Yes, you were Otto.

I swear to God being first is everything to some.

In other news: Obama is a stuttering clusterfuck of a spying tyrant.

Morning, ‘rons and ‘ronettes.  Thanks for the news, Gabe.  Hope Vic will be in with his usual catalogue of doom.  Anyway. . .

It wasnÂ’t very often that anyone intimidated the brash, pugnacious producer Sam Goldwyn, but one who did was the director John Ford.  During the filming of 1937s The Hurricane, Goldwyn watched the rushes, only to find fewer close-ups of leading lady Dorothy Lamour than he liked.

The next day, Goldwyn walked on to the set and told Ford that he didnÂ’t feel the director was shooting enough close-ups.  “Now, IÂ’ll tell you, Mr. Goldwyn,” Ford replied, “IÂ’m making this picture the way I feel it should go.  If I want a close-up this big,” he went on, hitting Goldwyn in the stomach with the back of his hand, “IÂ’ll make ‘em that big.  Or if I want ‘em this big,” he added, slapping Goldwyn in the chest, “theyÂ’ll be this big.”  Then, clenching his fist, he said, “I might want them even bigger!”

An intimidated Goldwyn left the set with a companion at his side.  When they were a safe distance away, the producer felt he could safely have the last word.  “Well, anyway,” he muttered, “I put it in his mind.”

Hope you all have a wonderful day.

a guy cuts you with a switchblade because he's a criminal? Bush

A guy cuts you up with a scalpel because he's trying to fix you up? Obama

Lessons in liberal thinking, lesson one

re 14: it's called "growing in office"

lessons in liberal thinking, lesson two

Y'know, as much as many people on here didn't like them, can you imagine a President Gingrich or a President Santorum ordering up a secret warrant to access all of Verizon's phone records?

I can't.

@ 13 - "I believed all these "polls" (mittmentum? women shifting away from Obama? All of the wasted flaming skulls) during election time last year. Obamacare is here to stay."

The polls last year were correct.

But it doesn't mean a thing when you defraud the vote.

Today is the 69th anniversary of D-Day. G-d bless the memory of those who gave their lives that day and in the following days, and those who somehow lived to tell the tale

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at June 06, 2013 07:08 AM (+98Gb)

Agreed, J.J.  The country's finest.

I'm glad they couldn't know the world their children would create.  If they had, they'd have just said, "Fuck it.  It's all yours, Schickelgruber."

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at June 06, 2013 07:02 AM (+98Gb)

I'm tired of this being painted as Sebelius deciding who lives and dies.  She didn't do that at all.  She said to let the rules in place determine who gets transplant.  She declined to use her position to make that determination.  It seems like every Republican on the planet has lost his mind and is looking for a reason to beat the government over the head.  Yeah, this administration sucks in spades.  However, they actually got this one right,.  They didn't let a bureaucrat make the decision.  They wanted to let the rules determined by doctors be the deciding factor.

Out: Phone taps on overseas lines of known terrorists.

In: Blanket search of Verizon's domestic phone data.

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at June 06, 2013 07:24 AM (+98Gb)

It is when they want to take over, directly, all food production and distribution that you have to worry. In fact, aren't Buffett and Soros investing heavily in those areas? The  masses can get by ok without medical care. We can always get black market antibiotics, but we have to eat very regularly.

>>Bush used it to target his enemies: suspected Muslim terrorists. Obama is using it to target his enemies: the American people.

Shhh. That's a freaking selling point to liberals.

Good grief, how do you do URLs on here?

When you've lost Al Gore...

Umm...

Give me a minute here...

>>Good grief, how do you do URLs on here?

Painfully.

A TinyUrl or such will work in the comment, but it won't be a link.

Some links will work in the URL box under name, but others won't.

Nice things, can't have, trolls, some assembly required.

Posted by: Oldsailors Poet Palin/Bolton 2016 at June 06, 2013 07:44 AM (XIxXP)

Lol!  That's what my husband called her yesterday.

Morning all!

Posted by: Chi-Town Jerry at June 06, 2013 07:48 AM (UTq/I)

All the judge did was allow her to compete with the adults for lungs.  He did NOT guarantee she'll get them.  If there is an adult that is in worse shape than she is, the adult will get the lungs.

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at June 06, 2013 07:33 AM (+98Gb)

Yes, I'm guessing that the flying squirrels at NSA (I used to live in Laurel, Maryland and knew a few of them; very very smart and weird with negligible social skills) have access to everyfuckingthing but will only pass along what is legal to do so.

