One of the side effects of NuVigilthat I didn’t see mentioned is rapid weight loss. A friend of mine, who was already slender, starting taking NuVigil to counteract sleep apnea. Within a few months, she was gaunt, almost anorexic, and she hadn’t changed her diet or exercise. It also makes her thoughts race and sometimes she just babbles as she talks, hardly making any sense.

NuVigil – the new “speed”.

The ACA was never, ever rationally analyzed, by either side. I was ready to throw things at the TV: the right’s arguments were full of delusional lies and the left assumed that it was a wonderful new pet pony. They did not do any research or investigation into the core issues with the US healthcare system AT ALL.

Let’s sum up what the core problem is with the ACA and healthcare in the US. The goals of a profit-based system always tend towards the sociopathic and predatory tactics of capitalists. They are completely crossways with a goal of good health, which is humanistic in nature.

And as the article and others have pointed out, the health system can never truly be “free market”. When you buy a new car, you have the freedom and time to do your research, ask questions, be selective and shop around for the best deal. When you have a heart attack, you get rushed to the nearest hospital, regardless of whether it or the doctors there participates in your plan or not. A hospital charging you triple simply because you don’t have insurance is literally predatory and sociopathic – it’s preying on people who have no choice or alternatives.

“For Obama, Deficit Reduction Is the Goal; for the GOP, It Is Just a Tool”

The tool, in this case, is Obama himself. It is the story of his entire career, since he was editor of Harvard Law Review, that he has made himself a tool to right-wing idealogues. Now that the right has become pathologically unsound, he simply follows them, without a moral or ethical challenge from him – because he is incapable of doing so.

The ironic thing, of course, is that bullies don’t like it if someone stands up to them – but they do respect it. They absolutely loathe it when someone tries to appease them – which is exactly what Obama tries to do. He is digging a bigger and bigger hole for himself – one that the whole country may never be able to climb out of.

The left needs to put on its thinking cap and start finding semantic short cuts for talking about chained CPI, like the right did with “death panels”. If chained CPI is not given a shorthand terms that equivocates them with “toxic”, we will LOSE ONCE AGAIN.

As for not allowing any recording devices into court, I assume that also means steno-type machines like the ones used by court reporters, but do they still allow pen and paper? If so, has anyone tried to find someone who knows Gregg Shorthand? For those younger pups who might not know what it is, it’s a style of taking dictation with pen and paper using special phonetic characters so that it’s possible to write (nearly) as fast as words are spoken. It’s a lost art, I know, but it may be worth a shot to find someone.

The ACA is a big huge turd with a few chocolate sprinkles on top. The Obamabots got soooo excited about the sprinkles and didn’t want to even discuss the turds, or the smell, or the flies that the turds would draw.

This will keep happening, this country’s pathologically immature rush to the promise of bright and shiny things by men in bright and shiny suits – to the point where we have run out of both resources and time. America as a whole is now officially too incapable of logic, reason and critical thinking to survive much more than a few years. The next financial collapse, which is inevitable, will do us in.

So glad we are having these conversations – four years TOO LATE.

Anyone who has ever tried to buy a Medicare Part D plan – which is JUST for drugs – knows that all the hype about the health insurance exchanges was a total LIE. The website where you can buy Medicare Part D coverage has about two or three vague metrics for each plan, it’s completely useless. If you want to know if a certain drug is covered and at what rate, you have to go to each separate company website (and last time I looked there wasn’t even a link, you had to google it and find it on your own). Compare 50 different companies which each have totally different setups on their websites?

Healthcare insurance is 100 times more complicated than drug insurance. Just think of the process that employers use to select a health plan. Employers generally allot at least a YEAR from start to finish for the process. They solicit bids from health care companies and give those companies the same exact information. When the bids come back to the company, they have lawyers and people with degrees in health care management going over the bids with a fine-tooth comb to see which one has the most gotchas and finally decide which one is the most cost-effective. Let me repeat, the process takes a YEAR, and it requires people with specialized degrees to make sense of what they get from the insurance companies.

So now an INDIVIDUAL – without the clout of a corporation, without a law degree and without specialized training in healthcare management – is going to waltz into an insurance exchange and at the end of that, they are going select a plan that gives them the best coverage for the best price?

HA!

North Korean technology is far, far away from being able to launch a missile that is capable of striking the US.

I used to work on the Atlas and Titan, both of which were originally designed to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). To deliver a traditional nuke across continents, the missiles have to be huge, up to 10 feet in diameter; N. Korea has nothing approaching that size that they’ve successfully tested. In addition, they require very sophisticated guidance systems which need to be extensively tested; the US had hundreds of failed tests before they got the design right. North Korea has nothing that is big enough, or has been tested enough, to do anything more than hit South Korea or Japan, and that’s pretty questionable that they can do even that. And while they’ve successfully detonated a nuclear device underground a few times, that doesn’t necessarily translate to an ability to build a nuclear bomb that is contained and transportable via missile.

In other words, if North Korea did attempt to hit the US with a missile, they are far more likely to blow themselves up than anyone else.

And if my word isn’t enough, here’s Wikipedia on North Korea’s ability to launch a nuclear strike:

“There is no evidence that North Korea has been able to miniaturize a nuclear warhead for use on a ballistic missile. A 2012 display of missiles purporting to be ICBMs were declared fakes by Western analysts, and indicated North Korea was a long way from having a credible ICBM.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

So sad to think of future war trials as something hopeful… but I’m hoping!

Kevin, I applaud of your use of the reference to sociopathy throughout the article – because that’s exactly what it is. It’s people without a functional conscience acting not only in sociopathic ways (without remorse, without empathy, impulsive, without any internal “brakes”), but normalizing that behavior in greater society. It’s been scientifically proven that the vast majority of people will go along with sociopathic systems (Milgram, Stanford Prison experiments).

There are simply tests that can be used to screen for sociopathy/psychopathy (Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist for one) and we need to start requiring them for public office and high-level appointees. The US is currently experiencing an exploding rate of sociopathy (it’s tripled in 40 years) and without something more formal to protect the public, this ship is going to go down.

That’s because one of the other characteristics of sociopathy is incompetence. It’s due to a combination of narcissism, impulsiveness, and the ceaseless obsession with control (wealth, power, fame). That combination will eventually topple any government or business because it’s not sustainable – it uses up more and more resources until it either explodes in war or implodes due to depleted resources.

eToys later went out of business partly due to lacking capital that it could have raised in a more honest IPO

Goldman is still the villian here, but eToys and the tech bubble in general contributed to the demise of eToys as well. First of all, they spent way, way too much on advertising that didn’t have a payoff (remember pets.com?). eToys also spent much of its resources on unplanned expenses such as hacking prevention, and they paid big fines to the FTC when their delivery system couldn’t keep up with demand (as was true with many other start-ups in 1999/2000). This last issue really hurt the e-commerce sector in general, and it took years to regain people’s trust and rebuild the business model.

eToys filed for bankruptcy in 2001 and was bought out by KBKids.com. When KBKids itself went bankrupt a few years later, it had more to do with bad management, bad strategic decisions and a toxic company culture that discouraged communication between employees and punished anyone who raised issues, no matter how valid. As a result, the company wasted huge amounts of money and resources and eventually just fell apart. Shocker, the CEO was a Bain guy – a cold, humorless, myopic jerk who micromanaged pennies on spreadsheets but threw away millions on bad ideas.

“The resident Obots will have a perfectly sensible explanation”

The Obots have clearly already left the building. Their main purpose was to prop Obama up for the election. Now that that’s over, they spend their time mooning over Obama’s content-free speeches.

Republicans have regressed to the point of toddler development (scream and have a fit whenever you don’t get your way), but Democrats have also regressed. The Obots reside in teeny-bopper land, where it’s all about popularity, idolization and fantasy.

Legislative jobs are already not appealing to anyone who has a soul and a conscience.

Glad to see moveon.org is getting exposed for the sham and a scam they are. At one time they boasted a membership of 5 million. If so, they squandered their potential for REAL change with an intent that should be criminal.

moveon.org emails alerts, which I unsubscribed to long ago, all seem to be written by middle-schoolers. Every day, they send out these screeching, rantingly immature emails about how someone done us wrong! Every day is a different hysterically hyped firedrill: different target, different person, different issue. Oh, and PS, send money, NOW! They couldn’t dilute their potential any more if they tried.

Not sure how and why they are the way they are, but they reflect the sad and pathetic mentality of our current Democratic party and our President: talks a lot, but underneath is absolutely feckless, cowardly, and character-free.