Orly?

"After years of being lambasted by the left as uneducated rubes, a recent study by a Yale law professor proves members of the Tea Party are actually more likely to understand scientific issues than is the rest of the population."

http://www.westernjournalism.c...

"Yale Law professor Dan M. Kahan was conducting an analysis of the scientific comprehension of various political groups when he ran into a shocking discovery: tea party supporters are slightly more scientifically literate than the non-tea party population.

When composing histograms of the scientific inference abilities of liberals and conservatives, he discovered that those who described themselves as tea party supporters came out pretty well, based on National Science Foundation standards of evaluation:"

http://www.ijreview.com/2013/1...

~Sigh~ SMH

Strat

No, you're not understanding what happened. The new law made lots of insurance policies no longer allowed. For example: if you're a married couple 80 years old, you still have to carry, by law, insurance that includes full maternity care. So a lot of existing insurance simply evaporated. People who lost those insurance plans lost their health insurance. They then had to go find a way to buy new insurance - usually at much higher prices, often from a different carrier ... which wouldn't do business with the doctor you used to use.

This isn't a matter of the doctors retiring. This is about the law forcing people to buy very expensive new health insurance from a new provider that - because of all of the heavy new requirements of what and who they must now cover - greatly reduce the number of doctors they'll work with. And so people lost access to their familiar doctors, despite Obama's promise that no such thing would happen - remember, he said nobody would have to leave their plans (a lie).

I've heard of this movie involving two girls.

You mean, aside from helping you determine if something is edible?

But they got a cafeteria full of grown adults to mix their formulas and drink them with looks on their faces of people drinking something they must than what they'd rather?

Which is exactly why I said what I said. There are people who show up here to scold people about holding onto (or exploring) some of the more exotic physics frameworks and compare that to being a True Believer (in the traditional religious sense). These are NOT the same things.

He said that because people were worried that the doctor the currently had would suddenly be unavailable to them when the law kicked in. This is exactly what happened, to a lot of people. It happened to our family. The insurance policy with which we were perfectly happy evaporated because the law considered it unacceptable (the new law requires that we buy insurance that covers, among other things, maternity care ... which is super handy now that we're in our 50's). The new plans from which could choose did not include the doctor we're happy with, and precluded the use of two of the nearest (and best) hospitals. Our premiums went from roughly $250 a month to over $500, and our deductible went from $2,500 to $12,000.

Each of these things was predicted with great clarity by not only the people opposed to the law's passing, but also by the people who WROTE the law. But in front of cameras, Obama lied about each and every point of it, repeatedly, and deliberately. If he had been honest, and if he'd talked Pelosi and Reid into also being honest about the consequences of the law (instead of the "You'll have to pass it to see what's in it" explanation she provided), it would never have passed. Democrats talked into voting for it have since said they wouldn't have voted for it if they'd understood the huge new costs, taxes, and service limitations that it puts on middle class families.

You know, and Obama knew, EXACTLY what "you can keep your doctor" meant when he said it - he was trying to tamp down the very vocal concerns that exactly what has happened would in fact happen. He knew it was going to, but he lied about it anyway. What I don't understand is why you're trying to spin it for him. What do you gain by attempting to back up the deception?

No one is feeding you anything. You feed yourself. That makes you responsible, not a food supplier. I'd far rather live in a world where I watch some dumbass eat himself to death than live in one without Twinkies because some crusade removed everything dumbass could hurt himself by eating.

You suffer from that magical view of the past thing as well. Your list ("obesity, heart disease, diabetes, colon cancer, and many many other serious medical issues") existed prior to modern foods. We just died of other stuff first and more often.

Social networking is actually a good idea I think, but not with the proprietary platforms we've had until now. Something like Diaspora, a decentralized platform, is what we really need; that way people can control what they share, with whom, and they control the platform itself (since you run it on your own webserver, or one you sign up for to have an account on, but your data is your own and is easily moved to a competing service).

Having everything all centralized on one site with no democratization is making it usable because there's no real consumer choice or control.

Because you have a choice whether you want to use Facebook or something else or nothing. No one is forcing you to use Facebook. Your dumb relatives posting stupid pictures of themselves is not a compelling reason to use Facebook; it's not like trying to be a computer professional and refuse to use email (which would prevent you from getting a job in the field) or normal job posting sites.

PeeWee translation: "I know you are, but what am I?"

Hilarious.

What does it matter if there is some future change to the law (not counting the illegal unilateral changes made by the president by selectively choosing whether to follow the statute's specific requirements once he realized it wasn't politically expedient). If you've already lost your insurance plan, or you've had to give up your doctor, and can no longer use the convenient nearby hospital because of the law's impact (all things that we were promised wouldn't happen, which the law's partisan authors knew WOULD happen, and about which the president repeatedly and deliberately lied), then that damage is already done. Not that it matters. Even if you can afford one of the new plans, the deductibles are hugely higher - making the effective premiums even higher than their new, higher stated values.

So for many, many people the "affordable" care act has: blown away existing insurance plans, removed choices of doctors and hospitals, doubled and sometimes tripled premiums, and in many cases quadrupled deductibles. All of which was well known in advance, and was proactively lied about, repeatedly, by Pelosi, Reid, and Obama. Republicans also knew it was coming, which is why NOT ONE of them voted for that monstrosity of a law.

How is that off topic? The entire thread is about some hand-waving "priorities" she'll have as president. Which has absolutely nothing to do with which compromises she's willing to make the legislative branch when it comes to things like tax credits or other regulatory/funding matters. Pointing out how disingenuous she's been on pretty much every other issues she's ever mentioned is NOT off topic. It points out exactly how to think about anything and everything she says during her limited, poll-tested public remarks.

You've already fallen for it! It's NOT a campaign promise. It's an aspiration. A "priority." The president can no more wave her hands and make such a thing happen than he or she can wave his or her hands and make healthcare get cheaper. Now THAT was a campaign promise ("You can keep your doctor. Period. You can keep your plan. Period. The average household will save $2,500 year on health insurance, and it will start costing about what a mobile phone does.") See the difference?

I use both; Google on my phone and HERE on my car's built-in nav unit. Being able to use the car's system where there's no or poor cell coverage is definitely a big plus. However, the HERE data is old and incomplete as far as businesses. If you know the street address of where you want to go, it's great. However, if you just want to look up all the Walmarts nearby and pick one to go to, it tries to direct me to one that's an hour away for some odd reason. And forget about finding some small restaurant; if it's been there for decades, it's probably on HERE, but if it's fairly new, forget it.

Google Maps' biggest strength is that it combines navigation with an up-to-date business directory. I can search for "Italian restaurant" within a certain area, see all the businesses that match that description, then look at them and immediately see peoples' Google and Yelp reviews, so I can avoid places that suck. Then I can just tap one button and have it navigate me to that place, without having to mess around with street addresses.

I wish my car's system could integrate the business-directory stuff from my phone (assuming I have coverage at that moment), and then switch me over to the car's navigation after it gets a street address.