Tis the season

Every now and then I check out the Not Always Right website for the latest in customer stupidity stories. Here's one from Newfoundland:

Me: “Hello, ma’am. Did you find everything you were looking for today?”
Customer: “Yes, yes. Sure is busy here.”
Me: “I guess that’s because of the season, ma’am. Everyone’s out getting last-minute holiday gifts.”
Customer: “Oh, I see, yes. I haven’t needed to buy any gifts for a while. Everyone I love is dead.”
Me: “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that!”
Customer: [stares at me intently] “Someday, everyone you love will be dead, too.”
Me: “Uh…”
Customer: “Merry Christmas, now!”

Sort of existential, isn't it?

Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney

This sorta has the flavour of "Let's put on a show in the old barn!"

Star Phoenix Fail

This Star Phoenix editorial -- Native advocate in health system requires review -- has to have reached some kind of record in patronizing insult and overreaching analysis.
Here's the story: a five-month-old baby boy, Mason Fullerton, died last spring of bacterial pneumonia. In the five days before he died, his increasingly-frantic mother Beverly had taken him to see several doctors, including his family doctor and two emergency rooms. Nobody did an x-ray of his lungs. Nobody gave him antibiotics. Everybody patted Beverley on the head and told her it was just a virus, that our health care system has important things to worry about like the long-term societal expense of overuse of xrays and antibiotics, while she, the mother of three other children, was obviously misjudging the situation and she should just take Mason home.
So little Mason died on an April morning, sitting in his rocking chair, as Beverley was getting ready for another trip to Emergency.
And since Mason's pointless death, there has apparently not been an inquest or an investigation of why our health care system let Mason and his family down so badly.
The whole story is somewhat inexplicable, until you realize that Beverley is Aboriginal and so was Mason. Did that have anything to do with how Mason was misdiagnosed, and Beverley's concerns were dismissed? We don't know, but the FSIN has now asked for an Aboriginal advocate to investigate problematic Aboriginal health care cases.
So now the Star Phoenix leaps into action.
They didn't do an editorial about how badly the health care system let down this family. They didn't demand that little Mason's death be investigated.
But now they have trained their editorial distain on the only suggestion made so far which might discern the truth about why this baby was not treated. Here's an example of the tone:

Whether or not the baby's death was avoidable is something that warrants investigation. But to do so in a confrontational manner generally won't improve care at the hospital, or bring back the baby. It also could be highly damaging for health-care providers and other patients if authorities resort to over-testing and redundant reporting simply to avoid blame.

Because Heaven forbid we should get confrontational over the needless death of an innocent baby. Why, someone's feelings might be hurt!
They go on to pearl-clutch over how truly awful it would be if someone actually got sued over this case:

It could be even more disastrous to the health system if the baby Mason case has to be sorted out in court . . . The risk of litigation also has led to hospitals and doctors ordering redundant and mostly unnecessary tests as a way to avoid being held liable.
In a Canadian health-care system that is already hard-pressed to find the manpower and resources to do vital medical tests, it is frightening to think what would happen if lawyers as well as doctors demand that it perform more.

Well apparently in this case, the system could hardly have done less.
But the stupidest statement in this editorial is this astounding sentence

Of even greater concern is the pain and discomfort small children would have to endure as health-care workers extract more bodily fluids -- not to improve care but to mitigate legal liability.

How noble, its all about the children, really.... but does this editorial writer really mean to imply that death is better than an uncomfortable medical test? Besides, a simple chest xray hardly falls into the category of a medical test which requires endurance.
The editorial wraps up with statement about how an advocate "could easily result in a loss of trust on both sides."
So what? If trust is the casualty of better care, then that's a trade-off we should all be quite willing to make.

Classy

Our Prime Minister's Office is staffed by 14-year-old boys.

Great line of the day

Booman writes about Obama's first year:

Obama is by nature a bridge-builder. He isn't afraid of the other side and sees value-in-itself to working with them. He assembled a Team of Rivals and former opponents in his cabinet. Early on, he reached out by inviting Republicans to attend public workshops at the White House. The response was an embrace of Birtherism and Teabagging, combined with rigidly disciplined obstruction on a totally unprecedented scale . . .
Obama will need to become tougher. His challenge will be to do so without losing that bridge-building quality that was so integral to his message of hope.

Napolitano is an idiot

As a mother who just watched her two children get on a plane today, I found this CNN interview with Janet Napolitano profoundly bizarre.
She babbles perky talking points about how everything is just great and everyone should feel perfectly safe because "the system worked" and other airlines were warned about the Detroit bomber right away and nothing bad happened -- and she blithely ignores Crowley's observations that it was apparently only the bomber's own ineptitude and the quick thinking of other passengers, not federal watch lists or airline security procedures, which prevented a tragedy.
I don't know who told Napolitano that her job was to pat people on the head and focus on airline profitability instead of public safety, but she needs to cut it out. This interview hit a sour note.

Enjoy!

From the Claymation Christmas special:

Again?

Harper is talking about proroging Parliament again, I guess to avoid having to deal with Ignatieff and his Liberals over torture, climate change policy, the list goes on.
Sure Steve, you just do that.
Canadians who are struggling to find work and to pay their bills and their taxes are sure to be sympathetic -- Prime Ministering is such hard work, ya know, that sometimes you just need to throw the country into an uproar so you can get a few days of peace and quiet, without those annoying questions coming up again and again.
The most pathetic and enduring image from last December was Rick Mercer's report about how Conservative staffers had to show up at 24 Sussex at 6 am to cheer when Harper drove by, so he would be in a better mood when he got to the office.
He thought they were real.

Happy Festivus

Top ten list

The Onion selects the top ten news stories of the last 4.5 billion years.

Take your pick

Theft? Or incompentence? Not much of a choice, but there it is.

Is my memory failing?

So our finance minister is scolding Obama about the US debt.
Funny, I don't recall Flaherty ever saying anything to George Bush about his deficit, but of course, my memory could be failing.

Great line of the day

Jane Hampsher has lost her mind and Ezra Klein calls her on it while also providing a rationale for the American health care reform bill:

. . . Hamsher's list implies that the bill is failing relative to a world in which we don't kill the bill.
But in that world, there's still no drug re-importation. Still 50 million uninsured. Still rampant cost growth. In the world where we pass the bill, most everything gets somewhat better, if not good enough. More people have insurance. The insurance industry ditches its worst practices. Fewer families go medically bankrupt. More people catch diseases early, when they can be cured, rather than late, when they become fatal. People who would otherwise have died live. The medical system begins the process of updating itself for the 21st Century, and responding to the cost pressures it's placing on the rest of the country.
The world in which we kill the bill is a world in which everything just continues to get worse, and politicians are scared away from the issue for decades. A world in which we pass the bill is a world in which things get better, and politicians remember that they can pass big pieces of legislation that take on, or begin taking on, big problems.

Death Star anniversary

This is a little grim but has its moments. "If we don't rebuild, the Jedi's win"

Nobody tells MacKay nuthin'

Dawg alerts us to this horrible story about a prisoner being kept in a intolerably hot cell, and once again poor Peter MacKay just didn't know anything about it:

Defence Minister Peter MacKay’s office said the Global National report was the first they had heard of the incident and they’ve asked the defence department for more information.

Isn't it just too bad that nobody associated with the Canadian military in Afghanistan thinks to tell the Minister about this stuff?
Or so we hear.
Could I suggest something? Perhaps the Canadian government could write up some sort of document -- call it a "policy" or a "directive" or something like that -- which lists all of the offices which are to be told about bad things that happen in Afghanistan. And perhaps the office of the Defense Minister could be on that list?
Just a suggestion...