First of all, why would I read your comments in a different thread? I'm not part of that discussion and did not write a reply over there. You holding me responsible for knowing what is written over there only makes you look even more foolish.

Even more so, how does the reduction of regulation not increase crony capitalism?

I'm still waiting for you to provide even the slightest bit of support for that assertion. I'm not holding my breath on that to happen, though.

And who else has the power to forcibly prevent states from regulating commerce as they see fit? You are directly advocating for revocation of the states' rights to regulate commerce, but who can revoke that right and maintain it in that condition?

No, you did not. I would call you a liar but you don't know what that means so the term wouldn't be useful here.

And how is that a regulation on the insurance industry? It doesn't dictate what kind of insurance must be provided. For that matter, it doesn't dictate that the employer actually pay anything towards it, only that they offer it (and up until now, only to full-time employees at that).

That is probably the strongest argument you have made in a discussion with me since I started commenting on slashdot. However, it still is a weak argument in that employees were still free to seek out insurance by other mechanisms; they were not required to use the insurance available through their employer.

Nice boogey-man, there. If portability was actually a concern then you should celebrate the health insurance industry bailout act of 2010, as it allows people to take the plan they had with one employer and keep it when they go to another employer.

... as above.

This isn't about timing,, it's about chronology. You replied to a reply to a reply (or perhaps even deeper). As much as I do appreciate you taking time off from demonstrating your superiority complex to other people waiting at the same unemployment office to come here to demonstrate for all of us how skilled you really are at shoving your foot into your mouth, it's only amusing to watch you do that so many times in a day.

I didn't say you couldn't, or shouldn't. I will, however, again suggest that you may want to start by reading the thread from its beginning instead of jumping it at the first reply from me that makes your blood boil

Well, what you have just done is a pretty good example. I wish it was an upper limit, however you have shown before that you can go a lot further.

I am interested to know why you don't seem to stalk other people from your perma-hate list to the degree that you stalk me. Not that I expect a meaningful response from you on that one, but one can't help but wonder...

Too bad it didn't support your claim at all. I like how you have already stopped quoting your earlier claim, is this in hopes that you can get readers to forget it?

I'm sorry that the English language is so vexing to you. Too bad you don't know any good writers personally.

I was referring as much to your assertion of what you thought he meant as I was to how you love to try to insert words into my mouth after I make you look silly. I will say though, I am impressed it took you this long to falsely accuse me of lying. You almost accidentally came across as mature and civilized (in spite of being non factual).

See above.

I'm sorry that you can't be bothered to look into the facts of the situation. You should start by paying attention to the congress people who are owned by insurance companies; you will find that the insurance industry effectively owns the majority of members of congress from both parties, and has for some time. How exactly can you claim that the insurance industry was willing to sit by idly and be driven to the bring by regulations when they have a wider distribution of power than pretty much any other industry imaginable?

Wait a minute. First of all, I thought you liked states being able to regulate commerce within their own borders? Why are you suddenly against it and looking to allow the federal government to dictate it instead? Right now, the regulations of which plans can be sold where are strictly at the state level.

In fact, you are one of many people who have bitched repeatedly about "federal regulation" on health care, without providing even a single example of a federal regulation that influenced anything before the giant handout to the insurance industry that was signed into law by President Obama in 2010.

I'm sorry that you have such a terrible grasp on economics. Perhaps you didn't take that in junior college either?

What a surprise, you come in late to the discussion, insert your opinion, and provide no support for it other than claiming it to be equivalent to the word of god because you typed it out on your own keyboard.

It had occurred to me that it had been a while since you came around here to shove your foot into your mouth. I thought maybe your knee was getting sore or something, welcome back.

I expect that in the process of earning your "degree in journalism" you didn't take much (if any) math or logic, as you have shown yourself over the years to be a terrible scholar of both. I was merely setting up an upper limit for his request. Interestingly enough, if you had waited a little longer before inserting your response, you may have been able to make yourself look a little less foolish. Being as you have made a reputation for yourself of shouting out false assumptions about other peoples' beliefs - and then refusing to admit to ever being wrong - that wait probably would have killed you.

I don't necessarily see that as weird. In fact I would even dare to suggest that you and I might well agree that politicians rarely have a very good understanding of their constituents as they are generally more concerned about the requests of their owners. I do see a possible next step from that being a state where the population as a whole votes on legislation. I don't know if that is a state that you would aspire for or not, but I think it could be an interesting experiment (and a nightmare state for some conservatives). Honestly I'm not sure why "small government" types are opposed to such a setup as it could in theory allow congress to be shut down entirely if all the voting was done on a national scale.

That said, if the country was broken into independent city-states with no federal government at all any more then the same thing would be possible with a slightly different way to the same feat.

