British National Health System in crisis, Doctors desperate, home lives wrecked, urge immediate changes to Obama-like system

Tom Daschle, advising Obama on 'health' issues said the new US plan will not be 'pain free.' He advised the most important thing was to push the plan through quickly so critics could not see what was in it. He said that was why the Clinton health plan failed, because too much participation was allowed.

• 8/1/10, BBC, "Doctor Hours Law 'failed patients' Surgeons Say,"
  

"Patients' lives are being put at risk under European rules that cut the working hours of doctors, experts say.

• The Royal College of Surgeons said creating a 48-hour limit on the working week had "failed spectacularly".

About 80% of 980 NHS surgeons and surgical trainees surveyed said care had worsened since the European Working Time Directive started last August.

• A Department of Health spokesman said the way the directive was being applied was "clearly unsatisfactory".

But the RCS - which surveyed surgeons and surgical trainees in all nine surgical specialties - warned the changes had left hospitals overstretched and much less safe than they were a year ago.

• More than a quarter of senior surgeons said they were no longer able to be involved in all of the key stages of a patients' care, up from 18% in October 2009.

The survey also found two thirds of junior surgeons said their hours in training had been cut - a quarter more than a year ago.

More than 60% of consultants who used to do surgery assisted by trainees said they were now

• often forced to operate alone, while 45% of consultants and 37% of trainees
  

• reported "inadequate handovers".

In addition, more than half to those surveyed said they consistently worked more than the permitted hours because of stretched rotas.

• 'Great problems'

RCS President John Black said surgeons not only thought

• patient safety was worse, but doctors'
  

• work and home lives were also poorer for it.

"To say the European Working Time Regulations has failed spectacularly would be a massive understatement.

• "There is not a moment to lose in implementing a better system
  

which would enable surgeons to work in teams, with fewer handovers and with the backup of senior colleagues," he said.

Charlie Giddings, president of the Association of Surgeons in Training, said "new innovative solutions" were needed, "rather than the minor short-term tweaks that

• artificially produced compliance
  

• at the expense of training and patient care".

Howard Cottam, president of the British Orthopaedic Trainees Association, said the directive had "largely failed" and the system "remained reliant on the professional integrity of

• trainees who continue to cover the gaps in the rota".

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "The health secretary will support the business secretary in taking a robust approach to future negotiations on the

• revision of the European Working Time Directive,
  

• including maintenance of the opt-out.

"We will not go back to the past with tired doctors working excessive hours, but the way the directive now applies is clearly unsatisfactory and is causing great problems for health services across Europe."

• The survey covered all Strategic Health Authorities in England as well as surgeons based in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

The RCS said it endorsed calls for a working week of up to 65 hours - including time spent on-call - to provide the ideal balance between adequate training opportunities, good patient care and work-life balance."

On David Mamet's conversion (to no longer being a brain-dead liberal)

• Commentary Magazine, "The conversion of David Mamet," July-August, by Terry Teachout

"Whatever the reason for his change of heart, Mamet is now

• the only major playwright in America who is
• openly anti-liberal."...

via Hot Air

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Now Obama calls it 'the energy and oil spill bill' (even though the catastrophe has inconveniently 'disappeared')

7/27/10, "Harry Reid: New Energy and oil bill draft unveiled, less sweeping than failed climate legislation," Huffington Post, F. Frommer

• "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid unveiled a draft of energy and oil spill legislation Tuesday, having to settle for a far less sweeping bill than the cap on carbon emissions he had hoped for.

Reid, D-Nev., was forced last week to give up the cap on carbon, which is blamed for global warming, when it became clear he didn't have the votes to pass it.

The new bill would require oil companies to pay higher fees into

• the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund
  

and would eliminate the $75 million cap on economic liability from an oil spill. It calls for spending $5 billion for the Home Star program, which would provide rebates to consumers to encourage energy efficiency upgrades. It also would fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund....

• On vehicles, the measure has portions of an electric vehicle bill introduced by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., including $400 million to encourage the deployment of electric cars in certain cities
  

and a competition run by the federal government to develop a battery that will power a car for 500 miles on a single charge. The bill also encourages federal agencies to buy electric drive vehicles for their fleets and

• offers incentives to retrofit heavy-duty vehicles for natural gas."...

