Nurse-midwives are primary healthcare providers for women and most often provide medical care for relatively healthy women, whose birth is considered uncomplicated and not “high risk,” as well as their neonate. Since the nursing model, unlike the medical model is a holistic, patient-centered approach to care, they are less likely to insist on high intervention births, and to respect the wishes and desires of the mother and their partner. Oh, and these births tend to be less costly because of their lack of (unnecessary) high-tech interventions.

If the end result is the same (or better, in terms of less complications and higher satisfaction) then why not pay them the same amount? It makes more sense to me to free up these highly trained OB-Gyns to do what they have the training for — the more complicated, higher risk births.

Matt Taibbi: “Obama's Big Sell Out” Links to the full article with video

Thought Merchant
Politics and Commentary for the Thinking Person of Color
“Better to sell an idea than to buy a lie!!”

Nurse-midwives are primary healthcare providers for women and most often provide medical care for relatively healthy women, whose birth is considered uncomplicated and not “high risk,” as well as their neonate. Since the nursing model, unlike the medical model is a holistic, patient-centered approach to care, they are less likely to insist on high intervention births, and to respect the wishes and desires of the mother and their partner. Oh, and these births tend to be less costly because of their lack of (unnecessary) high-tech interventions.

If the end result is the same (or better, in terms of less complications and higher satisfaction) then why not pay them the same amount? It makes more sense to me to free up these highly trained OB-Gyns to do what they have the training for — the more complicated, higher risk births.

Matt Taibbi: “Obama's Big Sell Out” Links to the full article with video

Thought Merchant
Politics and Commentary for the Thinking Person of Color
“Better to sell an idea than to buy a lie!!”

11:51 am December 9, 2009, by ctucker

I was trying to ignore the Travails of Tiger Woods. A pro golfer’s personal transgressions are not the most important thing happening in the world; his behavior affects only him, his wife and his sponsors. (And, of that triumvirate, only his wife deserves any compassion.)

Besides, I’ve never expected him to behave like a preacher or a priest. Nor is he a political figure who tries to tell other people how to live. He’s a very wealthy, very visible young guy. As the great philosopher Chris Rock put it, “A man is only as faithful as his options.”

Still, I did expect Woods to be smart. His discipline and incredible will contribute a great deal toward making him the world’s greatest golfer. And since he has long been known as obsessed with protecting his privacy, I never would have expected him to engage in trysts with women who would be likely to kiss and tell.

There was speculation that Woods fired his first caddie, Mike “Fluff” Cowan, because Cowan was developing a very visible public profile of his own, appearing in commercials and giving interviews. Well, if Woods couldn’t tolerate a talky caddie, why send counteless text messages to women who’d be eager to tell the world they slept with Tiger Woods?

How stupid can you be?

http://blogs.ajc.com/cynthia-tucker/2009/12/09/…

Under the prev admin USDA whistleblowers were handled worst than drug dealers.

“• Companies with 50 or more employees would have to set aside “reasonable” break times for nursing mothers and create a private space for breastfeeding. “There's no question that this is a smart health care practice,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who fought for the provision. Trautwein said the idea smacks of “too much Uncle Sam.”

• Nurse midwives would be paid the same as doctors for their services under Medicare. They now receive about 35% less. Midwives perform maternity care for about 3 million disabled women who qualify for Medicare, according to the American College of Nurse-Midwives, and also provide primary care, particularly in rural areas.

• Restaurants with more than 20 locations would be required to post nutritional information.”
……………………………..
LOL – why spend 4 years in college, 4 years in Medical School, 4 years in an OB/GYN residency, and a 1 year fellowship for Obstetrics (13 years) and then get paid the same as a “nurse-midwife”? – did money change hands to get this into the bill??

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the meat it buys for the National School Lunch Program “meets or exceeds standards in commercial products.”

That isn't always the case. McDonald's, Burger King and Costco, for instance, are far more rigorous in checking for bacteria and dangerous pathogens. They test the ground beef they buy five to 10 times more often than the USDA tests beef made for schools during a typical production day.

