Big bad stick in the sky, knocks down missle with laser...

U.S. medical bankruptcies a myth; personal bankruptcy rate higher in Canada

It's just as easy in Canada to get over your head with credit card and finance debt, as it is in the US

 

Don't you mean 'future casualties'?

 

Not really, taxpayers are the pawns to pay for it all the time, their children are the pawns to die for them, and at no point is the country or the average American in the equation.

 

Re: Big bad stick in the sky, more than just a pricy pointer...

Aha! I knew there was a practical use for it. Now if only I could remember where I put my tin-foil hat!

 

Jay,

Bankruptcies are a reality anywhere, and getting in over your head with debt of any kind (including CCs) is real. Regardless of bankruptcy rates between Canada and the US, the fact is that (except in rare cases) people don't go broke because they get sick in Canada!)

In the case of your link, the Fraser Institute is a "free market" think tank that does have a clear agenda. So as to not shoot the messenger, here is a quote from your link:

“If socialized medicine played a role in reducing personal bankruptcies, we would expect to see a lower rate of personal bankruptcy in Canada compared to the United States. Yet the reverse is true. The personal bankruptcy rate is actually higher in Canada than it is in the U.S.,†he said

This is a classic example of bad logic used to obfuscate the truth! Because the US has a lower personal bankruptcy rate says absolutely nothing about the causes of bankruptcies, and it is even a bigger leap to assume it is because of our medical system.

It sort of like saying "if wages were higher in Canada we would expect to see more rich people!" It is a logically in correct assumption.

 

Just pointing out the overall rate is similar or close enough, to wonder how the red herring of medical bankruptcy is going to help

Yes, here in Canada, wages are thought to be a cure-all to many ills. They are not, otherwise all those one-horse pulp towns, mining towns, boomer towns, etc with skewed high wages, would be idyllic paradises.

Rather the opposite occurs

I'm all for finding a solution to the ills of our society. Quite frankly, I do not have one damn clue how to do so. And I am man enough to admit that too

 

One simple way to start, is to STOP spending money on this sort of Bullshit! (The laser star wars stuff)

 

Well, in its defense, complex engineering programs like this keep thousands of engineers like myself employed...which drives the need for people with advanced degrees since there is such a demand for it.

...And it helps defend us since other big powers are actively pursuing ways to make their ballistic missiles better (Iran, China, North Korea, Russia, etc). If they all decide to drop what they're doing I'd be on board to stop what I'm doing and put my efforts toward something else...but until that day, we must keep looking at ways to defend our country against the realm of possibilities. The better our technology gets, the more people we can keep out of harms way.

Some people argue that climate change is not a problem...that we waste so much money on something they can't see any immediate danger to...yet we spend so much money looking for greener alternatives...again employing thousands of engineers designing green technology, hybrid cars, and energy efficient appliances.

Sure, weapons are evil, but we're not the only ones with weapons out there. It would be a very different world without weapons. But North Korea tested a nuke and launched two intercontinental Taepo Dong II missiles, Iran tests MRBMs on a regular basis and is centrifuging weapons grade plutonium (for research purposes they claim)...hopefully you can see why we're working on "anti" missile technology such as this...

http://www.mda.mil/global/videos/abl/marti_jan10.wmv

I hope there never comes a day when we have to use something like this...but it sure is nice to know we have it just incase...

 

Support faith based missile defense systems!!!

 

There is zero justification for spending 1.5 to 2 Trillion dollars on defense spending, all these lasers and billion dollar airplanes mean nothing in the scheme of things, they are simply a waste of money, justified by false fears. We have the weaponry now to protect the country, now and well into the future, everything else is just a cover story for spending lots of money.

 

I call BS! The Russians, and the Chinese or the Indians or dare I say even the Iranians are not a thread to us via ICBMs. In the case of the first three, the economic reality is the weapon of choice. Why would it make sense to kill your customer (or debtor!)? In the case of Iran (or some other "Islamic terror state/non state the reality is a dirty bomb is much easier, much cheaper, much easier to deploy, and in the end much more effective.

I would posit that the chances of ICBM nuke attack is nearly zero, and all the "threat" is nothing more than fear and an organized attempt to funnel money into the military industrial complex. (the chance of a dirty bomb somewhat greater!)

You want a safer world? Spend some money on infrastructure/education in parts of the world that need it! Problem is that short sited people can't see the personal economic benefit of it, certainly not in the next fiscal quarter.

The chuckle is we spent billions (tax payer money all you teabaggers!) building the weapon systems of the 1950's-90's. Now we are spending billions more to decommission many of these same pieces of hardware. (tax payer money again,,, all you libertarian/no tax me folks!) Sort of sounds like job security for engineers doesn't it?

