In fact that's exactly what Nebraska does. The parties are not shown on the ballots. They even have a unicamerial legislature. They've got it figured out.

You're a smart guy. I agree with almost nothing you have to say, but you're still a smart guy. We'd love to have you over at The Forvm (see my sig).

As others have said, I fail to see how this is a troll. The general consensus in Washington right now is that we're going to have to make some hard choices in how we spend our money, seeing as the current debt is getting rather high in both nominal terms and as a percentage of GDP. Government-funded scientific research will likely be determined to be something we can't afford given that the Democrats will hold the line on entitlement spending and Republicans will hold the line on keeping taxes at current rates.

If there is one thing that all Republicans are united against, it is the raising of taxes on those subject to the highest marginal rate (I'll forgo the loaded term "rich"). You might think that's a virtue, and you might think that's a vice, and I'm not here to argue either, but it is the truth. The same goes with the Democrats and keeping Medicare a government-run single-payer health care program for people over the age of 65.

Are you trying to tell me you don't know the name of the clerk who makes sure that our friend's grandmother gets her Social Security check is not popular? I follow her on Twitter.

Die-hard OSU football fan here.

It pays to note that OSU unilaterally decided to vacate their wins from last year. The NCAA had nothing to do with that.

It also pays to note that the players involved in the rule-breaking were simply selling their own possessions. Sure that's against the rules, but it's a pretty shitty rule. A friend of mine pointed out that they must have this rule or else schools could simply buy each player a $100,000 trophy that they could sell...which would get around the ban on paying the students. Fair enough, but this only lends more credence to the idea that college football (and to a lesser extent, basketball) programs should not be the de-facto minor league for the pros.

I don't particularly know why the NCAA would need to be able to do stuff like this. I do know that if the NFL and NBA had developmental leagues (like MLB and the NHL), there would be no reason for it. If you're a good high school football player, you have to play college football for 3 years until you can be drafted (well technically you just have to be 3 years removed from high school). There'd be no reason for players to violate NCAA policy if they didn't have to go through the NCAA. They could just go to the AA football team and play for money until they were ready for the NFL.

I wouldn't loose too much sleep if N. Korea was no longer in the UN.

Or, you know, the fact that many elderly folks don't have a cell phone and don't want a cell phone. Grandma stinerman isn't going to one day wake up on Jan 1, 2005 and start paying her grocery bill by iPhone.

Slaves don't vote. Slaveowners do.

He may fully support SB1070. Good for him. It's still a bill that is anti-brown people.

You're a bit more keen on their chances than I am. People underestimate risks when they are in control.

In 2009 there were 30,797 traffic-related fatalities in the USA. If we could cut that in half with self-driving cars that'd be amazingly good. But the public wouldn't go for it because now the machine is in control, so the risk is overestimated.

How many stories would we see about "killer cars that account for 10,000 traffic deaths per year"? How many people wouldn't buy them because of how "unsafe" they are?

Yes, that's actually incredibly good.

And the GP didn't say, but I'm betting it's that good because it's an HMO. HMO plans are a lot cheaper because they don't pay for anything but the doctors in the group.

Yes, it's quite a shock when you learn how it all works.

In 2009, I started working for a software company that has to deal with being able to bill to health insurance companies. There are no fewer than 75 different program options that have to be flipped on or off depending on the whims of what some insurance company wants to happen. For instance, many state Medicaid programs require that the dates of service on the claim not span a month. So if your claim says something like 50mg IV Morphine 6/15 - 7/14, it will be rejected as being in the incorrect format and they will refuse to pay the provider until the claim has two line items for Morphine, one for 6/15 - 6/30 and another for 7/1 - 7/14. And of course some of them will let you put ancillary supplies over a month, but not the main drug. Oh, but if the main drug is a compound, they want to see all the ingredients that made the compound, which can span a month...unless it's a TPN therapy, in which case just bill a per diem.

Most insurance is billed electronically these days, but yes, most hospitals, HME companies, and other large providers have armies of billers in the A/R department whose sole job it is make a decent guess at how a particular insurance company wants to be paid, transmit the claim, receive a cryptic rejection notice, and then figure out which T's they need to cross and which I's they need to dot in order to get paid. It is not the norm, but it is also not unheard of that for certain therapies, the provider won't even bother billing the service because the cost of having someone work the claim isn't worth the amount of money they'll get paid. The insurance companies try to make the billing rules as obtuse and arcane as possible to bill them so that the providers will do just that -- throw their hands up in disgust and not even bother asking them to pay for it.

I don't know about that. Sure they've only won 5 of the last 14 Super Bowls, but they've won the last two. I wouldn't write them off just yet.

My Kilobot has Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available.