This blog is mainly about the spectacular train wreck at The Sacramento Bee and its parent company, the McClatchy Company. But I also post about current events, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, politics, anything else that grabs my attention. Take a look around this blog, hope you enjoy it.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Saturday November 28 -- Got news or an update?
If you have news or an update, leave it in comments. . . .
23 comments:
Anonymous
said...
NBC News Reports On State Dinner Crashers Picture With Obama (mediaite.com)
Two frauds and charlatans, hand-in-hand. They were made for each other.
"Mr. President, I'm so sorry to tell you this, but my last name is not really Salehi."
The Strange, Sad Death of Journalism (Townhall.com)
WASHINGTON -- Like the nearby Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the Newseum -- Washington's museum dedicated to journalism -- displays dinosaurs.
On a long wall near the entrance, the front pages of newspapers from around the country are electronically posted each morning -- the artifacts of a declining industry.
Inside, the high-tech exhibits are nostalgic for a lower-tech time when banner headlines and network news summarized the emotions and exposed the scandals of the nation.
Lindbergh Lands Safely. One Small Step. Nixon Resigns. Cronkite removes his glasses to announce President Kennedy's death at 1 p.m., Central Standard Time.
Behind a long rack of preserved, historic front pages, there is a kind of journalistic mausoleum, displaying the departed.
The Ann Arbor News, closed July 23 after 174 years in print. The Rocky Mountain News, taken at age 150. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which passed quietly into the Internet.
What difference does this make?
For many conservatives, the "mainstream media" is an epithet.
Didn't the Internet expose the lies of Dan Rather?
Many on the left also shed few tears, preferring to consume their partisanship raw in the new media.
These no-talent hacks who are fired will disperse amongst the various publications across the country, getting hired as editors and assistants.
They’ll buy freelance articles from other recently fired no-talent hacks.
The magazines end up looking like the garbage publications they were fired from. The result is biased articles subscribers don’t want to read and a consequent falling readership.
After that publication is destroyed, the hacks will move on to other publications. It’s like a perpetual motion machine of leftist destruction.
This is happening all across the print media. None are immune.
Owners need to step in, fire these leftists and hire professionals.
BBC Abandons Ballet With Deformed Rapist Pope (FOX)
The BBC has abandoned plans to screen a ballet featuring a deformed Pope who rapes nuns that it had announced as one of the highlights of its Christmas schedule.
Last month the corporation said it would televise "In The Spirit Of Diaghilev" from London's Sadler's Wells Dance Theatre as part of a season of ballet programs.
The tribute to the Russian impresario comprises four acts, each by a groundbreaking choreographer, with the entire production due to be screened on BBC Four next month.
MARK STEYN: CLIMATE SCEINCE AND THE PEER-REVIEW CONSENSUS FORGERY (Dakota Beacon)
My favorite moment in the Climategate/Climaquiddick scandal currently roiling the "climate change" racket was Stuart Varney's interview on Fox News with the actor Ed Begley Jr, star of the 1980s medical drama "St Elsewhere" but latterly better known, as is the fashion with members of the thespian community, as an "activist".
He's currently in a competition with Bill Nye ("the Science Guy") to see who can have the lowest "carbon footprint".
Pistols at dawn would seem the quickest way of resolving that one, but presumably you couldn't get a reality series out of it.
Anyway, Ed was relaxed about the mountain of documents recently leaked from Britain's Climate Research Unit in which the world's leading climate-change warm-mongers e-mail each other back and forth on how to "hide the decline" and other interesting matters.
Nothing to worry about, folks.
"We'll go down the path and see what happens in peer-reviewed studies," said Ed airily. "Those are the key words here, Stuart. 'Peer-reviewed studies.'" ...
ClimateGate Scientists Cited in Report to White House and Congress (Newsbusters)
Scientists involved in the growing ClimateGate [0] scandal were cited in an October climate change report prepared for the White House and Congress.
snip
However, what is disturbing is that America's news media haven't cross-referenced this high-profile report with all the names in the e-mail messages obtained from the computers of the University of East Anglia, and reported to the American people just how connected to the United States government these people are.
Or would that be too much like journalism?
Before you answer, consider how the press would be all over this report if the scandal involved policies advocated by leading Republicans that were not supported by the media, and the man in the White House was also a Republican.
