The Nightowl Newswrap

by: Blue Girl

Wed Jan 14, 2009 at 22:46:25 PM CST

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This item is especially for Thersites and Optical Weenie  What is Kevin Drum going to say about this?  Inkblot and Domino have some competition for most famous cats in the world now that Nancy Pelosi has launched CatCam on her YouTube channel.  Beautiful critters.  But watch carefully - as my friend Steve said, she is "aware of our internet traditions."   No kidding.  I dunno about you, but I will never forget the first time I was Rickrolled by the Speaker of the House!

It's official.  Retail sales sucked in December  The Commerce Department said today that retail sales tumbled by 2.7% last month from the previous month on a seasonally adjusted basis.  The news capped a lousy quarter.  Sales in November decreased 2.1%, revised down from an originally estimated 1.8% decline. October was also revised lower, to a drop of 3.4% from a previously reported drop of 2.9%.  Economists expected a 1.2% decline in sales during December.

Eureka!  We have an answer that rivals 42!  Do you realize what this means?  We now know what "immediately" means in government parlance!  The Minnesota Supreme Court agreed today to hear Al Franken's argument that he should immediately be granted a certificate allowing him to take his Senate seat while Norm Coleman's nuisance suits wend their way through the courts...in three weeks.

Can I just say I will so not miss this horrible, horrible man  Dick Cheney sat down with Jim Lehrer for an "exit interview."  Not a single word of the interview had any basis in reality.  He still refers to Saddam Hussein as having ties to al Qaeda, and he is disappointed by those ingrates in Iraq who didn't bounce back.  He also brings up the Shia uprising of the first Gulf War and how they were slaughtered by Saddam Hussein...but fails to mention that the United States hung them out to dry and let them be murdered en masse  after telling them they would support an uprising...and Dick Cheney was the Secretary of Defense who led those opposition leaders to the slaughter.   Also - no one was tortured, they only did what they had to do, they didn't make that many mistakes, the economic meltdown isn't their fault, and when confronted with his own unpopularity he says "I don't buy that."  

I suspected all along that Olmert was lying  about interrupting a speech to get Bush on the phone and tell him to stop Condi voting for a cease fire resolution in Gaza that she had drafted.  The State Department denied his claim and issued a statement denouncing Olmert's claim as "wholly inaccurate as to describing the situation, just 100%, totally, completely not true."  Or as we would say where I come from, he lies like a rug.

Remember the little boy named Adolf Hitler that a supermarket wouldn't make a birthday cake for?  The state of  New Jersey has removed him and his two younger sisters from their parents home.  The parents, Heath and Debbie Campbell, were to appear for a hearing today in county court.  The chief of police said he didn't know why the children were taken, but said his department had not received any reports of abuse or neglect involving the children.

Get to the bottom of this right now  Patients at as many as 50 VA health centers were given incorrect doses of drugs, had needed treatments delayed and may have been exposed to other medical errors due to the glitches that showed inaccurate displays of their electronic health records.  The glitches, which began in August and lingered until last month, have not been traced to any instances of permanent damage, were not disclosed to patients by the VA even though some of the mistakes were potentially life threatening.  The health care worker in me is furious - heparin overdoses are a big damned deal.  

RIP 4th Amendment  There is no longer any reason for police to show any restraint.  SCOTUS today said that even if evidence is obtained via an illegal search, it is admissible.  In a 5-4 opinion the Romans upheld the conviction of Bennie Dean Herring, whose felonious behavior is rivaled only by his lousy luck.  Herring was arrested on a warrant that was not valid by a cop who had a hard-on for him and was actively looking for a reason to bust him for something - anything - to run him in on.  Within minutes the error of the withdrawn warrant was discovered, but too late for Mr. Herring - he had already been cuffed and stuffed and was being run in for being a felon in possession of a gun and traces of meth in his pocket.  Glad he's off the street and locked up - I really, really hate tweekers - but I wish the Fourth Amendment wasn't collateral damage.

Some of us have been saying to do this for years Every hospital-wide staff meeting of department heads and representatives that I have ever sat in on has included a suggestion from the blood bank rep to duplicate and customize our blood bank checklist for the surgery teams.  We always argued that doing so would all but eliminate errors for them like it does us  because by sticking to the protocols we don't make mistakes  - and we are an anal bunch who wouldn't deviate from that checklist if our mothers eyes depended on it.   Now that someone had the idea to present the suggestion as modeled on the checklist used by pilots before takeoff, surgical teams are a lot more amenable.  Presumably pilots rank way higher on the coolness-scale than blood bankers.  

Zyprexa settlement imminent  Eli Lilly is expected to agree as early as tomorrow (Thursday) to pay $1.4 billion to settle criminal and civil charges that it illegally marketed the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa for off-label uses in patients at high risk to experience harmful and devastating side effects. Among the charges, Lilly has been accused of a scheme stretching for years to persuade doctors to prescribe Zyprexa to pediatric and geriatric patients - two patient groups for whom the drug was not federally approved.  In one marketing effort, the company urged geriatricians to use Zyprexa to sedate unruly nursing home patients and in another charge the company pressured pediatricians and family practitioners to prescribe the drug to manage disruptive children, even though there was a confirmed tendency of the drug to cause severe weight gain and metabolic disorders that is particularly pronounced in children.