Saturday Reads, Politics Overload Edition

Posted: July 14, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, nature | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 41 Comments

Good Morning!!

I’m a little burned out on politics at the moment, so I’m going to focus other kinds of news. I’ve got some nature stories and a few other odds and ends.

The photo above shows a rare baby white bison that was born in Connecticut last month.

[W]hen Bison No. 7 on Peter Fay’s farm gave birth to a white, 30-pound bull calf a month ago, it made the Fay farm below Mohawk Mountain, for the moment at least, the unlikely epicenter of the bison universe.

For Mr. Fay, what happened was an astoundingly unexpected oddity — white bison are so rare that each birth is viewed as akin to a historic event.

For Marian White Mouse of Wanblee, S.D., and other American Indians, it is a supremely auspicious message from the spirits. She will fly with her family to Connecticut for naming ceremonies at the end of the month that are expected to draw large crowds.

….

Mr. Fay said his Indian friends had told him that a white bison was considered the most sacred thing imaginable — its birth viewed as something like the Second Coming….Mrs. White Mouse, a member of the Oglala Lakota people, said a white bison was believed to be a manifestation of the White Buffalo Calf Maiden, or Ptesan Wi. She is revered as a prophet, who in a time of famine taught the Lakotas seven sacred rituals and gave them their most important symbol of worship, the sacred pipe.

“They are very rare, and when a white bison is born there is a reason for each one to be here,” Mrs. White Mouse said.

Only one in ten million bison are albinos. You can watch some videos of the baby bison here.

Two snow leopard moms and their cubs were located recently in Mongolia and were filmed for the first time ever.

Snow leopard dens are difficult to find because of the animals’ secretive, elusive nature and the difficult, mountainous terrain in which they live. Finding the dens is an important step in learning more about the reproductive behavior and the young of this endangered species.

“We have spent years trying to determine when and where snow leopards give birth, the size of their litters, and the chances a cub has of surviving into adulthood,” said Tom McCarthy, executive director of the snow leopard program at Panthera, a wild cat conservation organization….

The dens were discovered in Mongolia’s Tost Mountains, where locals refer to the creatures as “Asia’s Mountain Ghost.”

A team of scientists from Panthera and the Snow Leopard Trust entered the dens when the mothers were away hunting. They found that the first had two cubs and the second, one. All three cubs were weighed, measured and photographed and handled with extreme care, according to a Panthera release. Two were fixed with tiny microchip ID tags (about the size of a grain of rice) that were placed under their skin for future identification.

Here’s the video:

A little three-month-old kitten stowed away in a shipping container and traveled from Shanghai to Los Angeles, somehow surviving the trip without food or water.

The orange-and-white short-haired kitten traveled 6,500 miles before arriving Wednesday.

It was unclear how many days the kitten was in the container. The trip can take as long as 21 days, according to freighter-travel.com.

The stowaway was retrieved from the container at a Compton-area business where it was delivered.

Los Angeles County animal control officers are cautiously watching his health.

Poor little thing. I hope he survives and finds a home.

Next, a silly story involving a tree (including video): Devout see Virgin Mary in N.J. tree trunk, erect shrine around it

Some people walk past the tree in suburban New Jersey and see … well, a tree. Others walk past it and see what they say is a miracle — an image of the Virgin Mary in the trunk, which has become the centerpiece of a shrine rising on the hot pavement.

“It’s amazing,” Dile Marku, part of the throng surrounding the tree, told WABC, the local ABC affiliate, on Friday, after news of the wondrous piece of wood spread through the city of West New York. “I cannot explain because that’s God’s work, but I know how I feel and what I’ve seen people feeling here for three days. It’s amazing. It is amazing.”

The mayor of West New York, a city of about 49,000 people across the Hudson River from Midtown Manhattan, said he had received calls from around the world from people wanting to come and see the “miracle” for themselves. Mayor Felix Roque said the attention had led to a shrine so large that he wants to make it permanent, in hopes of drawing visitors to an avenue whose fast-food shops, nail salons and cellphone stores don’t scream “vacation spot.” ….

