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Obamacare = god's gift to insurance companies

Started by dollar
about 12 years ago
Posts: 52
Member since: Apr 2012
Discussion about
The least expensive plan on the NY exchange is around $300/month. People making over $40 000 (!) are too rich to qualify for subsidies while the $300/month is considerable money for them. The tax break is a grand $64/YEAR. The threat of fine for not buying it is in place. So what does the government call affordable and to whom? If you buy it, you have to jeopardize your rent payment; if you don't buy it, the government will jeopardize your rent payment for you. Beautiful. Let's face it, the law was designed by and tailored for exclusively for the insurance industry. The lobby always wins... CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES. They have to go back to work and re-write the law FOR their constituenc, not for the insurance lobby.
Response by columbiacounty
about 12 years ago
Posts: 12708
Member since: Jan 2009

huh?

electric razor?

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

no, you mamma

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Response by columbiacounty
about 12 years ago
Posts: 12708
Member since: Jan 2009

what does that mean?

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Response by columbiacounty
about 12 years ago
Posts: 12708
Member since: Jan 2009

yep...exactly what i thought.

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

C0C0, talking to yourself and senility are another reason why a woman wouldn't be attracted to you.

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Response by columbiacounty
about 12 years ago
Posts: 12708
Member since: Jan 2009

your mother is a woman?

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Response by columbiacounty
about 12 years ago
Posts: 12708
Member since: Jan 2009

how come she has a mustache?

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

C0C0, talking to yourself, senility, and silly silly statements are another reason why a woman wouldn't be attracted to you.

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Response by columbiacounty
about 12 years ago
Posts: 12708
Member since: Jan 2009

but...that doesn't explain your mothers facial hair.

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

C0C0, repeating yourself is another reason why a woman wouldn't be attracted to you.

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Response by columbiacounty
about 12 years ago
Posts: 12708
Member since: Jan 2009

does the female facial hair run in the family or is it limited to you?

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

what would you conclude?

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Response by columbiacounty
about 12 years ago
Posts: 12708
Member since: Jan 2009

i don't know...that's why i asked.

is it just you that has female facial hair or the entire family?

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

don't deny your relation

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Response by columbiacounty
about 12 years ago
Posts: 12708
Member since: Jan 2009

there are treatments, you know.

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

treatments for what?

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Response by columbiacounty
about 12 years ago
Posts: 12708
Member since: Jan 2009

electric shavers.

cream.

check it out on google.

you can get help.

no reason to be shy.

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

you don't like hair?

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Response by columbiacounty
about 12 years ago
Posts: 12708
Member since: Jan 2009

female facial hair?

you think that's nice?

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

what's your preference?

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Response by columbiacounty
about 12 years ago
Posts: 12708
Member since: Jan 2009

i can understand your need to try and change the subject but as i said there are treatments for your problem.

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

so you prefer no hair

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Response by columbiacounty
about 12 years ago
Posts: 12708
Member since: Jan 2009

not the point but keep trying.

better use of energy to get help for your condition.

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Response by aboutready
about 12 years ago
Posts: 16354
Member since: Oct 2007

Only if you are willing to partake in treatment. Or if you are committed involuntarily. Hmm.

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

just tell me which you prefer C0C0. I'm here for you. Your family paid for 3 hours, I'm here for 3 hours for you.

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Response by columbiacounty
about 12 years ago
Posts: 12708
Member since: Jan 2009

i have no idea what that means. but....i do understand that our are humiliated by your situation.

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

that's fine. The money arrangement is between me and your family. You focus on what you want: am I right - hairy women?

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Response by columbiacounty
about 12 years ago
Posts: 12708
Member since: Jan 2009

such a shame about you. keep trying. i'm glad that this pleases you so much.

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

again C0C0, this is about you. Your family paid me for you.

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Response by columbiacounty
about 12 years ago
Posts: 12708
Member since: Jan 2009

no...no...

its about you.

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

yes, right, about me. what would you like C0C0?

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Response by columbiacounty
about 12 years ago
Posts: 12708
Member since: Jan 2009

actually...its about your mothers mustache and the shame that brought you.

