Mukhtaran Bibi

Over at Mercury Rising, Phoenix Woman posts about and links to this shameful story.

What happened to this woman defies all humanity and also defies Islamic law.

It also begs a central question: in societies where inequality at best is the fate of the fairer sex, then how on god's not-so-green earth are we going to establish democracy there? Ain't gonna happen, folks, until Islam undergoes something at least as revolutionary as the Reformation.

The Middle East will run out of oil before that happens.

Blast From the Past

It's back. We've not had much of this since Vietnam, when the term fragging first entered the American vocabulary in a significant way.

I do not see how there will be anything but more incidents such as this, as our poor soldiers remain bogged down in that insufferable Republican war.

Bring them home now. Please.

To those who may have noticed, my apologies for the snarky title. But let's not stop here. There's even more.

Fragging and napalm. History repeats itself.

Next we will be getting stories in the news about famous rock musicians who die choking on their own vomit.

Such Eloquence

Scroll to the June 14th entry, and enjoy, because this is a good little read. I bet I know where he stops for a cold one on Thursdays.

Rumor-22

Over in the Eschaton haloscan comments-warp, Boilerman10 passes along a very interesting rumor involving Rush Limbaugh. Note the italics. It's just a rumor. But hey, as we were recently reminded, Watergate was once just a rumor.

It seems that Lumpy may owe some money to a few very unsavory characters, if you know what I'm sayin'. And it's not as if he has no means to satisfy his debt to these folks.

He can't pay them off without the transaction confirming his drug trafficking. The authorities have been paying rather close attention to his spending habits, I suppose, so a payoff would likely be noticed and somehow entered as evidence. Poor boy.

Let us all express sorrow for his tragic situation. It could happen to any of us, right?

No. Not right.

Most of us are too busy earning an honest living to become addicted to illicit narcotics while bloviating about sending all junkies to prison on nationally-syndicated radio.

I am looking forward to the release of the pertinent aspects of Rush's medical records. The health-care privacy laws will ensure that his draft-dodging butt-pimple problems remain removed from open discussion.

Sixteen Percent and Rising

For those of you who haven't heard, there is a shortage of professional nurses. The number that gets tossed about regarding this, on a national level, is a keen 11%.

It varies regionally. For example, in the ever-sprawling two-dimensional metastatic growth of red-tile-roofed suburban flatland known as The Valley of the Sun, 16% of all positions for registered nurses go empty. That's a lot.

So what do you do about this crisis in health-care nursing staffing, if you are a Republican President? You make it worse, of course. Not all at once, mind you, as these things take time. You have to start an illegal and unpopular war first.

Then you begin to draft not just nurses, but all the medical people you want: doctors, nurses, operating room technicians, medical imaging technicians, and nurse aides, to name a few.

These people don't even have to pass a military physical. You just assume that if they're performing their duties adequately in the civilian world, they will do just fine in combat zones.

Of course, hospitals that presently must compete ferociously to recruit and retain nurses will have to jack up salaries and retention bonuses even more, as the field of qualified nurses shrinks under the pressure of the Republican war draft. This will push up the price of health-care in general, so your insurance premiums will rise, along with the price of anything made by people who happen to be lucky enough to have health-care coverage.

This is a Republican war in Iraq. When the draft comes, it will be a Republican draft, but all of us will suffer for it, especially those who are sick in hospitals already.

So, the next time you end up in the local emergency room waiting for hours on end, thank Preznit George for his hard efforts to make your experience even worse. And if you voted for him, please kick yourself repeatedly. We tried to warn you. We're still trying.

Nods to Thomas at Seeing The Forest for helping to get this out there.

Feel the Love Explained

While I was driving to the muffin factory this morning, I caught a few minutes of Arizona's best morning drive-time A.M. radio host and he was chatting with that guy who wrote the very interesting letter-to-the-editor I mentioned yesterday.

Turns out the guy was kidding. But, the newspaper itself had edited his letter. He said his satirical position was much more evident as he had originally written it, but the Arizona Republic omitted some parts. Hence the confusion.

So let me get this straight... I remember when at the bottom of the Letters-to-the-Editor page there was small print that said something like "letters may be edited for length and clarity." Those days are gone. Gone like two Beatles. Apparently, now it is the policy of at least one newspaper that I know of to edit Letters-to-the-Editor for length and confusion.

I suppose it's really all for the best.

Everything Counts

You just never know what information you can trust on the web, but this resonates with a suspicion that I've had for awhile.

We have long known that the Bush administration does not allow the flag-draped military coffins which arrive at Dover in the midst of night to be filmed in any way.

