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#227 Mar 14 2012 at 10:36 AM Rating: Excellent
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It makes for an amusing, though completely unbelievable, story.
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#228 Mar 14 2012 at 7:18 PM Rating: Decent
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idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
Yeah, medicine is an extremely new field in human history, but people tend to act like it's been a part of human culture for a long time. It wasn't until the 40s that most women even began giving birth in hospitals, and seeking medical care for lesser things was even more unheard of... unless you were rich.

And that's how insurance formed. Medical care was way too expensive on its own, but as the benefits of it began to be increasingly apparent (benefits that, truthfully, hadn't even appeared until recently anyway), more and more people sought a way to gain ready access to it. But even then, insurance was pretty much limited to the wealthier. First plans emerged in 1930, and by 1940 under 10% of Americans had it. And most of those were covered by community plans, where they were only serviced if they went to the specific hospitals they paid out to.


Health insurance for rare and expensive stuff, yes. Comprehensive care was exceptionally rare in the US until the mid to late 70s. And that happened because of the HMO Act of 1973. The government basically forced employers to offer the "choice" of a federally managed HMO (which offered comprehensive care instead of just major medical coverage which was the norm at the time) if they offered any form of health insurance at all.

It's not like health care was all snakeoil and leeches between 1940 and 1975. Health care was broadly available and affordable and certainly was performed by licensed professionals. What changed was that the government decided to move us "in the direction" of socialized medicine by using insurance as a method of subsidizing costs.The result is that costs have skyrocketed relatively speaking and more and more people can't afford to pay directly for health care and many can't afford the insurance anymore either.

That's the problem. Eliminate the mandates and that problem will diminish. Get us back to just covering rare and expensive stuff with insurance and watch the prices drop on "regular" care. No doctor would charge the kinds of prices that insurance companies pay for this stuff if their customers had to pay out of their own pockets. A free market drives down prices. The absence of a free market drives up prices.

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Nationalized healthcare was supposed to be a part of the New Deal.


And the public overwhelmingly rejected it. Since then, the political left has attempted to move the US in the direction of socialized medicine while carefully avoiding saying that's what they're doing. And their primary method to accomplish this has been to put sufficient government controls and payments into the system so as to ensure that the free market can't actually operate properly. Then, they can walk in, proclaim the existing system "broken" and get people to maybe let them institute a universal health care system.

If you recall, this is what Obama started out trying to do back during his campaign in 2008. But that didn't poll well with the public. But generic "health care reform" did, so that's what it became. Then, after going through the mill of Congress, the result was a disaster. But they'd attached so much to "passing health care reform" that liberals didn't care if it worked, or if it made things better or worse. They just wanted to pass something called "health care reform" so they could claim they did something.

It's pretty darn crappy to apparently deliberately make things worse for the public so that they'll become desperate enough to give up their opposition to what you want them to do, but that appears to be the approach the left has taken to health care. So I don't tend to give much credence when liberals argue that our existing system is too expensive. It's too expensive because they made it that way.

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But now we find ourselves in an era where we could realistically provide healthcare to every citizen...


Only if we just provide something we've labeled "healthcare" to everyone and don't care much about what it actually provides, or how much it actually costs, or whether we're trampling over a whole slew of people's rights in the process. Just because we can do a thing doesn't make it the right thing to do.

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... but we are still stuck thinking that it's something only the elite should be able to have access to.


False dilemma.
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#229 Mar 14 2012 at 8:31 PM Rating: Good
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That's the problem. Eliminate the mandates and that problem will diminish. Get us back to just covering rare and expensive stuff with insurance and watch the prices drop on "regular" care. No doctor would charge the kinds of prices that insurance companies pay for this stuff if their customers had to pay out of their own pockets. A free market drives down prices. The absence of a free market drives up prices.