Locals say the image appeared this week after a man was killed in a car crash in the area. Eva Copantitla, who lives in West New York, was the first to notice the image and alerted the mayor, the Jersey Journal reported.

A California photojournalist was surprised when he found there was a hive containing 50,000 bees in his home. Instead of having them exterminated, he decided to find a bee expert to relocate them. There’s video at the link.

Larry Chen, 27, initially didn’t notice the bees. According to the hired beekeeper, the hive was an estimated six to eights months old.

However, one month ago, Chen began noticing bees buzzing in and out of his window, and he decided to investigate. According to Chen, the bees only came out during a 30-minute window in the day.
“I’m not really terrified of the bees… I just remained calm, and I figured they wouldn’t bother me too much… I got stung once, but I was more curious about how big the hive actually was. I figured it was just a small clump of 1,000 or so,” Chen said.

After his initial investigation, he spent a month on the road, traveling for work. When he returned, Chen found time to call a professional to assess the situation. He explained that he recently saw a documentary about the endangerment of bees, so he wanted to save—not exterminate—them.

He found a man on Craigslist, who goes by the name Mike Bee, who would safely remove the bees. He is a member of the rescue organization Backwards Beekeepers, a group that works with HoneyLove.org in order to educate the public about bees.

Read the rest to learn how the bees were relocated.

Attention gun and pop culture collectors: the guns used by Bonnie and Clyde during their infamous 1930s crime spree will be auctioned off in New Hampshire in September.

She kept a Colt .38-caliber revolver close, while he preferred a .45-caliber pistol from the same maker.

But neither weapon was enough to save American outlaws and lovers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow during a 1934 ambush by law enforcement officers.

After the duo was dead, authorities recovered the revolver Bonnie had secured to an inner thigh with white medical tape.

They also seized the handgun Clyde had tucked into his waistband.

Nearly 80 years later, those guns and other items connected to the infamous gangsters will be going up for auction in New Hampshire on Sept. 30. An auction official estimated Thursday that each Bonnie and Clyde weapon could bring between $100,000 and $200,000.

Also to be auctioned off are

a gold pocket watch Clyde was wearing when he died, and a cosmetics case Bonnie was using to carry lipstick, Coty face powder and a powder puff. The brown leatherette box was inside the Ford automobile the gangsters were riding in when a posse of lawmen riddled it with bullets on a Louisiana road.

Also in the auction is a letter that Clyde wrote to his brother L.C. Barrow on the back of a photo showing a house on a platform surrounded by water. He signed it “bud,” his code name when he was on the run.

On Tuesday at Comic-Con, Hyundai introduced the “zombie survival machine.”

Korean automaker Hyundai unveiled its latest model – the unlikely Elantra Coupe Zombie Survival Machine – at an unlikely venue Tuesday night, Comic-Con International 2012 in San Diego.

Built to withstand the rigors of the coming zombie apocalypse, it features such essential undead-eliminating armaments as a front-end spiked zombie plow, armored window coverings, a roof hatch that enables passengers to fend off attacking walkers, a trunk laden with electric and pneumatic weaponry, front and rear-mounted floodlights and spiked all-terrain/rally type tires.

The heavily customized version of the automaker’s new compact coupe was designed by creator/writer of The Walking Dead TV show and graphic novel series Robert Kirkman, and was fabricated by Design Craft Fabrication in Westminster, Calif.

Video at the link.

Finally, don’t forget that Sunday July 15 is National Ice Cream Day. MSNBC offers some suggestions of where to celebrate.

Those are my non-politics news selections. Feel free to discuss politics or anything else in the comments. What are you reading and blogging about today?

David Corn’s Latest: Romney Lied in his Most Recent Financial Disclosure

Posted: July 13, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, open thread, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , | 8 Comments

At Mother Jones, Corn writes:

The ongoing hullabaloo over the timing of Mitt Romney’s exit from Bain has become a bit absurd. The Romney camp and Bain insist that Romney fully retired in February 1999 from the private equity firm he founded and owned—even though in the past he and Bain have described his departure as a part-time leave—and evidence has emerged (including Securities and Exchange documents I first reported) showing that Romney was involved to some extent in Bain as late as 2002, while he continued to maintain his ownership of the firm and its various entities. Romney has been working hard to avoid being held responsible for any post-February 1999 Bain deals that might have resulted in bankruptcies or outsourcing. But there is another reason for the Romney crew to worry about this controversy: Romney may have made a false statement on a federal financial disclosure form, and doing so is a felony punishable by up to one year of imprisonment and a $50,000 fine.

Like all presidential candidates, Romney has to submit a financial disclosure statement to the Office of Government Ethics. He filed his most recent one last month, and the disclosure contains a very clearly stated footnote:

Mr. Romney retired from Bain Capital on February 11, 1999 to head the Salt Lake [Olympics] Organizing Committee. Since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way.

There’s no ambiguity there: not involved in Bain operations in any way. But that’s not true.

At the link, Corn enumerates many SEC filings that put the lie to Romney’s statement to the Office of Government Ethics. In addition, Corn blasts Glenn Kessler, “fact-checker” for the WaPo for his sycophantic defenses of Romney’s lies and half-truths. Read the whole thing at the link.

Also at Mother Jones, Adam Serwer has compiled a list of “everything we know so far about Romney and Bain.”

Please use this as an open thread. JJ will have a cartoon post later on.

Breaking . . . Mitt Romney Has Scheduled Interviews With Major Networks Today

Posted: July 13, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Breaking News, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , | 87 Comments

According to Buzzfeed,

Mitt Romney will sit down for interviews with all of the national networks today, according to a network source.

The source said Romney will sit down with ABC, NBC, and CBS, and will air on the nightly news broadcasts. The interviews will likely not be in person, the source said.

The news was confirmed by a Romney staff member.

Talking Points Memo has more detail:

Mitt Romney, beating back a wave of new reports and political attacks concerning his record at Bain Capital, is making a primetime media blitz Friday. He plans to give interviews to all three major networks, plus two cable networks.

Romney will speak from Laconia, New Hampshire with reporters for CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox News and CNN Friday afternoon, with each segment possibly airing as soon as that night’s broadcast, the Romney campaign confirmed to TPM. Romney has typically been cautious in granting interviews, making his first appearance this election cycle on a non-FOX Sunday show just last month.

No interview for MSNBC. Gee, I wonder why Romney doesn’t want to be questioned by Rachel Maddow?

A little more info from the Caucus Blog:

Mitt Romney will submit to five network and cable television interviews this afternoon after several days of being hammered by President Obama’s campaign on his personal wealth and his time at Bain Capital.

The brief interviews — on CNN, CBS, ABC, Fox and NBC — will give Mr. Romney an opportunity to end the week on message. His campaign has been angrily accusing the president of lying about Mr. Romney’s record.

But it also will provide the networks an opportunity to press Mr. Romney on the accusations from Mr. Obama’s campaign, including questions about the timing of Mr. Romney’s departure from the private equity firm he founded.

This is interesting:

The interviews may in part be designed to bolster the reach of Mr. Romney’s advertising campaign, which has been hampered by a quirk in financing which has temporarily left Mr. Romney without the resources to mount an overwhelming response to the Democratic attacks, according to sources close to the campaign.

Most of the money that Mr. Romney has raised in the last several months can only be used in the general election, which begins after the party’s national convention later this summer, the sources said. The long and contentious Republican primary drained Mr. Romney of much of the money he could spend before then.

See, I told you Obama actually has more money than Romney so far. This makes it sound like Romney is going to try to dance around a little longer and try to pass off some bullsh*t to some weak interviewers. Too bad he doesn’t have to guts to talk to Rachel Maddow or Lawrence O’Brien.

I will continue to update in the comments as I get more information.

Mitt Meltdown Open Thread

Posted: July 12, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, just because, open thread, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , | 66 Comments

I thought I’d put up an open thread to discuss the ongoing Mitt Shady meltdown–or anything else on your mind. I’m gearing up to listen to Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell and I’ll post anything interesting they have to say. If you’re watching or listening too, please join in.

I know you’re already aware that Romney demanded a retraction from The Boston Globe, and they informed him that their story is solid and they’re not backing down. Of course the Obama campaign laughed their asses off at Romney’s demand for an apology from them. Here are some of the latest headlines on the Mitt Shady meldown.

I really like this post by Brian Beutler: Cutting Through The Bain Bamboozlement

Technical questions are, for the moment, dominating the dispute over when Mitt Romney really left Bain Capital. But from my point of view, on the sidelines of this particular story, it all seems much, much simpler.

The reason this issue is in dispute at all is because Mitt Romney wants full political inoculation from anything Bain did between early 1999 and 2002, when he definitely truly left the company. He wasn’t in charge, except in a narrow, technical sense; he’d delegated his duties; Bain’s business practices from that period can’t be hung around his neck.

If you’re not already belly-laughing think about it this way.

For Romney to be truly off the hook politically for the stuff Bain was doing, he’d have to claim not lack of control, but lack of knowledge. And that’s just not going to wash with anyone. He could try going the “I didn’t have even the slightest idea what the company I technically still owned was doing” route, but he’d be marking himself as either dishonest or incompetent.

Here’s a story from The Boston Globe defending their original piece from this morning.

The Romney campaign did not dispute the contents of the documents reviewed by the Globe but insisted Romney had nothing to do with Bain Capital’s operations after he became chief executive of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee.

“The article is not accurate,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said. “As Bain Capital has said, as Governor Romney has said, and as has been confirmed by independent fact checkers multiple times, Governor Romney left Bain Capital in February of 1999 to run the Olympics and had no input on investments or management of companies after that point.” [….]

But a former SEC commissioner told the Globe that even if Romney did not have his hand in Bain Capital’s day-to-day operations, he was still responsible for them, as the firm’s boss.

“It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to say he was technically in charge on paper but he had nothing to do with Bain’s operations,” said Roberta S. Karmel, now a professor at Brooklyn Law School. “Was he getting paid? He’s the sole stockholder. Are you telling me he owned the company but had no say in its investments?”

The Romney campaign claimed Karmel is biased, noting that she was appointed by Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Karmel did not donate to Obama in 2008 and has not given to the president’s campaign this year, either.

HuffPo: Mitt Romney’s Own Testimony Undermines Bain Departure Claim.

Romney has consistently insisted that he was too busy organizing the 2002 Winter Olympics to take part in Bain business between 1999 and that event. But in the testimony, which was provided to The Huffington Post, Romney noted that he regularly traveled back to Massachusetts. “[T]here were a number of social trips and business trips that brought me back to Massachusetts, board meetings, Thanksgiving and so forth,” he said.

Romney’s sworn testimony was given as part of a hearing to determine whether he had sufficient residency status in Massachusetts to run for governor.

Romney testified that he “remained on the board of the Staples Corporation and Marriott International, the Life Like Corporation” at the time.

Yet in the Aug. 12, 2011, federal disclosure form filed as part of his presidential bid, he said, “Mr. Romney retired from Bain Capital on February 11, 1999 to head the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. Since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way.”

Bain, a private equity firm, held a stake in the Lifelike Co. until the end of 2001, including during the period in which Romney claimed to have no business involvement with Bain entities. Bain had heavily invested in Lifelike, a company that Romney identified personally as an opportunity, in 1996 and sold its shares in late 2001. His involvement with Lifelike contradicts his assertion that he had no involvement with Bain business. His testimony is supported by his 2001 Massachusetts State Ethics Commission filing, in which he lists himself as a member of Lifelike’s board.

