EBSB52

Any car gets 0 MPH when stuck at a standstill - at that point, we're talking gallons per minute (GPM) at an idle condition (stop and go traffic) instead of MPH. So the more efficient car would be the choice to put in the stop and go traffic - if we really cared about consumption of the world's resources and not special treatment for a socially engineered behavior........ Totally agree and have a driving competency test that actually requires vision and some sort of ability to put the car into a slide/skid and recover. The cops love speedlimits, lights and other traffic control devices - it allows them to catch people more easily and distinguishes the "good guys" from the "bad guys" in their mind.

And so when you do that and he swerves and hits other people, or realizes what you did and gets inches frok your ass, you are now pat of the equation/problem. If something happens and the cops/prosecutors figure it out, you'll be tried along with him for the same crime (if someone gets hurt/dies). Your little switch IS a tool of roadrage and will liley spark an issue/incident sometime.

I'm sure there are some innocent people in prison, however, there are many many more guilty people there. The system isn't perfect (and you won't find one that is), but I think it does a pretty good job. Of course, the vast majority of people in prison are guilty and some need to be there the rest of their lives for the safety of society. But if you're one of the many innocent in there and someone else is fucking your wife and raising your kids, well, those numbers don't matter do they? Is there more injustice in freeing by way of failing to convict the guilty or by jailing innocent people? This, "convict at all costs" prosecutorial mentality is what drives this, as well as many dirty cops.

Thank you for writing what I thought. Corporations (he used the products of dozens if not hundreds of corporations just to make that post) are not inherently evil. Oooh, smells of fascism. Somehow, I don't recall corporations being the evildoers in WWII.... (he used the products of dozens if not hundreds of corporations just to make that post) And that's the other side of the agument: Corps bring us jobs, products, and many things; how can they be evil? In the strict, focused aspect of jobs and products they are fine, but when they want to kill the environment and get away with it or treat their employees like crap and persuade the gov to crap on citizens in favor of corps then that muddies the whole thing. The Overtime Law, the Bankruptcy Law, Seat Belt and Insurance Laws of the 80's and now Social Securoty Reform all benefit the corps with some incidental benefit for people in a peripheral context. The intent of these laws is to help corporate bottom lines. Oh, how about tax breaks for corps outsourcing jobs???? Oooh, smells of fascism. Somehow, I don't recall corporations being the evildoers in WWII.... Right, the enemy was Fascist..... Italy in case you didn't figure it out. The enemy was also Imperialist, Japan. Funny how we've become what we heroically destroyed. I don't know your age, but remember when the gov wanted a severance between corps and would genrally never allow major corps to merge? Well, Boeing/Douglas and some IT corps have done it many times since the 80's. If the gov wanted competition they wouldn't have done that, but corps and the gov aren't competing, they're all working together.

And what the hell does a corporation running the operation of a prison have to do with conviction rates, the interpretation of the Bill of Rights or legal defense? Sorry, EBS - your whole "Fascist America" byline is worn out from trying to stretch it to cover too many things - this one doesn't fly. And what the hell does a corporation running the operation of a prison have to do with conviction rates, the interpretation of the Bill of Rights or legal defense? Don't convolute the whole thing. Corps running prisons means the corps are largely responsible for upholding 8th (and others) Amendment protections on the front end and I don't think they have the interest to do that. Profits and Const protections are strangers. Now, the as for "conviction rates," the original post spoke of the gross number of people in jail/prison. It did not make mention of the incarceration rate, but you took the original post and expounded on it slightly, which is how conversation works. Now you have a problem that I take yours and expound it a bit. You're trying to establish a gross tangent, but there is none. I understand that you get defensive when people illustrate how this country could be crap, but in some ways it is - deal with it. Not to Ad Hominem, but you ae from Texas so I'm not surprised to read your responses. Sorry, EBS - your whole "Fascist America" byline is worn out from trying to stretch it to cover too many things - this one doesn't fly. Huh? If you understood Fascism you wouldn't assert that. Fascism is the comming together of corporation and government to have 1 agenda. Unfortunately the corporations tend to make the majority of the decisions and put profit before protections. IF corps decided it would be beneficial to revoke the 2nd or limit it to be very restricive, you would likely blame some liberal agenda. The truth would probably be that the legislation initiates like most current (and last 20 years) legislation does, and that's with teh proding of some corporation. Now, what corps that run prisons do is to make the prisoners work for virtually nothing, or get to leave their cell 1 hour per week. If there was some rehabilitative notion to this I could almost stomach it, but the intent is to create a huge prison population to work for free. I wonder who motivated thimngs like "Truth in sentencing?" Keeping people (slaves) i9n prison longer helps the bottom line. Acquiescence is a beautiful thing

Edited to add: maybe this has something to do with it: Under federal law, dealing five grams of crack cocaine (favored in poor black communities) gets a first offender a mandatory minimum sentence of five years. 500g of powder cocaine (favored in affluent white communities) is needed to get the same sentence. That's a 100:1 disparity. ... As a justice major we beat this one to death. Very true and very indicative.

