INSURANCE! by WISHIMAY

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:

Oh, honny, all I have to do is take one step outside my front door to know that there probably isn't another like me on the entire planet...Sure, you could find someone who LOOKS like me, and maybe even has the same health problems, but I've never found ANYONE that I come even 50% close to on ideologies.

Everybody thinks that because they are unique they are also special and valuable. This won't shake your high opinion of yourself, but if a person was a painting they would not be a Vincent van Gogh landscape. They'd be a unique landscape, alright, like everyone else, but they'd be the one sold by a starving artist for $35.

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:

And keep drinking dat fluoride...you really do believe that politicians represent the PEOPLE and not da moneys and their OWN AGENDAS. How quaint.

From politicians' self-interest, politicians everywhere and in every century have always represented those who voted for them. If you voted for their opponents, politicians care little about you except for how you vote in the NEXT election. But if you want them to care nothing about you, maybe even deliberately do you harm, then don't vote.

You got the idea that excellent politicians would be voted into office by conscientious and well informed voters. But what really happens is that well informed voters choose rotten rat bastard politicians that can be depended upon to do them a favor.

Excellent politicians with all their other wonderful qualities are as rare as perfect 100 carat diamonds. I guess America needs to import excellence from some country. Or else devise a way to get the rotten rat bastard politicians to perform better for everybody. Make everybody a voter is one way. It sorta works in Australia.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3048814/Flawless-100-carat-emerald-cu
t-snip-25million.html

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Tuesday, January 5, 2016 10:47 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:

They would probably be poor and more likely to vote democrat

Oh, you think they'd vote YOUR way...holy narcissism Batman...

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Tuesday, January 5, 2016 10:53 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:

They'd be a unique landscape, alright, like everyone else, but they'd be the one sold by a starving artist for $35.

Moron. Van Gogh WAS a starving artist. He only sold ONE painting.

Guess I should start de-valuing myself immediately because you think I should... You people are SO BRAINWASHED it's hilarious. And horribly, horribly sad...

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Tuesday, January 5, 2016 11:14 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:

They'd be a unique landscape, alright, like everyone else, but they'd be the one sold by a starving artist for $35.

Moron. Van Gogh WAS a starving artist. He only sold ONE painting.

Guess I should start de-valuing myself immediately because you think I should... You people are SO BRAINWASHED it's hilarious. And horribly, horribly sad...

That is why I choose van Gogh rather than, say, Picasso or Rembrandt. WishIMay's preciousness will be recognized one day, although not in your lifetime.

www.redbubble.com/people/girardin27/works/10521648-starry-flight

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, January 5, 2016 9:48 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:
Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:

They would probably be poor and more likely to vote democrat
Oh, you think they'd vote YOUR way...holy narcissism Batman...

Continuing the theme that the wealthy specifically don't want WishIMay to vote:

Facebook Backer Wishes Women Couldn't Vote
http://gawker.com/5231390/facebook-backer-wishes-women-couldnt-vote

Peter Thiel, foremost among Silicon Valley's loopy libertarians and the first outside investor in Facebook, has written an essay declaring that the country went to hell as soon as women won the right to vote.

Thiel is the former CEO of PayPal who now runs the $2 billion hedge fund Clarium Capital and a venture-capital firm called the Founders Fund. His best-returning investment to date, though, has been Facebook. His $500,000 investment is now worth north of $100 million even by the most conservative valuations of the social network.

On the side, though, his pet passion is libertarianism and the fantasy that everything would be better in the world if government just quit nagging everybody. But, now he's given up hope on achieving his vision through political means because, as he writes in Cato Unbound, a website run by the Cato Institute, all those voting females have wrecked things:

Quote:
The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women - two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians - have rendered the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron.

So there you have it: The problem with women is that they don't vote like their menfolk tell them. We would have so much more freedom, Thiel suggests, if only we'd deprived women of it.

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Wednesday, January 6, 2016 10:15 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by G:
Some of the problems I see with the idea that more voters = better representation:

2. 36% voter turnout seems like a large enough sample size. Hell, they call these things at like 5%.

I'll just go after point 2 because the answer is completely technical. The 36% of eligible Americans would have to be chosen at random for it to be a large enough sample size. 0.1% would be a large enough sample if it was truly a random sample of the eligible. The 36% actually voting is NOT random at all which most definitely explains why government at the national, state and local level are certainly indifferent toward the people who don't vote. Non-voters might just as well be nonentities, total nothings to be ignored.

The eligible voters of Dallas have exactly zero power in Houston government because they don't vote in Houston. No Houston politician, no matter how nice & competent, cares what Dallas voters want. Likewise, the eligible voters of Houston who don't vote have exactly the same power over Houston government as Dallas voters have. Zero.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, January 6, 2016 10:51 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by G:

Bring back tar and featherin' I say! That'll set 'em straight.

Now someone is talkin' some sense!

Hubbs has always said that we should put every politician on trial after their term is over, like the Spartans did. And televise it and make it a national holiday.

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Wednesday, January 6, 2016 11:31 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:

Now someone is talkin' some sense!

It's nonsense. The tar and feathering is a revenge fantasy of the powerless. Since you're not going to use force, you could use The Force. Rey demanded in The Force Awakens, “You will release my restraints and leave the door open.” The stormtrooper rebuffed Rey, but she didn't stop asking. Try the same on politicians, except they need to be told thousands of times by thousands of voters because The Force is very weak in Americans, who are meek around authorities but are loud and full of themselves where it is useless.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, January 6, 2016 1:22 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by G:

I know! Tell me that the visual of Ted Cruz having to spit out a few feathers so he can plead for us to stop doesn't spark even a little smile...

Visualize this:

David Horsey's "Deconstructing the U.S. electorate" http://blog.seattlepi.com/davidhorsey/archives/225993.asp OCTOBER 24, 2010

And the result of being split 25%, 25% and 50% is this:

www.mindfully.org/Jonik/Jonik-People-Have-Spoken.htm

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, January 6, 2016 10:44 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

1. If it's the same candidates then what's the diff? They're all losers, they'd just be losers with more votes.

But they're not ALL losers. Which is why you have to vote to keep the good ones in and roll the dice again when someone fails to serve. And KEEP ON doing it. Sooner or later they'll get the message -- non-performance leads to having your own personal political career cut very short. You get one term in office, and if you fail your constituents, you're out.
That's something the US electorate has never really tried.

4. If we could get more people to vote and it looked like it would influence behavior... the curs in office would just find other ways to rig it. They always seem to be one step ahead of us peasants.

How would anyone know that? We've never even come close to that through the vote.

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Thursday, January 7, 2016 12:23 AM

Thank you for giving the perfect visual examples of why voting is a process of little consequence.

1. The people (who, as you notice have their own very personal and limited agendas and those agendas will always be more important, thus social movement is completely dictated by such and irrespective of which way I see it)
2. The Mass Confusion Principle (see all those little signs? We couldn't get the country to agree on any ONE of those even if we COULD somehow reach everyone, which is what makes us sooooooo inefficient and easily manipulated- which works for the system)

You keep thinking the system can get better, when it's the PEOPLE that need to get better, and I don't believe that humanity as a group can get that much better in my lifetime, which is why I don't vote.
This crazy state IS probably as good as it gets, which is immaterial because you still have to get along the best you can. Voting or no.

And don't bother to call me un-American, either. I'm just renting the soil beneath me anyway. I could get what I get here at a dozen other countries- if I could ever afford to leave.....

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Thursday, January 7, 2016 9:05 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:

You keep thinking the system can get better, when it's the PEOPLE that need to get better, and I don't believe that humanity as a group can get that much better in my lifetime, which is why I don't vote.

Joss Whedon does not agree with this belief that people need to get better.
"A year from now, ten, they'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running; I aim to misbehave." - Malcolm Reynolds

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, January 7, 2016 2:13 PM

He was talking about unauthorized experimentation in neurochemistry on an unsuspecting populace, and also that we don't understand what we are doing or the effects we have, not that we shouldn't try to eliminate mental illness. There's ways of doing things reasonable like and ways that are not so reasonable. A logical population IS still best, for the environment and the people in it.

Blue Sun would have had no way to measure how much of a certain chemical is absorbed in day to day life, which is where I think they went wrong. They added it to the air processors in small amounts, but didn't account for long term exposure. Maybe they even came back to apply a maintenance dose in an already affected population and that's what caused the event....

