UConn James

That doctor self-identifies as "a friend of the Kennedy family." How objective is this going to be? This is not entirely he said/she said. The surveillance video that is available for viewing shows Kennedy going to an elevator with an explanation that a "Code Pink" (a baby kidnapping) had been activated. The nurse enters the elevator and stops it, while there is obvious discussion. You can probably guess what's being said. The nurses are not moving their hands, they are not lunging, they want to diffuse the situation; he takes a hand away from the baby to make an upturned palm gesture. Kennedy exits the elevator and heads toward the stairs, where a nurse says she was reaching to stabilize the newborn's head when you can see Kennedy's leg extend and the nurse falls to the floor. From the video, it's obvious to anyone without some vested interest who is being the aggressor. The nurses were not being grabby. They were trying to delay as long as they could until security arrived. Evidently, in the stairwell, the nurse had enough concern for the baby's positioning that she couldn't wait for security and only then reaches out. Then, Kennedy went Mortal Combat. The lawyer is saying they're trying to get the charges dropped. Which is code for 'calling in political favors' to people in higher offices. How anyone can watch that video and excuse these actions would be beyond me, but stranger things happen with frequency.

This rain delay coverage... only slightly less boring than once the left-turn fest begins. I was really just watchin' for Danica.

Uhmmm... I used the word "combative" about what Kennedy did. Not about you. Checking out with the proper person to make sure that the person taking the baby is a person who actually is entitled to take the baby is not too much to ask. Expecting someone to not become physically violent while holding a newborn is not too much to ask. It just isn't.

"Lunging" was a term that Mr. Kennedy used. Which I take with a grain of salt for the same reason that the owner of a dog that bit me and mine last summer on the opposite side of the road from its house said it was "protecting its property." As AJ said, with some level of expertise, the ER doctor had little or no authority in the maternity wing. The baby was not his patient/charge. As this doctor said, he was "accompanying" him; what I still don't get is why he did not talk Mr. Kennedy down out of Mortal Combat mode, but.... Likewise, marketing managers at HP do not have a place telling manufacturing line assemblers to put this transistor here instead of there. It's not their area and they likely have little idea of the protocols in another department, especially with the security issues surrounding neo-natal centers with today's brand of whack-jobs. The maternity nurses aren't there to play games, nor are they there to hermetically seal the child away from parental whims that don't affect care. The primary, secondary and tertiary concern is the safety of the newborns. The first week is a critical period of care. EII, this is most definitely NOT a case of a 'well, everyone was wrong here; so no harm no foul' in the hopes of, say, avoiding this becoming a potential distraction for his cousin Joe Kennedy III running for congress. For the record, I could give a stevestojan about any politics fallout. Whether people base a vote in a Kennedy race (other than Douglas Kennedy himself if he ever ran as a means of discussing his own decision-making) based on this would be stupid. The essence is the safety of a baby, the need for everyone to understand the system and stop being so !@#$ing combative about simple security measures and following rules, and still... there is a little bit of a concern of why some members of this family feel entitled to thinking violence against women / people doing their job is OK. Mr. Kennedy is the one being charged with criminal actions. His choice was the genesis of the incident and his poor choice escalated the incident and put the baby at risk of injury.

Oooo... going back and re-reading that sentence, it's not quite as I imagined what I was saying (that the ER doctor might have been expected to be a voice of reason b/w the two sides; instead it seems like he just stood there and now is speaking against his own hospital's rules How long does he stay employed there?), but even then it still had a lot to learn from your explanation. Thanks for your input, aj. It just makes Mr. Kennedy's actions even less defensible. You're in PPP. Now, like that opening scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark"... step back carefully on the same footprints you came in on.

Intent on testing the waters. Doesn't sound like he's envisioning being back. I just hope the experience with what even a half-way decent TE can do has opened Chan's mind to the position.

Ummm... yeah. If my own father did this, I would feel the same. I would cuff him myself. There is no person for whom this is allowable. What the !@#$ kind of question is this?

BURP!!! (Sorry. With our blue laws there's no liquor sales on Sundays, so....) But yes, under the discussion section, they did not note how in CT our illustrious Gov. Dann-uh-uh-uh-el Ma-uh-uh-uh-lloy actually increased spending by $3B in the two-year budget when we were already $3.5B in the hole. He then increased the income tax withholding by b/w $1,000-$3,000. People who found out that at $50K, they were the ones Ma-uh-uh-uh-uh-lloy called "the rich" during the 2010 campaign got slightly pissed. He is a one-term governor, but not before he sinks this state even deeper in debt and economic despair (at least, outside of Greenwich/Fairfield County). He gets three death threats per day, according to my state trooper neighbor, who was asked to be part of his security detail but declined.

He is entitled to do that, with the proper security clearance WRT recent safety measures that hospitals face liability for, as Jack related. Imagine the headline "Kennedy Baby Kidnapped!" People are sick these days. It happens. He is not entitled to be physically combative when staff need to follow protocol... or hell, even if they are being asshats, he has no right to kick people in their midsection and put his own newborn at risk by initiating such action while holding it. I've held newborns; you need to be so careful with their head and neck. Patrick Kennedy felt he was "entitled" to walk through security at LAX without screening his huge bag because he thought everybody knew him and that he was a congresscritter and he was late for his flight. "Do As We Say, Not As We Do" is inscribed on their family crest.

RFK's son struggles with nurses at NY hospital Regardless of whether Mr. Kennedy thought the nurses were in the wrong: 1) What the hell is the mindset of pushing and kicking at people while holding a newborn? 2) If an ER doctor (a family friend of the Kennedys) was accompanying him, why did this man not speak up during the altercation? You'd assume there's some semblance of hierarchy that RNs would defer to a doctor. 3) I don't know exactly what the nurses' contentions were ... perhaps an identification issue (there are people who swipe babies from maternity wards) or something. Security prevented him from leaving, so it would seem that he was breaking rules. Again, I don't know. 4) Whatever, there's no justification for kicking someone in the midsection (there is video of an altercation and a nurse falling to the floor). If you think they're wrong, you take the baby back to the room and sort it out quickly with hospital admin. 5) What the !@#$ is it about the Kennedys that they feel the rules don't apply to them and when someone gets in their way, they're within rights to shove and kick women who are trying to do their jobs?

Something I mentioned upthread that received a terse "Shut your trap!" from Juror#8. He doesn't want to have this part of the conversation. And I'll say it again, this thread was started as a conceit to post a smarmy video.

I would. It's been forever since I've eaten out anywhere but Subway or the like (Rare for that, too. I like to make my own food for reasons of cost and quality.) I never quite got why I should be socially bound to give 15 percent to someone who simply scratches down an order and walks your food 10-20 feet to your table. The people in the kitchen are the ones doing the majority of the work while a waiter/waitress plays a social role. Maybe it's just me....

http://blogs.suntimes.com/foreignc/2012/02/the-pursuit-of-powerlessness.html I thought I had gotten this at the time, but I'm still going to have to give this a revisit soon.

You would smell less if you wiped after using the toilet.

Your avatar sucks.

Que? Selmon's health class book is his special bathroom reading material.

And something else, Juror.... this election is an exact copy of 2004? We haven't even got a nominee for one side and you're saying this? The 2004 election was about the liberal-left's (or for our purposes, a hard-core of the party ideology) influence in the primary, who nominated a guy who couldn't beat --- at the time --- the most unpopular president ever, according to polling. A Romney nomination, and this election has 1980 Redux written all over it. Santorum or Gingrich... might give you your 2004, but even then I doubt it just based on political realities of electoral college shift from the census and that there are states Obama has no prayer of winning again now that he has to run on a record.

The point was that you bandy about the charge that Romney is / business leaders are "automatons" as if they don't live in the real world and aren't impacted by very human problems. You can continue with the canard that these machines need to lube up, but it only means you're the one who has to go through life as a reductive * who has to looks through the lens of stereotype to be able to see anything. You are painting with so broad a brush (Academics vs. Businessmen) that you're discounting personhood. When you're dealing with a set of 44 examples, each of whom was a product of his time, from which to make inferences, what the !@#$ do you hope to prove? Because Hoover was a "businessman" but didn't live in a 24/7 CNN world, he made decisions based on day-to-day profits? That long-term thought and strategy isn't something 'non-academics' can get? He didn't realize the concept that the machination in any process takes time to produce something? Romney doesn't get this? Because you say so? Who the !@#$ do you think you are, pretending to know how these men thought/think and calling them automatons? you.

The standard reply from someone who's lost the argument.

And friends... that's saying something!!!

No stevestojan. Maybe you should come back when you have two brain cells to rub together. This may have some direction/basis in reality if Romney had no experience other than as a CEO. But as it stands, you don't acknowledge that he led an Olympic Games that was $800M in the hole from corruption and graft when he got there and which ended up making $300M in an era when almost EVERY Olympic endeavor has lost money hand over fist and any city and nation that bids for it looks upon it as a tourism advertising effort. You write your crap as if Romeny didn't have to deal with construction, budget, contracts / litigation, and security/terrorism issues a few months after 9/11. He then was elected governor of a state, and brought it back to fiscal sanity, wrapped up the Big Dig, responded to major flooding in 2005 when we in the northeast had 20 straight days of rain including dam breaks that threatened a 20,000-population city, he did the best he could with an 85% Democrat state legislature... and the place didn't turn into a Mormon Theocracy. Businessperson or not, Romney has had success at every increased-responsibility challenge he's ever faced. The Peter Principle hasn't hit him yet. Pres. Obama, on the other hand, has largely proven to be out of his depth. How has being an academic helped him? If he actually had a stevestojan-sliver of experience in the Real World where you actually have to produce a product, have to own fiscal responsibility and the realities that irresponsibility causes, and not just blame other people for every !@#$ing problem... this country might be able to go somewhere. I don't get your statement about having multiple places where he's lived/worked/owns a house. This is 2011. Obama used his moving around as an argument in his favor vis. that he could relate to different groups of people (Hawai'i, Indonesia, Kansas, Illinois, D.C.). How doesn't this apply to Romney as a positive, other than you & the Left saying the case is different for anyone with an R after their name? This point alone proves that you're a !@#$ing idiot who's just throwing stevestojan out there and basically created a RomneyBad thread so you could link a smarmy video.

Just wanted to mention Whaley said that, since many media outlets are reporting and fans are saying that it's 0% / completely off the table. Per the Ass't GM, it's not.

At the rate the women are going, I wouldn't be surprised to see a mixing via drawing buffs from a bag in two weeks at the earliest. Men vs. women is an interesting idea in the abstract, but when it comes down to it, the women can't compete given the immunity challenges that have been picked, where a team is only as good as its physically weakest player. There ought to be some that are not a matter of fastest, strongest. Blaming the loss on having boobs was... kind of cheap, but they may have a point. With some of them, that was an extra 4-5" to have to work around at a point that is highly disadvantageous WRT center of balance. Having to lean out that extra bit to accommodate the volume of two sets of ta-tas was marginally unfair.

You replaced Stupendous Man with a little infant? Really, gringo? REALLY?!!!?

In a chat session on BB.com, Doug Whaley just wrote that putting a franchise tag of SJ is still "a possibility" but that it would be "a short-term fix."