Gorgon

I used to be a member of Greenpeace, now I'm embarrassed to mention it. I liked them better when they were just blockading illegal chemical dumps and getting arrested in new and interesting corners of the world. You know before they got so press savvy.

Quite simply we view health care as an essential service that should be available to all, and you do not. By your definition the US has socialized fire departments. The point is when the **** hits the fan, help is available, be it your house burning down or discovering one of your kids has cancer. It's just a matter of degrees of differentiation.

Yeah Ronnie won the standoff with the Ruskies, but that don't mean it wasn't one hell of a gamble to make with the fate of the world at stake.

What Taks means is a proportionally higher degree of redistribution, but that doesn't sound very catchy. Government does not own the means of production, nor does it limit personal liberty, unless you include taxes in that definition, and we live in market driven economies. The term socialist is used more as derogative to describe this expectation that government will provide in certain situations. To find countries that would actually describe themselves as socialist one would have to turn to Cuba or Venezuela.

You're right of course, the only people who would describe the European health care model as 'Socialist' are Americans. It's just that I have given up trying to insist on the distinction.

Yay, nice cheap shot. Yeah that was a cheap shot, I got carried away I guess.

And countries who have paid virtually nothing by comparison for their own defense over the past several decades should be ashamed for citing American debt. You overspent on defense to maintain a position of absolute supremacy. I suppose as demagogues go the US is better than the Ruskies or the Chinese, but the US didn't place the majority of it's medium range nuclear missiles smack in the middle of western Europe out of altruistic motives. Had push actually come to shove in the cold war Europe would have been a wasteland. And with a loon like Reagan with the finger on the trigger no less.

Gifted feels no sense of community unless it involves going somewhere and blowing something up. That's fine, we can't force it on him, or the us. [Tongue in cheek] They're animals anyway so let them destroy themselves. [Tongue in cheek]

The formation of the welfare state was in all likelihood the result of two world wars. Provisions for health care regardless of ability to pay is the prevailing formation among rich countries though, the US is the odd man out here.

Maybe we will catch a break and it will spread among the zombies, making them even more sluggish and easy to evade.

Where else would men hump each other. See what you did there, being a bigot in a roundabout way.

I wonder if it would feel as nefarious if it hadn't been named after an animal.

Denmark is in the black. We have been for a long time, we have no foreign debt and have universal health care, Britain, Sweden etc. aren't about to go bankrupt either so don't tell me it's not possible, or feasible. Only difference is that here the doctors have 2 cars instead of 4, and that we are willing to pay for comprehensive public health care.

Maybe we will all be walking around with those retarded looking particle masks before long.

It's impossible these days to tell a media scare from a real threat. No one has died in the United States from swine flu, officials said Sunday. I dunno, how bad is it.

Lols

I suppose that would release federal discretionary funds, like a natural disaster.

That's like saying Left 4 Dead on the 360 and PS3 is the same game as on the PC. What's different about them? If anything it probably works better on Xbox because the aim helping mechanism all but ruins aiming on the PC. You have to crank up the mouse speed and acceleration so much you wind up constantly dancing around in circles, or settle for making huge spastic motions to fine tune your aim. I can only suppose this feature is so deep in the engine they didn't know how to remove it for PC. Or they just didn't care.

You're welcome

I reiterate : Motorcycle.

I've not been hospitalized since I fell down a flight of stairs when I was 8, so I suppose it has been a really bad quid pro quo for all the taxes I have spent. I'm glad the safety net is there though. As opposed to having to trust a health ensurer who spends a lot of time and effort finding loopholes and reasons to deny claims.

Macs don't suck, quite the opposite. They are just way too expensive for what you get.

Private operators in a public health care system can help improve the overall efficiency of the system, as long as continuous care is taken in defining their role. In Denmark treatments are guaranteed by law, and if the public system can't cope the government has to pay for private treatment, this includes in theory treatment overseas. In the US a system of public hospitals in direct competition with private hospitals does not seem possible. Too much ideology to overcome, and even if it was government lacks the strength to kick the private operators back in place when needed.

Go Socialism, America ain't worth preserving as it is.

When considering what makes most people think macs are better I think we are definitely in psychological and intangible territory. It's brand reputation, not actual performance. The same reason coca colas cost more than no name lemonade. Apple very successfully appeals to the same segment who buys designer furniture. The cheaper laptops are designed to 'get em while they're young', and they can get away with it because the laptop market is confusing to begin with.