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Response by columbiacounty
about 12 years ago
Posts: 12708
Member since: Jan 2009

i can only imagine the difficulty that brought you.

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

I thought you said I was the only one in the family with excess hair. Well, I'm still on your clock $$$, so whatever you want.

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Response by columbiacounty
about 12 years ago
Posts: 12708
Member since: Jan 2009

ok...you're officially more boring than usual.

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

sorry, no refunds

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Response by Triple_Zero
about 12 years ago
Posts: 516
Member since: Apr 2012

"Who specifically are you talking about when you say "denied the privilege of driving"? The elderly? The disabled? Drunk drivers? Prisoners?"

One of these four is very much not like the others, and I'm disappointed that you can't see that. The latter two have *done* things that have gotten their driving privileges taken away. The elderly, if they drove when they were younger, at least made use of the things their tax money paid for in the past.

People with certain disabilities, on the other hand, never have and never will drive a car -- and it's illegal to try. To have such a disability is bad enough; to use their tax money to build highways that they cannot drive on and to build car-centric communities that presuppose that every resident has a privilege that they don't share is salt in the wounds.

"How about rich people? Some of those poor saps pay millions in taxes but get a minor fraction of it back. Can they be added to Triple_Zero's "using less" accounting? They are denied all sorts of privileges: no food stamps, no Medicaid, no middle- and upper-middle class tax subsidies, no needs-based college education subsidies, etc."

A rich person who falls on hard times and loses his entire fortune can, in fact, get all of those things. Food stamps and the like are a way for the *privileged* members of society to help the *underprivileged* (and I'm happy to pay my share to support that). Automobile-related subsidies paid by the entire population to support only drivers are an example of the *underprivileged* being forced to support people with more rights than they have. And then to claim, as the previous poster does, that such people are still "using" these highways because businesses use them to deliver goods -- what colossal insensitivity!

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

Oh now 000, if you keep talking like that, you'll goad inoitall into the purchase of a new car.

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Response by w67thstreet
about 12 years ago
Posts: 9003
Member since: Dec 2008

go triple apple...... apple .. .more apple.... so easy... why sit in a sofa when you can sit in an apple store?

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Response by w67thstreet
about 12 years ago
Posts: 9003
Member since: Dec 2008

fk... find a political forum... this shit is for apple.

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

dollar, that's unfortunate if true, especially on top of the dead embassy workers, and the spying on foreign leaders.

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Response by inonada
about 12 years ago
Posts: 7952
Member since: Oct 2008

TZ:

- Lots of disabled people can drive.

- I assume those disallowed are due to a very significant safety issue.

- One of my closest friends is quadraplegic, and he drives. That should give some perspective to how accommodating the privilege is.

- As a society, we try to collectively accommodate living preferences of others.

- For example, society has decided to collectively bear various costs to make our country more accessible to disabled people.

- Most people don't complain about this, even though they receive no benefit for the cost paid.

- All people have the right to use our highway system.

- Those who cannot drive safely can be driven, can take a bus, can have shit delivered by UPS, etc.

- A huge portion of the population, including disabled people who cannot drive, like living in the suburbs.

- It sounds like you just don't want to pay for that which you do not use in the same way others are able to.

- Except every time you go to the airport.

- Should we have pay-per-use roads everywhere?

- What about those who could formerly drive, do they have to pay like the elderly because they once had the privilege?

- Highway budget is 2% of federal budget. Tax deduction for the legally blind reduces tax of median income by 7%. Are you saying it should be 9%?

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Response by huntersburg
about 12 years ago
Posts: 11329
Member since: Nov 2010

Is this for real? What the heck does a driving quadriplegic or getting "shit delivered by UPS" have anything to do with Obamacare?