Smart. The fewer people we have insured, the less doctors will be able to charge. Because, I mean, they can't charge people more than they are able to pay. There's a level of morality here by which all doctors abide.
#230 Mar 14 2012 at 8:33 PM Rating: Good
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Back when the New Deal was being debated, a much, much lower percentage of Americans were voting. And those that were generally voted the same way powerful local leaders wanted, because of the personal benefits that endowed, without much understanding of what was actually happening. We are talking about an America where few people even had permanent residences to list on their registration, let alone one where anyone had the time to educate themselves about politics. It was essentially a war between Robber Barons, and organized crime had never been (nor been since) as significant an issue as this period. If WWII hadn't shocked the nation into unity, we'd be in a VERY different place as a nation right now, and it would not be good.

To make a statement that a majority, or minority, or whatever, of the population "supported" or "opposed" the New Deal is a joke. The fact of the matter is that politics of the time were a purely upper class system, and any attempts by the lower classes to gain representation (meaning the Populist movements) were suppressed militarily.

So no, the majority of US citizens did not disapprove of the New Deal. Nor did they approve of it. They barely understood what it was, nor did they care. That's why the AMA had to invest so much in their lobbying campaign. If most Americans were against the New Deal reforms, they wouldn't have had to invest. Doy.

Next, your understanding of health care history and insurance access is a joke. I'm not going to type out a history lesson before, because you could educate yourself if you tried. But protip: The distinction between emergency care plans and comprehensive care plans wasn't firmly established until the late 50s. Before then, emergency and comprehensive plans were the same thing, because of the way American culture dealt with the medical establishment. You didn't bring your kid to the doctor for a cold. It had nothing to do with whether or not you could afford it, you just didn't. As time went on, the combination of heightened awareness to medical progress, combined with medical scares from the Cold War, led to a significant cultural shift that caused people to begin seeing doctors for more "basic" things.

That cultural shift created the environment in which a distinction between emergency and comprehensive plans mattered, which opened that area of the discussion up. Before than it was a non-issue, because it was irrelevant.
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#231 Mar 15 2012 at 6:01 PM Rating: Default
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Guenny wrote:
Quote:
That's the problem. Eliminate the mandates and that problem will diminish. Get us back to just covering rare and expensive stuff with insurance and watch the prices drop on "regular" care. No doctor would charge the kinds of prices that insurance companies pay for this stuff if their customers had to pay out of their own pockets. A free market drives down prices. The absence of a free market drives up prices.


Smart. The fewer people we have insured, the less doctors will be able to charge. Because, I mean, they can't charge people more than they are able to pay.


Yes. You say that like you're being sarcastic, but it's absolutely true. It is, in fact, the basic cornerstone upon which modern economic theory rests. To deny this is to deny everything we know about economics. Of course prices will go down when people have to pay for things directly, and will go up when the price is hidden from them.


Quote:
There's a level of morality here by which all doctors abide.


Morality is a side issue at best here. I happen to believe that most doctors will help people in need regardless of what that person can pay. But if we have a government which will ensure that an insurance company *must* pay full price, then the doctor will charge full price to everyone. And that cost will get passed on to taxpayers and/or insurance purchasers (which often is passed on to their employees). And since that cost is usually hidden from the consumer, the doctor will tend to raise his prices over time (more correctly, the health center he works at will).

This is why health care costs keep going up.
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#232 Mar 15 2012 at 6:48 PM Rating: Default
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gbaji wrote:
Quote:
Nationalized healthcare was supposed to be a part of the New Deal.


And the public overwhelmingly rejected it.



idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
To make a statement that a majority, or minority, or whatever, of the population "supported" or "opposed" the New Deal is a joke.


That's not what I said. I said that the public overwhelmingly rejected Nationalized Healthcare. You know "part of the New Deal"?

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So no, the majority of US citizens did not disapprove of the New Deal.


Crazy re-telling of history aside, I didn't say that. I said they rejected Nationalized Health care. It was considered too far. Hell, the biggest objection to a lot of FDR's programs was that they were socialist. This was moreso. To what degree you think "the people" did or didn't have a direct voice in that, it was one of the parts of FDR's agenda that never got implemented.

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They barely understood what it was, nor did they care.


Really? So humans were just brutal barbarians who couldn't think until when? Your generation? You're kidding, right?


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Next, your understanding of health care history and insurance access is a joke.


