The Goat Pen

It's entirely possible that Trump has Asperger's syndrome. While that would excuse, I guess, some of his rhetorical gaffes, it opens up a whole 'nother can of worms with regard to his fitness to be president...

trump has a habit of generalizing things into never when the correct word is hardly

no and Obama did not call everyone of those 3000 plus killed in Iraq and Afghanistan

who can blame them

the reporter asjked why trump hadn't called the families of those SF guys killed 2 weeks ago and trump seeks to deflect by incorrectly saying families were never called by prior presidents. He should have said they are infrequently called

Hedge, I wish you had assburners syndrome

The historical spike in greenhouse gasses? Its wasn't humans

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa ... xide-spike

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/persona ... id=U142DHP
In 2003, a team of influential economists published a paper pointing out that prices are the key problem in American health care. It came with the title: “It’s the Prices, Stupid.”

The takeaway was absolutely clear. “Higher health spending but lower use of health services adds up to much higher prices in the United States than in any other OECD country,” the paper concluded.

Johns Hopkins’s Gerard Anderson was the lead author of that report. I called him a few weeks ago to ask if he thought the conclusions of his 14-year-old report still stood.

“The Affordable Care Act reduced the price to consumers, but it didn’t reduce the actual, unit price,” says Anderson. “It essentially made everything affordable to people, but the prices actually accelerated in growth post-ACA.”

But this is not always the story told about American health care. Instead, it often goes like this: We are going to the doctor way too much, and that makes our system expensive. Rampant overuse, unnecessary care, and waste are at the heart of our spending problem.

One poll of 627 doctors, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that 42 percent of physicians thought their own patients were receiving too much medical care. “You’re getting too much health care,” a headline in the Atlantic bluntly declared.

In this narrative, American health care is outlandishly expensive because we take advantage of every new scan, drug, or treatment.

no, when I go to the general practitioner, its my doctor who can't make an assessment and has to send me to a specialist. The general practitioner today is no more valuable to me than a medical app on my phone that will ask me a series of questions to help determine what it probably is. People aren't getting too much health care, they are getting a layer of bureaucracy that exploits insurance.

but its absolutely true its the prices.

You don't have to have an economics degree to know that subsidizing those who can't afford it without capping costs will escalate the cost of health care. its basic supply and demand.

Why does Ford motor company sell a basic car? Because its all that some people can afford. If the government subsidized everyone to afford a Ford Focus, the price of the Ford focus would double in about 2 years. Ford has zero incentive to cut costs when the government is creating demand.

Same with health care, education and housing.

I have a theory - it may be complete horseshit and I will readily accept it because its pretty out there

but this Harvey Weinstein thing had me thinking. Every day 10 or so women in Hollywood are coming out with a story of sexual abuse - and there are alot of women who experience it. I bet depending on your definition of improper sexual conduct, may 80, 90% of women have experienced it in their life. I know that every woman that I got to know long enough to be in a long term relationship has a story about it - from babysitting to the father-n-law.

And that isn't surprising to me. Men have it in their DNA to find women attractive and men in power will use that to their advantage.

But what is a bit surprising is this environment of women not being able to accuse them or confront men who do this for fear of retribution or credibility.

And my theory is the reason behind this , in part anyways, is Atticus Finch.

Thing about it, since 1965 or so, To Kill a Mockingbird is required reading for males and females in high schools across America...not so much in Mississippi...and while no one is going to compared Harvey Weinstein to Tom Robinson, the book drives home the point not just about racism but about women falsely accusing men to cover their lust.

Ok, that may be world is flat territory, I admit it, but at some level I think it gets embedded in both the male and female psyche, and has been reinforced over the years with defense lawyers attacking the credibility and virtue of the accusing women.

I can't quite get my head around this analogy, unless, being the virulent anti-semite that you are, you're suggesting that these women were so ashamed of having consensual sex with a jew that they're now claiming rape to avoid the taint of being labeled a jew lover. That doesn't really work in this situation, though, on a lot of levels...

hedge wrote:I can't quite get my head around this analogy, unless, being the virulent anti-semite that you are, you're suggesting that these women were so ashamed of having consensual sex with a jew that they're now claiming rape to avoid the taint of being labeled a jew lover. That doesn't really work in this situation, though, on a lot of levels...

no I'm ignoring race - I'm just point out that To Kill A Mockingbird may have had a chilling effect on women accusing any man of rape.

Hedge raped me

"To Kill A Mockingbird may have had a chilling effect on women accusing any man of rape."

I would hope it would have a chilling effect on a woman falsely accusing any man of rape, but I'm not terribly optimistic that someone who would even consider doing such a thing would be swayed by a novel. I still am not following how TKAM would have an effect on women who were actually assaulted/molested/raped...

hedge wrote:I can't quite get my head around this analogy, unless, being the virulent anti-semite that you are...

The word “virulent” seems to be the liberal word of the week. This is just another example of ridiculous and absurd accusations of anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, and all the other -isms that constantly flow from the modern liberal mind. Leftists are now so utterly obsessed with identity politics/victimology/reparations that they are no longer capable of thinking about anything else.

