patrick.net

TwoScoopsOfSpaceForce says

Funny, I don't remember CNN or MSNBC saying "Rabid Anti-Semitism in America: Hassidic Man Brutally Beaten by Middle Easterner" and making it top news.

Bad for the narrative.

Have you watched every story on MSNBC and CNN? Do you remember every one?

I imagine there is a lot you don't remember....

tatupu70 says

Have you watched every story on MSNBC and CNN? Do you remember every one?

I imagine there is a lot you don't remember....

So, there's a hate crime in broad daylight and it's barely reported? Pretty odd, eh?

We all know if it was a White Dude beating a Jew, it would be the story of the week at least. And blamed on Trump to boot.

TwoScoopsOfSpaceForce says

So, there's a hate crime in broad daylight and it's barely reported? Pretty odd, eh?

Was it barely reported?

It was probably a false flag anyway. Did you check the guy's twitter account?

tatupu70 says

It was probably a false flag anyway. Did you check the guy's twitter account?

I wish Slate would. They read all Bowers tweets but ignored the ones where he damned Trump (and his supporters, as well as "Q") as a Jew Stooge.

But somehow they "Forgot" to mention that in their hit piece.

Tim Aurora says

I am a never Trumper for the simple reason that he is a uncivil, stupid and a liar . The main reason is that he is stupid.

@Tim Aurora, you posted this in a thread about a different topic, but I wanted to ask you about it, so I am replying here. IRL, a friend who can't stand being contradicted keeps calling the President an "idiot," and I can't understand why. Perhaps you could explain? What makes you believe the President of the United States, who earned a degree from Wharton and succeeded in almost everything he ever set out to do, including beating more than a dozen candidates for the Presidency who were mostly desperate to win, is (in your opinion) "stupid"?

APHAman says

Did he intend to go bankrupt running casinos and investing in Manhattan Real Estate?

Did he go bankrupt?

HEYYOU says

@HEY YOU, I am trying to understand your use of this meme in the context of your recent comment history. Little help?

curious2 says

a friend who can't stand being contradicted keeps calling the President an "idiot," and I can't understand why. Perhaps you could explain?

Can verify. Trump is kinda dim. Genial, shrewd, and has a big personality, but not really intelligent. If you don't think Papa Fred got him into all those fancy pants schools then you're fooling yourself.

Look, he's certainly not stupid, and it's not like he has Downs Syndrome, but at some point his 'successes' have clearly transcended his level of intelligence. And that's actually fine: it's perfectly acceptable to not be terribly bright and still be in charge of a large institution or corporation, it happens all the time. I'd wager George W. was a good deal dumber than Trump. Reagan was not only an academic lightweight but was probably putting his daily briefing in the White House refrigerator for the last two years of his presidency. Obama is a pretty smart guy and I know how many of you feel about him, but he still ran the show for 8 years and look, we're still here. Clinton is actually brilliant- a Rhodes Scholar- and things seemed to generally be run the way any democratic president would run things. Meh.

Point being, your academic abilities, while helpful, really only mean so much. The presidency is a lot more than that, plus it's equally important who surrounds and supports you in the administration.

But yeah, Trump isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. Have lots of friends from Apprentice that could back that up.

Evan F. says

Trump is kinda dim. Genial, shrewd, and has a big personality, but not really intelligent.

Can you distinguish between "shrewd" and "intelligent" for me?

First definition I found says shrewd is "Characterized by keen awareness, sharp intelligence, and often a sense of the practical."

TwoScoopsOfSpaceForce says

Did you miss this one? I sure did:

https://www.foxnews.com/us/photographer-dies-6-months-after-taking-beating-in-alleged-racial-attack-prosecutors

I did miss that one.

Let's see, Muslim black man murders Jewish white man. (Assuming Muslim from the name Jamil and the Mohammedesque beard.)

Muslim gets a point, black gets a point, man loses a point: net +1
Jewish gets a point, white loses a point, man loses a point: net -1

By the liberal math of victimhood, such a story must be relegated to a small article on the back pages if reported at all.

