But I did have a lump!  And they didn't take it seriously.  My primary said it felt like normal breast tissue.

I'd be delighted if those who go to medical school for the prestige and money stayed away. Better they should go into the bond market.  I'm quite sure we'd still have plenty of applcants for medical school, and I would hope they'd be interested in medicine, not money!  I don't mean that all doctors are interested solely in money or even most, but there are certainly a good number of them--perhaps they all move to New York City.  (My doctors excepted, of course--they're great!)

My favorite story from Italy is when my husband needed a colonoscopy (father died of colon cancer, and he had serious symptoms).  He had no insurance there at that time.  He got an appointment almost immediately--in three days.  When the procedure was finished (all clean, it was a NASAID that was causing the bleeding), he asked what he owed.  The lovely Italian doctor said, I quote, "It was a pleasure looking at your colon, so no charge."  He was kidding, of course, but he followed up with, "Italians don't pay for this procedure and neither should you."  It cost him nothing!!!  And then when we were getting our car out of the parking area, we saw his doctor leaving the hospital.  He was riding a bike.   This was in Terni, if any one is interested.

Shirley, I don't believe I said at any time that doctors should not make a decent living, or even a better than decent living, whatever that may be.  Doctors in Italy make a decent living; they just don't make the money they make here, and yet they still go into medicine and, like here, there are good doctors and ones that are not so good.

And as a writer of novels, I can assure you that the vast majority of writers don't make a decent loiving; they generally do it for the love of the craft---to quote my publisher when I tried to get a bigger advance.  LOL.  As a business consultant in telecommunications I made so much more money than I do from my novels, that I wouldn't post the numbers for embarrassment.  Even the very best of writers (I don't mean the Dan Browns of the world), make very little money.  In fact,  the writers I most admire make less than I do, since the world at large prefers reading mysteries to serious fiction.  Most good writers have to teach to supplement their incomes. The same is true of the majority of actors; most of them spend years on their craft and have to supplement their wages by waiting on tables, etc.

College professors don't make what doctors do, and I can assure you they spend just as much time in training--I was one of them once.  Another thing, we need more family doctors so they don't all have to specialize.  Many of them specialize because of the money.  How many plastic surgeons do we need in this world? 

I have excellent doctors and I wish them well and I certainly hope they make more money than I do as a writer, but I can promise you that none of them spent as much time learning their specialties as I spent on my first novel.  

The following article on discrimination in cancer screening seems  an appropriate posting for a political thread on a cancer board:

Two-thirds of Republicans and about half of independents say they've heard too much about Obama, as did a third of Democrats, according to the survey.

It's getting so so boring  . . . . 

Sen. Hillary Clinton told a gathering of supporters last week that she's looking for a "strategy" for her delegates to have their voices heard and "respected" at the Democratic National Convention -- and did not rule out the possibility of having her name placed into nomination at the convention alongside Sen. Barack Obama's.

"I happen to believe that we will come out stronger if people feel that their voices were heard and their views were respected. I think that is a very big part of how we actually come out unified," Clinton, D-N.Y., said at a California fundraiser last Thursday, in a video clip captured by an attendee and posted on YouTube.

"Because I know from just what I'm hearing, that there's incredible pent up desire. And I think that people want to feel like, 'OK, it's a catharsis, we're here, we did it, and then everybody get behind Sen. Obama.' That is what most people believe is the best way to go," she said.

"No decisions have been made. And so we are trying to work all this through with the DNC and with the Obama campaign."

But Obama is not yet the party's nominee and won't be until the convention.  Member, why do  you not want Hillary (the first woman who had a chance to achieve the WH) to have the same rights that have been accorded male nominees since every convention but this one?  Because she's a woman!  I can't see any other reason since this same rule, give up before convention and the delegates are counted, never applied to men!   If Kennedy had not endorsed Obama, Hillary would today be the nominee, and with enough elected delegates that she wouldn't need the Super Delegates. Yet Ted Kennedy, one of the group of men trying to force Hillary off stage, did every thing possible in 1980 to get the nomination from Carter, a sitting president, and not, like Obama, an untried and unqualified candidate. And he even refused to shake hands with Carter when Carter won. (Kennedy won only 10 primaries and Carter won 24.)  It's generally unheard of for someone in the same party to run against an incumbent president, yet Kennedy did.  And as a matter of history, Kennedy has had enough clout in the Democratic Party to pick the nominee (Bill Clinton excepted), yet the people he picks almost always (or is it always?) lose in the general.  A thought to remember.

