Posts Made By: James C Chandler Jr

Roomba.

Lee Spain said:
Would you have a beer with Obama after he called an arrest you made stupid? I have a feeling that the Cambridge cop is in for a condescending lecture from the President and Professor Gates.

Oh goodie! A precious teachable moment opportunity to sit at the feet of the messiah for a patronizing lecture!

In the entire history of crap sandwiches, there may not be a beer this crappy.

It will be recorded, and if it so benefits the messiah selected edits will be released beyond the cop's control.

I don't think I could stand to have a beer with many of our fearless leaders from either party. As if that would hurt their feelings. Just sayin...

Maybe with a $100,000 consulting fee and clearance to bring my own camera crew. Maybe $100,000 is lowball. Maybe its worth more than that. George Soros is good for it.

Rod, I don't have that external GPS unit, but how long was the GPS 'turned on' before you try the GOTO?

Lots of budget GPS take many minutes to figure out where the heck they are, especially the first time they are powered on after being moved hundreds of miles. Maybe the expensive ones are the same, but have never used an expensive one.

Before doing alignment on the CPC (with built-in GPS) I wait quite awhile then always go into the setup screen to verify that the mount has correctly figured out its location and the correct time.

In 1988 Biden had emergency brain surgeries to repair intracranial aneurysms.

I know a bright and brave Vietnam era helicopter pilot who became a preacher later in life. Then he had a minor stroke and had to quit the pastor gig. He still has good sense, but the stroke affected a part of the brain which censors what one says. Honestly saying everything you think can turn out badly when delivering sermons. This problem does not mean that the fellow is a bad person. There are just certain gigs incompatible with unfailingly complete honesty .

Dunno. Reckon the brain surgeries give Biden a valid excuse? Though if painful honesty is incompatible with preaching, maybe it is also incompatible with vice-president?

The nature of the system is that every taxpayer has to eat the crap sandwich and pay for stuff he doesn't want. Everyone has a bee in their bonnet over some 'wasteful' or 'immoral' govt program they object to involuntarily funding.

Though roundly criticized as impractical, I'd like to see an optional IRS form where the taxpayer can earmark his tax payments to special areas, or alternately forbid his tax payments to fund special areas.

This could cause initial problems if all the stardust & moonbeam taxpayers earmark all their taxes for saving whales, and all the lifestyle meddlers earmark all their taxes to the war on drugs. All the trekkies would earmark NASA.

But after the roads get full of potholes, all the special interest taxpayers would grudgingly check off roads to receive some percentage of funding on their tax returns. After high school grads can't even spell k@tt correctly, earmark education.

Eventually the truly desired programs would get adequately funded and the ones no-one cares about would die on the vine. If this resulted in plenty of money for abortion-on-demand, then so be it. It would prove that plenty of folks value that program sufficiently to pay for it.

Tony Aguire said:

Kudos to Obama for being such a strong leader in one of the most difficult times (economic, and otherwise) this country has faced in its history. Considering his overall lack of experience, as well as his controvercial methods of engaging the country he is doing a great job. Obama certainly making lemonade out of the lemons left to him by the previous administration. I am very glad I voted for him and will certainly do so again in 2012! I shudder to think of where we would be today if Mccain and Palin had won the election.

I am one of the many Moderates that are glad our voices were heard and someone stepped up with the ability to move this country in the right direction into the future, instead of keeping us mired in 20th century outdated ideology and policy. We need to take a progressive path to a sustainable vibrant future, Obama is making this happen. Kudos to the majority of Americans that agreed with me!

That must be some really good stuff, Tony . I see colors, man!

I'm just curious and don't have time to read the entire site, but a question for those who have read the entire site--

Has annenberg factcheck.org ever in its history uncovered an unsubstantiated liberal/democrat rumor or myth? Surely the liberals must have been wrong about something, sometime or the other?

Tom Rodstrom said:

Here is a question about health care and the free market.

Lets suppose that your are the CEO of a large drug company responsible for maximizing the profits of your stock holders. You currently sell an AIDS drug that holds the disease in check for as long as a patient takes it. Lets say it costs the patient $12,000 a year (for life). Now, your research department comes up with a drug that cures AIDS completely. What do you do, release the drug or bury it (until someone else releases a cure)?