I actually think breeding programs are the way to go, but there is always the "what if". What if we breed out aggression and aliens attack? What if we can't fix what we have done and we need to? What if those traits we breed are used to an advantage by wrongdoers and manipulators?

Again, people are their own undoing...which is I'm sure the reason why Blue Sun was DOING the experiments to begin with... Trying to explain reason to an unreasonable populace is MADNESS

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Thursday, January 7, 2016 3:34 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:

Again, people are their own undoing...which is I'm sure the reason why Blue Sun was DOING the experiments to begin with... Trying to explain reason to an unreasonable populace is MADNESS

People have not evolved since 1515 AD. They aren't genetically better. But the world is a much better place. How did that happen? Please don't claim that medical drugs, electricity, printing presses, and flush toilets created better people. That's silly. Inventions only created a better world, not better people.

I give credit for a better world to the ideals of the Enlightenment and to scientists and engineers who are no longer living under the same old rules that have controlled humanity since the year 666 AD. (Or maybe 666 BC?) The world got better because of better ideas to live by, not because of better people living under ancient rules. People aren't any more extraordinary than they were 500 years ago and yet there have been huge improvements for ordinary people. And more improvements are possible and will be made by ordinary people, not some new race of superior people becoming voters and their elected rulers.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, January 7, 2016 4:58 PM

REAVERFAN

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Thursday, January 7, 2016 7:06 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Republicans have shied away from floating detailed Obamacare replacements that could be subject to close analysis for financial and health care impacts.
-- www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/01/06/paul-ryans-year-of
-contrasts-begins-with-obamacare-repeal-vote/

Hey — no guns at the Republican National Convention? Really? What better place to demonstrate the wisdom of open carry? The convention floor seems like logical next place to expand gun rights.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/01/05/a-modest-proposal-on-guns-for-
conservatives/207769

Remember: Guns don't kill people. Guns just kill people who don't have guns.

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Friday, January 8, 2016 8:55 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
" The world got better because of better ideas to live by "

Really, the world got BETTER?
I think this video distinctly proves it HASN'T.

If anything, we've gotten better at blowing ourselves to bits while raping the planet and having LESS skills than people 500 years ago.

Legal rights, more pills, and a little more general knowledge... and that can all be undone in a flash with one war. Christians and Muslims go at it we're all done for...

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Friday, January 8, 2016 11:01 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/comics/2010-11-08-serenity08_ST_N.
htm

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, January 8, 2016 2:24 PM

Ok....

Do you have the one that was a Christmas kind of episode?
Hubby missed that one...

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Friday, January 8, 2016 2:54 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:

Do you have the one that was a Christmas kind of episode?
Hubby missed that one...

If by one you mean comic, than Hubby probably means Serenity: Downtime, which is at
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/comics/2010-11-08-serenity08_ST_N.
htm

I added the Xmas tree to hide Book and Kaylee. The window glass isn't a one way mirror – without the tree, Jayne and Simon would see who is looking in the window.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, January 8, 2016 5:02 PM

JO753

rezident owtsidr

Therez a continuity error. Hiz pants are up suddenly & then down agen 10 secondz later. Plus, hiz left arm looks severely dislocated in the 2nd to last frame.

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.nooalf.com

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Friday, January 8, 2016 5:48 PM

deleteded

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Friday, January 8, 2016 5:56 PM

NVM.

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Friday, January 8, 2016 6:51 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/comics/2010-11-08-serenity08_ST_N.
htm

I have clicked all OVER the damn page and none of those links to the comic.

To get to Serenity Downtime, start on this page
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/comics/2010-11-08-serenity08_ST_N.
htm
There are those nine dots with numbers inside the dots to the right of the word "Downtime": page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9.
Click on one those numbers and you go to that page.
Imagine Kaylee's voice: “I'm pointing right at it!”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, January 8, 2016 8:40 PM

Nope don't have it. Flash is enabled and checked activeX filter like it says and ...NADA. It's ok, He saw the vid...

BOOKS. WAAAAY better than comics. More detail, depth, and they at least keep me entertained for an hour or two. Easier to download parts too...

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Friday, January 8, 2016 11:20 PM

SHINYGOODGUY

Shiny!

sgg

Quote:
Originally posted by second:

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/comics/2010-11-08-serenity08_ST_N.
htm

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, January 8, 2016 11:30 PM

SHINYGOODGUY

Trouble is, it's all truer than not................God help us!

