DrJockitch

Trump used this argument in 2016, if there is a problem with the system that lets me pay nothing then why haven't you fixed it. That was fair and reasonable argument. An unfair and unreasonable system but that is how the United States was built. But, I know this is hard to believe, he has been president of the confederate states for four years and the only tax law he has passed has made it easier to not pay taxes if you are rich and has beggared the government. But hey the super wealthy have gotten super wealthier so success by the metrics he cares for.

There are only a handful of teams with cap space and I suspect that they are all held up with internal budgets or by the Tampa situation. Why take LE and a first when Tampa may have to give you a first, Cernak and a forward that can actually play the game. I doubt we will see any cap dumps until Tampa gets at least one done. The flood gates won't exactly open then because again, very few teams that have room, but will likely see a couple of cap dumps for high prices once Tampa moves.

Wasn't a bad utility winger for us. He could be a steal at that price. I imagine he was only getting offered a PTO here. I have moved from Vancouver to Calgary it sucked (no longer there).

They don’t live in regular New York. They live as “coastal elites” in towers with gold toilets, Get chauffeured everywhere and hire bootlicks to take care of their daily needs. Good thing we have them to fight the “coastal elites”

That is a bit of fossil fuel industry spin. There have recently been some major breakthroughs in solar as well which will help a lot. They are a lot more cost effective in the long run as well. Nuclear is problematic not just because of what the accidents we have seen in the US, Japan and worst off Russia (which was very close to making much of Europe un-liveable). Currently in Ontario we have barrels and barrels of heavy water that are sitting exposed to the elements in an era of climate change and unpredictable storms. Nobody will accept the nuclear waste so there it sits. You also have to consider how early on we are in solar, wind and hydro power. Continuing to stress these will lead to improvements in efficiency both of production and use. Just in the last year we have figured out how to make solar crucibles that are hot enough to melt metals, have recently developed new coatings that double the efficacy of solar panels and will allow for translucent panels. Imagine what we could do if we funded education appropriately and incentivized this sort of ongoing development instead of half the people fighting against progress.

Sorry, did you think the Republicans really cared about anything other than who is paying the bills. The fossil fuel industry gives huge amounts of money and climate change is an inconvenience for them. Trump ran back and away from the green energy policies that were growing jobs so that he could push for a stagnant shrinking coal industry to be allowed to pollute more. No new jobs in coal but more profit and pollution. The green energy industry employs 1000X the number of people than the coal industry and should be growing but instead it is being conceded to China because the thinking is that this is that coal is the long term solution to energy?

I tried to make the point earlier. This is not a binary option. Do something about coronavirus and ignore everything else. Ignore coronavirus and treat everything else. Aggressively responding to coronavirus while developing alternate plans to treat depression and chronic illnesses should be the goal not one or the other. This has been done by switching to more virtual care and decreasing Covid cases so that the hospitals can get back closer to business as usual and that is what we have tried to do in Canada. You see though that as soon as people start not taking it seriously, stop social distancing and wearing masks, the cases spike and we move backwards. The best strategy to continue to manage chronic issues is to aggressively mitigate the coronavirus to give us space to do that. It is when this isn't done that the hospital system gets overwhelmed. This happened in H1N1 as well people were dying at home because they were scared to go to hospital. We have gotten better at this but things don't always flip 100%. For the most part I have been in contact with my most vulnerable patients throughout this and have communicated with them what the appropriate next steps are when necessary and that may include emerg, in office or other options. As a further note though I am currently in Quarantine because I was exposed to a patient that decided not to take this seriously, lied multiple times on screening and came in to our office symptomatic for COVID and then tested positive. They then lied to public health and never told them they came to my office. This could have been a disaster of a super spreader event because someone had the exact attitude that this isn't a serious illness while I was trying to do exactly what you are complaining about here. As physicians we have seen this kind of myth spreading more and more and it is putting our lives and the lives of our other patients and staff at risk.

So you are mad about the success of the restrictions and don't understand how the immune system works.

Well in Canada yes we had empty hospitals because of planning and successful mitigation. In Minnesota they are starting to use field hospitals as New York had to in the spring. Why, because empty hospitals? I guess we need to ignore all the refrigerator trucks that have had to be ordered to store the dead bodies, after all they are no longer in hospital beds. Numerous hospitals in the COVID hot spots are running out of beds. This is just silly revisionist history that ignores the truth. It is true that we have gotten better at treating COVID but this has been through the sharing of experience in the international science community, something not exactly full throatedly endorsed the current President who keeps misquoting studies to try to fill his narrative.

I hear this argument all the time but it kind of has a bit of a flaw. The world is not an on off switch. You can't say we can't take any precautions because there is a chance of these secondary issues. Taking things seriously from the start would have made it easier to open back up under restrictions and would have mitigated some of this for example see Canada. We closed down, got the numbers down, gradually opened up with appropriate precautions and consistent messaging to the people on how to mitigate spread. Still hurt the economy but puts us in a better position to recover and per capita our infection rate is less than 25% of the American. Because of Canada's relatively effective handling of this I have been able to get back to getting my patients with chronic conditions optimized. I have been able to see people that mostly need seeing, to get back to working on diabetes and blood pressure and other chronic issues. Some I can do in office, much virtually or on phone. We are 8 months into this, if someone in a position of leadership was actually interested in preventing suicides, children dependent on school programs from going hungry etc, (they probably shouldn't have opposed those types of programs in the first place) and should have put in a plan and funding to provide on-line counselling and physician consults, suboptimal sure but better than just saying we just let this thing burn through the community and not do anything because it is to hard and unpopular with my base while trying to end the healthcare for 20million people with no plan what to do.

It is a funny year for sure. May be the year to give up draft picks to fix issues as scouting is going to be severely affected. How do you even scout North America ATM? There are only a few teams left with significant cap, some of whom have internal caps. I imagine the Tampa situation is holding everyone up. Why take LE and a pick when you may be able to get a quality roster forward and D for essentially nothing or even with an added pick from Tampa. I imagine Yzerman is holding Tampa's feet over the fire atm.

I can't believe people believe the stupid fairytale of mutually assured destruction. What's next are they going to start believing that if the wealthy can get richer they will let the money trickle down to the poorer. Nobody can be that naïve anymore. I do get not wanting to rely on the American's as reliable partners but still this is such a stupid wasteful way to spend money.

I don't think your team would do very well without goalies.

Somethings gotta give. $83M with 6 D and 15 forwards. Assuming Baer and someone else at $1M or more goes down, we still need two D for the usual 23 man roster. Looks Like Benning pretty much knows that Ferland is not coming back, knows they will have a B squad so can carry a 21 or 22 man roster, or is not done. I do not like the buyout of Sutter option as it effects our cap next year which could be even trickier than this year. Seems like a fair deal for Jake. JB has signed some bad contracts over his time here but usually his RFA deals have been very good since Sutter.

That seems about right if true.