The operation was a success

... but the patient died.

Remember how many Republicans said that America has the best healthcare?  Obamacare was going to screw that.

Oops.

The U.S. life expectancy for men is about 76 and ranks last in the 17 countries studied. For women, the life expectancy is about 81 years and ranked 16, followed by Denmark.

“Why are we falling behind leads to broader, complex questions,” Woolf said. “We were not surprised there was a health disadvantage, but by how big and pervasive it was.”

The disadvantage exists even though the U.S. spends more per capita on health care than any other nation, partly because of a large uninsured population and inaccessible or unaffordable medical care, according to the study. Americans also have riskier health behaviors, including being involved in more traffic accidents that involve alcohol and using firearms in acts of violence. Americans who don’t smoke and are not overweight also appear to have higher rates of disease.

Not that I expect any corrections of the record. Republicans had to say we're the best. They still have to say that. Being best at everything is what they mean by American exceptionalism. We're number one, we're number one.

What were we talking about?

Why Republicans want to end academe

They don't control it:

The U.S. Supreme Court should uphold a law requiring most Americans to have health insurance if the justices follow legal precedent, according to 19 of 21 constitutional law professors who ventured an opinion on the most-anticipated ruling in years.

For now, anyway...

Poverty and violence

I've long thought that a key source of sectarian peace in Northern Ireland was the economic boom in all of Ireland. This resurgence of violence suggests I was right.

How does this matter for America, other than engaging our sympathy (and possibly, negatively, our sympathies)?

The perennial avarice of the wealthy class in this country for a larger and larger share of the pie leads to privation, and that eventually leads to violence, as it always has. It won't matter whether the maldistributed GDP is bigger if the people have empty stomachs.

Media proves that units matter

The first principle of consuming media is this: If something seems wildly crazy, it probably is. Remember this the next time you hear something outlandish about Barack Obama.

This woman's body temperature was not 30° Fahrenheit, as CNN claims, which would equal dead. It was 30° Celsius, which for you metric-challenged Americans is 86° F. That's still incredibly low, the sort of scenario that usually means there was alcohol involved in copious amounts.

Bloomberg gets the units right and puts her body temp 7° C cooler than normal.

I'm guessing that CNN reporter Ashley Fantz, her editor, and their caption-writer (do caption-writers still exist?) took as little science and math as possible in high school and college.

Still and all, a very merry Christmas for Molnar and her family, at least compared to the more likely outcome. Best not try to put the conventional miracle narrative on this either, though, since the stories don't add up. Her family says the blizzard forced her off the road, yet when rescued, she alibied, "I just wanted to take a walk."

The media definitely won't report to us the dark side of events such as this, especially not in a season that's supposed to be miraculous. If you want to know what's true, rather than what you wish to be true (and there really aren't that many of us who do), you're on your own with big media. (By the way, I don't want reporters to dig into this poor woman's life, just to refrain from using her to sell a happy-talk narrative that doesn't fit.)

In any case, I hope that Molnar can find her way through the pain to healing. That would be a Christmas blessing.

Update: CNN has fixed the units. The general lesson about outlandish so-called facts still stands.

Disclosure for Democrats

Obama has posted his family's tax returns for 2000 to 2006. Hillary is waiting till later. From the Boston Globe, that's all you hear about.

Bloomberg notes that John McCain's are still MIA. But, he's busy now, trying to have his Bush and eat it, too!

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Forty years on

"Actually, we thought Memphis was more civilized," said Andrew Young, sitting for an interview on Bloomberg. He was speaking of April 1968 and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Imagine getting intelligent coverage in real time!

Money leaves a trail

The financial straits of the Salem schools need to be addressed, and that's what the story is about, but I want more. Some forensic accounting is needed to find out what went wrong and who's responsible. School systems often have poor internal controls (though at least we're not talking 5 billion euros here), but there should still be enough of a paper trail to get to the bottom of it.

Cherche le bucque

When large sums of money are involved, people cheat - antidepressants, statins, whatever the FDA doesn't oversee carefully. And with Republicans in the executive, that means everything. Democrats might be better, or they might not.

So, next time you hear "9 out of 10 dentists recommend," think: If an ad says it, maybe they shot the other 90 dentists who didn't recommend. Same goes for Coke and Pepsi ads, except they can run as many trials as they need to get the "right" result.