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013
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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

White House Memo
Where the Buck Stops, Some See a Bystander
Opposition lawmakers and pundits have seized on the White House's explanations that Mr. Obama was unaware of problems to accuse him of being a “bystander president.”
By PETER BAKER
Published: October 29, 2013 979 Comments

WASHINGTON — President Obama finds himself under fire on two disparate fronts these days, both for the botched rollout of his signature health care program and for the secret spying on allied heads of state. In both instances, his explanation roughly boils down to this: I didn’t know.
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As a practical matter, no president can be aware of everything going on in the sprawling government he theoretically manages. But as a matter of politics, Mr. Obama’s plea of ignorance may do less to deflect blame than to prompt new questions about just how much in charge he really is.

In recent days, the president’s health and human services secretary said that despite internal concerns and a failed test run Mr. Obama was not told about serious problems with the new program’s website until it was rolled out this month. Other officials said the president was not aware that the National Security Agency was tapping the phone of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and other friendly leaders until this summer, although intelligence officials said Tuesday that others in the White House had known.

Opposition lawmakers and pundits have seized on the White House explanations to accuse Mr. Obama of being a “bystander president,” as the Republican National Committee put it. Even some Democrats are scratching their heads at the seeming detachment from significant matters. MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” ran a montage of clips showing Mr. Obama or his aides disclaiming presidential knowledge of various issues as well as a graphic titled “Implausible Deniability.”

“It seems to me there’s a pattern here — with any bad news coming out of the administration, the excuse is the president just didn’t know about it,” said Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois.

“There’s a point at which the I-didn’t-know excuse really violates the idea of the buck stops here,” he added. “We want to have a feeling that the president ultimately takes responsibility. The American people want to know they have a president who’s in control and in charge.”

Democrats were less likely to blame the president but suggested that he was ill served if other officials did not keep him fully abreast. “If people really knew there were to be problems, I was a little surprised that people at the highest levels weren’t aware,” Patrick Griffin, who was a top White House official under President Bill Clinton, said of the health care program.

As for the N.S.A. surveillance, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the Democrat who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, put it sharply in a statement she released earlier this week. “It is my understanding that President Obama was not aware Chancellor Merkel’s communications were being collected since 2002,” she said. “That is a big problem.”

Aides dismissed suggestions that Mr. Obama did not pay enough attention in either of these areas. On the spying program, they said the president was deeply immersed in details of the nation’s surveillance practices but was focused on those areas that constituted the major threats to the United States. He had no reason to suspect that Ms. Merkel or other leaders of close allies were being tapped, nor did he think to grill anyone about it because that was not a high priority, they said.

On health care, aides said that Mr. Obama had been fixated on details of the law’s carrying out and that advisers did not withhold information but were likewise surprised by the scope of the problems.

“From the moment the health care bill was signed into law the president was very focused on making sure it was implemented correctly,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a senior White House adviser. “In just about every meeting, he pushed the team on whether the website was going to work. Unfortunately, it did not, and he’s very frustrated.”

Mr. Pfeiffer insisted that the president wants to hear what he needs to hear and would not accept advisers’ keeping negative information from him. “He’ll know if you don’t tell him the bad news he needs to hear, and that’s the quickest way to be on the outside looking in,” Mr. Pfeiffer said.

The challenge for any president is keeping on top of a vast array of issues, any one of which could blow up at any given time. Harry S. Truman spoke for many of his successors when he said that “the pressures and complexities of the presidency have grown to a state where they are almost too much for one man to endure.” And that was decades before metadata technology came along.

Opposition lawmakers and pundits have seized on the White House's explanations that Mr. Obama was unaware of problems to accuse him of being a “bystander president.”
By PETER BAKER
Published: October 29, 2013 979 Comments
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WASHINGTON — President Obama finds himself under fire on two disparate fronts these days, both for the botched rollout of his signature health care program and for the secret spying on allied heads of state. In both instances, his explanation roughly boils down to this: I didn’t know.

As a practical matter, no president can be aware of everything going on in the sprawling government he theoretically manages. But as a matter of politics, Mr. Obama’s plea of ignorance may do less to deflect blame than to prompt new questions about just how much in charge he really is.