They prohibit this not just because they do not want America to see the coffins. They do this because they do not want us to count the coffins.

Feel the Love

It has become more and more difficult to discern parody from opinion these days. Another world famous Phoenix blogger also coughed up a hairy one when he spotted this today, proving once again that at least two people read the Arizona Republican newspaper letters-to-the-editor section.

In many cases, poor grammer and a complete disdain for logical processes will clue you in to determining that a piece is "opinion," for parodists often write too well by half. So if this LTTE is indeed "opinion," we must altogether congratulate the writer on his respectable sentence structure.

Of course, one could always just call the guy and ask, but I wouldn't, for the obvious reason that his name ends with a vowel.

Cheek Turning as Viewed in the Ancient Roman Empire

There's a thread over at Eschaton in which Adventus explains that in Turkish (and by implication, longstanding Middle Eastern,) culture, if someone slaps you with their open right hand, on your left cheek, that to then turn and request that they then slap you, backhanded, on your right cheek, emulates a greeting!

So, as seen in its cultural context, "to turn the other cheek" means to reverse the intent of the aggressor, inviting him to hit you again but in a manner that is seen as a greeting of good friends, in that culture. This is not self-abasement, as the phrase seems to suggest to way too many people.

Jesus was not saying "Please sir, may I have another," as in the "Animal House" fraternity initiation scene.

Not that the rightwing Christian movement in this country would ever consider that. War, homophobia, tax-cuts-for-the-rich, and the dismemberment of the social contract occupy far too much of their present political agenda for them to actually stop to consider the words of their Saviour.

To be a modern American conservative Republican born-again churchgoer today pretty much means that you're really a Roman.

More Stars Than a Van Gogh

As soon as I ran into the room, I could smell the stale aroma of alcohol and cigarettes emanating from the patient. I was assigned to the defibrillator but one of the emergency department nurses was already on it, so the code leader asked me to just hold the guys' legs down and play gopher as needed.

He just couldn't stay still, which seemed to upset most of the people working on him. I guess it really is a lot easier to run a code on somebody who has passed out. He was wide awake and hollering his fool head off, as they say.

It was only about one o'clock in the afternoon, so I thought he was remarkably drunk for so early in the day. But what did I know?

Speaking of remarkable, I remember the ST changes on his 12-lead EKG. They were as big as the thumb of a grown man. Real crowd-pleasers, those, in leads II, III, and IV. The biggest I'd ever seen, and bigger than anything I've seen since. One of the ICU nurses, a big guy that I really liked, was holding up the copy of the EKG and we were all going "Wow, nice anterior blow-out." Very impressive.

There was nothing subtle about that guy. Nothing he said, or yelled at the top of his lungs, nothing he did, jerking around like a shark out of water, not his smell, and certainly not his ST changes, were in the least way subtle.

The emergency room physician's assistant was particularly displeased with the guys legs, so she threw her body over them to hold them down. I stepped back to get out of her way. Then the guy sat straight up and hurled everything he ate that day, which was Cambell's Chicken Soup with Stars mixed with beer. All over her back. All over himself. Vomit was dripping off of him and onto the floor. Tiny little beer-soaked stars and a few meaty chicken chunks. And a smell that "could knock a buzzard off a shit wagon," as George Carlin once said.

She scooted off him and came back with leather restraints for his legs.

He was doing well enough by then that the doctor said to wheel him into intensive care to start the streptokinase.

The code team, me included, dispersed back to our regular units.

The story was the guy was drinking in a local tavern when he fell off his stool, clutching his chest.

It was a place that I knew about but had never entered, because I do not patronize establishments that serve soup from cans. I recommend that you also avoid such places.

And Don't You Forget It

It's not about protecting our freedom. It's not about spreading democracy. It's not even really about oil.

It's about ruining lives.

When to Ask

The patient arrived from the E.R at about 5 p.m. Not a very healthy specimen, really. First heart attack before age 30 years, poorly managed diabetes, hypertension basically ignored, obesity, and still a smoker even after cardiac catheterizations that resulted in the stenting of a couple/few coronary arteries. Nothing much wrong with them aside from that.

We ran into some blood sugar problems, like levels in the 500 range, but basically OK for the couple hours I spent with them before my shift ended.

Later I thought that maybe it would have been cool if the ER nurse who gave me the patient had mentioned that the patient's sugars were just a little high.

Something else just didn't seem right to me, though I couldn't articulate anything specific. I spoke to the attending doc and a couple residents, saying "I don't think this patient will end up staying the whole night here," and they agreed, but there was no reason yet to make a move.

