AndyFromCB

Actually, mine was 41% last year between federal, state and sales tax. Not counting various fees. Then $1400 a month for health insurance on top of that. Maybe I'm starting to see why people are revolting. At least in Europe you get something for you taxes, here it's mostly YouTube videos of predator strikes and homeless vets. But yes, most middle income people actually pay very little in taxes and their pain would be considerably greater than mine if tea party ideas were actually implemented. But yet they vote for them. It comes down to the issue of "fairness", because they don't think in terms percentages, so while they work their asses off trying to make ends meet, they see someone in the store using their $120 a month in EBT and think how unfair that is to them. That's the though process that drives them.

Scott can ignore facts faster than you can type them. Just saying. That portion of his brain has reached maximum efficiency he so much yearns for years ago.

"defense", at least it used to be called "The Department of War", but then nobody likes war

Joni didn't say no cashing my contribution check. And I bet you she'll have no problems voting YES on the next farm bill. She's a good Iowa girl and knows that saying Yes can lead to so much fun.

But we already have that system in place. Paying a million a year in taxes puts you square in the 1% camp. Actually, 10% of 1%. Theirs are the only votes that count. 99% vote to elect players. 1% calls the shots. For example, do you think for a second that the opposition to immigration reform in congress is anything but a ploy bought and brought by big ag business to prevent millions from having rights in the workplace? Even if elected 99 Joni Earnsts to Senate, not one more illegal will be deported or border more secure than it is now. Your individual thoughts on the subject do not matter, there is only one big paymaster on that issue, big ag, pretty easy to follow the money. President doesn't care cause big ag was never a major contributor to his team. But 5 million future reliable blue team voters are hard to pass by.

You have to define "contribute". And here in lies to problem. As far as a corn farmer in Iowa is considered, we all contribute, cause we all eat. To the farmer, EBT swiped at HyVee, to buy some soda, trickling down is just as good as cash ;-) To me, same thing, farmer needs to insure that corn. To the good doc, the EBT carrying overweight poor sob, is just a future diabetes case. And the hamster wheels spins. And I think Scott is a fine voter. Bless his heart. I just don't see why he hates hamsters so much.

Hate to break it to you, but here I actually know what I'm taking about, being it's my business, insurance that is. Total cost of malpractice suits is 1 to 1.5% percent of healthcare spending, depending on the year. Tack on 20% for insurance company profits, and we're only talking about about $40 billion a year. Birthing of the illegals does not up to that much either, as births are pretty straight forward and medicaid only reimburses somewhere around $2000 per regular delivery. Do you really think French have less illegals? Have you ever been to the ghettos of Paris? Overrun with northern Africans, in the country illegally. On the other hand, dumping $700 million of pills that do not do anything on VA, actually ads up to something: "Just as Big Pharma has camped out in Medicare and Medicaid, living on our tax dollars while fleeing to England so it doesn’t have to pay taxes, Pharma has also camped out in the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs. Arguably, no drugs have been as good for Big Pharma as atypical antipsychotics within the military. In 2009, the Pentagon spent $8.6 million on Seroquel and VA spent $125.4 million—almost $30 million more than is spent on a F/A-18 Hornet. Risperdal was even bigger in the military. Over a period of nine years, VA spent $717 million on its generic, risperidone, to treat PTSD in troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet not only was risperidone not approved for PTSD, it didn’t even work. A 2011 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found the drug worked no better than placebo and the money was totally wasted." Same with Medicare Part D, which by law, brought to you by non-other than GWB, prohibits the feds from negotiating price discounts like insurance companies do. And ACA is exactly what you described, a reasonable regulation of the insurers. Next we need reasonable regulation of hospital billing practices. The shit they are pulling right now with pricing varying up to 10x for same procedures and bringing in out of network "guest doctors" during surgeries has to stop. There is a clear collusion in major markets with the "guest surgeon" program between hospitals to pad some bills $100K to 200K for things such as simple knee operations.

Please elaborate. I want to see how deep we can dig this hole.

Flyboy, but now you have to understand that a British conservative MP is so far left of Obama, that around here even Dennis Kucinich would not want to have anything to do with him. I'll repeat myself again, we don't have a left here in US of A. We have center-right and then the crazies who would not budge when Obama proposed 10 to 1 spending cuts to tax increases. So the taxes went up anyway as GWB's tax cuts went away and the crazies got nothing in return. Same thing is about to happen with immigration and the same law the crazies passed years ago, when they refused to fund various functions of government via general taxes and instead granted the executive the power to collect fees, will now be used to fund the executive order "immigrations reform". Be careful what you wish for. Yes, Obama has the constitutional power to do this because Reagan felt that National Parks shouldn't be free to all. Congress has for years abdicated its responsibility and its power of the purse to the executive so that the incumbents can claim they did not raise taxes during the election instead funding the executive with fees. Now the executive will collect fees from illegals to fund the processing and there is not a damn thing the congress can do. You show me one executive order of any importance that ever left the books after it was "declared" to be the law of the land.

