There are other causes of death out there than what a simple visit to an ER can cure.

Yes - which is precisely why it is propoganda for Mr. Doofus to say they 'died of not having coverage' or to imply anything of the sort. All the people he's listing lived in the US - and had access to health care. To say they died for any reason except the simple vicissitudes of life is preposterious on its face. People die. It happens. He's trying to say "Pass Obamacare, and these deaths won't happen." Bull feathers.

How did you get to a point that when someone states the fact that people die due to lack of medical care

Because they didn't. His claim they 'died of lack of medical care' is a complete falsehood. It is leftist bilge that is being used to sucker the simple and stupid into giving government obsence amounts of money and power.

but when a company denies health coverage due to absurd preexisting conditions, they're considered model businessmen?

Let's not mince about it. Insurance tries to control costs. Human need is a bottomless, gaping maw that by definition cannot be filled no matter how generous and munificent the resource pool. Someone somewhere at some point has to say "No". There isn't an infinite pool of money, and medical care is not free (nor should it be). People need to be paid. Research needs to take place. Drugs need to be manufactured. Supplies have to be shipped. Facilities have to be built, maintained, and updated. It costs $$$$.

Government is right now in the process of slinging a huge lie that it will somehow be able to control these costs more efficiently than the private sector. It's total crap. They've never succeeded in this goal once with ANYTHING - especially not medical programs. Why should we believe they can now?

Social medicine costs are not proportionally less then private. Nor is coverage more generally widespread. Government run health care controls costs by denying services, lowering quality, not 'covering' standard tests, completely denying specialized tests, and on and on and on. SOcial medicine controls costs by denying and delaying care just as much (or more) than private coverage. At its very best, social medicine is a wash compared to private in terms of 'care'.

But it comes as an immense price in freedom, and accrued power to government. Such a path is historically fraught with peril. It isn't worth it. We're better off with freedom in a private system (however flawed) than with a public one. No doubts. No question. It's just a fact. Government can play a regulatory role and be helpful. But that's not what they want to do, so I'm not going to pretend. They're trying to become a provider. Blech.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'viscously, verbose, vioced, vedentta' to 'viscously, verbose, vioced, vedentta, voila, villain, vicissitudes' - edited by gwiz665

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is it vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose so let me simply add that it’s my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

Now replace that with all P's.

As usual, Krupo, you provide insightful comments. But,

"When have those ever not been sifted right to the top? It's like the new Family guy. I mean, hell. I think it was yesterday that there were THREE Robot chickens in the Top 15." <- Various topics/video genres have hot and cold spells. And as the Woohoo channel proprietor, I've seen many vids that lay sprawled out on the sidewalk with a bottle in their hand and a distinct lack of attention.

I think you missed mine and gunrock's point. It's not that some genres are sometimes hot and sometimes cold, but that when a particular genre is hot, should the obvious easy post be rewarded the same (or more) as a truly well crafted sift talk post, for instance. I would argue not, since the effort and ultimately the long term value to the community is not as great. Since there is obviously no way to control for the vicissitudes of the community, my argument is that non-video-posting activities should be rewarded, on average, in equal measure to original submissions.

some "costs" could be variable, depending on Sift activity: say, if the Sift is quiet on the front page, cost of a *-promote would drift down to a pre-set floor. If videos are being published fast and furious, up the cost, to discourage people from spending Siftars on a promote that'll just flush recently sifted vids off the front page.

That's just absolute genius. Unfortunately, you're talking about implementing an incredibly complex economic structure, which I'm pretty sure would take quite a large coding effort. I'm torn, because the benefit could be very large, but it's unknown.


The issue of cliques, timing, and anon posts is too tangled for me to separate (right now). I believe you are sincere, Krupo, when you say that you do not choose to view or skip a vid based on user name, but my own and several others anecdotal evidence suggests that many folks do. And short of server log data to the contrary, I won't be easily convinced otherwise. That being said, I realize it's just a natural side effect of a community site. Ultimately, Dag pointed out the most important reason why anonymity in the queue is bad (as much I as knee-jerk liked the idea) - catching drive-bys, spammers, and silly newb self-linkers is heavily dependent on the community, and that ability would be severely hampered (if not completely destroyed) by queue anonymity.

I also see one of every star category on the front page right now
I'm not convinced that necessarily indicates an equal distribution of views in the queue. Again, timing and many other factors are in play there.