CHICAGO (Reuters) - On the day after the 2010 midterm election that swept Republicans into control of the House of Representatives and decreased Democrats' majority in the Senate, senior White House adviser David Axelrod had a message for President Barack Obama.

"I think they just planted the seeds of your re-election," he told his boss.

"The most strident voices had seized control of the Republican Party and you knew that the nominee who would emerge either would come from that Tea Party base or would have to yield to it in order to be the nominee," Axelrod told Reuters.

That nominee ended up being former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and Obama's campaign went on to exploit his ties to the conservative wing of his party and outmaneuver him to victory in the November 6 general election.

Axelrod, who left the White House to oversee strategy for the president's 2012 campaign, and fellow Democrats attribute Obama's decisive win on Tuesday to Obama and to a consistent strategy that sidelined Romney in key swing states.

An early and effective effort to define the former private equity executive as unfriendly to the middle class, a superior ground operation to get out the vote, and a deft response to missteps by Romney and his allies helped Obama overcome his own perceived weaknesses in presiding over a slow economic recovery.

"They successfully made this a choice election as opposed to a referendum on the president and the economy," said Michael Feldman, a Democratic strategist and former adviser to Vice President Al Gore. "They also used the critical months between the end of the (Republican) primary and the general election to better define Mitt Romney than the Romney campaign did."

That defining process turned out to be key.

In the spring and summer, Obama's campaign used a massive advertising package to highlight concerns about Romney's tenure as the head of Bain Capital and pounded the multi-millionaire executive for refusing to release several years of his personal tax returns.

The Romney campaign's slow response to that onslaught and failure to neutralize the criticism over his tax returns baffled Obama's Chicago team.

Originally posted here:
Anatomy of a White House win: how Obama outmaneuvered Romney

Recommendation and review posted by G. Smith

The fungal meningitis outbreak that sickened 414 people this fall was unprecedented -- first, because only people who received a tainted steroid injection were at risk; and, second, because the fungus wasn't known for making people sick, let alone causing a deadly inflammatory disease that's killed 31 people so far.

Health officials on the local, state and federal levels had to work together to trace the cause of the outbreak and get the word out to at-risk patients and their doctors.

"All of that coordination -- the right hand knowing what the left was doing -- has made a big difference in how quick we could come to an understanding of what was going on," said Dr. David Reagan, the chief medical officer in Tennessee, adding that the tainted drugs were recalled eight days after Tennessee physician Dr. April Pettit contacted the state health department about a patient with a suspicious illness.

Here is a timeline of how the outbreak played out:

Early September: The first fungal meningitis patients arrived in emergency rooms around the country in early September, but it took a clinician in Tennessee, Dr. April Pettit, to realize her patient with a mysterious illness was the beginning of a public health crisis. Reagan said she found fungus in the patient's spinal fluid.

The Centers for Disease Control/AP Photo

Sept. 18: Pettit contacted the Tennessee Department of Health, including Dr. Marion Kainer, looking for similar patients. Her call set the investigation into motion, and she noted that the patient had recently received an epidural steroid injection.

Sept. 20: Two days later, the state health department called the CDC to report a fungal infection, noting that the patient had received an epidural steroid injection at the Saint Thomas Outpatient Clinic in August. Although the CDC had not heard about similar cases, it suggested Kainer visit the clinic. The same day, the clinic voluntarily closed. It has not reopened.

Sept. 21: The Tennessee Department of Health narrowed its list of possible causes to tainted steroid injectables from the New England Compounding Center (NECC) in Framingham, Mass., environmental contamination, or mishandling of equipment.

Sept. 24: Several other meningitis cases had been reported, and the Tennessee Department of Health reached out to Massachusetts's Department of health to learn more about NECC.

Visit link:
Anatomy of a Meningitis Outbreak

Recommendation and review posted by G. Smith

Image credit: KELSEY MCNEAL/ABC

BACK TOGETHER AGAIN Cristina (Sandra Oh) and Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) reunited during a touching hour of Grey's Anatomy.