Truck carring 6,000 gallons of Scotch overturns and catches fire in NJ.

http://goo.gl/yH147

Me has a sad

Posted by: Name Withheld Upon Request at June 06, 2013 07:50 AM (U2UQk)

------------------

Don't forget the liver transplant list... HAHAHAHHAHAHHAHH!!- Larry Hagman.

Any docs in the house? Will this girl's body destroy the new lungs the way they destroyed the originals?

Posted by: Chi-Town Jerry at June 06, 2013 07:57 AM (UTq/I)

The sad truth is some will die no matter what the judge did. 

Doctors have said that the age cut off is mostly arbitrary and archaic.....based on older medical procedures.  It doesn't really apply now. 

@ 132 - "his "Hey, no cutsies!" argument is fucking retarded. In all likelihood, this kid dies in the next few weeks. Feel better now?"

The main issue here, I think, is that we have a government that will change the rules to allow a 10 year old girl to get access to an abortiofacient, but then turns around and follows the letter of the law to not allow a 10 year old girl to potentially get a lung transplant she needs to, well, live.

Kill her baby?  Fine.  Continue breathing?  Not so much.

Jim McDermott (D-WA) is "tired of reading the Constitution"

Must.  Not.  Rage.  Stroke.  This.  Early.

Preston Brooks, your country needs you!

Posted by: jeannebodine at June 06, 2013 08:02 AM (LBBS3)

Yes, I'm listening to the rewind now and what you said is accurate.

@ 145 - "Kill her baby? Fine. Continue breathing? Not so much."

There you go again.  Can't you stupid SoCons *ever* keep from injecting your religious mumbo jumbo into a thread??

From teh Twitter:

Jim Geraghty:You self-proclaimed civil libertarians who voted for Obama are such suckers.

>>Could someone tell me why carriage returns (is that what they're still called or am I dating myself) appear in my comments?

That one, I don't know. If you have the row of icons above the Comments box, you could click the far right one to see if there's any codes lurking in there...but if you're just typing, they shouldn't randomly appear.

Are you using Verizon???

@ 174 - "I just wanna know when I can start snitching on my neighbors. Some of them, I'm not too crazy about.."

Yo dog, snitches get stitches.

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at June 06, 2013 07:24 AM (+98Gb)

What are you talking about?  UNOS and OPTN have been around for years and years.  They far pre-date Obama.  The rules have been in place for a long time.  They don't just change them willy-nilly.  They ask for input from the public and people in them medical profession.  They have doctors who serve on the committees to determine what the criteria are.  This isn't some Obamacare BS.

If people would actually read what I said, I said that Obama and all his minions suck.  All I was pointing out was that, this one single time, the government actually got it right.  This is starting to smack of a knee-jerk reaction on the part of the Right that anything the Obama administration does is wrong.  I agree that 99.999% of the time that's true.  It's just not true 100% of the time.

>>That was thought to mean she wanted to be around for the kids' last week of school, even though their last day is today.

End of year parties.

>>The local news just reported that tonight's she's speaking at a fundraiser for Terry McAuliffe's guberatorial bid in Tyson's Corner, VA, which is in the DC suburbs.

Wow. Way to piss off the Chinese. Brilliant.

Posted by: GnuBreed at June 06, 2013 07:32 AM (ccXZP)

I didn't say that at all.  I am only speaking about transplants.  In my case as a kidney transplant patient, our rules are straightforward.  That's only because we have dialysis available to us.  In our case, the criteria are how close of a match you are, how long you've been on the list, relative body size, and the viability time  of the organ.  Other organs have some of the same criteria, but they also have to include a subjective factor of how sick the person is.  That adds a complication.  They try to give the organ to the patient with the highest score that matches the other criteria the best.  These criteria are designed to provide the highest probability of success.

Posted by: Oldsailors Poet Palin/Bolton 2016 at June 06, 2013 08:13 AM (XIxXP)

Is anybody bringing up the shady financial deals in Global Crossing that the fucking Clintonoid dirtbag made out like a bandit while other investors took it up the ass?  That should be enough, in a fair and just world, which the state of Virginia obviously is not, to torpedo his political aspirations and possibly leading to a prosecution.  Like that Corzine guy.

 Customer: This scotch you just served me, it tastes like asphalt and road kill.

Waiter: I'm sorry, Sir. I thought you ordered bourbon.

Posted by: That Guy at June 06, 2013 07:52 AM (LYtpo)

Yes, there are.  In the case of my genetic disease, there is an increased incident of brain aneurysms.  Before I was added to the transplant list, the doctors required me to undergo a brain CT scan to make sure there was no evidence of possible aneurysms.  Habitual drug use is another possible cause for not being listed.  Sometimes, the nature of the disease causes it.  If there is a risk that the same disease will attack the new organ, you won't be listed.

Posted by: Zombie Mickey Mantle at June 06, 2013 08:03 AM (ccXZP)

--

Wait for me!

Posted by: GnuBreed at June 06, 2013 07:32 AM (ccXZP)

Oh for the Love of fucking god, let's get facts straight.

SINCE NO ONE HAS STOPPED TO DO THAT YET.

A few notes:

1) No one actually read the IOM report on mammograms, clearly.  I did. It didn't actually say what you think it said. In fact it specifically carved out an exclusion for women with a family history of breast cancer (for other women, it reached the conclusion that because of false positives, which lead to biopsies, which yes sometimes do go wrong, as well as emotional stress, every year was probably overkill.)

Believe it or not: Science went into that.  In fact, mammograms are not that expensive overall, what was expensive was the costs of the remarkably high number of false positives.  But Breast Cancer groups get their bread and butter from this kind of identity politics, so they had to leverage the issue.

You know what else is pretty damned inaccurate, PSA tests.  Don't get one unless you're at high high risk of prostate cancer. 5 out of 6 of the "high" PSA's are false positives, leading to a biopsy you probably don't want (and of the 1/6 "correct" a high percentage is due to BPH.)

2) HHS's role in the OPTN system is that they get to choose who runs it (UNOS) and they can override their decisions.  For some remarkable reason (and I honestly have no idea why) Sebelius chose not to run with that power.  Blind Squirrel, nut or something. (Although I suspect why didn't run with that power was significantly more cynical.)

3) Insurance != healthcare.  Full stop.  Simply not true.  So when the IOM releases their decision, you're still free to get a mammogram every year.  Hell I'm sure you could find a doctor willing to prescribe one every 6 months.  But insurance companies (who do need to at least break even) are likely going to say "yeah that's not something we're paying for, sorry."

4) IPAB is moronic for an incredibly different set of reasons.  In part because it has the power of law behind it.  Also because many of the decisions it's going to have to work with won't be as simple as comparing the "Need to Treat" to the "Need to harm" and doing some cost benefit analysis.

This case doesn't even walk like a duck, or talk like a duck.  Yet we whipped it up and used it against...someone I guess.  Welcome to the new Post-Modern healthcare system.

Posted by: Tami at June 06, 2013 08:00 AM (X6akg)

That's actually not entirely true.  Part of the reason for the rule is that there is very little research into the procedure in children that young.  Her doctors seem to think they can pull it off.  Other doctors aren't so sure.  UNOS and OPTN normally take their time making these kinds of changes because they want to make sure that they aren't going to lose an organ to a risky procedure.  Once the lungs are modified to fit in this girl, they can't be re-used.

A secret warrant (the latest of many) is being used to compel Verizon to hand over caller data to the NSA . . . all Verizon caller data. The President's defenders will evolve some excuses for this over the next few days, I'm sure, but let's get the obvious ones out of the way. First, the man who said he was all about making a change from Bush 43 will say "Bush did it." Second, liberals will ask, "why do you care . . . unless you have something to hide." Third, "experts" (aka liberal law professors) will suggest that caller data isn't really private info, so how could anyone reasonably protest that the government is collecting it? Fourth, something along the lines of "Verizon warrant is the new n*****." Gonna be a fun day.

Today is also the anniversary of D-Day.

Why do I    mention that in reference to this passage by Gabe?   Oh, no reason. 

My eyes!
Posted by: Tami at June 06, 2013 08:27 AM (X6akg)

I think I've figured out how to fix it now.

Someone said to run in compatibility mode.  All my font is Times New Roman now, but we'll see if that works.

@ 240 - "Being a good steward of the environment is way different than being a radical environmentalist. We should all be "conservationists" to some extent."

I recycle...when it makes economic sense for me to do so.

>>But if she pisses off the Chinese...fine with me.

If it were a political decision, sure.

But if Obama is trying to be nice and will fail because she wants to play with the girls and/or not stand next to the petite and pretty Chinese First Lady, then it's noteworthy.

Their biggest one will be that conservatives never had a problem with this before but "suddenly" do now. It's always attack, attack, attack.

I had this "conversation" with an asshat  lefty last night.  "You didn't care when Bush was targeting the NAACP!"