You saying so doesn't make it so. I'm not the one suggesting that the people weren't smart enough or didn't care enough about politics just 80 years ago. And I'm not the one suggesting that when the people tried to push for things they wanted, that they were beaten down militarily by the US government (or some other military?). You're kidding yourself if you think that today we live in a time of enlightenment where "the people" are so much smarter than they used to be and so much more able to influence their political outcomes than they were in the past. I suspect that you are just more deluded (if anything).

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But protip: The distinction between emergency care plans and comprehensive care plans wasn't firmly established until the late 50s. Before then, emergency and comprehensive plans were the same thing, because of the way American culture dealt with the medical establishment.


Um... Unless you're making a far more obtuse point than it appears, this is not true at all. Comprehensive health care plans were about providing a whole suite of health care from a single pool. They appeared most in company towns (like mining communities), where workers and their families all lived in the same area and it made sense for them all to pool their money to hire doctors to provide care for everyone. It was rare outside of that situation.

I'm honestly not sure what your point about emergency care is. Those are different issues.

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You didn't bring your kid to the doctor for a cold.


You don't bring your kid to the doctor for a cold today either. But to the point that you might seek medical care for your child if his cold becomes bad enough, you would take him to a doctor, just as you might roll into an urgent care today. The only difference is how much you are charged and who pays for it. Back then, you'd take your kid to the local doctor, he'd give him some medicine, give you some advice, etc, and then bill you for his time. Now, you get pretty much the same service, but instead of a full bill (which might be the equivalent of $20 in today's money), you'd make a co-pay (more like $5 or $10), and the rest would be paid for by your insurance. And by "the rest" I mean an amount likely to be several hundred dollars.

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It had nothing to do with whether or not you could afford it, you just didn't.


Wow. Just wow. You honestly think so? No one ever brought their kids to a doctor when they were sick, or had a flu, or sprained an ankle, or got the mumps, or measles, or any of a number of relatively minor ailments? You have a really warped idea of medical care in the early to mid 20th century.

Quote:
As time went on, the combination of heightened awareness to medical progress, combined with medical scares from the Cold War, led to a significant cultural shift that caused people to begin seeing doctors for more "basic" things.


You're kidding! You can't honestly believe this. I'm expecting someone to come popping in with a TV camera telling me this is all a joke at this point. People can and did seek out and obtain medical care for a whole variety of things. Everything from a cold, a fever, or stomach pain, to full blown infections, broken limbs, etc. And sometimes the doctors even made house calls! What a freaking amazing thing!!!

How sad must the health care you want be that you have to pretend that there wasn't anything prior to its arrival on the scene? I mean, there are some legitimate points to make about socialized medicine, but trying to pretend that regular people never sought or received medical care (even for "minor" things) prior to the implementation of early forms of socialized medicine is just insane. Of course they did! They had to. If your kid was sick, you didn't know if it was a minor cold, or a major illness that might take his life. If he didn't get better quickly, you'd take him to the doctor. Just like you would today. Nothing has changed (except more availability of over the counter medicines has made it less likely that an average "I'm sick" might end out with a doctor visit than it used to).

Have you ever spoken to anyone over the age of like 50? Talk to your parents or grandparents about what health care was like in the 40s and 50s. It's not anything like what you are describing. It was not the dark ages or anything. Quite the opposite. Health care was much more available and affordable to the average citizen back then than it is today. The medicines have gotten better but the care was just as good if not better then, and absolutely more affordable. People, average people, absolutely did just go to the doctor for checkups and for care.

Quote:
That cultural shift created the environment in which a distinction between emergency and comprehensive plans mattered, which opened that area of the discussion up. Before than it was a non-issue, because it was irrelevant.


You're dreaming. Assuming by "emergency" you mean what they used to call "major medical", then there was no such thing as "comprehensive coverage" for most people. They were absolutely very different things. I'm honestly amazed that you seem to think your vision of the US during this time period is correct. Where the hell did you get these ideas? Certainly not from actually talking to anyone who lived during that time period.
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#233 Mar 15 2012 at 8:21 PM Rating: Good
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Ah, revisionist history at its finest. You know, you might actually be better at it than Beck.
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#234 Mar 19 2012 at 5:08 PM Rating: Decent
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idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
Ah, revisionist history at its finest. You know, you might actually be better at it than Beck.


