I can't speak to Canada's system, but I can weigh in on Medicare quality of care. My Grandmother, the woman who raised me, was diagnosed with lung cancer in her early 70's. Since I was helping to take care of her at the time, I got to see what I have to look forward to in my later life.

Consistently we had to wait for treatments to be approved and she was often delayed for patients that were not on Medicare. Additionally, every single therapy or quality of life aid was scrutinized beyond belief.

As an example, the doctor gave her a prescription for an oxygen tank and delivery system after they removed part of her lung that was not responding to chemo. Medicare refused to cover it without an 'oxygen saturation level test'. This 'test' was horrible. She had to try to breathe without the machine for multiple minutes, struggling and gasping for air. It was fucking brutal to watch, but the people that Medicare sent to verify didn't give a shit. They basically told me that if her saturation wasn't low enough after 15 minutes, she couldn't be covered for the machine. I couldn't take it, so I told them to fuck off out of her house and paid out of my own pocket for the rental.

These are just some examples, there were others before she died that made it quite clear that Medicare is not quality care. It's basically the bare minimum they have to give you to keep you alive. So this video comparing Canada's care to Medicare doesn't reassure me in the slightest and it's almost certainly an unfair comparison to their system. I can tell you I am dreading making the swap to Medicare in 20-25 years, let alone being forced into something similar sooner. As far as ACA, I don't really care. It's probably good for people who don't have good jobs or who are unemployed, but I will be more than happy to hang onto my extremely good insurance provided through my employment.

Monica explained in one episode that they could only afford the apartment because it was rent controlled and was actually her grandmother's apartment.

The guys who made this video forfeited all credibility saying on the show they never go to the bathroom or clean up. The show definitely had people using the bathroom on several occasions and Monica was always cleaning up.

And they weren't from old money. Phoebe and Joey were poor.

This seems like it was written by someone who only ever watched a couple of episodes.

My grandmother used to say the same thing...angels have wings...and claimed the quadruple bypass scars on her back were where she had her wings removed...but I realized something else had wings....BATS!!! From then on we just called her an old bat.

Yep. He just accidentally insinuated that his grandmother was promiscuous, and that's why Phil nearly choked to death. Because otherwise it's not that funny a comeback.

More philosophical wank citing junk analogies (lol, blowing up peoples houses with them still inside = drunken manslaughter in a bar fight?) to justify a position directly contradicted by people who should know...

http://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-auschwitz-borders-revisited/7847

"The late Tommy Lapid, justice minister in Ariel Sharon’s government, caused an uproar in 2004 when he said that images of an elderly Palestinian woman in Gaza “crouching on all fours, searching for her medicines in the ruins of her house” demolished by the Israeli army reminded him of his own grandmother who perished at Auschwitz. Lapid compared the Israeli army’s writing of numbers on the arms and foreheads of Palestinian prisoners to the Nazi practice of tattooing concentration camp inmates. “As a refugee from the Holocaust I find such an act insufferable,” he said in 2002."

"Lapid, who was chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, also likened the routine harassment of Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron to the anti-Semitism of pre-World War II Europe. “It was not crematoria or pogroms that made our life in the diaspora bitter before they began to kill us,” he said in 2007, “but persecution, harassment, stone-throwing, damage to livelihood, intimidation, spitting and scorn.” Lapid did not live long enough to see Hebron settlers attempt to burn down a house with a large Palestinian family trapped inside, an act witnessed on 4 December by Avi Issacharoff, reporter for the Israeli daily Haaretz, who called it “a pogrom in the worst sense of the word.”

or perhaps:

http://youtu.be/qMGuYjt6CP8

"Sir Gerald, who was brought up as an orthodox Jew and Zionist, said: "My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town a German soldier shot her dead in her bed.

"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."

He said the claim that many of the Palestinian victims were militants "was the reply of the Nazi" and added: "I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants."

I'll take the word of people who lived through the Holocaust and the formation of Israel over you... = P

I checked with my mom and it was Alanen.

Thanks for the detailed Schuko info. By the way, I'm part Finn on my Grandmother's side. I think the family name was Alanin or Alaninin. Something like that. I'd love to make it to the Scandinavian countries some day.

