The question isn't really whether or not they deserve to be vilified. The question is whether or not you should trust the certs they issue. Making it hard for people to revoke the certs means people will be hesitant to revoke bad certs. That means their certs should not be trusted.

Not really. The french use civil law while the US uses common law.

I don't think anyone said Tim is one such person. What we said is that he said something that some of us find offensive. We're not saying he should be fired, hung, thrown in jail, marooned, the subject of widespread opprobrium. Just that he said something offensive. What's wrong with saying "Oops, this was meant as a joke and I didn't mean to offend you guys. I'll try to watch out in the future."

Context for the first sentence is provided in the last sentence. Being offended isn't a rational objective analysis. So I got offended before I got to the end of the article. That's how human brains work. DH could have simply said: "I understand some of you were offended by the joke in the first sentence. As you can see at the end, this was meant as a sarcastic comment. Sorry if that wasn't clear." Done. No need to get defensive.

I'm not easily offended and I do know it was a quote. (Forgot it was the Simpsons, thought it was South Park) The way you wrote it is indeed also making fun of Americans, but it is nevertheless still offensive. It's not like we're accusing you of being a horrible bigot. The phrase was offensive to some of us and we're just letting you know. A little criticism isn't going to kill you. I for one would have been perfectly happy if you had applied the phrase to the government and the supporters of this law, but it's really unpleasant to be lumped in with these protectionist idiots.

You could have made the exact same point without the "surrender monkeys" joke. It's pointlessly offensive.

You're right. Americans are so irrational. And don't get me started on Americans' opposition to socialized food and socialized clothing.

You're quite right. Sometimes when corporations run things, you don't actually have other options and you are stuck with something crappy for a while. When the government runs things, you are always stuck with whatever they give to you. Sometimes, you get to opt out. (though you of course still have to pay for the crappy service you're not using.)

Of course I can. I would not do it personally obviously. I would look up the doctor's credentials, reviews, certifications by third-party organizations, etc... In other words, I would outsource it to competent third parties.

WRT the food-supplement industry, I don't see your point. Are you claiming that consumers in that industry are dropping like flies? As far as I can tell, people who consume food-supplements are quite happy with what they buy. I for one participate in that industry only in a limited manner because I want a high degree of certitude WRT the effects of the products I purchase. So I do more research. But others are quite happy with the placebo effect or with taking a higher risk and so do less research. I get what I want, they get what they want, everyone is happy. What's the problem?

We seem that way to folks like you who are under the mistaken impression that all such things can only be provided by the government and that they can be efficiently provided by the government. (by which I mean neither over-provided nor under-provided)

Who in their right mind would buy unsafe water? What makes you think people would not try to save money by having energy-efficient homes? Why would telecommunication companies not build and launch the satellites they use to make lots of money? (hint: they do)

You're right. I have a better idea. Let's prohibit anybody who is not in the top 10% of doctors to practice medicine. I mean, we don't want anyone getting shoddy quality. Nobody but the richest will be able to afford doctors, but hey, fuck the rest of us right? Quality is important, and if that means people die or can't afford surgery at that quality level, who cares?

You mean to say that if there was no government-licensing, you would just go hire the cheapest doctor without any regard to their competency? That sounds suspiciously like you getting what you deserve.

If it is run by the government and it works poorly, as a citizen of a republic, I'm screwed, because I have zero power to change things unless I'm an influential lobbyist, in which case I'm (practically by definition) wealthy enough to afford health care that actually works well. (When was the last time you cast the deciding vote in an election?)

If it is run by corporations and it works poorly, I can go look for a different corporation to provide me with healthcare or found a corporation to provide it better making millions of dollars in the process.

When you look at it that way, it's pretty simple.

There are plenty of reasons why people oppose the PPACA (That's "Obamacare") ranging from the highly intelligent to the stupid. (Similar to the reasons why people support the PPACA) I can give you my reasons which are obviously on the highly intelligent side of this.

I oppose it because it forces you to pay for more healthcare than you need and it forces you to pay for healthcare through insurance even when not sensible. This ends up raising the cost of healthcare.

