McCain chooses Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska

[Bill Glasheen]

I heard it reported at mid-day today that McCain knew of the extended family status before giving Sarah Palin the nod.

With both of my boys, I held information about pregnancy status from everyone until WE decided it was time for us to share it. In both situations, individuals in the health care system leaked said information. In the first situation, it was a health care worker in the hospital. In the second situation, it was someone in the BCBS plan I worked for who saw the medical claim come through for genetic testing.

If I had my way, both of these individuals would have been fired. And that would have been my "nice" response. Today if I leak such information from the health care information I work with, I can be fined $25,000. Per infraction. That's a Heath Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) rule. (This bill was authored by Teddy Kennedy and Nancy Kassenbaum.) And that's the way it should be.

You wanna piss off some working moms? Go ahead. Make an issue of this.



And for what it's worth, working moms vote. The young and the restless don't.

Obama - himself the son of a teenage mom - is nobody's fool.

- Bill

[Jason Rees]

DailyKOS started this whole bloody mess. Politics really makes some people jump off the deep end. This has absolutely nothing to do with whether she's qualified for the Veep.

As much as I'm mostly pro-life, and will make it clear to my kids my feelings, reasons and whatnot for staying as far from sex as possible while living under my roof, I know nobody is perfect, and things happen, even with parents who are attentive, caring, and who laid down good rules for their kids to follow. I dread the day my little girl grows up. And I feel for the parents of whoever thinks of touching my little girl that way, especially if he doesn't have life insurance...

Obama's move was the right one. Teen pregnancy is probably another one of those issues that's above his pay-grade.

Ugh, Slate. You know, Ian, I get their email notifications every day, and I check it out every once in a while. I don't recall they've ever said anything positive about a Republican, unless they're acting like a Democrat, ie; Arnold Schwartzeneger. Isn't that like going to Townhall.com for your news? Abstinence works, if it's practiced It's the only 100% guaranteed way not to get pregnant. Parents need to get over their reluctance to touch this issue, and stop letting Planned Parenthood control the discussion.

[IJ]

Ok, so abstinence is perfect, when it works... true for all those other methods. I wouldn't advise kids to have sex. I just wouldn't expect that advice to stick and so I'd prepare them for harm reduction (eg, with those hep B, hpv vaccinations; pregnancy and std info) in all cases.

Disagreed with Bill (again) that no one without kids can have a meaningful opinion about issues that pertain to kids. I may not have one, but then I can say I've looked up the American Academy of Pediatrics position statements on the matter. One to several quanta of emotional investment do not a mountain of data overrule. As further evidence I submit asinine decisions about vaccination risks and resultant potentially dangerous or lethal infections in children, such as people whose kids have nearly bit it from Hemophilius type B, an infection that is now almost unheard of when it used to be a common cause of meningitis. They had skin in the game, and it made their thinking loopy.

Agreed with Bill that private medical info is private and the "curious" or malignant disseminators should both be punished. Leaks about Chris Reeve (at UVA after his neck injury) were embarassing to all sane doctors there. HIPAA on the other hand is a serious annoyance, as are other patient protection measures (so called).

--I had an insurance company REFUSE to tell me whether a med would be covered for a condition "because of HIPAA" when *I* was the one making the senstive (not really) diagnosis and they only needed to tell me about what they would do about a situation, not a person; HIPAA has made people compromise care to save their butts. It's made communicating with doctors difficult, eg, you call someone's doctor to help treat the patient and transfer info, and they're terrified to speak with you, lest the patient benefit from their doctor knowing what's wrong with them.

--The Dept in charge of human research protection halted a study designed to see whether implementing known best practices in the prevention of hospital infections would actually work. They DID and the infections were nearly wiped out, but these yahoos wanted to call the whole thing off. Better to die of an infection than for some researcher to keep track of depersonalized, completely uninteresting patient data for the purposes of tracking the intervention's efficacy and intervening when needed! Grrr. Quality improvement research needs to be left alone because the research isn't about new, unproven therapies, but merely the application of effective therapies that every patient would request if given the chance. (provided the usual precautions for protected information are followed, even though it is very low interest information).

Slate has it's flaws. Of course, facts and quotes don't become invalid when presented there, so I take that and other sources with a grain of salt, but particularly when reading the analysis or opinion sections.