The cardiologist wanted to take the patient to the cath lab that night. Odd, that.

Next thing you know, the oncoming nightshift nurse was getting a crappy blood pressure, like 60 over just about nothing, and the pace picked up a little. Dopamine and another pressor were started, a couple cath lab nurses showed up, and the cardiologist stuck a central line in the patient's groin.

The doctor didn't even gown up. He just tucked his tie into his shirt, and somehow he didn't get a spot of blood on him. Classy, that.

Soon it was 9 p.m. I was tired after 14 hours of work and I wanted to go home. There were about 11 other people in with the patient anyways, and it looked like I was done. They intubated the patient. I phoned the family, but they still hadn't arrived by the time the patient left the floor for the cath lab.

One of the cath lab nurses had borrowed my stethoscope, and I didn't really want to interrupt her at the bedside to get it back. It just wasn't the right time to ask. She put it on the patient's bed as we wheeled them out of the room and into the hallway, so that's when I grabbed it, at 10 p.m.

If I had left before that, my stethoscope would surely have disappeared and I'd never have gotten it back again. And those things go for big bucks these days.

Schmiorities

The taxpayers of Phoenix, as a random choice city, have contributed over $598 million dollars to the cost of the Iraq war.

Compare the whole bill for this military excursion to other costs; for instance, noting that such a sum would pay to provide healthcare coverage for about 104,000,000 children.

Well now, that's interesting. We could pay for medical coverage of every child in the United States, and then some. But there are other priorities, it seems.

Tell me again how awful it was during the Clinton administration.

Salt

You, me, your dog, and your parakeet all have salt in our blood. Under normal circumstances, its concentration is 0.9% sodium, barring electrolite imbalances and disease.

There are two probable reasons for this . One would be that this is how That Higher Being Whom We Revere designed things to be. (Nod to Heinrich Boll, who wrote a short story about a talk radio show in which the word "god" had the above substitute phrase used in its place.)

The other reason would be that 0.9% was the ocean salinity about 650 million years ago, when life began to crawl out of the seas and onto land. Lifeforms carried this salty genetic heritage with them as they populated the lands.

There need not be logical exclusion between these views. But only one of the above notions is a scientific theory.

Community nurse rondo

She said "I was a nurse way back before you were born." Not to sound argumentative, I suggested that perhaps I was a little older than I looked, but that didn't change her story.

She was doing community nursing when she knocked on a client's door, and heard a sing-songy "Come on i-in" from within.

But nobody came to the door, so she knocked again and called out a "Hello? Anybody home?" and the same mellifluous "Come on i-in!" came back to her.

Again she knocked, frustrated that the voice had not opened the door to her, and again the refrain "Come on i-in!" Now she was really banging on the door. She had other appointments to meet that day. Finally the elder occupant came to the door and let her in.

The nurse asked why the client didn't come sooner, and they replied that they hadn't heard her there.

Then who was imploring her to enter?

The parrot.

Triumph of the Kibble (Cat Blog Number Two)

When I told this story around the lunch table at the hospital in the mountains by the lake, Dr. H. blew coffee out his nose. The brief tale itself involves coffee, and this story belongs to Riley, the departed gray tabby.

Riley liked to sit up on the kitchen counters, and there was nothing we could do about it, so we just got used to it. One morning my spouse had placed her cup o' joe not far from him. She had turned away for a moment, then got her cup and resumed the morning caffeinization.

Later she recalled that the coffee tasted a little bitter.

As she neared the bottom of the cup, the bitterness increased, and then she noticed the partially-digested, but still-formed, bits of cat food kibble marinating in the bottom of her java. She then did what we all would have done in a similar situation: she spewed.

Apparently Riley, the ever-sly one, had discreetly woofed up a mouthful of kibble with which to flavor my spouse's coffee. His version of those trendy Torani or Davinci syrups you see lined up like soldiers behind coffee-house counters.

Good kitty! Licking his paws, with a "why are you all looking at me like that?" expression.

Schmanctions

Our current president apparently chose to look the other way as Bayoil and other firms paid Saddam millions of dollars in kickback, violating the so-called sanctions against his sordid regime. U.S. Navy ships in the Gulf stood down and let these tankers through. Nice, that. Money for Saddam's purse, and gas for your car. No food for Iraqi orphans, though.

Let us now take time to recall that Bush's grandfather got his bank taken away from him, as punishment for trading with the Nazis.

What is it with these people? Is it really so difficult to make a decent living honestly?

