How is everyone doing?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Okay, another waste of time as usual...........

[Chris Webster]

Is school actually open???

Not yet...teachers are supposed to report back August 3 and first day of classes is supposed to be August 10.

[Neil]

"I cant imagine the anguish, pain and depression you are suffering because Trump is the president of this country you live in...

Or the fact of how much you despise capitalism when you were obviously part of the capitalistic medical industrial complex and made your living from it and that you can continue to support a capitalistic toy company that sold out all 350 of it's union employees and moved it's production to the biggest racist oppressive country in the world. One that rounds up all the Muslims and put them in concentration camps to be brainwashed."

Trump deeply bad. Sick man. Evil man. Me fine. World always has had monsters like Putin and Trump in it. Resigned to that in my eighth decade of life. Capitalism is the worst system except for all the other systems . Same thing Churchill said about democracy. I support capitalism fully, with government oversight to prevent the Trumps of this world from screwing things and people up.

Lionel is in China because of the capitalist focus on maximal profits and because Mike Wolf is a successful and voracious capitalist who has minimal ethics and a Trumpian sense of ego and entitlement. Without Wolf there is no China Lionel. Nothing to do with me or other quiche eating liberals .

It isn't the Democrats who screwed the unions and supported moving business offshore, in the main. It isn't the Democrats who made nice to Mao and his successors. Hello Tricky Dick. Trump cannot get his kisser off the rearends of the Chinese leaders or any other totalitarian monsters who he feels a deep personal affinity with. He is a sucker for anyone as evil as himself or even more evil. It gets him off in some way I suppose. I look forward to watching him face the courts when he leaves office in January or 4 years from January. I do not feel anguish, pain or depression because I know that karma is a bitch and people like Trump wind up, often as not, reaping what they sow. So I'm entirely calm about things. Our military and judicial system will not allow this dishonest, psychopathic fascist abomination to institute the police state he yearns to rule without opposition. 230+ years or so of US history is on my side, for one thing, not his. I at least know that Finland is not part of Russia . This too shall pass.

[Neil]

PS: I'm in favor of a government sponsored/regulated health care system where hospitals don't sit half empty, no administrator is paid millions of dollars and no doctors earn those kind of dollars. So much for my support of the capitalist-medical complex. Am I prepared to earn less money to make this happen? Yes. Do I think for profit medicine is a contradiction in terms? Yes. Did I earn a good solid upper middle class living as an academic physician? Sure. Did I become fabulously wealthy so I could retire at 55? No. Do I mind? No.

And basically the medical industry is a government regulated utility, protected monopoly, not a capitalist enterprise. It couldn't work as capitalism, as capitalism prioritizes profit, not social service. A truly capitalist health care system would let people suffer and die with no or minimal treatment since that's the cheapest cost to maximize profits. So whatever our important medical institutions are, they are not capitalist, they are a government managed (poorly) and funded utility.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

PS: I'm in favor of a government sponsored/regulated health care system where hospitals don't sit half empty, no administrator is paid millions of dollars and no doctors earn those kind of dollars.

I take issue with that statement regarding administrators - my father was a hospital administrator and never made that kind of money ever after making it to Pres. of the hospital. The doctors and department heads, and the Board members were in the rarefied income air for income.

As for Gov't regulated - the Gov't is not a very good organization for running any business, generally borderline incompetent, and is far too subject to interference and influence while simultaneously tying itself up in excess regulation and red tape bureaucracy. Fold in insurance companies and pharma with their hands on the backs of Congress steering the decisions towards that capitalistic scenario of denial of services and maximization of profit and it's not a recipe for success for the country.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Another lovely morning, tea and reading in the morning off the deck listening to the bird's serenade the backyard before the temperature ascends into the 90's.

A bit of time here and then it's Editor hat on in the home office for a few hours.

[Neil]

"
I take issue with that statement regarding administrators - my father was a hospital administrator and never made that kind of money ever after making it to Pres. of the hospital. The doctors and department heads, and the Board members were in the rarefied income air for income."

Times have changed. For-profit hospitals have proliferated and there are lots of vice-presidents of this or that who are earning millions of dollars per year, the CEO tens of millions. Even at not-for-profits, the senior administrative leadership, usually not physicians by training, are often paid many hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the typical internist, pediatrician, psychiatrist and other primary care docs. There are graphs of the growth of administrative personnel vs. healthcare professionals over the last few decades and the administrative costs have outstripped growth of healthcare providers by many fold. Admittedly a lot of this growth is due to overenthusiastic regulation (human subjects, HIPPA, billing compliance) driven mostly by Democratic led governments. 90% total rubbish in my view. Our administrative costs account for 25% or so of healthcare dollars, which is double or triple what is typical in many developed nations.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

"
I take issue with that statement regarding administrators - my father was a hospital administrator and never made that kind of money ever after making it to Pres. of the hospital. The doctors and department heads, and the Board members were in the rarefied income air for income."

