Guard Dog

As long as they don't ban the Drumming Pug I'm good.

Actually Sharpie is far from alone in his thought process. I know a few people who think Howard Roark is the greatest literary hero of the 20th century and can still get mad social media platforms banning people.

Umm no. In 1984 it was the GOVERNMENT that was making people disappear. Huge, huge difference. And they literally disappeared. Alex Jones still has his website, radio show, and other mediums. YouTube, Facebook, Apple, & Spotify are all private entities. They can ban whomever for any reason or no reason at all. We post on this board and I think Obs is glad to have us here. But it's THEIR board. If they wanted me banned for some reason, or no reason, Fio would do it. And if it happened no rights of mine were violated because I was a guest on their space.

Not even in office yet and the democrats are looking for way to "regulate" what we see on the internet: https://graphics.axios.com/pdf/PlatformPolicyPaper.pdf I could have saved Senator Warner's staff 23 pages of typing with one sentence: "Hey everyone, don't believe everything you read on the internet! A lot of it ain't true!"

We've come a long way from Republicans who swore "Better dead than red" To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, I didn't leave the Republican Party. It left me.

You are getting ripped off. Seriously. You and I are both state employees and compared to the family rate here you are paying a lot. I'm telling you Hurlshot you need to pack up the family and get out of California. Sanity begins east of 120 Longitude. One question. Because of the OOP max that likely qualifies as a high deductible plan. Do they offer you a HSA?

Just like every other company every where ever. I assume health care customers can read. It should not be a mystery what they are buying. People really should look into medi-share plans. It costs a bit more than insurance (depending on the size of the pool) but most of them cover everything over a certain amount. The one I know of is any bill over $1k. They way it works is everyone contributes based on income level and all costs are shared by the pool members. Sort of a "each according to their ability to each according to their need" kind of thing. Only without men with guns threatening violence to compel cooperation.

US remote is requiring a different frame o' reference than many folks will immediate understand. many years past, when we were a wee-tyke on a small ranch in the middle o' god forsaken nowheres, our nearest neighbor were ~1 mile distant. not uncommon. at least we had roads to connect... roads which were impassable 'bout 1/4 o' the year due to mud or flood or snow. one mile distant to dr. quinn when you got heavy forest and uneven terrain seperating you is much further away than it might first seem to be. also cannot count on a life threatening crisis to happen only during pleasant afternoons rather than dead o' night blizzards or thunderstorms. growing up remote and subsistence as did Gromnir kinda takes any o' the jeremiah johnson style romanticism outta the equation for us. cold, with nothing to eat save ketchup soup, and hoping grandmother's fever would break soon 'cause were no way to get her to the doctor or the hospital 'til the weather broke. am needing a break from humanity frequent, but is no way we wanna go back to off-the grid. worked too hard and long to get on the grid. HA! Good Fun! There is definitely a world of difference between living off grid by necessity (poverty) and doing it in a way that is planned and maximizes comfort and convenience. I can tell you for a fact, the latter ain't cheap.

The "media" expends a great deal of angst on how people perceive them as biased, hostile, insert-bad-description-here. The funny thing is "they" sometimes go out of their way to antagonize the very people they say are criticizing them. Of course that may well be deliberate. The best way to cover a story is to create it in the first place. One thing that annoys me is for the longest time people drew no distinctions between news reporting and news commentary. Somewhere along the line the news networks themselves seem to have lost that distinction as well. But bias exists in the news and always has. If not in how a story is reported then it's in what stories are reported. Broadcast minutes, website megabytes, and newspaper inches are all finite. Not everything that is news can be reported by every medium. So they can hype or ignore stories that drive or harm whatever narrative the medium prefers. It's not new Raging against it won't change anything about it. Caveat emptor. You know what you're buying.

This sounds like a really great way to get yourself killed in a medical emergency just because the help you were calling for couldn't arrive in time. It's like that where I live now. It's at least 15-20 minutes for police & EMS to get here and probably 10 for fire. No biggie. The place I was looking at would stretch those times out a bit though.

I found myself in the bathroom. Apparently I hang out over the sink

I have an idea for a exterior bathroom/bath house that uses a septic tank for waste water disposal and a rainwater catch system and solar heater rather than plumbing/water utility/well connection. About a year ago I was looking at some land in Wyoming that was just dirt cheap (and remote with a capital R) but has Platte river access. I was considering trying to build a completely off grid and self sustaining farm. Then I woke up and realized that although the land is cheap, the idea surely is not! Maybe someday though.

You can have both. The former through your mobility/wireless service. The latter with a little bit of ingenuity.