It was undoubtedly by exactly perfect design, but Cristina uttered the most poignant line of Greys Anatomys ninth season so far in the last few seconds of last nights episode -- a line that sums up everything thats happened so far: Everyones dead, she said to Meredith without much fanfare, as the two best friends -- separated by half a country for five episodes -- embraced for the first time this fall.

The line was so simple and so fitting because, well, its true: Everyone has, indeed, died. Lexie. Sloan. And after last nights rather wrenching episode, titled Beautiful Doom, Dr. Feeny -- the old-man friend of Cristinas whose real name was Dr. Thomas -- also dropped dead, God bless his crusty, old soul. (Although the character death maybe isnt allllll bad for the actor who played him, William Daniels, since he may be getting his old gig back as Feeny on the recently announced Boy Meets World sequel spin-off that Disney has in the works.) All I have to say about all this continued theme of death is: We get it, Greys Anatomy powers! Youve got the power to kill people! No one is safe! Life is fragile! We should be scared! And all that jazz! But geez, its be nice if you stopped killing people. Death is exhausting, and there are really not many more tears to shed at Seattle Grace.

And maybe all the death has been a way to thin out the ranks on the over-populated show some. But Dr. Feeny was a new addition this season, so killing him, clearly -- as evidenced by the voiceover from him as his dead body was wheeled through the hospitals hallway -- wasnt to make room for other characters to have space to breath. It was to teach Cristina Yang to be a better person, which sorely needed to happen. (And will probably need to happen yet againand again.)

Truly, we can all take something away from the words he offered to Cristina Yang: Breathe, Dr. Yang, the voiceover from him near the end of the episode said, giving advice to the typically high-struck and unfriendly Cristina. Dont be crass. Youre skulking. Women of your generation are graceless. Its an affront to nature. Mediocre surgeons will see you and feel themselves wilting in your shadow. Do not shrink to console them. Do not look for friends here. You wont find them. None of these people have the capacity to understand you. They never will. If youre lucky, one day, when youre old and shriveled like me, youll find a young doctor with little regard for anything but their craft, and youll train them like I trained you. Until then, read a good book. You have greatness in you, Yang. Dont disappoint.

His death, however sad, was not unexpected. First off, he was really old. And actually, not long before Dr. Feeny dropped dead in the OR with Cristina, I had already thought he was dead once during the episode. Remember that scene when Cristina happened upon Feeny sun-bathing on a bench outside the hospital? I could have sworn he was dead then -- he looked it. But thankfully, Greys decided to pull his plug much more dramatically, with him literally keeling over mid-surgery. Cristinas sex friend Dr. Parker tried CPR on the immediately stiff man, while Yang had to finish her surgery. Also thankfully, considering everything, Yang was successful in her surgery. If it hadnt gone well, it might have sent me over the edge to have Feeny and the patient die minutes from each other.

NEXT: Meredith learns some lessons, too...

Read the original:
'Grey's Anatomy' recap: The Ballad of Meredith and Cristina

Recommendation and review posted by G. Smith

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Boston (CNN) -- Before Republicans went looking for answers Tuesday night, some of them went looking for the remote.

When it became clear about midnight that President Barack Obama was safely on the way to re-election, a handful of cranky and inebriated Republican donors wandered about Romney's election night headquarters, angrily demanding that the giant television screens inside the ballroom be switched from CNN to Fox News, where Republican strategist Karl Rove was making frantic, face-saving pronouncements about how Ohio was not yet lost.

Romney's 'all' proved not enough

Rove was wrong, of course.

But the signs of desperation inside the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center on Tuesday night were symptomatic of a Republican Party now standing at a crossroads, with not much track in sight.

New term, familiar challenges for Obama

How did Romney lose a race that seemed so tantalizingly within reach just one week ago?

"We were this close," one of Romney's most senior advisers sighed after watching the Republican nominee concede. "This close."

Little support from young, minorities

See more here:
The anatomy of Romney's defeat

Recommendation and review posted by G. Smith