SGG

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by G:

I know! Tell me that the visual of Ted Cruz having to spit out a few feathers so he can plead for us to stop doesn't spark even a little smile...
Visualize this:

David Horsey's "Deconstructing the U.S. electorate" http://blog.seattlepi.com/davidhorsey/archives/225993.asp OCTOBER 24, 2010

And the result of being split 25%, 25% and 50% is this:

www.mindfully.org/Jonik/Jonik-People-Have-Spoken.htm

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, January 9, 2016 8:32 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:
Nope don't have it. Flash is enabled and checked activeX filter like it says and ...NADA. It's ok, He saw the vid...

BOOKS. WAAAAY better than comics. More detail, depth, and they at least keep me entertained for an hour or two. Easier to download parts too...

Serenity-Downtime in .cbr file (comic book reader file)
www.mediafire.com/download/oroux5zuzdx8k0z/Serenity-Downtime_%282010%2
9.cbr

A program I personally use to read .cbr files such as Serenity-Downtime
www.cdisplayex.com

A Politico review of Barack Obama’s domestic policy legacy—and the changes he made while nobody was paying attention. Obamacare success and failure is mentioned several times.
www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/obama-biggest-achievements-213
487

Coal miners hate these Obama rules about energy efficiency of home appliances and the upcoming rule for commercial air conditioners:
“They’re hell-bent to ram through as many rules as they can, as fast as they can, at the highest levels they think they can justify to a judge,” says Stephen Yurek, president of the Air Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute. But like it or not, the barrage of strict new rules is a key reason why U.S. electric power demand, after decades of growth, is now virtually flat, averting the need for new electricity generating plants while saving consumers billions of dollars.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, January 9, 2016 9:48 PM

Okay.... and we're back to

I'm done with you, yer an idiot. Go play in your diary, little girl...

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Sunday, January 10, 2016 12:52 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

1. The people (who, as you notice have their own very personal and limited agendas and those agendas will always be more important, thus social movement is completely dictated by such and irrespective of which way I see it)
2. The Mass Confusion Principle (see all those little signs? We couldn't get the country to agree on any ONE of those even if we COULD somehow reach everyone, which is what makes us sooooooo inefficient and easily manipulated- which works for the system)

Apparently you think the places in the world that are better than the US are inhabited by a better species of human that's unlike us, and the people in worse places are inhabited by a worse species of human that's unlike us.

Because that's the only answer for how it is that things are different.

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Sunday, January 10, 2016 7:22 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:
Okay.... and we're back to

I'm done with you, yer an idiot. Go play in your diary, little girl...

Quote:
Originally posted by second:

Coal miners hate these Obama rules about energy efficiency of home appliances and the upcoming rule for commercial air conditioners:
“They’re hell-bent to ram through as many rules as they can, as fast as they can, at the highest levels they think they can justify to a judge,” says Stephen Yurek, president of the Air Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute. But like it or not, the barrage of strict new rules is a key reason why U.S. electric power demand, after decades of growth, is now virtually flat, averting the need for new electricity generating plants while saving consumers billions of dollars.

You have good reason to be angry. Your Hubby lost his job as a coal miner and you did say you wanted to ram a red hot poker into Obama because it is Obama's fault. You blamed the right person, even if you're wrong about Obamacare Insurance being worthless. It is all true that for the next 30 years Obama's government rules requiring higher efficiency for large electric motors will stop coal burning power plants from belching billions of tons of CO2 and costing a trillion dollars for wasted electricity to big electric motors. And that trillion dollars is money that coal miners will never see in their paychecks.
www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/05/f15/electric_motors_ecs_final_
rule.pdf

http://bizarro.com/comics/january-10-2016/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, January 11, 2016 3:55 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Originally posted by Brenda:
All I can say is that with my family's latest run in with cancer, I am glad this cousin and her children live in Canada.

And this lets you know just how propagandized Americans are, in their fight to dismantle the little we have:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/06/upshot/lost-jobs-houses-savings-even
-insured-often-face-crushing-medical-debt.html

Even Insured Can Face Crushing Medical Debt, Study Finds

Here is the surest way to enjoy the peace of mind that comes with having health insurance: Don’t get sick.

