Letters to the Editor
Elephantman
Published Letters: 1087 Editor's Choice: 15
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Again, I suggest to those who might think that the current healthcare system is so badly broken; don't use it if you feel that way.
[Read the article: Is there a doctor in the mouse?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If you think doctors are a "leading cause of death"* don't go to them; you'll eliminate that "risk."
If you think big pharma is ripping you off, don't buy their products.
If you think big teaching hospitals are horrible, don't go to them.
If you think health insurance is a dangerous ripoff, don't buy it. Save your money, negotiate your own rates, pay cash, and make all the personal decisions that you want. (This is not such a facetious idea; this is the one sure-fire way to restrain rising health care costs.)
Otherwise, enjoy the fact that in 21st century America, we have the finest and most unimaginably advanced system of health care in the history of planet Earth.
*Where, I wonder, would the category of "Doctors" rate on list of the "leading causes of the cure of illness" and the list of things responsible for the "transformation of diseases from incurable to curable"? Somewhere above the category of 'holistic naturapaths'?
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Wow, the Salonistas really went off the rails on this story!
[Read the article: The U.S. military inflicts more damage on its own credibility]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I saw both tapes, the navy crewman's, and the Iranian crewman's.
Where was the "fuckup"? (This thread seems to have drawn out even more than the usual amount of foul-mouthed Salonista bile.) The Iranians provoked, and the U.S. navy responded with caution. The Bush administration and the Jiont Chiefs reported the incident for what it was. An apparent provocation by the Iranians.
And since we've entered the waters of foul-mouthed retorts, I say YOU'RE GOD DAMNED RIGHT I WANT THE U.S. NAVY PATROLLING THE STRAITS OF HORMUZ, PROTECTING THE TRANSPORT OF GULF OIL! And if Iran wants to provoke us in that mission, I say, we should act cautiously -- and warn Iran to back down. That's exaclty what the administration has done. Exaclty the right thing. None of you seem to know how provocative these actions were in terms of a naval encounter. This wasn't water skiing on Lake Wobegon. The straits of Hormuz are an area where danger lurks beyond the horizon. It is shocking that so many Salon readers are so deranged with Bush-hatred syndrome that they couldn't even remember the USS Cole.
The real fight here is not about a military encounter. It is about Bush hatred, and a general foreign policy dispute with Iran. Everything else is just an excuse to lash out at a Republican administration.
And yes, I too think the the kind of pain that Glenn Greenwald felt in taking sides against the US military under the present Administration is like the "pain" I feel when I am served a cold beer and a deep dish pizza.
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Uh, your honor, I don't have any further questions for this witness...
[Read the article: Is there a doctor in the mouse?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Letters to editors
Salon:
Unfortunately, your Letters To Editors area is cluttered with one or two Trolls, whose means of self-entertainment is unlimited and manifest of their low level of taste. Either they are unengaged professionally, retired, or working from their offices at the expense of their employers, but will claim they are self-employed, if so, well one of them may soon be unemployed.
When people hide behind nom de guerre’ it is an attestation of cowardice. My name is my name, and true professionals don’t obscure their identities from the public like some of the sinus infected-quidnunc, ignoramuses who invade and Troll such sites as yours making their callowed, presence and obnoxious public, unintellectual, masturbation of ratiocination, a public spectacle, sans the realization that their inanity is plainly visible to all who read except the very limited number of sycophants who are their severely limited, smattering, of intellectual inferiors. They are so self-absorbed that they are clueless of their boorishness, but are so enamored of reading their own dribblemouthbabble, that they miss the drool running down their chins onto your Letters To Editors spaces, and gooing those spaces up with gunky globs of Gook.
I suggest that you clean up your LTE area and dump the elephantine egos with the flea cranium cavities and, deeply sloped, frontal lobe. Limit letters to editors writers to one or two comments per column, the dirty-dish ataxia of a single commenter interfering in each offering, is not bringing you more readers but less, including me.
-- ProfessorEmeritusPeterB
I rest my case.
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Ha! Nequals fell for it.
[Read the article: Is there a doctor in the mouse?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yet another twisted, truncated MSM story on the supposedly-failing American healthcare system. But Nequals falied to include this quote formt Reuters write-up of the same story:
"Nolte said the large number of Americans who lack any type of health insurance -- about 47 million people in a country of about 300 million, according to U.S. government estimates -- probably was a key factor in the poor showing of the United States compared to other industrialized nations in the study.
'I wouldn't say it (the last-place ranking) is a condemnation, because I think health care in the U.S. is pretty good if you have access. But if you don't, I think that's the main problem, isn't it?' Nolte said in a telephone interview."
In addition the authors acknowledged that the U.S. was a rather extreme statistical outlier in this survey, which makes me very suspicious that there was a seriously flawed methodology in this study. Frankly, I don't know, and I am guessing that Nequals doesn't know either.
But we do know this about some of these foreign-based reports on American healthcare, timed with American elections. Remember the Lancet study that indicated something like 650,000 Iraqi deaths as a result of the liberation and the subsequent civil conflict? Turns out that was a pretty suspicious report too, notwithstanding the fact that it is still quoted as gospel by the credulous Salon readership:
http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/databomb/index.htm
Nequals, it's a free country! Go to Canada for your hip replacement! Get you coronary catheterization in Finland! Pop down to Mexico if you need an MRI! Don't let this big, bad American healthcare system run you down!