Evan F. says

Can verify. Trump [is] shrewd....

Look, he's certainly not stupid.... I'd wager George W. was a good deal dumber than Trump.

BTW, W holds degrees from Yale and Harvard. You can say he got help getting in, but he had better grades at Yale than John Kerry. If you didn't graduate from Oxford, Cambridge, or MIT, then I don't see how you could call him dumb.

I don't understand why some people insist on calling other people "stupid," "idiots" (IQ below 26), "dimbulbs," or "retarded" when those labels are plainly false. Marcus calls almost everyone he disagrees with a dimbulb, including @CBOETrader, who succeeded in the exact profession where Marcus admitted having failed. (Full disclosure: Marcus has also called me "retarded", and deleted a whole thread where I had proved him wrong about a rule of math, which he claims to teach.) It seems to reflect a sort of willful ignorance, stubbornly refusing to consider the possibility that intelligent people can disagree and even be wrong.

I think it harms debate and public discourse, because people retreat into their echo chambers where the "other" side is always "stupid" instead of having anything worthwhile to say. It becomes an excuse for people to shout slogans at each other instead of trying to reason together.

curious2 says

Yale than John Kerry.

Both John Kerry and Al Gore Jr are morons. Gore, after Harvard undergrad, flunked out of Vanderbilt Law.

Calling Trump stupid is just another form of "orange man bad".

And what we should care about is results and Trump has been more effective at getting good results than any other president in our lifetimes.

The reduction in nuclear tension with N. Korea alone is a major accomplishment which has made us all safer. Every American should be grateful for that at the very least.

So leftoids are advocating that stupid people and retards should never have any meaningful jobs but if you express your opinion supported by facts that men and women are different or illegal and unskilled immigration is bad, or oppose gay marriage or don't address xir by xeir preferred pronoun, then you should be fired for discrimination or even prosecuted. Can't make this shit up even if one wanted to.

jazz_music says

Are you sure you understand what was said?

I had been wondering the same about your comment. I asked @Tim Aurora a simple question. I asked politely and reasonably. You are not even Tim Aurora, and yet you responded with an irrelevant rant assuming all sorts of things about me, e.g. this:

jazz_music says

You were indoctrinated that there’s nothing better on earth and that greed is good and not one of the seven deadly sins that those assholes 4000 years ago claimed.

You also acknowledged that W had deliberately spoken persuasively, and essentially outsmarted his audience including you, and yet you call him "stupid." As noted above, W got better grades at Yale than John Kerry. If W is "stupid", what does that make you? Did you go to Yale, and if so, how did you do there?

Patrick says

Let's see, Muslim black man murders Jewish white man. (Assuming Muslim from the name Jamil and the Mohammedesque beard.)

Muslim gets a point, black gets a point, man loses a point: net +1
Jewish gets a point, white loses a point, man loses a point: net -1

By the liberal math of victimhood, such a story must be relegated to a small article on the back pages if reported at all.

In the NY Metro Area in the past few weeks:

Elderly Hassidic beaten by Muslim Cab Driver
Black Teens assault pre-pubescent Hassidic Boys, then vandalize the Temple
Black College Student and Orphan adopted by the City Council, and who stayed with a Jewish Couple, who was studying AA at Brandeis, free ride, also Vandalized a Temple.

I'm sure it had nothing to do with Islam or Farrakhan's latest rants.

The Good News is that the Women's March is being outed, while th eorganization issued an apology, Linda Sarsour issued a "Not-pology' on Facebook later.

Patrick says

identical twins are not more likely to both be gay if one of them is.

Patrick says

it is an outright lie that homosexuality is something innate and immutable

Both of those statements are false, and you have been presented with plenty of evidence to know that. @Patrick, why do you litter your own site with outright lies?

