From the graphic: “We all think of the hospital as the place to go to get better. But hospitals in the United States are making people sicker at alarming rates. Between overtired interns, germ-covered doctors, and haphazard record keeping, you might find yourself in more trouble than you were when you checked in.“

There is a large list of why US hospitals aren’t as safe as you may have thought. This infographic details medical errors, the spread of infections within hospitals, poor sanitation, and inefficiencies in record keeping.

Do you think a larger budget in Healthcare would improve hospital conditions?

Created by: Medical Billing and Coding

Leave a comment to let us know.

Gallup did a state by state assessment and came up with the following map. Very discouraging for the Repubs out there.

I think this is mostly due to the fact that Republicans still aren’t proposing viable solutions. And that’s probably because they lack any true leadership right now.

Also, whether they want to admit it or not, last election the electorate shifted significantly left and nothing suggests it’ll switch back. True, some of the anti-deficit crowd may be very vocal, but being loud doesn’t mean you’re the majority.

So until Repubs can come up with some new ideas to excite the moderates and conservative Dems, well, this map will continue to stay blue.

I’ve been genuinely intrigued at how much fiction and reality have been intersecting recently.

See, there’s this film called MOON and it follows the story of a guy working on the far side of the moon who figures out that there’s a lot more to his mission than collecting the natural resource Helium-3. It’s a fantastic piece of science fiction cinema and if you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and catch it while it’s still in theatres.

But after seeing it I discovered that not only is the energy source they talked about in the movie real, but it’s clean, supposedly economically viable and extremely plentiful on the moon’s surface.

More at True/Slant.

A great video for today.

What do you love about the United States?

And, on the other hand, what do you think we could be doing better?

Happy Independence Day everybody. Hope you and yours have a fun and safe 4th.

And, as always, thank you so much for reading and joining the conversations here.

North Korea seems very insistent on testing President Obama. Apparently, the U.S. government is tracking a North Korean freighter suspected of carrying illicit arms.

Government officials say they will act within the bounds of a recent UN Security Council resolution which permits international navies to request the inspection of North Korean cargo vessels but does not give them the right to board. If the North Korean ship docks in a foreign port, the local authorities have broadened inspection rights.

North Korea has said any attempt to board a North Korean vessel would be considered an act of war. This threat likely explains Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ order to increase Hawaii’s defenses against a possible incoming long-range missile.

Gates’ order is almost certainly done out of an abundance of caution and not because the U.S. is planning to take action against the North Korean vessel. However, North Korea is not known as a rational actor and there is very real reason to worry even a small provocation could escalate quickly.

I’m not sure what North Korea’s endgame is, but the nation’s recent actions have been more than a little alarming. Hopefully things will simmer down. The world has enough to worry about already.

It started in Flint, Michigan, but it could be extended to other blighted communities across the nation.

From Telegraph:

The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.

Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.

Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes.

Most are former industrial cities in the “rust belt” of America’s Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.

In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside.

“The real question is not whether these cities shrink – we’re all shrinking – but whether we let it happen in a destructive or sustainable way,” said Mr Kildee. “Decline is a fact of life in Flint. Resisting it is like resisting gravity.”

I like the idea. It makes no sense to keep communities around that are abandoned. And if these cities eventually do come back they can build back up if need be.

What do you think?

Barack Obama’s handshake with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has managed to upset more than a few observers. Of course, the negative reaction from the right has been so predictable and overblown, there’s been little room for a more reasonable critique of Obama’s performance in Latin America.

Thankfully, Eugene Robinson, writing for the Washington Post has written what I think is a generally appropriate reaction to Obama’s a bit-too-passive moment with Chavez. Robinson thinks that, while discourtesy would have been out of place, the President could have shown more displeasure with Chavez and his antics.

Obama was right to show respect for the leaders of neighboring countries big and small at the Summit of the Americas. Those who were not gracious enough to show respect for him deserved to be given — metaphorically, of course, and in the spirit of hemispheric cooperation — the back of the presidential hand.

Robinson doesn’t suggest what sort of “back of the hand” moment he’d have liked, but even a cold stare or a pithy yet undeniably negative remark from the president wouldn’t have been inappropriate. Chavez may not be the great danger some paint him as, but he is an anti-democratic force and a potentially destabilizing presence in the region. There’s no harm in Obama letting Chavez know that a kinder gentler America is still not going to cozy up to wannabe strongmen.