In recent days, the president’s health and human services secretary said that despite internal concerns and a failed test run Mr. Obama was not told about serious problems with the new program’s website until it was rolled out this month. Other officials said the president was not aware that the National Security Agency was tapping the phone of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and other friendly leaders until this summer, although intelligence officials said Tuesday that others in the White House had known.

Opposition lawmakers and pundits have seized on the White House explanations to accuse Mr. Obama of being a “bystander president,” as the Republican National Committee put it. Even some Democrats are scratching their heads at the seeming detachment from significant matters. MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” ran a montage of clips showing Mr. Obama or his aides disclaiming presidential knowledge of various issues as well as a graphic titled “Implausible Deniability.”

“It seems to me there’s a pattern here — with any bad news coming out of the administration, the excuse is the president just didn’t know about it,” said Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois.

“There’s a point at which the I-didn’t-know excuse really violates the idea of the buck stops here,” he added. “We want to have a feeling that the president ultimately takes responsibility. The American people want to know they have a president who’s in control and in charge.”

Democrats were less likely to blame the president but suggested that he was ill served if other officials did not keep him fully abreast. “If people really knew there were to be problems, I was a little surprised that people at the highest levels weren’t aware,” Patrick Griffin, who was a top White House official under President Bill Clinton, said of the health care program.

As for the N.S.A. surveillance, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the Democrat who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, put it sharply in a statement she released earlier this week. “It is my understanding that President Obama was not aware Chancellor Merkel’s communications were being collected since 2002,” she said. “That is a big problem.”

Aides dismissed suggestions that Mr. Obama did not pay enough attention in either of these areas. On the spying program, they said the president was deeply immersed in details of the nation’s surveillance practices but was focused on those areas that constituted the major threats to the United States. He had no reason to suspect that Ms. Merkel or other leaders of close allies were being tapped, nor did he think to grill anyone about it because that was not a high priority, they said.

On health care, aides said that Mr. Obama had been fixated on details of the law’s carrying out and that advisers did not withhold information but were likewise surprised by the scope of the problems.

“From the moment the health care bill was signed into law the president was very focused on making sure it was implemented correctly,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a senior White House adviser. “In just about every meeting, he pushed the team on whether the website was going to work. Unfortunately, it did not, and he’s very frustrated.”

Mr. Pfeiffer insisted that the president wants to hear what he needs to hear and would not accept advisers’ keeping negative information from him. “He’ll know if you don’t tell him the bad news he needs to hear, and that’s the quickest way to be on the outside looking in,” Mr. Pfeiffer said.

The challenge for any president is keeping on top of a vast array of issues, any one of which could blow up at any given time. Harry S. Truman spoke for many of his successors when he said that “the pressures and complexities of the presidency have grown to a state where they are almost too much for one man to endure.” And that was decades before metadata technology came along.

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Response by alanhart
about 12 years ago
Posts: 12397
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Response by alanhart
about 12 years ago
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Astronomers Find Earthlike Planet, but at 3,500 Degrees, It’s Too Hot to Visit
By KENNETH CHANG
Published: October 30, 2013

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Kepler 78b, a planet some 400 light-years away, is like hell on earth.
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Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

An artist's rendering of the surface of Kepler-78b. The planet is similar in size to earth, but its close proximity to its own sunlike star heats the surface to between 3,500 and 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
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Astronomers described it on Wednesday as the first Earth-size planet that seems to be made of the same mixture of rock and iron as Earth, and that orbits a star similar to our sun.

But Kepler 78b would not be a pleasant place to visit. It whirls around its parent star, Kepler 78, at a distance of less than a million miles, and its year — the time it takes to complete one orbit — is just eight and a half hours. (By contrast, Earth is 93 million miles from the sun and, of course, completes its yearly orbit in a little over 365 days.)

At that close proximity, the surface of Kepler 78b is infernally hot: 3,500 to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, or “well above the temperature where rock melts,” said Andrew W. Howard, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii and the lead author of one of two papers being published in the journal Nature. “This is probably one of the most hellish planets that have been discovered yet.”

Viewed from the surface of Kepler 78b, its star would cover 80 times more of the sky than the sun does in Earth’s sky.

