Wrong. There is a right answer: Everyone without a medical reason must be vaccinated. The government should eliminate any bullcrap 'religious' or 'cultural' excuses for not vaccinating their children.

Those who refuse to vaccinate their children should be fined, and in extreme cases have their medically endangered children removed from their household by Child Protective Services, no different from those who eschew medical treatment because 'gods will be done', and let their children DIE rather than getting appropriate and necessary medical attention.

Yes, children have the right to not be abused OR NEGLECTED by their parents. That right to not be medically neglected includes the right to be vaccinated against common disease vectors.

Yes, this is a proper role for government - to protect the interests of SOCIETY AS A WHOLE from those who would threaten harm to that society for their own selfish ends. That is, essentially, the fundamental purpose of government.

You do understand the epidemiological paradigm of 'herd immunity', right?

It's this nonsense war-on-science 'woo' about 'BigPharma' that has led to a re-introduction of measles, mumps, whooping cough and chickenpox.

Please please read this excellent book about the 'war on science', and stop feeding that war with crapulatious caterwauling : https://www.amazon.com/War-Sci...

So because I 'own' this clay bowl that I made for myself, I'm less free? How does that work exactly? Are you making some metaphysical claim about being 'tied' to material possessions?

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Yes, that which I call 'I' has ownership over the physiological hardware which is supporting and running the software of 'Mind' of which 'I' am an instantiation. That is the 'who' that is doing the 'owning'.

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Or in the motto of the Gands: "Freedom - I Won't" (see E.F. Russel's "...And then there were none") We all can choose to be free - entirely free - anytime we want. As Sartre pointed out.

Do you really think that the warnings that smoking cannabis would turn you into a bat were valid? When the government engages in mindless fear-mongering, doesn't that pretty much invalidate anything else they might have to say on the subject? In his congressional testimony, Anslinger claimed, and I quote: "Marihuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death." Not one of the several compound assertions in that statement is true. Cannabis is not addictive (or at least, no more so than pornography, gambling, or chat-rooms) Cannabis doesn't cause insanity. Cannabis doesn't cause criminality. There are zero recorded instances of a death due to toxic overdose of cannabis. Zero. So this idea that government has only the best interests of The People at heart when it does anything is massively ignorant, and foolishly naive. See this speech by law professor Charles Whitebread about this history of druglaws for some actual history of the government's perfidy in the case of cannabis: http://www.druglibrary.org/sch...

Rand was simply a moron - her 'objectivism' isn't 'rightwing', it's just a stupid attempt to justify greed and selfishness. The 'collectivism' that the Randians decry is what the rest of us call 'civilization'. If all the Randians were rounded up and put on Madagascar to fend for themselves, they'd all die because to them, cooperation is anathema.

Yes, Hitler was 'right wing'. Most authoritarians are. No, Stalin was not a leftist. Neither was Castro. They were both authoritarians too.

If you want to see a 'leftist' nation, you need only look to Norway and Denmark. If you want to see a 'libertarian' nation, you won't find one. Anywhere. Ever. There's a reason for that.

What 'left wing person' did Google officially endorse for President? Can you link us to their press release on that endorsement? There were no 'left wing' candidates for president in 2016. Not even Dr. Stein.

that the Trump administration gave away millions of dollars to conservative groups surprises you in some way? Surely you don't believe that a settlement is an admission of guilt, do you?

Is that why Eric Gardner's family got 5.9 million from the NYC, because they were admitting that the NYPD murdered him, even though no indictments were filed against Daniel Pantaleo? Or is that 'different' somehow?

Please stop being a blind partisan. It's clearly not working all that well for you.

You mean the ALLEGED discriminatory practices which, upon investigation, were discovered to be unfounded? Those practices?

Which of these facts are you claiming is not a fact?: "the FBI told Fox News that its investigation had found no evidence so far warranting the filing of federal criminal charges in connection with the controversy, as it had not found any evidence of "enemy hunting", and that the investigation continued. On October 23, 2015, the Justice Department declared that no criminal charges would be filed. On September 8, 2017, the Trump Justice Department declined to reopen the criminal investigation into Lois Lerner, a central figure in the controversy.[1] " (wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...) (see also: https://www.npr.org/sections/i... )

What you really mean is that mean old nasty IRS was actually enforcing the regulations concerning 501(c) groups that were ILLEGALLY putting money into Republican campaigns, and were allowing the wealthy to anonymously contribute thousands of dollars which they wouldn't have been able to do through normal campaign donations. It seems like conservatives in general think that the laws don't apply to them, because they think they're doing "God's work", and to them, 'God's laws' (or rather, their very constrained and contorted INTERPRETATIONS of 'God's laws') always beat out 'Man's laws'.