This insistence that Hillary's name should not be placed in nomination when neither of these candidates has a sufficient number of pledged delegates points to the incredible gender bias that Hillary encountered and is still encountering trying to achieve the WH.  I particularly hate it when women are part of the problem, which almost always seems to be the case.  It was hard enough working against the Phyllis Schlafly's of the world, who didn't want women to have any rights beyond what men give to them, to be forced to do the same in 2008, and this time it's women in the Democratic Party.     

Far too many of Obama's supporters are bullies, as are his campaign managers, and I hate bullies--(and I'm not referring to you Member).  I hope Hillary and her supporters fight this to the end, whether bitter or not.  Bush wouldn't be president, twice, if it weren't for the inept men who run the Democratic Party.  If we sit back and let this happen again, we're fools and deserve our fate.  Hillary can win in November.  Whether Obama can is still a very iffy proposition.  If he hadn't taken that ridiculous trip to Europe to satisfy his vanity, he'd still be well up in the polls.  With judgement like that, how do we know what stupid trick he'll pull before November? 

If the following doesn't say it all, it certainly says a whole lot.  Note the paragraph on Obama's over-the-top supporters:

Obama fatigue

Aug 7th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Is America beginning to weary of “Yes we can”?

THE most politically potent emotion of the past 18 months has been Obamamania. This condition allowed a neophyte senator from Illinois to seize his party’s nomination from the jaws of the formidable Clinton machine. The big question now hanging over American politics is whether Obamamania is giving way to Obama fatigue.

Mr Obama has everything going for him in the race for the White House. Almost 80% of Americans think that the country is heading in the wrong direction. People are disgruntled with George Bush’s Republicans and worried sick about the economy. Mr Obama is also running a far better campaign than his rival—smooth and professional where the McCain campaign is slapdash and amateurish.

Yet the polls tell a different story. A Gallup/USA Today poll showed John McCain beating Mr Obama by 49% to 45% among likely voters. The cash-rich Obama campaign has been pouring money into the battleground states. But, if anything, the polls in those states are tightening. Generic Democrats enjoy a 10-15 point advantage over Republicans. But add the names Obama and McCain to the mix and you get a statistical tie.

This suggests that, for all their energy and professionalism, the Democrats may have made a big strategic error: allowing the election to become a referendum on their candidate rather than a verdict on the Bush years. This was probably inevitable if you run a mould-breaking candidate (in retrospect, the Democrats might have been better advised to run a white male rather than getting into a slugfest between a woman and a black). But Mr Obama is hardly a master of deflecting attention from himself.

The junior senator from Illinois is strikingly self-obsessed even by the standards of politicians. He has already written two autobiographies. He seems to be happiest as a politician addressing huge crowds of adoring fans. His convention speech at Denver was always going to be an extraordinary moment, given that he will be delivering it on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. But Mr Obama decided to move it to a local sports stadium that has room for 75,000.

There are worrying signs, for the Democrats, that Obama fatigue is beginning to set in. A Pew poll this week showed that 76% of respondents named Mr Obama as the candidate they had heard most about compared with 11% who named Mr McCain. But close to half (48%) of Pew’s interviewees said that they had been hearing too much about Mr Obama—and 22% said that they have formed a less favourable opinion of him recently.

Mr Obama is undoubtedly an enormously talented public speaker. But his rhetorical tropes can begin to pall, particularly in a campaign that has already gone on for 18 months. How many more times can Americans hear the phrase “Yes we can” without wondering whether they really want to? George Will, a conservative columnist, notes that Disraeli’s gibe about Gladstone might well apply to Mr Obama—he is “inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity”.

Mr Obama may be ill-served by his hallelujah corner in the press. The Pew survey suggests that the frenzy of media coverage of Mr Obama is creating a backlash. He may also be ill-served by some of his more over-the-top supporters who treat him like a rock star rather than a statesman. “Barack Obama is inspiring us like a desert lover, a Washington Valentino,” Lili Haydn wrote in the Huffington Post. “Couples all over America are making love again and shouting ‘Yes we can’ as they climax.”

The McCain team has been quick to spot its opportunity. It has released a series of advertisements that are designed to pummel the president-in-waiting. One quotes an NBC reporter confessing that “it’s almost hard to remain objective while covering Obama because the energy of the campaign is so infectious.” Another compares him to Moses. Mr McCain also keeps saying that Mr Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign. This onslaught cleverly tries to turn Mr Obama’s qualities—his youthful good looks and devoted supporters—into weaknesses. It also sends a clear message to voters: Mr McCain equals country first, Mr Obama equals Obama first.