"A genetic analysis of 409 pairs of gay brothers, including sets of twins, has provided the strongest evidence yet that gay people are born gay. The study clearly links sexual orientation in men with two regions of the human genome that have been implicated before, one on the X chromosome and one on chromosome 8... The latest study involves about three times as many people as the previous largest study, which means it is significantly more statistically robust."

Prior work involving more twins:

"We found 52 percent of identical twin brothers of gay men also were gay, compared with 22 percent of fraternal twins, compared with 11 percent of genetically unrelated brothers," said J. Michael Bailey, an assistant professor of psychology at Northwestern University in Evanston, "which is exactly the kind of pattern you would want to see if something genetic were going on." By "unrelated," Dr. Bailey was referring to brothers by adoption."

Another major factor is birth order:

Twenty years ago, Ray Blanchard and Anthony Bogaert demonstrated that the probability of a boy growing up to be gay increases for each older brother born to the same mother, the so-called fraternal birth order (FBO) effect. Their first investigation indicated that each older brother increased the probability of being gay by about 33%. This startling phenomenon was confirmed in multiple studies based on independent populations totaling over 10,000 subjects, and a meta-analysis indicated that between 15% and 29% of gay men owe their sexual orientation to this effect. Despite this compelling evidence, a mechanism to account for the effect remained elusive. In PNAS, Bogaert et al. present direct biochemical evidence indicating that the increased incidence of homosexuality in males with older brothers results from a progressive immunization of the mother against a male-specific cell-adhesion protein that plays a key role in cell–cell interactions, specifically in the process of synapse formation, during development called neuroligin 4 Y-linked, or NLGN4Y. This study provides the first data-based explanation for the FBO effect and adds a significant chapter to growing evidence indicating that sexual orientation is heavily influenced by prenatal biological mechanisms rather than by unidentified factors in socialization."

You and @FortWayne/@FortWayneIndiana seem to insist on certain falsehoods, AKA lies. I can see why he obsesses over it, spreading lies to atone for his own sinful thoughts and behavior, but you don't even believe.

Patrick says

I just don't want them teaching it to children.

Most gay children are born to opposite sex parents and grow up in those households. Where exactly do you want gay children to learn that they are not alone?

You have also claimed falsely that everyone has only two parents of opposite sex. In reality, intersex (XXY) and anatomical hermaphrodites can and do have children, and many children (e.g. those born to surrogates) have three biological parents. That still leaves a majority of gay children growing up in households without gay parents, so the question stands: where should they learn about their own lives?

It is very odd to see you posting the same outright lies over and over again, repeating them like a prayer.

Patrick says

the racism and hate for working people illustrated in the comic absolutely guarantees that nothing will be solved.

The comic shows two parents, a daughter, and a dog. It makes fun of the parents' ignorance. It says nothing about whether the parents are working, retired, unemployed, or lottery winners. They could be Walmart millionaires, for all you know. It says nothing about race, though the people happen to be white (as most Americans are) and one parent wears a confederate flag hat. You seem to be projecting a paranoid fantasy onto a comic, much the way marcus projects racism onto everyone everywhere.

FortWayneIndiana says

curious2 says

That's false. @Patrick, why do you litter your own site with outright lies?

You are quoting either false studies or studies that simply point that people who grow in the same household, under same conditions, more likely end up gay. Which has been proven. It's socially constructed to a high degree. Raise normal kids in a gay neighborhoods, and likelihood of them going looney is higher. Same with Trannies. Which is why this shit is child abuse. The lower the IQ of the child, the higher probability of children raised that way turning out homos. That was another study. And no study has found a genetic difference between gays and normal, which likely means that it's not genetic, but socially constructed (aka sexual confusion). There is no gay gene, just stupidity.

See, your problem is that you ignore half the damn evidence curious2.

