Archive for November, 2009
President Obama’s Defensive Posture: No Hand Over His Heart During National Anthem–Update
Friday, November 13th, 2009Go over to Pamela Geller’s place and check this out and then come back.
Why won’t President Obama put his hand over his heart, a sign of devotion, during the National Anthem? Even better, why does President Obama protect the family jewels (symbolically) by interlacing his fingers in front of his crotch when the National Anthem plays?
Does the President feel threatened and therefore feels the need to be self-protective during the National Anthem? Is he just bored and trying to figure out what to do with his hands–anything, but show devotion to his country?
It seems to me that President Obama is not comfortable around any patriotic displays. In fact, it seems that any shows of patriotism make him feel defensive. He seems to want to protect himself from the assault.
Update:
@Techaskew on Twitter noted that it could be just another narcissistic display–that President Obama is taking the National Anthem in as if it’s being played for him. Like he’s the perpetual birthday boy and being sung to every time there’s a big event.
Oh blech. I think that might be more wretch-inducing.
Updated again:
“I got your salute right here.”
Via Lucianne
Twitter-cide: Is Twitter Killing Itself?
Thursday, November 12th, 2009Is Twitter trying to kill itself?
That’s the question I’m asking, because it sure seems like it. Here are a list of things I do not like about Twitter currently and many have to do with “innovations” meant to “help” and by “help”, I mean help Twitter not use as much bandwidth.
1. See Everything: Remember when you could see conversations with people even if you weren’t following both participants? I want that feature back, please. Make it something people can turn on and off. I found the best, most interesting people this way…by watching their conversations with other people. It’s a great way to learn, too.
2. Retweet: I read Evan’s rationalization. Here’s what he said:
If five people you follow retweet the same thing, you get five copies, which can be useful but it a lot of noise. This comes up even more in search. Popular users can get retweeted enough to saturate a search query.
This is a way, Evan, to ascertain the importance of a topic to people. I’m often shocked by what gets RT’d. In fact, some things turn into a trending topic because they touch a nerve. It is unpredictable. I don’t mind seeing 30 RT’s in my stream of the same thing. I like it. Now, I can see Twitter not liking it, because again, it takes up space. And this new innovation is all about saving space…for Twitter.
Then, Evan says this:
The other thing some people will not like is that, unlike organic RTs, there’s no way to annotate or leave your own comment when you retweet something with the new system.
This is a problem. Already, I have followers who think I agree with something because I RT it. Many times, I add a comment. It CAN get confusing. Whatever. People see the content morph and can jump in and question. It provokes conversation. And my comments, my take might make the RT relevant in a way that a random RT unannotated would not.
For example, a simple word | “Snort” after some stupid comment can indicate that this tweet is either stupid and/or ridiculous and/or funny. People usually get which.
Again, I only see Twitter benefiting from this feature, not the users. It makes streams less cloggy. Okay, fine. You know what? Make these “features” opt-in/out.
Twitter can be a messy, difficult to follow mish-mash. Oh well. It’s social. It’s conversation where a person is going in and out of the stream. What’s wrong with that? Why does it have to be “clean”?
Some of the fluff is dealt with in 3rd party Apps anyway. A person can filter. And Evan says that a person will only get the info they want. But that’s just it. People can follow the people they want who give the content they want or don’t want. Some is bunk, but every once in a while, there will be something really good. How do you control for that gem?
What I see Twitter doing is trying to take the humanity out of the Twitter–to make this social media less social and more pure information sharing. Yuck. I like Twitter because it’s like the best, hand picked group of friends I could ever want all sharing stuff but sometimes being amazingly juvenile (like the Star Wars Sex meme). That’s called being social and human. It’s fun.
Streamlining Twitter might be nicer for Twitter, taking less bandwidth and server space, but what of the user experience? I already don’t like missing so many conversations. What if I could just have a way to watch all conversations by the people I chose? What if I could RT w/o comment or with comment (tagged, for example) with a pop-out like the TwitPic–a cloud around the original comments with people’s comments?
The solution isn’t to pare information, it’s to make more information accessible. At least, that’s the solution I’d be shooting for.
The Islamofascist Everyone Knew: “You would not want Nidal Hasan in your foxhole.”
Thursday, November 12th, 2009From NPR:
Starting in the spring of 2008, key officials from Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences held a series of meetings and conversations, in part about Maj. Nidal Hasan, the man accused of killing 13 people and wounding dozens of others last week during a shooting spree at Fort Hood. One of the questions they pondered: Was Hasan psychotic?
“Put it this way,” says one official familiar with the conversations that took place. “Everybody felt that if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, you would not want Nidal Hasan in your foxhole.”
