I thought nurses were health care professionals?

Thirty nurses infected with SARS are suing the province for almost $200 million, claiming the government didn’t do enough to protect them during the outbreak. “The nurses taking part in this lawsuit have been and continue to be severely affected by SARS. Most were in hospital for many days or weeks and were off work for many months. In addition, they have suffered isolation and social stigma as a result of SARS,” Ontario Nurses Association president Linda Haslam-Stroud said at a news conference yesterday. The nurses worked at hospitals throughout the city and each contracted the disease while on the job. Some returned to work after six months, some as recently as December, some not at all. Many suffer lingering health effects, such as difficulty breathing. One passed on the infection to her 10-year-old son, who now suffers from asthma.

Unfortunate, sure. But people – it’s your job to be on the front line with infectious disease outbreaks. The government is paying you to protect us. Risk of infection comes with the territory.

Each nurse is seeking $5 million, while their family members are asking for $700,000 each in damages. They are asking to split another $5 million in punitive damages, for a total of $188.6 million. “Money aside, accountability needs to happen. Someone’s got to stand up and take responsibility. That’s a very big thing,” said Connie Leroux, a nurse in the intensive care unit at North York General Hospital who contracted SARS and still has breathing problems. The lawsuit follows a $600 million suit launched by a nurse who got SARS off the job. It’s aimed at the city, province and federal governments, alleging political meddling sparked a second SARS outbreak. It has not yet been certified as a class action.

What’s next – RCMP suits against “the government” for not protecting them from criminals?

MIchael Totten has pics up of “peace” protesters yesterday

“If I were against the war, I wouldn’t have a damn thing to do with these people. This seems to me a lot like marching against affirmative action with the Ku Klux Klan. But hey, I could be off here.”

UN Commission on the Status of Women

When the US asked that the document explicitly state that ‘mother’ and ‘father’ were not under the umbrella of the term ‘negative gender stereotype’, she was jeered by the EU and cut off by the Canadian chairperson.

It’s not easy being a woman in Canada.

When discussing portrayals of women in the media and gender stereotypes, the Canadian chairperson Beatrice Maille said that countries must work together so that girls in the media aren’t portrayed as playing with dolls and boys aren’t seen as sports players as this perpetuates negative stereotypes. The representative from Sudan responded, “How can we prevent this portrayal of girls? Why should we prevent this? It’s the reality that most little girls play with dolls. In fact, I still play with dolls on occasion!”

We have negative gender stereotypes like Beatrice Maille to overcome.
Hat tip – Trudeaupia

Somebody, pinch me.
Former conjoined tortoises go separate ways at home

The former conjoined tortoises — who drew worldwide media attention when they were separated in a delicate three-hour operation February 8 — returned home to Tucson, Arizona, this week showing signs of relishing their separate lives, owners Sharon and Bobby Ehasz said.

They didn’t. Tell me they didn’t do this.

Ehasz said his wife worries that bills will keep piling up to care for the 4-inch turtles, whose scars are covered in gauze hardened with epoxy. Already, the couple said they used part of their tax refund check to pay roughly $300 in anesthesia bills. That’s in addition to $700 they shelled out to buy the 3-year-old reptiles in December.
More hospital stays and surgeries also may be needed to correct a curvature in the turtles’ bottom shell, which keeps them from walking properly.

Let’s see if I’m following this so far. They took the world’s only known uber-mutant turtles, worth $700 US and invested a further $300 to turn them into 2 lumps of worthless algae growth medium, one of which could yet depart its mortal coil.
Gotcha.

“It’s all worked out the way it should have so far,” Ehasz said, thanking a handful of donors who helped pay for medicines and a new plexiglass-enclosed home he’s building for the pets. “It’s our responsibility to keep taking care of them.”

No Ehasz, had it worked out the way it should have, there would be a flock of happy seagulls preening turtle guts off their feathers.
At this point, there are some commentators who might exclaim “Only in America!”
Uh, no.
Only in Some Whirling Alternate Universe of Rock Hard Stupid.

If the NDP ever form government, please, someone – take me hunting.
CBC news:

Removal of GST sought for hygiene products
A Manitoba MP says it’s a tax that discriminates against women, and she wants it scrapped. Judy Wasylycia-Leis, the NDP MP for Winnipeg-North Centre, has introduced a private member’s bill, demanding that the GST not be added to the price of feminine hygiene products.

The battle has been raging for two decades.

“By what possible stretch of his mean, male-minded imagination could he impose a tax on tampons and sanitary napkins — which is a direct tax to the women of this province?” Copps, now the federal heritage minister, said in May 1982.

In 2002, the Ontario NDP urged a national campaign:

Charging GST on feminine hygiene products is a discriminatory gender tax that ought to be abolished, Ontario’s New Democrats said Friday ….
“It is an unfair tax and it is discriminatory,” said Marilyn Churley, women’s critic for Ontario’s NDP. “It taxes a bodily function that is central to womanhood and family life.”

Listen up, you stupid, stupid bitches. Our forebears did not fight for women’s suffrage so that you could stand up and embarrass us in the House Of Commons by yacking about tampons. Had they known you were going to do this, they would have returned to their kitchens and kicked off their shoes in shame.
Enough, already.

Michael Moore with tits.
In addition to serving as chief role model for those aspiring to rise to the level of trailer trash, Rosie O’Donnell is a whining testimony to the willingness of the media to
give a soapbox to stupid rich people.

“I think the actions of the president yesterday, which are, you know, in my opinion, the most vile and hateful words ever spoken by a single president in my opinion. I am stunned, and I am horrified,” she said.

Wosie is vewy, vewy, vewy, vewy angwy at the Fiwst Wady, too.

In addition to being angry at the president, O’Donnell was also stung by remarks from First lady Laura Bush, who said that she found the fact that gays were standing in line to get married in San Francisco “very, very, very, very shocking.”

Hey, who is ABC news quoting? Someone’s added a couple of extra very‘s here…
Update – Robert Prather is punishing this insult as well.