“It’s certainly not a habitable planet,” said Francesco Pepe, a professor of astronomy at the University of Geneva and the lead author of the other Nature paper.

Kepler 78b is the newest addition to the pantheon of oddball planets in the Milky Way. The first planet discovered around another sunlike star turned out to be about the size of Jupiter, but orbiting its star at what seemed to be an impossibly close orbit. Other discoveries over the years include a fluffy planet with a density less than that of cork and a planet blacker than coal.

“Exoplanets are just surprising us with their diversity,” said Dimitar D. Sasselov, a professor of astronomy at Harvard and a member of Dr. Pepe’s team, using the name for planets outside our solar system.

Kepler 78b is one of more than 150 planets spotted by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, which noted the dimming of the starlight when a planet passed in front.

Those findings were published in August. But while Kepler can determine exoplanets’ size and orbit, it cannot measure their mass. For that, two teams of astronomers looked at Kepler 78b star from Earth. Dr. Howard’s team used the Keck 1 telescope in Hawaii; Dr. Pepe’s team used a telescope in the Canary Islands. They could not directly see the planet, but they could spot undulations in the frequency of light from the star caused by the gravitational pull of the planet. The heavier the planet, the larger the swings in frequency.

The teams coordinated their work, agreeing to publish their results at the same time, but they did not collaborate. They decided that they would not exchange their data and answers until their papers were almost complete so that each would serve as an independent check on the other.

In the end, the two teams came up with nearly identical answers. The density of Kepler 78b is 0.2 pounds per cubic inch, the same as Earth’s, suggesting that the two planets’ makeup is very similar — an iron core with rocky, if melted, outer layers.

“It’s the first really well measured Earthlike composition for a rocky extrasolar planet,” said L. Drake Deming, a professor of astronomy at the University of Maryland who was not a member of either team but wrote an accompanying commentary for Nature. That astronomers have already found an Earthlike planet suggests that there should be others in cooler, more life-friendly orbits. “You can reasonably conclude from that that it’s not rare, because you’ve found it pretty easily,” he said.

That still leaves a mystery: how Kepler 78b got where it is. “Right now, we have no clue,” Dr. Sasselov said.

It could not have formed there, because the star as a youngster would have extended into its orbit. A near-miss with another planet could have flung it toward the star, but in that case its orbit would have been elliptical, not circular. Or it was nudged inward by the material that formed the planets.

Another possibility is that it was originally a gas giant like Saturn and that as the planet spiraled in toward the star, all of the gases were stripped away, leaving just the rocky core at the center.

“Right now, this scenario doesn’t work, either,” Dr. Sasselov said. “If you want me to choose out of four bad ones, that’s probably the one which seems least so.”

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

Surprised we have no response from yikes / Wbottom on this

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Response by dollar
about 12 years ago
Posts: 52
Member since: Apr 2012

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/11/01/doctors-dropped-by-insurers-as-affordable-care-act-rollout-continues/

So, to sum up: millions of newly uninsured, many of them sick; thousands of doctors off the grid (unemployed?). We are governed by arrogant morons.

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

If you want to sum up, you need to include some of inoitall's nonsense.

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Response by yikes
about 12 years ago
Posts: 1016
Member since: Mar 2012

FIELDBERGHFSCOMCHESTER, nor whatever fucking name you are using now:

you have wasted too many years of your life on this board, where you contribute nothing.

get help. do something to fix your life-absorbing obsession with being so utterly useless.

take a fucking walk for christ's sake, or get a job--just do something other than drivel endlessly during all your waking hours on this somewhat meaningless website.

can't you see how pathetic you are? has it become so pathological for you that you cant see what is completely obvious to all who see your life, here on streeteasy?

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

did you beat your wife yikes? Is that why she left you? Is that the reason you are a fan of Michael Vick but not of elementary school teachers?

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Response by aboutready
about 12 years ago
Posts: 16354
Member since: Oct 2007

Troll. Have you ever had a wife? Or anyone love you? I can't imagine.

