Here's what I don't get....

Chancellor Merkel called President Obama on the telephone to request that he not listen to her telephone calls.

Why didn't he say "Okay" and hang up the phone?

In point of fact, the US has not been tapping her phone.

They've been picking up her conversations by concealed transmitters that were cleverly and surreptitiously installed just below her ears:

CTYankee is busy this week, so I've been put in charge of shaking up the Friday Art Quiz.

This time it's "Jeopardy Style"

I'll post the answers, and you have to post the pictures!


Ready?

#1 - Oh, I've seen that before, but can't remember it

#2 - Definitely Not Caravaggio

#3 - It looks like something in the Sistine Chapel, but instead it's from somewhere you never heard of.

#4 - The Dutch Guy!

#5 - Wasn't that one stolen from somewhere in Norway?

#6 - I'm pretty sure its a Mucha, but it might not be.

As noted in earlier threads, there was a woman who took the podium during the vote, started yelling something, and was removed from the House chamber.

She was apparently an actual House stenographer, and not an infiltrator. Reports from Twitter suggest she started ranting on about Jesus, Masons, and the House doing the work of the devil.

Everyone please check to see if your spelunking buddy is safely out, or we'll have to send in a search party.

The fact of the matter is that one of the things driving up the cost of health care for everyone are the unreimbursed expenses run up by people who have no health insurance.

What a $5K deductible means - on the other side of the equation - is that when a patient comes through the door, the hospital is looking at a maximum $5K loss.

Back when I was much younger, and my income was $12K a year, I had an event which incurred a $7500 hospital bill.

They chased me for a while over it, but the fact of the matter was that I was a grad student with no money, and I spent some time after that making $45 a day as a substitute teacher for a while after that. I don't know if things have changed, but there was no finance charge on that debt, and by the time I had real employment, the time had expired for it to be collectible anyway. After seven years, it dropped off my credit report.

Yeah, with high deductibles, some people are going to get bills they can't pay. You know what they are going to do? Not pay them. The upside - for everyone else - is that everything ABOVE that deductible WILL be paid.

The other consequence of that dynamic is that it will be a lot easier to negotiate away those bills. Let's say you run the hospital finance department. Someone racked up $50K for something, and they had a $5K deductible. You get $45K from the insurance company, and bill the guy $5K. You find out the guy has no money and can't pay the $5K. What are you going to do:

(A) Spend your staff time bugging a guy with no money for $5K

(B) Spend $1K on a law firm to get a default judgment the guy can't pay

(C) Sell it to a collection agency for $1K and they can try to collect until the statutory limit expires

(D) write it off as a 5K loss and take the tax benefit

If you answered (D), then congratulations, you just improved the bottom line.

At the end of the day, the hospital got $45K on a $50K bill, which is a lot better for the hospital - and everybody else - than getting 0 on a $50K bill.

It's pretty good. You get a free implanted radio receiver, a change of batteries once a year, and someone from the government to watch you all of the time.

Has anyone checked her birth certificate?

Come to think of it, that website is working better than much of the rest of the government right now.

You gotta put that in perspective.

A hearing for a Pennsylvania police chief who made profanity-laced Internet videos about liberals and the Second Amendment was halted suddenly tonight after a handgun belonging to one of his supporters slid out of its holster and crashed onto the concrete floor.

The loaded semi-automatic handgun landed inches away from Gilberton Chief Mark Kessler and his attorney. It did not go off, but attorney Joseph Nahas said that he and other officials were concerned about the safety of everyone in the tiny, crowded meeting room at Borough Hall.

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/breaking-news/index.ssf/2013/10/gilberton_pa_police_chiefs_hea.html