@FortWayne @FortWayneIndiana

The exchange does not involve funny pictures, so I am replying in the Reply Thread. I have linked the largest and most recent studies above. Your assertions are simply false, and disproved above. When you make deliberately false statements, those are lies.

curious2 says

@FortWayne @FortWayneIndiana

The exchange does not involve funny pictures, so I am replying in the Reply Thread. I have linked the largest and most recent studies above. Your assertions are simply false, and disproved above. When you make deliberately false statements, those are lies.

Nope, your stuff is false. What I'm posting was real science, even quoted by Jordan Peterson, who is a renowned psychologist, not some bullshit left winger ignoring evidence such as "place where people are raised".

It's still the case that if you take normal people and raise them in a homosexual neighborhood they are way more likely to turn out gay. It's shocking how huge of a correlation there is. That's right, socially constructed mental disorder right there proven scientifically. And when scientists went to try to find "gay" gene, there wasn't one simply. Case closed.

FortWayneIndiana says

What I'm posting

You have posted nothing but your own lies, with no links to anything, while I reply with linked facts. You choose to bear false witness against your fellow Americans.

This is an area where even conservatives learn with age. Barry Goldwater, Dick Cheney, and Rob Portman all endorsed gay rights after learning that they had gay children and grandchildren. Someday, the same may happen to you. In that moment, you will feel the pain of regret for having born false witness against your own family. I would spare you that pain, but you insist on it.

As for what you claim Jordan Peterson said, you have not even quoted him, let alone linked, and actual examples show the opposite of what you claim. For example, even after pleading guilty to homosexual solicitation in a public toilet, "rest room enthusiast" Larry Craig insisted he was straight, and remains married to a woman. (She has kids from a prior marriage, he has none of his own.) Ted Haggard, George Rekers, and countless other Republican closet cases demonstrate that closet cases can claim to be "straight" if raised in environments where they are pressured to do so. It doesn't change what they are inside.

@Patrick has also commented about two people in his own family who were gay and unfortunately Catholic, so they chose lives of celibacy to avoid sin. I hope he might apologize to them for having born false witness against his own family. His only gain is more page views on his website, which doesn't even make money. Perhaps he can at least confess to them what he said, including the time when he said people choose to be gay in order to get easy sex.

Positing false dichotomies is also a form of lying, and I do not intend to imply that every occurrence of characteristic X results from cause Y. That would be projecting false binaries onto a nonbinary world, as Patrick tends to do. Sexual orientation is influenced by genetics, maternal hormones during gestation, etc. The fact remains, many are born gay, even if Larry Craig and other examples claim to be straight.

Funny thing - all the commenters who are supposed to giving their employers a full 40 hour work week who have time to fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way by posting and commenting here during work hours.

Let someone who really needs some form of government assistance get it - travesty and then some. These people are cheating and wasting the taxpayers money but a-ok to waste the employers time and money but that part about showing up and actually doing a full 40 hours or so of work was probably not stated in all seriousness

Good afternoon to our colleague from Jersey !

Kakistocracy says

Funny thing - all the commenters who are supposed to giving their employers a full 40 hour work week who have time to fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way by posting and commenting here during work hours.

Per comment 132 - retired for 10 years now, bailed at age 57 after 30 some years.

Even though I had more than my share of workarounds for the typical 8-5 routine - my employer always got their 40 hours and then some but often I did that time on the weekends and at night when everyone else was off or schlepping around the country 50% or more of my work life.

Now if the discussion is going to move to paycheck collectors as opposed to employees that actually give a shit - we had tons of those and they lasted an average of 12-18 months before moving on to the next scam.

Good afternoon to the respondent from Jersey - aka Mr.Magic

Doing some research on the comments from the respondent and over 95% of what has been typed is an attack in one form or another on a small group of other posters - going back over a year it would seem even less than 5% of the comments that came from the respondent were remotely intelligent or informative.

To be fair you are not flying solo in this arena - there is small core of less than 5 regulars that form the attack club carrying the same credentials.

Is this the best that the club can come up with on a day in day out basis ?

This goes back to a few days ago when "the need for transparency was claimed" - that was a bullshit excuse now then and it still is bullshit.

jazz_music says

Either I am a raging apostate or this is the capitalism that you and every good slave believes in.

I'm going for the raging apostate choice.

We Americans Have the right, and opportunity, to be successful or to fail. And if you fail there is a safety hammock waiting for you.

Nobody is starving in the USA.

Onvacation ignore (3) 2019 Mar 1, 10:58am ↑ like (0) ↓ dislike (0) quote flag

jazz_music says

Either I am a raging apostate or this is the capitalism that you and every good slave believes in.

I'm going for the raging apostate choice.

We Americans Have the right, and opportunity, to be successful or to fail. And if you fail there is a safety hammock waiting for you.

Nobody is starving in the USA.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Grossly underfed, malnourished, eating cat food or dog food, maybe one meal a day - maybe, hungry 24 x 7, but techincally speaking only about 125 people died of "stravation" per se in the country on an average year but that is "technically" speaking so nothing to worry about.

A small (relative to the population) and unacceptable number of isolated or abused disabled elderly and a very few terribly abused and neglected children in the US do starve to death every year in the USA, however starvation is extremely rare. - "technically" speaking of course

In the United States more than half of hungry households are white, and two-thirds of those with children have at least one working adult—typically in a full-time job. With this new image comes a new lexicon: In 2006 the U.S. government replaced “hunger” with the term “food insecure” to describe any household where, sometime during the previous year, people didn’t have enough food to eat. By whatever name, the number of people going hungry has grown dramatically in the U.S., increasing to 48 million by 2012—a fivefold jump since the late 1960s, including an increase of 57 percent since the late 1990s. Privately run programs like food pantries and soup kitchens have mushroomed too. In 1980 there were a few hundred emergency food programs across the country; today there are 50,000. Finding food has become a central worry for millions of Americans. One in six reports running out of food at least once a year. In many European countries, by contrast, the number is closer to one in 20.

To witness hunger in America today is to enter a twilight zone where refrigerators are so frequently bare of all but mustard and ketchup that it provokes no remark, inspires no embarrassment. Here dinners are cooked using macaroni-and-cheese mixes and other processed ingredients from food pantries, and fresh fruits and vegetables are eaten only in the first days after the SNAP payment arrives. Here you’ll meet hungry farmhands and retired schoolteachers, hungry families who are in the U.S. without papers and hungry families whose histories stretch back to the Mayflower. Here pocketing food from work and skipping meals to make food stretch are so common that such practices barely register as a way of coping with hunger and are simply a way of life.

IF anyone is interested - here is the link - graphics, details galore etc - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/hunger/

Onvacation says

Nobody is starving in the USA.

Exactly right, no one is starving, actually it's just the opposite:


There's a fat epidemic in the country.

Kakistocracy says

To witness hunger in America today is to enter a twilight zone where refrigerators are so frequently bare of all but mustard and ketchup that it provokes no remark, inspires no embarrassment. Here dinners are cooked using macaroni-and-cheese mixes and other processed ingredients from food pantries, and fresh fruits and vegetables are eaten only in the first days after the SNAP payment arrives.

Seriously dude, you need to get out more. Go take a walk through the neighborhood Walmart and report back how many malnourished people are seen inside.

We'll be waiting for that report.....

Seriously dude, you need to get out more. Go take a walk through the neighborhood Walmart and report back how many malnourished people are seen inside.

We'll be waiting for that report

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That would be Mr. Dude to you.

As for the report as soon as one of the attack club members coughs up that dissertation on inventory I've been patiently waiting for , I will consider the request above.

It would be nice to know the date of and source for the chart above - just sayin.

Body weight is not an indicator of proper nourishment or what health problems are not visible to the eye.

By mere coincidence was in an area Wal-Mart the other day. See the same shit day in and day out every time I go there.

People going up to the register putting back item after item because they do not have enough money to pay for everything and walk out with the bare necessities and those are really bare necessities by anyone's standards. This is called malnutrition, food hungry etc.

See it in the groceries as well -size doesn't matter - people are going fucking hungry and the few things they do buy are not high on the healthy or even high nutrition list but again this rolls to education and lack of resources to buy what is nutritious.

This place is getting like the Philippines where for most people finding food to eat is the big project of the day - sometimes the only project.

Kakistocracy says

To witness hunger in America today is to enter a twilight zone where refrigerators are so frequently bare of all but mustard and ketchup that it provokes no remark, inspires no embarrassment. Here dinners are cooked using macaroni-and-cheese mixes and other processed ingredients from food pantries, and fresh fruits and vegetables are eaten only in the first days after the SNAP payment arrives. Here you’ll meet hungry farmhands and retired schoolteachers, hungry families who are in the U.S. without papers and hungry families whose histories stretch back to the Mayflower. Here pocketing food from work and skipping meals to make food stretch are so common that such practices barely register as a way of coping with hunger and are simply a way of life.

A pound of ground beef costs $3 (pork and chicken would cost only $2 per pound); a pound of flour costs 50 cents; a pound of flash-frozen veggie or berries would cost only $2-3 (apples, oranges and melons would cost far less, about $1/pound). So a total of $5/day can can deliver 3 meals of feast (of balanced diet) that only Kings and Queens could dream of not long ago, and even today only the dictators and their families and friends can afford such in socialist paradises such as Venezuela, North Korea and Cuba.

$5 is 20minutes of work at $15 minimum wage! You can't possibly be telling me someone who can steal food from work doesn't have money to buy food. He/she is taking food from work because his/her income is taken by other expenses! ranging from taxes, government imposed medical monopolies and insurance mandate to pay such monopolies, education loans due to government imposed university monopolies and license requirement for jobs, high housing cost due to government restrictions on housing supply, etc. etc. in some cases, perhaps even high illicit drug cost due to government war on drugs.

Hunger is always a management/distribution problem: specifically government not allowing the free market place to function. When a person's nutritional requirement can be taken care of by $5/day or less, forcing people to pay taxes to maintain a gaggle of bureaucrats each making $200-600/day to run so-called welfare programs just doesn't make sense: the bureaucrats themselves suck up far more resources than the intended recipient would ever get.

Reality says

A pound of ground beef costs $3 (pork and chicken would cost only $2 per pound); a pound of flour costs 50 cents; a pound of flash-frozen veggie or berries would cost only $2-3 (apples, oranges and melons would cost far less, about $1/pound). So a total of $5/day can can deliver 3 meals of feast (of balanced diet) that only Kings and Queens could dream of not long ago, and even today only the dictators and their families and friends can dream of in socialist paradises such as Venezuela, North Korea and Cuba.

Where ?

Let me know asap as I will switch where I shop. The best I can do is buy one get one free on Pork Loins (2.29 lb.) and I have not seen 80% lean or higher ground beef in well over a year at $3 lb..

If I catch a good sale, I can get top round cheaper than ground beef

Kakistocracy says

A pound of ground beef costs $3 (pork and chicken would cost only $2 per pound); a pound of flour costs 50 cents; a pound of flash-frozen veggie or berries would cost only $2-3 (apples, oranges and melons would cost far less, about $1/pound). So a total of $5/day can can deliver 3 meals of feast (of balanced diet) that only Kings and Queens could dream of not long ago, and even today only the dictators and their families and friends can dream of in socialist paradises such as Venezuela, North Korea and Cuba.

Where ?

What do you mean by "where"? These are the prices at Costco and Walmart. Stop buying junk food, and especially expensive junk food.

Just saw your edit, the last time I priced pork loin, about a month ago, Costco price was $1.69/lb, Walmart price was $1.75/lb. 83% lean ground beef was $2.89/lb at Costco; Walmart price ranged from $2.70/lb to $3.89/lb depending on package size.

Reality says

What do you mean by "where"? These are the prices at Costco and Walmart. Stop buying junk food, and especially expensive junk food.

Will be going to both tomorrow morning - I will give you an update. I try to avoid buying meat at Wal-Mart, Costco however has decent quality.

Don't have money to piss away on junk food actually - not a big fan.

Pork Loins are not junk food when I can get 5-6 meals out of one Pork Loin. Same with a few decent cuts of Top Round.

Anyway this conversation needs to get moved to another thread - this is not what this thread is for.

@Patrick - can you assist in this matter - moving these food related comments to a new thread ?

I agree, real meat is not junk food. I used beef instead of pork for reference, just to be generous and accounting for some people not eating pork due to religious or cultural reasons. BTW, 10lb frozen boneless and skinless chicken breast is $2/lb at Walmart SuperCenters (and slightly more at Costco, I think $2.30/lb in 10lb bags); whole rotissary chickens fully cooked weighing 3-5lbs is only $5-6 at Costco and Walmart SuperCenters. The junk food reference was relating to ketchup, mustard and macroni in the article you quoted earlier; these are not real food, despite government classification of them as Vegetable! in school lunch programs! That's the sort of nonsense when government bureaucrats are put in place of deciding what your kids can eat!

Kakistocracy says

Don't have money to piss away on junk food actually

Sounds like some problems with the retirement planning, doesn't it?

Kakistocracy says

The best I can do is buy one get one free on Pork Loins (2.29 lb.) and I have not seen 80% lean or higher ground beef in well over a year at $3 lb..

Wow, I have no idea of what the cost per pound are when I shop. If I like it, I buy it, but then, I planned appropriately for my retirement, and I'm not grovelling in dumpsters looking for my next meal.

Kakistocracy says

Anyway this conversation needs to get moved to another thread - this is not what this thread is for.

Who went off tangent on malnourishment in America in this thread?

The food cost discussion is actually quite relevant, and cuts to the core falsehood in the faith in welfare state. The cost of medicine, education and housing could be likewise much less expensive if not for the meddling by the government bureaucrats. For example, an MRI costs $2000 in the US, but only $100 in Japan! No, that's not price after Japanese government subsidy, but cash price in Japan, $100, not even $1000! Medicine in the US is expensive thanks to government regulation limiting supply and "capping" institutional profit margin (such as insurance profit margin) to 10%, so institutions have every incentive to run their own cost sky high! 10% of $100 is only $10, but 10% of $2000 is $200! Guess which route the profit-margin-capped institutions would take? The Road to Hell is Usually Paved with "Good Intentions."

Food just happens to be more obvious as we deal with food pricing more often than dealing with medicine, housing and education: an individual can feed himself/herself very well in the relatively free market place for $5/day, whereas government school lunch programs typically allocate $20+ per pupil per day (for one meal, lunch only), but are only able to serve crap like ketchup as "veggie" and the "pink slime" as "meat protein source"

Instead of allowing you to spend your own money, having someone else to spend your money on someone one else (a third party) is just about the most expensive and inefficient way of getting anything done. If you really care about the hungry, volunteer at food pantries and donate! Or better yet, hire them for a job! They'd be able to earn their day's balanced diet in 20 minutes!

@Hugolas_Madurez - fyi not based in Olgino anymore. Moved back to St. Petersburg, closer to the family dacha but rarely stay there now. Can't reveal the current base for security reasons.

It is just a hop, skip and a jump though to get to China, Russia or Pyongyang from Korea....just sayin.

@Goran - will get back to the NY Tax thread later - The only problem with the Kansas plan is the GOP took it national....

curious2 says

"We found 52 percent of identical twin brothers of gay men also were gay, compared with 22 percent of fraternal twins, compared with 11 percent of genetically unrelated brothers,"

Quite interesting that 11% of genetically unrelated brothers are gay, considering 4% of the population is gay.

Seems like evidence that gay is also taught, not just genetic. 52% of gay twin brothers seems strong for genetic argument. Would like to see the contradicting studies, if any.