Deathpig

Johnny Dangerously. "There's no way, *no* way that you came from *my* loins. Soon as I get home, first thing I'm gonna do is punch yo mamma in da mouth!"

Ban knoves!* *I assume knoves is the correct pluralization of knofe.

I want to take a moment and point out that the article you linked is another exhibit on why we shouldn't be basing civic laws on what we think we understand about obesity or health. You've just given us a study that pretty much torpedoes what everyone (including the AMA) believed was the way to 'being healthier' and 'losing weight'. What will we discover in another ten years? I imagine what we'll discover is that we wasted a lot of time worrying about the wrong things right now.

The creation of the AAA, the NRA, and the PPACA had direct effect on people (as opposed to the indirect effect of McCain-Feingold), and the fact that the previously mentioned were much bigger deals in terms of Congressional use of power and their perception of being keystone pieces of Presidential legacy (again, very much UNLIKE McCain-Feingold). So, yes... I had them in different mental buckets. I love how you loaded the question, though.

I guess I hadn't mentally lumped that in the same sort of bucket as the health care act or other more sweeping pieces of legislation (partly because it was more of an amendment to previous legislation and parly because it was much more narrowly focused).

I disagree with that assessment entirely. He took the easy way out as it would have been WAY ballsier for the Chief Justice to cast the deciding vote on a case that would upend a law passed by Congress. If the vote had been 5-3 against without him, he'd have cast against (to make it 6-3) and written the majority opinion in a way to mitigate the blow (fix issues regarding precedence on the decision if not give Congress hints on how to fix the law). In this case, with the justices split 4-4, the path of least resistance is to vote to uphold (and again be put in the position to write the majority opinion outlining specifics of what/why on this ruling for future incidents of precedence). Even if I'm not the happiest about how the process to get to this point has been handled, he did the right thing. I can't recall off the top of my head a 5-4 decision to wipe out a law passed by Congress. The two examples from the New Deal that pop up all the time (the NRA and AAA) were like 9-0 and 6-3 decisions, I think. If we have any legal beagles that love constitutional law, I'd be curious how this decision fits in with two other similar cases in the past (South Dakota vs. Dole and United States vs. Butler). The former covered the federal government witholding benefits from states to incentivize behavior from the states (similar to the Medicaid part of the ruling, but ruled opposite in this case) and the latter covered the federal government exerting control over markets via taxation/subsidies (similar to the mandate part of the ruling, but again, ruled opposite in this case).

Twinkie diet worked.

It didn't take long for the 'what next?' It's time for milk and popcorn to get added to the list. Should we start a pool for what's after those? I'm thinking serving sizes of non-lean meats-- those double patty burgers and large steaks are doomed.

The Human Rights that is referenced above is very similar to (but not the same as) Natural Rights-- a very influential concept in the formation of governmental law since about the Age of Enlightenment. To sum up Human Rights a different way, consider it the basic rights you are given just for being a human (instead of 'given to you from God')-- in terms of the Declaration of Independence they would be Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. The rest of our legal rights (literally defined from the Constitution and the various other federal and state laws) essentially exist to frame/codify and preserve the basic Human Rights. I'm drastically oversimplifying but hopefuly you get the idea. They don't actually have anything to do with God, the Bible, the Church, Commandments or any other form of religous indoctrination. In a way, the concept of God-given Human Rights was actually used to (again, very simplified here) end the concept of the divine right of kings and opened the path for stronger secular-based governments.

If NY would just choose to tax salt or soda or whatever they have their panties in a bunch over, I wouldn't actually care as much. I think we can agree that there's a pretty big difference between 'pay a little more' and 'banned'. I know you won't care about cotten candy, but the problem is that by the time this gets to the point that they are taking away something you *do* care about you won't have the ability to stop it. It's not actually any different than people on the right saying 'Patriot Act, what's the big deal. If you aren't a terrorist you have nothing to fear!', except in this case you are idealogically aligned with the ban so you don't care that it's happening.

Fascist insurance companies can raise your rates for ingesting large quantities of soda. Fascist insurance companies can maybe even drop your policy for ingesting large quantities of soda. Fascist insurance companies can't outright deny ingesting large quantities of soda to millions of people. That's the difference.

I really wish I had some sort of Solomon-esque answer for you, but I keep abstracting the question to be more like: Should this poor guy who has adult onset diabetes die, or should 400+ million people get screwed because of him? It's like that scene from any movie that has a submarine and one of the compartments starts flooding... sometimes a handful of people need to be sacrificed to save the rest of the ship. You simply can't save them all no matter how much you'd really like to. I'd rather a minority suffer from extreme bad luck or horrible personal decisions than to screw over the majority. It's utopian fantasy to pretend that people aren't going to die, we're really just arguing when and how. Also, a ban on large sodas doesn't stop your mill worker from downing soda all day. He can buy a six-pack and drink it all himself in one sitting if he wants. He just can't go to a restaurant/convenience store and have them pour half that into a single glass-- unless it's diet (until we decide the potential cancer risk merits banning that) or ice tea (until we decide that potential caffeine related prostate problems merits banning that too).

I'll answer your question with a question. Where does it end? The logical extreme of something as silly as a soda ban is every person in the country confined in padded rooms wearing strait jackets and eating high nutrient food paste (100% FDA Approved!). If we're going to ban soda, we may as well ban fat, salt, carbohydrates, and anything else that might directly (or indirectly) be responsible for 'poor health'. If we're really worried about health care costs then every single activity that lends itself to a high incidence of injury needs to be outlawed as well (contact sports, driving, escalators, etc.). On one hand, I can see a soda ban as another stupid thing that New York state is going to do (I think they already banned salt), but on the other hand I see it as a slippery slope of utterly destroying freedom in the name of the 'better social good'.

Zimmerman absolutely commited homicide. That homicide could VERY easily be charged as manslaughter. That homicide (with the evidence so far released) is a STRETCH to be considered second degree murder. The prosecutor decided to jump to second degree murder. If the higher burden of proof of second degree murder ends up as an obstacle to convict Zimmerman, he walks. If he walks, Martin's family does not get justice for their son's death. This is a problem. Hence, I can know that he killed the guy (duh! he admitted it!), but simultaneously feel that the prosecutor will have a difficult time proving the charge they arraigned him for. I'm not sure why this is so damn hard for people to understand. This should help summarize it-- I'm apparently not on Looney Island (on this issue at least) alone here.