so why is Hillary inevitable, given that her efforts took serious discussion of health care reform off the table for about 16 years?

I'm looking for random twinkle lights for my tree. Years ago we had a bunch of C-7 bulbs that would twinkle individually making a very nice effect. All I can find are strings that flash every fifth bulb at set intervals.

I'm thinking cool white in order to get accurate colors, but I'd like some input one way or another.

OK, so it's pretty obvious where I stand.

able to explain this to me:

Sometimes with an old house, the plaster just gives up the ghost and starts crumbling. We had a friend who knocked down all the plaster, then tore out the lath as well. Our laths were in good shape, so we just applied the sheet rock right over them. The result was sheet rock with a nice solid backing which withstood the test of time and a pack of growing children.

I challenge anyone to watch some of those early episodes and tell me how emergency rooms have changed since then. Some of the equipment is different, but they are still understaffed and IMO, chaotic and poorly managed. I am also of the firm belief that hospitals use ER charges as a profit center. Any hospital bill is full of incongruous and random charges, but ER bills take the cake. Why else would the bills for simple services be so outlandishly high?

We still have lousy experiences in Emergency Rooms because there is no real pressure for hospitals to change the way they are run. Any manager of a grocery store quickly learns that there better be some extra cash registers open on pay day. How is it that a visit to an ER still means hours of waiting with no information? It's what I went through back when my infant son had asthma attacks. It was what I went through last winter after a serious auto accident. (I'd also note that I saw several violations of infection control protocols with poor management of facilities as a root cause.)

I have a chronic autoimmune disease and I can tell you, it's easier to beat yourself up for being lazy and unorganized than it is to sit back and acknowledge that you have limitations because you are ill. I have also seen people seriously ill with acute symptoms, denying to themselves that anything is wrong. I have seen people put off going to a doctor, waiting for the symptoms to go away on their own.

The Ebola patient did not tell the ER staff he thought he had Ebola because he was hoping that they would find something else wrong. The best news he ever had was that it was only the flu.

back when everything was on sale in June. I'm out of town right now (my son is home holding down the fort) and I'm getting messages that UPS is leaving packages for me. The problem? I'm sure I actually ordered all this stuff, but I'm not sure what I ordered. It's going to be a gardener's surprise party when I get home!

# People killed by Ebola this week in the United States - 0

# People killed by gunfire this week in the United States - 200+ by my estimate

(Based on CDC report of 11,068 killed by firearms in 2011 -

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm