Sicko Fun Fact: English Hospitals Resort to “Patient Stacking” to Meet NHS Goals

Why wouldn’t we want a system like England’s here? From the Daily Mail:

Seriously ill patients are being kept in ambulances outside hospitals for hours so NHS trusts do not miss Government targets.

Thousands of people a year are having to wait outside accident and emergency departments because trusts will not let them in until they can treat them within four hours, in line with a Labour pledge.

The hold-ups mean ambulances are not available to answer fresh 999 calls.

Doctors warned last night that the practice of “patient-stacking” was putting patients’ health at risk.

Figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats show that last year 43,576 patients waited longer than one hour before being let into emergency units.

Only seven out of 11 ambulance trusts responded to the survey, so the true figure could be far higher.

Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb is writing to health secretary Alan Johnson to demand an urgent investigation into the practice.

“This is evidence of shocking systematic failure in our emergency services,” he said.

Labour brought in the four-hour A&E target to end the scandal of patients waiting for days in casualty or being kept on trolleys in corridors.

But a shortage of out-of-hours GP care, after thousands of doctors opted out of treating patients outside working hours under lucrative new contracts, means more and more are going to casualty units, putting them under greater pressure.

Dr Jonathan Fielden of the British Medical Association said: “The vast majority of patients coming into hospital by ambulance are in critical need of care in hospital and therefore delay can worsen their outcome.”

Sam Oestreicher of Unison, which represents most ambulance workers, said: “Ambulances should not be used as mobile waiting rooms. They should be freed to do their job.

They should be but under a government run system they will never be. The government is not in the business of helping people, it’s in the business of running things which means that individuals who die are less important than the smooth running of their system.

So when you’re waiting in an ambulance for two days here after the Dems pass their “free” health care, remember that you had all the facts in front of you and voted Democrat anyway.

Heroic Babysitter Defends 3 Year Old Charge from Maniac

It sounds like the plot from a horror movie. A young girl agrees to babysit a toddler only to find herself under siege by an unknown maniac. It wasn’t a movie however when it happened the Boyes Hot Springs community nestled in swanky Sonoma Valley where a young babysitter acquitted herself heroically:

(02-17) 19:26 PST Boyes Hot Springs — A babysitter appears to have thwarted the kidnapping of the 3-year-old child in her care when she fought a man who opened the screen door of her apartment and grabbed the toddler, according to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department.

The man, identified by sheriff’s deputies as Normando Zamora Ramirez, 24, of Boyes Hot Springs, entered the apartment in the 100 block of Boyes Blvd., near Boyes Hot Springs on Friday at about noon.

Authorities said Ramirez grabbed the little girl, ripping her sweater, and when the babysitter intervened, he grabbed her and dragged her out of the apartment by her hair.

Ramirez also forced the child out of the apartment and as he struggled with the babysitter, a neighbor heard her cries for help and ran over to help, deputies said.

The neighbor detained the suspect, who appeared to be drunk or on drugs, until deputies arrived and arrested him. Ramirez was jailed on suspicion of attempted kidnapping, false imprisonment, burglary and child abuse.

The girl was not hurt but the babysitter, who was not identified, was treated by paramedics for minor abrasions, deputies said.

This young woman is a hero and I hope the 3 year old’s parents realize how lucky they are to have her as friend of the family. At the very least she deserves a raise.

China Bans Horror

This makes me glad to be an American. A woman called “darklilth” asked me recently what was wrong with a little communism (I’m paraphrasing), the answer is nothing if you don’t mind being told what to do or think:

BEIJING (Reuters) – China has added ghosts, monsters and other things that go bump in the night to its list of banned video and audio content in an intensified crackdown ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

Producers have around three weeks to look through their tapes for “horror” and report it to authorities, the General Administration of Press and Publications said in a statement posted on the government Web site.

Offending content included “wronged spirits and violent ghosts, monsters, demons, and other inhuman portrayals, strange and supernatural storytelling for the sole purpose of seeking terror and horror,” the administration said.

The new guidelines aim to “control and cleanse the negative effect these items have on society, and to prevent horror, violent, cruel publications from entering the market through official channels and to protect adolescents’ psychological health.”

This won’t change the mind of the “darkliliths” of the world, but it makes me appreciate living in America all the more:

elvira-american-flag.jpg

I love this country!

Under The Weather Link Round Up

I’ve got the flu and a couple of Ribeyes and a dozen oysters so blogging will be light, but here are some links that should entertain and inform:

Islam’s long history with America is detailed in this excellent article by Wallbuilders. Notice the footnotes, oh how I miss academia.

Bikini promoting Pundit Rachel Marsden has a nice pic up of French President Sarkozy’s new squeeze Carla Bruni. Her new project Grand Central Political is up and running as well.

Debbie Nathan sort of apologizes for defending filthy pervert Bernie Ward in one of the most asinine articles to ever appear on Counterpunch. Sort of.

Lost in Lima, Ohio has a story of rough justice in Folsom prison.

Much maligned blogger Lionheart is seeking asylum in the good old U.S. of A. He can crash at my place.

The body Brianna Denison has been found. Our worse fears have been confirmed as it is now thought to be the work of a serial rapist.

In other crime news the claws are out at Criminal Conduct who are taking on police impersonator Steven James Nemec. Nemec is an ex-con who Mike Huckabee granted a police commission to, even though impersonating an officer was Nemec’s crime of choice.

NSFW, America’s most beloved porn journalist is not a Lindsay Lohan fan.

Iran smirks its way through a threat on Israel. Peaceful nukes indeed.

GSGF disagrees with me on Kosovo independence, and she’s in good company with Kim Zigfeld at Publius Pundit. Tammy Bruce agrees with me. We’ll settle this in a duel!

Former Farscape favorite Virginia Hey is helping her land lord unload his estate style house on her blog. If anything can beat a housing slump, it’s good old fashioned nerd bait.

Darklillith“, some angry Wiccan who was upset with me for this or that, answered my point by point refutation of her asinine comments about me by vomiting forth a defense of Cuba and Communism. She’s apparently not seen this report by The Devil’s Excrement on the food shortages in Venezuela. Maybe she should spend more time on Babalu Blog and The Real Cuba and less time on DailyKos. Read her comments to see the mind of a neo-Marxist at work.

Ectoplasmosis rips apart The Guardian, Max Gogarty and Communism. Now that’s criticism!

Guess how high Zimbabwe’s inflation is?

Wolf Howling talks sense on National Security.

Velvet Hammer has the story of another victim of Muslim death threats, this time an author who was trying to present Mohammed’s sex life in a good light. The Umma can’t have that I guess.

Neo-neocon is a blogger after my own heart. Poetry without form is like music without melody.

America’s Rogue State: Kosovo and Islamic Imperialism

Kosovo declared independence amid the kind celebration that should shame American supporters of the Albanian Muslims:

In the capital, Pristina, the mood was jubilant. Thousands of ethnic Albanians braved subfreezing temperatures to ride on the roofs of their cars, singing patriotic songs and chanting: “KLA! KLA!” the acronym for the now-disbanded rebel Kosovo Liberation Army. They waved American flags alongside the red Albanian banner imprinted with a black, double-headed eagle.

The Kosovo Liberation Army is a jihadist group that that even Human Rights Watch, who are supportive of the Albanian Muslim cause, describes as a violent terrorist group who murdered and raped Serbs, Christians and Albanians both before and after the Kosovo conflict:

As presented in the Background chapter, the KLA was responsible for serious abuses in 1998, including abductions and murders of Serbs and ethnic Albanians considered collaborators with the state. In some villages under KLA control in 1998, the rebels drove ethnic Serbs from their homes. Some of those who remained are unaccounted for and are presumed to have been abducted by the KLA and killed. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, ninety-seven Kosovo Serbs who went missing in 1998 were still missing as of May 15, 2000.

The KLA detained an estimated eighty-five Serbs during its July 19, 1998, attack on Orahovac. Thirty-five of these people were subsequently released but the others remain missing as of August 2001. On July 22, 1998, the KLA briefly took control of the Belacevac mine near Obilic. Nine Serbs were captured that day, and they remain on the ICRC’s list of the missing.

[…]

Elements of the KLA are also responsible for post-conflict attacks on Serbs, Roma, and other non-Albanians, as well as ethnic Albanian political rivals. Immediately following NATO’s arrival in Kosovo, there was widespread and systematic burning and looting of homes belonging to Serbs, Roma, and other minorities and the destruction of Orthodox churches and monasteries. This destruction was combined with harassment and intimidation designed to force people from their homes and communities. By late-2000 more than 210,000 Serbs had fled the province; most of them left in the first six weeks of the NATO deployment. Those who remained were increasingly concentrated in mono-ethnic enclaves, such as northern Mitrovica, Kosovo Polje, or Gracanica.

Most seriously, as many as one thousand Serbs and Roma have been murdered or have gone missing since June 12, 1999. Criminal gangs or vengeful individuals may have been involved in some incidents since the war. But elements of the KLA are clearly responsible for many of these crimes. The desire for revenge provides a partial explanation, but there is also a clear political goal in many of these attacks: the removal from Kosovo of non-ethnic Albanians in order to better justify an independent state.

In other words terrorism works. The Roma mentioned above are what we’d call Gypsies and were largely innocent by-standers in the conflict. Islamists target them because of their unorthodox views and lifestyles.

The wide spread desecration of Churches and attacks on Christian minorities is under reported by our media. The fact the the crowd chanted “KLA!” at the celebration should indicated to us that they embrace the K.L.A. ideology, which includes fealty to Al-Qaeda and Islamism in general.

The K.L.A. and their ties to terror is no secret and the end result of Kosovo becoming a Muslim country with a small Christian minority is well summed up in this interview:

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The K.L.A. is also supported by various Communist groups who approve of their “revolutionary violence” just as they approve of Al-Qaeda’s in Iraq, Afghanistan and across the world. They also must support the policies they believe the K.L.A. backed government would institute. Policies like the destruction of churches:

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The Desecration of Christian alters and relics:

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Or maybe just participating in the long standing Islamic tradition of forced sexual slavery.

In addition to the death sentence we have helped hand the Orthodox Christians in Kosovo, a belligerent Russia has seemingly decided to make it’s stand against the U.S. over this issue. Kosovo’s independence could be used as a pretext for Russian military operations in Europe, the establishment of bases in Serbia or just a return to cold war footing for our to nations, but no matter the outcome the much vaunted “blow back” of the libertarian left is on display for all the world to see.

Many on the right are straddling the fence on Kosovo, falling back of the leftist Majoritarian argument that “the will of the people” must be respected regardless of whether or not that will includes exterminating Christians and setting up the capitol of the Caliphate that Jihadists have been hoping for. We have nothing to celebrate and much to be ashamed of.

And we should be afraid. The gratitude of the American loving Albanians only goes so far after all:

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We have granted the enemy a victory and created a future rogue state.