92 Comments

1. barry 0351:

Social Healthcare.
This sounds like the Veterans Administration.

Feb 8, 2009 - 6:07 am 2. lucy:

The Beeb report is as stupid as the social workers. How many times in 9 minutes can one use the word devastating? The results were devastating–workers sacked! Oh my goodness.

So okay. These are the same sort of Brit social workers who decided 2 weeks ago that it was better to place a young boy with gay men instead of the grandparents who desperately wanted him. AND told the grandparents if they complained, they would never get to see the child again.

Do people want to be free? Do they want personal responsibility and all that implies? Or is it preferable, no matter what consequences, to give others jurisdiction over the messy business of living a life?

Feb 8, 2009 - 6:57 am 3. geoffb:

What I see is our public school system. Ever more administrators, administrating fewer and fewer teachers.

Feb 8, 2009 - 7:07 am 4. 3Case:

In the healthcare filed we will get the same. Ever more administrators (of various sorts) administering fewer and fewer doctors and nurses. With the shift in emphasis to homecare, that problem exists already in nursing. I see it on a near daily basis.

Feb 8, 2009 - 7:15 am 5. Peter Boston:

The situation described in the report is the direct result of too many lawyers in the legislative process. Dalrymple nails it exactly. Lawyers are educated and trained to focus on process regardless of outcome. Common sense is made the slave to principles.

Feb 8, 2009 - 7:41 am 6. joe buzz:

Mad correlative skills Mr. Fernandez. Brings to mind the state of California handing out IOUs to taxpayers while helping a single mother of 6 become a single mother of 14. Strange days indeed.

Feb 8, 2009 - 8:06 am 7. Jay:

At the U New Mexico the faculty will not get a raise while the president has appointment a number of VP for diversity, minority affairs etc with overlapping powers and good raises. The president is not driven by any legislative pressure.
In my university the older professors such as myself are adopting the Soviet style of “work”. We go through motions while the kiddies bring their notebooks to class and surf using our wifi network, those who do come to class. My university is one of the better state universities in the US.
Parents who care better start ignoring the BS ratings of the US News & World Report and find out what really does on. But then many parents do not care. They do not know what drugs their children are taking and what their offspring are doing.
My daughter thinks she is on top of what my teenage grand daughters are doing? I doubt she does since the upper middle class kids in the burbs have become really sophisticated deceivers.

Feb 8, 2009 - 9:03 am 8. E. Nigma:

Perosnal morality is and should be the judgement by one person of right and wrong, and hopefully the courage to act upon that judgement.

Public morality appears to be mutating from a shared, pluralistic notion of the same private morality, to that of the notion of process, to evade the notion of ever having to make a personal value judgement.

Thus we are intellectually “collectivized” more thoroughly than we are ever economically collectivized. The words and the semantics prepare the mind amd spirit for submission. The cruel and tragic death of “Baby P” is a small price for the professional collectivists to pay for offering the mind numbing escape that “public process moralizing” allows to those seeking expiation of their guilty consciences.

No wonder Theodore Dalrymple fled the British NHS. What a whorehouse of sickening, slummy morality.

Feb 8, 2009 - 9:09 am 9. Jimmy:

Stunning similarities to my field as well.

I work in the design of personal protective and load carriage equipment in the private industry in Canada.

Canadian troops are issued a load carriage vest that took over 10 years to field from program inception to being issued en mass where is was promptly mass rejected as wholly inadequete by the vast majority of users. Strangely the vest went through ann extensive battery of tests, trials, research programs etc and yet it took less than one deployment in the field for actual users to reject. The system that produced the vest hailed it as a stunning success and had all the test data to “prove” it including documented high percentage acceptance rates amongst the testers.

When questioned directly about the delta between the test results and end-user acceptance the tendency was to dismiss, ridicule, and demean instead of addressing the requirements. I suspect that inthis case the fac that the end users were mostly “other ranks” made it easier to dismiss their concerns and ignore/gloss over the problems.

The case of Baby P enrages me on may levels. For may years I opposed capital punishment, and yet in this case I think I would find it hard to restrain myself if I were in the presence of either the perpetrators of this heinous act OR the people lining their pockets under the guise of preventing it.

And we ask saoldiers to fight for this society.

Feb 8, 2009 - 9:11 am 10. A Conservative Teacher:

Obama would claim that the baby was a mistake anyways.

Feb 8, 2009 - 9:18 am 11. Leo Linbeck III:

Meanwhile, on our side of the Atlantic, the same trend of process over results continues to march apace in our public K-12 education program.

KIPP, the Knowledge is Power Program, is one of the most successful charter school systems in the US. They take low-income kids and give them an actual education, raising test scores and instilling a strong work ethic, with the results being a nearly order-of-magnitude jump in college attendance.

KIPP is one of the few bright spots in public education. Bill Gates recently single out KIPP in his speech at TED.

And yet, there’s a problem brewing: the union is coming:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/education/07kipp.html?ref=education

Watch this struggle, and also what is happening in Washington DC schools under their dynamic chancellor, Michelle Rhee, and their reform-minded mayor, Adrian Fenty.

Will actual results be sacrificed on the altar of “due process”? To be sure, unions are necessary to protect employees against the capricious actions of a monopoly, but KIPP is not a monopoly; teachers who are unhappy are free to leave and go teach in the regular NY school system. So is the union really trying to protect the teacher, or is it trying to protect the monopoly? The young KIPP school, only four years old, is a threat to the union’s “lifestyle.” Will it stop this promising program while it is still young?

IOW, will KIPP in Brooklyn be Baby P’d?

L3

Feb 8, 2009 - 9:22 am 12. wildernesscalling:

Here comes the “Cradle to Grave” care the Democrats want! There was a story just a couple days ago out of Florida where an abortion was done without the doctor in the clinic, the live birth 23 week old female child was simple dumped into a plastic “biohazard” bag and then thrown into the garbage like common medical trash, this folks is what “0” did not want to stop this from happening so why should the practicesors of his favored and protect holy grail be bothered with the minor detail or waste the time to actual keep the non-human (lump-o-flesh to the pro choice crowd) from suffering a agonizing death by sucking its brains out or cutting its head off or any other quicker method of destroying its life… the times of Noah are nearly here, be ye prepared…

Feb 8, 2009 - 9:30 am 13. Robohobo:

A rare glimpse into our future. Thanks for the view, Richard. I have read Dalrymple for years because he is the canary-in-the-coal-mine for our nanny state.

