mpohl

BINGO! But that's too much to ask of today's Tis. Heck, in my days I never thought it possible to actually loose a student. Until a SE TI introduced us to the idea...and many other TIs soon followed. These days, I bet that few Tis know about no-go areas depending on aircraft. Am I too harsh in my assessment?

Cuba exports Doctors all over the place, Latin America. And also, I have had great outcomes in the US as far as healthcare is concerned. Except that they can be ruinous. Ask your average dz.com participant what it costs to femur in! Out-of-pocket! W/ and w/o adequate insurance. At times it is not only bone-shattering, but life-shattering!!!

Look at France, Germany, Austria. Canada and Great Britain. And even the Dominican Republic! Except the DR, they don't come cheap! But a lot cheaper than the US! And with better outcomes. Why do you resist best practices so much? And learning from the best? Oh yeah, American exceptionalism; we are exceptionally stupid, so we can't be taught! Plus, you would go hungry in those countries as malpractice lawsuits seldom yield a Porsche! I asked a question that requires you to actually think. You have not even attempted a response. Tell me how a healthcare system can be inexpensive, high quality and not rationed.

And you are not my concern! And for that reason I resent every tax dollar that I pay for your upkeep. Makes sense??? NO!!! If you are in the US, you are my brother. I might disagree w/ you on fundamentally everything, but I will not allow you be homeless, or die from hunger, or the lack of healthcare! That's what it means to be American!! Proof me wrong!

LR, good for you that you qualify for Medicare! Supported by the 99% of us!!!' I just know that my daughter, after a fall, needed to have a head CT at roughly $3,000 of which I had to pay $600 in cash (after insurance premiums!) In Austria/ Germany/ the EU, I would have paid $0 out-of-pocket. Because the children are our future. And my daughter may have to wipe your ass in the future when you can't do it any longer yourself!! Yeah, I know: "The Rich. How will we take of our Rich???? W/o our Rich we'll be left to fend for ourselves!!!!" Do you know how ridiculous you sound???? Yeah. But insurance companies are evil. Yeah. Uh huh. Note: Medicare provides those “free” CT scans. Look at how much they cost. Government likes to reimburse health care providers very little. Hence, they break even by charging insurers and private payers more to cover it. The above is the face of free health care. First, it isn’t free. Second, controlling costs mean someone gets banged. And it’s almost always the doctors who take it right up the wazoo. I understand that facts are nowhere near as compelling as grand conspiracies and corporate cabals. But sweet Jesus, lay off the rhetoric for a while and examine the facts with an open mind.

Hello again, Dimwit! Just enter Freddy Lepe, Puerto Plata on google.com. Plenty of information and feedback. I still prefer to pay $25 over $200 and rather forego the lawyer malpractice option!!!! For more advanced treatment. You think that this is http://www.dentalcibao.com/ is third-world?? Nice PA. I'm not a Malpractice Attorney. And I was referring to the Dominican Republic Dentists.

Well, there are no bananas in Austria! Not even kangaroos!! DIMWIT!!! And your kind (malpractice lawyers), are the worst of the bunch! Really bringing down all of society! P.S.: Plus having been part of the health care systems of Germany, Austria, the Dominican Republic, and the US!! I have basis to form an opinion. DO YOU?

Actually i it is a lot better in the third world.... Dentist (US-trained), Dominican Republic, white filling, front tooth, $25.63 (typically $200+ in the US); Dentist (US-trained), Dominican Republic, Cleaning and Diagnosis, $30 (typically $200+ in the US): CT Pelvis, Abdomen; $6,000+ in the US w/ insurance!; $0 in Austria w/ insurance, reimbursable at $25 (!) per scan to US providers. The US health care system is just a gigantic scheme. Million dollars salaries for CEOs, hundred of thousands for MDs, and no affordable health care options for the 99%!!! http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/29-6

I know a lot of people who aren't rich. But they work hard and produce! Every day! What is this infatuation w/ the "rich"??? Are they supposed to watch over us? Will we wither and die w/o any rich people around?

And btw, let's just look at a country w/ no functional postal service. Like the Dominican Republic, less than 2 h flight time south of Miami. You will not be able to send a letter or package there! The only reliable services are UPS and DHL. Every letter will cost you a minimum of USD50!. Maybe that is the future for the US w/o a USPS?

Not an answer. Give me a quote for a 1 oz shipment by UPS or FedEx from 30319 to 97403. YOU DARE TO POST THE QUOTE! Use the lowest quote available!!!! Bad example. Won't cost him a thing to mail them the bill. He'll add it as an "administrative costs" line item on their bill. Heh. True.