And:
Hasan had been a trouble spot on officials’ radar since he started training at Walter Reed, six years earlier. Several officials confirm that supervisors had repeatedly given him poor evaluations and warned him that he was doing substandard work.
Both fellow students and faculty were deeply troubled by Hasan’s behavior — which they variously called disconnected, aloof, paranoid, belligerent, and schizoid. The officials say he antagonized some students and faculty by espousing what they perceived to be extremist Islamic views. His supervisors at Walter Reed had even reprimanded him for telling at least one patient that “Islam can save your soul.”
Participants in the spring meeting and in subsequent conversations about Hasan reportedly included John Bradley, chief of psychiatry at Walter Reed; Robert Ursano, chairman of the Psychiatry Department at USUHS; Charles Engel, assistant chair of the Psychiatry Department and director of Hasan’s psychiatry fellowship; Dr. David Benedek, another assistant chairman of psychiatry at USUHS; psychiatrist Carroll J. Diebold; and Scott Moran, director of the psychiatric residency program at Walter Reed, according to colleagues and other sources who monitor the meetings.
Yep, his brand of crazy was the worst-kept secret in the history of treasonous crazy. And yet, the shame that cannot be named, kept everyone from acting on the obvious: The Army had a psychopathic, Islamofascist nutjob in their midst.
Podcast: The State As God
Thursday, November 12th, 2009America faces a crossroads and most Americans know it. They know that the state invading every aspect of life from constipation to thermostat setting to TV type elevates the state over the individual. If God isn’t making the rules for America, god, in the form of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama, the Triune of I-Know-Better-Than-You-What-Is-Good-For-You will be making the rules. And boy, are they.
So, Americans can either buy the illusion–that the state will care for them. Or, Americans can recognize that no human power can adequately care for the mind, body, and spirit. And when the state does care for basic survival needs, it starves the mind and spirit needs as a result.
John Hawkins joins me to discuss this topic–oh, and health care, the shooting at Fort Hood and lots of other topics are woven in together.
Download MP3
To subscribe on iTunes, just click here!
When Melissa isn’t on the radio, you can find her at melissaclouthier.com and on Twitter. Her username is MelissaTweets.
Reebok Reduces Women To Tits And Ass
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009I’m sure this video is meant to be somehow affirming:
Used to be, that a woman was reduced to her bits and pieces by the creepy old guy in the office who didn’t know better. You know, he was from the older generation, like Bill Clinton.
This nonsense is being foisted on women by Reebok. It’s supposed to be an encouragement to what? Wear more revealing tops so guys don’t stare at a girl’s fabulous butt?
The video is so stupid, condescending and sexist that it makes me completely disinterested in ever buying anything Reebok again. The thing is, I’m not prudish. I also get the notion that “sex sells”. But the flaw in this video is the substance as much as the form. Reebok indulges in the worst of stereotypes–competitive petty women angling to get the most male attention–and turns a woman against herself. She competes with herself. That is, her boobs want to best her butt. What the hell?
It’s stupidity.
Via @Ziggy_Susan on Twitter
A Veteran
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009I am a weenie. How big a weenie am I? I am such a big weenie that I’ve struggled with whether I’d have the internal fortitude to shoot an intruder. I’m such a weenie that even in the defense of my own life or my own home, I’m not sure I could do what needed to be done. My cowardice shames me. My fear and lack of resolve–my inability to be sure that I would do the right thing, if pressed–makes me weak. I know this.
And so, I’m full of respect for those who would take up arms and defend a nameless, faceless me, not knowing me, and do it without doubt and with resolution.
A soldier hasn’t formed a relationship with me. He isn’t taking or shooting a bullet because he likes me so much that he wants me to live. Frankly, I worry that if said soldier knew me better he’d step out of the way and let nature take its course. No, a soldier fights and dies for me because he’s defending an idea greater than me: That freedom is worth fighting for and that even my little slice of freedom is worth defending.
I find this profoundly humbling. When I see a soldier stride past me in the airport, on his or her way to do his or her business, I feel a strange mixture: A debt of gratitude that can’t be paid back, pride in their greatness, and humility that they can do what I fear I’m incapable of.
The fact is, I don’t know what I’m capable of and I don’t want to know. I hope to never be tested this way. And yet a soldier or a marine walks toward his or her fears, confronts them, and conquers them.
A Veteran knows things: He knows life is precious, because he’s seen life cut short. He knows life is strange, because those that should die live and those who have the most life sometimes die. He knows life is not easily wrapped up in a box philosophically. He knows that plans fail. He knows there’s such a thing as luck. A veteran chooses his hard lessons and walks toward them.
I am grateful for those who volunteer and serve. Their honor, duty and defense of the weak means I can sit here and type and ponder my character while they go fortify theirs through tough choices and action. Thank you to all who give me this luxury.
Veteran’s Day: A true celebration.
Podcast: Fort Hood And Health Care
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009John Hawkins joins me to discuss the tragedy and what it all means.
Download MP3
To subscribe on iTunes, just click here!
When Melissa isn’t on the radio, you can find her at melissaclouthier.com and on Twitter. Her username is MelissaTweets.
Cap-n-Trade Gives Obama Strong Man Powers?
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009Wanted to share this provocative tidbit from the Washington Examiner:
Both the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade energy approved earlier this year and the version just okayed by Sen. Barbara Boxer’s Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s Democrats (Republicans boycotted the vote) contains an obscure but nasty bureaucratic provision that requires President Obama to act like Venezuelan strong man Hugo Chavez.
Here’s how: The bills require a federal declaration of a “climate emergency” if world greenhouse gas levels reach 450 parts per million. Guess what? The Pacific Northwest National Lab says it is a virtual certainty that level will be reached within a few months. The bill then requires the president to “direct all Federal agencies to use existing statutory authority to take appropriate actions…to address shortfalls” in achieving needed greenhouse gas reductions.
Ever get the feeling that you’re unarmed and being assaulted on all sides?
A Firsthand Account From Inside Fort Hood
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009A letter a blogger friend forwarded:
Dear Family and Friends,
Thank you for your thoughts and prayers for us and the Fort Hood community, a community that has been deeply wounded both physically and spiritually. The past day and a half have been very challenging. I write to share my somewhat-insider perspective on the events. Please know these have been humbling hours for me and I write not to glamorize myself or this tragedy. I hope my personal experience is helpful as you all are processing the events.
At about 1:40 pm local time on Thursday, I was informed that a mass casualty situation was evolving at Fort Hood. At that time I was working in a trailer adjacent to the hospital. The only information I had was that one or more gunmen had opened fire at a SRP site, a type of processing facility where many soldiers pass through daily. Knowing the high density of soldiers at the SRP site, I braced myself mentally for the possibility of a large number of casualties. Upon exiting the trailer, I immediately heard sirens and saw several ambulances driving up to the ER bays, dropping off casualties, and turning right around to pick up more. I ran up to the hospital.
The hospital has pre-designated areas for personnel to report to in the case of a mass casualty/disaster situation. Ours (family medicine docs) is the family medicine clinic, located on the first floor of the hospital, about 100 feet from the ER. All casualties were going initially to the ER, where they were quickly triaged and dispersed from there to the operating room, our clinic, or elsewhere. There were already casualties being treated when I got to the clinic. We broke up quickly into teams, with one or more docs and nurses with each patient. All the patients had bullet wounds-not a common site in a family medicine clinic. Fortunately or not, several of the staff had extensive trauma experience from prior deployments. Initially there was no morphine available, so the halls were filed with shouts of pain as the patients were examined.
My first patient was a young second lieutenant. Her uniform trousers were cut almost completely off, a standard practice during trauma evaluation, designed to avoid missing any injuries. A bullet hole can be pretty small, and one injury can easily distract from others. The less immediately obvious wound can become deadly if not appreciated on the initial assessment. I had never treated a patient with a gunshot wound before Thursday. Thankfully the Army has sent us all the Ft. Sam Houston to an ATLS (Advanced Trauma Life Support) course, a course designed for exactly this setting, where a non-trauma-surgeon is evaluating and stabilizing a trauma victim.
When we asked the 2LT what happened and she was able to tell a sensible story in complete sentences, I knew that for the moment her airway, breathing, and circulation were intact. She had a tourniquet and some bright red blood on her left thigh, and said the shooter had looked her in the eye, then shot her in the leg. “He could have shot me in the head, but he didn’t.” I left the tourniquet in place, since it seemed to be working fine. I swept my arm under her body, looking for any blood when I pulled it out. Her vital signs were good. Her heart and lungs sounded good. She had IV access with fluids running. She had no other pain other than her leg where she was wounded, and she had good pulses and sensation in that foot, all encouraging signs. We gave her some morphine, removed the dressing and saw an entry wound, but no exit wound was visible. We got ready to take her to get x-rays.
Then, here comes the cavalry-the orthopedic surgeons arrived! They quickly examined the 2LT, agreed she was stable, and moved on. X-rays showed a bullet near her hip with no fractures. Much later in the night, after reviewing the patient’s x-rays with ortho again, she was released to go home with instructions to come back to our clinic in the morning for a re-check. A couple ER physicians came through to offer their help; not satisfied at saving lives in their own area, they offered their expertise to us as well. We were glad to have it.