My grandmother had a neighbor who made wooden toys for children in his garage. On his left hand he didn't have a single finger that was full length.

OK, a few things.
First of all, how can you hate this? They even had a vagician!
Still cracks me up.

Second, look, I'm not a female so I'm probably not the best person to comment on this but...
I've seen "Carrie" and even read the book (which obviously makes me an expert), so I wouldn't compare the first period with random erections. I don't know about you but I had them way before I knew what they truly meant. When girls get their first period, they are at least capable of understanding it (depending on their sexual education more or less well). And it is a bigger deal. Not like making you an awkward, homicidal X-Men big but noteworthy when it happens the first time.
Just from a stigmata perspective (not even talking the maintenance side of things) it's a quite different thing. How many boner jokes did you see and hear on average in movies or TV last year? How many menstruation jokes? See where this is going? It's still very much a taboo subject. You're more likely to find videos here about fucking children than menstruation. That's how comfortable our western culture is with the subject.

Third, the only stupid thing about this is that there is a country that is super rich and wealthy and still somebody feels the need to sell a menstruation starter kit to the parents living there. And that commercial is not aimed at single fathers (who'd probably really love such a kit), no, it's aimed at the moms. You know, the women who menstruated for (hopefully) at least a decade or two before their little girls start as well. Just like their grandmothers and great-grandmothers. They are supposed to buy that shit. Welcome to the country of vajazzling!
Still, hilarious video! Exactly the shit I'd pull on my kids if I had any (and the exact reason I shouldn't have kids).

This was interesting. Was her grandmother really SS? I can't appreciate all that it means, and I'm too skeptical to take it at face value, but assuming this is as true to it's message as it seems, this is definitely the way to change human beliefs, ignorance, and prejudice.
Kindness, love and education.
If this is all true (I'm always devils' advocate) I am humbled by this woman's strength.

It's probably not as economical and convenient as white phosphorous.

My father was a physicist, and he told me a story (mind you, a great deal of his stories were apocryphal and he died before they could be sorted out--which is why I feel justified in claiming my great grandmother was Irish royalty and my great grandfather was an armless gypsy horse acrobat... but I digress). Anyways, he claimed that for a time in Spain there was a company marketing cigarette lighters that used white phosphorous so that you could merely flip the lid open, exposing a small amount to the air igniting it, and very suavely light a ladies cigarette for her. Unfortunately, sometimes the seals would fail while in a man's trouser pocket, which is where the slang "willy peter" comes from.

The secret is having your grandmother's ring. Sure, it's a piece of crap, but it's got *sentimental* value.

Laughing all the way to the altar.

Ex-wife's grandmother was a Ukrainian Jew, fled the bullshit-Got several American revolutionary war patriots from my mother's side, most-likely destined to be another front-line protester of political and police state bullshit in this lifetime-

ALL politicians and their complicit enforcers need be rendered into history's forgotten ranks-

Actually, I'm an atheist because my local pastor was a cool guy who used to play table football and billiards at my grandmother's pub. And when he realized that many of us couldn't take the stories of the Bible seriously, he never pushed any of his beliefs onto us. So you might say it never took root with me.

The humanistic education of a German gymnasium did the rest. When the internet came along at the turn of the century, with its ready access to the likes of Bertrand Russell and, much later, Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, deGrasse Tyson, it merely pushed my attitude from not caring about organized religion into open confrontation with it. Though to be honest, I prefer not to bring up religion in a discussion, ever. It has the uncanny tendency to derail any conversation.

That said, science, specifically my training as a computer scientist, had no part in it. I was a passive atheist long before I took any of my education seriously, aka university.

I drink old fashions because my 88 year old grandmother drinks old fashions and she's fucking cool. Plus they just taste great if they are made correctly. Up until Mad Men came out everyone made them like shit unless you were in Wisconsin.

I remember when I was really young, I was ridding down the back yard neighbor's driveway to my grandmother's house, I hit a railroad tie and the bike flipped, and in a panic I dropped while it was upside down only to see the bike land on its wheels and continue on for a short bit... had I stuck with it and it did the same thing it would have been epic, but odds are it would have changed the kinetics and just resulted in more pain.