And many other wise people realize that there are many innocent people in jail/prison. Also, the amount of crime you can commit is diectly proportionate with the amount of money you have, so the system is skewed with classims rather than this laughable concet of deterrence.

However, idiots who weave in and out of traffic on their daily comute are ... beyond words I really want to to use. And they weave because????? They weave because many people don't follow the concept of moving to the right if cars are stacking up behind you. Actually, a person should be able to percieve if that's about to happen and move before the jam starts. Even cops will tell you to let em go by and they will get em later - don't impede. SO there is a mutuality to it.

But when you compare the US with other nations and realize we are worse with incarceration rates than most other nations, land of the free, then it becomes worse. Compile that with the fact that most or all prisons are run by corporations and it gets much worse. It smells of gross Fascism and I don't want a corp to define the 8th Amendment based upon some standard of profit. Next question would be that of how many of the 2.1 mill are innocent and how many are poor and couldn't afford anything but a court appointed attny.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0426guns-veto26.html Democratic Governor Napalitano vetoed a bill that would have allowed guns in bars. I'm as pro-gun as it gets, but guns in bars, polling places and banks should stand at being prohibited. I don't know if it was a conservative initiative or non-partisan, but what a joke to want guns in bars, a place where people go to get stupid. This is the wild west, but please, guns in bars????

And the good employers who provide decent health plans are subsidizing deadbeat employers who don't, and especially the sleazebag employers who keep their employees just below "full time" status so they don't have to provide any benefits. Tying health care to employment the way we do in practice is moronic. You mean the government should provide it? What a concept - I wonder if any other countries have heard of this? Just sarcam, but I've never before thought of employer (corporation) provided insurance as Fascism, but it certainly was the start of it.

None that I know. Don't forget to include the left in there, too. Hell, anyone trying to advance an agenda generally does exactly that. - Jim None that I know. None that would openly admit, maybe. Don't forget to include the left in there, too. Hell, anyone trying to advance an agenda generally does exactly that. OK, I gave an example, an analogy to support my point; can you give me examples or analogies that support your contention?

Which is essentially utilitrianism, a major component of Marxist Communism. American Democracy and spirit of freedom place the emphasis on the rights of the individual, or should we say it used to, so the rights of the whole will be automatically taken care of.

Right, or choice. Remember, Christianisty is unconditional - believe or you will burn in hell's fire for all of eternity.... wait, isn't that a condition?

Are you saying let's clean up the more egregious stuff before we clean up the less egregious stuff - religion? It can all be coercive and dangerous, but to ignore some of the less dangerous but still dangerous stuff is "dangerous." When I read that I think of people saying, "You think we have lost freedoms? Look at China." Ok, the US's loss of freedoms suck, but do we have to wait until we are China before we raise the flag? Religios isn't a problem for you because you appear to be a Christian and the trend of teh country is going that way, so congratulations, but look at it objectiveley and you will see the other side.

Now how about the aspect that no one seems to be talking about; the religious right and their fanatics. I realize this didn't come directly from the church, but tell me when abortion clinics were bombed that the Christian right didn't cheer just a little bit, if even quietly inside. And now I will be bombarded with replies asking how the hell I could tie this to the Christian church. OK, now use that same logic with the Christian right's feeling on the attack and capture of Saddam. Its the same scenario: Rudolph is to the Christian right:: as OBL is to the Muslims or Iraq. Rudolph and OBL are affiliates to their repsective causes, but outside players in the actual sense. But the US went after Saddam as if to convolute the entire group of entities as if they were all complicit. With that same logic we could now blame the American Christian church for the bombings, right? I know that no Christian right wingers will agree and claim "thread drift," but what I've written is an analagous test of identical logic with the right wing yielding opposite results. Conclusion: right wing utilizes flawed, subjective logic.