Climategate: the whitewash begins (The London Telegraph)
Breaking news from the splendid Bishop Hill. It seems the AGW establishment has launched an urgent damage limitation exercise in order to whitewash the Climategate scandal in time for Copenhagen.
Here’s the (so far unconfirmed) story:
1) Lord Rees (Royal Society) to be asked by UEA to investigate CRU leak.
2) Foreign Office and government leaning heavily on UEA to keep a lid on everything lest it destabilises Copenhagen.
3) CRU asked to prepare data for a pre-emptive release in past couple of days but trouble reconciling issues between data bases has stopped this.
The appointment of Lord Rees, if confirmed, is especially worrying.
It’s the rough equivalent of appointing King Herod’s grand vizier to investigate a mysterious outbreak of mass baby killing in Judaea.
First, Lord Rees – formerly Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal –is very much of the catastrophist mindset which helped launch the whole AGW scare in the first place.
Five years ago, he declared: “I think the odds are no better than 50/50 that our present civilisation will survive to the end of the present century.”
Second, he has previously suggested that there might be certain areas where frank and open scientific enquiry is not a good idea.
“He asks whether scientists should withhold findings which could potentially be used for destructive purposes, or if there should be a moratorium, voluntary or otherwise, on certain types of scientific research, most notably genetics and biotechnology.”
Third, he is president of an institution – The Royal Society – which has persistently used its distinguished name (founded 1660); and supposed unimpeachable scientific authority to push AGW theory.
Here is the Royal Society’s most recent statement on the subject, brought out in the aftermath of the Climategate scandal.(continued)
NHS bureaucracy bill soars by £78 million in two years (# of NHS bureaucrats soared past 2 years) (www.telegraph.co.uk )
The amount spent on employing managers has risen by a quarter, or £78 million, in the past two years, the study shows. NHS Trusts blamed Whitehall targets for the increase.
It comes a day after NICE, the drugs rationing watchdog, refused funding for life-prolonging bowel cancer drug Avastin, saying it was not cost effective.
Pulse, a magazine for GPs, found that projected spending on management salaries has increased by 25 per cent between 2007/08 and 2009/10 in primary care trusts, which look after community services. It was up from £312million to £390million.
But the true figure is likely to be far higher, because only a third - 55 - of the 152 trusts responded.
The rise is largely down to trusts taking on more managers, with 15 that provided headcounts saying the number of posts had gone up 14 per cent.
These trusts also reported that the cost per manager had risen by 11 per cent. David Stout, director of the NHS Confederation's PCT Network, said it was "unrealistic" for such increases to continue.
243 sick babies treated in one London hospital ward.... and just 18 mothers come from Britain (dailymail.co.uk)
Countless red dots scattered across the world map on the wall of a NHS hospital reveal the story of the changing face of Britain.
Each dot denotes the background of a mother with a baby in the neonatal ward of London's Chelsea and Westminster hospital.
The map was put up by hospital administrators to 'celebrate the ethnic diversity' of the sick children treated there, each at a cost of £1,400 a day.
It shows dramatically how the NHS now treats patients from every corner of the globe.
The 243 mothers are from 72 different nations. They include Mongolia, the remotest regions of Russia, Japan, Africa, South America, swathes of Asia, Australasia and even Papua New Guinea.
Only 18 mothers said they were from Britain.
The women were invited to put a dot on the map to 'represent' their home country. One, a London-born mother of a baby treated there earlier this summer, sent the Mail a photograph of the result.
She said: 'Almost every cot and incubator at this wonderful unit was occupied by a baby with a foreign mother.
Interpreters were on hand to make sure the mothers understood the doctors.
'Babies' lives are being saved and that is a good thing. Yet this seemed like a free-for-all.'
It is impossible to say how long each of the mothers has been in this country. But the fact is only a fraction of them declared themselves as having a British background.
In theory, only a woman who has lived here legally for a year or has a student visa lasting more than six months is entitled to free NHS care when giving birth.
The Doctor Can’t See You Now, Can You Come Back Next Year? (David Horowitz's NewsRealblog)
In the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi’s version of the bill designed to implement President Barack Obama’s overhaul of the American health care system (and in the process provide coverage to 30 million currently uninsured Americans and possibly illegal aliens) passed, but immediately came under fire for being too expensive. Pundits predicted that a similar version would not pass in the Senate.
Harry Reid’s Senate version of the bill had Reid’s progressives looking at what could be cut from the House’s plan in order to make the bill more financially palatable.
Since Senate Democrats seem to enjoy spending other people’s money just as much as House Democrats do, they naturally didn’t find too much.
One of the things they did ultimately select, however, was the elimination of those subsidies that had been allotted to financially assisting medical residents in becoming primary care physicians and general surgeons.
By eliminating these subsidies and placing more of the financial burden on future physicians, Reid and his minions reasoned that they could keep their version of the plan under a trillion dollars, thereby making its passage in the Senate more likely.
The Senate version passed, and Reid and his progressives gloated before the state-run media’s TV cameras.
Both versions had one serious flaw in common: they both failed to address what a Fox News report has identified as the premier health care challenge currently facing the nation: the severe shortage of physicians.
In fact, finalizing either version of the bill will make the shortage of physicians worse.
NHS trust faces probe into high death rate and blood-spattered equipment (dailymail.co.uk)
Action will be taken against an NHS trust after inspectors found blood-splattered equipment and an unusually high death rate among patients.
Inspectors for the Care Quality Commission (CQC) published a report earlier this month raising concerns about Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Now, the CQC has asked the regulator of foundation trusts, Monitor, to investigate.
It has told Monitor it has lost confidence in the ability of the trust's management to steer through changes.
Inspectors from the CQC found blood stains on floors and curtains, blood splattered on trays used to carry equipment and badly soiled mattresses with stains soaked through in the A&E department.
They also found equipment being used repeatedly that should only be used once and resuscitation room equipment that was past its use-by date.
Other items found at the trust included blood pressure cuffs stained with blood, suction machines contaminated with fluid inside and out and apparent mould.
The trust's death rate in 2008 for all emergency admissions was 6.1 per cent, above the national average of 4.4 per cent.
The CQC report said: 'In the accident and emergency department we found dust on high and low surfaces, including curtain rails, vents and floors.
'We saw floors that were stained with blood and other fluid spillages and black dirt had accumulated in the corners of the bay areas.
70 deaths on ward of shame: Patients neglected...says damning report (UK) (daily mail online)
Dozens of patients died needlessly as a result of filthy conditions in an NHS hospital, a shocking report said last night.
Appalling nursing care in Basildon University Hospital contributed to a mortality rate that was more than a third higher than the national average.
At least 70 people may have died who should have been saved.
It is the latest example of patients paying the ultimate price for Labour's failure to stamp out Third World conditions in the NHS -despite trebling taxpayer funding over the past decade.
Poll : Americans no longer believe in health 'crisis' (WSJ)
A poll released today shows Americans' belief in the current health care system has risen dramatically in the last year, and support for a socialized solution to a health care "crisis" has nearly evaporated.
The latest results from Rasmussen Reports show 49 percent of Americans now rate the quality of U.S. health care system as good or excellent, to only 27 percent that still argue it's poor.
Stimulus benefits at least 14 percent phony, and counting (WashingtonExaminer.com)
California's state government said it took its share of stimulus money and saved 18,229 corrections jobs.
But fewer than 5,000 of those jobs -- perhaps fewer than 1,000 --were ever in any danger of being lost, according to a letter released this week by the state's auditor.
In Washington state, 24,000 teachers' jobs were reported as "saved," but none of their jobs were in jeopardy, either.
The teachers in question had all been contracted through the end of the school year, and even though stimulus money was used to cover some of their pay, the governor's stimulus adviser concedes the stimulus did not "save" their jobs.
These are only two of the most egregious examples of stimulus job inflation from the administration's first cheery-eyed report on the stimulus at the beginning of this month.
Between the jobs "created" on projects neither begun nor funded, the jobs "saved" that were never really in jeopardy and the jobs that were just reported erroneously, our staff has counted more than 90,500 bogus jobs in more than 100 American cities. (See our stimulus jobs map at WashingtonExaminer.com.)
These most obvious errors account for 14 percent (and counting) of the total 640,329 stimulus jobs reported by the administration.
Even if most errors in jobs reporting originated with the recipients of stimulus money and not with the federal government, President Obama has no one to blame but himself for the perception that his administration is making things up as it goes along -- and wasting a lot of money as he does so.
Acorn Document Dump - Trashed Documents ARE RELEVANT TO INVESTIGATION BigGovernment.Com
Have you heard the one about the pimp, prostitute, politician and the community organizer?