Feb 8, 2009 - 10:15 am 14. NahnCee:

First step in assuring responsibility is to print the kid’s name. Baby P — who is that protecting other than the mother, the boyfriend, the parents of the mother, and whoever raised the murderous boyfriend. Not to mention the neighbors and the landlord who assuredly heard this going on for weeks and years and couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it.

You can tell a lot from just a name sometimes — race, religion, socioeconomic level — and I think it’s horrible that in Australia, even after the SOB’s are convicted and incarcerated their names are still kept secret. Will the overly-civilized English ever get around to giving the poor little kid a real name, or is their legal system set up solely to protect that bad guys, too?

Feb 8, 2009 - 10:20 am 15. Mike Sylwester:

Theodore Dalrymple writes in his article that the first lesson to be learned from the case of the abused baby is this:

The first [lesson] is that the work of child protection is very difficult, emotionally wearing and even dangerous. Staff turnover in the organisations that carry it out is often rapid. Most British paediatricians in training have experienced threats from parents or guardians, and 5 per cent have been assaulted sufficiently badly to need medical treatment. If this is true of doctors, who generally still retain a modicum of public respect, the situation of social workers is likely to be even worse. There is nothing like a constant fear of violence for undermining both the will to do anything and the judgment.

In this particular case, the doctor is being criticized because she did not recognize that the baby’s spine and ribs had been broken. It was not until the baby’s body was opened for the post-mortem examination that those injuries were observed.

You’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t. You are damned if you are a social worker or a doctor who tries to intervene into parents’ treatment of their own children. And you are damned if you are a social worker or a doctor who fails to intervene into parents’ abuse of their own children.

In any such controversy, lots of people will seize the opportunity to damn social workers and doctors and the government that employs them.

Feb 8, 2009 - 10:21 am 16. voyeur:

Of course the doctor, who was trained in Pakistan, was competent. Yes.

The system that is really broken here is the methods of recruitment and professional screening at the NHS.

Feb 8, 2009 - 10:22 am 17. marymcl:

NahnCee – Excellent point about the child’s name. The ostensible reason given of course, is to protect the privacy of the patient, but the patient in this case is dead, and the only people being protected are the ones who got her that way. We seem to have an incident like this every year or so in Washington state – multiple home visits from CPS, a life-long history of ER visits for unexplained trauma – and yet the authorities always come back with the same shock and surprise and defensive assurances there was nothing they could have done. At the same time all sorts of specious complaints are instituted by public school teachers against parents whose children answered ‘yes” when asked if they’d ever been spanked at home.

We are headed the same way as the Brits in terms of health care – process matters more than anything, no matter what. The confusing language wretchard refers to is designed that way precisely to enable everyone concerned to avoid responsibility. Medical records aren’t charted in the same way anymore, either. Physicians and nurses used to write notes. Sometimes we still do, but increasingly we are required to use instead online forms with dropdown boxes, which are set up to conform to the byzantine requirements of Medicare/Medicaid billing. The patient and his needs, even the truth itself, are secondary to this process and nowhere is it more evident than at the point of care, because previous records often contain vital indicators of what’s needed.

I spend most of my time doing actual clinical care but part of it is spent doing data entry for tracking patients with chronic disease. The latter involves a lot of chart auditing and the number of errors one finds in the electronic record is discouraging, to say the least. Even worse, as things now stand, they cannot be corrected or deleted. There is a good summary of the current state of medical recordkeeping in the US over at the Corner.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjcwZTFkZWU5MzVjN2Q5OTg3ZGZhZjQ2MGFkYmY0MWU=

In a few years everything will be on EMR, and there will be no more charts, as most people understand the term. There’s been lots of PR about how this is supposed to reduce errors arising from illegible penmanship, but there are lots of other errors to be made and for now, anyway, EMR seems designed in such a way as to encourage these.

Feb 8, 2009 - 11:14 am 18. OmegaPaladin:

I am fortunate that the compliance department I work with is run by people with common sense. The goal is safety, the means are whatever gets the job done efficiently.

If I ever have employees that ignore the end and focus only on the means, they will get tossed before they can blink.

Feb 8, 2009 - 11:52 am 19. wireline:

In a civilized and merciful society, the first step would be that the mother and boyfriend would be tried and hung within 72 hours. In a less merciful society, they would receive the same treatment as the child.

One grieves for England. And fears for the United States.

Feb 8, 2009 - 12:19 pm 20. Leo Linbeck III:

NahnCee,

Excellent point. Hadn’t thought about that. If they did publish his actual name, it would also be easier to implement wireline’s suggestion.

Cheers.

L3

Feb 8, 2009 - 12:25 pm 21. Soflauthor:

Fifteen years ago, Philip Howard wrote The Death of Common Sense. In his book, he argued that many people, both inside and outside of government are more concerned with process than they are with common-sense results. Sound familiar?

I think more and more people are using “process” as a navigation tool. Rather than examining actual problems specific to a given field (e.g., education, medicine, social welfare), defining clear, common sense goals, and measuring success by tangible results, bureaucrats prefer to rely on process as their road map. No matter that it doesn’t reflect the real terrain and suggests long circuitous routes when straight line travel is possible.

Way back in 2006, I ran across the following comment by Bill Whittle. It addresses the subject nicely:

Navigation by means of reason and logic, taking sightings from historical landmarks and always keeping the firm hand of common sense on the wheel, can steer us clear of these dangerous and confusing shoals. This sort of thinking, what is essentially scientific thinking, is a new tool, relatively speaking. It is a powerful tool, one that makes powerful demands of us, asking us to forgo pride and ego and preconception. It asks us, as blind men and women in the darkness of the present, to walk into the future not by imagining a map that is to our liking, but rather to learn to navigate like bats and dolphins, pinging our surroundings, interrogating nature and history at every turn, finding fixed points of reference that we can use to triangulate where we are and where we are headed …

Feb 8, 2009 - 12:32 pm 22. whiskey:

Wretchard, sorry but both you and Dalrymple avoid the questions.

The old ways, the nuclear family, is falling apart and WHY? Is there some magic, anti-family pixie dust in the air? Did Papa Legba cast a Voodoo spell? Perhaps it was Marie Laveau?

No, the nuclear family collapsed because women, given free choice unlimited in any way, chose mostly to be serially single, going from brute to brute as in the man who murdered Baby P while the mother looked on, more concerned about keeping the brute than protecting her child.

