hitops

I can't imaging how that could ever be enforced for countries who simply want to lie about it.

This 'deal' is non-binding and won't do anything, just like all the previous ones. Any government can just not meet it, then come up with some excuse for why. The concern is that in the process of doing nothing, what costs will be imposed on us? This remains to be seen.

As a doc, I deal with this stuff routinely. Our wait times for some things are decent, and terrible for others. If you are telling the truth, this is the extreme exception. The only patients of mine who get MRI in < month are those who's life may depend on it (cancer follow or emergent diagnosis). Every else waits months, usually more than 6. That's a false dichotomy. There is not a fixed number of divinely bestowed MRI machines, which much be parceled out into private and public. If a private system is allowed, more MRI machines get installed and operating compared to if not. The issue is docs - the concern that docs will divert their time into private care if more lucrative, and wait times would suffer for public. The NYT is overtly liberal, and of course this, like nearly every other article they do on the topic, completely ignores the fact that they have the largest government funded insurance system in the world - medicare (for those over 65). Obviously under such a model, you will get over consumption and wait time increases just like we do. When you compare wait times overall in the US (including medicare), of course things will be dragged down the the government insured system. If you want to know the real difference, you need to compared private insurance vs government insurance. They do however at least make a few honest points. One is that the VA, their only government-operated system, is awful. The other is that the problems they identify, will be made worse by the ACA. The biggest overall wait problem they identify is finding primary care. Right now, this is most difficult in the government funded systems (medicare, medicaid). The main reason is that the payments for a consultation are lower than private. The ACA's solution? Just lower the fees more (as a cost control). For hopefully obvious reasons, that will not help the problem.

Fortunately it's not. In only a few months of governing, they have not even come close on their promises about refugee resettlement, tax increase paying for tax cuts, or limited deficit to $10B. Not even close.

Notice how when the bee hive (communism) model has been applied to humans, it has resulted in the some of the largest human disasters in history? Our economy is in no way geared towards the rich overall. It has huge social benefits that mostly benefit the poor, and plenty of worker protections, minimum wage etc. This is exactly why it is unproductive.

The hypocrisy is that while all pm's get domestic help and that is understandable, Trudeau is the only PM who specifically addressed his own family as not needing it. And he is the only PM who made a big show of donating his UCCB because he 'didn't need it'. But he needs full time servants for the kids, of course, which cost far more. What was the point of giving back the UCCB if you are accepting the taxpayer-funded nannies which cost more to the taxpayer? According to Justin, his problem was taxpayer help to rich people, not taxpayer help in general. That is why it is hypocrisy. It is not compared to other pm's, it is compared to his own stated standard.

Because people say it, does not make it true. It is still far more expensive to produce power with non-fossil sources, which is why the vast majority of the world's energy is still produced with fossil fuels.

This is actually a relevant point. It really doesn't matter what the west does, even if you believe reducing emissions is useful. If China does not reduce, and the west just makes all their stuff in China (and of course then takes big about how they are reducing emissions at home), it is just pissing in the wind.

Good point, I forgot that all the equipment used to maintain a power station, all the materials used to build and service it and getting those materials there, and all the people who get there for work, is all done by magic fairy dust. You don't need coal or oil for any of that, just tap you heels together.

Uh.......ya, when the price of something falls, people invested in that thing make less money. Congratulations captain obvious. This undermines your point, it does not support it. Falling prices are not because of some kind of magic declaration of 'the end of fossil fuels'. It is because of a huge increase in fossil fuel supply. You use fossil fuels every day, for most of your activities. Effectively all your transportation. Nearly everything you buy, was brought to you using fossil fuels. You have electricity, because of fossil fuels. You are typing on your computer right now, which was manufactured with fossil fuels, as was the servers this board is hosted on. How you do not recognize this, is an exercise in extreme denial. You are literally debunking your own points with every word you type, every minute your pc/laptop/tablet is powered on.

