Disqus - Friends of Vegasjoe57

Re: Golden Retirement Benefits For Congress | Bankrate.com

Getting Tired — Sun, 04 Aug 2013 20:40:32 -0000

I don't think the populace has the wherewithal to vote them out. Let's hope some alien race flies in and vaporizes the Capitol, preferably on State of the Union night, when they are all in one place.

Re: Will The Medicaid Safety Net Be Stretched? | Bankrate.com

Getting Tired — Mon, 19 Aug 2013 09:27:32 -0000

Show your proof. I also am a healthcare provider and take strong exception to your right-wing-predictable trope about the doctors being the problem. Most of the fraud is in the DME (durable medical equipment) arena, where fly-by-night "businessmen" can set up shop and rip off Medicare and Medicaid then disappear, deflecting their fraud onto a shell network of corporate entities-much like how the financial services sector operates. Remember The Scooter Store?

Most legitimate studies show that the percentage of people gaming the Medicaid system is rather low. The uninsured are also gaming the system: not Medicaid, but they take advantage of laws that require hospitals to treat them regardless of ability to pay, so they use emergency rooms as their primary provider. To paraphrase Mitt Romney himself, when he got the mandatory health care law put through in Massachusetts, "We require people who drive to be financially liable for their actions, so why not require the same for those who use the health care system?"

Re: Shutdown leaves courts running on fumes

Getting Tired — Sun, 13 Oct 2013 11:28:58 -0000

Most folks are basically good. They will continue to do their jobs, for a while, as best they can even if they aren't getting paid. But that doesn't mean the government should expect it of them. That is exploitation. Bad enough we have exploitation on a grand scale of employees by corporations, we need that from our government "of, by, and for the people" too??

Re: Shutdown leaves courts running on fumes

Getting Tired — Sun, 13 Oct 2013 11:30:42 -0000

OK, and the increasing wealth of the top 1% at the expense of everyone else isn't wealth redistribution?

Re: James Avery, star of 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air' dies at 65

Getting Tired — Wed, 01 Jan 2014 15:45:32 -0000

CNN sure has been slipping in terms of journalistic integrity. A man who was born in 1948 that passed away on 12/31/2013 would be 65 years of age, not 68. Let's see how long it takes CNN to figure it out.

Re: Heroic Sir Peter Maxwell Davies lifts the Curse of the Ninth

Getting Tired — Mon, 06 Jan 2014 15:29:06 -0000

Aye. I decided to find some of his music on Youtube, being unfamiliar with it. I got through about 3 1/2 minutes of his 9th symphony, and I think I must agree with you. And I am an avowed open-minded musician because I am composer! Sir Peter is a proponent of "new music". I think it is a stupid term; if you compose, you obviously are producing "new music". If one composes old music, then one is not a composer at all, but a plagiarist!

Re: Top Ten Scary Quotes by the Religious Right

Getting Tired — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 14:50:43 -0000

There is a bright side: Falwell and Rehnquist are dead, Christine O'Donnell and Dubya are now irrelevant, nobody with a brain takes anything Sarah Palin says seriously, and most of these other clowns have little national impact. However, "the cost of freedom is eternal vigilance".

Re: Top Ten Scary Quotes by the Religious Right

Getting Tired — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 14:56:30 -0000

And sometimes, I think, why waste so much time trying to fix this place? It's a lot easier to just move on to another nation or place in this world with some shred of decency and tolerance. How about a top ten list of those such places?

Re: Spectacular beach art that's destroyed at high tide

Getting Tired — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 13:54:51 -0000

Life itself is ephemeral, fleeting. Perhaps that's the underlining meaning of his art. How many times have you heard people say to get out and enjoy life before it's too late?

Re: Guinness pulls out of St. Patrick's Day parade

Getting Tired — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 15:20:02 -0000

As for all you gay-haters, who probably also have a problem with people who do not look like you, or pray like you, here is my fervent hope that your next colonoscopy be done by a crazed homosexual gastroenterologist. Thank you in advance...