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

believe me AR, as vile as you consider me, it's just online between you and me. yikes on the other hand - for you, I'd strongly reconsider who I'd associate with: ask his ex-wife. or his ex-business partners. or the people he's done business with including real estate deals

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Response by aboutready
about 12 years ago
Posts: 16354
Member since: Oct 2007

Oh please, this is kind of funny. I know who yikes is irl. I've known for a couple of years. You're a stupid ass, hb. Truly.

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

you deserve each other.

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Response by aboutready
about 12 years ago
Posts: 16354
Member since: Oct 2007

You deserve yourself and your own lonely stupid commentary.

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

In addition to myself, at minimum I always seem to have you.

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Response by aboutready
about 12 years ago
Posts: 16354
Member since: Oct 2007

That's sad for you, because I despise you.

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

And yet I still seem to have you.

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Response by aboutready
about 12 years ago
Posts: 16354
Member since: Oct 2007

Delusional. And creepy. As in really creepy.

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

Has your daughter's real age exceeded your mental age?

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Response by aboutready
about 12 years ago
Posts: 16354
Member since: Oct 2007

No, but it's exceeded yours.

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

but what am I?

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Response by aboutready
about 12 years ago
Posts: 16354
Member since: Oct 2007

An idiot.

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013

Alright, you won that one.

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Response by Triple_Zero
about 12 years ago
Posts: 516
Member since: Apr 2012

Ino, you really think all "usage" is equal here?

Imagine if you were banned from riding the subway alone because of some condition you were born with, or that airplanes refused to transport someone of your race unless a Caucasian person flew with you. (To tie this back to Obamacare, imagine that a segment of society were only permitted to visit certain kinds of doctors, but had to pay the same insurance premiums as anyone else.)

Laughable, isn't it? And imagine further that people claimed that you were still "using" this infrastructure — which society has built itself around and with the presupposition that all citizens can make full use of it — because you could still be chaperoned by *another* person, or because people *delivered* things to you using it. That's not "usage": the other person is the one using it. Your "usage" rights are so limited as to be non-existent.

To answer your question, yes, we should have pay-per-use roads, but in the form of gasoline and vehicle-ownership taxes. In making all taxpayers subsidize them, we create an artificial incentive for the average person to get as much use out of this infrastructure as possible, since he's paying for it whether he uses it or not. Which is why it's such an injustice to ban certain people (who are already a minority, and will never have the votes to change the system) from using it with no balancing compensation.

To answer this question: "Highway budget is 2% of federal budget. Tax deduction for the legally blind reduces tax of median income by 7%. Are you saying it should be 9%?"

Possibly; how did they arrive at the amount you can deduct? Has it increased as society's car dependence has increased? I might also note in passing that driving a car requires 20/40 vision, but tax deductions (and disability-related discounts on trains and such) begin at 20/200 (which is really serious visual impairment), leaving a big hole of people in the middle.

It's never going to be possible to remedy all of society's injustices, but typically trying to is one of the goals of this kind of redistribution. But the redistribution that people will support (or grudgingly accept) is typically one that takes from the privileged many and gives to the underprivileged few. And it can be voted down at any time because the "payers" have more votes. You seem to support doing the exact opposite (taking *a lot* from an underprivileged few to support an overprivileged majority). If you ever fell out of that majority, believe me, your opinion would change.

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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013
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Response by inonada
about 12 years ago
Posts: 7952
Member since: Oct 2008

>> To answer your question, yes, we should have pay-per-use roads, but in the form of gasoline and vehicle-ownership taxes.

We already have those. Fuel tax is $70B a year. Vehicle taxes are in the same ballpark.

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Response by albundyhere
about 12 years ago
Posts: 2
Member since: Aug 2012

what i'm really pissed off about is 2 things. 1, the fact that obama forced us to get on his plan, but he didnt force doctors, hospitals and insurance companies to get on his plan, which leaves millions without much choice. 2, he makes people pay when they dont have the money. my unemployment insurance will run out in a month, yet obama wants me to shell out $360 a month for insurance that i couldnt originally afford in the first place. why should i even pay/file my taxes anymore? no more penalties then, right?

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