I am ashamed of this president and his malignant administration. But how many of my fellow Red-Staters maintain not only ignorant pride, but even jealousy of these greedy sickos? How many Circle-K-jerks would gladly jump the cash register to defy sanctions and trade with the enemy, for nothing but money, and how many of them also have friends or family serving in our back-stabbed military?

For that is what this boils down to: Every dollar made by any American company in defiance of those sanctions is a knife in the backs of our servicepeople, and a meal taken away from a child standing forsaken on the burnt sands of Araby.

Shmabortion

As surely as our planet spins, so today, as in every day, some Republican blowhard somewhere will spin the abortion debate against any and all political threats. They've been doing it for over twenty-five years, since the annointment of B-movie actor Ronald Reagan to spearhead the Alzheimerization of this country's noble experiment with democracy.

Once in a great while, and usually at the state or local level, a Republican effort to stifle access to abortion succeeds. Red meat for red state "values" voters, these accomplishments serve to hassle poor and working women who need the service, but the procedure itself still thrives and anyone with the money can get one anytime.

So, the next time you see Representative Redfaced Knuckledragger (Snotsdale) on Faux News screaming at his political opponents about the evils of abortion, keep this in mind: the Republicans do not ever want to lay down their biggest club. They've been bashing the Democrats with this issue for decades, and if abortion is truly banned, they will lose a trusted weapon. They will never outlaw abortion. They need it. Without it, they would not survive as a political party.

What? They could continue to run on economic and foreign policy issues?!

It has been written that our current chief knuckledragger, the Preznit himself, drove his then-underage pregnant girlfriend to have an abortion way back when. (Bartcop laid this out years ago. It's in his archives. Names are named.) We all know about Bob Barr writing a check for one.

It's OK if you're a Republican. Youthful indiscretions. Pre "born again." The sun got in their eyes.

It's the same with military base closings. The Republicans do not want to save money by closing bases, but they do want to threaten Democratic districts with the economic hit that would go along with the loss of a local military installation, and reward Republican districts with military pork.

Obsolete desert airbases, the other white meat.

It's the same with gay-bashing. The Republicans are virulently anti-homosexual, except when it comes to an undisclosed Whitehouse insider who rewards JimmyJeff GuckertGannon with a spiffy press card to presidential briefings, as a token of appreciation for being such a good "top."

It's the same with the sanctity of marriage. Red state divorce rates and the serial marriages of Limbaugh, Gingrich, and the guy who sued his political opponent because he was really only married five times, not six, as she had claimed; Henry Hyde's girlfriend, the guy who had a donkey for a girlfriend when he was growing up on a farm... These are the Republican defenders of the institution of marriage.

Republican commitment to marriage is about as intact as Ann Coulter's hymen.

So again I ask my Republican friends: why do you buy all this?

Where Have I Seen That Before?

It was a commercial for some kind of truck, and one of the selling points was that it got "the best gas mileage of any truck in its class."

People really do care, don't they?

Cat Rambo Hang

We had parakeets at the time, two lovely sweet little things that we kept in a round-sided wire cage suspended from the ceiling in the den of our apartment. We also had two cats: a grey tabby named Riley and a flame-point named Tristan. This is Tristan's story this time around.

It was yet another cold winter night, so we decided to go for Mexican food. There was usually a long wait at the one in Saranac where we lived then, so we drove to Placid. Same food, same owners at that time, but we seemed to like the one in Placid better anyways. It was about a fifteen minute drive.

Even here in The Great Southwest it's hard to find a chili relleno dish as good as the ones at Desperado's. You would not think that. But it's so.

When we got home, we heard faint cat wailing. That weak, tired, "stuck" sound that meddlesome kitties sometimes make when they've come to a sorrowful situation.

We walked through the living room... no problem there; and through the kitchen, into the den.

Tristan had jumped from the back of a chair and latched onto the bottom rungs of the birdcage, where he was hanging from his paws as if strung up by his thumbs (but yes of course cats do not have thumbs.) His own down-stretched body prevented him from unweighting to unlatch his claws from the cage. He mewed pitifully at us. No telling how long he'd been hanging there. An hour or two maybe.

He turned to appeal to us and one paw did come free, leaving him hanging like Stallone in that mountain movie, from one long tired cat-arm.

As we pulled him to relative safety we laughed and laughed. Kitty hugs and solace for Tristan, while Riley looked on with his usual disdain and disgust, as if he were shaking his head and saying "for shame, Tristan my friend, for shame."

Tristan was lithe. But after that he looked like he'd gotten longer.