First Liberal lie of the 2011 election campaign: Dalton promises Four More Years Of "Leadership"!

Great story with the headline "Premier promises 4 years of leadership"!!!
What a great example of "truthiness" at work.
Well, for starters, McGuinty is Ontario's Leading Liar - so, to loyal Grits, four more years of McGuinty's Liberal lies is "leadership"! See how easily the deception works!
But for the rest of us, McGuinty is no leader, just a plain friggin' Liberal liar - so, right there, this Liberal weasel has already told his first lie of the 2011 campaign.
Tell us the truth for once, Pinocchio Dalton; be honest: just promise us all 4 more years of lies!!!
Is that so hard to do?!
Tell us that your lying Liberal spots have not changed: you're still Ontario's Premier Liberal Liar, and that, if re-elected, your Lying Liberal Leadership will disastrously continue as it has continued for the last eight deceptive years. Steady as she goes, and all that, captain... (captain of the Liberal Titanic, that is...)
Can ya do that for us, just once, Dalton - tell us the truth, that you will continue to placate us with your relentless lying Liberal lullabies.
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Rising Niagara death-toll: 27 C. difficile victims now killed in Liberal state-controlled healthcare monopoly

The July 25, 2011 St.Catharines Standard reported that the death toll in Niagara's C. difficile outbreak now stands at 27 patients dead.
The St. Catharines Standard did not report whether they contacted their buddy Jim Bradley, the local Liberal health monopolist whose government controls health care in Ontario, for any comment on the latest death - or on any of the previous deaths.
After all: wazz Ole Jimmer gots ta do wid any o dis?
The St. Catharines Standard has studiously avoided any mention of Liberal Jim Bradley in association with the 2011 C. diff deaths in Niagara, or with Bradley's Liberal government's 2008 decision to refuse calling a public inquiry when hundreds of earlier patients died of C. diff infection.
But, then the July 25. 2011 St. Catharines Standard also printed Warren Kinsella's great investigative story "C. difficile kills 27 in Niagara - who's next?", where an intrepid Liberal-lovin', stereo-type shatterin', all-guns-blazin'  Kinsella thoughtfully examines the McGuinty government's culpability in Niagara's C. difficile outbreak.
Warren, in his best Dirty Harry writing voice, growls direct and piercing - very piercing - questions at McGuinty, Bradley, and Kim Craitor:

Next time you hear of another C. difficile-infected  patient being killed in your Liberal anti-patient-choice healthcare monopoly, ask yourself one question: did I let that happen?
Eh, you punks: DID YOU??
Well, you might be asking yerself - was that 24 dead Niagara patients, or 25 dead Niagara patients, that Ole Kantsellit's talkin' 'bout... ah, who cares...
But there are now 27 C. diff victims inexplicably killed in your Liberal health monopoly, in 2011, just in Niagara alone - yet in 2008 your Liberal government was telling Ontarians that there was no need to worry; that all we had to do was wash our hands; that all would be OK; that a public C. diff inquiry wasn't needed because you Liberals said you knew all there was to know about C. diff... so, you punks, how many more patients need to be infected and killed for any of you Liberal clowns to ask yourselves: how did we let this happen?

Gosh - when Kinsella's on a roll, ya kant stop him.
To top it off - gosh golly yowzers gee - the July 25, 2011 Standard ran that fabulous Dewar cartoon showing an annoyed Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, holding a newspaper with the headline "27 Niagara C. difficile patients dead in Niagara; Jim Bradley vanishes" (...which obviously can't be the St.Catharines Standard; it must be some right wing rag..!) and saying  "Stop pestering me! I'm just an innocent health care monopolist... I'm not responsible for any fallout of my despotic Liberal monopolism..."
Oh, and that ever-so-witty Dewar also shows Jim Bradley wearing an ermine robe (to show us how elitist these Liberal reds are), with an oozing hospital bed-pan mounted on his head, and with an unseemly large wad of toilet paper shoved in his ass. What a fantastic piece of Dewar political satire. Dewar gets right to the point, eh... whatever it is.
Oh, yes, and on the same page of the Standard, we were also treated to some more climate change fearmongering by David Suzuki!!
What a bonus!!
C. difficile now approved weapon to fight climate change - how refreshing for Jim Bradley and the Club of Rome depopulationists to know...
Yep: Warren Kinsella and Dwight  Duncan are so  right correct when they whine on about those 'right-wing Sun papers'!!
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Why is the media afraid of Liberal Jim Bradley?!

As of July 24, 2011, now 26 infected patients have died in Niagara's C. difficile outbreak - yet, the local St.Catharines Liberal MPP, the disgusting health-care monopolist Jim Bradley, HASN'T SAID A DAMN WORD about the outbreak.
Why isn't a national media outlet such as CTV demanding interviews and answers from this local Liberal hack? This smug little shit Bradley has represented St.Catharines riding (where most of these deaths occurred) for over thirty years; now, when dozens are dying in Bradley's despotic, secretive Liberal health-monopoly, right in Niagara, right in Bradley's own backyard, Bradley has conveniently disappeared, and no one bothers to call him on it!
It's one thing for the local loyal Liberal media sycophants to be enamoured with their buddy Bradley, and therefore give Bradley a free ride, but where is the national scrutiny, and the national in-depth coverage of this horror happening in Niagara?
Why isn't the national press demanding answers from Liberal MPP Jim Bradley?!
Is the press afraid of Jim Bradley? WTF?!
26 Niagara patients are dead from a C. difficile outbreak (so far in 2011)  - yet, Jim Bradley has not said a damn word about it!! How many more patients have to die before Jim Bradley decides to offer his comments?!
McGuinty's Liberals assured Ontarians in 2008 (...when Smitherman was hiding the Liberals from a possible C. difficile inquiry after HUNDREDS of patients were killed in Ontario's Liberal health monopoly...) that there was nothing to worry about - all we had to do was wash our hands in the hospital, and all would be fine!!
McGuinty deceived Ontarians, telling us that we DID NOT NEED any C. diff investigation in 2008 because his Liberals knew all there was to know about C. diff; yet now we have dozens more C. diff dead in Niagara. So much for McGuinty's Liberal negligent lies.
And why has no one bothered asking McGuinty's Liberals to explain the CIHI revelations from 2007, which found the NHS hospital in St.Catharines (Bradley's own riding) to have the third-highest patient death rate in Canada??
THAT was in 2007 - and NO LIBERAL has YET explained this shocking finding! Was C. difficile an unexplained and quickly-covered-up factor in the NHS's CIHI-reported high patient-death-rate?
Even more shocking: both Jim Bradley and Niagara Falls Liberal MPP Kim Craitor DID NOT BOTHER  to call for any investigation into this shocking CIHI revelation in their own region; these Liberals DID NOTHING to explain why this had happened. (see here)
As if that secrecy wasn't bad enough, McGuinty's jerkoff  health minister George Smitherman then decided TO CUT the NHS's spending, and force the NHS to create a cost-cutting  HIP plan - yet bizarrely, nobody said anything whatsoever about the CIHI-reported high patient-mortality rate!!
The whole thing was glossed over and swept under the rug.
Go ahead: try searching for this yourself - start from Nov. 2007, when the CIHI-report was released, and then make your way forward: try to find ANY mention of the NHS death-rate from any Liberal.
Instead of explaining the reasons for this NHS high death-rate, McGuinty's health monopolists decided to CUT the NHS's spending!!
This Niagara nightmare doesn't seem to be ending, the C. difficile death-list grows, and the Liberal politicians in charge are hiding and spinning like there's no tomorrow.
*

The NHS's HIP was 100% Liberal-made

An interesting, yet quite misguided, lettter appeared in the July 23, 2011  St.Catharines Standard by John G. Bullivant, titled "Creating more problems".
Bullivant wrote (regarding the Niagara Health System's HIP)  "...it is difficult to understand why the NHS board of trustees, whose decisions created the problems in the first place, was then empowered to solve them."
You know what is truly difficult to understand? People who actually think that only the NHS created "the problems". (see another misguided Bullivant letter here)
Is this guy serious?
Time to replay the facts (again):

#1 - the NHS DID NOT originate the HIP.

