Shwa

Because in the immortal words of the Right Reverend Horton Heat, they were the 'Baddest of the Bad.' At least in modern times and popular history. That we can agree on. That were not on our side.

Third post down in this thread and no one has commented on it? Let me:

Yes. Do what your parents tell you! Or else... My kids, especially when they were under-25 and smoking dope, always seemed to vote NDP - ostensibly because the two major parties harshed their buzz. The affect of this, of course, was that they cancelled out my vote. And since there are more of them than there are parents, damn, we were outvoted every election!! Needless to say, they have been cut out of my will. They would just spend their inheritance on bud anyways.

"Share the Land" is a little known rock song? What country are you from? Oh, right... With Canadian content rules on radio stations, Share the Land still gets plenty of airplay on the remember-when FM stations. 'Ice Nice' by Saga - now there is a little known rock song by a Canadian band.

And it will have the benefits of flushing all the mental cases out of the woodwork, thus allowing a much easier targetting method for re-education and re-integration into normal society. It won't be long before the community colleges are offering adult night courses on many 'liberal' art topics such as politics, history and languages. So overall, SunTV will be very good for Canadian democracy.

Absolutely! He died for his ideas which are now an integral part of our national heritage. But it is true to say that posters here and Canadians already know our general history. The devil is in the details.

A good post! The only thing I would add: US Auto Sales for November 2010 - Wall Street Journal Market Data Centre Now, back to our regularly scheduled thread...

We do? I can go into practically any provincial court, read the docket and listen in to what the justice system is doing in those sessions. I am not sure if I have the same access to the local 'health corporation' boardroom, but to be fair I have never tried. Even the education system - another pillar - elect trustees...

Oh, I see - you are specifically referring to foodstuffs and not including non-foodstuffs correct?

LOLF! I haven't seen those little gold or purple nuggets in years. Do they still make them?

I am confident that if we dug in to make a real study of what is going on in the background, we would see plenty of operations experts analyzing the system. Like any institution. And yes I think the industry does exist in a 'silo,' but that term is so... 30-months ago. Now they talk about 'pillars.' I digress... I think there is no disagreement that something needs to be fixed within the health care system, however, there is a disparity between various factions as to what that something actually is. For any changes to the system, other than those changes that are the direct responsibility of - or within the power of - the systems administrators, the perception becomes less isolated and into the public arena. And thus political. And even if we entrusted wide spread change - not the actual implementation, but the concepts of what needs to be changed - to those administrators, there is going to have to be some sort of consensus of what the changes should be and how they will be implemented among them. Even that limited degree of consensus making takes quite a bit of time. Since we are the owners of the system, then even a political consensus will take much longer and with the health care system, no politician is going to suggest an immediate, radical alteration and stay long in office. Plus, I think that how we fix those somethings in the health care system will be under far more scrutiny from the public that the actual system is now. It is a touchy subject for sure. But I believe you are on the right track with regard to information transparency. Health care is as important as justice and one of those societal pillars and it seems that there is far more information about how the justice system performs than the health care system. Perhaps what we need to start with is an oversight organ similar to the way that justice hierarchy is organized from the local to the supreme...

What I mean is that any streamlined process will, over time, develop a bureaucracy. All you need to do is take a look at history to verify this phenomenon. Can you name one complex western institution that did not have a bureaucracy in support of it? What you are talking about is de-institutionalizing health care. Ain't gonna happen. Ever. That has nothing to do with my proximinty to "the bureaucracy."

Unless packaging was part of the appeal and incentive to buy. Cheap advertising.

In other words, another layer of bureaucracy! And if it isn't too bureaucracy-like at first, give it time. However, I would agree that some of the processes require acute and regualr review from time to time. They could hire management consultants to do that.

I am not sure what you are saying here. Are you saying that the "definitive authority" has to be on the web somewhere?

<SIDEBAR!> Learn to finger pick with as many fingers as is comfortable right from the get-go. It might slow your learning down a bit, but you will really, really appreciate it later. </SIDEBAR!>

I am posting this for several reasons. One, this is an amazing breakthrough. Two, for those of us pushing towards the target screening age (50+). Three, pancreatic cancer has killed a few people I know, including my Dad 22 years ago. Pop was diagnosed and three months later was dead. The problem with this type of cancer is by the time they diagnose it, you are a goner. So there is a real potential to detect pancreatic cancer early and hopefully they get those tests on-line as soon as possible. Pancreatic cancer tumours take more than a decade to develop, study shows

A million atheists just gasped...

No, the problem was with GMAC getting into the mortgage bubble which whacked both GM & Crysler, GMAC's main owners, when the bubble popped. Ford - with similar employee pensions and benefits as GM - weathered the mortgage scam just fine. Now that GM has been bailed out and 'fixed' GMAC, note that all the shifts are starting to come back to their plants. Next year look for the convertible Camaro model. Another big, boss North American car.

Why should you care? Because 'all the world's a stage.' That's why.

When was the last time you actually looked for a "definitive authority?" And even if you come up empty-handed, whose to say that means anything more than a lousy search? I am certain there are some fairly well informed folks who can give you a good idea of those sort of costs. Have you actually looked for any?

I think that is one of the main inputs for universal healthcare in the first place, don't you? But I think education goes hand in hand with those social efforts. For example, my Mom had 4 kids. When I had kids and they showed signs of illness, I didn't run to the emergency ward and clog the services because my kids had a cough or a fever. I called my Mom. I think one of the big problems with health care is not the system itself, but user problems and the God-hood image of doctors. There is likely an untapped wealth of basic health care information and experience that exists within every community that could likely reduce a good deal of Emergency visits. Another good idea is th Nurse Practitioner. Now there are political considerations to all of this. For example, my calls to my Mom are free and no doctors, nurses or hospital administrators made any money off of that. Neither do I so long as it does not overburden the system with useless flights of fancy. Why spend millions on data that very few in the public will ever use and possibly misinterpret? I have a very good friend who is a management nurse in a large hospital in the US and their performance data is contained within proprietary databases that are tightly controlled by the database owners and the government. This stuff is not available for public perusal.

Sure it can. You are looking at a worse case scenario and I highly doubt it will come to that. There is more than enough wealth to go around, and health is one of those key aspects of society that is worth protecting. I see quite a bit of the health industry pointing towards prevention and healthy lifestyle and those changes alone will modify the overall system to the better. No it doesn't have to get worse and it likley won't. In fact, universal health care will likely expand in scope and we'll make great knowledge gains in the areas of aged health and geriatrics with the boomers. Otherwise, we are in fine shape, most people want universal health care and there ya go.

Why do we bother with stormtroopers, Nazi's & Soviet when invoking hyperbole? I say we should go straight to making the comparisons to those aliens in Independence Day or the Aliens movies. So Saipan's comment might look like this: Has a nice ring to it, is flexible. Although more of a description of the religious right than anything.

Pffft. Are you kidding? The latest rumours on the street - Sussex that is - have Harper proroguing Parliament to take the band on Canadian tour. First stop: New Liskeard!