We have had Skype for a long time and are very happy with it. Make up your mind before January 31st because they are offering 50%off on for unlimited calling. In other words for US$14.95 - just over $16 Canadian as I see you are up here in the Great White North - you can call any land line telephone or cell phone in America or Canada for free for a whole year. Calling Skype to Skype is totally free all the time. While you are chatting computer to computer you also get the opportunity to send text messages, photos or other files. If you have need to call other parts of the world you need to buy time and it comes in 10Euro amounts which is about $16 Canadian and gives you about 10 hours of talking time to most countries. I suggest you invest in a headset for the best performance. Using a stand alone mic and speakers can be a distraction because as you speak to the other party your voice leaves their speakers, passing the mic which you pick up a half second later. It is not disastrous but the headset removes all that. The sound quality is excellent. Grab it and play around for a few days if you have another party who has it or will install it on their computer. Then you can decide about paying for the other service. Finally, no I am not a salesman for them but I do enjoy the benefits of using it quite a lot.

Unfortunately, leaving it up to the states is not a good idea in the US. It is one of the reasons the Feds established minimum welfare levels, for instance, because some states cut funding levels to ridiculous lows and tightened requirements so that hardly anyone qualified. The result was that poor people flooded into states with better benefits. For that same reason, there is a huge debate about Section 5 of the Voting Act. For decades some local voting laws were shaped to deliberately exclude rural black voters. Not until Section 5 was passed, was the Justice Dept. given the "teeth" to enforce fair voting rights across the country, regardless of state or local attempts to block such. Expecting every municipality in the US to treat everyone fairly is a nice pipe dream that reality has shown does not happen without some sort of enforceable federal mandate making it possible. Many national health services are moving to a two-tier approach. It's inevitable if you are in a capitalist system. You either nationalize all the drug companies everywhere, or accept that some drugs/treatments are going to cost a whopping amount because they're (a) new or (b) useful for only a small percentage of people able to pay for it. This means several changes to how the US approaches healthcare. The insurance lobby is a lot stronger than the AMA. So basic healthcare, especially for underage children, is going to pass quickly and be expanded. This is a good thing that has a fair amount of bipartisan support. The second is to decouple healthcare from one's job. This is a lot trickier and because of the failing financial health of our Medicare system, soemthing that will be eased in over time. Again, the emphasis will be on basic care. Even today you can buy catastrophic health insurance at a reasonable cost, albeit with limited total caps on benefits. People who can afford better healthcare, will pay for supplemental insurance that covers more. IOW, similar to how Medicare Part D is handled. The basic change needed for Medicare is for Congress to allow it to demand price competition. Medicare is legally barred from doing so. Where states can offer use is to encourage programs that tie together existing resources in a manner that works best locally, such as San Francisco's innovative PACE/On Lok program, which is so successful it was recognized by Congress as authorized Medicare providers (providing better care at lower cost, yet with higher satisfaction ratings). The fastest growing area of healthcare is home health services. This is a critical area where cost savings elsewhere could be utilized to help ill/disabled people stay in their homes longer and thus ease the need for institutional care. There will always be waste, but if we could even reduce 30% of that waste and redirect that money into areas that are truly needed, it would be worth the effort.

Thank you, mitchdesj for your reply. The sort of problem that I'm worried about is leachable metals, like lead, that are ingredients in glazes (and glassware). After doing a quick search on Google, I came up with these two articles: Some imported glassware hazardous FDA Consumer, March, 1990 Several patterns of imported glass tableware sold last spring at Macy's, Nordstrom's, and several other department stores in California, New York, and the Northeast may contain dangerously high levels of lead that can leach into food. The patterns are "Crackle Rim," "Murrina Clear," "Cracked Gold," and "Murrina Transparent Silver" collections of dinner plates, soup plates, bowls, stemware, vases, and ashtrays. Some of these patterns may also be sold as the "Orofolio" collection. Consumers who purchased any of this glassware should immediately stop using it and return it to the store where purchased. Eating off these products or even handling them could cause acute abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhea in adults and children, or central nervous system damage in fetuses and small children. Lead leached from samples reached levels higher than 16,000 parts per million (ppm). (Currently, safe levels for ceramic products range from 2.5 to 7 ppm. An FDA proposal now is calling for lowering the allowable limit to 0.1 ppm for some items.) FDA discovered the problem during a routine inspection of a shipment that arrived at the San Francisco port. Other shipments were sent to the New York port. The glassware was manufactured by SI-AN di Cioni & Busoni of Florence, Italy, and sold to various U.S. companies. R.H. Macy Company and other retailers have taken the glassware off their shelves and posted warnings of the danger to alert customers who had purchased the products. ....Here's another article: A rapid lead test: Public outreach and testing to detect leachable lead in ceramic ware Abstract A modification of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lead screening test of ceramic ware was made to screen large numbers of samples in a short time frame. Ceramic ware in use by Davis and Sacramento, California residents was tested. Lead was leached from ceramic ware with citric acid and identified by rhodizonic acid in this quick, qualitative test. Of 92 individual pieces of pottery tested, approximately 6.6% were positive for leachable lead. Approximately 67% of the positive samples were handmade in Mexico. This rapid test is sensitive to two (2) parts per million (ppm, g/g) leachable lead. Ceramic ware with detectable leachable lead levels may present a health risk to individuals who habitually use such items for food storage and/or consumption. Because only 2030 minutes is needed to perform the test, immediate communication of results to the participant is possible. . . . . Both of these articles are at least 10 years old, so maybe the problem no longer exists. However, a good friend just bought a child's lunch box last week from LL Bean which was vinyl on the inside (and made in China). The enclosed directions said to throughly clean the vinyl interior to remove residues from manufacturing. China does not have the regulations in place that keep toxic dangerous compounds like lead out of the air, water, or soil. In fact, food grown in certain areas contains lead, so I try to avoid foods made in China (like honey). This is one of the reasons why stuff from China is cheap. I think you're right about clear glass (is glass naturally clear?). Also, given that I'll be storing stable ingredients like flour and sugar (rather than acidic foods), I think it should be safe. I don't subscribe to women's magazines or health magazines, the newspaper, or watch the news, so I wanted to check here to make certain that what I purchased was food-safe. I'll give them a good scrubbing with lots of hot water and call it a day. Oh, and I think that the lids are aluminum. Thanks again!

Who...? We have been told it's actually and mostly white men making more than $70,000 per year. We've also been told Trump is a narcissist, which explains everything blfenton posted. The die was cast as soon as the Electoral College put him in power, and there should be no expectation of his personality disorder driven behavior changing anytime soon.