Catholic Professors Criticize Boehner in Letter – NYTimes.com

Finally, someone from the Christian community has spoken up and pointed out that Charity and Social Justice are central and important basics of Christianity… that there is more to morality than abortion and gays…

More than 75 professors at Catholic University and other prominent Catholic colleges have written a pointed letter to Mr. Boehner saying that the Republican-supported budget he shepherded through the House of Representatives will hurt the poor, elderly and vulnerable, and therefore he has failed to uphold basic Catholic moral teaching.

“Mr. Speaker, your voting record is at variance from one of the Church’s most ancient moral teachings,” the letter says. “From the apostles to the present, the Magisterium of the Church has insisted that those in power are morally obliged to preference the needs of the poor. Your record in support of legislation to address the desperate needs of the poor is among the worst in Congress. This fundamental concern should have great urgency for Catholic policy makers. Yet, even now, you work in opposition to it.”

via Catholic Professors Criticize Boehner in Letter – NYTimes.com.

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Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics – NYTimes.com

“We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list,” Ms. Giffords said last March. “But the thing is the way that she has it depicted has the cross hairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize there’s consequences to that.”

via Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics – NYTimes.com.

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Sarah Palin — One heartbeat away from ‘Four More Years’?

Well, unless you have been living underneath a rock, you might have noticed that Mccain has announced his running-mate, Sarah Palin.

All you need to do is hit google, or keep up with the wikipedia link above to get all that is known (or, rather, not known) about Sarah Palin.  There are a lot of faults that are being pointed out, but what I find most troubling has to do with the most important job of the vice-presidency.

I like McCain.  Not enough to vote for him necessarily, but certainly I think our country would have been better off if he was the President the last eight years rather than Bush, Gore, or Kerry.  I also think he is experienced enough and strong enough to follow what he thinks is right rather than that of his party.

I have always felt that John McCain was a principled man who did things right rather than BS around, but I seriously wonder if this presidential run as changed him.  He himself said was the most important criteria for Vice-Presidency : “”person most prepared to take my place.”  Sarah Palin may be a wonderful person (I don’t know), but by that standard she seems to be woefully lacking.  It appears that John McCain is more interested in winning the election than finding someone fit for the job.

Sarah Palin’s lack foreign policy, and Washington political experience is really concerning.  If she ends up president, it won’t be long until the Republican machine (i.e. Dick Cheney) takes over everything that happens inside the White House.

Let’s face it, John McCain’s health isn’t the best to begin with, and even if it was good, things happen to people, and people die suddenly without warning.  Is this country ready for even the possibility of “Four More Years” ?

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The New Yorker: The Checklist

A really great article by Atul Gawande (writer of “Complications” and “Better”) was published in the New Yorker. The ariticle follows the work on intensivist Dr Peter Pronovost, who made simple workflow interventions which made dramatic reductions on the rate of complications in the intensive care unit. The following quote, however, made him an instant hero to me:

“The fundamental problem with the quality of American medicine is that we’ve failed to view delivery of health care as a science. The tasks of medical science fall into three buckets. One is understanding disease biology. One is finding effective therapies. And one is insuring those therapies are delivered effectively. That third bucket has been almost totally ignored by research funders, government, and academia. It’s viewed as the art of medicine. That’s a mistake, a huge mistake. And from a taxpayer’s perspective it’s outrageous.”

A link to the article is here.

Thanks Phil Andrus at the Mount Sinai Emergency Medicine Critical Care Blog for bringing this to my attention.

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