I also had my wife pack my reserves. In those days, I was just as lazy as you are! Of course, she also went thru the same training and took the same exam w/ the very same FAA DPRE. Plus, it really leaves a bad "impression" if the reserve packed by one's wife malfunctions. P.S.: Just another waypoint to not abandon the FAA and USPS :)

If your wife packs your reserve, she hopefully was accredited as a Sr Parachute Rigger. Thru the FAA. So her qualification is NOT that she is your wife (or that you are a lazy ass!), but she has passed an independently administered examination. By a government agency, no less!

You can't be real!!! I for one enjoy FAA oversight of who packs my reserve! You let your friends and family go right ahead! And just in case you didn't know it. The FAA is a federal agency, and I appreciate their work!!! P.S.: Of course we are still awaiting a response from deserted_lawyer, as to how much it would cost to deliver a bill to one of his clients. Via UPS or Fedex. I throw in a 44c stamp by USPS for good measure. :)

And what's the current rate for a 1 oz. delivery by FedEx or UPS? You tell me!! It is more than 44c!!!!

So, as a US Citizen. Why don't we just junk all of the US? If we don't need a Postal service, maybe we don't need a police force either. Or the USeless military?? Let's not even get into Medicare/Medicaid that is only designed to keep individuals alive that can't tough it out on their own! Let's just get rid of everything that's binds us together as humans!!! December 3, 2011 The Junking of the Postal Service By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL A FEW weeks ago a petition appeared next to the mailboxes in my building’s lobby in Upper Manhattan. It read: “Save Saturday Delivery! ... Save the U.S. Postal Service!” Over the next 24 hours signatures poured onto the sheet of paper. I will not say whether I signed. But I will tell you what arrived in my mailbox that Saturday: two credit card offers; a Linen Source catalog for someone who used to live in my apartment; a notice of a sale on running shoes; some coupons for 10 percent off on pizza delivery; three promotional letters about colleges; and a bank letter about changing terms on my son’s high-school checking account for 2012. As junk mail multiplies and the United States Postal Service struggles for financial survival, experts are increasingly asking the question, do Americans need Saturday mail delivery ... or daily mail delivery ... or a state-run postal service at all? Should mail be a guaranteed government service — like primary education — because it is essential to our well-being? Or has this once hallowed institution, like pay phones, outlived its utility? The founding fathers regarded the postal service as an essential instrument of nation building in a vast new country, serving to “bind the nation together,” according to the law that created it. After radio and telegraph communications rendered that role obsolete in the early 20th century, the post office instead took on an important commercial function, with bills and payments sent by mail allowing for the growth of regional and national companies. But faxes, then direct deposit, and now online billing and payments have provided alternative delivery systems for what was yesterday’s mail — from paychecks to birth announcements, said Ian Lee, a historian of both the United States and Canadian postal services. “The post office is in the final stage of decaying into total irrelevance,” said Mr. Lee, a professor of strategic management at the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University in Ottawa. The fact is that the primary beneficiary of the United States Postal Service today is arguably the advertisers whose leaflets and catalogs flood our mailboxes. First-class mail — items like bills and letters that require a 44-cent stamp — fell 6.6 percent in 2010 alone, continuing a five-year-long plunge. Last year was the first time that fewer than 50 percent of bills in the United States were paid by mail. There were 9.3 billion pounds of “standard mail” — the low-cost postage category available to mass advertisers — but only 3.7 billion of first-class mail. In fact, to compensate for projected declines in “real” mail, the Postal Service has been aggressively promoting the use of new services for advertisers like Every Door Direct, which allows local retailers to place unaddressed promotional material in every mailbox in an area for pennies a piece, with a few clicks of a mouse. “One could argue that the real customer of the Postal Service is now the direct mailer; it is a channel for advertising,” said Chuck Teller, founder of Catalog Choice, an online service in Berkeley, Calif., that helps people get their names off catalog mailing lists; this requires submitting the customer numbers on unwanted catalogs that arrive in the mailbox, one by one. And the problem is not just annoyance. Direct-mail advertising generates an estimated 10 billion pounds of waste each year, costing cities an estimated $1 billion to dispose of it, according to Catalog Choice. No surprise then that dozens of United States localities have hired Catalog Choice to create Internet platforms to allow residents to opt out of mailings. Even at $22,000 for the first year of service, King County, Wash., which includes Seattle, has calculated that it will be a good investment for all the garbage collection it will obviate, said Tom