patrick.net

I think Gore was the last guy I voted for president. After that I stopped because I realized what a sham presidential elections are. I still enjoy the local and state elections though.

Call it Crazy says

OK, So who's paying those taxes and where are they coming from????

People who aren't paying $1500 a month for health insurance.

If you are a small player you go to the grey bar hotel. If you are a big player you compete for a cabinet post.

For the banks it is the cost of doing business, for the state and federal AG's it is a chance to declare victory every week.

For the rest of us it is evidence of the failure of the rule of law and the rule by a moneyed aristocracy.

Chuck Prince of Citigroup fame should be renamed Prince Charles of Citigroup.

Reality says

Medical tourism is currently a $10+billion market (2012), and expected to double this decade.

Yes and a large part of it is Americans going to other countries. Don't you ever look up facts before you post?

"A McKinsey and Co. report from 2008 found that between 60,000 to 85,000 medical tourists were traveling to the United States for the purpose of receiving in-patient medical care. The same McKinsey study estimated that 750,000 American medical tourists traveled from the United States to other countries in 2007 (up from 500,000 in 2006). The availability of advanced medical technology and sophisticated training of physicians are cited as driving motivators for growth in foreigners traveling to the U.S. for medical care, whereas the low costs for hospital stays and major/complex procedures at Western-accredited medical facilities abroad are cited as major motivators for American travelers. Also, the decline in value of the U.S. dollar is offering additional incentive for foreign travel to the U.S., although cost differences between the US and many locations in Asia are larger than any currency fluctuations."

Reality says

Tenured doctors won't work any more diligently than tenured professors.

Yet they manage to work quite diligently all around the world. They aren't tenured, they are employees. Do you know how health care works anywhere else?

MoneySheep says

Do you know that in one payer health care system you cannot "jump the queue" for treatment even if you have money to pay for it yourself? Why? because the losers want to press you down to their level.

Other than Canada that's false. There is private health insurance available in every other public health care system. There are doctors who see private patients outside of the public systems for people who want to "jump the queue". Try to actually find out what you are talking about before posting.

Reality says

Would that be the same VA system that produced the Walter Reed Hospital, where Cheney got the best repair to his broken heart, whereas wounded soldiers coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq got consigned to dilapidated rooms infested with mice and roaches?

I don's suppose you would like to document dilapidated rooms infested with mice and roaches at Walter Reade? Nah of course not, you never care to actually document anything. Easier to just talk out your ass.

My sister was treated at Walter Reade after Kuwait and I didn't see any dilapidated rooms infested with mice and roaches. Where did you find them at? Got any pictures? How much time were you at Walter Reade? Zero I would be willing to bet.

The majority of vets treated by the VA are satisfied with the VA. That's pretty damn good considering the kinds of serious problems vets frequently have. There are certainly some bad VA hospitals. There are some really bad private hospitals. So what's your point?

bgamall4 says

Captain. You need a dementia test

I don't think there is any reason at all to bother to test the captain for dementia. That would just confirm the overwhelmingly obvious.

LoL! The other SCOUNDREL has to cover the face in order to hide a full on SH*T eating grin

Yet, I'm always right.
I should change my handle to Al Weiss Right.

CaptainShuddup says

Yet, I'm always right.

I should change my handle to Al Weiss Right.

You are a legend in your own mind.

Well it is one honor that I wish Obama would prove me wrong.
But the more Teaparty, Racist, Republican I sound while describing the shit storm that Obama's short sighted follies will create, then the more right I am.

Obama is free to prove me wrong anytime. Though most here suspects he never will.

He's not even on your side. If you wanted to sit at the table with Obama, you would be sitting at the kiddie table with Cheney, Rove, and Woody. Obama sits with his Corporate titans in Bush's old Captain's chair.

bgamall4 says

YOu are full of it. Most people had no clue prices went down in real estate. The shills said it wouldn't. Remember David Lereah?

Wong, your defense of Wall Street is shameless and disgusting.

