haresfur wrote:
Doesn't hurt to be reminded occasionally what privilege/entitlement really looks like...

 R_P wrote: 
FWP to end all FWPs

Naughty Santa visits Mnur-chin...

Neighbours told local media of their irritation at the incident.

"We have $50 million homes and we can't move, we can't get out," actress Zsa Zsa Gabor's widower Prince Frederick von Anhalt, who was trapped for two hours, told CBS.

"That's bad, they have to find another way."

 kcar wrote: 
We're all in this mess together.

And the good people fighting each other isn't a good thing IMO.

 spammer wrote: 

You read my mind, but the article that R_P quoted just below is well worth reading.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all! 

I wish this thread and others like it would be dormant for a couple days.

GOP Leaders Celebrate Decisive Win Over Americans

Nixon Reloaded...

According to six officials who attended or were briefed about the meeting, Mr. Trump then began reading aloud from the document, which his domestic policy adviser, Stephen Miller, had given him just before the meeting. The document listed how many immigrants had received visas to enter the United States in 2017.

More than 2,500 were from Afghanistan, a terrorist haven, the president complained.

Haiti had sent 15,000 people. They “all have AIDS,” he grumbled, according to one person who attended the meeting and another person who was briefed about it by a different person who was there.

Forty thousand had come from Nigeria, Mr. Trump added. Once they had seen the United States, they would never “go back to their huts” in Africa, recalled the two officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss a sensitive conversation in the Oval Office.

As the meeting continued, John F. Kelly, then the secretary of homeland security, and Rex W. Tillerson, the secretary of state, tried to interject, explaining that many were short-term travelers making one-time visits. But as the president continued, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Miller turned their ire on Mr. Tillerson, blaming him for the influx of foreigners and prompting the secretary of state to throw up his arms in frustration. If he was so bad at his job, maybe he should stop issuing visas altogether, Mr. Tillerson fired back.

Tempers flared and Mr. Kelly asked that the room be cleared of staff members. But even after the door to the Oval Office was closed, aides could still hear the president berating his most senior advisers.

 aflanigan wrote:
I have been trying to teach myself to telemark for years and I still suck at it. My tele fanatic friends tell me I need special boots and bindings (which ain't happening—I'm way too cheap) but I keep telling myself that the guys who invented it had bamboo poles and canvas pants. So it's a work in progress. Good luck with lessons!

Reality TV Presidency

Andrew Sullivan: Putin’s First Year in the White House

Grading the Kremlin.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/andrew-sullivan-putins-first-year-in-the-white-house.html

 Lazy8 wrote: 
Will do.

You posted in the other place about skiing with dogs. One of the most amazing sights I remember from skiing in Utah was seeing a guy telemarking down a slope with two dogs running/rolling/stumbling along with him and having the time of their lives trying to keep up with him.

I need to try doing a telemark lesson one of these winters. 

 aflanigan wrote:
If I ever write the post that generated this as a response we can by golly declare it rebutted. In the mean time I'll join you in wishing all and sundry a merry Christmas/Kwanzaa/Hanukah/Festivus/Solstice/First Night/Post-Christmas Eggnog Sale. Get some skiing in and get those cookies and scotch out for Santa!

Donald Trump has spent a year lying shamelessly. It hasn’t worked

 R_P wrote: 
Number seems low to me.

End of year lists...
Donald Trump has said 978 false things as U.S. president

 Lazy8 wrote:

I hear ya.

I suspect though that your argument may be mostly based on post hoc, ergo propter hoc reasoning. 

The alleged "restraint of trade" discussed in the libertarian historical article happened over 100 years ago. The article does not seem to contain any data on what medical costs at the time were in modern dollars (or, say, as a percentage of annual income), nor compare them with costs in other countries which did not have licensing requirements that so offend the libertarians. 

I'm a firm believer that quackery and other forms of pseudoscience are harmful to society and should be deterred.  If you want me to buy miamizsun's cited article as conclusive evidence that the requirement of competence in medical practice based on scientifically sound diagnostic and therapeutic knowledge as it evolves through the peer review process, and through ethical experimentation and other scientific studies, is at fault for high health care costs in the US relative to other nations, I'm sorry but I'm not in the market.
 

By all means, if you want, submit valid and reliable data establishing  that the 35 or so nations who have lower per capita health care costs than we do all enjoy this advantage due to lack of  comparably stringent requirements and laws with regard to the practice of medicine. That would be a much more compelling case for the causal link you guys seem to be trying to infer.

Just looking at per capita cost, of course, does not taking into account the value you get for your dollar (i.e. not taking into account the efficacy of treatment received, based on better outcomes such as living vs. dying, living longer on average, better worker productivity due to more effective therapies, etc.). 

Not sure how you would go about trying to come up with a suitable measure of cost effectiveness in human health care.  Interestingly, we once had not one, but two national organizations tasked with looking into this issue, and reportedly they were abolished as a result of opposition by vested interests. Maybe if you want to go after the AMA, it would be more convincing to look at the political lobbying side of their activities.

I would certainly agree that the idea of maximizing profit could generate perverse incentives when it comes to making sound health care decisions, and it may well play a role in making health care costs more expensive than they should be. 

Finally, have a Merry Montanan Christmas, Freaky Festivus, a Wild and Wacky Winter Solstice, or whatever tickles your fancy.

Donald Trump to build his wall in Ireland amid climate change 'irony' claims

Protesters were quick to highlight the irony of a president, who is sceptical about climate change, building a wall in an attempt to manage coastal erosion.

The original application cited global warming and rising seas as justification for the wall.

 aflanigan wrote:
Like, for instance, midwives and nurses. Restraint of trade drives up prices, and the medical profession has found many ways to restrain trade—like the accreditation process for medical schools.

But yeah, this is getting a ways from anything Trump-related. Not that I mind distracting any conversation from that steaming pile of

 aflanigan wrote: 
How dare we not respect the great masses who know less than the folks who have been trained and passed examinations proving their knowledge base is sufficient. That latter group are the ELITES and are to be shunned!

(At least according to my Fox-watching bro-in-law. He has strict policies about hiring only the best subcontractors, but rails against the "elites" who think they know more than anyone else because of their training. Wha?)