I suspect you are being a bit sarcastic there but I am being serious. The freedom to travel that we have within our borders for many years has only recently been enjoyed by those in Europe. If we split the country into independent states we could find new restrictions on travel and trade that had not been allowed before. Similarly states that have specific ideas on immigration could prevent people from moving in from other states.

The political videos that people like to link to from here often praise the past, and demonize the present. While they leave me wishing I could have my time back I would love to know if the comptuers could recognize time as moving forward.

(That said, as they are mostly political speeches with no significant moving object the identification could be done by speech pattern recognition)

Aren't the first and last working in opposite direction? US congress includes 535 voting members (senators and representatives total). If you had 535 voting members for every 100,000 people you have basically each person representing on average 186 people.

If you want to abolish the federal government entirely and dissolve the US into some large number of new independent city-states with each having a population of no more than 100,000 people (hence some small neighborhoods in large cities would become their own city-states) then that is an argument you can make if you want. It could be an interesting idea but I would expect that trade, travel, and relocation would become nightmares for the serfdom.

No.

What I have seen is that in most markets the ability to sell cable TV went to the first provider who was willing to run the cable to houses. After that nobody wanted to bid on running additional cable and the providers realized they could do better by keeping it that way.

Notice that the owned politicians did nothing to prevent monopolistic behavior. I have not seen any actions taken by owned politicians to prevent other companies from being started. More significantly I have not seen any actions taken by owned politicians to prevent the cartels (national or international) from buying out the startups to ensure their dominance remains.

You have that exactly backwards. The health insurance industry has been purchasing congress people for a long time and in 2010 they cashed in on their investment when they were given the largest corporate handout in the history of corporate handouts. The health insurance industry isn't doing jack shit for the government, rather they are telling the government what to do and what will be done.

I would be interested in knowing particularly what regulations you feel were set up by the government to give rise to the oil cartels and monopolistic behaviors that exist in the second scenario.

I actually agree with you that the ability to buy politicians is the problem here. The difference is how we see the owned politicians acting to support those scenarios from above. If I may ask you a question though how would you prevent politicians from being purchased in the future?

I would counter that those situations were created not in response to excess regulation, but rather in response to the general absence of regulation. I see no way that capitalism left to only its own devices would not create more situations like those.

To borrow from the quotes of a large number of conservatives, I don't recall how any of those three industries came to be the way they are today as a result of "government picking winners and losers" or as a result of government regulations.

Is that greedy people will compete against other greedy people to prevent each other from having too much power? How well has that worked out in the oil industry? How about with cable TV? Or health insurance?

I'm sorry that my questions leave you feeling such a victim. This still leaves one to wonder why you bother posting your JEs with comments enabled for all however, when it seems you don't actually want comments from anyone who doesn't share your opinion. Or at the very least, you don't seem to welcome topical questions from anyone who does not agree with you.

I haven't seen you actually discuss anything in this thread with anyone who held a different opinion from your own. Granted I am not interested in reading every comment you wrote in this thread to people who are of your same political stripes, but I can't find any you have written to anyone of unmatched stripes where you actually discussed anything with them.

That is a strange way to indicate that you don't want to have a discussion. Granted, you gave plenty of other comments in this discussion that also conveyed that idea clearly, but if this is the cherry on your "don't-talk-to-me" sundae it is rather unusual.

That is a perfectly valid reason to post. What it doesn't explain though is why you don't just post them "comments disabled", as you don't want to discuss issues with people who disagree with you anymore.

It's true that you can have a discussion with only people who agree with you. It's also true that your argument likely won't improve from it, and you likely won't learn anything from the experience either.

I'm sorry that you find yourself personally insulted when I challenge you to think.

When one of us enters the discussion without any real intention to answer real questions, the discussion doesn't have much hope of being lasting or valuable.

That's just silly. You are again painting me with the same broad strokes that you love to apply to anyone who is less conservative than yourself. I don't blame GWB for the new problems that have come to our country since the inauguration of Obama. When you go for your labeling initiatives you make yourself look just as sill as you do when you run around trying to get people to call you a racist for not supporting Obama.

But if you don't want to actually discuss issues - or, at least, not with people who have opinions that don't match your own - then why do you post on them here? Doesn't pajamas have a discussion forum where you can post to only people who agree with you? Just because slashdot has an overwhelming (by front page article and discussion post volume) conservative majority doesn't mean that everyone will agree with your extreme conservative views; you will on occasion find your comments attracting replies from people who are actually aware of what is going on.

The Benghazi attacks that are a key part of your favorite (by comment volume) conspiracy theory occurred on September 11, 2012. If there is something critical to them that happened the year prior, please share that in more specific terms.

I can confidently state that this will happen because the attacks have already been investigated independently. Your blatant and proud refusal to read the reports that came from those investigations only makes your argument look that much sillier.

None of your conspiracies have had factual support beyond your hatred of all things democrat.

