their lobbying arm made sure government gave them money with no strings attached, rather than following a more progressive path (temporarily nationalizing them FDIC-style, or folding the same volume of money into the social safety net and letting them fail, or just giving the money to single-home homeowners to bail them out, and by proxy bail out their banks).

I'm in a wait-and-see mode with the bank bailout. Government spent it all to get stock in these banks, which it will later sell. It may wind up being that the way they did it will actually bring more money in than it spent initially, like what happened with the S&L crisis.

Profit is not something strictly selfish (well, actually it is, but profit is usually obtained by providing services to others, which is where the "selfless" magic behind profit lies), a growing economy eventually allows itself to have longer and longer-term goals while still being bound by a profit-seeking mentality, even if we're talking highways or space exploration.

I understand the free market theory, and I actually see that kind of virtuous business cycle as being a goal I share. I just don't think it's possible to have a market that is both unregulated and beneficent to ordinary people.

I also don't think we can count on charities to take on the problems of the poor adequately, especially not in economic downturns that's tightening everyone's budget. People are too selfish to really worry about it.

You said, regarding the Fed's expansion of the money supply:

Austrians say it will cause hyperinflation, keynesians will either say "yay, it worked!" or "hyperinflation only happened because the Fed didn't expand the money supply enough and didn't save enough failing banks".

Actually, unless something drastic changes, Keynesians will say "holy shit, how did we get inflation?"

I'll be writing off Keynesians as being quacks if we wind up in a situation with high unemployment and high inflation, unless we have some sort of supply shock (e.g. OPEC decides to stop selling oil to us), or we wind up scaring the world into dumping the dollar before we recover.

Supply shocks aren't really predictable, but there are ways to measure the international community's confidence in the dollar, and there aren't any warning signs at this point.

If employment comes roaring back, and GDP reverts to trend, then we'll be calling for the Fed to contract the money supply to stave off inflation.

Inflation produces easy money for the govt at the expense of everyone's wealth denominated in that currency. It's the ultimate stealth taxing tool: The govt/Fed just prints money and we all get poorer, and they get to give that money to those who are politically connected.
It's like an upside-down redistribution of wealth, everyone gets slowly robbed (the poor getting hit the hardest for having less resources) and usually the ones at the top get the most benefit first, specially if they're in bed with govt.

I agree with this assessment of the issues that can and do crop up. I disagree that the Fed intentionally causes periods of high inflation in order to explicitly to benefit their well-connected friends.

Govt, as always, gets a free pass and points its finger at capitalism, business owners, the market, banks, foreign lenders, ANYTHING and people will buy it if they're keynesian, statist or stupid enough.

Slurs against people like myself aside, I think you misunderstand our position. It's not that government gets a free pass, it's that a corrupt government happens because of businesses influence.

Peter Schiff has used the analogy that the crisis was like a teacher leaving kids alone with a bunch of candy, and then later comes back and finds the kids have made themselves sick. I agree with the analogy -- business is like a bunch of misbehaved kids, and the government, like the teacher, is supposed to be the responsible adult who keeps them in check. The cure isn't to fire the teacher and let the kids have the keys to the candy supply, the cure is to fire the teacher and hire a responsible one.

I guess what I don't understand is why you would trust government with nuclear missiles, police, courts, etc. but not control of currency.

I want to end fraud, corruption, and abuse, but I don't think big business is somehow immune to it, and I don't see how telling government to generally take a hike would cure it.

I think it's a symptom of human nature itself that people are always going to be seeking advantage, fair or not, by any means necessary. I want to empower altruistic people who represent the people's interests, and aren't afraid to push back against corporate interests to make sure people are treated fairly.

I cringe at the entire conservative "we must make policy about maximizing business growth, period" philosophy of governance. Mine is "we must make business growth beneficial to society".