I have had a fascination with the concept of a completely "off grid" home for a long time. One that has no connection to public utility at all and such services as it has are delivered wirelessly. It's certainly doable. But it requires a little bit of thought, a pretty hefty initial investment, and a few trade offs. You will not be able to have all the modern amenities you have now. Sorry Grom, don't know what your kitchen looks like but I'm betting it's nice and draws far more power than you will be able to generate on your own. One thing about it though, you will need to own your own land. Because to do it with a level of comfort and convenience you'll need to do some construction. If you're cool with the unpowered shack in the woods however, that's not hard to do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmYCUljsrDg I LOVE that house though

Actually yeah. I thought Friskies came from here. Don't worry Katphood, if things actually get bad we'll send you some. LOL, I'm sure the DHS would LOVE to know why I'm sending cat food to Tehran. Almost worth it to provoke that confrontation.

I have this mental image of taking them to the guys from Pawn Stars

OK, Gromnir. Let's come at this a different way. Explain WHY competitive market forces (such as those that exist in vet care, automotive repair, etc) would not reduce costs to human health care consumers? How would elimination of territorial exclusivity for insurance companies allowing any insurance provider to sell health plans anywhere (like vet insurance or automotive extended warranties) not reduce the costs of insurance plans? How could punitive damage reform not reduce the cost of malpractice insurance? Health care, in the end, is just another product. A widget. A service people buy and sell. There are many reasons why the prices are high. One of those is that there is 0 incentive to lower them. How could allowing the incentive to exist, as is does in other services, not help?

Well, I posted it as an mildly interesting news article. I don't actually care enough about this issue to analyze if they are lying or not. It's Canada and their government is pretty generous with other peoples money. Maybe they are lying, who knows. The idea of UBI has some merit if it's done as a substitution for other benefits. Not in addition to them. Sooner or later you run out of other peoples money.

Ontario is ending it's universal basic income experiment: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/lisa-macleod-announcement-1.4768626 Apparently it's economically unsustainable. The people who were getting money for doing nothing are not happy about it. There is a shocker.

Again you are saying I'm equating vet care with human care. I'm not. You are no one's fool and you know what I'm getting at here so cut the BS. What I am saying is that is human health care and health insurance was still a competitive industry that would help control the prices. And I'm pointing at vet care as an example of how that works. I am NOT saying the two are the same thing. Yes I understand animals are property and have an actual value. I f-----g know WHY vets don't have to worry about punitive damages. But with reasonable limits on punitive judgement on doctors would go a long way to reducing their insurance costs wouldn't it? And when their costs go down and there is an element of competition in their market place the consumers costs go down. And as far as the death panels thing goes I do not recall saying they were a thing. I only commented that that was what a lot of people were afraid of. And that the fear is not entirely unreasonable. Next time you want to reply to one of my posts kindly turn down the 80's new wave, screw the lid back on the scotch bottle and don't deliberately misconstrue what I'm saying.

Oh for crying out loud. It is a major stretch to suggest that example in any way endorses the compulsory euthanasia of older people who are not worth treating according to the care giver. Yes that is a part of vet care but I think you know what is NOT what I was talking about. There are, by a cursory google search, 7 different companies that are selling over 30 different vet insurance plans that anyone can buy anywhere in this country and Canada. That is six more carriers and 27 more plans than are available to ACA customers buying from an exchange in Tipton County TN. There are over 300 veterinary clinics, hospitals, and home visit services in Tipton & Shelby Counties that will see my dog for anything up to and including complex surgery within the next 48 hours. The lead time to see my doctor for a sinus infection is a week. All of those facilities are competing against each other for my business. That keeps the prices lower. They all offer multiple options for care from basic to levels some human hospitals would envy. The place I took Tommy to see the Canine Oncologist was unlike anything I'd ever seen. Those seven insurance providers are also competing with each other to sell their products. That means a varied selection of plans and prices. Competition has been bred out of the human healthcare system by design. And to top it all Veterinary clinics don't need to worry about punitive damages over mistakes. They are on the hook for actual damages just like everyone else. This is all stuff human healthcare no longer has and a big reason why the cost are spiraling out of control. Not the sole reason, but one of them. Notice I said compulsory euthanasia. Literal death panels. That is the fear many people have of government healthcare. While I seriously doubt that would ever happen I also don't think the concern is all that far fetched. However, it should be an option for people with terminal illnesses to consider themselves. If your life isn't yours to extend or end as your personal ethics determine we can go ahead and dispense with the notion of being free altogether. If we can't make choices for ourselves then we really are just livestock.

Unfortunately I agree with this. Under the circumstance they don't need a warrant. There were exigent circumstances. But it does not appear they made any effort to figure out what was going on. Like I've said before, I'd give the police a choice: either give up your firearms while on duty or give up your qualified immunity. One or the other.

Doing a lot of professional reading lately. My job responsibilities are changing. I'm moving up so to speak to take the place of someone retiring. My education has done little to prepare me for the job I have now. Less so for the one I'm moving into. I need to cram a lot of info into my brain that is already close to being maxed out. Every new thing I lean I forget something old. I'm afraid I won't be able to find my way home one day! Now reading this: