News ticker stories (stolen from Reddit)...

- Black & Decker named official torture device of the 'hostel' series.
- New fertility drug promises to help couples realize dream of having TLC show.
- Media watchdogs criticize Calvin Klein's 'Penetration' cologne.
- Report: Wikipedia ushering in golden age of Holocaust revisionism.
- Haagen-Dazs released new line of ice creams for barren women.
- White house reluctantly accepts Collect Call from Indonesia.
- IRS rebrands itself 'The S' to appeal to younger demographic.
- Happening Now: Cottage cheese ruined by mental image of grandmother eating cottage cheese.
- Jonathan Taylor Thomas re-released from Disney Vault.

One of the most important videos to watch if you're an American.

i'm pretty sure cops are bullies in every country
important for everyone to see, just as 1984 is to read



>> ^Truckchase:
DO NOT STAND BY when you see this sort of thing happen. All those bystanders are just as guilty as the cops.
Edit: in response to the conversation here; there is no legal way to re-mediate this situation. This is corruption from the top down. At some point these instances of force must be met with overwhelming force by ordinary citizens. If we don't stand for our rights now they'll only continue to erode.

and this would accomplish what exactly?
it would give them a perfect justification for mass manslaughter if it came to that
only way to beat them is by information, like what this video is
make it known in the public sphere and get independent watchdog organisations going
crush the myth that you're expected to fear and respect what is supposed to be YOUR servant and protector

Generally the more that people get healthcare, the longer they live. The longer they live, the longer and more productive members of society they are.

As far as human health care is concerned, there are only two 'blocks' of people identified (A) by how much they produce and (B) by how much health care they consume. Block 1 is age 17 to 64 which produces the bulk of a nation's GDP, and consumes (on average) low amounts of health care. Block 2 is the very young and the very old which produce low amounts of wealth, and consume the bulk of the nation's health care. The claim 'the longer you live the more productive you are' is untrue. As far as a socialized medical system is concerned, it would be ideal if human beings died the second they stopped working so they wouldn't be freeloading off the system.

Generally when someone goes to the hospital when they don't have healthcare, it's because it's do or die.

In a word - baloney. Here's a story about a guy that calls the ambulance rides for every little tiny thing.
http://www.wgrz.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=69029&catid=37&provider=email
And his story is NOT all that unusual. Sure, he takes it to the furthest extreme perhaps, but everyone runs to the doctor for every little cough, ache, or twinge. That includes poor people with no insurance who end up getting free doctor visits on the tab of the honest paying citizens who play by the rules. When you have no insurance you don't just 'not go' to the doctor in the U.S. You go anyway and it's free. Sure, the office tries to get you to pay. But if you can't pay they just make it up off the insurance compaines.

All I'm saying is that there's not any real evidence that a social system is going to result in one red cent of savings. It is also NOT a given that it will result in 'more people being covered'. The devil is in the details, and Obama's plan is being rushed through pell-mell without due dilligence by the media, the Congress, or anyone else who should be putting the brakes on this mess. The 'stimulus' plan was rammed through with no watchdog, and look what a fiasco that has been. Government should never be allowed to do things in haste (ahem Iraq War ahem!). When goverment acts hastily, the people should stand up and shout NO. Haste is the enemy of sensible policy.

who are these people who want a public option to assuage their guilt

Quite simply, anyone who wants to vote for a health care plan with no testing, no fact checking, no peer reviews of efficacy, and no attempt to apply the rigor of science, analysis, and cost effectiveness - AND IT MUST BE DONE THIS YEAR OMG OH NOS! Though I will have to ammend my statement that there is only ONE kind of person who'd do this... There are really TWO kinds of people... 1. Is the guilt-addled neoliberal (like you perhaps?) who votes for any socialist system that comes down the pike. 2. Is the brain-dead Obama-zombie neoliberal lemming who just dutifully follows the wash of "Me too!" propoganda that gives him his marching orders. Obama sent out his orders this week to his army of lemmings. Guess the community agitator didn't like it very much when the community was agitating against HIS plans...

>> ^rasch187:
and thanks for supplying us with some proof of that btw


I don't care enough to google it to win some petty disagreement. If you care enough, go forth and google to your heart's content and you will find some statistics on the matter. Whether they're true or not; I don't know.

Also, I don't think giving to charities is only incentivized by government tax breaks. In fact, most of the money I give isn't even tax deductible. I think the ACLU is a decent watchdog group and I give monthly to them, and not one cent of that is tax deductible because they consider it a political organization even if it is not for profit.

>> ^NetRunner:
What is government doing to keep the concept of corporations in existence that private citizens wouldn't be able to do through contract?

>> ^blankfist:
Corporate power depends greatly on the intervention of government - how often do you see private business (read: small business) receive subsidies and bailouts? Ever heard of Corporate welfare? Yes? Ever heard of private business or free market welfare? No? Hmm.
How about protectionist tariffs? Heard of those? Grants of monopoly privilege? Seizing of private property for corporate use via eminent domain (as in Kelo v. New London)? Shall I go on or can we stop there?

Progressives don't like it when big business get our tax dollars. Usually we argue for things like small business subsidies, regular welfare (ya know, for poor people), anti-trust legislation and enforcement, etc.

We also don't like corporate tax loopholes, capital gains tax cuts, or attempts to eliminate or reduce estate taxes, or the porcine industry-specific tax cut.

We don't like when people are putting their hands in the cookie jar who shouldn't be, we just don't think getting rid of the jar will help fix the problem.

Me: To mildly rephrase dft's question, how does libertarianism defend against private power and influence taking advantage of people's lack of information or knowledge to their own detriment?
blankfist: Hardly "mildly" rephrased. Corporations and private are hugely different. That aside, your point is very valid. Let me ask you this? What has stopped this from happening now? Government is the power in that scenario, and they steal our money and use it to fund war and pay out no bid contracts to very powerful corporations. Your petty watchdog programs aren't working. Government is the power and influence.

I fail to see how detaching power and influence from the constraint of law, or the accountability of a ballot box improves anything.

If you have a suggestion on how to make sure that the people our Constitution and our democracy empower to make decisions regarding when to go to war will always use it wisely, I'm all ears.

And government certainly takes advantage of those who are less educated. Have you read any of the tax codes? Hey, ever heard this one: "Ignorance of the law is no excuse!" Would you dare agree with me that it's impossible to know all the laws, so therefore it's inevitable for you to be ignorant of them? Your government is "taking advantage of people's lack of information of knowledge" and doing so with our money.
Any questions?

Yes, are you nuts?

The tax code is too complex, but the real issue with it is not the complexity, it's the fact that most of that complexity is designed to benefit people with multiple homes, businesses, yachts, and complex investment portfolios.

The free market provides me with tax preparation services, though most of them tell me "you don't own enough for us to do much for you" (though they say it very differently).

Ignorance of the law is no excuse, but when's the last time you faced a legal penalty for anything bigger than a traffic violation? For that matter, have you ever gotten a traffic violation for something you didn't know was illegal?

To turn that around, do you understand your credit card agreement? Your cellphone contract? Have you ever received a bill that included a fee you were charged for doing something you didn't realize they could charge a fee for? Should they be able to sell the information you provided them without your consent?

Why isn't the free market stopping that stuff from happening already?

>> ^NetRunner:
What is government doing to keep the concept of corporations in existence that private citizens wouldn't be able to do through contract?

Corporate power depends greatly on the intervention of government - how often do you see private business (read: small business) receive subsidies and bailouts? Ever heard of Corporate welfare? Yes? Ever heard of private business or free market welfare? No? Hmm.

How about protectionist tariffs? Heard of those? Grants of monopoly privilege? Seizing of private property for corporate use via eminent domain (as in Kelo v. New London)? Shall I go on or can we stop there?



To mildly rephrase dft's question, how does libertarianism defend against private power and influence taking advantage of people's lack of information or knowledge to their own detriment?

Hardly "mildly" rephrased. Corporations and private are hugely different. That aside, your point is very valid. Let me ask you this? What has stopped this from happening now? Government is the power in that scenario, and they steal our money and use it to fund war and pay out no bid contracts to very powerful corporations. Your petty watchdog programs aren't working. Government is the power and influence.

And government certainly takes advantage of those who are less educated. Have you read any of the tax codes? Hey, ever heard this one: "Ignorance of the law is no excuse!" Would you dare agree with me that it's impossible to know all the laws, so therefore it's inevitable for you to be ignorant of them? Your government is "taking advantage of people's lack of information of knowledge" and doing so with our money.

Any questions?

>> ^blankfist:
Being that corporations are created by government, that would mean they shouldn't exist in the first place.

What is government doing to keep the concept of corporations in existence that private citizens wouldn't be able to do through contract?

By wanting to increase the size of government to play watchdog for those who are using that very mechanism in the first place to pass legislation in their favor, you're only fanning the flames, right?

I think you misunderstand the progressive position. It's not about "growing government to play watchdog", it's about the people pushing for laws to set limits on what business can do, in order to protect people from schemes they may not be able to detect or understand, and then have the government use its law enforcement powers to monitor that in ways private citizens would not (or should not) be able to.

To mildly rephrase dft's question, how does libertarianism defend against private power and influence taking advantage of people's lack of information or knowledge to their own detriment?

If that's what they think will make them so much profit that they are willing to bribe government to let them do it, why do you think getting government out of the equation will lead to superior outcomes for regular people?

^First, Libertarians do not believe government should be involved in private contracts except to enforce them in court should a civil dispute arise. The short of it: government shouldn't be in the business of private business.

Being that corporations are created by government, that would mean they shouldn't exist in the first place*. Corporations use government to get favorable legislation passed that makes small business difficult to compete with them.

By wanting to increase the size of government to play watchdog for those who are using that very mechanism in the first place to pass legislation in their favor, you're only fanning the flames, right?


* to circumvent an unnecessary argument, I understand corporations are well established in this country and they cannot be done away with overnight. It's the political and philosophical direction that is important here, because it focuses on change instead of band-aiding a bad system.

No one's denying the man is charismatic, his hypno-speeches could make dogshit taste good.