Issues, not orgasms

This strategy is far from risk-free for Mr McCain. It threatens to dilute his brand as a straight-talking anti-Washington reformer. He has surrounded himself with veterans of the George Bush-Karl Rove machine: the man behind the latest ads, Steve Schmidt, was the person Mr Rove put in charge of the Bush war-room during the 2004 election. Mr McCain has also engaged in some decidedly unstraight talk. He has complained loudly that Mr Obama failed to visit wounded soldiers in Germany, ignoring the fact that his rival had visited injured troops in Iraq.

Mr McCain needs to win over undecided and independent voters if he is to have any chance of winning the White House. He also needs to come up with his own version of a “change” agenda for an electorate that is desperate for something new. But the more he employs Mr Bush’s footsoldiers and borrows from Mr Rove’s playbook, the more he opens himself up to the criticism that he is offering another four years of Mr Bush. The same polls that show the race narrowing also show that Mr McCain has not managed to break 46% in the Gallup tracking poll since Mr Obama won the nomination.

The Obama machine also remains formidable: it is impossible to wander around American cities these days without coming across enthusiastic young canvassers. But Mr Obama needs to reframe the election so that it is less about him and more about the issues. And he needs to abandon the rhetorical high ground for the nitty-gritty of policy. Otherwise the general election could prove to be the second coronation in a row, after Hillary’s implosion, that has ended with a surprise.

Of course, she has a right to a vote at the convention.  Her candidacy is not over until she says so, not when you say so, and she has every right to a vote, as the men who came before her.  They took it and I hope she does as well.  If she backs down on this one, it will be solely because she's been bullied into backing down.  I hope at 60 she decides principle is more important here, but probably not!

You keep talking about Hillary not ruining her political future!  What future beyond what she currently has, a senator from New York.  The next step is president and if she doesn't get the nomination now, or veep, that future is over.  Unless, of course, Obama loses and she runs again in four years, but I'm quite sure that's not the future you're referring to. 

Hillary is a long way from being the the type of woman I want to be our first woman president, and Obama is a long way from being the type of man I want to be our 44th president. Very few of the people who run for president are the types of people I admire, no doubt because I generally dislike people with outsized egos. But I'll take what I can get, so long as she or he fulfills some of my expectations, or in this case universal health care.  

It's obvious that it's always been over with you concerning Hillary as you pick and choose from her very long career to focus on the negatives.  I should point out that some of what you cite are not viewed as negatives by many, but like you I too view most of them as negatives. But with respect to children, Hillary has done more than Obama and far more in terms of her services to the community.  I also was against welfare reform, but we were in a minority and still are.  She did what she did for political expediency, but Obama, your candidate, is expediency's gold standard, so it's hard for me to credit how you can be against her, and yet for him.  Doesn't expediency count as a negative if it's practiced by your candidate?

As I remember, Obama avoided being in the Senate to vote on the Iran resolution.  He pulled similar stunts when in Illinois, to avoid voting on bills where his vote might prove unpopular.  And he voted for funding the Iraq war, as Hillary did.   His great experience as a community organizer was actually less than three years.  Hillary put in more time than that doing similar community work.  And yes, she did serve on Walmart's board and actually did some good for Walmart employees by serving.

For each negative example you give of Hillary, I can provide a similar one for Obama. As far as I can determine his pastor didn't cheat on him, yet when Obama found it necessary to cut him off he did so.  At least Hillary had the excuse of condemning women who had knowingly harmed her.   Also, from what I've read it was Obama's grandmother who paid for him to attend an expensive, private school, when he decided he no longer wanted to live with his mother.  Yet when he needed to make his grandmother look like a fool in front of the world he did so.  (Many who know his grandmother have said they can't remember her saying anything racist. Is it possible he made that one up to round out his speech--Wright on one hand and his grandmother on the other.  It works for a parallel construction, always effective in writing and speaking, but was it true?)   Poor woman, having a grandson who would do something so extraordinarily mean.   

It's over for me if at the convention Hillary is not named the nominee.  It may be over for all of us if the very vain "change" candidate doesn't find a position he can stick to despite the polls.  I'm not betting on the latter.  

And a post script.

I doubt anyone will agree with me here, but another example of Obama's nasty habit of  pandering for votes is his statement regarding the driver who was just judged guilty by a military tribunal.  I don't know if Hillary commented, but if it's anything like Obama's, congratulating the tribunal for their excellent work, I'll stop posting on this thread tomorrow.