 

and how well does the laser work with cloudy, rainy, and snowy days?

 

Two or three well placed nuclear missiles above the USA would wipe out the entire or almost the entire electrical system as well as most if not all electronics. Ten’s of millions would die and America would become a third world nation. The Health Care Plan won’t fix that so I’m kind of glad people like Reagan et. Al. had the vision to start this thing.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57571

http://www.janes.com/defence/news/jdw/jdw040726_1_n.shtml

http://newsmax.com/RonaldKessler/emp-electromagnetic-pulse/2009/09/23/id/335160

http://www.heritage.org/research/nationalsecurity/bg1784.cfm

http://nationalsecuritybriefing.blogspot.com/2009/09/emp-attack-would-send-america-into-dark.html

 

When's the last time it was clouldy, rainy or snowy above 30,000 feet?

 

If it ever got to that point, it wouldn't matter, the one thing that people like Reagan and his followers just don't understand, they live in fear, without knowing what they should really be afraid of, basically pure ignorance. Reagan loved to spend money, just like most fear mongers, with no real idea on what to spend money on, so they spend it on things like lasers, billion dollar airplanes, space junk, and meanwhile the little uneducated, poor, fanatic, builds a $50 explosive and destroys most of that.

There will be no threat of the nature of that kind of spending on useless junk, a war where that kind of thing would ever be used won't happen, and if it ever did, protection from that would mean nothing, the world would be on self destruction within a few days.

In conclusion, if there was a healthcare system in place, survivors would at least have access to some meds and care possibly.

 

Without electricity how will the health care system operate? When's the last time you saw a regular thermometer not one of those electronic things? Without electricity how will they make pills? With almost all forms of transportation reliant on electronics, which will be burnt out after the EMP attack, how will aid be distributed?

I don't feel this is and "if" but a "when" type of thing. . .

 

Be scared,, be very scared!

The US is already becoming a third rate power, not due to it's lack of military hardware, but in some ways because of it. When ~1/2 of our national budget (federal) is spent chasing the enemies of the last war (How many troops do we have in Germany?) and or the cold war, and couple that with the lunacy of the military industrial complex that continues to build weapon system that the military doesn't need, and for nearly the first time in history says it doesn't want (See Boeing C?? airplane for example) funded by politicians that are buying jobs and therefore votes for their constituencies, at the same time a huge percentage of people can't get decent health care coverage you have the decline in a nutshell!

As I said earlier, the thread comes from nut jobs like the guy who just flew his own small airplane into the IRS building in Austin to protest the "government" and "Taxes" at the same time chastising that said same government for not helping his daughter with medicaid! Sounds a like like the rant "Keep your socialist hands off my medicare" Huh?

Add in a pile of nuke waste stolen from some " safe" depository and the order of magnitude of danger becomes clear. Then there is the nut job congressman from TX who is going to "study" in congressional committee how to "make buildings safer from airplanes!"

Give me a freaking break!

 

No offense amm0, but you are right, I do want to rant. I am ranting about the dumb thing that we do as a country, and indeed we are on the road to third rate status. (Note, I didn't say third world status, but that to might be in the cards!)

Who would have predicted a generation or two ago that China would be the dominant economic power in the early part of the 21st century? Who would have predicted at the beginning of the 20th century that the UK would be a third rate power by mid century?

American's have this notion that they have some god given right to be "number 1". If we squander our resources on things that instead of providing security serve to impoverish us we have only ourselves to blame. In reality all the tests that I have seen have only "worked" because we knew when and where the missile was coming from, and even then we didn't really hit it! Does this sound like a system that make us safe? Wouldn't a few billion or few trillion spend on things that actually makes us safe, like a stable economy make better sense?


Are you trying to suggest that the guy who flew the plane into the IRS building wasn't a nut job? Please explain!

And by the way, I think the chances are much greater that we will be struck by nut jobs of any number of stripes, (including the aforementioned one!) in similar ways, than to be struck by a nation state. Sad as it is, the concept of MAD did serve as a pretty good deterrent. Any state leader will know that it is suicide to strike first. What we have to be worried about is non state sources, and they don't have the resources to build/arm/command and control an ICBM network.

What we need is a rational policy that understands magnitude of protection relative to the magnitude of threat. (Something that we haven't been terribly good at!) We are pretty good at closing the barn door, and then building a new fence around the barn yard, and then putting a gate in the drive way, and a look out tower in the silo after the cows get out. What we often fail to see, is how the cows got out.