Unfortunately what he stands for is fraudulent in its effectiveness and workability.

The Constitution was designed to address such cults of personality, but it doesn't work if it's not obeyed.

If America had a watchdog media instead of a liberal lapdog he'd never have been President.

The former media watchdogs are now Obama's lapdogs, except "biased" Fox.

The real anti-freedom extremist is in the White House, his radical angry side hidden behind a teleprompter and clever words.

It's always fascinating to read well-written conservative propaganda.

Lately, with left-wing ideals on the rise here, they seem to have renewed their fight with the democratic process itself, since it isn't working out the way they want it to.

I especially like how they try to make it seem like democracy and rule of law are somehow mutually exclusive.

Notice that at no point does this author address the question "how do we decide what the law should be?"

Democracy has its flaws, but this is really just laying out a belief system to justify inflicting a right-wing policy set on an increasingly left-leaning populace. They don't like that people seem to have learned that these petty right-wing wannabe emperors really have no clothes.

>> ^gwiz665:
Anyway, democracy is a good idea if people know what they are voting about, other wise it's not. I would favor a sort of technocracy, where people who pass certain "exams" or tests that qualify them for any given position in a state. And where people didn't have a vote per person just because they are a person, but where they have to qualify to be able to vote on something, so their vote is informed, not just gut instinct.


I like this idea, but I'm not sure how you prevent it from devolving into a theocratic ruling elite that only serves its own interests.

That may sound a bit like an overreaction, but as a historical note, even having mere literacy tests as a prerequisite for voting has been ruled unconstitutional here. The finding was that it discriminates against the poor, or immigrants, or really, former slaves who might still want to vote for something like more public school funding, or for civil rights laws.

I don't see what's so terrible about politics; it gets a bad rap in my opinion. A lot of my issue with the way it works now is the inequality in the volume of message, and a short-term shortage of independent watchdogs who try to keep the players honest.

I think it's necessary that we keep a feedback loop between people and policy. Breaking that loop, or deciding that certain people's vote shouldn't count, or shouldn't count as much as others seems like a very dangerously bad idea.

the more i watch rick sanchez,the more i like him.maybe because he calls people out on their BS,which Bill-O needs a huge dose of,megalomania is not conducive to objective reporting.then again,Bill-O is not a reporter,just a popular commentator.
media matters is a great watchdog site to check ALL of Bill-O's lies and obfuscations out.
http://mediamatters.org/

Rachel Maddow is the first journalist i've watched in a while that brings to mind "watchdog" when it comes to journalism. QM can argue that Ann Coultier writes fact based books til he's blue in the face but cant argue against these points made with the videos to back them up.

Argue against this if you dare Quantumushroom, the Bush administration as a whole has been dishonest and vicariously manipulative about the reasons we got involved in the Iraq war.

I wonder what the hell is going through these people's minds sometimes.

Seriously, what the Daily show has been attacking as of late is softball journalism. The comedians, by making social commentary and making good points along the way, have in essence become the watchdog for the media since the media has failed so miserably in the past few years.

>> ^StukaFox:
Welcome to ALL your food if the Republicans had their way with the FDA. Remember: Industry is the best police of industry!


Although I'm Libertarian and support a modest FDA, arguing about their role right now is like complaining about a leaky roof during a flood. So with that out of the way, I'll point out that the consumer's best friend is always going to be a solid court system. Even the most staunch capitalists aren't in favor of anarchy, protecting rights, upholding contracts, and offering recourse is essential, and I'm not sure China has that. Just recently, some guy here sold peanuts he knew were contaminated, and the socialists came out of the woodwork to claim that this is what capitalists are incentivized to do, make profits. Meanwhile, the company is about to be sued into oblivion, it has already filed for bankruptcy. If he was a good capitalist, he would have done what was profitable, and selling poisoned peanuts was the least profitable decision he could have made under this system. No system, it turns out, can prevent people from being idiots.

Still, the socialists argue that there is a way to protect everyone from idiots: by charging each family $1,000 a day to appoint one government inspector per peanut, and then $1,000 more to hire watchdogs for those inspectors, and so forth. Similarly, a socialist would probably approve regulation that locked us all in our basements to reduce the murder and fraud rate to 0. That's just an extreme example of how socialists fundamentally cannot understand that saving a few human lives simply is not worth incurring a greater, but non-fatal aggregate cost. In this case: the freedom to interact with other human beings. In the food case, the cost of the food itself. How much money should we take from people to ensure the safety of their food.

I think my biggest criticism of the FDA is that any agency which purports to protect you with its powers is subject to corruption. The FDA colludes with businesses all the time to look the other way on things, sort of like how impotent the SEC became (and to what degree were people less skeptical thinking that they were protecting them?). They allow things that have been banned in other countries for years: water fluoridation, bovine growth hormones in milk, nitrates in meat.... they were paid off in the 80s by artificial sweetener interests (billion dollar industry) to ban stevia, a natural patent-less sugar substitute that is far safer. And maybe the most dangerous of all, they have the power to ban promising new drugs they deem "unsafe" or "experimintal." Doesn't matter if you're dying of cancer and have nothing to lose, they won't let you choose.