Well, thanks to San Diego private investigator Derrick Roach, Californians are not laughing at what is turning into a political nightmare for California Attorney General Jerry Brown and ACORN.
On Tuesday, November 24, Attorney General Brown appeared on KABC’s “Peter Tilden Show” after it was revealed that some 20,000 documents had been thrown into a National City dumpster by ACORN employees.
The documents were thrown out in advance of state investigators arriving at the local ACORN office to conduct an investigation resulting from national media attention. ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera was videotaped giving advice to two individuals posing as a pimp and a prostitute regarding underage prostitution and human smuggling.
Without admitting any wrongdoing ACORN terminated Mr. Vera, or so they said. Documents provided to BigGovernment.com show that Mr. Vera was not terminated but was simply laid off, implying that Mr. Vera is also eligible for rehire. (The document also notes that Mr. Vera was laid off due to “restructuring” related to “videotaping incident.)
Calif. Attorney General Offers Incoherent Troubling Answers When Asked About ACORN Document Dump (Big Governement)
On Tuesday November 24th, the day after Big Government broke the story revealing tens of thousands of documents containing sensitive material had been unceremoniously dumped in a trash bin behind the San Diego ACORN office, Attorney General Jerry Brown appeared on Talk Radio KABC’s Peter Tilden Show.
Considering this document dump occurred just a few days after the Attorney General had announced an investigation of this very same office, we anticipated his righteous anger at this obvious afront to the integrity of his investigation and the people of California’s right to investigate all evidence pertaining to the operations of ACORN.
Justice Department Says Acorn Can Be Paid for Pre-Ban Contracts (The New York Times)
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has concluded that the Obama administration can lawfully pay the community group Acorn for services provided under contracts signed before Congress banned the government from providing money to the group.
The department’s conclusion, laid out in a recently disclosed five-page memorandum from David Barron, the acting assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, adds a new wrinkle to a sharp political debate over the antipoverty group’s activities and recent efforts to distance the government from it.
Since 1994, Acorn, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has received about $53 million in federal aid, much of it grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for providing various services related to affordable housing.
But the group has become a prime target for conservative critics, and on Oct. 1, President Obama signed into law a spending bill that included a provision that said no taxpayer money — including money authorized by previous legislation — could be “provided to” the group or its affiliates.
Good Times Roll for Black Panthers, 9/11 Terrorists, & ACORN (CFP)
...As reported, in part, at the NY Times:
“WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has concluded that the Obama administration can lawfully pay the community group Acorn for services provided under contracts signed before Congress enacted a law banning the government from providing funds to the group.
“The department’s conclusion, laid out in a recently disclosed five-page memorandum from David Barron, the acting assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, adds a new wrinkle to a sharp political debate over the antipoverty group’s activities and recent efforts to distance the government from it.
“Mr. Barron said he had based his conclusion on the statute’s phrase “provided to.” This phrase, he said, has no clearly defined meaning in the realm of government spending — unlike such words as “obligate” and “expend.”
“Citing dictionary and thesaurus entries, he said “provided to” could be interpreted as meaning only instances in which an official was making “discretionary choices” about whether to give the group money, rather than instances in which the transfer of funds to Acorn was required to satisfy existing contractual obligations.
“Since there are two possible ways to construe the term “provided to,” Mr. Barron wrote, it makes sense to pick the interpretation that allows the government to avoid breaching contracts.” ...
The combined MNI?Knight Ridder pension fund reported that it has been swindled by more thAN $77 million as a result of a partner gone bad. The company also paid more than $10 million for fees and advice. The value of the pension fund declined by more than $300 million during the year.
When will the company have to make good and add extra money to the pension fund to make up for these massive losses? Where will McClatchy get the money to bring the pension up to acceptable funding levels?
Isn't anyone the least interested in who is contributing the vast majority of the posts on the open-ended thread each day ("Got news or an update?)" It is obviously someone who is paid as part of their job to find and post anti-Obama and anti-Democratic gossip, rumors, non-stories and (occasionally) legitimate news. The Republican National Committee? Dick Armey's lobbying organization? Or does it matter?
23 comments:
NBC News Reports On State Dinner Crashers Picture With Obama
(mediaite.com)
Two frauds and charlatans, hand-in-hand. They were made for each other.
