hypocaffeinemia

For years, I’ve opted to take the stairs whenever possible at work. It’s often faster than waiting for the elevator, and it saves electricity as well as prevents an elevator from being tied up by one guy carrying nothing. My old hospital in the Dallas area even encouraged stair use for this very reason- it was an older facility without many elevators.

However, my current facility has another view. The entrances to each floor excepting the first are badge-access controlled in every staircase. That’s a reasonable security measure, except our badges don’t give us access to enter our floor (or any other). This means we can go downstairs perfectly fine (I’m sure they’d put a badge acccess point on the first floor too if it weren’t a fire code violation), but we can’t go upstairs.

The US Department of Health and Human Services recently proposed a new piece of regulation designed to protect healthcare workers from discrimination based on their conscience. It’s absolute bullhockey:

“This proposed regulation is about the legal right of a health care professional to practice according to their conscience,” HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said. “Doctors and other health care providers should not be forced to choose between good professional standing and violating their conscience. Freedom of expression and action should not be surrendered upon the issuance of a health care degree.”

You’re right, Secretary Leavitt. Healthcare workers should not have to choose between violating their conscience and good professional standing. They should choose between violating their conscience and giving up their license to practice! More on this after the jump.

So lately McCain and his cronies have been beating their “Obama is an out of touch elitist” drum loudly, featuring some fairly prominent attack ads against the O.

The irony of this is that McCain recently joked that the line which separates the poor from the rich is five million dollars. He topped off this massive “gaffe” (more like “highlighting his lack of perspective”) by providing this answer when asked by a reporter how many houses he owns:

“I think — I’ll have my staff get to you,”

The guy doesn’t even know how many houses he owns, and yet he’s running ads admonishing Obama for being elitist?