I don't think it's fair to call him shameless or disgusting. I agree the lenders need to be held responsible, so does the mainstream media for withholding the truth and being in the back pocket of the banks and real estate associations, but the public is still responsible for their own choices and mistakes. None of them should be bailed out, nor should a person be bailed out if they make a bad investment in the stock market. It really is time people start taking responsibility. Big business needs to be held accountable, but so does each individual. We live in a bailout culture that has learned to validate all negative actions under the sun. I believe we need to return to having standards and taking responsibility. We can't expect politicians and business leaders to take responsibility if we are not willing to take responsibility ourselves.

bgamall4 says

Most people had no clue prices went down in real estate.

Actually, people did know. We were encouraged to jump in before the bubble by almost everyone and the media backed them up, but just a little research showed us that housing went up and down a little, basically followed inflation, and was generally no more than twice the median income. One thing was obvious, nothing in our history looked anything like the market before the bubble, or now. It wasn't extensive research, just looking up the facts available to everyone. Patrick.net warned of the coming bubble and the shady loans the whole time. This very website warned of the clearly inflated housing market of the late nineties, and kept warning citizens with articles, graphs and historical evidence all the way to the bubble burst. The information was available, but everyone wanted to be in on the wave. It happens with stocks, gold and all kinds of potential investments. No one should be bailed out if an investment goes wrong. An investment is a gamble, and no one can convince me that people buying a home for nine times their annual income had no clue it was a gamble. They knew.

This must be the "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy" study.

Hard to really figure out how they sorted out the controls for this study, although the conclusion is one of those "Annals of DUHHHH!" stating the obvious things.

Did the study account for the reasons for the heavy drinking? Maybe loss of memory was the best thing to happen to those poor saps.

Call it Crazy says

"because of time constraints, CMS is awarding the Accenture contract on a
sole-source basis."

This reminds me of Halliburton, Dick Cheney and no-bid contracts in iraq. Obozo the lying hypocrite is worse than Bush.

hrhjuliet says

but the public is still responsible for their own choices and mistakes.

we continuously over look this especially when we hear about "recovery"
in prices vs a long denied correction downward to normal market balance.

yes the public is responsible for denying a house bubble existed before in late 80s and more recent. How could so many be in denial in 2002 given 10 years prior we all pretty much saw prices decline, even written in the papers.

bgamall4 says

I don't buy that at all. Most people just wanted a house for their families, and the few that were on the wave were taught by Lereah that the real estate could not crash.

If you you believed anything Lereah said, you were trully a fool.. no Lereah even back in the early 2000 was catching flack for his comments.. no wonder he left the NAR from the public pressure.

bgamall4 says

So if the doctors require that you diagnose your own illness and you screw up should you be held responsible? Lenders are responsible for telling you how much house you can afford and it was against the law to lend more to people than they could pay back. Notice the FIRREA Act of 1989 that W ignored.

Hype... it was all hype as we have seen since the Gold Rush which lured many westwards... As far as Regulations or lack of ... even the SEC act 1933/34 failed to prevent the Stock Bubble of late 90s. Even though we had Tech companies IPOs before and mindfull buying/selling was based on revenue growth, earnings, and Price to Earnings matrix. All that failed somewhere around 1995-2000...

just ask your typical bubble head why they think their home is worth $1M... there are lots of them in SF prime...

bgamall4 says

So if the doctors require that you diagnose your own illness and you screw up should you be held responsible? Lenders are responsible for telling you how much house you can afford and it was against the law to lend more to people than they could pay back. Notice the FIRREA Act of 1989 that W ignored.

. It is a very different situation. I always research my own diagnosis, and in one case my research helped lead to answers for my little cousin when the doctors had said her elimination process was probably just diet. It wasn't her diet, and she needed intervention and she got it, due to my research. I agree that the banks should be punished for not following the law. But in the case of the homeowners the information WAS available and a bail out for homeowners is not a fair solution. They took a gamble, and it was a poor one. I am sorry that happened to them, but they must take responsibility for their own choices. The information was easily available and this very site was a source.

bgamall4 says

lostand confused says

Perhaps you just aren't smart enough to see the obvious. Perhaps you are lost and confused.

