"Yeah, sure, nothing tells us better about the effects of human activity on Earth than looking at something that human activity cannot affect high in the sky."

Translation: Looking at the sun for clues about earth climate cycles and change can produce no helpful argument for imposition of global command economy, so stop looking up there.

Well, it isn't only GWB - Jimmy Carter, too, mispronounced the word in the exact same fashion. The difference is that while Bush was never associated with nuclear powerplants or propulsion in any way, the same cannot be said of Carter, as he was in the middle of U.S. Navy nuclear powerplant operator training when his father died, an event which caused Carter to resign his Navy commission. In other words, Bush may have consistently mangled the word, and that's bad, but not nearly as bad as Carter mangling it when he most certainly knew better and should have had the habit knocked out by Rickover's crew. Carter's the bigger dolt in this case.

When I'm in my best shape, meaning very little fat, good muscle tone and good endurance capability, I weigh between 175lbs and 180lbs. I'm 5'7" tall. Six foot, 200lb people are not necessarily overweight, they may have much more natural muscle mass than others. Your BMI charts have never applied to the entirety of the population.

I didn't copy/paste anything, and I don't think foreigners are dirty. To insinuate such things is insulting and stupid. Look, if you prefer to have fewer health care options that take longer to get, that's your business, but don't assume that I want that for me and my family, because I don't.

"And why do so many Americans come to Canada and lie to get basic medical treatment?"

Because you give it away for "free"? I don't agree with that practice, scumbags exist.

"And here's the kicker: Our Socialized medicine will pay for Canadians to go to the US for these treatments when they aren't offered here."

So you lament the fact that individuals from the US scam your system to get "free" health care, but you have no problems with the fact that your system appears to be designed to keep costs in check by sponging off the more robust health care apparatus in the US? That's pretty rich. What will you do when some American bureaucrat decides to cut the treatments you get in the US? You'll go without, that's what. Sounds great!

"No single country has the best treatment for all diseases. Rich Americans often leave the US to seek treatment in other countries."

It is quite rare for Americans to seek medical care abroad and typically it only occurs when the Federal government has failed to recognize or authorize a specific type of treatment for use in the US, not because the quality of care is questionable, and certainly not because the timeliness of the care is a problem. Conversely, Canadians often seek care in the US precisely due to quality and timeliness problems in Canada. My former boss, who is a native of Montreal, was so fed up with the poor care and long waits his mother was experiencing with her breast cancer care in Canada that he brought her down to Pittsburgh to be treated. The oncology departments in Montreal are second rate, understaffed, and underfunded. And that is a direct result of the Canadian socialized system. It's sad that socialized medicine, which is usually brought into being under the guise of compassion, ends up causing avoidable suffering.

While not Canada, I have some experience with and understanding of the socialized health care milieu in the UK. There are entities there which are set up expressly for the purpose of lobbying government lawmakers and bureaucrats in an attempt to get them to authorize treatments and drugs. This happens in any country, but in the UK new therapies are routinely rejected solely based on cost, with the result being that, if you're not able to afford private care, you're not getting those treatments no matter how effective they are because some government bean counter had decided it's not worth it.

Granted, US insurance companies refuse to pay for drugs or procedures in some cases, but the key point here is that Americans can choose another insurance plan to get the type of care and access to treatments they desire. Under single payer, socialized medicine, a person only has options if they're wealthy. Normal folk are at the mercy of the bureaucrat hack.

"When scheduling a procedure more than 2 days in advance you can basically go to any hospital in the world."

This assertion is simply untrue. Ask suffering Canadians on waiting lists to get hemorrhoid surgery if they can call their local hospital and request surgery in 2 days.

"The real problem is not the peek quality of the US healthcare system it's all the gap's which kill people."

We in America may have 40 million without health care insurance, but if you discount illegal immigrants, young, healthy people who decide to spend their money elsewhere, and the stupid, the number becomes relatively small. The uninsured argument is a canard that's artfully used by the left to promote attacks on the free market.

If the Canadian health care system doesn't have a piss-poor record regarding waiting lists and unavailable procedures, why do so many Canadians visit US hospitals for treatment? The good old American hospitality? The "fact" is that wealthy people in countries w/ socialized health care find a way to opt out and get decent care elsewhere - from private health care providers if they are allowed by the govt, or from private providers abroad if they don't. And they opt out because they know that with a single payer system comes qualitative and quantitative decline. In the end it's only those who are not wealthy who need to deal with the mediocrity (or worse) that invariably arrives with socialized medicine.

The insidiousness of socialized medicine (or socialized anything) is that no matter how terrible the results may be, once it's implemented it is almost impossible to do away with. Look at the massive Ponzi scheme that is American Social Security for an apt example.

Why bother explaining it to them, Shadow? Their worldview is so ass-backwards you'll never make any headway. We'll just have to sit back and watch until enough of them have had to wait for months or years for a medical procedure they can get on-demand now for them to come around. Canadians facing long waits or poor care have an option now, they can come to the US for treatment, and they do. When we socialize our healthcare, there'll be no place for us to go. We're about to taste a gigantic shit sandwich.

First, you'd have to relay exactly what kind of standard of living I'd be afforded on $150k per year in Somalia - it may very well be that it'd be preferable...

I realize you were referring to business tax, but the amount of income taxes I pay exceeds the amount I pay per year for my own "infrastructure", namely, my housing, vehicle, insurance and clothing. I don't believe that paying the federal government more than I pay for a nice, 12y/o, 3bdrm ranch style on 2 acres of land, decent car, and passable wardrobe can be considered a worthy "investment" by any stretch of the imagination. It's just way beyond BS.

I wish I had mod points - that sums up a freetard quite nicely.

Oooh, what a big, long, strong, erect arm you Canadians have built. Does a little recognition make you feel more manly and effectual? I hope so...

And someone responded to you, correctly, saying that the PI would then be an agent of the state, and would be bound by the same rules and regs as the cops are.

which country are you referring to when you say "we"?

"We don't have the US-style urban sprawl here because we have an extensive mass transit network, not the other way around."

No, you don't have the required land area to support American style urban sprawl, so stop trying to prop yourself up as some kind of uber society, prophetically able to foresee the best ways to support population growth - you have better mass transit because it's easier to implement on your comparatively diminutive scale, and more cost effective to maintain when you have hundreds of humans per square mile to reduce the average cost per ride.

If the US had the population density of France, 310,000,000 Americans would be living east of the Mississippi river on roughly 1,000,000 square miles, leaving the 2,000,000 square miles and all of the states in the lower 48 west of the mississippi unoccupied. With that type of population density, where all Americans lived east of the Mississippi, it'd be a lot easier to do efficient mass transit in America.

A better way to think about it would be, in France, how efficient would mass transit be if you had 6.4 million people to service instead of 64? That's the kind of density disparity we have here.