WaPo: Mitt Romney faces new round of calls to release tax returns.

For the Romney campaign, the calculation is complex, as his advisers are weighing the benefits of transparency against the potential problems he could face should the documents reveal — or even appear to reveal — that he has gamed the tax code.

For now, Romney’s advisers said that the candidate has been sufficiently transparent and that he has no plans to disclose additional tax filings. But with four months left until Election Day — and the near-certainty that Romney will face questions about his finances in any interviews and in the fall debates — his advisers might be forced to reevaluate their strategy if the issue damages his standing in the polls.

Even some Republicans are describing the Romney position as problematic. Former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, a onetime party chairman, said this week that he would provide more than two years’ worth of documents if he were in Romney’s shoes.

Strategist Mark McKinnon said the candidate’s reluctance to release his taxes feeds into the Obama campaign’s argument that Romney is hiding something and taking advantage of the system to enrich himself.

The longer Romney stalls, the worse this is going to get. He’s starting to sound like Nixon claiming “I am not a crook.”

Thursday Reads

Posted: July 12, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, health, Mental Health, Mitt Romney, morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , | 59 Comments

Good Morning!!

I don’t know if this has anything to do with “Romneycare,” but the news came out yesterday that the average life expectancy in Massachusetts is nearly 81 years!

Life expectancy for people in Massachusetts hit an all-time high in 2009, as the rate of deaths from major killers, such as heart disease and cancer, declined, according to a report released Wednesday by the state Department of Public Health.

Overall life expectancy from birth was 80.7 years in 2009, the most recent year for which data are available, compared with 78.5 years nationally. Since 2000, death rates in the state from stroke, heart disease, all cancers combined, and diabetes have continued to drop.

Deaths from HIV and AIDS have dropped dramatically in recent years. Nearly 1,000 people died in both 1994 and 1995, during the peak of the epidemic. In 2009, there were 124 deaths from HIV and AIDS. The decline, the authors write, is the result of advances in treatment and a reduction in the infection rate.

Life expectancy varied by location. Check this out: in Brookline it was 87 years!

From the Sydney Morning Herald, Melinda Gates tells “How I convinced Bill to give away his millions.”

Imagine for a moment that you are married to one of the richest men on the planet. You have three beautiful children and a $125 million home, complete with an indoor swimming pool boasting underwater speakers and a home cinema. How would you choose to spend your days? Shopping? Lunching? Ah yes, travelling – but to the dirt-poor villages of Bangladesh? The wretched slums of India? To TB wards and Aids clinics to sit with the dying and the ostracised?
Melinda Gates, wife of the Microsoft magnate Bill, flew in from a field visit to Niger and Senegal on Tuesday, and will have risen by 4.30 yesterday morning to conduct meetings and interviews before the real working day begins.
In her capacity as co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, she will then join Andrew Mitchell, Secretary of State for International Development, in hosting a family-planning summit for global leaders in London. Together, they will launch a $4 billion fund-raising effort that would deliver safe contraception to 120 million women and girls in developing countries.

The article doesn’t really say how she convinced her husband to become a philanthropist, but there’s some information about Melinda’s early life.

Gates’s conscience was cultivated from an early age. Unlike her Harvard drop-out husband, who was born into a privileged Seattle background, she is one of four children brought up in modest circumstances in Texas, where education was regarded as the holy grail. Her housewife mother regretted not attending college. Her engineer father set up a cleaning business on the side to raise the cash for his children’s education, and as a teenager Gates scrubbed floors to help out.

It’s nice to know that there are some wealthy people who actually want to use their money to help others instead of collecting homes and cars and horses like certain presidential candidates.

Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, Dick Cheney is holding a fundraiser for Mitt Romney today in his home in Wyoming.

