Usa Thread

[Steve]

Just to get into some mindless entertainment banter for a second. I have no sympathy for Katie Holmes. Who gets into a relationship with someone as deep into Scientology as Tom Cruise is? Okay, bang the dude if you're an up and coming actress, appear on the red carpet and get some PR to further your career. I can respect that...but marry and have kids?

 

http://omg.yahoo.com/news/katie-holmes-used-disposable-cell-phone-to-secretly-plan-divorce-from-tom-cruise--report.html?_esi=1

 

According to the Los Angeles Times, a friend of Holmes provided her with the throwaway device so she could talk to her New York City-based lawyers without Cruise, 50, or his people knowing what she was up to. Now, yet another report, a People magazine story released on Wednesday, divulges further details on how Holmes caught her husband of five years off guard by meticulously plotting her divorce plans ahead of time, even reaching out to her parents for help. According to the report, Tom Cruise was about to start shooting an action-packed scene on the set in Iceland when he answered an unexpected call from Holmes. “He was about to do a stunt and got off his motorcycle to take the call,†a source tells People. It was during that conversation that Holmes broke the news. “He’s been in shock since that day,†the source adds.

[Steve]

http://news.yahoo.com/taliban-commander-says-taliban-cannot-win-afghan-war-131208823--abc-news-topstories.html

The Taliban leadership knows it cannot win the war in Afghanistan and is prepared to accept peace with the Afghan government, but only if the militant group plays a prominent role in the country's future, according to an interview with an alleged senior Taliban commander conducted by a former high-ranking diplomat.

Pakistan Remains a Taboo Subject "The one thing I dare not talk about is the relationship with Pakistan."

[Flashermac]

It hasn't been that way for all that long. I remember my father saying that when he was a boy, doctors and preachers were poor people. We had several doctors in the family. They lived comfortably, but none of them were anywhere near wealthy.

 

p.s. Remember when doctors made house calls? Or maybe you're not old enough.

 

 

 

 

 

[Flashermac]

Who gets into a relationship with someone as deep into Scientology as Tom Cruise is?

You are presuming she is any more intelligent than he is. She said at the beginning that Scientology was "interesting". She is just another overpaid Hollywood fruit loop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[allistar]

Even if Tom is away on a shoot, he has a cadre of Scientology members that help "take care" of Katie and their daughter. I heard that the breaking point was when those members stopped Katie from disciplining he daughter. Cruise should look for a fellow scientology member to marry. I hear Christy Alley is still available.

[kamui]

And what of the medical professions' salaries? Are they as high in as the USA? And does an organisation like the AMA exist that does all it can to keep more medical schools opening to produce doctors?

 

 

In Germany, some docs, like dentists, are extremely well paid, country doctors aren't doing that well.

We don't have medical school, medicine is taught at all major universities. You need an extremely good college degree for to study medicine, since there are far more students than university places...

 

Actually, we have two-tier system: self-employed and high earners are mostly privately insured. They get a better service (like single rooms in hospitals, much shorter waiting times at doctors, e.g.), but if they get older they have to pay very high premiums. All others are covered by health care providers whose prices and services are mostly fixed. Those providers cover all basic needs, including chronic illnesses, cancer ops, dentist, eg.. Only elaborate dentist work or similar stuff has to be paid separately.

 

Only around 200.000 people (among 100 million) are uninsured. Unemployed or poor retired people are covered by the state and receive the same health care as others. And we don't have higher premiums for pre-existing conditions... Bankruptcies because of exploding health care payments don't exist in Germany.

 

But of course not everything is fine. The health care industry is extremely powerful. Prices are going up, while service are going down. The health care industry prefers completely privately insured people, because they can ask for up to three time higher prices for standard services.

 

 

 

[Steve]

I remember there was a doctor with his own office in the Italian neighborhood next to me. Dr. Ciaverelli. Funny thing is the Italians said he was a whack but we went there because he was cheap and you could pay in installments. Once he got to know your family very well, he adjusted the price to accomodate. He seemed well off enough to have a full time office manager and there was an Indian guy training with him.

 

In any event, doctors make plenty these days and even if they stood more competition I don't think we'll see a shortage. There are too many lawyers but law schools are still filled up and competitive. Furhermore, are we basing health care on how much doctors should make? Its factor but a minor one. Doctors will come out all right.

 

Obama should have started off dismantiing the present system. Insurance across state lines should be the first thing done and work with governors with regards to that.

[Steve]

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/07/to-make-america-great-again-we-need-to-leave-the-country/259653/#.T_5b9LTJWUM.facebook

 

Foreign observers used to chuckle at that very distinctly American political rhetoric of exceptionalism -- the assertions of our God-granted preeminence and predestination. But beneath that laughter, there was usually grudging respect, and even envy for a country whose citizens were so ready to express such national pride.

 

Now such language it is often openly derided. Let's face it, even with all the problems in Europe, and everywhere, the American lantern is not as brightly inviting as it used to be. And I don't mean just literally inviting, as in inviting to immigrants -- though that in itself is a huge problem, one that contributes to the general perception of a country closing itself inward.

 

When Americans travel abroad, they are often surprised at how well other countries do the things we used to think America does best. In fact, one reason so many American businesses still lead the world is because they benchmark the competition and emulate best practices. But suggest to an American politician that we should try to learn from other countries, and he will look at you like you are from Mars. It is somehow unpatriotic even to raise such comparisons.

 

Imagine if a politician were to say, "France has a better health care system than we do." I can almost guarantee that politician would suffer electoral defeat -- even though the statement, in most objective respects, is true. The U.S. is, for too many, the only country that matters; experiences anywhere else are irrelevant. Remember, we have many members of Congress who boast they have no passport.

...But many of our political leaders, rather than asking what we can learn from the countries that have surpassed us in various ways, choose instead to win applause with unqualified boasts of our inherent greatness. They imply that the answers to our problems are to be found not just by closing our borders to immigrants but to foreign ideas as well.

America is moving toward the kind of bifurcated society we used to deride in banana republics--rich getting richer in gated communities, while the poor grow poorer, barely seen in segregated urban ghettos and hidden rural decay. Over 20 million Americans live in extreme poverty. One in 50 Americans' only income is food stamps. Add the poor and the near-poor--that is under $44K for a family of four--and you have more than 100 million people.

 

The richest country in the world now has the highest rate of child poverty in the developed world. The U.S. has gone from being relatively egalitarian to one of the most unequal countries in the world.

 

Members of Congress spend up to 70 percent of their time raising money; that is their job; they become fundraisers far more than they are legislators. In that same year, 3 percent of retiring Congressmen became lobbyists. Now it's 50 percent of Senators, 42 percent of House members. Critics from the left and right and middle alike call our political finance system one of "legalized bribery."

Rich private interests have many ways to block change. This is why health care reform was so modest in the first place; that is why there was no public option; that is why climate change legislation is now near impossible; that is why the U.S. is alone in the world in its inability to regulate guns; that is why basic financial reform can't be enacted.

[Flashermac]

Okay, I left it. Now what happens?

 

 

 

 

 

[kamui]

Okay, I left it. Now what happens?

 

 

Everthing went downhill in the USA since you left...