As I said above, I don't want to start a flame war; you're welcome to challenge or disagree with anything I say. However, I do have a response:

I don't know what you mean by "most" constitutional professors, but apparently these professors know more than the Supreme Court because 7 of the 9 judges said that it violated the Commerce Clause--which should have meant that the government cannot "penalize" someone for not buying something they may not want or need. The Commerce Clause was one of the founding arguments in favor of Obamacare by the constitutional lawyers that fought for it. Furthermore, the Court declared that the Federal government cannot force the states to expand Medicare (another one of the tenants of this bill). The provision in the bill that tried to do this basically said that if a state did not want to expand Medicare it would not receive any money for Medicare at all. That violates the Enumerated Powers clause.

Also, throughout the debates and discussions over the law, they all denied that the Mandate was a tax. Vehemently said, no, this is not a tax. The Supreme Court upheld the Mandate as constitutional because it was a tax (which falls under the government's legal ability to tax), and basically said "you can say it's not a tax all you want, but it IS a tax." This was apparently evident by how the law was written, but unfortunately I haven't seen the actual text of the law, so I will have to read that before I completely understand what it is they meant.

As for this being a Conservative idea... if that were the case, the Conservatives would have come up with it, not the Liberals. And Liberals in congress would have been opposed to it for that very reason. Also it strongly violates many of the Conservative ideologies, including limited Federal government, so I'm not sure exactly where you see this as a "Conservative idea." Not to mention that this bill means that we, the Middle Class, will be seeing approximately twenty-two new taxes added on to our income.

I'm not sure if you see taxation the same way that I do, but isn't all tax just money that someone forces you to pay under threat of violence? How else would they enforce a law but with violence?

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Oh, so you're against enforcing laws with violence too? Including the violent ones?

Honestly, I thought we covered taxes ages ago. And still you act like you'd rather be in a governmentless vacumn, where everyman is alone and where the strong crush the weak underfoot.

You utterly fail to see the value the taxes are paying for, then comparing to the disadvantages.

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Typical. I make a simple observation and you can't help but insult and demean me. And what's with those Strawmen? Is that really the best you can do?

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Eh, the best I care to do? I suppose.

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Oh i remember i made a post about assholes who used the mlp pictures as their "lol idk" card sometime ago, funny that i thought about you while i wrote it

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srsly documented for posterity

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Ellipses to prevent wall of text.

I wasn't talking about the commerce clause.

Here is what I've found to back up what I said:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012 ... fpnewsfeed
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-2 ... grees.html


Fair point, not one I really brought up so it's not really something to argue about. An analogy could be just because someone says something is unconstitutional doesn't make it so - just because you say something is a tax doesn't mean it isn't. My guess would be that they wanted to avoid calling it a tax due to the political fodder it would create.


The conservatives came up with the individual mandate in the 90s. Obviously, they did not come up with the text of the law itself, but the elemental core of it came from Newt Gingrich and was bolstered by Mitt Romney with his enactment of universal health care in Massachusetts. Whether they're true conservatives in your book would influence your personal interpretation of it of course (same as how you might consider Obama a liberal but I'd consider him a moderate), but in the arena of politics, they are considered conservatives.


It's stipulated in the law that they most they can do is fine someone, and I believe the fines are pretty pathetic at the start though they get near a $1,000 after a couple years. So I can definitively answer you on this in that it is not backed by a threat of violence. The weak capability of the government to enforce this was a compromise as far as I can tell. Also you're sidetracking here honestly, unless you consider imprisonment to be violence, then you already know that the government for the most part does not enforce law with violence. Maybe philosophically this can be true, but practically, no, there is no threat of violence, or even imprisonment, for failure by an individual to comply with this law.

And what if they refuse to pay the fine? Will the police arrive and ask them politely to arrive at the station at their leisure so they may be properly booked?

If laws are not enforced with police or military force (i.e., violence), there is little incentive for people to follow them. It's just a matter of fact, and I'm not saying it's always a bad thing.

Getting back on track, the fact remains that Pres. Obama ran on a platform of not taxing the Middle Class. He vehemently denied that he was imposing a tax on anyone with the Individual Mandate. The Supreme Court read the law and said "yeah, this is a tax all right." This tax affects the Middle Class. So either one of two things is true: either Obama lied to make it seem like it wasn't a tax when he knew it was; or Obama--a so-called editor of the Harvard Law Review--is merely incompetent and can't understand the wording of the law that he signed. Unless I'm missing something, those are the only two choices that make sense with the evidence we possess.