My answer:  "So when was the last time you went to an anti-war rally, asshole?  That was all the rage when BOOOSH was around - not so much when it's your prancing Black Jesus, though."

Posted by: Sherry McEvil, Stiletto Corsettes C'est Magnifique at June 06, 2013 08:29 AM (IHyzL)

FDR understood "never let a crisis go to waste" better than anybody as his dimwitted programs extended the Depression as they increased everybody's dependence on the central government.  Even my Repub father spoke better of him than he deserved.

Yeah her doctors have been portraying this as "the rules are old and have never changed!"

Which is in fact entirely untrue.

The rules for Kindeys and livers have been altered.  Not the rules for lungs.

Now some will suggest this is an oversight I guess. I'm thinking it's far more complicated than that.

As I said before, these rules don't exist in the CFR, they're far more malleable anything government.  But we don't run and change them very often because if we're not 100% right, we've lost 2 patients.

Posted by: Lizzy at June 06, 2013 08:28 AM (jvnuj)

Where's the Unabomer when you really need him?

I recommend running in Firefox mode. Posted by:AllenG (Dedicated Tenther) at June 06, 2013 08:31 AM (/PCJa)

I never really liked FF to be honest.  Dunno why.

And Chrome is basically spyware for google at this point.

I don't see the big deal with the Rand Paul "crunchiness."   What I glean from the article is that he enjoys spending time outdoors in nature, and that he composts.     Oh, and he planted a tree.    I didn't read anything there that indicated he uses only one square of toilet paper when he goes to the john, or that he    bathes in his own urine for   its   alleged holistic properties,    or that he's      one step away from chaining      himself to a tree     to protest logging in the Sierras.   Did I miss something here?

“When we have people with tattoos and without tattoos, with ties and without ties, with suits and in blue jeans, then we win nationally.”

No offense, Rand, but we already DO have these people.      Just because the media likes to pretend we don't doesn't mean it's true.

Posted by: HeatherRadish™, Crankypants Extraordinaire at June 06, 2013 08:15 AM (hO8IJ)

You really need to learn about transplants before commenting on them.  UNOS and OPTN have the responsibility for allocating organs in the best way possible to assure successful transplants.  Every time you see a TV show or a movie where someone is rushing an organ around to get it to a recipient, that scene is possible because of what they do.  They maintain the national registry.  Without those rules, organs would be up for auction when they came available.  While I know it does happen, that's outside their purview.  They try to maximize the effectiveness of the organs.

@EoJ

By the by, I actually never cried "no cutsies." My biggest concern is that once she jumps lists, the new list won't account for the correct criteria at all (which in this case I'm sure includes lung size relative to patient size) or account for them correctly.  Simply because the system wasn't designed this way (and now has to handle a case it wasn't designed for).

In which case she might be artificially moved up the list over someone with a better chance of survival.

And if it doesn't work (because her doctors are merely arrogant fools trying to forge new ground, which is a pretty big possibility actually and she's just a tool for them to enhance their careers).

Then we've made an irreversible mistake.  And in the process set a new precedent.

(No one's mentioned that yet have they?  That the doctors may have manipulated the family in this case as a way of getting that "big time surgery" to enhance their careers and publish a few case studies.)

Posted by: AllenG (Dedicated Tenther) at June 06, 2013 08:38 AM (/PCJa)

How's that now?

My 32 bit machine is running IE10 in fact.

Posted by: tsrblke at June 06, 2013 08:33 AM (GaqMa)

Exactly.  In fact, UNOS announced a new rule for kidneys and opened it to public comment earlier this year.  The new rule proposes that kidneys be matched to recipients based on age.  The idea is that a kidney from a young person could last longer transplanted into a young person.  Since an older person will likely die sooner, the younger person might get more years out of it.  They didn't just arbitrarily change this rule.  They are allowing for doctors and patients to have input.  It generally takes 2 years for such a change.  They want to be sure the change is the right one.  That's one of the problems with the little girl.  She doesn't have the time to wait, so her parents started a PR campaign to circumvent the standard procedure.

Hahahahaha - I had to go to the IRS website this morning, and what do I notice first thing? 

A "conferences" tab in the middle of their home page.  Among the highlights:

Their BS/propaganda about how they've cut costs for meetings by 80% since 2010.

A statement from Weasel Werfel regarding his "personal" outrage over the costs

Steps the IRS will take to ensure this never happens again.