#2 - George Smitherman was trying to cover up the 2007-CIHI-report which revealed that the NHS had the third-highest patient mortality rate in Canada. (see here; here)

# 3 - Liberal MPP Kim Craitor whined about governance reviews at the time - but did not bother to ask or explain WHY the NHS had this horrible death-rate. (see here)

#4 - Liberal MPP Jim Bradley also said nothing about the NHS's high mortality rate.(see here)

#5 - to this day, no Liberal has yet publicly explained the reasons for the 2007 CIHI revelations about the NHS's high-death rate. (see here)

# 6 - Smitherman, to appease Craitor, suddenly demanded that the NHS cut its spending - yet, no mention was made, by any Liberal, about the NHS's death-rate! Smitherman ordered cost-cutting reviews at the NHS, which led to the LHIN ordering the NHS to create a HIP plan. (see here)

# 7  - obviously, Bullivant doesn't remember this stuff.
In case Bullivant and others like him forgot, the LHIN's were created by Smitherman. The Niagara LHIN was tasked with ordering the NHS to come up with a HIP plan. (see here)

#8 - the NHS DID NOT  just come up with the idea of the HIP all on its own.
The NHS was ordered to create a HIP by the Liberal government which controls it, and pays its bills. What utter disingenuousness to pretend that the NHS did all this, all on their own, in some policy vacuum!! That's what Liberals want us to think!

#9 - Bullivant and others like him should now understand that the McGuinty Liberal government, through their LHIN-smokescreen agents, directed the activities at the NHS.
The HIP at the NHS was 100% Liberal-made. Bullivant should try to grasp that reality.

#10 - the Niagara LHIN, a Liberal-created, completely non-independent proxy of the McGuinty monopolist government, not only ordered the NHS to create the HIP plan, but this same LHIN also approved the HIP plan, after the recommendations of the Kitts Report were taken into consideration.

#11 - for some reason, the Bullivants of Niagara don't remember this.
The Bullivants blame the NHS for creating 'the problems' - yet 'the problems' were created by the Liberals and their LHIN!
The LHIN approved the NHS's HIP plan - the same plan which Smitherman and his Liberals (through their LHIN agents) demanded that the NHS come up with, in the first place!
The NHS complied with what its monopoly-pushing Liberal masters had ordered them to do!
Doesn't Bullivant see this catch-22 circle, orchestrated by McGuinty's Liberal health-care monopolists?!

#12 - McGuinty's Liberals had no problem whatsoever with the HIP which their LHIN imposed upon the NHS!
Have we all forgotten how George Smitherman, then David Caplan, and then Deb Matthews all were quite happy with the HIP, and REFUSED to RECONSIDER it? (...until the last minute, just before an election!!!!)

#13 - so when Bullivant now talks of how 'the people who created the problems are being empowered to solve them', doesn't he see that this is exactly the deception which Jim Bradley and his Liberals set in motion?
Bullivant, though, seems to believe that the NHS is to blame, and so doesn't seem to understand that it was the the Liberal-controlled LHIN which created 'the problems', and which is laughably now in charge of the solutions!! (...busy Liberals, busily um... 'fixing' what other busy Liberals had umm... been busily 'fixing' before...!)
Yes: this is the same LHIN which demanded the HIP in the first place; the same LHIN which then approved the HIP; and this is the same LHIN which ordered the NHS to begin implementing the HIP!!
And now this same LHIN is supposedly going to "solve the problems which the NHS created" ???! Come on!!!!
This was a Liberal-orchestrated fiasco by McGuinty's monopolist Liberals since day one.
This is the travesty of the non-independent, loyal LHIN doing the dirty work of McGuinty's health monopolists, while the locals are led to believe by deceptive doofuses such as Kim Craitor that the NHS is solely responsible for everything that's going on, and that the LHIN's are doing a great job!
The Bullivants and the Craitors and the left-wing media in Niagara are loathe to connect the Mess In The NHS to the LHIN or to Dalton McGuinty's fascist health monopolism.
For the purposes of the Liberal-friendly narrative, the NHS must be blamed, while the LHIN's and the LHIN's Liberal-creators and policy-makers are to be given a free pass.
*

Why does Liberal Jim Bradley get away without any C. difficile scrutiny from the local (or any!) press?

The Barrie Examiner today had an interesting editorial "Duncan should know where the blame lies":

"July is waning and Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan is just now figuring out his Liberal government needs to spruce up its communications strategy.

It's not too little, too late, but it's close.
Duncan says voters in this province don't realize the full extent of the tax breaks they have enjoyed for the nearly eight years Premier Dalton McGuinty and the Grits have ruled Ontario.
Income tax breaks, property tax grants for seniors and full-day kindergarten (daycare savings) are just three of 10 such benefits Duncan outlined for The Canadian Press this week.
The finance minister says this averages $355 per person, but the savings are a little hidden because they are only seen in bits and bites on our pay-cheques.
Instead, Duncan says Ontario voters have noticed the harmonized sales tax, and blamed the right-wing media for not telling the truth. He even compared the media here to Rupert Murdoch's bunch in Great Britain.
But the real truth is if the Liberals aren't adequately getting their message to Ontario voters, they only have themselves to blame.
Since when did any level of government in this country rely on the media to get its message across?
Prime Minister Stephen Harper certainly didn't in the last federal election. He probably wouldn't be PM today had he done so.
Why would Duncan, and by extension McGuinty, believe it's the media's job to spin the news their way? It is the media's job to question any government's agenda, policies and actions -- usually to a greater extent than the opposition parties.
Why? Because governments are in a position to take action on their agendas and policies. They can and do set laws.
The Liberals might also consider that one reason they have received bad press on the HST and high hydro rates is because Ontario residents don't like them.
Even if they are getting some tax breaks, they don't like paying 13% tax (HST) on more items they purchase than before -- even with the HST rebates the Liberals have offered.
What Duncan and the Liberals have done an inadequate job doing is explaining the benefits of the HST, how it will save businesses money and create more employment in the future.
Of course, it doesn't help that Conservative boss Tim Hudak has been politically pounding on the Liberals nearly every day this summer.
Taxes are too high, government spending is too high, there's too much waste in government, the average Ontario family is being screwed over by the Liberals, etc., etc., has been the message. And Hudak keeps banging that drum.
But if it's working -- and it appears to be, if the latest polls are accurate -- then that's the Liberals' fault too.
It's always tougher being the government than in opposition. Governments have to defend what they have done, and are doing -- while the opposition can just criticize and complain.
Hudak needs to do a little more than this now, with a provincial election looming on Oct. 6. But the Liberals have, to this point, done a poor job countering what the Tory leader has been saying, and promising.
Again, that's not the media's fault.
Perhaps McGuinty, Duncan and company are awaiting summer's end, when the real election campaign begins, and the finance minister was just letting off a little steam this week.
Surely he knows, however, where the real blame should fall."
*
Ole Dunkin' probably yearns for the kind of fawning, deviously helpful, Liberal-friendly, Liberal-ass-kissing media which Liberal MPP's Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor enjoy in Niagara.
Jim Bradley's Liberalism has been on a permanent spin cycle in Niagara for thirty friggin' (as Liberal Joyce Morocco would say) years!!
Jim's political Liberal laundry is well-washed by his Liberal media acolytes - and Good Ole Jimmy always comes out clean!
If - as this editorial states - it is "the media's job to question any government's agenda, policies and actions -- usually to a greater extent than the opposition parties" - then this HAS NOT BEEN THE CASE IN NIAGARA!!
In Niagara, Jim Bradley is simply NOT MENTIONED in stories which may be possibly-Liberal-negative in nature.
Jim is mysteriously overlooked when it comes to media questions and criticism!
Jim Bradley can do no wrong in Niagara - even under the disgusting lying Liberal McGuinty's despotic majority rule!
Bradley's Liberal media buddies do their best to keep it that way.
And don't even ask about how easy of a ride Jim Bradley had when he was in opposition!
Since May, 2011, 26 patients have died in Niagara's C. difficile outbreak, in Bradley's own Liberal-monopoly-controlled hospitals, in Bradley's own backyard: dare you to find one comment about this horror from Liberal Jim Bradley!
It's as if Good Ole Jimmy's got nuttin' ta do wid it - wid any of it.
*

Is "the system", or is Dalton McGuinty, to blame for a Niagara C.difficile-infected patient's death?

Allan Benner wrote in "The system let him down" (St.Catharines Standard, Jul.21, 2011):

"FORT ERIE — In early March, Gary Ball was enjoying the last skiing trip of the winter.

Three and a half months later, he was dead.
Dozens of sympathy cards line a table in his Ott Rd. home in Stevensville. It was his dream home, where he hoped to spend more years living with Denise Ball, his wife of three years.
Now, an urn beside the fireplace holds his cremated remains awaiting burial. Along with a newspaper clipping of his obituary, Denise placed a few mementos beside the urn — items representing the things Gary loved in life, such as a small metal sculpture of a downhill skier and a softball he used while playing slo-pitch.
The 63-year-old retired teacher was always active and healthy, with the exception of mild asthma. He spent his winters downhill skiing and his summers playing baseball and taking care of his two hectares of wooded property.
That changed April 7, while he was out for his daily walk. Suffering extreme pain, he was rushed to Greater Niagara General Hospital and diagnosed with pancreatitis.
Denise said Gary believed he'd get the help he needed at the hospital, that he'd get better — not sicker.
"He believed in the system," Denise said.
"The system let him down."
When she visited Gary four or five days after he was admitted, she learned he'd been diagnosed with Clostridium difficile as well as pneumonia — both conditions were acquired while a patient at the hospital, she said.
"At that time, we didn't know what C. diff was. They weren't treating it like it was a big deal. But I went to his room one day and there was a tag on his door."
That was long before the first outbreak was declared May 28 in St. Catharines. Outbreaks in Welland and Niagara Falls were declared simultaneously June 23 — and it was long before hospital staff stepped up cleaning protocols to combat the outbreaks.
Besides being concerned about cleaning efforts at the time, Denise was also concerned about her husband's hygiene while in Niagara Falls.
"The man was there nearly a month. He was asked the very last day, would he like a shower or a bath," she recalled.
Gary was released from the Niagara Falls hospital April 25.
"He didn't look any better, but I was glad that he came home because I thought, well, I can take care of him," she said.
At home, his condition deteriorated until he was admitted to Welland hospital May 8, where he stayed until May 25.
In Welland, she said Gary felt more at ease than he had in Niagara Falls. She said one nurse took the time to sit with Gary, holding his hand and telling him he'd be OK.
But it was there that physicians found a 22-cm-long pseudocyst had formed on his pancreas.
"If it burst, all the arteries and the heart are behind it," Denise said, recalling a doctor telling her: "This is dangerous."
She said the doctor transferred Gary to the intensive care unit for 24/7 care.
Doctors knew that cyst needed to be drained, but due to Gary's weakened condition as a result of the C. difficile they didn't dare conduct the surgery, Denise said.
"The doctor told him, 'We can't even cut you open because you won't make it,'" she recalled.
"It was like hitting a wall."
The plan was to treat the C. difficile, and get him strong enough for an operation. But his condition got worse.
The couple were concerned about spreading the illness to others so they asked their friends not to visit. Instead, Denise used her iPod to videotape her husband and sent those videos to friends over the Internet to update them on his condition.
In the videos, she said Gary's slow and steady transformation is apparent — from a relatively healthy man weighing 170 pounds to a frail and weak 140-pound man.
"It worried him. He'd look in the mirror. He's not a big guy, but he lost 30 pounds," she said.
During his care, she said he developed additional conditions, including a swollen leg due to a blood clot, a hernia caused by coughing and diabetes from low hemoglobin levels.
Although Niagara Health System officials cannot discuss individual cases due to confidentiality policies, chief of staff Dr. Joanna Hope spoke generally about the ravages the disease can inflict.
"It can be extremely devastating, no doubt about it," she said during a media briefing about the outbreaks Wednesday.
"That's why every case is reviewed, so we can help families develop learning and as always in medicine, be better at dealing with the trials and tribulations of populations and human beings at large."
After Gary's release from Welland hospital, he had a few more attacks of pancreatitis June 11 and 16, Denise said. Each time, he was treated at the hospital and sent home.
June 26 was different. He was lying in bed about 11 p.m., and sat up suddenly describing a "whoosh" feeling. He staggered toward the bathroom and collapsed. Denise called 911, and the same paramedics who took him to the hospital April 7 arrived.
He was pronounced dead June 27 at GNGH, but Denise knows he actually died at home before midnight.
She watched the cardiogram as paramedics worked to save his life and saw the flatline on the monitor.
Although the official cause of death was pulmonary embolism, Denise said she's confident Gary would still be with her if the C. difficile hadn't prevented physicians from treating the underlying illness.
C. difficile has usually been associated with the elderly and frail, but her husband was anything but — healthy and active, with a love of gardening and the outdoors.
"Here was a healthy man, and it took him," she said. "C. difficile did not kill Gary, but having C. difficile caused all those other problems so he could never get to being healthy."
"Our hearts go out to that individual," said Sue Matthews, NHS interim executive director.
"This is a very, very difficult time for this patient's family," Hope added.
Although most people who have died with C. difficile during the outbreak have been older, Hope said that isn't always the case.
"C. difficile affects those people who don't have enough immunity to fight the problems they are facing, either acutely or on a chronic basis."
------------------
While older people have more difficulty fighting off the infection, NHS chief of staff Dr. Joanna Hope said the likelihood of catching C. difficile depends on the impact any underlying condition has on the patient regardless of their age.
"An epidemiologist is with us looking at our data," she said.
Preliminary information provided by the epidemiologist shows the average age of women who died with C. difficile is 80 years old, plus or minus 10 years, while the average age of men who died with C. difficile is 76, plus or minus 10 years. That information, however, "is first cut and may change," she added.
"If you have a younger person, say a 36-year-old with a cancer of the lymph nodes, they are very immune-compromised with a very aggressive chemotherapy and can easily develop infections."
Since the outbreaks began, 25 people have died.
In its official tally, the NHS states 24 patients have died because it does not include a community-acquired case."
*
I would say that the Liberal government of Ontario let this patient down: they control Ontario's anti-patient-choice monopolist system.
It's McGuinty and all of his sitting Liberal single-payer-health-care-monopoly-pushing MPP's who let not just this patient - but many, many others - down, with their bait-and-switch Liberal healthcare duplicity.
It's McGuinty and his Liberal health-monopolists who arbitrarily decide what health-care rations Tommy Douglas will toss our way.
*
Thankfully, no comments from any of  Niagara's Liberal monopolist MPP's were included in this story - since, of course, Liberals have nothing to do with any of the unpleasant fallout from their political negligence... especially with an election coming their way this October!
*
So remember folks, once again: Vote for Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor, and vote often - Jimmy'n'Kimmy will save health care from  McGuinty themselves harris. yah...
*

Niagara Falls, Ontario, officials should issue a public warning to tourists about Niagara's dangerous health-care monopoly

Further to this earlier disgusting episode in Kim Craitor's Liberal-controlled single-payer health-monopoly's franchise in Niagara Falls, Ont., comes another, similarly shocking story at the same Niagara Falls, Ontario, hospital, as Brett Clarkson reported in "NHS apology after mom, 39, dies" (St.Catharines Standard, Jul.22, 2011):

"The family of a Ridgeway woman who died at Greater Niagara General Hospital after no one helped her while she sat dying in her boyfriend's car in the parking lot are outraged and hope nobody else has to go through what they did.

Jennifer James, a 39-year-old mother of two who "loved life," died at GNGH in Niagara Falls April 26, a few days after she was carried into the hospital — not breathing — by her boyfriend Charlie Poisson, his 11-year-old son, and a still-unknown woman who stepped up to help when hospital staff wouldn't.
"They said, 'Sorry, you gotta call 911,'" said Jarrett James, 37, Jennifer's brother. "Nobody would come out and help."
"They should've helped, they should've tried, they should've been out there," Eunice James, Jennifer's mother, said Thursday. "Regardless of what the outcome would've been. And it may have been the same. They needed to be out there."
Eunice James was scathing in her criticism of the GNGH emergency department, particularly one doctor whose name she did not know but whom she described as "arrogant."
But she credited the intensive care unit staff with being caring and helpful after Jennifer was moved there later the same night.
"As far as the ICU unit, the two nurses that we had there were absolutely wonderful," Eunice said. "As far as going in there to the ER or anything like that, I think it's just an awful place."
According to the family, Jennifer was in Poisson's car April 21 near the Niagara Falls car dealership where he worked. Reaching her hands up to her face, she began to yell and started having what appeared to be a seizure. They said Jennifer lost consciousness and stopped breathing, so Poisson sped to the hospital.
When he got there, the family said, he ran inside the main front door and was told to go the emergency department. But when he got there, no one was willing to help. So Poisson went back outside and started performing CPR.
After three or four minutes, his son Carson went into the hospital to get help, but couldn't find anybody who would come out.
An unknown woman who did not work at the hospital came outside and told them medical staff would not be coming out of the emergency department.
At this point, they grabbed Jennifer, put her in a wheelchair and pushed her into the hospital, at which point medical staff worked on her.
Although Jennifer was revived, the family was told by a nurse she had gone without adequate oxygen for about 45 minutes. The impact would likely be catastrophic on the brain.
About five days later, the family allowed Jennifer to be taken off life-support because she had only lower brain stem function. She died after about 24 hours, on April 26.
"They said that maybe someday, by a minor miracle, she might be able to blink her eyes," Jarrett said, explaining Jennifer's condition at the time.
"Jen was my best friend, so I am still reeling from this," Eunice said, sobbing.
"It's tough," said Jarrett. "We were very close. I talked to her every day. I miss the phone calls, I miss the banter, the joking around."
Eunice said doctors found Jennifer had an enlarged heart before she went in for minor surgery on neck vertebrae in 2010. Despite that, her neck surgery was a success.
The James' family wanted to make public their GNGH experience after reading media stories about the experience of Niagara Falls Coun. Joyce Morocco, who arrived at the hospital Sunday in a car driven by her husband, John.
While Morocco lay barely conscious and struggling to breathe in the car, her husband ran into the hospital to get help. He was told to call an ambulance. An ambulance was dispatched from the GNGH garage, several metres away.
The James' experience caused Niagara Health System interim CEO Sue Matthews to apologize to the family during the NHS' daily C. difficile press briefing at GNGH Thursday.
"I think what's most important is that this family's grieving, and it's very difficult and I feel for them as a nurse, as a human being … So I can apologize to them, how horrible their experience must be."
Matthews also said staff was told in December they are covered for liability or injury in hospital parking lots — despite the years-long belief among health workers that it's not safe to care for patients in parking lots."
*
Enough of all these trite, useless apologies: IT'S TIME FOR CRIMINAL LEGAL ACTION against the negligent monopolist policies of  Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government.
Someone will have to Cellino-and-Barnes McGuinty's irresponsible  monopoly-enforcing, anti-patient-choice Liberal government.
This Liberal crap has been going on for too long.
Patients are dying and no-one's responsible for anything.
Where was the Liberal-created LHIN (which oversees the NHS) in all this?
Doesn't the LHIN, along with the Liberal government which completely controls the LHIN,  have anything to do with this?
[Why isn't the LHIN giving public daily briefings on the C. diff outbreak, in the way the NHS has - finally - begun doing?
Why isn't MPP Jim Bradley - the loudmouth local Liberal healthcare monopolist - giving daily public briefings on what he has personally done during this outbreak? Jimmy could also answer questions on how his own single-payer health-monopolism, along with his years of despotic, smug secrecy,  somehow do not make him culpable in the C. diff deaths in his own city.]
Funny how neither of Niagara's Liberal MPP's - Kim Craitor or Jim Bradley - are mentioned in this report.
(...I mean, gawrsh: what do these Liberals have to do with any of this?!)
The media's joyous narrative is about how Kim Craitor, the 'hero-maverick', is... umm... gonna save healthcare in Niagara!!
Forget about the fact that for the last eight years, Craitor and his single-payer-pushing Liberal  monopolists have been secretively and steadily eroding health-care in Niagara! (yes: remember - Craitor is first and foremost a proud McGuinty-supporting Liberal. Craitor at every opportunity pretends that Niagara's Liberal-controlled monopolist health care disaster is somehow NOT political - yet then Craitor sanctimoniously and ominously blames  harris  whenever he can! Craitor, the devious Grit hypocrite (Grit-o-crite) sloughs off his own monstrous lying Liberal monopolism!!
Patients left fending for themselves in Niagara's hospital parking lots: that's CraitorCare TM  for you.
Jim Diodati, the Liberal mayor of Niagara Falls Ont. should be warning EVERY TOURIST that his local Liberal-controlled health-care monopoly has been severely compromised, and that visitors could be taking chances with their lives if they got sick and expected swift care locally in Ontario; it'd be better if they went to the States with an emergency. (see also here)
Even the Niagara Regional government (led by Gary Burroughs - another Liberal, by the way...) has just blamed Niagara's C. difficile outbreak as a reason why thousands of forest-fire refugees from northern Ontario should not come to Niagara, the fear being that Niagara's Liberal-controlled health-care monopoly cannot handle them! As of July 22, 2011, 26 C. difficile infected patients have now died in Niagara's outbreak.
This is the legacy of Liberal George Smitherman folks - and for Liberals Kim Craitor, Jim Bradley, and a lot of Niagara's sanctimonious Liberal municipal politicians - this was and is the epitome of Dalton McGuinty's vision of Tommy Douglas' pipedream socialism. This monopolist-dream failure here - right in Niagara - is exactly what eight years of untouchable Liberal-majority government fascist health-care looks like.
Yet the Kim Craitors and Jim Diodatis think that someone else did all this, and if we only had some busy Liberals fixin' things, if we only had some more despotic socialism... why, then... everything would be all right again... just, ummm, as it was under McGuinty's benevolent, non-despotic rule!!! (say whaaaaat?!?  you figure it out...)
No-one's responsible, for anything... oh, yeah, so some patients die here and there, but, so what??!
It isn't any Liberal's fault! (Why, just by reading the St.Catharines Standard and Niagara This Week you'll know that!!)
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So, once again folks - don't tell Michael Moore about any of this - vote for your local Liberal health monopolist, and vote often!! Liberals: they'll fix health-care!! Trust them!!! Why would a Liberal lie?!
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Hot, eh... remember winter?!

(click on photos to enlarge)

above: the blue ice on Goat Island

above: looking at the Bridal Veil and American Falls

Yep: this was only five months ago!! Cools you down just looking at these icy photos!

above: Feb. 2011 - that giant frozen salamander head was back again... with one eye poked out...

While we're sweltering in Niagara's hot July weather, let's remember how it was just five months ago, when the Falls were a frozen wonderland.
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Why were C. diff deaths kept secret?

Brett Clarkson reported in "One death during 2008 C.diff outbreak, NHS says":

"The Niagara Health System has revealed that a patient died after acquiring C. difficile during the last outbreak at Greater Niagara General Hospital in 2008.