Here is an example: birth control mechanisms. (Let's set aside their therapeutic use for a moment which is a completely different issue) Your consumption of birth control isn't linked to a "risk". It's a regular expected expense. In fact, the birth control pill is something you have to take every single day. You can't get further away from "risk" than that. And yet, the Obama healthcare plan mandates that your health insurance (which you are required to carry) must cover birth control. If it does not, you will have to pay a penalty. (or tax if John Roberts happens to be reading)

Now, you might say, who cares? Women having birth control is good. Sure it is. But you have to wonder about the incentives. Having birth control covered by health insurance means you don't pay full price at the point of purchase. All other things equal, that pushes you towards the higher priced version whether it is worth the higher price or not. That means birth control is more expensive than it otherwise would have been. And of course, you do pay full price because that means premiums and/or taxes go up to compensate. That's just one of many such products which are not risk-related but which the Obama healthcare plan forces you to purchase bundled with your insurance.

Now, before I'm accused of being some retrograde opposed to women being able to chose when they have kids, I am not. I think it's a jolly-good thing that women have access to birth control pills. But I would rather the price of birth control not be artificially inflated just so the Democrats can score cheap political points with women voters.

Then you have the more general issue of younger folks. People in their 20s. People in their 20s often do not buy any health insurance, or they buy a catastrophic care plan. (in case they get hit by a bus or something similar happens) That makes a lot of sense. People in that age group are highly unlikely to need the full array of medical services that somebody older might need. Also, those people don't have that much money to spend on health insurance. (When we were in our early 20s, my wife and I purchased a bare-bones $~100/month plan for instance) Such plans are not allowed under the PPACA. (Well, you can have them if you are willing to pay the penalty on top of that.) In fact, the current average healthcare expenditure of somebody in their 20s is significantly lower than the new required plans will cost. Let me be clear on that one: Under the PPACA, people in their 20s must spend more on insurance plans than they currently spend on healthcare.

Now, somebody is bound to jump in and point out that this is all BS because the PPACA also provides subsidies. So even if the true cost of healthcare for a 20-year old will go up, if the 20-year old is poor, they will get subsidized and so they won't pay as much and too bad for the richer 20-year olds, they can afford it. (Too bad also for everyone when the total price of healthcare goes up.) But that's an inconsequential argument. The subsidies are completely separate from the individual mandate and community rating. The PPACA could have simply said: we know it's hard for poor people to afford healthcare. Here is a voucher. Go buy the health insurance you need. Or expanded medicaid. Or any number of schemes to allow people who need insurance to get it without creating all of those perverse effects in the healthcare market. But instead, they went with a plan that had some good parts, but whose central provision is a terrible idea. That's why I oppose the PPACA. (There is more, but I have to do some work.)

The law that is allegedly violated is not that auto-complete is being racist. It is that auto-complete is creating a database that contains ethnicity. Of course, given that the presence of the word "jew" in auto-complete does not actually indicate that the person actually is jewish, the lawsuit is bogus. But bogus in a different way.

OK, so your assessment that significant extra protection was provided is based on what exactly? I'm not saying it's a bad assumption, but the article supports only the fact that Bush's daughters were in Buenos Aires and that they may have put themselves in a dangerous spot. Nothing in there suggests there were significant security arrangements made. So when abc gum asks: "How many were assigned to the Bush twins on their excursions, like to Buenos Aires for example." my answer is that I don't know, but that the article in question suggests few, not many.

There are serial killers who rape and murder dozens of people. Does that mean we should stop handing out parking tickets?

So yes, the wars that Bush (as well as Clinton, Obama, Bush Sr) are orders of magnitudes worst than what we are talking about here. But that is not an excuse.

Neither does the President of the United States. There are plenty of fetters. If he started abusing his power wantonly to comply with demands by kidnappers, the cabinet would most likely declare him incompetent and the VP would take over. Now of course, Cheney in charge isn't exactly what I would call peachy, but it's nowhere near as bad as you think.

Good for you. It's very generous of you to chose to give the guy a hand so his daughter can go visit Mexico. Oh wait, you had no choice in the matter. He just reached in our pockets and took what he wanted. Well... You are still a generous soul for wanting to give.

I don't know. But on the page you linked to, it said: "No Secret Service agents were anywhere to be seen in the lobby, according to ABC News’ Joe Goldman." My point was not that Obama's daughter shouldn't have gone to Mexico. My point was that it was irresponsible of her father to spend extra tax-payer dollars for it. So sending his kid with insufficient security is one way to do this. Of course, the Bush twins were adults and so if their father said: "I can't send enough Secret Service to protect you effectively", they could answer "OK, we'll risk it." Given how young Obama's daughter is, I simply assumed that the "go to Mexico with insufficient security" option was off the table.