But none of the videos of their conference activities, of course

And nothing anywhere that I could see (and admittedly didn't spend a lot of time looking for) about an apology to those conservative groups and individuals whose lives they interfered with so brutally.

I normally attend the annual IRS Nationwide Tax Forum, which is a 3-day seminar they put on for tax practitioners in 6 different cities each summer regarding tax law changes.  (Of course I pay for my attendance, unlike the government leeches.)

I was going to skip it this year because we are going to Europe with our kids in August.  But I might - MIGHT - have to go to the Orlando one next month. 

The tap-dancing alone would be popcorn-worthy. 

Posted by: GnuBreed at June 06, 2013 08:45 AM (ccXZP)

I didn't like the reversal then either.  It stank of falling victim to the PC mentality.  Someone cried "war on women" and the science went out the window.

I'm sorry to hear you had prostate cancer. I'm in no way trying to minimalize the effect of it (or say that there aren't severe cases.) 

I am saying that the PSA test as a screening mechanism is wildly inaccurate, and mostly a waste of time and money. (As a monitoring tool it's being used in an entirely different way.)

I'm not saying all prostate testing is a waste of money.  As much as it sucks to have it said out in the open: the digital rectal exam is both cost effective and reasonably accurate.  This was one example among many, I'd note.

Posted by: alexthechick - Dr. SMOD. Soon to be making all the housecalls. at June 06, 2013 08:55 AM (VtjlW)

I'm actually working on a paper that says the difference between [our] (as in the co-author and my) philosophy and the leftist greeny dingbats is that we seek conservation (and human flourishing) they seek mere preservation (and the human death that comes with it.) Then we make the argument that conservation is more awesome.

Although, this paper is for a theology conference so I get to "cheat" and use religion to justify my position that humans are "da awesome" (to use the religious term)

Posted by: BCochran1981 at June 06, 2013 08:57 AM (EMhO

not us, not us, as we truly are special little flowers.

however keep you eye on UPS and boxed gifts that seemingly move by themselves.

Okay, I have an incredibly idiotic question. No, I mean this is really stupid even by my standard of stupid questions, which is nigh to Platonic. Here it is: will adult lungs even fit in a 10 year old? I mean, I know organs are squishy and all that, but a child is not an adult. Posted by: alexthechick - Dr. SMOD. Soon to be making all the housecalls. at June 06, 2013 09:00 AM (VtjlW)

No.  They'll have to be modified.  How much is dependent on the individual patient and the lungs themselves.  My understanding is that modification usually involves removing lobes.

This would be the case normally actually.  But my understanding is the modification is more extensive in these cases.

As I said, I'm not entirely sure how lung matching works (liver is a far bit simpler, so that's what's constantly used as an example in classes.)  It's POSSIBLE that lung size relative to patient size is taken into account when matching, but I don't know that.

Consider for example that the lungs from a fairly small adult may go fine in a young teenage person.  Whereas the lungs from a future NBA player whose only 9 may not actually fit all that well into another peds patient (that last one may be a bit of hyperbole, but you get the point.)

Under normal circumstances, no. But I believe, without actually having read anything (Moron), that her docs are/were claiming she's an exception for some reason. Maybe she's a big 10 yr old? I dunno. Posted by: BCochran1981 at June 06, 2013 09:04 AM (EMhO

Well just based on pictures she might be above average for her age.  But I also just sorta read the doctors as saying "we can make the necessary modifications." Which..to be fair, they're going to say anyway.

Also this case is more interesting because studies have shown that for CF kids, they do better from a heart/lung transplant, and then the heart (which is still perfectly healthy) is given to a kid who needs a heart (but not lungs) in what's known as a "domino transplant"

I have no idea if you could even do that in this case.

@AtC,

Right now we're just shooting to present at the big "Theology and Ethics" Symposium at Notre Dame.  After that if we get good enough feedback to publish we're thinking the National Center for Catholic Bioethics Quarterly.

It's more or less a ripping apart of some greenie weenie who gave a paper at most resent Cath. Health Assoc. meeting which was just standard green shit (Prius! Organic farming! Walking as exercise!) squished together with the words "stewardship" and "intergenerational justice" without any reflecting.

Me and my Coauthor beat it to pieces in 30 seconds.  Several others pointed out that her plans would be horrific for the poor (a concern of the church) and she actually stood there stuttering on stage and said "Well everyone will be better off in the end." (She hadn't even considered that, at all)

Worst case, this was the "student paper competition" winner. My department chair was (and still is) livid over it, but he sees why I stopped submitting papers to the competition.  Not worth it.