"We have confirmed with (Niagara Region) Public Health that there was one death associated with the 2008 outbreak of C. difficile at the GNGH site," said NHS interim CEO Sue Matthews.
Speaking at the NHS' daily C. difficile media briefing at GNGH in the Falls, Matthews said that at that time and even now, hospitals are not required by the Ministry of Health to report C. difficile deaths and because of that non-obligation to report, the hospital did not make the death public at the time.
That previous outbreak in the Portage Rd. hospital's Unit C ward lasted from Dec. 5, 2008 until March 5, 2009, with The Niagara Falls Review reporting at the time that there had been six confirmed cases and one suspected case of C. difficile in the unit. At the time, no mention was made of the death.
It was a reporter's question during a NHS media briefing on the current C. difficile outbreaks that sparked the recent revelation, said Matthews.
Underscoring the NHS' recent pledge to be more transparent with the public, Matthews said the NHS has changed its ways since the 2008-2009 outbreak in the Falls and that now, that death would've been disclosed.
"Hospitals were not reporting deaths at the time of this outbreak and in our new culture, this death would've been reported in a timely fashion," Matthews said.
Because of patient confidentiality legislation, the NHS has not and will not be releasing the patient's name, but on Wednesday Matthews said it was still unclear as to the exact date of the death or even how old the patient was. Officials were still trying to find out more information by checking records, Matthews said.
Manwhile, the current outbreaks have so far been linked to the deaths of 13 patients at the St. Catharines General Hospital, four patients at GNGH, and six patients at the NHS' Welland hospital, according to NHS figures.
Although the total number of deaths reported by the NHS is 24, media have been reporting 25 deaths.
This is because a C. difficile-linked death that happened at the same time of the St. Catharines outbreak is not counted by the NHS because it is not considered to be an outbreak-related case.
As of Wednesday there was still a total of 75 cases confirmed since the first C. difficile outbreak in St. Catharines was declared on May 28.
There were 21 patients confirmed to have C. difficile at the St. Catharines General, which was up two from Tuesday. At GNGH, there were 14 patients in the hospital, down one from the day before. As well, Welland's total number of in-patients with C. difficile rose by one to eight in total.
In the smaller local hospitals, there was still one non-outbreak related death associated with the Niagara-on-the-Lake hospital, where there was still one patient in hospital with C. difficile. As well, there was three cases at Fort Erie's Douglas Memorial Hospital and three cases at the Port Colborne hospital.
Clostridium difficile, a bacteria found in the intestines, can cause severe diarrhea and potentially life-threatening intestinal ailments such as inflammation of the large intestine, extreme inflammation and distention of the colon.
Matthews also said that she anticipates that the NHS will face criticism when NHS documents pertaining to a Hamilton media outlet's freedom-of-information (FOI) request are released in the coming days.
Despite previous attempts to try to block the release of information, Matthews said the NHS will fulfill the FOI request after removing any references that might breach provincial confidentiality legislation.
According to an April 12, 2011 ruling from an adjudicator with the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, the media outlet had asked for "all documents, reports, correspondence, e-mails, briefing notes and minutes pertaining to Clostridium difficile in the Niagara Health System since 2007."
Asked if the info will essentially make the NHS look bad, Matthews said she expects that it might.
"I expect that there will be some questions about our infection-control practices in the past and I think what we need to do is focus on going forward," Matthews said. "We will learn from the past. I believe we have.""
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'Looking bad'?! Are you kidding? This is more than that - this skulduggery should be for a criminal court to judge.
This whole thing about not reporting C. difficile deaths goes back to my July 4, 2008 post here, where the Hamilton Spectator reported that "Dr. Michael Baker, the Ontario patient safety adviser in charge of designing the reporting system, says there will be a standard definition for what constitutes an outbreak. But there is no intention to require hospitals to report deaths."
This effort not to focus on the C. difficile patient deaths has been standard procedure under the Liberals.
We are still being told by the NHS that, on the one hand, "hospitals are not required by the Ministry of Health to report C.difficile deaths", but then, we're also being told that the NHS has a sudden 'new culture', and now C.diff deaths would be reported; so, which is the official policy here?
Is the Health Ministry's original stance (ie - hospitals are not "required" to report C. diff deaths) still in effect (as Sue Matthews says) elsewhere in Ontario, or has this been over-ridden as specific local policy, ie, that hospitals always had the ability to report these deaths, but they didn't, because the Liberals told them they didn't have to.
In other words, being "not required to report" didn't mean that a hospital couldn't report! So the question then is: if  hospitals, province-wide, didn't have to report - but could, nevertheless, report their C. diff deaths - why didn't more hospitals opt to report?? Why the allowed secrecy; why did Smitherman and Caplan allow this lax default-"not required to report"-position, instead of making it law that these outbreak deaths (any outbreak) must be reported??
And this patient-death information is what the Hamilton Spectator was trying to pry out of the Liberal's secretive health monopoly province-wide in 2008.
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Maybe Good Ole Secretive MPP Jim Bradley can explain his Liberal government's position ... except that no media outlet in Niagara dares to ask Jimmy about this...
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Liberal Joyce Morocco discovers her local friggin' Liberal health-care system

Intriguing article in the July 20, 2011 St. Catharines Standard about a patient who collapsed in her car in front of the Niagara Falls Ont. hospital's Emergency Department, while her husband rushed into the hospital to find help; he was told TO CALL 911 (from the hospital!) while no-one assisted as his wife was gasping for air in their vehicle outside the ER!!
The woman in question was later quoted saying "No wonder our friggin' health care system is such a friggin' mess".
Turns out that this suddenly-enlightened soul, who was wondering about the friggin' mess of her friggin' health care system, was Joyce Morocco, ironically, also a  Niagara Falls Liberal, who ran federally in the 2008 election.(...strangely... hardeeharhar ...the St.Catharines Standard, Niagara This week, and other so-called independent local bloggerists didn't bother mentioning that this was a Liberal who was left in the parking lot by McGuinty's Liberal health-monopoly; apparently, this wasn't relevant, huh??!)
Honestly, Joyce... and Jim Diodati.... and Kim Craitor... seriously: these Liberals (they are Liberals, make no mistake) really still DON'T KNOW what's wrong with their own despotic Liberal monopolist health-care idiocy?
Good Lord.
Whose system is a "friggin' mess", Joyce: IT'S YOUR FRIGGIN' LIBERAL DREAM MONOPOLIST SYSTEM which is a friggin' mess, isn't it?! This is the system of Iggy and Dion and McGuinty!!
Don't you friggin' Grits friggin' get it??
You still don't understand your own Liberal healthcare duplicity???
What exactly is this "friggin' mess" which Morocco just found out about?
What: is this suddenly news to her, what her secretive Liberal colleagues have done to healthcare in Ontario? Come on.
She had to unfortunately find out the hard way what much of the rest of (non-Liberal) Ontario already damn well knows. Guess the boogeyman blame on harris and nicholson will soon follow; after all -what's Dalton McGuinty got to do with any of this, eh??!!
Where were Liberals Morocco and Diodati when Craitor's McGuintyite Liberals were hiding from a public C. difficile inquiry in 2008; and now the same Liberal secrecy hangs in the air with two dozen C. diff dead in Niagara?
Has Morocco called her friggin' useless Liberal MPP yet?
Has Morocco called that secretive Liberal Jim Bradley yet?
Has Morocco called her Liberal premier yet?
And, what will this Liberal friggin' tell them - as if they give a friggin' frig about her!
They'll tell her what they've told the rest of us: Frig off: we're building the Glorious Future of Tommy Douglas; a couple of wayside anomalies here and there are part of the game.
So vote Liberal, folks, and vote often.
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Why weren't McGuinty's Liberals charged for their 2008 Ontario C. difficile cover-up?

Brett Clarkson reported in  "C.difficile deaths up to 24; NHS pledges 'new corporate culture'" (Niagara Falls Review, Jul.19, 2011): 

"As another patient who had acquired C. difficile died Monday at the St. Catharines General Hospital, local health officials announced that a new infection control manager has been brought in from Hamilton to help the Niagara Health System manage the ongoing outbreaks.

Andrea Iacurti, a registered nurse with a certification in infection control based at St. Joseph's Healthcare in Hamilton, started with the NHS on a secondment Monday and will be reviewing NHS practices, cleaning schedules, and sharing strategies until the NHS hires a full-time infection control manager.
"Andrea started today and will report to Kim Stephens-Woods, our vice-president of patient services," said Dr. Sue Matthews, interim president and CEO of the NHS.
The death of the patient in St. Catharines early Monday raises the total number of deaths associated with the outbreak reported by the NHS to 24 since the first outbreak was declared on May 28.
"This patient had multiple health issues and passed away this morning," Matthews said.
The total number of cases reported by the NHS for the three outbreaks in St. Catharines, Welland and Niagara Falls was at 75 on Monday.
So far there has been 13 deaths at the St. Catharines General, six at Welland County General Hospital, and four at Greater Niagara General Hospital in Niagara Falls.
As well, Matthews drew a line in the sand between the NHS' "new corporate culture" and the health system's previous efforts to stonewall a Hamilton media outlet's freedom-of-information request about the 2008 C. difficile outbreak at GNGH.
The request for information sought info about how the 2008 outbreak was dealt with. Twice, the release of that information was blocked by the NHS.
"This approach is inconsistent with our new corporate culture and I have directed those involved to allow the disclosure to proceed," Matthews said. "As I've said previously, I'm committed to adhering to the highest standard of transparency."
Matthews said that the information, which could possibly be released in a matter of days, will likely shine a negative light on the NHS and its infection-control practices three years ago — practices she said have been improved greatly since then.
"I do expect that the content of the FOI request will include statements of concern about our infection control practices in the past," Matthews said. "Though I find this concerning, in the time since the emails and these information were authored, we have made tremendous strides towards the best possible practices."
The NHS' ongoing public relations campaign, which now includes daily media briefings, comes amid criticism from the public and elected officials who accuse the NHS of being less than forthcoming with public disclosure. That criticism evolved to anger and eventually lead to a protest in Niagara Falls on July 6 after word emerged that the four C. difficile-related deaths at GNGH happened between May 12 and June 16 but weren't divulged until an outbreak was declared on June 23.
On Friday the site head of GNGH, Frank Demizio, announced his intention to retire at the end of August, a move that Matthews said had nothing to do with the current controversy enveloping the hospital, which is also battling outbreaks of VRE and MRSA.
As well, former communications chief Christine Clark departed the NHS in early July.
Matthews credited St. Joseph's in Hamilton for helping the NHS manage the outbreak and said Brady Wood, a St. Joseph's public relations director, has also been working with the NHS. So has Dr. Christina Lee, an infection control physician also based at St. Joseph's, Matthews said.
Asked about the safety of the hospitals, Matthews said she understands the public's fear but said that anybody who needs to go to an emergency room or hospital should still go.
As well, Dr. Joanna Hope, NHS interim chief of staff, said the symptoms of C. difficile include diarrhea as well as generalized symptoms including fever, chills, feeling ill, and cramps. However, there can also be serious complications including bloody diarrhea, acute renal failure, also known as kidney failure, and toxic megacolon, a form of colonic distension, which can sometimes require surgery".
*

Only now - after two dozen dead in Niagara - they're bringing in an infection control manager - and temporarily, at that? Sounds like way too little, way too late, doesn't it?

Why didn't Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor's Liberals fund such a position full-time, since the last Ontario C. diff outbreak?

Didn't Kimmy'n'Jimmy think Niagara's patients deserved full time infection control?! Funny about that, isn't it: Kim'n'Jim's Liberals didn't call a public inquiry into that last killer C. diff outbreak of theirs in 2008, so, Ontarians weren't told whether such a position would be necessary in Niagara's hospitals. Liberals made sure Ontarians weren't told about all the problems ...

So, let's see - what do the Liberals who dictate how Ontario's health-monopoly-prison is run, think??

Hm, funny: there's nothing from Niagara's secretive, health-monopoly pushing scumbag MPP Jim Bradley on what happened during that period in 2008, with all those HUNDREDS of C. diff deaths in Ontario, when Jim Bradley, Kim Craitor, and George Smitherman shut down and refused to call an inquiry into that monopolist-murder. McGuinty's negligent Liberals told us all to wash our hands, and that all was fine; McGuinty's Liberals told us that they knew all there was to know about C. difficile, so therefore, no public inquiry was needed.

As we now see, McGuinty's lying Liberals perpetrated a deathly health-care fraud onto Ontario's patients. We don't know how many lives might have been saved in Niagara in 2011, had we been properly informed through an independent inquiry, as to the correct infection control procedures and protocol in 2008; we were simply browbeaten and bullshitted by McGuinty and Smitherman's Liberals to 'trust them' that 'all was gonna be OK'. McGuinty's Gritty corporate-political-fascist culture is one of  Liberal healthcare duplicity.

Funny how NOW, these two outbreaks are being linked: read the red portion of the story above: an ombudsman's or other independent inquiry in 2008 (which McGuinty's Liberals refused to allow) would have certainly uncovered the reasons behind the McGuinty-Smitherman-Craitor-Bradley Liberal government's C. difficile cover-up. We see that in 2008 McGuinty's Liberal scumbags tried - successfully - to keep the NHS's information hidden, in the same way they tried to keep their entire province-wide C. diff disaster covered-up.

Since the NHS does not make policy, is not independent, and does not raise its own funding, and is entirely a creature of the Ontario government (as is  the NHS's overseer, the Liberal-created LHIN) we therefore require a criminal investigation into what specific directions McGuinty and his Liberal ministers gave the NHS, since 2003, and what the repercussions were, in terms of preventable C. difficile patient deaths. The NHS's 'transparency' or lack thereof was directly related to what it was told to do by the Liberal government which controlled and funded them!! Where, for example, is the subpoena for ALL of George Smitherman's five-year's-worth of correspondence with the NHS, including all of his ministerial discussions and directives??

Two dozen dead C. diff  patients in Niagara (so far...) and Jim The Pathetic Liberal Scumbag Monopolist Bradley hides from view. Why isn't secretive Jimmy calling for more transparency?!!!

This FLICKING Liberal gang of single-payer health-care monopolists should be in jail. Corrections Minister Jim Bradley could wear a GPS on his ankle when he's let out on parole in twenty years.
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Liberal Jim Bradley's "Voldemort" to Kim Craitor's "Gollum"

Here's a good description by Matt Gurney, which can be used to describe Niagara Falls' Liberal peckerhead MPP Kim Craitor's infatuation with Mike Harris.

Craitor, Jim Bradley, McGuinty, and the rest of Ontario's Liberal scum need this manufactured political prop of a "harris" - a generic evil doer - to become their rhetorical political tool, a strawman- distraction, allowing McGuinty's Liberal liars to divert attention from their record of incompetence, lies and deception. (as seen practised here by another disgusting Liberal, Kathleen Wynne)

"Gosh, folks - look at "harris"",  a Liberal would say - thereby quelling any further examination of whatever the Liberals have done!! All a Liberal's gotta do is point to "harris" (aka boogeyman) - and they no longer have to explain their own record!!! Frickin' magic!

This clown Craitor has never been seriously asked by the local - or national - press about HIS "solutions" to the inherent problems of his own Liberal health-monopolism, and how it would manifest in Niagara, "if things were different" (ie if  "harris" - oooppssiee... I meant McGuinty (!) - weren't in power!!! Which he - McGuinty - of course, is!! Think about it! Obviously, Craitor hasn't.)

Hahahah - these reports and interviews just don't happen!! Yes, what would Kim Craitor's ideal Liberal health monopolist system be, if only "harris" - dammit, did it again  - McGuinty, weren't in power??

Who can take a moron - such as Kim Craitor, who says Canada has twelve provinces - seriously, let alone understand how Craitor would re-organize and pay for not only Niagara's, but all of Ontario's, health-care as well. (...and which way does the Niagara River flow, Kim???!? Has the leftist media asked ya that, yet? At least Stockwell Day knew how many provinces were in our country!)

Craitor got all kinds of media attention parading with his yellow shirt buddies in front of Bradley's office, or in front of the Niagara Falls hospital, yet, not one media outlet bothered to actually examine what Craitor said!

It was enough just that Craitor was there, spouting sanctimonious horseshit about "harris"... and viola: he's some kinda heroic, maverick 'rebel', standin' up to da man... WTF?!

Forget about Craitor's lefty pipedreams and his inability to understand that his own Liberal party (which he proudly ran for twice, and will proudly run for again... some rebel...) and his own Liberal healthcare monopolism, directly led to what his own Liberals did!! (Kimmy should ask Dougy Herod, Bradley's buddy at the Standard, about that!)

'Twasn't "harris", Kimmy: 'twas you.
*
Isn't Jim Bradley Voldemort to Kim Craitor's Gollum? Discuss, class.
And what would that make Master McGuinty -  Ontario's Mordor's monopolist mass-murderer?
*

Now 24 patients are dead in Niagara's C.difficile outbreak; yet local Liberal health-care monopolist Jim Bradley vanishes

As of July.17, 2011  24 patients have now died in the Niagara C. difficile outbreak.

Local Liberal health-care-monopoly pushing despot MPP Jim Bradley has vanished, hiding and avoiding any comments on this issue - the same way he hid from his last killer C. diff outbreak in 2008, which killed hundreds of Ontarians, and which McGuinty's Liberal scumbags refused to investigate.

Meanwhile, Bradley's Liberal doofus buddy MPP Kim Craitor does his disingenuous best to pretend that... somehow... ummm... Harris killed these patients, and not Dalton McGuinty! ha ha ha... Kimmy's a laugh-riot...

That's how these secretive Liberal scumbags roll: hide from scrutiny, with a lot of help from their leftist media and municipal  buddies, and then pretend that their own failing monopolism, their own ideological single-payer, no-patient-choice health-fascism, has nothing at all to do with any of this.