And the limits Jack in the Box and other big retailers set for certain bacteria in their burgers are up to 10 times more stringent than what the USDA sets for school beef.

For chicken, the USDA has supplied schools with thousands of tons of meat from old birds that might otherwise go to compost or pet food. Called “spent hens” because they're past their egg-laying prime, the chickens don't pass muster with Colonel Sanders— KFC won't buy them — and they don't pass the soup test, either. The Campbell Soup Company says it stopped using them a decade ago based on “quality considerations.”

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-12-…

I can’t believe my ears.

Now that millions of white Americans are out of work, enduring the sense of desperation that poverty and joblessness bring, I can’t believe I’m not hearing the faux-moralists lecture them about taking “personal responsibility” for their own circumstances.

With nearly six million of the 15 million jobless out of work for six months or more, I can’t believe I’m not hearing that old saw – “Anyone who wants a job can find one” – being thrown in high dudgeon in their faces.

After all, that’s the “tough love” pitch the black jobless and the black poor got earfuls of for all this decade (and before), when, with rare exceptions, their unemployment rates were substantially higher than the 9.3 percent white Americans are now enduring. (The current official black unemployment rate is 15.6 percent.)

Of course, I’m not really surprised. I understand the difference perfectly. It’s what happens when the pain goes the other way. It’s what happens when some significant number of whites take out the anger or anxiety they feel in uncivil fashion (consider the right-wing reaction to the Obama Presidency); or, suddenly, the structure of the American system fails to keep them safe from economic harm.

When that happens, no negative ethnic-based generalizations are asserted. Instead, understanding that individuals are not completely masters of their own fate or, sometimes, their own behavior is the rule.

That is not the case, however, when a “problem”—say, mass unemployment—is seen to be largely limited to black Americans.

Then, the problem is racialized as a black problem and a sustained barrage of racially-driven criticism follows. News and opinion columns, the airwaves and the blogosphere rapidly overflow with glib slogans – “no excuses,” “tough love,” “personal responsibility,” and so on – used to disguise callousness masquerading as pragmatism. Such words and phrases were ubiquitous just a few years ago, when many at the top of the society ignored the truism that the financial markets are still ruled by the laws of economic gravity (what goes up must come down). Then, from 2000 to 2008, the white unemployment rate never exceeded 5.2 percent, and often fell below the official definition of full employment.

In sharp contrast, for five of those years the official black unemployment rate ranged from 10 to nearly 11 percent. Indeed, federal labor department statistics show that on an annualized basis the black unemployment rate breached the 10-percent level in 30 of the last 37 years. Throughout that period, the white unemployment rose above 8 percent only twice. In other words, black Americans have been enduring a sustained crisis of mass unemployment crisis since the early 1970s.

Even now, as mass unemployment continues despite an economic recovery appearing to take hold, the black unemployment rate for every category from high school dropouts to college graduates is soaring far above that of whites.

But the racial faux-moralists are silent. Instead, now that masses of whites are suffering, too, one finds an understanding of the harsh toll long-term unemployment can exact on adults and children. That was the point of a November 12 New York Times story which explored in poignant detail the stress on families caused by the long-term or serial joblessness of husbands and/or wives. The predicament, experts said, can have harmful lasting effects on both adults and children.

For me, the story was notable in that it focused on white, middle-class families with a dispassionate sympathy.

My first reaction upon reading the article was a bitter smirk—at seeing another confirmation of my this-is-what-happens-when-the-pain-goes-the-other-way theory.

http://www.thedefendersonline.com/2009/12/08/ou…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/09/britai…

“President Obama on 60 Minutes Sunday
Gives His First Interview Since The Announcement of His Troop Build-Up in Afghanistan
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(CBS)
(CBS) The president gave his first extensive interview since announcing his troop build-up in Afghanistan to 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/09/60min…

The interview will be broadcast this Sunday, Dec. 13, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

President Obama talks about his plans for Afghanistan and Pakistan, the economy and the creation of jobs and reacts to the breach in security at last week's White House state dinner.”