The number of uninsured Americans has fallen by an estimated 15 million since 2013, thanks largely to the Affordable Care Act. But a new survey, the first detailed study of Americans struggling with medical bills, shows that insurance often fails as a safety net. Health plans often require hundreds or thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket payments — sums that can create a cascade of financial troubles for the many households living paycheck to paycheck.

Carrie Cota learned the hard way that health insurance does not guarantee financial security. Ms. Cota, a 56-year-old travel agent from Rosamond, Calif., learned she had the autoimmune disease lupus in 2007. She ran up thousands of dollars in medical and dental bills and ended up losing her job, and eventually her house.

“I had to move in temporarily with my ex-husband,” she said in a recent interview. “I’m staying with him until I can figure out what to do.”

In the new poll, conducted by The New York Times and the Kaiser Family Foundation, roughly 20 percent of people under age 65 with health insurance nonetheless reported having problems paying their medical bills over the last year. By comparison, 53 percent of people without insurance said the same.

These financial vulnerabilities reflect the high costs of health care in the United States, the most expensive place in the world to get sick. They also highlight a substantial shift in the nature of health insurance. Since the late 1990s, insurance plans have begun asking their customers to pay an increasingly greater share of their bills out of pocket though rising deductibles and co-payments. The Affordable Care Act, signed by President Obama in 2010, protected many Americans from very high health costs by requiring insurance plans to be more comprehensive, but at the same time it allowed or even encouraged increases in deductibles.

“We’re at a point where there’s been slow growth in health care costs and huge improvements in the numbers of people who have health insurance,” said Sara Collins, a vice president at the Commonwealth Fund, a health research group. “But there is this underlying trend towards higher cost sharing that could put increasing numbers of people at risk for being underinsured.”

Among those who reported having problems paying their bills despite having insurance, 63 percent said they used up all or most of their savings; 42 percent took on an extra job or more work hours; 14 percent moved or took in roommates; and 11 percent turned to charity.

Randy Farris, 58, a factory worker from Conger, Minn., needed a knee replacement three years ago. His insurance covered 80 percent of the bill, but he needed to cash in an I.R.A. to pay his $4,000 share. “I haven’t been to the doctor since because I don’t want any more doctor bills,” he said. His wife’s retirement savings had been wiped out years before, he said, when he used them to pay her hospital bills after she died of cancer.

The health law has led to a decline in the number of Americans suffering financial stress from health problems, thanks to the new options for receiving coverage, especially for the poor. But the problem is still widespread, touching roughly a quarter of Americans under 65, when the insured and uninsured are looked at together. Americans older than 65 are covered by Medicare, which more frequently protects people from major financial trouble.

Unlike other polls, which have focused on the ways that insurance affects health care, the new Times-Kaiser survey explored the effects of medical bills on people’s daily lives well beyond the medical system. We found that medical bills don’t just keep people from filling prescriptions and scheduling doctors’ visits. They can also prompt deep financial and personal sacrifices, affecting their housing, employment, credit and daily lives. Kaiser has released a report today, detailing the survey’s main findings about this population.

“The major impact is actually a pocketbook or economic impact: their ability to pay the rent or the mortgage or buy food,” said Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

People without health insurance, of course, are more vulnerable to medical bills than those with health coverage. The study found that the people most likely to report bill problems were uninsured, poor or disabled. But the majority of people struggling with bills are insured. Of the people in the survey reporting difficulty with their medical bills, 34 percent lacked health insurance, 39 percent had insurance through work, 14 percent were covered through public programs and 7 percent had purchased their own health plans.

One reason, many experts said, is a gradual shift in the norms about the generosity of health insurance. In recent years, health plans have come with growing deductibles and narrowing networks of providers, provisions devised to lower the cost of premiums. Those features have made health insurance accessible to a larger share of the population, but may also be leaving more insured Americans vulnerable.

Ten years ago, David Dranove, a professor of health management at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, conducted research on people experiencing medical bankruptcies. The study he co-authored found that bankruptcy was largely a problem of the uninsured. “But with more people buying less generous health insurance, I think the old evidence might no longer be relevant,” he said.

