Wabash82

What? The abuse of power allegation in the impeachment articles concerns Trump's effort to get the Ukranians to "announce" that they were investigating Joe Biden. How was that effort a "response" to anything in the Mueller investigation? Trump also did press his cockimamie "it was really Ukraine who hacked the Dems email server!" thing with the Ukranians President, which is a tinfoil hat theory that I guess you could say he has latched onto in "response" to the Mueller investigation. But that tragic sign of his basic ignorance of the modern world (the guy apparently actually thinks modern cloud email servers are like a single "black box" hard drive that someone can physically take and hide in another country) is not the subject of the abuse of power article of impeachment.

That is cynically selective quoting to change the meaning. The gist of her statement was the matters that are subject of the impeachment articles arose out of events -- the Russian interference in the 2016 election -- that were uncovered in an investigation that began 2-1/2 years ago. Here is the full quote: "This has been a couple of years – two and a half – since the initial investigation of the U.S. – of the Russian involvement in America’s election, which started much of this and led to other things."

The Purdue student was trying to change the educational institution he attends. That is what you claimed you had never questioned a student having the "right" to do. Now you want to draw lines based on whether you think the proposed change is important or serious enough? That doesn't sound like much of a "right", if exercising it subject to the whim of Mr. Muda....

I'd say that position -- individual doesn't have right to try and change their educational institution through their words and actions -- was the implication of your comment in the recent thread about Mitch Daniels' and diversity at Purdue. I believe your remark was something to the effect that the president of the black student Union who was calling Daniels out for his comment should just focus on his studies.

Bob, what's the situation in Indiana these days with the "infliction of mental harm" -type torts? It's not an area of law I've had reason to keep up on, but I do seem to recall that our courts were consistently chipping away at some of the limits related to needing a contemporaneous or related physical harm. Is there room for a lawyer to make a good faith argument that the mental trauma and fear from learning you were operated on with "unclean" instruments is itself a recognizable (compensible) injury? I am thinking of the colonoscopy patient who has just learned that the scope that was stuck way up in his nether regions was not sterilized after being way up the hinie of some other patient before him. That would sure make me "sick"!

Were his lips moving?

A 19th century time traveler would undoubtedly find many other things in the modern U.S. to be odd -- the majority of the population living in urban settings; large numbers of women working outside the home; most families having less than three children; beer usually served cold, etc. "Odd" in this context just means different, not a value judgment. (Except for the beer thing - warm beer sucks.)

I loved the "dis" response from IBM (the presumed owners of the "supercomputer" mentioned in Google's press release): IBM pooh-poohed the 10,000 years number and said that, with unlimited access to disc space, their supercomputer could do the computation in just "two and a half days." Two and a half days. To do a computation that Google's computer did in 3 minutes. Atta boy, Watson, you really showed 'em.

Were the services at a Walmart? I mean, where else is there Christmas music in October?!

Muda, how did I know you'd be the kind of guy who orders "off menu" at a McDonald's! If you want it "your way" go to a goll darn French restaurant or a BK, and quit clogging up the line between me and that Big Mac I'm craving.

I'll check with SF for the details, but this doctor apparently must have known something about the Clintons, the Bidens and the Ukraine.....

The irony of Howard's post accusing the Dems of conspiracy theorizing following right on the heels of SF's post with this loony tunes conspiracy theory about "western intelligence agencies" all conspiring against Trump (Because ... why? He's a friend of the Russians? Because the Italians all love Hillary Clinton?) is just too funny to ignore.....

The whole "poor doctors will make less money" argument is odd from you, Muda, since you traditionally have argued for market-based approaches that, if they succeeded, would presumably have a similar affect on average income for doctors. (For the same market-based reasons that doctors made significantly lower incomes before employer-based group health insurance came along.) With regard to the smokers getting lung cancer thing: if have group health insurance through your employer, you are already subject to that exact sort of cost shifting arrangement now. While insurers can and will impose premium surcharges on smokers in the group pool, those surcharged do not offset the additional actuarially-determined cost of having those people in the pool, and they this spread that cost to everyone else in the pool. Even uninsured smokers who contract lung cancer cost you money under our current system, because they still get treated under hospital "charity" programs or state emergency medical cost plans, and those charges are eventually "shared" with you via higher taxes, and higher overall medical costs at the hospitals. The moralistic aspects of this are interesting to hear from you as well. While slippery slope arguments are often illogical, I can't imagine you have absolutely no vices or habits (eating or otherwise) that are not associated in some degree with some negative health consequences. Yet you foist the potential cost of your vice or habit on others in your group health coverage pool. Why should they have to carry part of the risk of your poor decision-making?

Real world circumstances suggest otherwise, as the number of physicians per capita in the U.S. and in Canada currently is almost identical. The per capita number of physicians should be much lower in Canada's "socialist" system, per your logic.

Fixed that for you....

Yes, the article (which you cited, by the way) indicates that the science is not settled on how low of a testosterone level would be needed to mitigate biological advantages the former males gained while they were male. That what these scientist are being asked to determine. Not whether gender classifications for the Olympics will be based on chromosomes -- they decided a long time ago the answer to that is "no."

So it was okay for those those Eastern bloc testosterone and other steroids laden humans who competed in the Olympics back in the '70s and '80s to compete as women because they had mommy parts?