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http://factcheck.org/2012/06/how-much-i ... acare-tax/
It's surprising you don't know some of the basic facts about Obamacare, but this has really good information on what you pay and what happens if you don't pay and other information. You cannot be put in jail or have property seized if you refuse to pay the tax, though it appears they can sue you for double the amount you didn't pay, the IRS hasn't yet said exactly how it's going to enforce this under its limited power to do so.

Also, that is not getting back on track at all - in fact it is quite the opposite. The topic is Obamacare, not whether or not Obama broke a campaign promise (which it seems he did, but I'll probably be voting for Gary Jonhson).

PolitiFact has also rated Sarah Palin's statement about Obama saying the mandate was not a tax True.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... ndividual/

This actually does not affect the middle class nearly as much as you make it out to be. The qualifications for penalties are that you can AFFORD insurance and are not buying it. Considering health insurance can cost upwards of $15k a year for a family, this does not affect the average middle class member.

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Escape will make me God.

Oh shit! A candidate lied when making promises during their presidential campaign!? Quick! Call the press!

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This post is intended for information only. Please do not reply to this message as responses cannot be read or acknowledged due to the stupidity of the user.

As Obama's promises go, that one wasn't broken very badly.

it's not really all that ridiculous at all when you consider most constitutional professors, even most conservative ones, aren't on the supreme fucking court, whose members were (as we all know) very divided on the issue

full libertard

Since the last topic of discussion burnt out quickly, I thought I could use this thread (if I may, Val) to ask a question...
So, who can help me figure the right answer, because I've been getting confused.



At first I thought it has to be A, since the cube has no momentum. But then again, we can use a moving frame of reference (where the stationary point is the portal) and then the cube does have the momentum, which in the other reference frame after exiting would mean it has to conserve that momentum. So now I think B.

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This post is intended for information only. Please do not reply to this message as responses cannot be read or acknowledged due to the stupidity of the user.

I thought of it such that the portal was just a square plate with a hole in it (not a portal), and the platform the cube was on to be stationary. I think that it would act just like A, because if you think of it the same way I did, the box doesn't move.

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One time when I was high, I thought I was in an ambulance dying. Turns out I was just eating sherbert.
-stufflikehearts-

If the platform with the cube were moving, then it would be B. Since it is not, it is A. The blue portal and the orange portal rely almost entirely on the motion of the object, not the motion of the portals themselves. The object has to be in a state of motion to be propelled through the portal.

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I suspect that in-game physics would assign a "momentum" value to the weighted storage cube in an absolute reference frame, which would be conserved in magnitude during portal travel. If that's the case, I think that A would result. However, if we go with "spirit of portal rules" physics (since I don't think that the game supports moving portals, and actual wormhole physics don't produce Portal-like effects) I would say B, since from the point of view of someone outside the blue portal, the weighted storage cube would be approaching, and its momentum would be conserved as it moves through the portal.

I think it'd be A. Just imagine the portals as a regular hole, except when you smash down the holed object around the box, you also tilt the pedestal on which the box is perched simultaneously. So imagine you're spinning both the pedestal and the stamper (I don't know the term or don't recall for such an object) from its straight angles into the angle at which the outward portal is angled at which point you smash them together. You'd then have the box tip over or stay in position angled depending on its friction. The objects would not make contact so I see no reason why it would transfer momentum, aside perhaps wind whooshing around it depending on its speed, like a big car going by you.

So basically a more detailed form of Icha's answer.

Momentum: A function of mass and velocity, is conserved between portals. In layman's terms: speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out.

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Signature Under Construction

@Calek: The question is, if something that is stationary (zero kinetic energy) is engulfed by a fast-moving (high kinetic energy) portal that leads to a stationary portal, is the first portal's momentum applied to the stationary object?

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Or rather (since portals don't conserve energy regardless), which reference frame the portal-conserved momentum is based on, and whether in-game physics or pseudo-real physics is used.

The portal-conserved momentum is based on the object passing through the portal itself. These portals are just simple doors to other spaces, they don't push or pull.

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Signature Under Construction

Putting a portal on a surface is equal to putting a hole in a wall.

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Soulchild: u thnk evry thng stupid.
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