Those are civics class description of the theories of those systems. The reality of how they perform for the people under them, show dramatic differences, with more capitalist societies dramatically outperforming the others, including for the poor. Where you are flat wrong even in the theory descriptions, is that in capitalist societies the worker keeps some value and the employer keeps some. The communist societies, the worker keeps none and is completely dependent on the government to give anything back. The reality of those two systems, is that the capitalist worker will get far, far more retained value and far better standard of living. The historical record makes this abundantly clear. There is a reason people were desperate to leave east Germany (often risking their lives) for west, and not the other way around.

The issue is not that Trudeau has staff, obviously heads of state needs staff. The issue not that he has nannies, he has a super busy job and young kids. The issue is not even that the taxpayer is paying for the nannies. The taxpayer has always paid for domestic servants including those who help take care of kids, and Trudeau's kids arguably need more care than any previous PM's kids, due to their ages. The issue is that Trudeau specifically complained that the UCCB was taxpayer money going to rich people, publicly announced he was giving his back, and specifically said that "Families like mine..." should not get childcare help from the taxpayer. And then he readily accepts the most generous childcare taxpayer subsidy of anyone in the country. He certainly is, according to campaign-Trudeau. That guy said there is no reason the taxpayer should help rich people with their kids.

There are no other sources that are widely available and not reliant on fossil fuels to make them exist. I'm not sure what you consider 'over', but fossil fuels still power the lion's share of world activities. Regarding smart money, many billionaires have been minted off the shale boom. Must be stupid I guess. Precious few from green energy. A number or very wealthy people have invested in green tech (like Christie Walton), and consequently lost a ton of money, however.

On the war and Syrian immigration? True he is staying consistent. But when there are body parts of Canadians flopping around like in Paris, we will see how much flip-flopping happens.

As long as you also don't need electricity or transportation, then that's reasonable.

Your point is not clear here.

It is indeed one of the approaches, and one of the worst to be sure. Capitalism is the best of the available options. No amount of bloodiness in capitalism can hold a candle to the mass murder and impoverishment of communism. The greatest mass killers in history, by a large margin, are Stalin and Mao.

Good point, but not for docs unfortunately. You cannot earn more than 10% of your income from clinical practice on a TN. Basically unless you are going to do research or teaching, it is not a viable option for physicians.

If they are quiet, then by definition they are not following the precedent and teachings of Mohammed as accurately as ISIS (even if they closely follow some portions). ISIS looks and acts like Mohammed and his posse did, with respect to area they control, how they behave, and their actions towards non-Muslims. Mohammed did not sit around and hope for divine intervention, he actively propagated hate and violence towards others (once he had political power) and encouraged his followers to do the same. And they did, both during his life and after.

You may not like the links that are evident now, and would like more, but nevertheless statements by various actors are part of the evidence. If you sit in court and a guy says he did it, nobody else does, and the police say he did it, that counts towards 'he did it'. Without exception, Islamic groups who carry out attacks, want you to know they carried them out. That is kind of their whole thing, the theater of it. If a non-ISIS (or affiliated) group did it, I agree ISIS might still try to take credit, however certainly the actual group that did it would also take credit. We don't have those competing claims here.

I don't think any serious person expects China will alter it's behavior, or do anything whatsoever different, based on agreements. The only way China is going to change, is if the west says we stop trading with you if you do not reduce emissions. But the west is not going to do that, since the only way we can show that we are reducing our own emissions, is to continue to outsource the manufacturing to make the stuff we want/need to the east.

The stuff in post #492

All of the above are links.

As a doc, I agree this 'minister' is a joke.

This is not so true anymore. It used to be that there were plenty of work visas, however within the last 2-3 years, the H1-B visa applications exceed the yearly quota within the first week of eligibility each year. It is now dominated by companies which specialize in making visa applications. the largest of which are based in India. Small firms in the US cannot recruit because of this. The NYT had an extensive article on this last week. And as far as medical, this has never been true. Unlike almost every other professional job, doctors have to write the US exams (called the USMLE's) to be eligible for H1-B's. This is a long, difficult and costly undertaking which is effectively a law by regulation, designed to circumvent NAFTA and protect American doctors from competition.