[Seth Rosenblatt]

http://tinyurl.com/6j8qel (washington post, for all you believers in the SCLM conspiracy)

apparently, palin was against teen mothers before she was for them:

"Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who revealed Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, earlier this year used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live."

[Bill Glasheen]

HIPAA on the other hand is a serious annoyance, as are other patient protection measures (so called).

Welcome to MY world. I deal with HIPAA regulations and bureaucrats every day. Again... thank Teddy Kennedy and Nancy Kassenbaum for this legislative nightmare - however well intended.

--I had an insurance company REFUSE to tell me whether a med would be covered for a condition "because of HIPAA" when *I* was the one making the senstive (not really) diagnosis and they only needed to tell me about what they would do about a situation, not a person; HIPAA has made people compromise care to save their butts. It's made communicating with doctors difficult, eg, you call someone's doctor to help treat the patient and transfer info, and they're terrified to speak with you, lest the patient benefit from their doctor knowing what's wrong with them.

This isn't right, Ian, and it doesn't surprise me.

There are times when insurance company bureaucrats will hide behind HIPAA as an excuse not to do something. Screw that! Don't let them get away with it if it is preventing you from treating a patient. You can always complain to your local medical society and the Bureau of Insurance. That tends to get their attention.

HIPAA allows for TPO (Treatment, Payment, and health care Operations) exceptions to the information retention. It gets dicey when your patient doesn't want you to release information to another MD for whatever reason. That reason may not be apparent to you, but it is to me. As a former worker in the BCBS plan here in Virginia, I had access to the health care information of many leading politicians. (This kind of sensitive information is now de-identified internally as well to prevent leaks to tabloid journalists.) But that's what your office bureaucrats are for - to get them to sign release forms so you can share and have access to information that allows you to give proper care to the patient.

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

http://tinyurl.com/6j8qel (washington post, for all you believers in the SCLM conspiracy)

apparently, palin was against teen mothers before she was for them:

"Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who revealed Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, earlier this year used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live."

By this activity, Sara Palin is showing herself to be a classic fiscal conservative. That has nothing to do with being "against teen mothers." That's kind of silly, don't you think?

You may find it interesting to know that the Great Society programs of the LBJ administration have been partially credited for the breakup of the black family as we know it. Easy access to welfare made it possible for dads not to take responsibility for their oat sowing activities, what with the state picking up the tab. That's all fine and good until you have this single mom with a few teen boys in the house. The result? A massive increase in the number of blacks in prison. The law doesn't discriminate, but poverty and welfare are associated with the African American community. Take the dad out of the home in that environment, and you have a recipe for a life of crime.

I can tell you with 100% certainty that if I was out of the picture, my wife would not be able to control my two boys. They are a full time job for a very loving but strong and very stubborn dad.

FWIW, it took a Democrat - Bill Clinton - to undo some of the mess of the Great Society programs. Bill instituted welfare reform, with the idea that people should get off of it as soon as possible.

And thank God for DNA tests.

Sarah Palin's slashing of funds for a state program to help house teen moms doesn't mean she is "against teen mothers." Quite the contrary, it is what this dad calls "tough love." Believe you me, I've been dishing quite a bit of that out in my own home.

The fact that the Sarah Palin's daughter's lover has offered to be responsible and get married says it all. If the teen mom chooses to have the child, you WANT both partners in the home raising the child. Mom needs all the help she can get. And history has shown (via the prison population) that the State is no substitute.

- Bill

P.S. As soon as you said that your source was The Washington Post, I knew to look for the welfare angle. The Post, the New York Times, and the LA Times all can be counted on to be pro liberal agenda. (Big Government knows better...) Fox News, Michael Savage, or Rush Limbaugh would be the opposite end of the spectrum. Always consider the source before imbibing in the propaganda.

[mhosea]

FWIW, it took a Democrat - Bill Clinton - to undo some of the mess of the Great Society programs. Bill instituted welfare reform, with the idea that people should get off of it as soon as possible.

Well, OK, I guess if Presidents get blamed for every bad thing that happens under their watch, then they ought to get the credit for the good things, too. It's only fair. But just as an aside, I think the genesis of this legislation comes from the so-called "Contract with America" that the Republicans campaigned on (successfully, on the whole) in 1994.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_w ... bility_Act

I did not follow the progression of the ensuing legislation closely, but I do recall that there did form a bipartisan consensus that the old policies were a failure and that some kind of reform of this nature was needed.

[Bill Glasheen]

This is all correct, Mike.

What made it all work is having a Democrat as president who wouldn't immediately be labeled as "anti child" for dismantling some well-intentioned but disastrous government programs.

If a Republican had been president... Even Ronald Reagan couldn't pull this off. But the Republican Congress could get a Democratic president to sign the reform legislation.

- Bill

[IJ]

"HIPAA allows for TPO (Treatment, Payment, and health care Operations) exceptions to the information retention. It gets dicey when your patient doesn't want you to release information to another MD for whatever reason."

This one's actually easy for me, Bill. I think the right to make decisions includes the right to make stupid decisions, and if patients don't want me to speak to their other doctors, there's usually substance abuse at play, and that means little they say can be trusted, unfortunately, and they're definitely not getting any scheduled drugs from me. You don't always have the docs' number, and we did have a borderline competent patient who wanted to leave to the street before he was ready who allowed us to write his key medical problems on him with a sharpie so future docs would be clued in--works great in people who don't shower! And then there are the trainwrecks everyone needs to know about for their and the hospital's good, eg, people who come to the ER 40 times whose stories get disseminated one way or another, perhaps without the use of MR numbers or even exact ages... dunno where HIPAA stands on that but people have to do their jobs.

[Bill Glasheen]

Word.

[Seth Rosenblatt]

into the pool, feet first!

Sara Palin is showing herself to be a classic fiscal conservative.

sarah palin is the very definition of a fiscal conservative.
http://tinyurl.com/5umpmm (bloomberg)
uh, or not.

She says she broke with the ``old-boy network'' by facing down oil and gas companies over energy development and tax rates and canceling a project to build a bridge to an island with 50 full-time residents. That project, dubbed the ``bridge to nowhere,'' was to be funded by a $223 million federal budget earmark that became a symbol of congressional spending excess.

In fact, Palin supported the bridge while running for governor, telling the Anchorage Daily News on Oct. 22, 2006, that she would continue state funding for it.

She also accepted $5,000 in campaign contributions in 2001 from executives of Veco Corp., an Anchorage-based oil-services company, when she was running for lieutenant governor.

You may find it interesting to know that the Great Society programs of the LBJ administration have been partially credited for the breakup of the black family as we know it.

by whom? and what's your point? are you actually trying to argue that blacks were better off in 1960 than in 2008?

Easy access to welfare made it possible for dads not to take responsibility for their oat sowing activities, what with the state picking up the tab.

bill, your logic is impeccable. "easy access to welfare?" yes, it's the welfare that's the problem, because people looooove to be on welfare. and please don't cite that stupid reagan canard about the welfare moms in cadillacs, that's already been proven to be a hoax.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... ngehomele/

That's all fine and good until you have this single mom with a few teen boys in the house. The result? A massive increase in the number of blacks in prison. The law doesn't discriminate, but poverty and welfare are associated with the African American community. Take the dad out of the home in that environment, and you have a recipe for a life of crime.

that's the biggest load of crap i've ever heard. the ridiculous and ineffectual "war on drugs" has nothing to do with the increase in prison populations, it's all those welfare cheats!

nobody disagrees that single parenthood (for either gender) is easy, but suddenly it's a forgone conclusion that single moms raise criminals? i'd wager that there are quite a few people on these boards who are single parents or have been raised by one and would find much laughable about your unsubstantiated generalizations.

Sarah Palin's slashing of funds for a state program to help house teen moms doesn't mean she is "against teen mothers." Quite the contrary, it is what this dad calls "tough love."

how is it "tough love" to teen mothers who don't have supportive parents or boyfriends? it just makes things more difficult for them.

As soon as you said that your source was The Washington Post, I knew to look for the welfare angle. The Post, the New York Times, and the LA Times all can be counted on to be pro liberal agenda. (Big Government knows better...) Fox News, Michael Savage, or Rush Limbaugh would be the opposite end of the spectrum. Always consider the source before imbibing in the propaganda.

that's right, bill, you SHOULD always consider the source. if you actually spent any time looking at multiple news sources per day, as i do, you'd realize that the washinton post and new york times are far more center than left - especially when it comes to their editorial pages.

fox news gets so much factually wrong that it's hard to think of a media outlet that rivals them on the left. certainly none in terms of size and audience. i suppose you could argue that mother jones is generally ideologically opposite fox, but most people probably don't even know that MJ exists. there are weekly advocacy journalism newspapers i could point to, such as the sf bay guardian, but there are simply none have fox's audience.