We moved from patient to patient, making sure everyone was accounted for and getting the appropriate treatment and that their loved ones were contacted, to know that they were safe. Soldiers barely out of high school were dying in the ER. A new, young mother died on the operating room table. A family medicine intern with a baby of her own was there. There was no time to pause or grieve.
Based on the numbers you have heard, the vast majority of victims were treated at our hospital, but the flow of patients eventually abated. I was hearing little bits and pieces of what had happened; there were conflicting reports on the number of soldiers killed, the number of shooters, and the number of locations. A patient told me the shooter was in uniform, a Major, a field-grade officer, and he had called everyone to attention before opening fire.
Later we heard the unthinkable, that this was indeed an Army officer, but worse, a physician, entrusted to heal but causing great harm instead. This man had on occasion worked at the hospital, covering on weekends. Sometimes the family medicine inpatient service admits patients that have intentionally overdosed or are drunk and saying they want to harm themselves. Once these types of patients are cleared medically, they need psychiatric evaluation to determine if they are safe to go home; one of the family medicine staff physicians, Dr. K., had consulted this psychiatrist (the shooter) on such a patient only 2 weeks ago.
When she heard who the shooter was, Dr. K. was besieged with guilt, saying that she knew he wasn’t quite right, that he seemed depressed, that she should have done something. She broke down in sobs in the middle of the clinic. A couple of us sat down in a clinic room with her and listened. My mentor, a female Major and West Point grad, hugged her and let her cry. It was probably the first hug she’d had since her husband deployed to Iraq in September. They got 10 days notice.
I have never been so proud of our clinic. There wasn’t a nurse in that clinic that wouldn’t run to the other side of the hospital to get something if a patient needed it. The cleaning lady was unreal-I thought some of that blood would never come off, and by the time she was done (quickly!) I would’ve eaten dinner of those tables.
Things were letting up for us in our area, so we went to other floors of the hospital, helping do things like write admission orders for patients so there medications could be brought up from the pharmacy. The general surgeons were doing yeoman’s work. They were cutting open chests and bellies and battling their mightiest to repair the damage done by the bullets. They mostly succeeded, doing the work of specialists in cardiothoracic and vascular surgery, simply because they were it, they were our best hope.
My fellow residents and I did what we could to help; most of us left around 9 pm simply because there wasn’t anything else to do. I was so proud of those guys and their families; they would have stayed the whole night if there was a way they could help out. A good friend of mine stayed to carry the Internal Medicine on-call pager; I went home to xxx, then went back around 2 am to take the pager back from him. No matter, no one was going to the ER, so there were no admissions. I think they thought, “You know, I’m not shot, I think I’ll be okay.” I did what I could to help out in the ICU.
Another patient died in the time I was at home, a clean-cut 21-year-old. He had extensive chest and abdominal wounds, the worst to his aorta. When he arrived to the ICU from the OR, he had what surgeon’s call the “unhappy triad” of hypothermia (his rectal temperature was 88 degrees), acidosis, and coagulopathy. It is rare to survive after reaching that point. He got 50 units of blood. Hospital workers were donating their blood. He was getting 4 IV medications to raise his blood pressure. He went back to the OR. He had cardiopulmonary arrest, was successfully resuscitated once, but not the second time. They gave him everything they had, even when it was probably futile, because what else can you do but everything? This is a kid who will never know what it’s like to fall in love and marry, to have children, to grow old. There is no tomorrow for him.
There was another young 20-year-old private with a bullet in his chest, only it inexplicably stopped at his sternum, and one in his back, only it never made it past the muscle. When I saw him up on the wards, all he was worried about was when he could go downstairs and smoke. A little walking miracle with a pack-a-day habit, no clue how lucky he was and, for the moment, some extra metal in him.
Friday, there were a lot of generals at our little hospital. They visited every single injured soldier. George W. Bush, the former president, visited the hospital in the evening. Say what you will about his politics, but that man was here, and that counts for a lot in my book.
Keep everyone at Fort Hood in your prayers, especially the families of the fallen. There are not words to describe how sad and tragic this is. As a Christian, it is difficult to understand and hard to accept. Abstract ideas about the effects of sin on creation, the depravity of mankind as a whole, and the presence of evil forces in the world give way quickly to the concrete reality that mothers will bury their sons and daughters in the days ahead, and everyone knows that is not the way it’s supposd to be. If I can offer you hope in the midst of this darkness, it is that I have seen all around me in these troubling hours people realizing their potential to do great good and to come together in unity to sacrifice for others. We as Christians must always remember that our God, not willing to allow us to suffer alone, took the form of a man and suffers along with us. When His friend Lazarus died, John 11:35 tells us that, like us, Jesus wept, and I know He still weeps along with us tonight..
God bless you all and we love you,
xxx and xxx