It's a no brainer. Under the profit motive you bury it.

Years ago, I read an article in Science News about a drug company researcher who found a promising path to a cure for AIDS. In the article, the writer said that it would not be pursued because there was no funding. That article has haunted me ever since.

It is an interesting question, Tom.

Your specific example may be entirely true but it lights up the BS radar. For one thing, there are thousands of promising research paths for every one that actually pans out.

For another thing, it sounds too similar to all those suppressed 200 mile per gallon carburetors, free energy machines, antigravity machines, orgone healing devices, etc. Thousands of those gadgets are hidden away at Area 51 .

I am not lecturing as you are likely more knowledgeable than me. Am merely pointing out obvious surface features.

Perhaps the CEO would make sure the patent is tight, and then release the cure for a price = $12,000 * MedianAidsSurvivalInYears? For instance, if median AIDS survival is 6 years, then the CEO can't expect to get more than $72,000 per patient until the patient dies, so he will make just as much money by selling the cure for $72,000?

He may be able to make equal profit by selling significantly cheaper then $72,000 because of all his competitors selling $12,000 maintenance treatments. If he only has a 25 percent market penetration, and assuming his competitors can't create a me-too cure, then the CEO can get 100 percent market penetration selling the cure, and therefore will make equal profit selling the cure for $18,000, barely higher than his current price for maintenance therapy.

However, at $18,000, unless the cure is extremely high-tech and difficult, this profit level will attract illegal black-market supplies of the cure, and the black market will be basically unstoppable. The CEO either has to keep it a trade secret and hope the cure can't be reverse-engineered, or he has to patent it thereby telling the entire world how to do the cure (if they don't mind infringing the patent). Unless the cure is really super difficult chemistry, there WILL be significant black market competition.

Hmm, perhaps that is a comment on the actual efficacy of some of the expensive drugs? If something like AZT at $1000 per month is really super-effective, then why isn't the Russian Mob selling it for $950 per month? That may be a pretty tidy profit unless the molecule is extremely difficult to synthesize?

Attempting completeness, you could turn the problem around--

If the government is drowning in debt and looking ahead to all those retiring boomers. Basically impossible to pay their social security and medicare, so the only option is delaying strategy. Attempt to stave off the inevitable as long as possible.

So if your government scientist has discovered an AIDS cure, why in the world would you release it? The younger-aged AIDS patients will be healthy enough to pay their own treatment for several years and then go down pretty fast, well before retirement age. So if you release the AIDS cure, it would just speed the future inevitable social security collapse.

Tom Dubois said:

Today at a town hall meeting when asked how private companies could compete with a government program Obama's response was:

"UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. It's the Post Office that's always having problems"

So what your saying is the private, non-union competition runs circles around government run Post? Buddy, your teleprompter is just shaking its head in the corner.

Yes, he's not remarkably helping himself with this argument.

At least he did finally 'reassure' everyone today-- "I don't believe in death panels." Finally taking Jon Stewart's advice to explain, "I promise we won't kill grandma!"

That after the previous town hall reassurance-- "Maybe grandma needs the pain pill rather than the pacemaker." The beauty of the pain pill being that if grandma needs a pacemaker, then she won't be in pain very long without the pacemaker, so we would save money on the pacemaker and would not have to buy many pain pills either .

However, one reason the Post Office has competitive problems-- It is legally required to serve all areas. The Postal Service has zillions of money-losing tiny offices 30 miles out past podunk, and without such offices many citizens wouldn't have mail service.

If the Post Office wasn't required to serve everybody-- If it could close down all the losing offices-- Possibly the Post Office could compete better with private competition.

So if that is what BHO was referencing (benefit of the doubt here)-- If a public option would cover all the losing markets and allow insurance companies to skim the cream, then it might be similar to Post Office vs UPS.

But my understanding is that the new law wants to forbid insurance companies to skim the cream. That would be like passing a law that UPS must set up a zillion money-losing tiny offices 30 miles past podunk and 50 miles past grinders switch. IOW, make the private company just as big a loser as the public option, except the private company can't print money and the Feds print all the money they need.