Watson, a project manager in the solid waste division of the county. “I know it’s a big revenue stream for the Postal Service, but to justify this kind of waste because it supports jobs is insane,” said Mr. Watson, who noted that junk-mail reduction was hugely popular with voters. The complicated relationship that many citizens have with the post office was tested in Canada this summer, when a monthlong hiatus in much of Canada’s mail delivery over a labor dispute provoked few complaints. When Canadian postal workers struck in 1990 there was great pressure on government to make concessions. This year, opinion columns ran under headlines like “Who Cares?” and “Postal Strike? Bring it on Baby: Walkout a momentary nuisance — until people realize they don’t need the post office anyway.” The Toronto Star predicted that Canadians would “quickly figure out ways to use it even less than they do now.” And guess what? Canada’s post office long ago ended Saturday delivery and house-by-house delivery in some newer neighborhoods. (Mail is left in banks of boxes at subdivision entrances.) If there is fairly wide agreement that government mail delivery today in America has little practical value for many, there is little consensus about what do to about it. Few broach doing away with the post office entirely. THE post office is a large employer, especially of minority workers, and laying off hundreds of thousands of employees in this economy would be extremely difficult. Even postal skeptics note that it still delivers essential communication to small subgroups that are not (yet) well connected online: the elderly and rural residents. And how else would we get subscription magazines? Ralph Nader has argued that the service should be maintained because it is a crucial delivery network for items like medicine in the case of national emergencies. For now, the overwhelming majority of Americans who pay bills online still prefer to receive paper statements. But to cover its costs, the post office needs to keep mail volume high. And even some high-end direct mailers worry that the contents of American mailboxes are coming to resemble a paper infomercial. “The post office has to make sure the signal-to-noise ratio remains high — if TV was all commercials no one would watch,” said Hamilton Davison, executive director of the American Catalog Mailers Association. Some experts favor a general “do not mail” option for people who do not want to receive any direct mail — although advertisers vehemently oppose that approach, maintaining that glossy unsolicited catalogs remain beloved by shoppers, and the postal system would most likely collapse if there were a sudden drop in its business. The Postal Service claims that 81 percent of American households surveyed in 2010 reported that they either read or scanned advertising mail. So, Professor Lee asked: “If the Postal Service has become a subsidized tool for mass mailers, why does the state still own it?” Perhaps catalogs should be delivered by private companies, ending the centuries-old law that the only a government employee can place things in your mailbox. And what’s the point of getting mail every day, when recycling is picked up only once a week? It is striking that even though many European countries have privatized postal services — shedding thousands of buildings and millions of jobs — the actual delivery of mail looks much as it does here. Deutsche Post, the German postal carrier, which converted from a state company to a private one over a decade ago, is still required to provide coverage six days a week. (And it still delivers and encourages direct mail.) Mr. Davison said the catalog mailers in his industry group could accept the loss of Saturday delivery, and would be fine with every-other-day delivery if that kept the post office afloat and costs down, noting that rates for glossy catalogs have increased greatly. So why are residents of my building resistant? Perhaps it is lingering nostalgia for the thrill of opening a party invitation or a letter from a long-lost college friend — before we had Evite and Facebook. Maybe they should ask themselves the last time they sent one through the mail — or signed something they then put in an envelope. Elisabeth Rosenthal is a reporter and blogger on environmental issues for The New York Times. MORE IN OPINION (12 OF 26 ARTICLES) Gray Matter: Our Microbiomes, Ourselves Read More » Close

Welcome to today's everyone for him/herself UNunited States of America. You wouldn't favor/ vote for Cain, Gingrich, or Romney, by any chance? If so, you are just experiencing a dose of your Republican medicine!

He should be arrested, and tried as the run-of-the-war criminal that he is. Ghaddafi, Mubarak, Hussein come to mind. Actually, there have been attempts to affect the same thru the EU. At least, some of the CIA operatives implied in covered renditions (torture!), are relegated to the sights of the US! Because they have an international arrest warrant on their respective heads! NO exception being made for US-AMERICAN torturers!! Lets hope they have the balls to do it. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2011/12/2011121171023774738.html

They shouldn't have it because...oh, FUCK YOU! :) You are making too much sense! P.S.: In reality, no country should have nuclear weapons! Not Israel (Jews), not Iran (Muslims), not the US (Evangelical extremists), and not even India (enlightened Hindus).