"Mr. President, I'm so sorry to tell you this, but my last name is not really Salehi."
"That's okay. My last name is not really Obama."
The Strange, Sad Death of Journalism (Townhall.com)
WASHINGTON -- Like the nearby Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the Newseum -- Washington's museum dedicated to journalism -- displays dinosaurs.
On a long wall near the entrance, the front pages of newspapers from around the country are electronically posted each morning -- the artifacts of a declining industry.
Inside, the high-tech exhibits are nostalgic for a lower-tech time when banner headlines and network news summarized the emotions and exposed the scandals of the nation.
Lindbergh Lands Safely. One Small Step. Nixon Resigns. Cronkite removes his glasses to announce President Kennedy's death at 1 p.m., Central Standard Time.
Behind a long rack of preserved, historic front pages, there is a kind of journalistic mausoleum, displaying the departed.
The Ann Arbor News, closed July 23 after 174 years in print. The Rocky Mountain News, taken at age 150. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which passed quietly into the Internet.
What difference does this make?
For many conservatives, the "mainstream media" is an epithet.
Didn't the Internet expose the lies of Dan Rather?
Many on the left also shed few tears, preferring to consume their partisanship raw in the new media.
These no-talent hacks who are fired will disperse amongst the various publications across the country, getting hired as editors and assistants.
They’ll buy freelance articles from other recently fired no-talent hacks.
The magazines end up looking like the garbage publications they were fired from. The result is biased articles subscribers don’t want to read and a consequent falling readership.
After that publication is destroyed, the hacks will move on to other publications. It’s like a perpetual motion machine of leftist destruction.
This is happening all across the print media. None are immune.
Owners need to step in, fire these leftists and hire professionals.
BBC Abandons Ballet With Deformed Rapist Pope (FOX)
The BBC has abandoned plans to screen a ballet featuring a deformed Pope who rapes nuns that it had announced as one of the highlights of its Christmas schedule.
Last month the corporation said it would televise "In The Spirit Of Diaghilev" from London's Sadler's Wells Dance Theatre as part of a season of ballet programs.
The tribute to the Russian impresario comprises four acts, each by a groundbreaking choreographer, with the entire production due to be screened on BBC Four next month.
MARK STEYN: CLIMATE SCEINCE AND THE PEER-REVIEW CONSENSUS FORGERY (Dakota Beacon)
My favorite moment in the Climategate/Climaquiddick scandal currently roiling the "climate change" racket was Stuart Varney's interview on Fox News with the actor Ed Begley Jr, star of the 1980s medical drama "St Elsewhere" but latterly better known, as is the fashion with members of the thespian community, as an "activist".
He's currently in a competition with Bill Nye ("the Science Guy") to see who can have the lowest "carbon footprint".
Pistols at dawn would seem the quickest way of resolving that one, but presumably you couldn't get a reality series out of it.
Anyway, Ed was relaxed about the mountain of documents recently leaked from Britain's Climate Research Unit in which the world's leading climate-change warm-mongers e-mail each other back and forth on how to "hide the decline" and other interesting matters.
Nothing to worry about, folks.
"We'll go down the path and see what happens in peer-reviewed studies," said Ed airily. "Those are the key words here, Stuart. 'Peer-reviewed studies.'" ...
ClimateGate Scientists Cited in Report to White House and Congress (Newsbusters)
Scientists involved in the growing ClimateGate [0] scandal were cited in an October climate change report prepared for the White House and Congress.
snip
However, what is disturbing is that America's news media haven't cross-referenced this high-profile report with all the names in the e-mail messages obtained from the computers of the University of East Anglia, and reported to the American people just how connected to the United States government these people are.
Or would that be too much like journalism?
Before you answer, consider how the press would be all over this report if the scandal involved policies advocated by leading Republicans that were not supported by the media, and the man in the White House was also a Republican.
Climategate: the whitewash begins (The London Telegraph)
Breaking news from the splendid Bishop Hill. It seems the AGW establishment has launched an urgent damage limitation exercise in order to whitewash the Climategate scandal in time for Copenhagen.
Here’s the (so far unconfirmed) story:
1) Lord Rees (Royal Society) to be asked by UEA to investigate CRU leak.
2) Foreign Office and government leaning heavily on UEA to keep a lid on everything lest it destabilises Copenhagen.