Insured people with financial problems often have plans with higher deductibles. But many said that the smaller co-payments piled up to make their care unaffordable. Many also received big bills that were not covered by their insurance. Among the 32 percent of insured patients stuck with an out-of-network bill, more than than two-thirds of patients said they didn’t know the provider wasn’t covered. More than 25 percent of the insured respondents said a medical claim had been denied.

Medical bill problems rarely occur in a vacuum, the survey found. Most of the people surveyed said their finances were tight even before there was an illness in their family. This pattern held true even for families higher on the income scale. The rates at which people with medical bill problems sought charity or borrowed money from friends was similar among people earning less than $25,000 and those earning more than $100,000.

Research on medical bankruptcies has been controversial because it can be hard to untangle how medical bills fit into a family’s overall pattern of financial troubles. Twenty-nine percent of the people with medical bill problems said a family member had been forced to stop working or cut back on hours. (On the other side, about 41 percent of people said they’d taken on extra work to help pay bills.)

“Is that a job problem or a medical bill problem?” said David Himmelstein, a professor of public health at the City University of New York’s Hunter College School of Public Health who has studied medical bankruptcies. “It’s both of those things.”

The survey included a random sample of 1,204 adults under 65 who reported problems paying household medical bills in the past 12 months. Interviews were conducted online and by telephone between Aug. 28 and Sept. 28, and some respondents gave follow-up interviews in December. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points. Information about the poll methodology is available here.

The survey asked people to describe the ways that bills had changed their lives. The chart above shows some of the most common answers. The quotations that are displayed throughout this article were entered by survey respondents when they were asked to describe “what other significant changes” they made in their lives. We’d like to hear how readers would answer a similar question. If you’re struggling with medical bills, please tell us about how your life has changed in the box at the top of this article. We may contact you about featuring your story in the future.

A quarter of all Americans become impoverished due to medical bills. The sick are treated as easy prey. If everything gets sucked out of them and they become completely destitute, or go bankrupt, or they die - well, that's the business model in the US, which has, as we all keep being told, the best medical care in the world.

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Monday, January 11, 2016 7:15 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY:
Trouble is, it's all truer than not................God help us!

SGG

Trouble is, it's all truer than not................God help us!

But other places do better. The question is: how? As my post above showed, the French, British, Canadians, and the composite EU person is just as scientifically illiterate, illiterate in general, mentally ill ...

... so how do they get a better result?

And I think it has to do with what we tell ourselves, and that has to do with what we're told. And what we're told is intentional on the part of tptb. It makes us unwilling to see that we have problems, unable to identify the cause, and demoralized from taking action.

We have the best system of all. Ignorance is honesty. United action is weakness, you must be an individualist. And anything that claims society owes its resources to it people is communistic, you dirty commie! If you can't make it as an individual in this great system, you're defective and deserve to die.

You know, we have a world full of hard-working people, and with those billions of people, there are the hundreds of thousands - millions? - of fantastically brilliant people who exist just by the nature of the bell curve. So with all that work and brilliance, why haven't we solved our problems? What are all these people doing with their work and their brains?

Well, most people's time is consumed by trying to stay alive, by working for someone else. So they're unwittingly and inextricably making tptb richer and making themselves poorer.

But what about those brilliant ones? They're - trying to make paint pigments brighter and cheaper so XYZ paint company can make a greater profit. Or they've plugged themselves into the medical system, or the legal system, to become PERSONAL success. Or they're busy figuring a new way to structure derivatives so they can be rich.

In other words, even THEIR activities are being determined by tptb. They're not solving these problems either.

The problem isn't 'humanity'. Or us as individuals. It's a distinct and identifiable small number of people who are directing the activities of the vast number of people on the planet.

And that happens because of the stories we tell ourselves. That they tell us. We need to tell ourselves a different story. Or we all won't go anywhere except over the cliff.

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Tuesday, January 12, 2016 11:29 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:

The problem isn't 'humanity'. Or us as individuals. It's a distinct and identifiable small number of people who are directing the activities of the vast number of people on the planet.

And that happens because of the stories we tell ourselves. That they tell us. We need to tell ourselves a different story. Or we all won't go anywhere except over the cliff.

It is never as dramatic as "over the cliff". I'll give you an example.