Those words “racism” and “sexism” and “anti-Semiism” used to have real meanings. Now, they are just verbal talismans used by liberals to ward off any word or thought they don’t like, as if they were evil spirits.

hedge wrote:"To Kill A Mockingbird may have had a chilling effect on women accusing any man of rape."

I would hope it would have a chilling effect on a woman falsely accusing any man of rape, but I'm not terribly optimistic that someone who would even consider doing such a thing would be swayed by a novel. I still am not following how TKAM would have an effect on women who were actually assaulted/molested/raped...

Bill Clinton and Harvey Weinstein must have made TKAM required reading by women just before they were sexually assaulted.

Question for the board: why weren’t the accusations of all those women accusing Bill Clinton of sexually harassing or groping or raping them not taken NEARLY as seriously as the women accusing Harvey Weinstein of similar behavior? Where was all the outrage back then?

I play golf with an army captain in the Green Berets. Played with him the Saturday after it happened. I never ask him about anything related to his work except to ask about the natural stuff he has seen in Africa (his group deals with Africa and that bullshit). He knew some of the guys killed. It felt weird playing with him knowing that (I didn't ask, but he made a comment about what a tough week it was because of the deaths when I asked him how things were going), but I guess he just accepts that as part of the job.

eCat wrote:I have a theory - it may be complete horseshit and I will readily accept it because its pretty out there

but this Harvey Weinstein thing had me thinking. Every day 10 or so women in Hollywood are coming out with a story of sexual abuse - and there are alot of women who experience it. I bet depending on your definition of improper sexual conduct, may 80, 90% of women have experienced it in their life. I know that every woman that I got to know long enough to be in a long term relationship has a story about it - from babysitting to the father-n-law.

And that isn't surprising to me. Men have it in their DNA to find women attractive and men in power will use that to their advantage.

But what is a bit surprising is this environment of women not being able to accuse them or confront men who do this for fear of retribution or credibility.

And my theory is the reason behind this , in part anyways, is Atticus Finch.

Thing about it, since 1965 or so, To Kill a Mockingbird is required reading for males and females in high schools across America...not so much in Mississippi...and while no one is going to compared Harvey Weinstein to Tom Robinson, the book drives home the point not just about racism but about women falsely accusing men to cover their lust.

Ok, that may be world is flat territory, I admit it, but at some level I think it gets embedded in both the male and female psyche, and has been reinforced over the years with defense lawyers attacking the credibility and virtue of the accusing women.

It's my favorite novel not written by Hemingway or Fitzgerald. That's just crazy.

if the federal government hasn't passed a law yet, they need to immediately to say that drones on American soil cannot be weaponized.

I doubt Trump would be up for such a law however.

Professor Tiger wrote:

hedge wrote:I can't quite get my head around this analogy, unless, being the virulent anti-semite that you are...

The word “virulent” seems to be the liberal word of the week. This is just another example of ridiculous and absurd accusations of anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, and all the other -isms that constantly flow from the modern liberal mind. Leftists are now so utterly obsessed with identity politics/victimology/reparations that they are no longer capable of thinking about anything else.

Those words “racism” and “sexism” and “anti-Semiism” used to have real meanings. Now, they are just verbal talismans used by liberals to ward off any word or thought they don’t like, as if they were evil spirits.

Dude, you are the only one in here who is obsessed. Your entire intellectual world, such as it is, has been reduced to "liberals do this" and "liberals do that." Pretty pathetic. The whole thing about anti-Semitism with eCat has been a long-running meme in here. Nothing to do with liberalism at all. Just shut your piehole for once...

"Ok, that may be world is flat territory, I admit it, but at some level I think it gets embedded in both the male and female psyche, and has been reinforced over the years with defense lawyers attacking the credibility and virtue of the accusing women."

But the point in TKAM was that the accuser was full of shit and she was just doing it to avoid getting beaten by her pappy and also b/c she knew the prevailing racism of the day would ensure that she would get a sympathetic hearing, irregardless of the falsehood of her accusation...

Professor Tiger wrote:

hedge wrote:"To Kill A Mockingbird may have had a chilling effect on women accusing any man of rape."

I would hope it would have a chilling effect on a woman falsely accusing any man of rape, but I'm not terribly optimistic that someone who would even consider doing such a thing would be swayed by a novel. I still am not following how TKAM would have an effect on women who were actually assaulted/molested/raped...

Bill Clinton and Harvey Weinstein must have made TKAM required reading by women just before they were sexually assaulted.

Question for the board: why weren’t the accusations of all those women accusing Bill Clinton of sexually harassing or groping or raping them not taken NEARLY as seriously as the women accusing Harvey Weinstein of similar behavior? Where was all the outrage back then?

It was the late '80s and early '90s. I'd like to think that, if Clinton were coming up today and had the same allegations, it would disqualify him from being president. What he was accused of (and probably did) was a terrible abuse of power. Obviously, that kind of abuse is not taken very seriously by the voters as evidenced by our current president. Women have more of a voice now than they did back in Clinton's day. Hopefully people will start taking this shit seriously and let these women speak out and get a fair hearing when this stuff happens to them.

At the same time, women were rallying behind a woman who stood by this man, dismissed his attackers and continued to enable him - and people wanted this woman to be president.