JosephH

jjd, just focusing on healthcare alone we now have one the most expensive and least effective healthcare systems among industrialized nations. It is a serious boat anchor on our economy and the well-being of families. I'm a systems architect and I can tell you for a fact that the IT overhead alone in our system is killing us. That we spend billions annually attempting to interface differing systems at all layers of the healthcare infrastructure - at doctors, pharmacies, hospitals, insurers, states, and the federal government. Every doctor, pharmacy, hospital, insurer, state, and federal agency is using different software that is all constantly churning within itself and at the interfaces with all the other systems. What is required is ONE system of standardized interfaces across all providers, pharmacys, insurers, states, and federal government. The current administrative overhead for private insurers alone is about $100 billion per year and that doesn't count the costs to everyone doing business with them. They whole system likely cost closer to .5 trillion dollars per year. We do not get value for the money spent, period. What bedevils our healthcare system isn't the government - it's the lack of a single-provider system that cuts out all the parasites that provide zero value yet are endemic in our current system. Our healthcare system is a complete failure at the moment based on the dollars spent relative to the services it provides.

So Seahawks, you want to take it sector by sector and show how the collusion between corporations and this adminstration has been anything but a sale of government - to be honest an old school, Eisenhower Republican would consider it treason.

Ever hear of SOX????? Actually, yes - but it's more about governance oversight and regulatory compliance reporting - it is about corporations adhering to the law, not about their efforts to change it. It doesn't address at all the efforts of corporations to get the previous Congress to gut state oversight of whole industries. Or any number of successful campaigns to eliminate or gut consumer and environmental protection laws they find inconvenient. Or the wholesale dismantling or shutdown of our government - agency by agency - by corporate lobbyists appointed as agency heads by a corrupt administration. All in all, SOX is about governance, structure, and reporting within the law - not the wholesale manipulation of law and it's enforcement.

Adam Smith vs. Government-Enabled Theft ======================================= Healthcare - many uninsured, poor coverage, high premiums, litany of expensive middlemen, widespread exclusions of pre-existing conditions, loss of coverage due to major illnesses, Marketing is the highest cost component of pharmecuticals, even non-healthcare corporations are being driven offshore by healthcare costs. Insurance - when a claim is submitted for almost any form of insurance a growning standard practice is now to deny it which drops about 5-20% of claims; then send out a very lowball settlement check resolving another 20-30% of claims who protest; then battling anyone that hasn't gone away stretching out the process and whacking another 20-30%, and only really settling legitimately with the remaining determined policy holders. Education - vast student loan conspiracy rapes the average student and family - is it good business or treason? 50+% of professional graduates are foreigners because we refuse to emphasize educating Americans. Corporations pay next to nothing into state education systems. Education and skills are the only competitive edge the U.S. has and we aren't lagging, we're crashing. The Bush administration has done everything in it's power to remove insurance regulation from states, essentially destroying existing industry oversight or policing. Banking - the Bush administration has engineered the removal of state oversight and regulation of broad swaths of the banking and finance industry essentially destroying existing industry oversight or policing. Immigration - corporations want stunning levels of H-1B visas to import foreign skilled workers rather than invest in Americans the skills they need to do the work. An endless list of skilled and professional "shortages" such as for Nurses are claimed to exist, yet Nursing education has not ramped up at all to educate Americans, all while we invest next to nothing in ourselves. Pensions - For the past quarter decade the American pension and retirement system has been systematically pillaged, looted, and destroyed by financial pirates who, having looted pretty much all the private pension funds, now desperately want to do the same to social security - the last gleaming treasure trove, it maddens them it is still out of reach after years of Bush administration promises it would soon be theirs. Oh, yeah - this version of free-market capitalism is just what Adam Smith had in mind. Or, to quote the summary statement of a friend's PhD dissertation in Accounting - "Corporations without proper government oversight are indistinguishable from organized crime."