No! I'm Spartacus! Really? You respond to me saying that someone else's statement is a re-writing of history by just saying that mine is instead? What are we? In kindergarten again?
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#235 Mar 19 2012 at 5:40 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
Ah, revisionist history at its finest. You know, you might actually be better at it than Beck.


No! I'm Spartacus! Really? You respond to me saying that someone else's statement is a re-writing of history by just saying that mine is instead? What are we? In kindergarten again?


If you were to provide a citation from a reliable source, ever, you might prove me wrong.
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#236 Mar 19 2012 at 5:59 PM Rating: Default
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idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
gbaji wrote:
idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
Ah, revisionist history at its finest. You know, you might actually be better at it than Beck.


No! I'm Spartacus! Really? You respond to me saying that someone else's statement is a re-writing of history by just saying that mine is instead? What are we? In kindergarten again?


If you were to provide a citation from a reliable source, ever, you might prove me wrong.


I provided exactly as much citation as the person I was responding to (you btw). If you provide sources and citations for your own claims, I'll provide them when rebutting them. Otherwise, you're presenting your opinion and I'm disagreeing with that and presenting mine. Insisting that I must provide a greater level of source support than the post I'm responding to is kinda pointless.


Feel free to support your own claims with cited sources and I'll respond in kind.
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#237 Mar 19 2012 at 6:17 PM Rating: Excellent
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Well, there was the time you used this as a source to prove your theory as to why the Great Depression ended.

Or your arguments for what led to marriage benefit legislation, which you are absolutely refusing to cite with any kind of trustworthy source.

Or your insistence that there was a tangible middle class since the early Medieval period European history, when the first one began to appear during the Dutch rebellions in the late 1500s. Also, in the same thread, that the plague didn't arrive in the New World until well after it was conquered (when all historical sources show that it devastated Tenochtitlan long before Cortes arrived with his armies, having been brought there even before the Night of Sorrows).

And you will also find, in each of those links, plenty of cases where we offer you a cite and you don't offer one in rebuttal. So I'm calling bull on your above comment.

No, you never engage in revisionist history.
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#238 Mar 19 2012 at 6:30 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Really? You respond to me saying that someone else's statement is a re-writing of history by just saying that mine is instead? What are we? In kindergarten again?

If you're actually ******** about someone else using the "I know you are but what am I?" line, I can only guess it's because you felt you had a patent on it or something.

Maybe he should have just responded to your claims of other's "revisionist history" by saying "You're projecting!!" over and over and over again.

Edited, Mar 19th 2012 7:32pm by Jophiel
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#239 Mar 20 2012 at 7:18 AM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Otherwise, you're presenting your opinion and I'm disagreeing with that and presenting mine.
Don't be so hard on him. Not everyone is as good at presenting an opinion and insisting it's fact like you.

Edited, Mar 20th 2012 9:19am by lolgaxe
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#240 Mar 20 2012 at 7:49 PM Rating: Default
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idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
And you will also find, in each of those links, plenty of cases where we offer you a cite and you don't offer one in rebuttal. So I'm calling bull on your above comment.


Funny. I see pages where I offer links to sources which support what I'm saying and no one offers any source of their own, but just insists that my source don't count (for a variety of reasons). Things don't change I guess.

And I'll point out that you *still* have failed to provide sources for your own claims, even after rejecting my counter position because I didn't either. So... are you willing to apply your own rules to yourself?
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#241 Mar 20 2012 at 8:09 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
And you will also find, in each of those links, plenty of cases where we offer you a cite and you don't offer one in rebuttal. So I'm calling bull on your above comment.


Funny. I see pages where I offer links to sources which support what I'm saying and no one offers any source of their own, but just insists that my source don't count (for a variety of reasons). Things don't change I guess.

And I'll point out that you *still* have failed to provide sources for your own claims, even after rejecting my counter position because I didn't either. So... are you willing to apply your own rules to yourself?


For a variety of reasons? HA, no. Your sources rarely count because the vast majority of them are links to opinion pieces or other non-rigorous works.