You should care because that's really how the rest of the world perceives the US, American politics, and Americans! And you should especially listen if it comes from the most successful export, economically competitive (!), nation, in the world! After all, isn't everything in the US about competition? And not about "us" any more?

EXACTLY! And that's why this country is going down the drain in a heart beat. Facts don't matter! Truth doesn't matter! But the US still insists on "educating" the whole world about right from wrong!!! And their presidential candidates can't even get the country of Africa right!

A Club of Liars, Demagogues and Ignoramuses A Commentary by Marc Pitzke The US Republican race is dominated by ignorance, lies and scandals. The current crop of candidates have shown such a basic lack of knowledge that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein. The Grand Old Party is ruining the entire country's reputation. Africa is a country. In Libya, the Taliban reigns. Muslims are terrorists; most immigrants are criminal; all Occupy protesters are dirty. And women who feel sexually harassed -- well, they shouldn't make such a big deal about it. Welcome to the wonderful world of the US Republicans. Or rather, to the twisted world of what they call their presidential campaigns. For months now, they've been traipsing around the country with their traveling circus, from one debate to the next, one scandal to another, putting themselves forward for what's still the most powerful job in the world. As it turns out, there are no limits to how far they will stoop. It's true that on the road to the White House all sorts of things can happen, and usually do. No campaign can avoid its share of slip-ups, blunders and embarrassments. Yet this time around, it's just not that funny anymore. In fact, it's utterly horrifying. It's horrifying because these eight so-called, would-be candidates are eagerly ruining not only their own reputations and that of their party, the party of Lincoln lore. Worse: They're ruining the reputation of the United States. 'Freakshow' They lie. They cheat. They exaggerate. They bluster. They say one idiotic, ignorant, outrageous thing after another. They've shown such stark lack of knowledge -- political, economic, geographic, historical -- that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein and even cause their fellow Republicans to cringe. "When did the GOP lose touch with reality?" wonders Bush's former speechwriter David Frum in New York Magazine. In the New York Times, Kenneth Duberstein, Ronald Reagan's former chief-of-staff, called this campaign season a "reality show," while Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan confidante Peggy Noonan even spoke of a "freakshow." That may be the most appropriate description. Tough times demand tough and smart minds. But all these dopes have to offer are ramblings that insult the intelligence of all Americans -- no matter if they are Democrats, Republicans or neither of the above. Yet just like any freakshow, this one would be unthinkable without a stage (in this case, the media, strangling itself with all its misunderstood "political correctness" and "objectivity") and an audience (the party base, which this year seems to have suffered a political lobotomy). Factually Challenged And so the farce continues. The more mind-boggling its incarnations, the happier the US media are to cheer first one clown and then the next, elevating and then eliminating "frontrunners" in reliable news cycles of about 45 days. Take Herman Cain, "businessman." He sat out the first wave of sexual harassment claims against him by offering a peculiar argument: Most ladies he had encountered in his life, he said, had not complained. In the most recent twist, a woman accused Cain of having carried on a 13-year affair with her. That, too, he tried to casually wave off, but now, under pressure, he says he wants to "reassess" his campaign. If Cain indeed drops out, the campaign would lose its biggest caricature: He has been the most factually challenged of all these jesters. As CEO of the "Godfather's" pizza chain, Cain killed jobs -- but now poses as the job-creator-in-chief. Meanwhile, he seems to lack basic economic know-how, let alone a rudimentary grasp of politics or geography. Libya confounds him. He does not believe that China is a nuclear power. And all other, slightly more complicated questions get a stock answer: "Nine-nine-nine!" Remember? That's Cain's tax reduction plan that would actually raise taxes for 84 percent of Americans. Has any of that disrupted Cain's popularity in the media or with his fan base? Far from it. Since Oct. 1, he has collected more than $9 million in campaign donations. Enough to plow through another onslaught of denouements. No Shortage of Chutzpah Then there's Newt Gingrich, the current favorite. He's a political dinosaur, dishonored and discredited. Or so we thought. Yet just because he studied history and speaks in more complex sentences than his rivals, the US media now reflexively hails him as a "Man of Ideas" (The Washington Post) -- even though most of these ideas are lousy if not downright offensive, such as firing unionized school janitors, so poor children could do their jobs. Pompous and blustering, Gingrich gets away with this humdinger as well as with selling himself as a Washington outsider -- despite having made millions of dollars as a lobbyist in Washington. At least the man's got chutzpah. The hypocrisy doesn't end here. Gingrich claims moral authority on issues such as the "sanctity of marriage," yet he's been divorced twice. He sprang the divorce on his first wife while she was sick with cancer. (His supporters' excuse: It's been 31 years, and she's still alive.) He cheated on his second wife just as he was pressing ahead with Bill Clinton's impeachment during the Monica Lewinsky affair, unaware of the irony. The woman he cheated with, by the way, was one of his House aides and 23 years his junior -- and is now his perpetually smiling third wife. Americans have a short memory. They forget, too, that Gingrich was driven out of Congress in disgrace, the first speaker of the house to be disciplined for ethical wrongdoing. Or that he consistently flirts with racism when he speaks of Barack Obama. Or that he enjoyed a $500,000 credit line at Tiffany's just as his campaign was financially in the toilet and he ranted about the national debt. Chutzpah, indeed. Yet the US media rewards him with a daily kowtow. And the Republicans reward him too, by having put him on top in the latest polls. Mr. Hypocrisy, the bearer of his party's hope. "I think he's doing well just because he's thinking," former President Clinton told the conservative online magazine NewsMax. "People are hungry for ideas that make some sense." Sense? Apparently it's not just the Republicans who have lost their minds here. The Eternal Runner-Up And what about the other candidates? Rick Perry's blunders are legendary. His "oops" moment in South Carolina. His frequently slurred speech, as if he was drunk. His TV commercials putting words in Obama's mouth that he didn't say (such as, "Americans are 'lazy'"). His preposterous claim that as governor of Texas he created 1 million jobs, when the total was really just about 100,000. But what's one digit? Elsewhere, Perry would have long ago been disqualified. But not here in the US. Meanwhile, Michele Bachmann has fallen off the wagon, although she's still tolerated as if she's a serious contender. Ron Paul's fan club gets the more excited, the more puzzling his comments get. Jon Huntsman, the only one who occasionally makes some sort of sense, has been relegated to the poll doldrums ever since he showed sympathy for the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators. Which leaves Mitt Romney, the eternal flip-flopper and runner-up, who by now is almost guaranteed to clinch the nomination, even though no one in his party seems to like or want him. He stiffly delivers his talking points, which may or may not contradict his previous positions. After all, he's been practicing this since 2008, when he failed to snag the nomination from John McCain. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. As an investor, Romney once raked in millions and, like Cain, killed jobs along the way. So now he says he's the economy's savior. To prove that, he has presented an economic plan that the usually quite conservative business magazine Forbes has labeled "dangerous," asking incredulously, "About Mitt Romney, the Republicans can't be serious." Apparently they're not, but he is, running TV spots against Obama already, teeming with falsehoods. Good for Ratings What a nice club that is. A club of liars, cheaters, adulterers, exaggerators, hypocrites and ignoramuses. "A starting point for a chronicle of American decline," was how David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, described the current Republican race. The Tea Party would take issue with that assessment. They cheer the loudest for the worst, only to see them fail, as expected, one by one. Which goes to show that this "movement," sponsored by Fox News, has never been interested in the actual business of governing or in the intelligence and intellect that requires. They are only interested in marketing themselves, for ratings and dollars. So the US elections are a reality show after all, a pseudo-political counterpart to the Paris Hiltons, Kim Kardashians and all the "American Idol" and "X Factor" contestants littering today's TV. The cruder, the dumber, the more bizarre and outlandish -- the more lucrative. Especially for Fox News, whose viewers were recently determined by Fairleigh Dickinson University to be far less informed than people who don't watch TV news at all. Maybe that's the solution: Just ignore it all, until election day. Good luck with that -- this docudrama with its soap-opera twists is way too enthralling. The latest rumor du jour involves a certain candidate who long ago seemed to have disappeared from the radar. Now she may be back, or so it is said, to bring order into this chaos. Never mind that her name is synonymous with chaos: Sarah Palin. URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,800850,00.html

Say Hi! to Hans and Sandy from me and Angelika. Old, clueless man! Evidently, you've been ingesting too much of your own product.

On a more positive note, over POPSJUMPER. Almost 15 yrs ago, I encountered a high-ranking exec of Sonics (the hamburger chain). His wife experienced severe symptoms as she was going thru menopause. I talked to him about it from a chemist's perspective and the work we put in every day to treat the human condition! He was extremely grateful. After all w/o the post-docs work, there ain't no medications by MDs to prescribe! It's not the pilots who will get you to your destination; because you would have never lifted off w/o the ground crew. It's not the MD that will ameliorate one's condition. Because w/o chemists, physicists, pharmacists, etc., etc. there would be no treatment!