Sounds like something Eric Rudolph would say. I don't mean that to incite and don't honestly disagree with you, but I think we should rise above that kind of thinking, because that's what guys like Rudolph would want. The court is imposing a sentence that is wise. Oklahoma spent over 4 million dollars to get nothing on Nochols. They can't afford that, but the poor kids will go w/o medical thanks to vengence w/o reward. It's done, this kook doesn't get to testify to espouse his Christian-based crap about being a messenger of God, which I suspect he thinks he is. Furthermore, he gave them the location fo 250lbs of exposives that can't hurt anyone now. It's a win-win for all but the retributionists. Now, how about Richard Jewel, the security guard that was for a long time wrongly accused of the Atlanta bombing.? Do you see how aggresive the system is in trying to hang people, guilty or not? Police and prosecutors find it embarrasing to have a bad guy out there, so if they can make society believe that any old guy is the bad guy, then they have the spot filled and they're happy. So when someone advocates heavy punishments and strict prosecutions w/o any real appeal, they are advocating innocent people being wrongly convicted.

He would have got that treatment just as fast under a social health care system. The waiting lists are as much about triage as anything else - thus urgent ops. such as that go first knocking less urgent ops back on the time scale. Sure, a triage exists all the way in the medical system, whether in the ER or in scheduled surgery. The myth about massive problems in the Canadian social healthcare system is, I believe, crap. It's the conservative American way to continue to reject a compassionate system and maintain a system of privillege. Capitalists fear helping poor people and want to make exclusive this country supposedly based upon, "Give us your poor, your weak...."

Some people file bankruptcy because they just don't want to be bothered with paying their bills and see BK as an easy way out. Hardly my definition of "overwhelming." I think the stats from the report you are refering to also states the average amount of medical bills at the time of filing the BK was about $12,000. I'm not going to rehash the thread, but I only bring it up because in leaving that part out, you are distorting the whole picture. I had read something about that, but in order for you to not disort the thread you would need to back up and explain how 75% of those that filed for BK had medical insurance..... now can we bitch about a few more % in income taxes? Agin, if you are unemployed or retired, is 12k a lot of money? It would be nice to read a demographic on the income of those that BK'd on what amount of debt. Is it possilble those that had 12k medical debt and BK'd also had other debt like unsecured bedt and lawsuits? Again, the whole report as it was related by the media was incomplete. Regardless of the source, essentially stop chapter7 for everyone and allowing coprorate BK's in the trillions is good ole American Fascism.

How do you feel when you learn that 1/2 of the 1.5 million people who file for bankruptcy protection in the US every year do so because of overwelming medical bills. Define "overwhelming." Oh, and by the way, I normally wouldn't mention it but since you like to pick on others about their spelling, Overwhelming is spelled with an "H" Oh Jebus. SO you imported that crap from another thread? Pretty desperate. If I cared what you just wrote I would bother to go get my post to shpw you it's not a spelling issue, but an issue a given poster wrote Ebonically - just had a laugh about it. Kennedy tried to make me the spelling Nazi, but I debunked that - go read the thread and educate yourself. As for overwhelming, that's subjective. I guess it depends upon your income and the amount of the bills. Either way, overwhelming enough for people to consider filing for BK and for the courts to dismis the debts.

How do you feel when you learn that 1/2 of the 1.5 million people who file for bankruptcy protection in the US every year do so because of overwelming medical bills. Then, how do you feel when 3/4 of those people had medical insurance? Medical insurance is as worthless as auto insurnace, they have such limits that they take care of boo-boos, but ignore major catastrophes. Most of the rest of the world uses socialized medicine, we don't. Mostof the rest of the world recognozes the Iraq war as shit, we don't. Ya, they're wrong, we're right. They'll do a WWII Germany/Japan/Italy to us and "reajust" our thinking if we're not smart enough to do it for ourselves - hope we will.

I love Ebonics [Shocked] It's called a typo. If you look at the little thing you're clicking away on, the "X" is right next to the "C." A. Why a question mark at the end of a statement? B. Why the question mark outside the quote? You left out the misspelling. So do you have anything substantive to add to the discussion, or just more sniping? It's called a typo. If you look at the little thing you're clicking away on, the "X" is right next to the "C." No, not that, typos happn to us all, it's the syntax of, "understood" instead of, "understand." You left out the misspelling. So do you have anything substantive to add to the discussion, or just more sniping? I noticed it, but nothing in my post was about misspelling; it was about the fact that he was trying to sound exact and effecient instead of sarcastic and couldn't construct it correctly. Your entire post was about resuming your fight with me from long ago, after a short moratorium resulting from when you were warned for doing so, so now I see you're back at it...... color me shocked. Do you have anything substantive?

Alright, you've been discovered.... this is George Bush isn't it?

"I think you do not understood the contect in which I wrote my reply". I love Ebonics It appears that you did not read the reply to which I was referenceing"? A. Why a question mark at the end of a statement? B. Why the question mark outside the quote?