While I think people do read too much into the symbolism of national leaders meeting one another, I also think Obama could have reacted with more noticeable displeasure when Chavez provocatively and inappropriately gave him the “gift” of an anti-American screed. Allowing Chavez to turn a diplomatic affair into political theater wasn’t Obama’s best moment. Hopefully the president will avoid or at least counterpunch such a situation next time.

Some good news already from G20:

After a meeting between the two men in London, on the eve of the G20 summit, President Obama also accepted an invitation to fly to Moscow in July, by which time both sides hope negotiators from both countries will have worked out an arms control deal to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) which expires on 5 December. The negotiators were told to begin work at once.

There were no specific figures in the statements issued after the meeting at Whitfield House, the US embassy residence, but the two leaders agreed that the new deal would go further than the Moscow treaty that their predecessors, George Bush and Vladimir Putin, agreed in 2002. The treaty stipulates operationally deployed (ready to fire) arsenals of 1,700-2,200 warheads, suggesting the goal of a new treaty would be to go below 1,700, and a target figure mentioned as a possibility by both sides is 1,500 warheads each.

No doubt these are just first steps, but I find it much more promising than hearing that Obama saw into Medvedev’s soul.

I’m just saying…

If you thought $700 billion was a lot of money, well..

It is.

But $2 trillion is.. ridiculous.

This is Danielle Ivory from ANP.

Congress and the new administration have been focusing their attention on strengthening oversight for the Treasury’s TARP program, but meanwhile few are paying any attention to the Federal Reserve.

Since September, the Fed has lent out about $2 trillion (Bloomberg reported 1.2 trillion in November), but it’s keeping the names of its recipients a big secret.

And while the Treasury’s bailout package has a $700 billion cap, there’s no limit to how much money the Fed can lend.

The American News Project sat down with Washington newcomer, Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL), who actually used his five minutes of valuable Q & A time in a Financial Services hearing to do some serious Fed fact-finding.

You can see the story or get the embed code here.

Or follow Danielle’s reporting on twitter here.

And visit Acorn Project for more music like this.

I didn’t post my reactions to Barack Obama’s inaugural address yesterday because I knew I could not be anything close to objective. I was moved by the occasion and caught up in the sense of hope (justified or not). I thought the speech’s tone was an excellent blend of forcefulness and humility, of reaching back to our greatest successes while looking forward to what we yet can achieve. But I know I likely heard what I wanted to hear.

So, forget the speech for a moment. But also forget the cynicism. I think The Christian Science Monitor has the right take:

The diverse faces of the millions who came to witness the swearing in of the country’s first African-American president testify to what ultimately unifies. It’s not ethnicity or religious creed, which define so many nations, but the founding ideals of the United States – liberty, justice, and opportunity for all.

That sounds simple. But I think, yesterday, it was that simple. I’m not concerned that I, like many others here and around the world, may have reacted more to the symbolism of the moment than to anything Obama said. I think we’re allowed one day, in the midst of trying times, to remember, without the blemish of irony or distrust, what makes our nation great.

Now, the real work begins.

In a few hours, Barack Hussein Obama will be President of the United States of America. This is an exceptional moment in U.S. history, not because Obama is the first black president (although that’s certainly noteworthy) but because we’re at one of those rare crossroads when we know the next four years will be of great importance to the future of our nation.

In January 1989, the country was in good economic shape and communism was on the run. In early 1993, our most apparent challenge was a minor recession already ending by the time Bill Clinton took office. At the start of 2001, the important question was how best to spend a budget surplus. You’d have to go back to January of 1981 to find economic turmoil and international problems anywhere close to the level of seriousness we face today.

Unsurprisingly, you also have to go back to 1981 to find a new president as anticipated as is Obama. In the long run, Ronald Reagan lived up to the hopes of many of his supporters. But there were missteps and disappointments along the way. We should prepare ourselves for the same under President Obama. There will be errors. There will be distasteful compromises. And there will be periods when many of us doubt the wisdom of the man we elected to lead us.

That said, today is not a time for pessimism. The historic moment of this new presidency is not only about the man ascending to the Oval Office. At risk of sounding trite, our future involves all of us (or at least a large number of us) participating in the betterment of our nation. We cannot afford the level of selfishness and inattentiveness that has permeated our culture for the last several presidencies. But neither can we afford docility, meekly following the dictates of our government or the simple-minded directives of the opposition.