That’s the extreme tail, of course, but the process of the collapse of the nuclear family rests on the changing choices of women. No one put a gun to their heads and said become single mothers, they chose it because they like it. The similarity to West African modes of childbirth, sexuality, partners, fluidity, and the violence that results is striking of course.

Secondly, WHY the Nanny State to replace the nuclear family, instead of efforts to rebuild the nuclear family, or religious based institutions, or secular ones (Greenpeace, Amnesty, United Way) to provide atomic-level social organization? It’s worth noting that the collapse of the Nuclear Family in Georgian times produced the Victorian counter-reaction, and the efforts included heavy doses of religious and cultural restrictions and changes, backed by lots of voluntary organizations.

There is no reason why a Greenpeace or a United Way could not have quickly filled the gap with both a religous component (Gaia worship, post-Christian nonsense but religious still) and a social one, much as the Christian churches did generations ago.

There was no reason for the State to become the preferred means of replacing the family … except that women wanted it.

Anywhere you see process elevated over results, you can see the gender divide and the domination by women in culture in that organization. Sports teams fire, hire, and change direction radically based on results. Process is meaningless. This is also true of the Military in war-time, energy and technology companies, and other firmly male-dominated cultural organizations (regardless of the number of men and women employed in them).

A female dominated culturally organization will always put process over results. Organized by a soft consensus, CYA, I filled out the forms.

This is because of the profound nature of how the sexes view risk. Men want results because on average, a results-based culture produces greater rewards. If you are average in looks, wealth, charisma, and social power, but can achieve something in a results based culture, you have a chance to compete with other men for women, who are the scarcest and most valuable resource around.

For women, you are either pretty or not, if not having lots of accomplishments will do little to excite men’s desire, particulalry those you want. So the downside of risk from a results based scheme (you might be held responsible for failures) is far higher than any tiny marginal upside (you can’t attract men with money, not the ones you want to stay)

This is why the View is ground zero for PC, and why places like Fox Sports features un-PC jokes and constant ribbing.

I don’t think howevr the female-dominated cultures are stable in the West. They leave men the choice of pure thuggery to attract women (as Dalrymple pointed out ad nasaeum), or beta-type dronedom in a sterile, feminized PC environment, virtual castrati.

We face a great crisis — Female oriented process culture cannot handle both internal male stress (most guys have zero stake in the system) and external threats like nukes from Pakistan in NYC. At best female process produces lots of Pelosis and Reids and Franks who produce lots of government paper-pushers but not enough patronage to build overwhelming political power. At worst a Byzantine Priesthood concerned with how many angels dance on pinheads while the Sultan knocks down the city walls.

I see only a gigantic catastrophe creating a cultural shift by women, led by women, to move towards more of a results oriented culture. But only after disaster shows up the process led culture.

And it will have to be done by women, who hold the political and economic social power — more women than men are now employed with the recession firing male workers instead of female ones.

Feb 8, 2009 - 12:34 pm 23. marymcl:

@18 OmegaPaladin – I don’t follow you. Common sense has nothing to do with it. Compliance isn’t up to the discretion of the sensible or the foolish. It’s the law, period. And since the advent of HIPAA, compliance oversight has become an insatiable bureaucratic monster all by itself.

And as for tossing out the careless or the incompetent ‘before they can blink’, good luck with that. I don’t know how it works in private hospitals, but I work for the state, and the best you can hope for there is that they don’t get promoted. There are very few things that constitute grounds for immediate dismissal – failure to obey a union directive is the only thing that comes immediately to mind. (I’m told they put safety first, too)

Feb 8, 2009 - 12:43 pm 24. lc:

This makes me sick. How awful. Talk about the banality of evil. And how sick, even in death “protection” means hide the perpetrators.

Whiskey — go join a men’s group.

Feb 8, 2009 - 1:01 pm 25. SamIam:

It is dysfunction by design.

Feb 8, 2009 - 1:10 pm 26. marymcl:

Holy dialectics, Batman, I think whiskey now says women will have no choice but to save the world after we’ve processed it to death. Or something to that effect. Take it away, girls!

You know, ballroom dancing is a great excuse to get out of the house and meet likeable people of the opposite sex. Just a suggestion.

Feb 8, 2009 - 1:23 pm 27. Mark:

Mary MCL wrote:

“In a few years everything will be on EMR [electronic medical records] . . . .”

You can count on it.

One of the interesting aspects of Obama’a presidency thus far is that he’s been keeping his promises. Just as promised, he has issued executive orders re. funding for overseas abortions, Guantanomo, torture, the war on terror, relations with the Muslim world, and other issues; and he is about to act re. (scientifically unnecessary) fetal stem cell research. He is deeply committed to voter registration; so, of course, he has ordered the Census to report directly to him.

Many Republicans heard what he said in the campaign and put a positive spin on his words. After all, we really did need ‘change.’Better health care? Of course.

Do you remember Obama mentioning Lilly Ledbetter in a debate? At the time I thought, ‘Why would he introduce a fringe issue like that, one that maybe 2% of the electorate knows about?’ Maybe he wanted merely to send a secret nod to the netroots? But lo and behold, good as his word, he acted on the “Ledbetter” income discrimination/back wages issues within two weeks of taking office.

I’m sure you see where I’m going. In debates he promised to put all medical records on line, and he promised this several times. It’s for efficiency and for better health care delivery, of course. He will be as good as his word. I suspect Dr. Dalrymple can tell us where this is going.

As could Michael Steele.

Feb 8, 2009 - 1:50 pm 28. newscaper:

Wretchard said:
“that they were so busy measuring compliance that there was no time to ask if the basic business made sense”

I’m reminded of my experience in the mid to late 90s going thru the adoption of ISO9000 at an electronics designer/manufacturer.

We jumped thru all the hoops to get our ‘quality system’ certified, which was a whole racket in and of itself — you pay one arm of some group to help get you certified, then others audit you. Once you’re in, the auditors always find *something* so you have to keep paying them to come back, perhaps wtih greater than ‘normal’ frequency to check on the followup, but they somehow never ding you hard enough to lose your cert, and possibly pull the plug on their gravy train.

As to the certification itself, all it meant was that your ’system’ had some internal consistency — it did not mean jack shit about your actual *quality* where the rubber met the road. You could produce shit, but as long as you went thru the motions of the process, everything was kosher.

Feb 8, 2009 - 1:59 pm 29. E D Maner:

Where this is headed is a Product/Process ratio of 0.

See Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy, and Parkinson’s Laws before that.

The truly terrifying thing here is that recent
Western Civilization turns out to be a painstakingly
crafted _Exception_ to the norm of human behavior,
for which we seem to have lost the recipe.

Feb 8, 2009 - 2:12 pm 30. Charles:

Best tune in church todayDraw Me Lord. Think I’ll go to a recording studio and overlay this with the poem I post here from time to time.

Feb 8, 2009 - 2:26 pm 31. Willie G:

Whiskey is right. Those who believe in the process use it as a talisman against all evil. Nevermind that there are folks who will pick that process apart and drag them into the courtroom they were so desperately trying to avoid.

That’s the lesson that hasn’t sunk in: results count…more than process.

Feb 8, 2009 - 2:28 pm 32. buddy larsen:

E D Maner voices perfectly the one realization that can save us.

Feb 8, 2009 - 2:34 pm 33. E. Nigma:

newscaper,

I think I read somewhere that many of the offices in the British NHS are ISO 9000 registered. What a coincidence.
Too true; the “process” approach of ISO can be gamed to the point of subverting the end goal of “customer satisfaction”. Are you satisfied with this outcome?

Feb 8, 2009 - 2:35 pm 34. Heh:

In that same England, a nurse, Caroline Petrie, was suspended because she asked a patient if she could could pray for her. She was accused of not being properly commited to “equality and diversity”.

Feb 8, 2009 - 3:01 pm 35. ricpic:

Don’t ever underestimate government workers.

Feb 8, 2009 - 3:17 pm 36. Dave D.:

..Willie G, I was a cop for 32 years and I’ve sadly got to tell you that process trumps results in court, every time. Rules of evidence are based on process alone, as are Miranda and the exclusionary rule. Obama won the election partly on his promise to ignore Bush’s excellent homeland safety results and change the process to comply with Liberal ideals. We are all headed to be Baby P, and I can tell you know it was the Muslim boyfriend of the Democrat Party that did the bashing. But, the process that gets us there will be unassailable…on paper.
…Ic, this is a mens group, that’s why we’re typing about the horrors of a process built system. And Whiskey is a charter member. Go join a womans group.

Feb 8, 2009 - 3:25 pm 37. maineman:

“Common sense is made the slave to principles.”
And what we’re talking about here are first principles.

If material, rather than God, is at the top of your hierarchy, then the creation comes to be seen as stuff and as disposable. There can be nothing less child-centered and more narcissistic than abortion, and we’re now seeing that the related genocide is on the verge of becoming all-inclusive.

Not that different from what happens when you elect a fraud as a President and you get a fraudulent government (and presumably a dishonest and disorderly society) as a result.

The true hierarchy will eventually be reimposed, either by choice or by the force of events. At least some of us will refuse to surrender our humanness, even though it may have to become a black market commodity.
Not to mention that America is not Britain. Some of us blow up federal buildings and clinics and form outposts and posses and such.

The interesting thing is that, contrary to what the current powers that be seem to be trying to precipitate, it may be the traditionalists rather than the “oppressed masses” that cause the ruckus this time around.

Feb 8, 2009 - 3:32 pm 38. NahnCee:

Dave – Whiskey is whackadoodle on the subject of women. Beware of defending him, or your own reputation will become whackadoodley, too.

RE: your assertion that it was a Muslim boyfriend, is that written down some place I can go to read it, or is it just a guess based upon years of experience?

Feb 8, 2009 - 3:42 pm 39. wretchard:

Although the perp names are supposed to be officially secret I found their names and faces easily enough. They are indigenous Brits, not immigrants. The mother is a fat, 27 year old woman who is a one time loser and spent most of her time on online chatrooms while her boyfriend entertained himself by dropping the baby head down on the floor to see if he would bounce. The boyfriend is a shifty, ratlike looking character; and although I’m only guessing, I would hazard he’s of the sort who thinks he’s cool and edgy in an illiterate and foul-mouthed sort of way. Maybe he’s got four or five profanity laced lines he uses with variations on every occasion. Apparently the woman is in some kind of stir where the jailors are taking heat for letting her watch “inappropriate” videos from the prison DVD library.

I got a laugh out of that one. It reminded me of a story a petty criminal in Manila told me once. The cops used to extract confessions by beating you at the station house. Sometimes they’d make you suck up the contents of a toilet with a straw. One wag apparently told the cops he couldn’t do it because there was a fly floating in the bowl … it might be bad for his health. It’s a joke with a point. A lot of people don’t care about the substantive issues, it’s the marginal ones that count.

Feb 8, 2009 - 3:44 pm 40. marymcl:

@27Mark – Obama is such a schmoozer – having all medical records online doesn’t make them more accessible to patients, far from it. In fact it creates another level of bureaucracy for patients to navigate through. It used to be if a patient wanted a copy of the doctor’s last note or his latest lab tests, we could just make a copy and give it to him. Now we are forbidden to print anything out and instead must refer people to the medical records department, where they truly work on government time, if you follow me.

Feb 8, 2009 - 4:07 pm 41. Voltimand:

Another shift of perspective yields the conclusion that the people in the “process-biz” are not only cowards, they are trained precisely to be cowards. The “process” is what “takes responsibility” because that’s what the process is invented to do: “You follow the rules, you get the result predicted.” The death of the baby was the result predicted, to the degree that doing what the process dictates will get you what the process is aimed at in the first place: depersonalization of responsibility. And with “depersonalization” comes killing people as a matter of routine. (aka: “process”). The boyfriend was not the perp; he was part of the process. What can the process people accuse him of being, other than of course being one of themselves?

The trouble with many of the people on this thread is that they are outraged that the process did precisely what it was intended to do. You want a different moral result? Then you better get a different process, which comes down to getting different people. But the nanny state is out ultimately to kill you. The child’s death, IOW, was business as usual.

You want to get past that point, I suggest armed revolution. You think I’m kidding?

Feb 8, 2009 - 4:20 pm 42. Dave D.:

..NahnCee, I typed ‘know’ but meant to type ‘now’. ” I can tell you NOW that it was the Muslim boyfriend of the Democrat Party that did the bashing ” ( of us, the next time we’re attacked, because Barack went for form over substance; pretty please over tell-me-now ).
..Had I done a better job it wouldn’t have had that obscured meaning. As to Whiskey’s wack-a-doodle…I’ll just have to take your word for that. And no, I’m not making referrence to his wedding tackle…wickerbill…stallion ganglia…et al. Or at all.