This is the same dynamic that has conservatives excoriating Bill and Hillary (him for having an affair, and her for sticking by him in spite of the affair), while ignoring or excusing the serial philandering of Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde's affair, Bob Livingston's affair, or the paraphilia of Denis Hastert. This is the same dynamic that allows conservatives to decry the actions of Harry Weinstein, while ignoring the similar allegations against Roy Moore.

Four servicemen lost their lives in an ISIS ambush in Niger due to the Trump administration's clueless incompetence. Where are the endless hours of congressional hearings on that like we had on Benghazi?

Oh yeah - the old 'IOIYAR' rule - "It's Ok If You're A Republican".

Sodomizing underage boys, and paying them hush money (Hastert) - it's ok if you're a Republican.

Serial adultery (Gingrich, Giuliani, Trump, etc, etc, etc) - it's ok if you're a Republican

Intentionally breaking laws you just don't like (Ollie North) - it's ok if you're a Republican

That's probably because your Republican governor didn't implement the State side of the ACA, to make a political statement at your expense. Vote out the oligarchs and kleptocrats. Don't support politicians who support the 'neoliberal' economic agenda of subsidies for the wealthy and austerity for the poor.

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My family policy costs about $1800/mo, of which I pay about $400; there is is a $10 copay ($35 for ER), and no deductible at all (Excellus PPO). Maybe you need to find a better employer.

So you really cannot think of any way you can pay out of pocket for this non-urgent surgery? There is no option for you? Are you failing to 'think outside the box'? Do you somehow think that you would be forcefully prevented from traveling to the US, where any number of hospitals and doctors would be very happy to take large sums of money directly from your wallet? Oh - is that too expensive? So quit smoking for 8 weeks. That's got to be easier than coming up with $50K out of pocket.

If you want to drive on public roads, you have to follow the traffic laws. If you want surgery in public hospitals, you have to follow the health laws. What's the difference?

a nifty idea. But what consumer will buy the STIG-certified product, when the cheap security-less knock-off is available for 60% of the price (having been made at 10% of the cost)? Does anyone really check for the UL label any more?

/. You can't stop credit bureaus et al from Hoovering up your data and reselling. ./

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Sure you can. Never apply for any credit. Never borrow any money from a bank. Never use electronic payments of any kind. Always buy everything with cash in face-to-face transactions. Don't work for anyone who refuses to pay you in cash in a face-to-face transaction. Don't waive your privacy in order to get a job - don't work for an employer who participates with TALX in providing salary and employment information.

. If you have no electronic 'footprint', there won't be anything for them to 'hoover up'. Of course, then you wouldn't be here on slash-dot.... And good luck finding an ISP that you can pay with cash. Hard enough finding one that takes cheques....

#And for security, you never want "rank and file" implementing it. The rank and file don't understand security.#

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Jolly good joke. It's the 'rank and file' that are going to get tricked by the phishers and 'social hackers'. It's the 'rank and file' who are going to set their password to 'password', or put their password on a post-it at the bottom of their monitor. Or save it to their GoogleDocs document named 'security' where they store ALL of their passwords...

Security is EVERYONE's job. Top to bottom. Even the folks whose answer to the question 'where was the document that you want me to restore from the backup?' is "It was in Word". And this is why we can't have nice things....

And if someone ever provides anything even close to empirical evidence for a 'soul', that will be the first time. No, there is zero evidence for 'souls', or spirits, or ghosts, or angels, or demons, or deities. Nary a scrap of anything even CLOSE to empirical evidence for any of those mythical entities. One may as well presume the existence of leprechauns and unicorns.

But yes, the 'outside of time' thing makes lots of sense within the mythological constructs of YHWH worshipers. That's the only way that 'predestination' (aka 'prophecy') can be compatible with 'free will'. God doesn't know what you're GOING to do. From God's perspective which is 'outside of time', you've already done it. That movie is in the can. Butch and Sundance had free will to surrender to the posse or jump off the cliff. But EVERY TIME you watch the movie, they jump off the cliff. Because they already did. God need not predict, merely recall.

Causality is a thing. But that doesn't meant that there cannot be causeless events. Take a SINGLE atom of polonium-210. We know that at SOME point, that single atom will emit an an alpha-particle and become lead-206. We know that in a very large quantity of such atoms, half of them will decay to lead in roughly 139 days. But we're talking about ONE single atom of polonium-210. Whoops- there it went. Now it's lead-206. What CAUSED that event? Oh sure, it decayed because the 210 configuration is 'unstable'. But what CAUSED that atom to decay at THAT time? Anything? Or is that an event without a cause? And if that event is causeless, that means any event can be causeless, and just because something happened, we can't presume there was a cause. As far as I can tell, BigBangs are how the multiverse reproduces. The formation of a black hole in one universe creates a 'daughter' universe. The 'expansion' period of the new universe corresponds to [matter/energy] 'falling into' the black hole from the parent universe. (time is merely a measure of entropy, and need not be consistent between universes) Pure speculation of course, but it has a certain simplicity to it. No deities necessary.