If Obama is indeed a wise man with the potential for greatness, he needs a wise electorate resistant to the urges of bifurcation. The red/blue mindset is a ruinous one, smothering free thought and critical thinking on both sides of the divide. Good ideas and real change will not come from an electorate willfully trapped in partisan ways of thinking.

I, for one, hope to be able to judge Obama not by where he finds his ideas, but by the quality of those ideas. I am certainly susceptible to the lures of ideology and simple solutions, but I hope Obama and his team will make the old grooves uncomfortable. If Obama proves to be a post-partisan president, then the electorate’s willingness to move forward from the partisan traps of the past few decades will likely determine whether or not we achieve real change — not change as a platitude or a campaign slogan, but a genuine improvement in this country.

We know the times ahead will be challenging. We don’t know what kind of president Obama will be. But today is a day for thinking about the future and realizing what needs to be done by all of us if we want the next four years to be better.

Hi, this is Danielle Ivory from the American News Project. My colleague, Lagan Sebert, and I just published a new video on the bailout and a lack of serious oversight.

Today, Henry Paulson urged Congress to release the second half of the $700 billion of the bailout money. But no one seems know what banks have done with the first $350 billion. Despite the fact that Congress wrote more than one hundred pages about oversight in the bailout bill, they left a gaping hole.

All of the content on ANP is available for free! If you like the piece, please feel free to post it on your blog, or replay on the radio or tv.

http://americannewsproject.com/videos/186

The International Herald Tribune has an opinion piece in it highly critical of the CIA. It makes one wonder if the guys in that agency have a mindset that much different from the automakers in Detroit. All have plenty of money to throw at a problem, but they seem to fail wherever they turn.

First, let’s start with Public Enemy Number One:

By the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, every serving CIA officer – indeed, every American – knew that the agency had one prime mission: “Get him!” But, after more than seven years and billions of dollars, we have failed. I recognize much has been done to damage Al Qaeda but, make no mistake, no amount of “rendition” of bin Laden lieutenants can mask our failure to bring to justice the man who ordered 9/11.

George Bush is leaving office in a few weeks, but after seven years, no one can find Osama bin Laden.

Then there is the stuff the spies should know because they have billions of dollars and the world’s best technology at their disposal.

There are other failures too, less dramatic perhaps but of even greater consequence. The clandestine creep of nuclear know-how threatens to put the worst weapons into the worst hands. If North Korea or Iran, or Shangri-La for that matter, claims the right to develop a nuclear fist, our intelligence services should know every detail about that program. Yet we collectively fail over and over again when North Korea tests a missile or nuclear reactor construction in the eastern Syrian desert come as a surprise.

The writer, Art Brown, is a 25-year veteran of the CIA. He says the CIA fails at the human level because of a “cocoon of secrecy that breeds distrust of outsiders.”

The CIA culture is steeped in mistrust of the outside world, but that is where they must get the information to determine what is happening. Brown makes the startling comment that few CIA officers have BlackBerrys, but many do not even have an internet connection at their desk.

In the information age, who in the world sits at a desk doing a meaningful job without an internet connection? That sums up the CIA problem too. Information is the CIA’s job, but they seem determined to make failure a built-in option in it’s processing.

Brown points that out with the CIA quality control problem. Here is a case in point. An al Qaeda threat emerges to attack U.S. military bases in foreign countries. Yet a web search finds some of those countries do not have U.S. bases.

Imagine what even a dial-up connection would in that case.

According to Brown, the CIA culture emphasizes quantity over quality, and it gets it.

In Brown’s years with the CIA, he says that he never recalls anyone being fired or even demoted.

The problem with the CIA is accountability and accuracy. Hopefully, with the Obama administration new outlook, some of that change will spill into the dinosaur-like ways of this nation’s chief intelligence agency.

(from Foolocracy.com)

Well, just when I think I understand Americans something like this comes around and smacks me in the face…

77% of U.S. voters say school children should say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning at school, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Just 13% say they should not, and 9% are undecided.

Sorry, but aren’t we a nation overly concerned with personal freedoms and being free thinkers? Doesn’t it go against that very idea if we have our kids saying the same pledge to country and God day in and day out? It’s like jingoism training.

But wait, there’s more…

82% say the words “under God” should remain in the Pledge as well. 14% think the phrase should be dropped from the Pledge, and just 4% have no opinion.

Voters are closely divided over whether students should be able to opt out of saying the Pledge of Allegiance every morning. 44% say they should be allowed to do so, but 47% disagree. 9% are not sure.

That’s right…more people think it’s a good idea for non-religious kids to be forced to talk about “God” every single day they’re in school. And let’s remember folks…that word was not in the pledge until it was put there in the 50s.

Just when I think I know my country…

UPDATE:
Well, at least Doug agrees with me.

A lot of good comments so far, but some are definitely out of line. So folks, please, be civil. It doesn’t help any of us when you yell and name call.

Thanks.

To those who made it home, and to those who didn’t: thank you for being there.

So, it really is over.

John McCain has conceded. Barack Obama is currently giving his victory speech. We have some new blue states and, in a few months, we’ll inaugurate a new president.

The night has gone just about like the polls suggested it would. So I guess that data wasn’t so bad after all, although it looks unlikely that Obama will win by more than 5% of the popular vote.

What a night. Let’s hope Obama lives up to the promise.

Danielle, here!

I’m back in Philly, my home away from home, sitting in a swanky hotel lobby, facing a wall, like a crazy person, in order to borrow wireless. And I’ve just published a piece for ANP.

Here’s the scoop…

Today, registered voters in Philly found their names missing from local poll books, which are apparently notorious for being out of date. When those names were checked with the central database, they were verified as registered. Nevertheless, according to election observers in the campaigns and independent of the campaigns, the local election board decided to assign provisional ballots to these voters, which means that their votes probably won’t be counted this evening. If the election is close in Pennsylvania, that’ll make a substantial difference.

This is, yet again, the responsibility of the Philadelphia City Commissioners’ office, led by Marge Tartaglione. Democrats in Philly have a curious way of eating their own..Click here for ANP’s previous coverage of voting in Philly.

Click here for Steven Rosenfeld’s article on Alternet

http://americannewsproject.com/videos/171

As the election neared, I heard more and more outlandish remarks about John McCain and Barack Obama. I was told that voting for Obama put me close to the ideology of the world’s tyrants. I read here in the comments that only the stupid, rich and racist are voting for McCain. I’ve seen, again and again, partisans of both sides concocting apocalyptic scenarios should the “other guy” win.

Guess what? It’s going to be fine no matter the outcome.

In America, the distance between the mainstream left and the mainstream right is not that far. Rhetoric and wedge issues make us seem to be at great odds with one another, but we share a large number of ideals, dreams and principles. Both Obama and McCain have made that point this election, but many of their supporters prefer to believe otherwise. They see this election as a battle for America’s soul.

When I look to the left or the right, I don’t see a “soul.” I don’t find the “true” America or a “correct” America. I see two collections of views, often with similar goals albeit different tactics. Sure, I see some nuttiness. I also see a lot of wisdom. But, to me, America’s soul does not rest in one political ideology or one platform.

America’s soul rests in what we’re doing today. America’s soul is democracy.

Our process is messy and often contentious. We aren’t the most civil of people when it comes to politics. And nobody would accuse us of gracefulness. But we not only have the right to express our beliefs, we can vote for them. Obama. McCain. Bob Barr. Ralph Nader. Cynthia McKinney. I don’t agree with all those figures (some I oppose quite strongly), but I’m proud to live in a nation where such diversity exists freely and peacefully.

Our two-party system can make us feel like a nation divided and can lead otherwise sober people to make outrageous claims about their political opponents. At times, I worry that we will fracture along the lines falsely drawn and promoted by those who care about nothing more than power. But then I remember the two parties are by no means monolithic. If the Republicans can house Ron Paul and the Democrats can shelter Dennis Kucinich, then I have faith that we still have enough diversity and enough advocacy of differing ideas to inoculate us against the single-mindedness of the most ardent ideologues.

Perhaps I am optimistic far beyond what is wise. But I love this country not just for what it can be, but for what it already is. And I believe, whether McCain is president or whether it is Obama, we will not only survive but will thrive. You might prefer to believe the fate of the nation hinges on this election. I think the fact that , after 232 years, we’re still having these elections and that they are freer than ever is proof that our fate is sound and our future will be bright.

We all know these three guys…

But do you know who Horatio Seymour is? Or how about DeWitt Clinton?

Check out ALL of the losers over at Hurty Elbow.