Feb 8, 2009 - 4:21 pm 43. 49erDweet:

Charles: Great catch.
Whiskey: Wow, talk about an inconvenient truth. Hope you’re ducking ’cause the shoes will be flying.
Wretchard: Has the UK tipping point passed? Will they ever “get it” again, or is it merely going to be one long slide into dementia and oblivion for them?

Feb 8, 2009 - 4:33 pm 44. Bob Murphy:

36. Dave D.:
“This is a men’s group”. Bullsh*t, Dave.
It’s an outcomes rather than process oriented group no matter whether the contributors are men or women.

Feb 8, 2009 - 4:35 pm 45. Bob Murphy:

Hey, Nahncee, you can get a bit sensitive about the “opposite sex” yourself, dear.:)

Feb 8, 2009 - 4:37 pm 46. PA Cat:

41 The “process” is what “takes responsibility” because that’s what the process is invented to do:

That’s the same point that Robert Jay Lifton was making in his book The Nazi Doctors– that bureaucracy (medical or governmental) is an effective tool for the genocide-minded precisely because it dilutes an individual’s sense of responsibility for the end result of the process.

Feb 8, 2009 - 5:27 pm 47. Dave D.:

..Bob Murphy, I post rarely but come here a lot, and I agree with you that this is a results oriented group, at least as far as folks that just type and can’t act ( here ) can be. But my experience in State service was that the females (officers and managers) I supervised or was supervised by were primarily concerned with the rules and the documentation, not the street results. Many didn’t connect police work with any results that weren’t institutional, measureable and documented. Investigations were an end in themselves, not a method, but a goal. While most of the men I worked with at any rank saw the creeping political correctness as counterproductive B.S., the woman endorsed it as their cause. Most of the woman I met in law enforcement were either angling for a special duty job or promotion that took them away from the field and out of police duties. THe gals that stayed in the field latched onto a partner and stuck with them.
..The most aggressive and problem solving women I met on the job were the lesbians who were self identified. But woman aren’t near as strong as men and almost always stood back in physical confrontations while the male officers took the action.
..I can only report what I saw, from 1971 through 2000.

Feb 8, 2009 - 6:08 pm 48. lc:

OT, but what the heck.
Dave D @36

“Go…women’s group.” I’ll pass, thanks.

Whiskey is interesting and I think he makes some great points, but I sometimes wonder if he is not over generalizing from something specific, hence “join a men’s group.” I have (joined a men’s group), and some of my rants have not been too different from what Whiskey says. A big difference, though, is they’re all guys there…and its funny, but nobody has laughed me out of the room for my rants, either.

Feb 8, 2009 - 6:38 pm 49. SpeakEasy:

It reminds me also of the US Congress. Arguing for outlandish expenditures in the name of stimulating the economy that does nothing substantial in that regard. The thinly veiled smiles seem to say “I know I’m just making things worse but I have to get while the getting is good.” In God we trust? We will be putting that motto to the test because only divine intervention can save us now it seems.

Feb 8, 2009 - 7:05 pm 50. NahnCee:

So if you’re at the Pearly Gates when these players arrive, who is worse to go to the deepest depths of hell: the boyfriend who did the torture, the mother who allowed it, or the bureaucrats who didn’t notice it?

I’m voting for the (male) boyfriend.

Feb 8, 2009 - 7:16 pm 51. E. Nigma:

It’s worth remembering that demographics and sociological data collected are not figments of the imagination of Whiskey.
Increase in births outside of marriage in the last 50 years? Check.
Increase in the number of elective abortions (total) in the last 50 years? Check.
Increase in the number of divorces and divorced people in the last 50 years? Check
Increase in the number of one-parent households, and that one parent is usually a woman, in the last 50 years? Check

Whiskey may not be completely right, but he is not completely wrong, by any stretch of the imagination. The ground has moved under our feet. Something has happened, and his hypothesis on the future based on the present observed social structure is as valid as any other that I’ve read, and unfortunately matches a lot of my own anecdotal observations of all the above ‘truths’.
I think the true picture is probably more complicated, but sometimes complexity just obscures basic truths that we need to grasp to make rational decisions.

I don’t think Whiskey harbors hate or misogynistic notions toward women (I don’t, at least), he has just developed a world view (or social hypothesis) based on observations and thought, and just because it is a pretty unpleasant and uncomfortable view, doesn’t make it impossible or unlikely.

It is worth understanding the social structure and problems of the oldest and lead country in the Anglosphere (the United Kingdom), as that could very well forshadow social and political events here in the US. Their ideas (in the UK) are viral and transmitted through the academy and other centers of the so-called ‘intelligentsia’, progressives all.
Some progress. And I’m sure it will be ‘for the children’. Just like for Baby P. That’s the horror of it. Joseph Conrad wrote of the ‘Heart of Darkness’ corrupting the soul of the white man in savage lands. Now, we’ve cultivated the savagery at home. No need to venture far to see it.

There is still time.

Feb 8, 2009 - 7:17 pm 52. SpeakEasy:

Nahncee, I hope they are roommates.

Feb 8, 2009 - 8:08 pm 53. ledger:

I know the UK can be a corrupt place but, there is something very fishy about this case. We are not being given the whole story.

The mother, slides past a murder charge. Two “boy friends” slide past murder charges.

60 some visits by social workers. The child was on an endangered child list.

A Pakistani doctor, who probably hates the UK just as Gascanistan Man is involved. Although Dr Sabah Al-Zayyat is a women who saw the child two days before his death, her gender hardly matters. She clearly violated the Hippocratic Oath.

The child’s name is obscured. The child was born while the mother was incarcerated.

The same thing happened in Victoria Climbie case – in the same area.

Something doesn’t add up.

Feb 8, 2009 - 8:38 pm 54. Josh:

This is the same “roles not goals” that rules in business environments today, describing how GenX and GenY workers see the world. Previous, it was management-by-objective.

Feb 8, 2009 - 8:45 pm 55. SpeakEasy:

I hope I am not going too far afield here but I can not help but see a correlation between this type of inhumanity and the loss of perspective on justice. I personally believe the law schools in this country have skewed the practitioners’ perspective on actual justice to mean whatever is good for your client. IOW, do anything to get them acquitted even though the evidence clearly shows they are guilty as hell. My (attorney) sister tells me they teach them to represent their client above anything else without passion or prejudice. And therein lies the problem; I believe the highest calling should be to THE LAW itself. You can represent your client without ignoring the concepts of right and wrong. So again we preserve the process (procedure) at the expense of the result (justice).

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. — Aldous Huxley

Feb 8, 2009 - 8:53 pm 56. wireline:

Process is supposed to be a means to an end (results).

Process is almost mandatory if the task is very large or complex, and can be a good thing. You’ve probably seen, as you board an aircraft, the pilot going through a pre-flight checklist, even though he may have already made the same trip, with the same plane, twice that day. That’s process.

But too often, the party who should be responsible (usually management)abdicates that responsibilty. One then tends to get a “check the boxes” mentality, lots of wasted motion, and poor results to boot. Processes also tend to accrete complexity (e.g. the tax code) over time.

Its a classic problem for ISO 9000 implementations where the objective is to “get the **** certificate” rather than to improve the business result.

It requires constant leadership attention to keep the organization focused on results, and the process as simple as possible to achieve that. This is easier if (like the pilot) bad results are very obvious.

There’s an old saying, “There are no bad regiments, only bad Colonels”. Same in business. Its always the leaders, for good or ill.

Feb 8, 2009 - 9:18 pm 57. marymcl:

The mother is just as guilty as the boyfriend. More depraved, in my opinion.

I think whiskey is a lucid writer who undermines his best points by beating them into the ground for the sake of this grand unified theory about the emasculation of western society. Sure he’s got a point but I’m damned if I can figure out what he’s after. It’s too much social determinism and it just gets tedious.

Feb 8, 2009 - 9:30 pm 58. TomMD:

Whiskey is right on. Oddly, I get it even if marymd does not. End of post–avoiding tedium!

Feb 8, 2009 - 10:02 pm 59. bob:

I’ve been reading Whiskey very carefully for quite some time, and I think he’s got a thing for Paris Hilton.

Feb 8, 2009 - 10:51 pm 60. Bob Murphy:

47. Dave D
I agree with you about the general tendencies with most gals to be concerned with rules and social consensus.
There are dangers there, especially if their tendency to be compulsive law abiders is allied with an avoidance of “confrontation”.
To me as a guy, speaking directly is a way of resolving issues in the shortest possible time so we can move on to other issues or just go on our way(s).
There is an underlying assumption of reason when I am “confrontational” in trying to resolve an issue. I have given the other person or people a chance to put their point of view so we can work it out.
But a lot of gals just don’t seem to be able to do it. It doesn’t seem to be their natural bent. I’d reckon it is rooted in a heightened sense of vulnerability but I wonder if that is still functionally necessary in most instances given our legislative framework giving them equal rights.
As for compulsive law abiding, I chide my female friends about it. I rented an apartment for 5 years where I lived alone but had lots of visitors. The sign on the wall over the toilet said, “Please raise seat after use”.
In five years at least 60 different women ALL raised the seat after use, every time. Even my daughter who is a feisty dragon. I found that both amusing and intriguing.

Feb 8, 2009 - 10:55 pm 61. Derek:

The most bizarre instance of this was in Kamloops BC, a few years ago. A woman showed up in the emergency ward, in labor. She was seen by a nurse, who left. The woman had her baby in the waiting room by herself.

The administrator of the hospital, a woman, announced to everyone that the situation would be examined to see if the proper protocols were followed. Then some comment about how the woman somehow was at fault.

I suppose that it was her fault. Who would ever think of showing up at an emergency ward to receive emergency care.

Derek

Feb 8, 2009 - 11:06 pm 62. buddy larsen:

bob murphy, that can probably be explained as “they have better manners than we do”.

Feb 8, 2009 - 11:06 pm 63. Bob Murphy:

Yeah I had a maiden aunt who was into Emily Post and all sorts of manners. But she was a fascist bitch, Buddy.
One thing I learned in Rangers. Always watch their eyes.:)
I do appreciate a bit of decorum as I get older but I remain much more interested in the book than the cover.

Feb 8, 2009 - 11:24 pm 64. bob:

I’ve got a thing for Paris Hilton too, but I don’t make a big thing out of it.

She’s a looker, that’s for sure….got great legs….

Feb 8, 2009 - 11:29 pm 65. Bob Smith:

Since the doctor qualified in Pakistan, I assume they’re Muslim. It is not surprising that they didn’t report the abuse, since under Islamic law it isn’t illegal for a parent to beat or kill their child. Like any good Muslim they applied Islamic rather than infidel law to the situation.

Feb 9, 2009 - 12:08 am 66. buddy larsen:

a Ranger –always makes me think of that Ronald Reagan speech at Pont du Hoc. I was watching it live [on tv], and when he said that phrase “…the boys of Pon du Hoc….” i almost fell out of my chair. still do, when i remember it.

Feb 9, 2009 - 12:43 am 67. PA Cat:

There is an interesting post over at Sox First on six different types of organizational pathologies:

1. Myopic organizations (”groupthink” places like Enron).
2. Bureaucratic organizations.
3. Passive-aggressive organizations. The author of the post comments: Large and complex places. No decision is final, there is a lot of second-guessing, roles are vaguely defined to ensure plausible “deniability”, quality information is hard to obtain, the quality of work is not accurately assessed, and beneath the apparent consensus and conflict-free veneer, plans and promising projects can’t seem to get traction. There is little accountability. (There are other articles in business journals about passive aggression as a common bureaucratic personality type. It looks to me as if the Baby P. case has some of the features of this type of organizational pathology).
4. Charismatic organizations. Author’s words again: These are the places that move lock-step with a leader whose word is final and who is never questioned. Dissent is always crushed. Witness the many failed business leaders brought undone by the illusion of omnipotence and invincibility, blinded by a veil of fantasy and flaws in a seemingly brilliant vision with a powerful ego that could cast a shadow. And let’s not forget that often behind charisma, there is illusion. Sound like anybody we know? This article was posted in July 2007– talk about prophetic.
5. Paranoid organizations (us-against-the-world outfits).
6. Depressive organizations (most common in mature or low-growth industries).

Read the whole thing: http://www.soxfirst.com/50226711/six_organizational_pathologies.php

Feb 9, 2009 - 12:52 am 68. sfblue:

The unholy axis of unions and politicians they support use these policy and procedure reviews as a smoke screen cover for the entrenched incompetence that necessarily results from their non-merit, seniority/tenure based reward systems.