3) CRU asked to prepare data for a pre-emptive release in past couple of days but trouble reconciling issues between data bases has stopped this.
The appointment of Lord Rees, if confirmed, is especially worrying.
It’s the rough equivalent of appointing King Herod’s grand vizier to investigate a mysterious outbreak of mass baby killing in Judaea.
First, Lord Rees – formerly Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal –is very much of the catastrophist mindset which helped launch the whole AGW scare in the first place.
Five years ago, he declared: “I think the odds are no better than 50/50 that our present civilisation will survive to the end of the present century.”
Second, he has previously suggested that there might be certain areas where frank and open scientific enquiry is not a good idea.
“He asks whether scientists should withhold findings which could potentially be used for destructive purposes, or if there should be a moratorium, voluntary or otherwise, on certain types of scientific research, most notably genetics and biotechnology.”
Third, he is president of an institution – The Royal Society – which has persistently used its distinguished name (founded 1660); and supposed unimpeachable scientific authority to push AGW theory.
Here is the Royal Society’s most recent statement on the subject, brought out in the aftermath of the Climategate scandal.(continued)
Howard Dean: There Isn’t Any Reform In Dem’s Health Care Bill (Audio) GatewayPundit
Howard Dean admits what most of us knew all along…
There’s no reform in the democrat’s Trillion dollar nationalized health care bill:
Howard Dean admits Obamacare will cost a trillion dollars, there’s no reform, and it is harmful.
But he also says it’s ok as long as there’s a public option.
49% of Americans now believe the current US health care system is good or excellent. This is up from 29% a year and a half ago.
NHS bureaucracy bill soars by £78 million in two years (# of NHS bureaucrats soared past 2 years) (www.telegraph.co.uk )
The amount spent on employing managers has risen by a quarter, or £78 million, in the past two years, the study shows. NHS Trusts blamed Whitehall targets for the increase.
It comes a day after NICE, the drugs rationing watchdog, refused funding for life-prolonging bowel cancer drug Avastin, saying it was not cost effective.
Pulse, a magazine for GPs, found that projected spending on management salaries has increased by 25 per cent between 2007/08 and 2009/10 in primary care trusts, which look after community services. It was up from £312million to £390million.
But the true figure is likely to be far higher, because only a third - 55 - of the 152 trusts responded.
The rise is largely down to trusts taking on more managers, with 15 that provided headcounts saying the number of posts had gone up 14 per cent.
These trusts also reported that the cost per manager had risen by 11 per cent. David Stout, director of the NHS Confederation's PCT Network, said it was "unrealistic" for such increases to continue.
243 sick babies treated in one London hospital ward.... and just 18 mothers come from Britain (dailymail.co.uk)
Countless red dots scattered across the world map on the wall of a NHS hospital reveal the story of the changing face of Britain.
Each dot denotes the background of a mother with a baby in the neonatal ward of London's Chelsea and Westminster hospital.
The map was put up by hospital administrators to 'celebrate the ethnic diversity' of the sick children treated there, each at a cost of £1,400 a day.
It shows dramatically how the NHS now treats patients from every corner of the globe.
The 243 mothers are from 72 different nations. They include Mongolia, the remotest regions of Russia, Japan, Africa, South America, swathes of Asia, Australasia and even Papua New Guinea.
Only 18 mothers said they were from Britain.
The women were invited to put a dot on the map to 'represent' their home country. One, a London-born mother of a baby treated there earlier this summer, sent the Mail a photograph of the result.
She said: 'Almost every cot and incubator at this wonderful unit was occupied by a baby with a foreign mother.
Interpreters were on hand to make sure the mothers understood the doctors.
'Babies' lives are being saved and that is a good thing. Yet this seemed like a free-for-all.'
It is impossible to say how long each of the mothers has been in this country. But the fact is only a fraction of them declared themselves as having a British background.
In theory, only a woman who has lived here legally for a year or has a student visa lasting more than six months is entitled to free NHS care when giving birth.
The Doctor Can’t See You Now, Can You Come Back Next Year?
(David Horowitz's NewsRealblog)
In the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi’s version of the bill designed to implement President Barack Obama’s overhaul of the American health care system (and in the process provide coverage to 30 million currently uninsured Americans and possibly illegal aliens) passed, but immediately came under fire for being too expensive. Pundits predicted that a similar version would not pass in the Senate.