Romney officials have said little publicly about the event, expected to be a high-dollar but low-publicity evening that will give top donors the chance to dine with Messrs. Cheney and Romney.

But the campaign trumpeted the reception and private dinner in an email to potential attendees, telling them that “Jackson Hole is a beautiful summer destination and this will be a memorable event.”

The dinner offers an opportunity to continue a string of fundraisers that have given Mr. Romney an advantage in the money race with President Barack Obama in the past two months.

“The past two months” are the operative words in that last sentence. Despite all the talk of Mitt Romney besting President Obama in the money race, Obama is still far ahead of the presumptive Republican nominee in terms of money collected since the two announced their candidacies. At HuffPo, Paul Blumenthal writes:

According to a report from the Sunlight Foundation, Mitt Romney will need to outraise President Barack Obama by $158 million over the next four months if he wants to take the lead in overall fundraising. This punctures a bit of the new narrative of Romney having passed Obama in fundraising. Sunlight’s Bill Allison: “For Mitt Romney, the magic number is $158 million. That’s how much he’ll have to outraise President Barack Obama over the last four months of the campaign to surpass the president, the record holder for campaign fundraising. Obama’s advantage has been lost in media reports highighting the Republican nominee’s $106 million June haul.

Romney’s June number doesn’t even put him on track to out-raise Obama.

For that to happen, Romney would have to best Obama by $39.5 million a month for each of the last four months of the campaign, which is $5 million more than the advantage Romney had in June.

The Obama campaign seems to be keeping this quiet so they can play the underdog. Interesting, huh?

Perhaps in an effort to even the score, Romney is planning fundraisers in foreign countries. We’ve already talked about the events that are being organized for him in London at the time of the Olympics. USA Today reports that he is also planning a fundraiser in Israel.

Mitt Romney is reportedly planning a fundraiser in Jerusalem during his visit to Israel later this month.

The Jerusalem Post reports that donors will be charged “$60,000 or more per plate” at the event. Romney is jointly raising money with the Republican National Committee, and $75,000 is the maximum donation to the Romney Victory Fund.

Romney is scheduled to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, among others, during his trip. The Israel visit will come after Romney attends the Summer Olympics in London.

I’ve been posting in comments for the past couple of days about the mysterious disappearance of Jesse Jackson, Jr. He took a medical leave on June 10, but no one would say where he was. Rumors spread that he was in rehab for drugs or alcohol. Finally today, the news came in a statement from Jackson’s chief of staff that Jackson is in an inpatient facility being treated for a “mood disorder.”

The statement quoted the unnamed Jackson doctor saying: “The congressman is receiving intensive medical treatment at a residential treatment facility for a mood disorder. He is responding positively to treatment.”

Earlier today, Ald. Sandi Jackson, said she is hopeful physicians will release details soon about her husband.

“I’m hopeful that my husband’s doctors will be able to release something soon,” she told the Tribune. “I’m in constant talks with them about Jesse’s condition and his medical prognosis going forward.”

Rep. Jesse Jackson, 47, a Chicago Democrat, has been on a medical leave since June 10, but his aides and family have declined to disclose the nature of his medical problem, where he is being treated or when he may return to work.

A mood disorder could mean major depression or bipolar disorder. Whatever is wrong, I hope Jackson will recover and be able to return to the House of Representatives. At present, he isn’t expected to return until after Labor Day, if then.

I couldn’t help noticing this NYT article about a 12-year-old boy who died tragically and unexpectedly of septic shock: An Infection, Unnoticed, Turns Unstoppable.

For a moment, an emergency room doctor stepped away from the scrum of people working on Rory Staunton, 12, and spoke to his parents.

“Your son is seriously ill,” the doctor said.

“How seriously?” Rory’s mother, Orlaith Staunton, asked.

The doctor paused.

“Gravely ill,” he said.

How could that be?