In order for the policy based systems to work, they would have to be based on a complex artificial intelligence algorithm. Quality work is based on the human ability to be resourceful and creative in solving problems. Problems as they exist in the actual, living world cannot be addressed by policy and procedure alone. The more complex the policies and procedures become in a bizarre and pathetic iterative attempt to resemble genuine human problem solving ability, the more bureaucracy is required to administer the policy/procedures. Sans human responsibility and reason, bureaucracy thus grows exponentially and the incentive becomes who can climb to the top of the dog pile. Ratchet in your current position and fight for every last dollar to support your growing fiefdom.

Feb 9, 2009 - 2:23 am 69. TonyB:

There are very good legal reasons for the withholding of Baby P’s name. Perhaps the greatest injustice in this case so far is the failure to obtain a murder conviction against any of the principals. I understand that there were technical/legal difficulties around proving who struck the fatal blow. So far convictions have only been obtained o the lesser offence of causing or failing to prevent the death of a child which means that there is a very real risk that the killers could be out after a risibly short period of jail time, even by UK standards.

However, I understand that the prosecuting authorities have not yet given up the ghost and may have another crack at murder (or conspiracy to murder if causation remains intractable) charges. It is for this reason only that Baby P’s name is being kept quiet, so as not to prejudice any future trial. There is no conspiracy.

As Wretchard points out five minutes on Google will lead you to the names. There was a campaign in the UK on the internet and using SMS trees to publicise the names. I hope these idiots feel good about themselves if a murder case is thrown out of court down the line because the defence is able to successfully argue that there is no chance of a fair trial.

As to the social millieu concerned what they are is North London Irish underclass. A rough stratum.

Feb 9, 2009 - 3:26 am 70. Mark:

Marymcl writes:

“@27Mark – Obama is such a schmoozer – having all medical records online doesn’t make them more accessible to patients, far from it. In fact it creates another level of bureaucracy for patients to navigate through.”

Yes, I agree.

My point, which I should have made more directly, is that once anyone’s records are available to the government, those records can and may be used against you. To take an example, would anyone doubt that if Joe the Plumber’s medical records were available to the government the records would have been leaked?

Feb 9, 2009 - 7:34 am 71. marymcl:

70Mark – The irony is, if someone with access had leaked Joe’s medical records, there would’ve been more of a dust-up about it. Everyone is terrified of being in violation of HIPAA. Unauthorized viewing of a medical record is the other thing that will get someone fired more or less immediately. A couple of years ago over a dozen people were fired here because they looked at the medical record of a Hollywood celebrity who was hospitalized with us at the time – and Joe was in the limelight already so this probably would have meant curtains for the leaker.

As for everyone’s records generally, HIPAA auditors have access already. I keep my imagaination in bounds about all this by reminding myself that they’re a relatively new bureaucracy so they’re probably even more stuck in the mud than we are. But it all points towards socialized medicine, which is a bit grim in light of Obama’s response to the financial crisis.

Feb 9, 2009 - 8:29 am 72. marymcl:

@58TomMD – I ‘get’ whiskey, OK? I even agree with his basic premise, as far as it goes. And I don’t think he’s a misogynist. I just think he’s locked in overdrive.

Feb 9, 2009 - 8:38 am 73. Orphaned Son of Liberty:

I can comment on this topic from the point of a mid-level executive in R&D working for a medical device company. The “Quality System” is god. Now back in the day, cowboy engineering was the norm, and occasionally (but only occasionally) sloopy design made some Bad Things Happen. An ordered development process was mandated by the FDA. If you read the CFRs, actually, they only require that you do common sense things, i.e. good engineering, and document it so that it can be readily found. However auditors are given broad license to write you up for how you comply, and even more pernicious, internal auditors (and if there’s a more risk averse breed I’ve never met them) will absolutely tie you in knots to ensure that the processes that must be followed are so complex and specified that you can’t really get useful work done. End result is development work grinds to a standstill. Now R&D is a male dominated endeavor, even today, and internal auditing is still a female dominated vocation. Hate to be labeled as “whackadoodle” myself, but I’ve noticed the castration of the engineering profession by this feminized, risk intolerant beaurocratic force. It is my job as a leader of R&D to fight against it so that products (which, by the way, will save lives) can be brought to market reasonably, efficiently and correctly. My adversaries in this effort are nearly all women.

Feb 9, 2009 - 8:43 am 74. Unsk:

Rush Limbaugh just said on the radio (west coast time) that the stimulus package includes provisions that would set up a Health Care/ Medical Records ‘coordinating council” that would direct Doctors on proper treatment and would apply a cost benefit analysis on your life and whether your life is worth treatment for x y z disease or condition. He quoted Tom Daschle’s book on the subject which influenced major provisions of the Stimulus bill to limit care particularly to Seniors. To quote Gov. Lamm of Colorado ‘ Seniors have a duty to just die and go away”.

Who said Obama wasn’t a lying marxist?

Rush quoted from an article by Betsy McCoy on the Stimulus package.

I look forward to informing seniors I know who voted Obama on what their guy wants to do to them.

Feb 9, 2009 - 12:27 pm 75. buddy larsen:

so, i’m at my computer & watching tv when this ad comes on –it’s so unbelievably anti-gender, or something, that i type in the advertiser and the network and find heavy promotions in San Antonio on formerly conservative Clear Channel Radio. I don’t watch broadcast tv but am wondering about the shows mentioned, “The Biggest Loser”, “Journeyman” and “Chuck”, what subliminal messages are aimed at “the children”. Then there’s this, i haven’t read it but the google header sure caught my eye:

MSNBC Teams Up With ACORN, La Raza – TopixMSNBC has launched a news project with a variety of left-wing special interest … American companies that Team up (supporters/sponsors/Partners) of NCLR (La Raza) … FedEx Corporation, General Mills, Inc., General Motors Corporation

well, great. elements of the northeastern USA Business Roundtable is in the world city, a border city, the eastern USA commercial opening to all of Central & South America and probably the megapolis that best demostrates a long history of affection and cooperation among latin and euro cultures, and is taking over the news business, in conjunction with latino seperatist and “Che!” cult, La Raz.

The sonzabitches. who do they think they are? Inside an hour, my beloved old Cheerios, shape shifted to a man-woman evil-eye dominating a woman-man, and the godless murderer psycho-narcissist sex-drenched zombie “Che!”

American big business –WTF ???