[mhosea]

What made it all work is having a Democrat as president...

Agreed.

[cxt]

And speaking of what "works" when it comes to sex ed---heard a really good one today.

Some talking head was ranting about how Palins outlook MIGHT have effected her kids sex education---her oppostion asked that if John Edwards really did to turn out to have a baby with his mistress---did that mean a 50 year old man was ALSO in need of better sex ed?.....laughed myself off the coach.

Besides, was there not some story recently in the news about a single small school where 13 or so girls all got "with child" at the same general time?
None of them seem to ready to marry the fathers, some of them are younger than Palins kid and the school is seemingly quite modern and up to date about teaching sex ed---they even have a ON SITE daycare for the students that have small children.

That alone should suggest that some of the arguments need some work.

As far as kids being reflective of a person---did anybody or does anybody that question Palins fitness ALSO questions Gore's fitness to lead because HIS kid/s had some drug and alcohol problems?


As far as drugs and alcohol problems are concerned--how many currently SITTING members of the legislature have had such problems DIRECTLY...not their kids--but THEM?
And how many people have questioned their leadership?

Ted Kenndy KILLED someone after a party under some pretty questionable circumstances and how many years has he serve?----Made a keynote speech for the DNC as well....and yet I heard not a peep from those oh-so-concerned about how her CHILDS actions might reflect on her.

Also a large number of actors, singers and entertainers support Obama---unwed mothers, "love" children, drugs and alcohol problems etc seem to pretty common in Hollywood---and yet all we hear from that set are demands for "tolerence" for their problems and how they should not be "judged" for their weaknesses and mistakes but for what they can accomplish--should not THEY be demanding that Palin get the same break they enjoy?

Did anybody suggest that Bill Clinton somehow needed to be home helping to care for his daughter instead of gropeing unwilling females and partying with interns?....and by "anybody" I mean the people in HIS party?
You know the same set of folks that are now suggesting that Palin somehow "needs to home" or asking "how can she bring such attention to her daughter?"

If her name was Barry Palin, there would be far less concern and far less focus----its a case of gender bias that the Left would be all over--IF Palin was a Lefty...since she is not...then the Left ignores its own claimed values and demands for "tolerence."

[IJ]

CXT:

1) An unreferenced tale of multiple tween pregnancy is not sufficient cause to rethink education policy. Should that have actually occurred, one would want to know what education the kids had gotten, first... otherwise who knows what the anecdote shows? Even then, it's highly anecdotal and the fact that something happened in one place once does not mean the alternative would have fared better or that national policy needs rethinking.

2) Agreed that Palin's daughter's pregnancy doesn't reflect on her ability to govern. I haven't heard anyone here or elsewhere say otherwise, but if someone did, then yeah, obviously they would have to expect Gore to answer for his kid's mistakes, or be a hypocrite.

3) The comments on all those Hollyweirds who "support Obama" that you now want to speak up for Palin--what?? First, she's not taking much flak for this. Second, such vagueness adds nothing to the discussion. What would it add if someone said, "What about all those evangelicals who attacked Gore for his kids problems and Clinton for groping women instead of tending to his family? Why aren't they demanding Palin get the same abuse for having flaws in her family, huh?" It's an irrefutable charge that is meaningless because the perpetrators aren't identified, the issues are only vaguely linked, and it's a generality about some group of people rather than a specific person or group with common ideals that we could discuss in some kind of specific way. The same goes for the charge that the "Left" has abandoned their ideals and piled on Palin in a sexist way. Huh? I'm "the Left" and I was just here recently saying how excited I was that the white house was changed forever whomever wins. I have issues with Palin but only her policies... I never said I thought a mom could prevent every case of teen pregnancy or that a woman couldn't be a vice president with several kids in tow. And I honestly haven't anything untoward about Palin anway--would you like to fill me in on the violations I missed? Better yet, how they exceed the usual din of nonsense about presidential candidates and veep candidates, when it's "anything for an angle" in our so-called news?

This looks like a case of much ado about nothing unless you can substantiate it a little further.

[AAAhmed46]

Why the hell should Ron Paul conform to everyone else? Remember, republicans used to isolationists...and i KNOW many republicans are Libertarians. Who's more libertarian then ron paul?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR5CnoLVOw8