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Journolist members in professional democrat jobs before, during and after membership

• Jared Bernstein, Economic Adviser to Vice President Biden at White House daily briefing, 6/8/09, ap

7/29, "Some Dem and administration operatives on Journolist," American Thinker by Clarice Feldman

• "Ezra Klein's vetting process left a lot to be desired, if we are to believe his claim that he kept political operatives off Journolist. As Daily Caller reports:

Despite its name, membership in the liberal online community Journolist wasn't limited to journalists. Present among the bloggers, reporters and editors were a number of

• professional political operatives, including top White House economic advisors, key Obama political appointees, and Democratic campaign veterans.
  

Some left government to join Journolist. Others took the opposite route. A few contributed to Journolist from their perches in politics. At times,

• it became difficult to tell who was supposed to be covering policy and who was trying to make it.

Two of the administration's chief economic advisors,

• Jared Bernstein, the vice president's top economist, and
  

• Jason Furman, deputy director of the National Economic Council,
  

were members of Journolist until they began working officially for Obama."... (Bernstein continued contact with the group passing messages through other members. While he was working in the White House he suggested a conference call between himself and Journolist members to expand on a particular White House policy. 14 expressed interest including representatives of Bloomberg News and the Washington Post). Continuing, American Thinker:

• "Ilan Goldenberg, now an advisor on Middle East policy at the Pentagon, was a member until he joined the administration.
  

• Moira Whelan left Journolist to work at the Department of Homeland Security.
  

• Anne-Marie Slaughter left to work at the State Department.
  

Former Journolist member

• Ben Brandzel is now a top staffer at Organizing for America, the political arm of the Obama White House.

• Josh Orton, a former spokesman for Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NM), became Obama's deputy director of new media during the 2008 presidential campaign.
  

After the election, he joined Journolist."

**

• 7/29, The Daily Caller expands on the above: "Political operatives on Journolist worked to shape news coverage," Jonathan Strong
  

"Journolist founder Ezra Klein, a staffer at the Washington Post, says he “tried to be very strict” in making sure no active political operatives joined Journolist. “It’s possible I missed someone,” he explained in an email.

• In fact, he did. Jeff Hauser wrote scores of posts on Journolist during the time he was managing the New Jersey congressional campaign of Democrat Dennis Shulman.
  

Hauser didn’t do much to hide his affiliation. Indeed, his posts on Journolist were signed, “Campaign Manager, Shulman for Congress,” followed by the campaign’s web address.

• After the election, Hauser took positions at a 527 group and a political action committee.
  

• He never left Journolist.

Jared Bernstein, meanwhile, worked as an unpaid surrogate for Barack Obama during much of the campaign. All the while, he remained a member of Journolist.

• Even after the campaign ended, and he had joined the Obama administration, Bernstein continued his contact with the group.
  

• In May of 2009, Bernstein contacted Ezra Klein to pass a message along to list members.

“Calling all Journos,” Bernstein wrote in a message relayed by Klein. “I thought we got too little love from progressive types re our tax changes targeted at businesses with overseas operations. We’re maybe going for another bite at the apple this Monday,” he wrote.

• Bernstein invited members of the list to join him on a conference call on the issue a few days later.

Not everyone was sold. A couple of members on the list, including Greg Anrig of the Century Foundation and

• Bloomberg’s Ryan Donmoyer, panned the administration’s plan to crack down on offshore tax havens as a misleading political stunt.

Dean Baker, at the time a blogger at the American Prospect, agreed the policy was dishonest, but defended it anyway.

• “Sure, some of the things they are saying are not true (the jobs story first and foremost),”
  

he wrote, “but the industry groups have this town blanketed with

• lobbyists and own a large portion of Congress outright. …
  

There has to be some counterforce to the industry groups and that is the populist rabble. It might not be pretty, but that’s Washington.”

• In the end, 14 journalists expressed interest in the conference call with Bernstein,
  

• including (Bloomberg's) Donmoyer and
  
• Washington Post reporter Alec MacGillis.
  

The effort appeared to be wasted on Donmoyer, who in the coming weeks wrote a couple of stories for Bloomberg expressing skepticism about the idea.

