Leaving Row 2 Seat 4 for the front row – maybe

The talk is that Major Garrett has a great shot at moving into Helen Thomas’ old seat. It’s also being speculated that Bloomberg will get the honor. My thinking – and not shared by anyone in the know – is that print media will be moving up. The Washington Post or NYT are both on the same side as NBC, ABC, CNN and Reuters, which is the White House side.

Read more here: The Daily Beast, NewsBusters, Mediaite

from http://www.whitehousecorrespondentsweekendinsider.com

Gift cards to Starbucks – more of your tax dollars at work

As I’ve written before, the state performs a yearly survey of all long term care facilities (nursing homes and rehab centers.) If a facility is failing or below grade – according to them – then they will survey more often. But while the surveyors are doing their nightmare deeds, they interview residents.

My mother is right now a resident in a local LTC facility that is currently being surveyed. The surveyors came in to interview her and her roommate. Both ladies are very alert, lucid and oriented. My mother had only one complaint that dealt with a housekeeper. Her roommate Elizabeth, on the other hand, had a laundry list of complaints, complete with names and incidents. These interviews were not done privately, I might add.

When the interviews were done, Elizabeth was handed a bunch of Starbucks coupons to hand out to the (few) staff that she was happy with.

My mother got nothing from them.

Elizabeth was rewarded for being a tattle tale or teller of tales and my mother was ignored for being happy with her care.

Before I go any further, let me talk a little about Elizabeth and her mindset. She complained to me that she had been getting a mechanical soft diet and “I’m not diabetic!” I explained twice to her that her diet had nothing to do with diabetes and everything to do with the fact that she had no teeth. But boy she was sure set on making this diet thing an issue and when I shot a dart in her balloon, she didn’t speak to me the rest of my visit.

After my mother told me this Starbucks story she said to me, “What about me? I didn’t have anyone to complain about so I got nothing to give to the girls who have taken good care of me.”

Needless to say, I have been on a slow burn over this all weekend. As a nurse in a LTC facility who has to endure the pure sadistic pleasure these surveyors get when they walk past our doors, I am furious about this.  As a taxpayer who pays their wages and now I learn, pay for Starbucks gift coupons to give to the do-badders, I am red HOT.

Not only will I be in the Administrators office first thing in the morning, but I’ve also notified our daily paper about this. They sound very interested in this story.

The Alien in the White House – Rabinowitz

Keep this in mind Tuesday night, when or if  you hear the president address us on the gulf oil gusher:

A great part of America now understands that this president’s sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class. He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe.

…

It is a White House that has focused consistently on the sensitivities of the world community—as it is euphemistically known—a body of which the president of the United States frequently appears to view himself as a representative at large. Dorothy Rabinowitz/WSJ