I always thought it was a better line just as "If I don't survive, tell my wife."

"I like having a police and fire department." It was quite recently that one particular homeowner discovered the downside to not paying for a fire department. In a 100% Republican-controlled county, his town opted to not pay for fire coverage via taxes, instead allowing individual residents of the rural surrounding areas to voluntarily subscribe to the firefighting services of the nearby town. This guy didn't, and then was terribly upset that his offer to pay the fee while his house was burning was rejected. Sorry, buddy. You want fire coverage? That's what taxes are for. If your political philosophy objects, elect people who let things like this happen, and you can deal with the consequences. It's the on-your-ownership society.

The share paid by the top 20% has gone up because the percentage of the national income accumulated by the top 20% has gone up by far more. If you have 100 people, 20 of whom make 100,000 each and 80 of whom make 10,000 each, and everyone pays a flat 10% tax, then the top 20% will pay 200,000 total while the bottom 80% pays 160,000 total. Then adjust it over time so the top 20 make 1,000,000 each while the bottom 80% make 20,000 each, but give the top 20 a 5% rate instead, and the top 20 pay 1,000,000 total while the bottom pay 320,000 - and so those top 20% who are making 50 times more than everyone else complain about how they're 'unfairly' paying too much, despite paying half the tax rate. It's a gross simplification, but the effect you're noting is not the wealthy paying an unfair amount; it's an effect of growing concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands, which is not a stable situation.

The Bush deficits weren't wholly and utterly his fault, but you can rather easily place an enormous percentage of them on him spending a trillion dollars on a war he chose to start, and a trillion dollars on a tax cut that went disproportionately to the haves and the have-mores.

Google 'Canadian National Anthem.'

Yeah! Those illegal immigrants who made Chinatowns and Jewish areas in American cities are just asking to be hunted down! Oh, and let's not forget Little Havana down in Florida, or all those darn Irish bars all over the place! For that matter, those traitorous Southerners are real ungrateful twerps, insisting on clinging to their outmoded racist culture when they were let back into the US, and their descendants STILL haven't adopted American cultural norms yet!

Actually, the only group to have taken steps to create a believable estimate was CBS News, who hired a company to take aerial photography of the crowd from multiple angles. Their estimate was 85,000 plus or minus 9,000 - so the 'low end' was 76,000 and the high end 94,000.

Amusingly enough, Cracked had an article that included the unregulated state of flamethrowers not too long ago. I followed up, and as best I could find (and IANAL, etc) they were correct. I only checked a couple of states, but neither covered flamethrowers. Reading the definition of 'destructive device' (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/26/usc_sec_26_00005845----000-.html), I think you might be able to make a decent case that a flamethrower does not in fact qualify as a 'similar device' on the grounds that, unlike everything else in the Act, a flamethrower does not have a projectile component.

It could certainly have some impact if as a Supreme Court justice she has to make some ruling on a topic like, say, net neutrality. Or IP law. Or similar topics. It's not a direct technical advancement, but it's got a high potential to impact the technological world anyhow.

Citation needed. Preferably one that matches in offensiveness, say, Republican-affiliated sites that list the names and addresses of abortion doctors and make 'wanted' posters with targets superimposed on their features.

Actually, nothing in the bill meets the legal definition of a 'mandate.' You cannot go to jail for not having insurance; you have a tax incentive to purchase it instead (in the form of a $695 tax that is waived if you do purchase it). There is no Constitutional question on this point. Similarly, the advisory board creates regulations, much like the EPA can create regulations. Congress has designated these groups as responsible for determining the implementation of policy within the guidelines that Congress has itself set, with discretion limited to what the law says has to be accomplished. Private insurance costs can only soar if medical costs themselves soar, because the bill specifically requires that insurers spend 85% of all premium dollars on actual medical care, with rebates for overages.

Congratulations! You have either a cult or a conspiracy theory. In either case, "Everyone but my chosen leader is not trustworthy, but my chosen leader is without flaw."

Allowing interstate insurance sales was intended to deliberately cripple the ability of states to regulate their own insurance markets - the amendments offered by Republicans very specifically exempted any interstate insurance from regulation by the state in which the policyholder lived. This was explicitly designed to create a race to the bottom, where the state with the least restriction on the insurance would become the home of all of the companies involved. So if, say, Delaware declared that insurance companies were immune from lawsuit regardless of their activities, every insurance company would cheerfully move there and the Republican amendment would have ensured that no other state could regular their activities. It was a deliberate poison pill that they knew would destroy the system. Barring consideration of pre-existing conditions was in the original bill; Republicans had nothing to do with it (other than voting against it). Even the most draconian tort reform would have a cost savings of less than 0.5%, and that's the optimistic estimate by pro-reform groups who took a serious look at the numbers. I have good insurance, and I do currently pay a reasonable rate. But guess who had to slog through paperwork and spend hours demanding they pay up when I had to use them recently? Both me and the hospital. And that was for a fairly simple bill. The insurance companies will slow-walk payments, refuse payments, and force litigation - if they pay up at all.

No, you won't go to jail. The maximum fine for not getting insurance is $695 if you make $80,000 or more. This is a fine, not a criminal penalty that could carry jail time. If you make less than that, you might be eligible for subsidies to reduce the cost you pay. You would be able to get some insurance; they could not refuse outright to cover you due to your pre-existing condition as they can now. I have not seen a reliable analysis yet of whether they would be required to offer you competitive rates or whether they could offer a screw-you rate that technically offers insurance and in practice costs far more than the expected benefit. However, with the new high-risk exchanges being created, you would have the option of buying into one of the existing high-risk pools, which might be expensive but would lump you in with other at-risk people, not expose you to having to negotiate rates on your own with a specific known condition.

Yes, clearly PBS has destroyed the free market for television in the US. Woe is us.