And I'll point out, once again, that I'm not required to offer evidence against you because I'm not making an argument. You expecting me to offer evidence is a logical fallacy, based in your belief that I can't provide evidence it will somehow make your argument more convincing.

I'm telling you that I see absolutely no reason to accept your premises, and the severe lack of evidence supporting you acts as evidence against you, by nature of what we are talking about (it being something that, by nature, would have been abundantly discussed in the civil forum). I'm telling you that I've rejected your argument because of your faulty premises.

I have not made an argument for why marriage benefit law was put into place, nor have I disproved your conclusion. All I have done is cast doubt on your argument. We have done so 2 ways--1. We have doubted the truth of your premises (about which we want proof). 2. We are not convinced that the logical argument is valid (that something being passed for reason X means it needs to continue to exist for reason X). If 1 is true, your argument could be valid, but not sound. If 2 is true, your argument would be invalid all together (even if your premises are false).

Therefore, because your conclusion is still up for grabs (if you can prove it), you should stop being an ignoramus and attempt to prove it. You can do this two ways. One, you can construct a new logical argument that is both valid and constructed from premises we have little cause to doubt (and you do this by offering evidence for their truth). Two, you can save your old argument by offering evidence to back up the premises we doubt, and defend the logical form (instead of just whining about the fact that we dared to question it).

There, a step by step guide to not being an idiot.

But by all means, keep ignoring that. It doesn't make you look dumb as hell at all.
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#242 Mar 20 2012 at 10:25 PM Rating: Good
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idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
But by all means, keep ignoring that. It doesn't make you look dumb as hell at all.

I remember when gbaji was a Sage. Hell, he might have been Guru at one point, I've forgotten.

I remember way back when I didn't agree with a lot of his positions, but I respected him because he had his own reasons, and he didn't try to justify them with illogic and irrationality.
#243 Mar 20 2012 at 11:50 PM Rating: Good
Aripyanfar wrote:
idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
But by all means, keep ignoring that. It doesn't make you look dumb as hell at all.

I remember when gbaji was a Sage. Hell, he might have been Guru at one point, I've forgotten.

I remember way back when I didn't agree with a lot of his positions, but I respected him because he had his own reasons, and he didn't try to justify them with illogic and irrationality.


Must have been before the indoctrination set in.
#244 Mar 20 2012 at 11:56 PM Rating: Good
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Aripyanfar wrote:
idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
But by all means, keep ignoring that. It doesn't make you look dumb as hell at all.

I remember when gbaji was a Sage. Hell, he might have been Guru at one point, I've forgotten.

I remember way back when I didn't agree with a lot of his positions, but I respected him because he had his own reasons, and he didn't try to justify them with illogic and irrationality.


I didn't frequent the cross game forums for a long time and by the time I ventured into the Asylum, he had lost them.
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#245 Mar 21 2012 at 5:36 AM Rating: Excellent
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Aripyanfar wrote:
idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
But by all means, keep ignoring that. It doesn't make you look dumb as hell at all.

I remember when gbaji was a Sage. Hell, he might have been Guru at one point, I've forgotten.

I remember way back when I didn't agree with a lot of his positions, but I respected him because he had his own reasons, and he didn't try to justify them with illogic and irrationality.

He used to be fairly normal. I'm not sure what happened.
#246 Mar 21 2012 at 6:09 AM Rating: Excellent
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My theory is that since all the sensible and/or funny conservative posters left, he's feeling isolated and defensive.
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#247 Mar 21 2012 at 6:41 AM Rating: Excellent
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Aw Samira. Way to break my heart and feel all sad and sorry for someone I've despised for a while.
#248 Mar 21 2012 at 7:33 AM Rating: Excellent
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Could be just a series of really bad attempts at playing devil's advocate.
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#249 Mar 21 2012 at 7:37 PM Rating: Good
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lolgaxe wrote:
Could be just a series of really bad attempts at playing devil's advocate.

He's stated as much before. He's such a master debater he can take on any position, even ones that he may not necessarily believe in himself.
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#250 Mar 21 2012 at 8:15 PM Rating: Excellent
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I'm still going with "he's off his meds".
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