Harry Reid’s Senate version of the bill had Reid’s progressives looking at what could be cut from the House’s plan in order to make the bill more financially palatable.
Since Senate Democrats seem to enjoy spending other people’s money just as much as House Democrats do, they naturally didn’t find too much.
One of the things they did ultimately select, however, was the elimination of those subsidies that had been allotted to financially assisting medical residents in becoming primary care physicians and general surgeons.
By eliminating these subsidies and placing more of the financial burden on future physicians, Reid and his minions reasoned that they could keep their version of the plan under a trillion dollars, thereby making its passage in the Senate more likely.
The Senate version passed, and Reid and his progressives gloated before the state-run media’s TV cameras.
Both versions had one serious flaw in common: they both failed to address what a Fox News report has identified as the premier health care challenge currently facing the nation: the severe shortage of physicians.
In fact, finalizing either version of the bill will make the shortage of physicians worse.
NHS trust faces probe into high death rate and blood-spattered equipment (dailymail.co.uk)
Action will be taken against an NHS trust after inspectors found blood-splattered equipment and an unusually high death rate among patients.
Inspectors for the Care Quality Commission (CQC) published a report earlier this month raising concerns about Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Now, the CQC has asked the regulator of foundation trusts, Monitor, to investigate.
It has told Monitor it has lost confidence in the ability of the trust's management to steer through changes.
Inspectors from the CQC found blood stains on floors and curtains, blood splattered on trays used to carry equipment and badly soiled mattresses with stains soaked through in the A&E department.
They also found equipment being used repeatedly that should only be used once and resuscitation room equipment that was past its use-by date.
Other items found at the trust included blood pressure cuffs stained with blood, suction machines contaminated with fluid inside and out and apparent mould.
The trust's death rate in 2008 for all emergency admissions was 6.1 per cent, above the national average of 4.4 per cent.
The CQC report said: 'In the accident and emergency department we found dust on high and low surfaces, including curtain rails, vents and floors.
'We saw floors that were stained with blood and other fluid spillages and black dirt had accumulated in the corners of the bay areas.
70 deaths on ward of shame: Patients neglected...says damning report (UK) (daily mail online)
Dozens of patients died needlessly as a result of filthy conditions in an NHS hospital, a shocking report said last night.
Appalling nursing care in Basildon University Hospital contributed to a mortality rate that was more than a third higher than the national average.
At least 70 people may have died who should have been saved.
It is the latest example of patients paying the ultimate price for Labour's failure to stamp out Third World conditions in the NHS -despite trebling taxpayer funding over the past decade.
Poll : Americans no longer believe in health 'crisis' (WSJ)
A poll released today shows Americans' belief in the current health care system has risen dramatically in the last year, and support for a socialized solution to a health care "crisis" has nearly evaporated.
The latest results from Rasmussen Reports show 49 percent of Americans now rate the quality of U.S. health care system as good or excellent, to only 27 percent that still argue it's poor.
Stimulus benefits at least 14 percent phony, and counting (WashingtonExaminer.com)
California's state government said it took its share of stimulus money and saved 18,229 corrections jobs.
But fewer than 5,000 of those jobs -- perhaps fewer than 1,000 --were ever in any danger of being lost, according to a letter released this week by the state's auditor.
In Washington state, 24,000 teachers' jobs were reported as "saved," but none of their jobs were in jeopardy, either.
The teachers in question had all been contracted through the end of the school year, and even though stimulus money was used to cover some of their pay, the governor's stimulus adviser concedes the stimulus did not "save" their jobs.
These are only two of the most egregious examples of stimulus job inflation from the administration's first cheery-eyed report on the stimulus at the beginning of this month.
Between the jobs "created" on projects neither begun nor funded, the jobs "saved" that were never really in jeopardy and the jobs that were just reported erroneously, our staff has counted more than 90,500 bogus jobs in more than 100 American cities.
(See our stimulus jobs map at WashingtonExaminer.com.)
These most obvious errors account for 14 percent (and counting) of the total 640,329 stimulus jobs reported by the administration.
Even if most errors in jobs reporting originated with the recipients of stimulus money and not with the federal government, President Obama has no one to blame but himself for the perception that his administration is making things up as it goes along -- and wasting a lot of money as he does so.
Acorn Document Dump - Trashed Documents ARE RELEVANT TO INVESTIGATION BigGovernment.Com
Have you heard the one about the pimp, prostitute, politician and the community organizer?