As said above, a break that involves tendon attachement points or joints is an order of magnitude more serious than one that is essentially a "chip". The fact you're in a hard cast versus a soft one or no cast says quite a bit by itself. The latter may well be a 6-8 week job, but the form is definitely more of a 4 month one. I've done a minor heel break and ankle sprain of the 6-8 week variety, but there was absolutely no complcations of any kind. Find out what the real story is and post back up with the details of what else is or is not involved in the break.

Got in the water at Doug's Beach in the Gorge on Sat. and got mildly brutalized in a big, very gusty day. I didn't get out at all last year on account of climbing so had to pay a few dues getting my water chops back.

MisterE, that sounds great - you must be getting in good shape pulling down at that altitude...

It's going to be raging in the Gorge - going windsurfing...

Any one planning on climbing Hood should be tracking these two links in addition to the local forecast. The PacSat loop shows weather systems out to Japan and the jet stream snap gives you an idea of where they might land: Pacific Satellite Loop Jet Stream

Oh sorry, I thought you were talking about the Bushco conspirators in the Justice Department. Then again, what the hell, they're only burning the Constitution. Just which American Terrorists are doing the most damage - the ones inside the administration with the power to deconstruct our national government, or the ones on the outside with little means and a decidedly local scope?

Facing the rock you can climb to the right of the 'no climbing sign'. Feel free to PM Kevin or I for details.

You're right, sorry I mispoke after jumbling dates in my currently jumbled mind - they shouldn't be headed for Hawaii, they should have left Hawaii around the end of April-early May and been headed for Southern Alaska. Cali is way south and off-route for that population, especially a mother with a calf. It would be interesting to know if it was a calf from last year or this year. It's more likely this mother is part of the Socorro Island Humpback population. This population has been long suspected of doing a NW Pacific/Bearing migration. It is possible that some of them are now starting to do an American coastal migration similar to Gray Whales.

The more interesting question is what were they doing heading down the West Coast at all (and to where), as opposed to Hawaii, which is where they should have been headed, and why so very late in the year?

Sure, I can bring ropes and a harness... What time?

Bill, I guess I could stand to get off my fat ass and do a few laps...

http://www.supertopo.com/forumsearch.html?o=ASC&s=ratings&v=0&cur=0&ftr=hammerless

Sounds like I left just in time...

Shaping up to be another tough year in the PNW - my condolences and be careful out there...

There are no shortage of road cuts and choss piles around that you allow you to practice nailing. Again, there's little point in leaving short pins, or knifeblades fixed unless you're going to damage the rock removing them. And that's where the practice comes in - if you're going to place them so your second can remove them you need to get picking the right piece down and not overdriving it (which you dont' want to do regardless). By and large in instances where I'm going thin and not going fix a piece I tend to lean more towards Beaks, Peckers, and old Crack 'N Ups rather than pins - they're faster to place and remove. As far as pins rusting out on classic alpine routes, that's a bummer, but had they been bolts they'd be an equally worthless rusted stub given most were placed at a time when SS wasn't the norm. Bottom line is all fixed pro - bolts and pins alike - require maintenance and if they don't get it they end up trash.

You never came back here - why do you think I was emailing...

Sure...

Congrats Mikey - if I make it your beer is on me...

We had a large angora named "fluffy" when I was a kid. Fluffy would bring home full-grown ducks, pheasants, and rabbits and leave them on our doorstep or young ones alive to play with them. He didn't outright kill dogs, but he did have several put to sleep. He'd get them to chase him, run up a leaning tree just high enough for them to put their front paws up on the trunk, and then he'd jump on their face and blind them. He did this to a St. Bernard and a Shepard that we knew of - both were mean dogs that regularly ran amok and threatened folks on other's property. Fluffy ruled that neighborhood.

That's a surprise - with all the heart-felt sincerity between the two of you I would have guessed it would have been "Alpine Betty". Which mountain were you two on that summer...? No matter, "Buddy" or "Betty", I don't think Falwell would have approved.

Bill and Ujohn, thanks for the rides. Frank, sorry about the pre-modern antics...