So essentially, let's never learn anything from anywhere else because that's un-American? I mean, someone, somewhere might be doing something better than we do? Can't be. And actually, we don't have a Democracy, we have a Republic. And the law was voted in, survived all challenges and the premiums in IA/NE for various companies I'm involved with, on average, actually dropped for the first time I can remember.

Actually, I don't have direct experience with Canadian, Greek or English system, but the French system blows away anything I've ever experienced in US of A, even with my so called "cadillac plan". Broke a wrist once skiing in Chamonix when I did work over there for AON and my total expenditure was zero, wrist was set using external pins that had to be taken out 2 weeks later in Omaha. The doctor in Omaha said we don't "that kind of stuff here" in relation to external pins and my US insurance company at first refused to pay to have them taken out as they felt me having full range of motion in my wrist was not worth paying for. The said only a simple cast would be covered. Only when I reminded them that I made health care decisions for what then was 80 employee company, did UHC budge. I can only imagine what's it's like dealing with them when you don't have an ability to put that kind of pressure.

And yet the rest of the civilized world's wallet somehow is? Universal care with better outcomes for half the price in Germany and rest of Europe? I wonder how they do it. One, I'm sure they let their government dictate prices. Anyways, yes, the average voter is stupid. So Gruber was right. Ask an average voter if they support Obamacare. 60% oppose it. Ask an average voter about the individual pieces of the legislation, such as preexisting conditions, individual coverage that cannot be cancelled should you actually become ill and need said coverage, universal rating, etc, the support goes to 75%. How is that for stupid? Average voter is like Pavlov's dog, except the buzzer was replaced with buzz words. Personally I believe ACA needs some major fine tuning, but it will provide Americans with much greater social mobility and economic freedom when health insurance is no longer attached to a paycheck. So many people are attached to jobs they hate simply because they cannot afford to leave due to health conditions.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/13/world/meast/isis-currency/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 Funny how ISIS and our own crazies are sounding more and more the same. Surprise? Looking forward to Glen Beck pushing it as the world's newest, safest return for your investment. To quote one of the finest political players of all time, "If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking." - Lyndon B. Johnson: When CNN and FOX are both screaming about ISIS all in unison, the people in charge are doing the thinking: more war, more money. If anyone of you, including Scotty from Iowa, think for a second that we really have a two party system, you are severely confused, as is their intention.

Has something to do with Republicans total unwillingness to compromise. Democrats always recognize that half a loaf is better than none. Hence for years that have created lasting legislation, some dating back to 1930's like social security. It's not by dumb luck or mistake that these pieces stick around. There is almost no lasting conservative legislation that survived constitutional review by courts in the last 80 years. Mid terms are low voter turn out, especially among young voters, hence the Senate was almost guaranteed to be delivered to the republicans who at this point, due the gerrymandered system they setup in the first place, incapable of presenting appealing, moderate candidates, because they would never survive a primary where only the nuttiest of the fringe participates. 2016 will most likely reverse it, due to much higher voter turnout when the younger, considerably more liberal generation votes again. The house will remain republican. The white house and senate will go democratic. Obstruction will continue and so will the increase in executive power as more and more actions are implemented via an executive order. 2018, the senate once again will be won by republicans. And so it will repeat itself for another 20 years or until the considerably more numerous, more moderate section of the republican decides to shut out the nut cases and continue to do business again with democrats, tit for tat. Obama offered $10 in spending cuts for each dollar of tax increase. After all, that debt has to be paid down somehow.

Little Timmy doesn't want to fly cause he'd rather smoke a bowl, call Little Johny on his Obamaphone, and play single payer doctor while dreaming of their fabulous wedding officiated by a lesbian minister. I'd say we (the center-right of the property party) did do a rather fabulous job in the last 6 years. Good luck undoing it ;-) Tea partiers will attempt to accomplish the following in the next 2 years instead of doing anything productive: -undo the will of the people in states with legalized marijuana because you know, federal law trumps state law, unless it comes to guns or pollution -spend way to much time worrying about what Timmy and Johny are doing with their peepees -pass some sort of a bill dealing with creationism further dumbing down their base, now #1 in confidence, #37 in competence worldwide They will do absolutely nothing else. In the mean time, the personhood amendment failed in all 5 states that put it on the ballot, and minimum wage got raised in all states that had on the ballot and you have not seen nothing yet, when Hilary is president 2 years from now. Can you say executive order?

Flyboy, Scott is always a capitalist, unless of course, it comes to me, who made his money starting an crop insurance company, which of course, makes a communist, or his employer, Selective, whom sucked, close to 90% of its income last year from either federal government programs (flood insurance, 50 million of their revenue), or federal/state mandated insurance (auto, commercial auto and workman's comp, 400 million of their revenue), which leaves about 50 to free market forces (been busy, I'm sure my secretary could assign at least 49 million to to other regulation). Most of the free market chickenshiats would be out on the street starving if it wasn't for rules and regulations. BTW Scott, a TBM (paid for, free and clear) is about to join the Mooney in the hangar, how is that for a communist ;-) Oh, and Scott, since you have some many opinions on Ferguson and you love GB so much, why not read this: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/11/29/man-arrested-62-times-for-trespassingat-his-place-of-work/ And then understand that 50% of Ferguson's revenues come from court fees, based on manufactured charges. How is that for poor/minority people not paying their fair share. Most of them pay a lot more percentage wise than us, middle and upper class folks. This is one area that we can maybe agree on, the federal government militarizing our police force. Sorry if they are the only ones with balls and finally blew their gaskets ;-) I'm sure you're willing to quit your job, give up the Cayman and go protest. Or we could give up the idiotic local control, 91 separate entities in St. Louis county and fund things on state/national level. Of course, it's nice having an opinion living in a third or fourth highest income tax state in the nation, like our Iowa, receiving on top of getting 10% of my income, another 40 cents on on a dollar from the feds and being all high and mighty, isn't it Scott? So full of shiat, I can almost not take it anymore.

I would say the day to day is no joke. You just cannot say how you will react at altitude. It's not however seconds at 28,000. It's still minutes, but it's minutes of total stupidity. You don't start getting into seconds until 35,000 feet when it starts going below 60 seconds in case rapid decompression.

Yes, but the definition of elite is kind of lame around here. I can go on a 100 mile bike ride and be done under 5 hours. To most sport folks, that's considered elite. The only thing that hurts is my ass. So yes, anyone who exercises past about 30 minutes recommended is not going to respond to oxygen depravation like some here. I did Denali 11 years back at 260lb so about 30lb of pure fat and while hard, 20,000 didn't feel like much and back then I smoked a pack of Camels a day. I quit because in my 30's, a pack of smokes killed me more than a liter of gin next morning.

One, some of us, especially who do not smoke and spend sufficient time CO or WY, do not even feel winded at 14,000. For me, since I quit smoking a few years back, I can do sprints on top of flattop mountain. I've spend days (5) at 14,000 with no ill effects. Others flip out and loose their shit. As to canullas, I've worn one to 24,000 while another pilot was flying with mask. Just fine for an hour. Took it off, went TU in about 10 minutes. Altitiude chamber at Offutt had no effect on me until 21,000 feet and then the drop off was severe. I quit making all sense and started seeing watermelons everywhere. I don't know why watermelons, but that was it. I was awake and talking trash until 24,000 and then I just turned off.

No, I said: I could have some fun with you, if you don't quit threatening my personal well being. I really have no reasons to own a cookie cutter home in Cedar Rapids. Not my cup of tea. Not a big fan of cement board siding. So it's all good unless you move next door and tell me I cannot build a fence. Then I'll have to buy the whole damn grave yard behind me and show you how it's done ;-) I think they moved out but still have not been able to sell their house for a year.

Spots don't get much better than this, congratulations. We landed in Green Bay today and I've been watching all day long from a boat. Got to love the polar vortex. Maybe tomorrow we'll crawl onto land and walk the grounds. Assuming I can walk, way too much gin and tonic today.

Because America, never wrong...

So are some kind of effing socialist? Bill and Hilary clearly command some giant speaking fees. The audience is clearly willing to pay them. Where do you see a problem? Supply/Demand. There is only few people in the entire world as well connected as Clintons. If you want a few minutes of their time, you pay. Once again, where is the problem? Nobody wants Bush the younger to drool over their floors (I sure as shiat don't after putting in 1600sqft of Bloodwood in my house) but Clinton does not drool and neither does Bush, the senior. That's why they get alone. Brains.

Chris, What nobody here appears to understand is that unlike Putin, we have to act within the confines on international law and rules. And it takes time. They only way to knock Putin on his ass, where the thug belongs, is not thru bellicose posturing, because that would be playing his game, but by undermining his support at home. And that takes time. We just introduced another round of sanctions and they are slowly working. Russian stock markets are down, way down. Banking system over there is breaking down and he was forced to sign a 'pretty sweet' deal with China for delivery of natural gas and since no prices were announced, to say the least, China has exploded Russia's weakness there. It was not favorable to Russia. However, we cannot introduce sanctions much stronger than what the Europeans are willing do, because then we create an opportunity to play one side against the other. This is a game of chess and I still would like to believe that our chess players are much better than theirs. Remember, while the figure heads change, he game is mostly played by career foreign service, state department and CIA workers who have been playing this game for a long, long time. Give our guys some credit, so far they've won the game for last 70 years or so.

Actually, I think you might be wrong here. MX-20 run on NT but I'm pretty positive GMX-200 runs on XP embedded…Hence I believe MX-20 was a better product, all be i, much slower. NT was actually a decent operating system. XP, while fine for desktop, never really amounted to much for embedded systems. Don't ask me how I know and why I have so much gray hair at 35.