Feb 9, 2009 - 1:12 pm 76. Roderick Reilly:

What a beautiful little boy Baby P. was. What sort of monsters would deliberately harm such a child, and in such a way? What monsters would harm any child whether physically “beautiful” or not?

There was a case a few years back of a toddler in the UK who was kidnapped by older boys and killed. Those savages have been out of prison for some time now.

The state created both sets of monsters, or at least bears a large part of the responsibility for their existence.

I see that the BBC report said the names of the mother and boyfried “can’t be revealed,” but the housemate’s can? What other bizzare bureaucratic is responsible for that rule?

Feb 9, 2009 - 2:27 pm 77. John Lynch:

Temple Grandin makes the same point about process and results in her book about autism and animal behavior, “Animals in Translation.” Verbal people inspecting slaughterhouses pore over paperwork. She, an autistic woman, simply looked at the animals to see if they looked stressed. Cows don’t care about paperwork. They care about being frightened. A person observing them can tell, without any paperwork inspection, whether the cows are being treated properly.

This progressive escalation of bullshit over reality is engulfing our society. Even war.

Feb 9, 2009 - 3:42 pm 78. Doug:

Porkulus on Drugs

One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.

New Penalties

Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties. “Meaningful user” isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541)

Feb 9, 2009 - 5:25 pm 79. Unsk:

Thanks Doug for the update, I hope the word gets out in time or we are completely screwed. Submissive Peace and Marxism in our time.

Call or Email Spector, Collins and Smowe today!

Unsk

Feb 9, 2009 - 5:51 pm 80. Bob Murphy:

66. buddy larsen:
I went and read that speech. Good.
I was there at Pont du Hoc, St Mere Eglise etc for the 50th Anniversary. It was awful that it was Bill Clinton, a draft dodger, addressing the vets. An affront to everything those guys had fought for.

Feb 9, 2009 - 6:22 pm 81. marymcl:

@73Orphaned Son of Liberty wrote -

“It is my job as a leader of R&D to fight against it so that products (which, by the way, will save lives) can be brought to market reasonably, efficiently and correctly. My adversaries in this effort are nearly all women.”

I don’t doubt it for a minute. Female administrators are the bane of my existence – I’ve been written up for insubordination twice and I can’t tell you how many dopey inservices like ‘The Attitude Virus’ I’ve had to attend because pointing out the obvious is considered threatening and uncooperative.

I’ve often wondered how much the level of risk-aversion in America has been influenced by the widespread use of Prozac. People on anti-depressants give the appearance of being above it all but they often have a hard time dealing with simple day-to-day disagreements. Anyway, keep up the good fight -

Feb 9, 2009 - 6:33 pm 82. buddy larsen:

Bob Murphy @ 81; i know what you mean –some pols create a real challenge to love of country –bubba’s one of the all time greats at that.

marymcl @ 82; that’s a pretty stunning notion. Prozac nation by preventing depression even when depression is earned and/or needed in order to get past a barrier or a behavior, making prozac nation unable to feel bad when it IS bad, look at when when it came to be so prevalent, and what else started happening — the sudden epidemic of obesity, esp childhood, no-fault everything, 40 million deleted universes, internet porn for anyone kids included, mega bank credit cards showered on folks mesmerized by madison avenue, living by labels, wall street madness, washington DC gone mob, greenies that somehow are able to proceed signing us up for world war…jeeeez. and no way to fix anything save a holy war.

Feb 9, 2009 - 8:50 pm 83. Bob Smith:

Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.

Important how? More to the point, what doctor doesn’t keep themselves informed of the latest medical findings in their specialty? Since when is government needed to remind doctors to do so? And how is such information useful, when the latest stuff is almost by definition the most expensive stuff and therefore unlikely to be deemed cost effective by our health care overlords?

Feb 9, 2009 - 9:43 pm 84. marymcl:

I don’t know buddy, but there’s gotta be a limerick in there somewhere

Feb 9, 2009 - 10:26 pm 85. buddy larsen:

“We’re all in this” they say, “…together”

“…a burden shared, and light as a feather!”

they assume that mere taxes
have so upset praxis

as slowly we die on their tether.

Feb 9, 2009 - 11:35 pm 86. Doug:

Today Lindbaugh had an example from the Euros:

Most of us would agree that too much often gets spent at the end of life for medical treatment that only benefits the billing.
…but bring the govt into the decision making and here’s what the Euros came up with:

If someone had Macular Degeneration, they had to go blind in one eye before they could get medication!

Complete Insanity, immorality, and depravity.

The Euros protested that one for three years and finally got it changed.

Feb 10, 2009 - 6:50 am 87. marymcl:

“as slowly we die on their tether”

We can carve that in stone, assuming we haven’t gone blind first – As crazy as Doug’s story sounds, it’s not hard to believe. I can just imagine the paperwork that goes with it, too – one of the weirder things about the conversion to EMR is the amount of attendant paperwork it has generated. Don’t ask me why, but it’s there. The “paperless office” is anything but.

I should add that all this stuff has a debilitating effect on morale, in more ways than one. Urban clinics and hospitals are high-stress environments to begin with and complaining about things you have no chance whatever of changing just drags everyone down. It’s not an easy call

And believe it or not, there are doctors who think increasing government oversight is a good thing. I recently asked a couple of them flat-out who they’d rather be evaluated by – the government or their peers – and they both said “the government, of course” Of course!?!

Feb 10, 2009 - 8:37 am 88. Cascajun:

Worshipping the gods of process….

Zero-Thoughtfulness

A Colorado school district has suspended a member of the Young Marines youth leadership group after students saw drill props in her vehicle.

Feb 10, 2009 - 1:43 pm 89. Mark Buehner:

“You know what I’ve noticed? Nobody panics when things go “according to plan.” Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all “part of the plan.” But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!”

The Joker.

Feb 10, 2009 - 2:45 pm 90. marymcl:

This is too funny

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzA5ZGVlNDRiZTQ3ZDVjOTZhMjZmY2MxODRkNzVmNjI=

Mark Buehner – are you he of the same name who used to comment at the Command Post?

Feb 11, 2009 - 12:26 pm 91. Mark Buehner:

I am! It’s been a long time eh?

Feb 12, 2009 - 7:41 am 92. marymcl:

Yes indeed – Actually the PJM site has some of the same energy about it as the old CP (sadly I noticed the old site has wiped away all the comments)

Anyway, it’s nice to run into someone from way back when!

Feb 13, 2009 - 8:06 am

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