Well, thanks to San Diego private investigator Derrick Roach, Californians are not laughing at what is turning into a political nightmare for California Attorney General Jerry Brown and ACORN.
On Tuesday, November 24, Attorney General Brown appeared on KABC’s “Peter Tilden Show” after it was revealed that some 20,000 documents had been thrown into a National City dumpster by ACORN employees.
The documents were thrown out in advance of state investigators arriving at the local ACORN office to conduct an investigation resulting from national media attention. ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera was videotaped giving advice to two individuals posing as a pimp and a prostitute regarding underage prostitution and human smuggling.
Without admitting any wrongdoing ACORN terminated Mr. Vera, or so they said. Documents provided to BigGovernment.com show that Mr. Vera was not terminated but was simply laid off, implying that Mr. Vera is also eligible for rehire. (The document also notes that Mr. Vera was laid off due to “restructuring” related to “videotaping incident.)
Calif. Attorney General Offers Incoherent Troubling Answers When Asked About ACORN Document Dump (Big Governement)
On Tuesday November 24th, the day after Big Government broke the story revealing tens of thousands of documents containing sensitive material had been unceremoniously dumped in a trash bin behind the San Diego ACORN office, Attorney General Jerry Brown appeared on Talk Radio KABC’s Peter Tilden Show.
Considering this document dump occurred just a few days after the Attorney General had announced an investigation of this very same office, we anticipated his righteous anger at this obvious afront to the integrity of his investigation and the people of California’s right to investigate all evidence pertaining to the operations of ACORN.
Justice Department Says Acorn Can Be Paid for Pre-Ban Contracts (The New York Times)
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has concluded that the Obama administration can lawfully pay the community group Acorn for services provided under contracts signed before Congress banned the government from providing money to the group.
The department’s conclusion, laid out in a recently disclosed five-page memorandum from David Barron, the acting assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, adds a new wrinkle to a sharp political debate over the antipoverty group’s activities and recent efforts to distance the government from it.
Since 1994, Acorn, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has received about $53 million in federal aid, much of it grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for providing various services related to affordable housing.
But the group has become a prime target for conservative critics, and on Oct. 1, President Obama signed into law a spending bill that included a provision that said no taxpayer money — including money authorized by previous legislation — could be “provided to” the group or its affiliates.
Good Times Roll for Black Panthers, 9/11 Terrorists, & ACORN
(CFP)
...As reported, in part, at the NY Times:
“WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has concluded that the Obama administration can lawfully pay the community group Acorn for services provided under contracts signed before Congress enacted a law banning the government from providing funds to the group.
“The department’s conclusion, laid out in a recently disclosed five-page memorandum from David Barron, the acting assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, adds a new wrinkle to a sharp political debate over the antipoverty group’s activities and recent efforts to distance the government from it.
“Mr. Barron said he had based his conclusion on the statute’s phrase “provided to.” This phrase, he said, has no clearly defined meaning in the realm of government spending — unlike such words as “obligate” and “expend.”
“Citing dictionary and thesaurus entries, he said “provided to” could be interpreted as meaning only instances in which an official was making “discretionary choices” about whether to give the group money, rather than instances in which the transfer of funds to Acorn was required to satisfy existing contractual obligations.
“Since there are two possible ways to construe the term “provided to,” Mr. Barron wrote, it makes sense to pick the interpretation that allows the government to avoid breaching contracts.” ...
Mentioned earlier: Jerry Brown gives "troubling, incoherent anwers about ACORN."
The combined MNI?Knight Ridder pension fund reported that it has been swindled by more thAN $77 million as a result of a partner gone bad. The company also paid more than $10 million for fees and advice. The value of the pension fund declined by more than $300 million during the year.
When will the company have to make good and add extra money to the pension fund to make up for these massive losses? Where will McClatchy get the money to bring the pension up to acceptable funding levels?
Anon 3:05 Source please?
They need to be kicked, but not when they are down
Isn't anyone the least interested in who is contributing the vast majority of the posts on the open-ended thread each day ("Got news or an update?)" It is obviously someone who is paid as part of their job to find and post anti-Obama and anti-Democratic gossip, rumors, non-stories and (occasionally) legitimate news. The Republican National Committee? Dick Armey's lobbying organization? Or does it matter?
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