Just last night my hair-cutter converted her four loans at 664% interest from CashNetUSA to a single 2% loan from me. She was desperate because her bank account would automatically pay those four loans and she was short of cash and there would be penalties. Here is a CashNetUSA document customized for Texas law that shows the annual interest rate:
www.cashnetusa.com/files/TX_CAB_Disclosure_950.pdf

It just so happens that 664% loans were illegal in Texas, once upon a time. But things changed for the better with a new law in 1999 signed by Gov. George Bush. Anybody heard of him? Was he a Democrat or a Republican, because I've forgotten. My hair-cutter has also forgotten because I asked her to test her knowledge. When she votes in 2016, the Republican party seems very appealing to her. I have noticed that many Texans see no connection between 1999 and 2016. The past is past and why bother thinking about it? Don't those laws go away and have to be reauthorized? “No” is always my answer.
www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/SOTWDocs/FI/htm/FI.342.htm

Year after year, the wealthy are under the temptation to more and more profitably control people like my hair-cutter by changing laws and never changing them back again. I, too, almost gave in to the same temptations by converting that 2% loan into a very profitable loan by having my hair-cutter pay me $1000 per month, but for 6 months rather than 5. She would have never understood how I was cheating her just like she never understood that her previous loan was 664% interest (until I showed her the cause of her financial nightmare). I resisted the temptation to profit excessively. Other people don't resist and they get away with somebody's money.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, January 12, 2016 9:29 PM

She's black, isn't she?

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Wednesday, January 13, 2016 9:34 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:
She's black, isn't she?

Not black. You should have known because, quoting myself, “the Republican party seems very appealing to her”.

Changing subject: Shirley's father died in the parking lot of the East Houston Regional Medical Center. Her father walked into the Emergency Room with chest pain and the staff correctly diagnosed that he had no insurance and sent him away. It was not racism, since Shirley's father was white, it was money. Obamacare can help with similar situations, even if every Republican objects to that law as a violation of their right to make money.
http://easthoustonrmc.com

Changing subject to Shirley's clothes: She died of a heart attack. Texas Paralyzed Veterans will pickup all of her clothes this Saturday. Those Paralyzed Vets came mostly from Iraq. The Iraq dictatorship, the worst in the world, was replaced by a democracy, also the worst in the world, and the transition to democracy was guided by market-oriented Republicans. It is the same market-orientation that makes Republicans totally oppose Obamacare. Just as salespeople marketing a product don't speak well of their completion, Republicans marketing their vision of healthcare in America don't speak well of Obamacare. Republicans are hard selling a more expensive product that is worse than the competition. Voting Republican means buying their product.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_reform_of_Iraq
www.texaspva.org

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, January 13, 2016 11:09 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Not black. You should have known because, quoting myself, “the Republican party seems very appealing to her”.

It's was a 50/50.
Payday loans are very popular with black people, and there are conservative black people, or at the very least black people that are attracted to conservatism but never actually join.

You really should stop preaching your party to me. I just see blah blah blah. It's a waste of your time. I do not, will not, ever care.
It just makes you another self-brainwashed nut who is incapable of objectivity to me.

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Wednesday, January 13, 2016 11:38 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:

You really should stop preaching your party to me. I just see blah blah blah. It's a waste of your time. I do not, will not, ever care.
It just makes you another self-brainwashed nut who is incapable of objectivity to me.

Paul Krugman has seen your kind before, people exactly like you, except for them having more money than you: "These days many Americans live in an alternative political reality, in which the simplest factual assertions are met with anger and derision. When I, like many others, noted that job growth since Obamacare went into full effect has been the fastest since the 1990s — which is simply what the BLS data say — I got a barrage of mail from people claiming that I’m crazy, a liar, etc.. Similarly, but on of course a much bigger scale, a lot of what I’m seeing in reactions to the State of the Union amounts to the assertion that only an imbecile or a hack could believe Obama’s talk about the strength of the U.S. economy relative to other advanced countries — when that’s a simple fact."
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/yes-he-did

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, January 13, 2016 9:52 PM

See, you can't even answer me without using a sound bite from someone else.

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Wednesday, January 13, 2016 10:29 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:

Apparently you think the places in the world that are better than the US are inhabited by a better species of human that's unlike us, and the people in worse places are inhabited by a worse species of human that's unlike us.

Because that's the only answer for how it is that things are different.

I didn't say that, but now that you mention it, YES different countries DO have different inbred genetic strengths and weaknesses.