Times have changed. For-profit hospitals have proliferated and there are lots of vice-presidents of this or that who are earning millions of dollars per year, the CEO tens of millions. Even at not-for-profits, the senior administrative leadership, usually not physicians by training, are often paid many hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the typical internist, pediatrician, psychiatrist and other primary care docs. There are graphs of the growth of administrative personnel vs. healthcare professionals over the last few decades and the administrative costs have outstripped growth of healthcare providers by many fold. Admittedly a lot of this growth is due to overenthusiastic regulation (human subjects, HIPPA, billing compliane) driven mostly by Democratic led governments. 90% total rubbish in my view. Our administrative costs account for 25% or so of healthcare dollars, which is double or triple what is typical in many developed nations.

Well, given the weight and crap that I saw carried and dealt with daily by my father, he was grossly underpaid vs. all those he was overseeing and answering to at their beck & call. Figure 10% of his real value. He headed up the health care system for the 5 counties of Philly and all that did was get him more grief from just about everyone. I doubt that 25% was anywhere close to what the administrative costs were then - probably single digits at best. I could always tell when the Board was meeting at the house - driveway was full of cars worth more than our house with guys in suits that cost more than than my college tuition that year. Interestingly enough, a Marine Staff Sarge could get them to do things.

I'm going to reject a few more manuscripts to cheer me up now........

[v8vega]

I go to 2 big churches one Sat. evening and the other Sun. The Sunday one today has many classrooms and is opening today for 100 or less in each classroom. Next Sunday they are going to have a huge tent in the parking lot. Our dictator governor who Niel would love allows this. my other big church is opening the 1st weekend in August, I'll pretty well be back to normal then.

[healey36]

Without Wolf there is no China Lionel.

You can't possibly believe that.

[Neil]

Actually, you are right. think the move abroad would have happened eventually, but not when it did. As long as Richard Kughn owned Lionel it was going to stay in the USA, but the treachery of Mike Wolf and his own illness made that impossible. Once a venture capital, private equity firm took over ownership, it was perhaps inevitable. But Mike Wolf's success and his legal machinations accelerated the process strikingly.

[J. S. Bach]

CAN WE KEEP THE DAMN POLITICS OUT THESE POSTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[rogruth]

PS: I'm in favor of a government sponsored/regulated health care system where hospitals don't sit half empty, no administrator is paid millions of dollars and no doctors earn those kind of dollars.

I take issue with that statement regarding administrators - my father was a hospital administrator and never made that kind of money ever after making it to Pres. of the hospital. The doctors and department heads, and the Board members were in the rarefied income air for income.

As for Gov't regulated - the Gov't is not a very good organization for running any business, generally borderline incompetent, and is far too subject to interference and influence while simultaneously tying itself up in excess regulation and red tape bureaucracy. Fold in insurance companies and pharma with their hands on the backs of Congress steering the decisions towards that capitalistic scenario of denial of services and maximization of profit and it's not a recipe for success for the country.

I would rather the medical people get it than the jocks ( professional athletes of any kind ) and musicians, I use the word loosely, that are under dressed and over sexed.

I am not going to debate this but have added my thoughts.

[rogruth]

CAN WE KEEP THE DAMN POLITICS OUT THESE POSTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dave, I agree. I have said before that the three things friends should avoid talking about if they want to stay friends is politics religion and who
is having sex with whom (?).
I don't remember discussing sex yet and hope we don't.

[chuck]

Stayed up late to watch the alleged penumbral eclipse. We live at the extreme western end of the Eastern Time zone. I checked at 10:50 to see if the moon was even visible. It was, big and bright. I kept checking up till 12:15. I was using a pair of binoculars and was able to identify Jupiter (it resolved to a disk and I could see two of the four "big" moons) and Saturn was borderline disk, too big and bright for a star. Last view the moon showed a "smudge" between 12 and 2 which I took to be part of the "eclipse".

Bad news (besides not seeing the eclipse was you should always review your gear BEFORE you go out in the dark to use it. I was going to try to take some pictures with my digital camera on a tripod. I couldn't see the control for locking the tripod's elevation setting. It's twist lock on the center stem which was impossible to read/see in the dark. The camera controls were equally frustrating as the tiny buttons on the back are impossible to see in the dark and so closely spaced you can easily hit the wrong one(s), over and over.

Good news, I actually got a good nights sleep out of all this non sense. I didn't really care if I got any pictures and was happy my new eyeglass lenses allowed me to see Jupiters moons with the binoculars. That wasn't possible all of last year.

BTW it was amazing how easy it was to reset the camera settings when I got back inside where there was some light.

At least it isn't about politics, religion, or sex!