Re: Guinness pulls out of St. Patrick's Day parade

Getting Tired — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 15:47:20 -0000

Yeah. People said that about Elie Wiesel as he kept making public appearances to remind the world of the Holocaust. All repressed groups have had to fight for their rights, which typically included getting in the public's face at every opportunity. Let's start with the miners and workers in America in the 1880s. No one here is old enough to remember the womens suffrage marches and protests; some may be old enough to remember the civil rights marches and protests in the 1960s. Now the gays are the repressed group. Nowadays, in addition to maximum exposure (i.e. protests and marches), a repressed group can hit the opposition financially. Guinness is simply seeing potential lost revenue and bad reputation, and they are not anti-gay enough to take the chance. Unlike Dan T. Cathy of Chik-fil-a, who tapped into a mass of Jesus-sanctioned hate in the flyover zone of the US; only in America and Putin's Russia could a businessman make more money by engendering hate than tolerance.

Re: How ODs and other doctors find strength in numbers

Getting Tired — Thu, 10 Jul 2014 17:21:07 -0000

Sounds like a good idea. Besides, someone has to compete with Koch Eye, who have pretty much taken over eye care in RI

Re: What Are Mothers to Do? How a New Tennessee Law Criminalizes Pregnancy and Promotes Religion

Getting Tired — Fri, 25 Jul 2014 20:50:59 -0000

Welcome to the Christian, jingoistic South. Applying reason, and working with these societal ills takes too much work and, especially, money, which belongs to the preachers and the CEOs. Laws like these are going to bring us back to the stoning pits of ancient Palestine (or modern Sudan).

Sanctimonious legislators are a big part of the problem, as is the hyper-conservative society that helps to engender a significant underbelly of drug-addicted people who receive little or no sex education thus end up pregnant and can barely figure out why.

Re: Private: The Ethical Dilemma: How Do I Respond to “Have a Blessed Day”?

Getting Tired — Fri, 25 Jul 2014 21:00:15 -0000

Too many words for those folks! :-)

Re: Private: The Ethical Dilemma: How Do I Respond to “Have a Blessed Day”?

Getting Tired — Fri, 25 Jul 2014 21:06:28 -0000

Yep. I live in the south only because I am making a lot more money in my line of work here than in the northeast where I came from. I intend to get outta here once I retire, especially now with the heightened jingo-Jesus sentiment everywhere (if there is a hell, it must be Fayetteville, NC).

Because I am a doctor, I just smile and nod when people say this stuff to me, as anything else will surely kill my practice. But if a person wanted to be really snarky, they can respond with "Fuck you very much", which, if said properly, sounds just like 'thank you very much".

Re: ESPN employees reportedly want Britt McHenry fired

Getting Tired — Sun, 19 Apr 2015 15:46:49 -0000

I don't watch sports as I have better things to do with my time. That said, this blonde moron has proven the stereotype in spades. And she has betrayed herself to the world as a lily-white, milquetoast narcissist. Of no real value, she tries to invent some. Better luck next life, idiot, if you're a Buddhist.

So, who is this DDofAL clown who never learned that capital letters only belong on place names, people, and at the beginning of a sentence? Oh, yeah, the handle suggests he/she is from Alabama. That explains it.

Re: Rules Are for Schmucks: Before Star Wars, Let Us Pray

Getting Tired — Sat, 05 Dec 2015 21:57:09 -0000

How about if groups of people staged a protest by going to the theater, and when the stupid church ad runs, they all stand up and shout at the movie screen, "F*** you, Church of England!" then sit down and watch the movie. That would certainly go viral all over every social media known to man nad, hopefully, make the church jingos look stupid.

Re: Ten Things the Eye Doctor Might Not Tell You

Getting Tired — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 19:12:19 -0000

What a load of rubbish disguised as bullshit! Obviously written by a shill for online glasses sellers, probably an ophthalmologist. Of course, ophthalmologists and optometrists are not the same; the former uses technicians to do the exams, the latter does the exam himself. Most eye MDs would rather just deal with surgical cases and let good optometrists near them handle all the rest. The days of optometrists being glorified lens grinders ended long ago.

Sure, you can save $10 and not get your lenses scratch-coated. In three months they will be useless, and, since uncoated lenses NEVER have warranties on them, you will spend more money on a new pair of lenses. If optometrists wanted to gouge patients on glasses sales, they would recommend uncoated lenses. I've never seen one who did.

As for buying glasses online, the stupidity of the public never seems to amaze me. If it's online, it must be better! Try getting some service if/when something goes wrong. Most people would never buy a custom-fitted suit or dress online, but will buy custom-made durable medical equipment online. Stupid! Lastly, when you finish playing optician because you broke your glasses, don't expect the shop you visit to fix it for free. No auto mechanic would do that if you tried to change your oil and cross-threaded the oil filter.

Re: Different Types of Eye Exams

Getting Tired — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 19:25:31 -0000

What you are describing is scleral depression, done to delineate between odd-looking areas of peripheral retina and a real retinal hole or break, which must be treated promptly with laser photocoagulation-to prevent a retinal detachment. Having practiced for 27 years, I can tell you that doing an exam with gloves on is much harder, and you can't feel through the glove very well so you might push too hard.

This technique is the best way to examine the retina after a vitreous detachment since risk of retinal detachment rises dramatically after the vitreous detaches. While hand-washing between patients is a good idea, our hands don't come in contact with anything besides the skin, which exists to keep bacteria and viruses out. The facial skin is typically covered with bacteria. the scleral depressor probably wiped some off your eyelids-an added bonus.

Getting a followup retina exam is very recommended. Once the vitreous detaches, it can take up to 8 weeks for retina tears to happen. If you just go home and only act if your vision gets blurred, you might have suffered what we call a macula-off retinal detachment, which can be fixed but your vision will be permanently ruined. Go to the followup and be proactive.

They say scleral depression is only a little uncomfortable. Baloney-it almost always hurts.

Re: Macular Degeneration

Getting Tired — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 19:26:08 -0000

That's what eye exams are for.

Re: New Age Bullshit Generator

Getting Tired — Sun, 07 Feb 2016 16:31:31 -0000

Yes, today I roamed into oneness with the quantum soup. And I learned that, indeed, the crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe.

Re: The Ethical Dilemma: Stop Playing Christian Music at Work!

Getting Tired — Fri, 12 Feb 2016 21:27:26 -0000

That's not a coop-that sounds more like South Carolina.

Re: Girls Scouts: Good Without God (And Without the Church’s Blessing)

Getting Tired — Sun, 06 Mar 2016 14:36:08 -0000

Well, now, I sure feel better about the 20 or so boxes of cookies I bought this year! Had I read this article before the sale ended, I might have bought some more and had them shipped to the archbishop with instructions to share them with his altar boys.

Re: Rules Are for Schmucks: Preacher-in-Chief

Getting Tired — Sun, 06 Mar 2016 14:40:28 -0000

I agree, and, in my opinion, Obama squandered the rest of his political capital pushing Bush-like mass surveillance-4th Amendment be damned! If any of the Republican clowns get elected, it would be a good time to see what all those expats find interesting about living in other countries.

Re: South Carolina hospital cuts 400 jobs to stem losses

Getting Tired — Sun, 20 Mar 2016 12:04:02 -0000

Oh, but all that money wasted is so the hospital can have medical records that are "meaningfully useful". What we have is another industry screwing over the American public-software vendors that are incompetent, are beholden only to government bureaucrats who invent these idiotic standards, then proceed to fleece the providers while selling them useless garbage. Welcome to America!