Note that this article is from zero hedge. There are 500 million lines of code? I don't buy that. How about some documentation on that? Never happened with ZH.

bgamall4 says

hrhjuliet says

I always research my own diagnosis,

No you research the disease, not the diagnosis.

No, I always do both. With something as important as a diagnosis or a potential disease, I would always research the heck out of them and get a second opinion, and often a third and fourth opinion.

What if you drink and do some mnemonic exercises, while smashed?

Doesn't that simply kill the bad cells and strengthen the good ones?

How did they get a bunch of drunks to take IQ tests over and over?

How did they know how they would test if sober?

If they were comparing the drunks to a less drunk or non drinking control, I would say the drunks did pretty darned good by comparison.

If you sobered them up, they might even do better than the controls.

bgamall4 says

Apparently that was not what was seen by many, many people. You may be right, or you may not be right. You weren't there. They were.

Neither were you there. People said they saw a streak of light and then an explosion. The streak of light was the plane, on fire. The explosion was the plane exploding. No mystery there. No reason to turn it into something it was not.

Oh of course I forgot, it's on the web so it has to be true. Every single article about the 500 million lines of code goes back to a single article in the NY Times that says "According to one specialist, the Web site contains about 500 million lines of software code" Who is this mysterious specialist and how do we know he/she is telling the truth or even knows the truth? Gee I guess no one has ever told a NY Times reporter a lie before. You think?

CGI's people wrote 500 million lines of code in less than 18 months, including analysis and design. Bullshit. A lot of you guys are coders, you know this is bullshit. No one has ever done anything even remotely close to that starting from scratch.

No no, Big Mal -- honeslty, I just think that ol gal's got her salmon grabber mashed into the poor girl's face, distorting her lip upward to resemble a kind of smile.

Look to the eyes. Those are not smiling eyes.

I'll drink to that

Call it Crazy says

I think the results show that....

You only need 1 line of code to have a poorly designed and functioning program if you do it right.

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch says

Accenture.

I am sure they'll spend the money.

Working system and auditable performance and iron-clad security tech and protocols?

Accenture?

Well, they could have gone with Deloitte!!!

So by your own sarcastic volition everything you say must be false.

bob2356 says

Oh of course I forgot, it's on the web so it has to be true.

Interesting. Drinking will really give us effects such as this. Just like in smoking, which is considered life threatening since it is the cause of so much disease that lead to death. Though, drinking cause less, we can still tell that mental decline is something we should think about.

Crude photoshop of what she might look like if her cheek weren't being smashed upwards.

Homeboy says

Crude photoshop of what she might look

Photoshop? You mean that there are pictures that might have been altered? You mean you can't trust what is posted on the internet? No say it ain't so joe. If it's on the internet it HAS to be true. It HAS to be true. Pictures like this PROVE there are massive hoax's being put on every day. They PROVE it!!!! Why if the pictures were photoshopped the hoax truthers would actually be hoaxers. We would have a hoax death spiral. The mind boggles at the possibilities.

Ok you can delete it now mosquito dick.

SoftShell says

So by your own sarcastic volition everything you say must be false.

bob2356 says

Oh of course I forgot, it's on the web so it has to be true.

No, that's a very poor read of what I said. I don't believe in things that come from an obscure anonomous reference to be engraved in stone especially when they seem very unlikely. Even when someone puts them up in a very nice looking chart.

It's called skepticism, something that somehow seems to be lost when dealing with the internet. Maybe there are 500 million lines of code, but I don't know that and neither do you so your assertions that having 500 million lines of code is the problem are meaningless.

A "recovery" "without real income growth" that needs life support

http://www.theburningplatform.com/2014/01/19/the-retail-death-rattle/