No, you did not. You quoted the questions and then went on about something else entirely.

I will give you a little leeway on this matter, however. You have given plenty of reason previously to expect that you are someone who holds their faith to be very important. My questions indeed challenged the depth of your faith, and you may well have felt insulted by them. If you felt insulted, I do apologize for hurting your feelings. We can just agree that you chose not to answer the questions, and move on.

Employing extralegal mechanisms to remove the POTUS won't help that any more than capital punishment has reduced the per capita murder rate.

There is nothing silly about this. Obama is demonstrably the most conservative president our country has ever had. You want a president who is even more conservative, and you want Obama out at any cost. You also don't seem the least bit concerned with the fact that you are actively pushing for the election of a president who would push our country even further in the direction we have been going for decades, which so far has not worked well for >>99% of the country.

That statement makes sense only if

• You haven't been reading what I write (an easy argument to support based on what you have written)
• or
• You realize you haven't made any points as your arguments are faith-based rather than fact-based

OR, you're full of crap.

If that is your belief then why do you continue in this discussion at all? I don't believe you to be full of crap; I believe you to be stating your opinion without concern for the fact that you have no facts to support said opinion.

Because you have never given ANY facts to support your undying screams for impeachment. You have been given a great number of chances to do so, and not once have actually made any attempt to meet that request. If you had any merit to your aspirations at all, you certainly would have provided some factual material by this point.

You called him in because you didn't like the people who investigated your conspiracy theory before. When pajamas tells you that his results are somehow wrong - based on the fact that he won't find reason to call a grand jury for impeachment - what will you do then?

My use of the term "you" is based on what you have shouted for in your own comments here on slashdot. You have repeatedly called for the removal of the POTUS simply for being a democrat. You have repeatedly called for the legal system to be jettisoned like last week's garbage simply to further your aspirations towards ending the presidency of a democrat early. You have repeatedly called for the consumption of vast amounts of time and money to further your favorite witch hunt of the week.

Just because you did not personally select the investigator for this does not mean this is not what you have been screaming for for the past 8 years. You came almost completely unhinged as soon as you realized the white house was going back to blue and haven't looked back since.

You have already tried inserting your dreams of a grand jury. I am instead inserting reality. Try it some time; you likely won't like it but it will help you prepare for what is to come.

Smitty, I really, really, wish you would go back to actually reading text before vomiting out responses to them. I did not say anything in that block of text about the GOP. I know that you on occasion claim to not support the GOP. I also know that on occasion you emphatically endorse people from the GOP. I don't really care which party you claim to be part of at this moment today. The point is that you have representation in congress, you have members in both the house and senate who you cheer for and agree with. Those members have authored, voted in favor of, and delivered bills. Those bills have been signed by the POTUS at an acceptance rate higher than nearly any other in history.

In other words, don't pretend that you don't control the white house as well.

Your dodge of your own lie is noted. As for the second part of your response, just because you see all of government spending as being inherently wasteful does not mean that other people agree with you. In spite of your beliefs, there is government spending that benefits people - even spending that benefits you.

That was the most substantive part of your "response", there. Why did you even bother quoting it when you didn't bother addressing it?

Is that you distancing yourself from it because you know it won't lead to impeachment?

I don't recall "incapable of ever making a mistake, ever" being a job requirement of the presidency. Why was this never a requirement before? We certainly have had other people on Pennsylvania Ave make military mistakes, which cost far more than 4 lives.

We see that you refuse to answer the questions. Duly noted. Interesting that you feel free to do the discussion equivalent of "plead the fifth" here, when you want to ensure that no such option is extended to the person you want to throw out of Washington.

The point is that your statement of "the goal is facts" is utter bullshit. You are clearly interested in punishment and blame. Facts haven't mattered to you on this regard for a long, long time.

I am saying that you are aiming to make a crime out of "being alive while not being exceptionally conservative". I don't agree that such a thing should be considered criminal any more so than the inverse of it.

The way you opt not to read does not support your claim of tolerance. Your claim of being forgiving does not make any sense either, considering the things you try to offer forgiveness for.

You are, again, leveling a faith-based claim to knowledge and superiority there. You could have read the article many times over in the amount of time you have spent bragging about not having read it. I can't make you not hate the Times, nor can I make you stop your illiteracy campaign. I can, however, continue to point out how silly you make yourself look while on it.

I believe you to be honestly representing your personal faith. I agree with pretty much none of it, but it is your own faith and you are free to hold on to it as you wish. There is nothing cheap or "ploy" driven about stating that you used to be an honest man. As time as marched forward your replies have become more about attacking me, making up things that I did not say, and trying to trick me into saying silly things.

And honestly, your replies have been so repetitive that I'm surprised you haven't tripped the slashdot lameness filter for using the same bit over and over again.