The dead patients pile up in Niagara's Liberal under-funded health-monopoly, while Liberal secretive health-care-cutting scumbags continue to hide from scrutiny and from their own guilt.
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McGuinty's monopolist Liberals proud of their killer C. difficile outbreaks

Here's Jonathan Sher and Adela Talbot's Jul.15, 2011 London Free Press report Health minister defends Ontario's C. difficile fight:

"The provincial government is proud of actions it has taken to protect patients against infection, Health Minister Deb Matthews insisted Friday.
Matthews, MPP for London-North-Centre, said the Excellent Care For All legislation, passed last year with unanimous support, requires hospitals to develop continuous improvement plans and to publicly report on hospital safety and patient satisfaction.
"Ontario hospitals are working very hard to reduce infection rates . . . to protect the safety of patients," she said.
"We're proud of what we've done and we want to keep working (toward) progress."
Most hospitals, including London's, use a slow, dated and inaccurate method of detection, scientists say.
More modern tests take hours or less rather than days and are much more accurate, Public Health Ontario acknowledges.
That may be true, but it's ultimately up to the hospitals themselves to choose what technology they want to use, Matthews said.
"Many hospitals have made the decision to switch over . . . and we want to support our hospitals," she said.
"I'm proud of the investments and the progress we have seen when it comes to getting infection rates down. This isn't about politics, it's about patient safety."
Only a few hospitals have moved to the newer test and all after outbreaks of C. difficile -- those in Hamilton and Niagara, while London will make the transition soon.
The new tests cost more, between two and four times as much as the older tests, and that has proven an obstacle to hospitals that get no added money from the Health Ministry for making the switch.
The newer tests detect the DNA of the superbug while older tests only look for toxins it may produce and missing many superbugs in the process, microbiologists say.
And in the long run, the new test might save money by catching cases sooner, starting treatment earlier and reducing the spread of C. difficile, microbiologists say, Ontario's acting chief medical officer of health, Dr. David Williams, has defended the province's response to C. difficile outbreaks, saying he had "full confidence in the province's health-care system to effectively and efficiently manage any hospital acquired infections."
--- --- ---
THE OUTBREAKS

• Welland C. difficile patient dies, another hospital worker infected
• Niagara Health System chief Sue Matthews vows crackdown on a "gap in knowledge" about infection control among staff.
• Latest patient death brings the total to 23 since the first Niagara outbreak was declared in St. Catharines May 28.
• At least 20 patient deaths were hospital-acquired cases; two others acquired the infection in the community.
• A caregiver at Welland hospital, who tested positive Friday for C. difficile, had been off work sick since July 13."

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So McGuinty's Liberals are proud of their killer C. difficile record.
Deb Matthews made clear her intention to distance herself from any culpability in the latest C. diff outbreak, by foisting the responsibility onto the hospitals.
Deb Matthews is saying 'Oh, sure,  these hospitals chose not to invest in the new, higher cost tests - it ain't my problem, I'm proud to say!! I've got my Liberal monopolist ass covered from liability!!'
But the point which Matthews avoids acknowledging is that her LIBERAL MONOPOLIST, LHIN-FILTERED BLOCK-FUNDING is an obstacle for the budget-strapped hospitals, when it comes to using the new infection-detection protocol (and in many other areas, as well)
Here is the devious duplicity of the McGuinty's Liberals at work again, in its finest two-faced despotic glory: enforce a single-payer monopoly, while at the same time, forcing hospitals to forsake one standard of infection-detection for another, due to Liberal ideological monopolist block funding limitations. Allocate state-monopolist funding for a lower standard of care, then hold yourself harmless for the subsequent deaths by pointing out 'hey - those hospitals chose to stick with the old detection guidelines!'
Liberal ass-covering genius, isn't it? (and forget about how McGuinty's Liberals under Smitherman hid from investigation back in 2008, after hundreds of Ontario C. diff deaths!)
The fact that McGuinty and Deb Matthews chose not to implement and fund the latest technologies system-wide is, amazingly, NOT MENTIONED by Deb!!!
And as for Niagara's dead and infected patients, who thought that Jim Bradley's and Kim Craitor's glorious Liberals were funding a high standard of health care: hahaha; all yer gonna get from Mcginny is adequate healthcare... maybe... and don't you dare ask for a legal definition of "adequate health care" either, dammit...
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The filthy health care hospital pit known as the Liberal Jim Bradley Wing

Here is C.J. Duffy's shocking July 13, 2011 letter in Niagara This Week:

Has C.J. Duffy contacted St.Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley about this filthy health-care pit?

Jimmy and Deb Matthews are in charge of Ontario's health care system - where is secretive Liberal Jim Bradley's response to this letter? This occurred in Bradley's own St. Catharines riding! Why is Jim Bradley utterly mute on this issue? (I'm sure - hardee-har-har - that Mike Williscraft is sending a NTW reporter to Bradley's office asap!) Bradley hasn't bothered to publicly respond to this letter either!

Oh, yeah.... and why isn't St.Catharines mayor, the always-oh-so-so-soooo-concerned Brian McMullan 'demanding answers' to this single-payer health-care travesty in his city?! Why isn't Mayor McFullofit demanding that his monopolist buddy Jim Bradley publicly address Mr. Duffy's concerns?? (yeah: as if...)

Until June 20, 2008, George Smitherman was McGuinty's monopolist health minister, after that date in 2008, it was David Caplan - have either of these two Grits replied to Duffy's concerns; has Duffy contacted either of them about his dismal, frightening experiences at the St.Catharines NHS franchise of McGuinty's Liberal health-monopoly?

The NHS only mops on Friday - yet, Jim Bradley only answers questions what - once a FLICKING year??? There's no water to wash your hands - yet Jim Bradley and Dalton McGuinty have washed their hands of any complicity for the Mess in the NHS!!

McGuinty's disgusting Liberal health-monopoly-pushing despots need to be punished for the disaster they have foisted onto Ontario's patients.
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Niagara's C. difficile deaths: is this murder by McGuinty's monopolists?

It's amazing - astounding, in fact - how the St.Catharines Standard and its staffers, such as Grant Lafleche, continue to carefully conceal their local Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, from any scrutiny, comment, or connection, to the killer C. difficile outbreak in Bradley's own city. (23 Niagara patients dead from C. diff infection as of Jul.16, 2011; see "Another death, another worker infected")

It is telling that neither Lafleche nor anyone else at the St.Catharines Standard is willing or able to ask the Liberal monopolist health-care-cutter Jim Bradley to comment on even one aspect of Lafleche's Jul.16, 2001 St.Catharines Standard story "Bacteria can kill us" where the NHS's CEO Sue Matthews was quoted saying that "the resources we have is all we have" in reference to maintaining the newly-'heightened levels of infection control' (which, presumably, were not in place prior to the May outbreak).

Going on what Sue Matthews said,  no-one bothers to examine the McGuinty Liberal's claims that they are not health-care-cutters and their further claims that the NHS is not underfunded - a claim which the NHS's Sue Matthews pretty much seems to have contradicted.

Of course, Lafleche did not bother to ask and report to Standard readers what the local Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's answer is in regards to whether the NHS has 'all the resources' it needs to control and eradicate this C. difficile outbreak, as well as prevent recurrences.

Lafleche also didn't bother to ask, examine, or determine what Liberal Health Minister Deb Matthews actually meant when she claimed 'hospital funding is adequate' (as Lafleche reported in "Bacteria can kill us", Jul.16, 2011) What metrics are being used here; whose idea of 'adequacy'??

Lafleche hasn't bothered to ask Good Ole Jimmy about how much his Liberals actually knew about C. diff in 2008 (when Smitherman was hiding McGuinty from a C. diff public inquiry, while telling us that his Liberals  knew everything there was to know about C. diff, that all we needed to do was wash our hands, and that everything was going to be all right), and why all this so-called Liberal "knowledge" was NOT in place for the subsequent Niagara C. diff outbreak.

See also the Standard's July 15, 2011 story, about the 'gap in knowledge' at the NHS, and ask: why didn't the 'all-knowing' Liberals know about this??!! Why didn't the Liberal's LHIN know about this? Why didn't the Liberal's own health minister know about this?! Nobody has bothered to ask Jim Bradley about this!!

Jim Bradley has disappeared like a cockroach into the woodwork on this C. difficile issue of whether his Liberals have contributed (via the Smitherman-created LHIN) to the 23 deaths in Niagara; Bradley's colleague Liberal health minister Deb Matthews says that boosting hospital funding is unlikely, and that the hospitals have adequate funding.

With this kind of catch-22-no-one's-to-blame negligence from the Liberals, perhaps we should no longer be viewing Niagara's C. diff victims simply as "patient deaths";  maybe 'murdered by McGuinty's monopolism' is a more apt description of what is occurring in Niagara.

The Liberals claimed that their monopoly-run-hospitals were/are safe and 'adequately-funded'  [remember: what 'adequately' means to Deb Matthews'  Liberals is not specified in Lafleche's story]; the fact is that now 23 Niagara patients have been killed in McGuinty's Liberal health-care monopoly, and the reasons why these hospitals (despite Liberal claims) were NOT 'safe' for these patients, is not at all clear... as it wasn't clear during the last outbreak, where hundreds of Ontario C. diff patients died in McGuinty's health monopoly, and there was NO PUBLIC INQUIRY!!

