I'm running Mint 17 RC right now, due to a fat-finger where I was trying to install it in a separate partition and blew up my partition table. Rather that try to reinvigorate Windows 7, I just went ahead and installed it on the whole disk and - damn! It is really nice, Once I saw that youporn videos worked, I was sold! :-)

Citation? On the other side of the argument, I'd cite pretty much all of the Nordic countries and Canada without even trying hard.....

What you and the economists are saying actually fits right in with Piketty's view. Consider that globalization - which has severely negatively impacted middle-class workers (and their entire communities) - has benefited the owners of the capital disproportionately. They reap the gains by virtue of their ownership of the capital and the rest of us continue to slide downwards as the middle-class continues to be hollowed out.

Actually, while working at Intel, I saw quite a few scenarios where hot-plugging of hardware is a critical requirement for long-uptime servers. Think adding storage, additional networking interfaces, and - for cPCI chassis - telecom interface cards. With systems that need to stay up all the time - and expand capacity - hot-swap is a great feature.

Rather than burn a mod point, I'd add on to that that ANY major software project, especially one that has to integrate so many wildly different back-end systems with differing formats, standards, etc. is prone to go through shake-out periods. Has anyone here had Version 1.0 rollout bug-free, ultra-secure, fully scalable, redundant, and on-schedule? Anyone? Hands-up.....

No mod points when I need them...Yes - the absolutely fundamental right of free travel has been violated by this "embargo" and there is zero rationalization for it remaining in place. Just a tremendous lack of courage from the political weenies...

Hold on there, big fella! Once you - as an organization - apply to the IRS for a tax-exempt status and swear under penalty of law that you are not engaging in political activity (and let's be clear - tea party organizations are by definition 100% political), then you *should* expect the IRS to come sniffing. Do not extrapolate that simple reality into "OMG - if I support X party then they're going to audit me!!!". Reality check, please....

Actually, Data General had a line of card punch and reader machines (I think they were OEM'ed, though) in the late 70s. I know because I was DG Field Engineer and had to work on those during election cycles. That's why I knew what "hanging-chad" was very early in the 2000 election fru-fru.

Just proof of Abraham Lincoln's maxim: Any man can handle adversity pretty well, but to really test a man's character give him power.

Well, from my own anecdotal research I find that most of MSNBC's airtime is filled with prison lockup shows.

I do. The thing that you're ignoring is this: the combination of my insurance premiums through work; my employer's premiums to the same insurers; medicare; medicaid; VA and a few others dwarfs - on a per-capita basis - what anyone else in the world pays for coverage. And that coverage, in case you haven't noticed, is ridiculously complex with tremendous gaps and inefficiencies that make the whole experience much, much worse than any dealings with the IRS - and I've had a few. In each case I found the IRS to be very helpful and pleasant to deal with. As opposed to, say, AT&T...

Excuse me? That whole post made no sense whatsoever! How did you get health care without insurance or a very large wallet? And don't hand me that crap about ER coverage being "free". It's not! Once you leave the hospital, you're going to have to make a detour through the business office where you'll get a full walletectomy before you can leave, and if you don't have cash, you'll have the collection agency knocking at your door.

You are conflating 2 separate things: improvements in diagnostics and treatment, and access to those things. Plenty of acute care (and non-acute) treatments and tests such as CAT scans, etc have improved dramatically over the last few years, so what's your point again? Oh! Right! If the government is involved in making access to these things, it's Bad(TM). Obviously, the OP pointed out that world-wide experience shows that single-payer, universal coverage is far more efficient and - oh, yeah - compassionate than our layers upon layers of BS insurance companies and their "Utilization Review Committees", aka "Death Panels".

Since you're already modded to +5 I won't bother, but - Kudos for not being one of the mindless cumwads who automatically reject anything that anyone else says just because they are associated with ${political party or person's name who we've been conditioned to hate by propagandists}. Without critical thinking, there is no thinking possible at all.