• Bernstein’s effort did appear to bear fruit elsewhere, however.
  

“I’ve heard that there’s some disappointment in the administration that they haven’t gotten the level of progressive love they feel they deserve for their ambitious proposals to curb abusive corporate tax loopholes,” wrote influential liberal blogger Matt Yglesias the next day.

• Yglesias went on to attack opponents of the plan, noting
  

• “how absurd some of the abuses the administration is trying to curb are.”

Yglesias took some pains to couch his advocacy in the language of journalism.

• Jeff Hauser, a professional political operative, didn’t bother.
  

During key moments in the presidential campaign, Hauser dropped the pretense entirely, becoming nakedly political. In the days before the first McCain-Obama debate, he

• straightforwardly asked working journalists on the list to skew their coverage in order
  

to help the Democratic candidate:

"The single biggest thing journolist can do is to lay the analytical framework within the media elite necessary for an actual Obama debate win to be viewed as such by a sufficient proportion of media elites

• that voters know it was a win.

Of course, this only works if Obama does as we expect (and McCain is a terrible debater, btw).

But even Gore’s uneven Debate 1 performance in 2000 was deemed a win initially by a viewership that was demographically to the right of the electorate (lower minority viewership in 2000 of debates, more male, more GOP

, etc…)… but Bush was winning on several media narratives and thus got the benefit from the intense 72 hours of post-debate coverage.

• Journolist’s greatest challenge is to make sure an actual win by Obama
  
• translates into winning the
  
• battle for political impact."

In the conversation that followed Hauser’s post, not one Journolister expressed surprise or disapproval. No one rebuked Hauser for telling journalists how to carry water for a politician.

• Despite the group’s supposedly “very strict” ban on political operatives
  
• and explicit partisan coordination,
  

Hauser remained a member of Journolist for almost two more years."
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• "industry groups have this town blanketed with lobbyists and own a large portion of Congress outright." …per a Journolist member
  

CNN has lost 42% of audience in Lou Dobbs time slot-LA Times

7/27, LA Times: "At 7(PM), John King's show is off 42% in viewers and 36% in adults 25-54

• from what Lou Dobbs was averaging last July, according to Nielsen.

Last year, Dobbs averaged 723,000 viewers, and while that was far behind Shepherd Smith's show at Fox News, he was beating everyone else.

• Now, though, CNN has dropped to fourth in that hour."...

via Radio Daily News

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Naturally Soros family is involved with Chelsea Clinton wedding

• People who have become rich via back room deals robbing entire nations stick together.
  

7/28, Politico Click, "The rehearsal dinner is reportedly taking place at the nearby Grasmere, a 525-acre estate boasting a Federal-period manor house with formal gardens, stucco guest cottages and a large stone barn complex.

• Another area manse rumored to be serving the family over the weekend will be Glenburn, where the Clintons are said to be staying over the weekend.

Glenburn is the Rhinebeck home of Eric and Andrea Colombel. Andrea Colombel is the daughter

• of billionaire financier and longtime Clinton supporter George Soros."...

via Drudge Report

Nigerian financial crisis involves lawyers, accountants, stockbrokers

• 7/28, BBC: "Nigeria stock traders accused over 'illegal practices'"

"For months, Nigeria's financial regulators have gathered evidence against hundreds of individuals.

• The offences include price fixing, share price manipulation, and fraud.

Those involved are not named, but they range from stockbrokerages to accountants, lawyers and individuals working in the capital markets....

• Nigeria's banking crisis last year exposed widespread abuses in the capital markets.

As Nigeria's banks came close to collapse, it became clear that lax regulation and inadequate surveillance of stockbrokers was a major problem.

• The appointment of a tough new financial regulator earlier this year dramatically changed the climate in the financial world.

A team from the US Securities and Exchange Commission visited Nigeria earlier this year, and compiled a confidential report.

• The BBC has seen it and it is sharply critical, attacking "a startling lack of oversight", and detailing cases of
  
• bribery and insider trading in the stock exchange.

It also says between 65% and 70% of Nigeria's stockbrokers are technically insolvent."

**

• So the US SEC is shocked, shocked to find a lack of oversight. The US SEC has no oversight. Please. ed.
  

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