Two days earlier, diving for a basketball at his school gym, Rory had cut his arm. He arrived at his pediatrician’s office the next day, Thursday, March 29, vomiting, feverish and with pain in his leg. He was sent to the emergency room at NYU Langone Medical Center. The doctors agreed: He was suffering from an upset stomach and dehydration. He was given fluids, told to take Tylenol, and sent home.

But Rory was already in grave danger.

Bacteria had gotten into his blood, probably through the cut on his arm. He was sliding into a septic crisis, an avalanche of immune responses to infection from which he would not escape. On April 1, three nights after he was sent home from the emergency room, he died in the intensive care unit. The cause was severe septic shock brought on by the infection, hospital records say.

I hope everyone will read this very sad article. An overwhelming infection that began with strep killed my graduate school mentor–the same infection that killed young Rory. One day he began vomiting and thought he had a stomach virus. The next day he was dead. This happened a few months after I earned my Ph.D. with his help and support. As you can probably imagine, this was a terrible shock to me and I’m really still grieving–I have tears in my eyes as I write this. Everyone should be aware that sepsis is “a leading cause of death in hospitals, can at first look like less serious ailments…”

Moments after an emergency room doctor ordered Rory’s discharge believing fluids had made him better, his vital signs, recorded while still at the hospital, suggested that he could be seriously ill. Even more pointed signals emerged three hours later, when the Stauntons were at home: the hospital’s laboratory reported that Rory was producing vast quantities of cells that combat bacterial infection, a warning that sepsis could be on the horizon.

The Stauntons knew nothing of his weak vital signs or abnormal lab results.

This is starting to turn into a health care post, so I’ll return to politics before I wrap up. Yesterday everyone was talking about Mitt Romney’s speech to the NAACP. He was booed when he talked about repealing Obamacare and at a few other points. So why did he go? Surely he doesn’t expect to win over many African American voters. I thought this piece by Jamelle Boule provided a possible answer: Mitt Romney’s Successful Speech to the NAACP

As an attempt to persuade, Mitt Romney’s speech to the NAACP this morning was an exercise in futility. African Americans are loyal Democratic voters, and aren’t particularly interested in an agenda of tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts for everyone else. But that wasn’t the point. Romney almost certainly knows that he’ll only win a tiny percentage of black voters in November—at best, he’ll match John McCain’s performance in 2008. If current opinion surveys are any indication, it’s more likely that he’ll win fewer African American voters than any Republican in recent history.

The point of this address to the NAACP was to send a signal to right-leaning, suburban white voters—that Mitt Romney is tolerant, and won’t represent the bigots in his party. But there’s a sense in which Romney had it both ways: Not only did he reassure hesitant whites, but by pledging to repeal Obamacare—and being booed by the audience—he likely increased his standing with those who do resent African Americans. By going to an audience of black professionals and sticking with his stump speech, there’s a sense in which Romney might receive credit for refusing to “pander.”

That makes a lot of sense to me. Here’s another piece I found interesting about Romney’s efforts to woo Evangelical Christians:

Several years ago, when Mitt Romney was merely a multi-millionaire Massachusetts politician, he couldn’t locate the conservative Christian evangelical movement with a GPS or MapQuest. Over the past few years however, Romney and his team have been holding a series of meet-ups – whose pace has been recently accelerated – with conservative Christian leaders to assure them of Romney’s fealty to their issues.
When Romney heads off to Israel later this summer, he hopes to accomplish at least three objectives: renew his longtime friendship with Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu; convince Jewish donors and voters that he is more Israel-friendly than President Barack Obama; and, send a message to conservative Christian evangelicals that he can be trusted.

Right win Christians are hoping Romney picks a VP from one of their own

“Acceptable nominees could be Tim Pawlenty, Mike Huckabee, Bob McDonnell, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, and Marco Rubio.”

Please let it be Rick Santorum! That would be the kiss of death for Romney’s chances.

Those are my suggested reads for today. What are you reading and blogging about?

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