Again, the Fox News article is an example of leaving out key facts to create a false implication. Specifically, they cite Biden's claim that he didn't speak to his son about his Ukrainian business, then note that Biden played golf with his son and a guy ON THE BOARD of the same Ukranian company in 2014! The implication being, here is Joe B. golfing with a guy from this company his son had just joined, and we are supposed to believe such a group was not talking about that company?! Except the report leaves out the important fact that the "other board member," Archer, was a longtime friend and business partner of the younger Biden from well before they both joined the Ukraine company's board. So this is a photo of Joe Biden playing golf with his son and one of his son's long time buddies. How nefarious! Again, let's be clear about what the issues are here. Joe Biden's son showed a lack of ethics and bad judgment taking the job with the Ukranian company. And Joe Biden showed a lack of judgment and character by failing to grab his son by the ear and telling him, "Don't do that! It creates an impression you are leveraging our relationship!" But there was nothing illegal about young Biden taking the job, or old Biden not stopping him from taking the job. There's abundant evidence from other objective sources that when Biden demanded the Ukranian prosecutor be fired, he was conveying a message that represented the official position of the U.S., the U.K., and the IMF, which was based on their collective conclusion that this prosecutor was weak on fighting corruption. The only source of "evidence" to suggest that Biden had any different motive, such as to protect the company his son worked for, is the allegations of the fired prosecutor himself -- who I think we can agree is a somewhat biased source under the circumstances. In his conversation with the newly-elected Ukranian President, Trump was not conveying a message that reflected the official position of the U.S. He was pursuing something in his own, personal interest. He doesn't even dispute that, as far as I can tell. He wanted Ukraine to help him find information to discredit the Mueller report, to assist him in his re-election effort, and to tarnish the image of a potential opponent in the next election, to assist him in his re-election effort.

The economic differences in the markets make your hypothetical pretty hard to answer, because (for the most part) legal insurance is not available to the average Joe, and outside of a murder defense, a person's not putting his life at stake if he decides to forego legal representation to avoid the costs. But in any event, there wouldn't be a 40%+ cut across the range for all lawyers under such a system, because unlike the situation with doctors, where even those at the lowest end of the pay scale make substantial bucks, there are lots of "starving" lawyers who make less than $45-50k a year from their practice, who would probably enjoy the raise they'd get working for the Federal Legal Administration.

Yes, he bragged that he got the guy fired. But you (and Trump and Guiliani) are the one's claiming he did it to protect his son or the company, when the FACTS show that Biden demanded the guy's firing on behalf of the U.S., the U.K. (who was tired of Ukranian slow rolling on investigations of Bursima's owner -- the U.K. had to release $25 million of the guy's money they'd frozen because the Ukraine had failed to pursue the investigation), and the IMF, which also had decried the prosecutor's inaction in pursuing corruption cases. The FACT (I like capitalizing that word, too) that Biden told the story of getting the guy fired in PUBLIC on the record, while the President (allegedly) had the records of his phone conversation with the Ukranian President moved to a secret server tells you a fair amount about who thought they had done something shady....

Not sure I understand your comment -- science generally involves consensus, as that's the line that's used to separate "theories" (e.g., General Relativity in physics) or principles or "laws" (e.g.the Laws of Thermodynamics) from mere hypotheses (e.g., "I bet dogs understands English...."). But in any event, the article says that they haven't decided on new guidelines yet in part because the science is not settled: a new study apparently indicated that the testosterone level they were contemplating using as the standard for who may compete as a "woman" may not be low enough to mitigate the biological advantages. That sounds like they are handling this advisory role like you would want scientists to hande it.

The numbers you cited (over a 15 year period) for deaths in Canada estimated to have been due to longer wait times for accessing care under their system appear to be lower than the estimates for deaths in the U.S. attributed to the lack of healthcare insurance (if these mostly one-year figures in the below article are extrapolated over a similar 15 year period): https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/may/08/raul-labrador/raul-labradors-claim-no-one-dies-lack-health-care-/ So the "people die from the flaws in your system" argument is at best a wash. In looking to other quality of care factors, like infant mortality rates or over all life span, or to economic factors like per capita cost, the western nations with universal healthcare systems seem to have us beat.

You are kidding with this comment, right? Questions concerning young Biden's work in the Ukraine and whether Papa Joe intervened to protect him were floating around in the MSM before the election back in 2016. It was the NYT or WaPo (too lazy to look up which one) that first wrote an article about it back then. The "problem" was (and is) that there is no "there" there. Young Biden's decision to take the job was ethically questionable, but no one has ever presented any evidence that he was involved in any corrupt activities. And there is lots of contemporaneous evidence that the U.S. and its EU allies all wanted the prosecutor in question gone, not because he was pursuing any corruption investigation, but because he was slow walking corruption investigations in general -- because he was a political ally of the previous president who was pushed out. As the Washington Examiner -- not exactly a liberal publication, by the way -- explained today, it looks like this mess has arisen for Trump because Guiliani got played by the former Ukrainian prosecutor: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/conned-road-to-trump-impeachment-may-have-begun-with-giuliani-getting-played-by-ukrainian-prosecutor?_amp=true

I have three millennial age sons (well, the oldest might be a 'tweener, as he is 30). They and their male friends of the same age appear to mainly drink beer. (Sometimes lots of it.) If they have a little cash in their pockets, they drink fancy micro-brewery beers; if funds are low, they drink mega-brewery beers. If someone took the last beer and the game's not over yet, they'll sometimes stoop to drinking whatever fruity alcohol concoction their wife/girlfriend brought. In the last year or so, I have seen their respective female spouses/girlfriends (who are also millennials) occasionally drink a White Claw instead of Miller Lite or comparable swill. I've never had White Claw, but that strikes me as a good decision.

I don't see a lot of guys drinking White Claw, either (unless all the beers gone).