There's a reason why Jews didn't fight back against Hitler, and it's because they are passive people who don't usually like to offend others, and they LOVE to make decisions in groups. Those traits are more likely to affect an areas laws as well.

But we've already had this discussion.

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Wednesday, January 13, 2016 11:26 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:

I didn't say that, but now that you mention it, YES different countries DO have different inbred genetic strengths and weaknesses.

There's a reason why Jews didn't fight back against Hitler, and it's because they are passive people who don't usually like to offend others, and they LOVE to make decisions in groups. Those traits are more likely to affect an areas laws as well.

But we've already had this discussion.

You're trolling us, am I right? You're doing the racist thing and the Jews-got-what-they-deserved thing just to see if somebody will take your bait and make a passionate anti-racism and anti-antisemitism position.

http://1-ace.deviantart.com/art/Firefly-All-Hands-on-Deck-583808816

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Wednesday, January 13, 2016 11:36 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

There's a reason why Jews didn't fight back against Hitler, and it's because they are passive people who don't usually like to offend others, and they LOVE to make decisions in groups. Those traits are more likely to affect an areas laws as well.

Apparently the genes of those Jews changed when they moved to Israel.

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Wednesday, January 13, 2016 11:39 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Second

I don't think any of your posts disproved my contention: that the wealthy have set up, expanded, profited themselves and victimized everyone else, by determining the economic structure.

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Wednesday, January 13, 2016 11:46 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:

You're trolling us, am I right? You're doing the racist thing and the Jews-got-what-they-deserved thing

Ok, that is a weird and paranoid over-reaction. I think you get more paranoid the later it gets... Not once did I even IMPLY THAT... Simply stating they didn't fight back much.
Someone loads me and mine on a cattle car and tries to take my shit I'LL TAKE EVERYONE WITH ME. But then, I'm predominately Irish, we're brawlers...

And yeah, different regions of religious groups have different DNA and cultural affects.

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Thursday, January 14, 2016 12:38 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Second

I don't think any of your posts disproved my contention: that the wealthy have set up, expanded, profited themselves and victimized everyone else, by determining the economic structure.

You are correct. I agree with you! Even before there was money or banks or writing or arithmetic, this was probably true and has gotten forever more true as more ways were invented to swindle and bamboozle.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, January 14, 2016 12:44 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:

Someone loads me and mine on a cattle car and tries to take my shit I'LL TAKE EVERYONE WITH ME. But then, I'm predominately Irish, we're brawlers...

And yeah, different regions of religious groups have different DNA and cultural affects.

So how many times have you gone to where your Hubby once worked and punched in the face of the bosses who laid him off? I think loss of income requires an assault and battery or else you cannot call yourself Irish.

http://gempai-creations.deviantart.com/art/Firefly-crew-584194409

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, January 14, 2016 9:24 AM

Er mah gerd, yer an Eeeeediot.

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Thursday, January 14, 2016 11:49 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:
Er mah gerd, yer an Eeeeediot.

So… When your Hubby's valuable job is taken away, you just meekly accept it be taken? You tell yourself to take the raw deal and, instead of blaming the real people who did this to you, you blame Obama who does not know you exist. You're not Irish; you're a pacifist, a nonviolent follower of Gandhi. Guess you didn't really learn from watching Firefly any lessons about how to handle thieving businesses, did you? The violence on Firefly was just escapism for the audience, as Joss Whedon and FOX intended it to be.

Your income might have declined more than average because you're not ordinary, but since the start of the 21st century the income of average folks has declined about 5 percent, while after-tax profits in the nonfinancial sector have gone up nearly 4x. How do you think that happened, WishIMay? Was it because business was so very nice and polite to you that all the people just like you charitably decided to voluntarily quadruple business profits? Or did business deliberately cheat you out of jobs and money?

Business should be grateful that you and a hundred million non-Irish-Americans willing accept, although unhappy, your position and let business kick you in the teeth.

www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/01/21st-century-sure-has-been-grea
t-time-be-corporation

A trillion dollars per year in profits, divided by 100 million households is ten thousand dollars per household, which is not insignificant money. WishIMay, did you receive your $10,000 dividend check for 2015 because business is grateful to you for being allowed to kick you in the teeth?

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Thursday, January 14, 2016 6:21 PM