One of the reasons we have no answers is because Liberal MPP Jim Bradley - the secretive Liberal scumbag from St. Catharines, where most of the recent C. diff patients were killed - has decided to hide, and the St. Catharines Standard and Niagara This Week,  have decided to let Bradley get away with it.

Why the hell should anyone in Ontario trust or believe Liberal Deb Matthews' claims that the NHS funding which she doles out to her Niagara health-monopoly is "adequate" ??? 'Adequate'  by whose standards???!

What we need is an independent analysis of McGuinty's Liberal health-care claims, going right back to 2004 when Liberal Finance Minister Greg Sorbara said he was going to "control" the 8%-annual-increase spending which the previous Conservatives had in place - which led to the Liberal's new health care tax, to new coverage delistings, and to a new LHIN bureaucracy!! What - doesn't anyone in the local press remember any of that?!

Where is the national media scrutiny regarding secretive Liberal health-care monopolist (and global-warming fear-mongerer...) MPP Jim Bradley's pathetic silence, while C. difficile patients drop like flies in his own city; in his own despotic Liberal-controlled single-payer health monopoly?!

Where is the scrutiny of what the Liberal-created, Liberal-directed, Liberal-appointed, Liberal-funded LHIN's actions have been, as the overseers of the NHS?!?

Where is the scrutiny examining whether McGuinty's negligent Liberal monopoly has murdered patients in Niagara, through the Liberal government's ideological obsession with single-payer, no-patient-choice, despotic, monopolist health-care statism?

Deb Matthews' glib claim that the NHS is adequately funded IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.

Liberals make these claims of "...ah, listen, bub - we told ya: the funding's ADEQUATE, ya hear?? Trust us; don't ask us any more questions... we said it's adequate - now bugger off..." within a monopoly setting, which McGuinty's Liberals conveniently enforce, control, and manipulate with impunity.

These despotic, monopoly-enforcing politicians are held harmless from the damage resulting from their single-payer ideology. The people trapped in Ontario's Liberal-government-run monopoly have no choice in determining what in fact IS "adequate".

Deb Matthews, along with McGuinty and  his cabinet crew of health-care-monopoly-supporting despots, should be charged with complicity in these Niagara C. difficile patients' deaths.

Let Deb Matthews and her Liberals describe to a criminal judge what "adequate" meant to them; and what "adequate" meant to the dead C. diff victims in their Liberal-controlled monopolist health prisons. Let Matthews and McGuinty plead their innocence by explaining to the judge how the LHIN and the NHS are independent, self-governing, self-sustaining organizations, and not Liberal puppets of the state!!

Yeah, these are exactly the questions which 'mavericks and rebels' such as Jim Diodati, Kim Craitor, Sue Salzer, Wayne Gates, Doug Herod, Doug Draper, John Robbins, Mike Williscraft and many others, aren't too fond of asking.

Monopo-whaaaaat?
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American health-care insurance a relief to Canadians

The July 14, 2011 St.Catharines Standard finally got around to reporting that U.S. health-care insurance from the Mayo Clinic through Calgary-based MyCare Insurance is available to Canadians (except in Quebec):

(click photo to enlarge!)

Can't wait for health-care monopolists McGuinty and his sanctimonious Liberal MPP's such as Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor to complain about this and demand that this be stopped immediately (the way Bradley and his buddy Smitherman did when Lifeline wanted to come to Ontario... remember that Liberal-fanned-anti-American-health-care-chauvinism/xenophobia?!?! If you forgot, then see: here pg.44-45, and here, and here, and here and here!)

Good gaia - what's next: these Americans will want to start building hospitals in Canada as well!!
We can't have any of that - it might put Bradley and Craitor out of work, y'see.
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Good riddance to another McGuinty Liberal monopolist

It is great to see that David Caplan - one of McGuinty's health ministers who repeatedly refused to re-examine the HIP which  Smitherman's LHIN had forced the Niagara Health System to create under severe political duress - is quitting.
Former health minister Caplan should also be accountable in any subsequent criminal investigations regarding his secretive Liberals' culpability in avoiding any public investigation into the hundreds of  C. difficile deaths in Ontario in 2006-08 (with false reassurances that an inquiry wouldn't tell the Liberals anything new about C. diff than they already knew; it's unbelievable, but that is what McGuinty's monopolists said...) and the subsequent 2011 C. difficile deaths in Niagara (22 dead as of Jul.14, 2011).
Hope Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor soon join Caplan in Liberal hell.
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A Vote for Kim Craitor is saying YES to Dalton McGuinty's Liberals

Interesting how the leftist press is now trying to glorify Kim Craitor, trying to portray him as some sort of damn rebel.
Craitor's a Liberal  (...or so he thinks...which might just be his entire problem...) - and a hypocrite Liberal, at that.
Craitor lost credibility years ago - still in McGuinty's first term. Craitor nevertheless happily ran on McGuinty's Liberal Party coattails twice. Craitor was no damn rebel during the 2007 Liberal re-election; Craitor was a company man.
Kim didn't quit his Liberal party. He chose to stay with McGuinty.
Craitor bullshits when he pretends that health care in Ontario somehow is not political; oh, come on, Kimmy - of course it's political; and, furthermore, it was McGuinty's Liberals - including Craitor - who made it so!
Kim Craitor, first and foremost, wears the McGuinty Liberal record. It is not someone else's record: it is Kim's and it applies to the health-care cutting which Craitor's own secretive Liberals did right in Niagara.
It's tiresome to hear these Liberals  pretend that the problems in Ontario are someone else's problems, not McGuinty's or Craitor's!
Craitor peddles purely deceptive politics when he avoids putting any investigative focus on his own Liberal-created LHIN's, and their direct role (as overseers) in any of the problems at the NHS!
Craitor wants an investigation into the NHS - but where's his call for an independent investigation into the LHIN?! (...and not a phony-baloney "internal LHIN review" which the bait-and-switch health-care-fraud team of McGuinty-Smitherman promised would be forthcoming, back when they introduced the LHIN monstrosity. McGuinty, breaking his own Liberal promises/lying once again, has since cancelled even that cursory review of the LHIN's!!)
Craitor cannot understand how his perverted Liberal single-payer despotism is falling apart at the seams.
We have 22 C. difficile-infection deaths in Niagara (as of July 14, 2011) yet the press and Craitor all follow the same narrative, that the NHS is to blame; and that Liberals are somehow innocent heroes!!!!
Forget about who funds and directs the NHS monopoly!!
Forget about which secretive, unaccountable government hid from scrutiny and refused to call a public inquiry into the C.diff outbreak in 2006-08, which killed some 500 Ontarians!!!
Craitor doesn't get into that!!!! Craitor, the hypocrite rebel without a clue, didn't have any sanctimonious problems with that outbreak, and that subsequent cover-up by HIS OWN LIBERAL government!
Now, after 22 local Niagara deaths in his own monopolist Liberal health-care prison - Craitor has not demanded a criminal investigation examining the complicity of the LHIN and of McGuinty's cabinet in Niagara's C. difficile deaths. 
Wow - some  FLICKING "rebel".
(...and neither have Craitor's and Jim Bradley's fawning ass-licks/useful idiots in the Niagara media and blogosphere called for a criminal investigation into the McGuinty Liberal's C. diff negligence.Telling.)
Craitor is Liberal schizo: railing with flailing indignance against misguidedly-perceived enemies (and purely fictitious ones, like his favourite strawman diversion, the scary "harris".) Craitor cannot fathom that his own monopolist anti-patient-choice Liberalism has caused what we see not only in Niagara, but in Ontario, today.
A vote for Kim Craitor is not a vote for some kind of  (frankly useless) 'rebellion'; a vote for Kim Craitor is an affirmation of Liberal Liar Dalton McGuinty's disgusting statist despotism.
It is saying YES to McGuinty.
It is encouragement to McGuinty.
It is aiding-and-abetting McGuinty.
It is an act of enabling McGuinty's Liberal addiction to secrecy and statism.
It is an "attaboy" to McGuinty.
A vote for Kim Craitor (or for Jim Bradley) is a vote for McGuinty's failing monopolist status-quo.
A vote for Craitor - or Bradley - is a vote for more of the failed same!!
More Liberalism - even more of Craitor's wackjob Liberalism - isn't going to fix the problem.
The Liberal hydra is pervasive in Niagara; Craitor's is one of the many Liberal heads which politically must roll in October of 2011.
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