Not sure what that link is supposed to prove. US does more international trade than any other country, of course it's name will pop up in trade disputes. The closest thing to an authoritative ranking of the countries by protectionism I could find:

http://www.voxeu.org/article/protectionism-s-quiet-return-gta-s-pre-g8-summit-report

Scroll down to "Table 1. Which countries have inflicted the most harm since November 2008?"

It is compiled from GTAâ(TM)s annual reports (which don't rank the countries).

I'm a free trade guy but in fairness if you are going to start blaming countries for unfairly imposing barriers to foreign products, the US would be near the bottom of the list.

Strange how shareholders are willing to pay CEOs large amounts of money just in order to ruin their company. Or maybe that's not how it is in reality.

Depending on circumstances, commitment to non-violence might lead to more violence - see Moriori for a human example, and probable extinction of cows, chicken, sheep, pigs etc should humans stop having violent uses for them (killing and eating them) and therefore the need to feed them and protect them from predators.

I was talking law, not biology (or theology).

It's simple: animals don't have rights. Forcing animals to do something and forcing humans to do something are two fundamentally different things. If you disagree, fine. Howevere, it is strange that you draw a line at implanting animals with technology for purposes of education, rather than, you know, slaughtering them by the billions each year, or using them as slave labor etc.

We kill 9 billion animals for food each year, in the USA alone. We still somehow manage to remember that killing humans is bad.

What's amusing to me is that those in favor of big government seem not to realize that this same principle applies to everything government does. It is oil industry that writes oil industry regulation, pharmaceutical industry that writes pharmaceutical industry regulation, banking regulatory agencies are staffed with former bank executives etc etc.

Media picks the president and it picked Obama. It is as simple as that. People vote like they are told. MSNBC for example did not have a single positive story about Romney or a single negative story about Obama in the final weeks before the election (http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/press_release_7). Something like that is expected of MSNBC but the likes of ABC, NBC, CNN, NYT, WaPo etc etc weren't far behind.

Of course it's not a party but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have a platform. This list is a good start seeing that most Tea Party groups endorse it and most Tea Party congressmen have signed up to it:

From http://contractfromamerica.org

1. Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does. (82.03%)

2. Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nationâ(TM)s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures. (72.20%)

3. Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax hike. (69.69%)

4. Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 wordsâ"the length of the original Constitution. (64.90%)

5. Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities, or ripe for wholesale reform or elimination due to our efforts to restore limited government consistent with the US Constitutionâ(TM)s meaning. (63.37%)

6. Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth. (56.57%)

7. Defund, repeal and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enabling a competitive, open, and transparent free-market health care and health insurance system that isnâ(TM)t restricted by state boundaries. (56.39%)

8. Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs. (55.51%)

9. Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark. (55.47%)

10. Permanently repeal all tax hikes, including those to the income, capital gains, and death taxes, currently scheduled to begin in 2013. (53.38%)

You'd take the US system because you have enough money to participate in it.
 
No, I'd take the US system because with my, fairly average, insurance plan I get better care. Almost everybody can participate in US care and if you want to help those who cannot, then lets be honest about it and pay for their care directly and bill the rest of us through higher taxes. That is how it works out anyway under Obamacare except it is obfuscated through an extremely complex system that still doesn't change the reality that somebody has to pay for those who cannot afford it.
 
  Healthcare is ALWAYS rationed
 
No it is not! Unless you have some bizarre definition of rationing that applies to literally everything. Are shoes "rationed" because there are some people who cannot afford them?

Everybody has the option of making more money and paying for as much care as they want or can afford. To take one anecdotal example to illustrate the principle: couple of years ago I tore my knee ligament while playing soccer. Within couple of days I received and MRI, and within couple of weeks an excellent surgery using latest equipment, pretty much the same kind used in case of professional athletes. I ended up paying about $1500, the rest was paid by my, like I said, totally average insurance plan I get through my employer. If I was under a rationed system like NHS, there is NO WAY that a sport injury that left me able to walk normally, just not play sports, in mid-30s would justify such expensive procedures. Most likely I would have to wait a few weeks even for an X-ray. The point it, the standard of care I received was determined by ME, my doctor and the contract I have with my insurance company. Under NHS it would be other people deciding how important or not my knee is (probably not very important to them).

Before you believe anything dcherryholmes says, be warned: he spews crap.

Hmm, ok so I tried your style of arguing and it doesn't work for me. I think I'll stick to arguing the merits of the issue instead of launching preemptive personal attacks.

That's right and I want:

- Freedom from having to pay my mortgage
- Freedom from making payments on my car
- Freedom from paying for my groceries (single payer groceries!)
- Freedom from paying ... [insert any expense]

Just need to vote for other people to pay for it and I'll be all set.

Universal health system = rationing = substandard care, waiting lists and corruption. I have lived under the NHS and under the US system and I will take the US system any day. for the 86% that have insurance in the US, the care they receive overall is superior to any major country (please don't start throwing in countries with 4 mil population and unlimited oil resources like Norway as a fair comparison to the US) with a single payer system .

Religious right most definitely does not own the Republican party. It has moved more to the right fiscally, but it has become less religious.