I ran across this post at

Feministe, of course I respectfully disagree with many of her statements in regards to abortion and Life Chain.The first part of the post deals with the Indiana Right to life group, which of course I’m not familiar with but evidently the site mentions Post-Abortion Stress Syndrome to quote Feministe:

It also stresses something called Post-Abortion Stress Syndrome.

Guess what? It doesn’t exist! At least, not scientifically. It is not a recognized syndrome anywhere in any phychiatric journal or resource, unless that publication houses writers who are anti-abortion. No surprise to you and me, but I wonder how many believe in this “syndrome’s” validity. Enough, apparently, to continue lining our local streets with people holding “Abortion Hurts Women” signs every fall. Aside from a false syndrome and over-hyped risks, I wonder exactly what they mean?

Post abortion stress syndrome can fall under the psychiatric diagnosis of “Post-traumatic Stress Disorder” (PTSD) or “Acute Stress Disorder”. Which you can find information here.

It seems the symtoms are very real and manifested in a variety of ways the head doctors are having some trouble categorizing it. I ran across articles that believe it should be under a new category in the DSM IV, “Religious or Spiritual Problems” or continue under the stress/adjustment disorders. Some clinicians and researchers are sitting on the fence due to studies that show women who have stress and adjustmental disorders are more likely to have abortions.This is definitely a whole post in itself, that I’ll save for an upcoming post.

To continue:

But if there are two things I cannot stand, the first is hypocrisy and the second is spin.

The letter to the editor states, As Christians we believe in the power of prayer and that is why local churches came together to petition God for His mercy on a nation that has allowed the killing of more than 40 million babies.

Prayer can be a powerful thing. Prayer is something that can be performed in public or in private. Prayer is probably not something that includes gathering en masse with political signs.

First, what is political about signs that say:

ABORTION KILLS CHILDREN

JESUS FORGIVES AND HEALS

ADOPTION: THE LOVING OPTION

LORD, FORGIVE US AND OUR NATION

ABORTION HURTS WOMEN

PRAY TO END ABORTION

LIFE—THE FIRST INALIENABLE RIGHT

If it is a true Life Chain event event, it is completely non-political.

When I lived in Iowa, Life Chain was something I helped organize and definitely participated in every year. It was coordinated through the county churches. We had close contacts with other counties and cities within a 100 mile radius. It was always a very quiet prayerful gathering.

Another thing, people have been gathering en masse for prayer for centuries. It’s called church. No..not the building, not the denomination…but a gathering of worshippers.What incenses me about this particular protest, the “Life Chain,” is the denial of the gathering as a political act. It is much less offensive to claim that you gather in the name of a God than in the name of partisan politics, and so they do. While these groups realize that it isn’t God who they have to “petition” for changes in legalization, but state and federal politicians, they continue to evoke the name of a Christain god and claim that their intentions are morally and not politically based.Yes, I guess you could say it’s political because the event is intended to enlist the help of the Supreme Being to influence others.

The purpose of Life Chain:

Accordingly, LIFE CHAIN is not a demonstration intended chiefly for the general public. Instead, its first goal is to minister to its own participants—to those who hold the pro-life messages and declare abortion a grave evil that defames the name and righteousness of God (Leviticus 18:21). Indeed we who call Christ our Savior have failed to intervene as we should have during the past three decades, while over 40 million boys and girls in America alone have been killed through surgical abortion and with additional millions dying from chemical contraceptives and the once prevalent IUD.Now for saying “It is much less offensive to claim that you gather in the name of a God than in the name of partisan politics, and so they do. “Come on now…what country are you from? I can’t believe how fast this nation is turning into Christians being the most politically uncorrect group around. Look for media coverage of the Life Chain. A search on Google News comes back with 70 hits, for an event that took place in over 900 cities. Not really newsworthy is it?

If the event was political all Life Chain would need was 100 democrats a couple of signs holding “Howard Dean for President”…in the middle of Timbuktu Iowa…and the media would of been all over it. Throw in a hog roast and CNN would of been there.

But gather a few Christians and suddenly every damn liberal is screaming there is a hidden agenda. Life Chain is exactly what it says it is.

In regards to education:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If society wants to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies, and thus abortion, we would be much better off communicating valid information with the legitimate backing research to our children and to our communities. We would also provide easy access to contraceptives to those of us who are sexually active, not only to prevent pregnancies, but to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. Denying comprehensive sex education does little more than misinform the masses and perpetuate myths about pregnancy and intercourse.

Of course we could educate on abstinence and taking responsibility for ones own actions….but that’s such a downer.

I’ve posted before how Michigan roads and traffic patterns are FUBAR. I stumbled across this site via the Detroit Free Press. Apparently Michigan has to have it’s own website to explain the stupidity logic behind their reasoning for doing what they do.Make sure you check out the Michigan left hand turn. This is the completely fucked up way that Michiganders have to turn left. To sum it up:When you want to turn left, get rapidly into the right hand lane, turn right, cut across 3 lanes of traffic to get into the far left lane, turn left. And if you are wanting to go some place on the right hand of the street, that means cutting across 3 lanes of traffic to the far right hand side to turn right.The dipshitsexperts say this is to prevent blocking traffic from those turning left to allow smoother flowing traffic. Apparently they don’t give a shit about the traffic flow on the cross street with all those cars dodging across 3 lanes to make a right turn into that damn White Castles.Of course if you are a policeman or drive a mass transit bus, apparently there is an obscure law that states you can turn left wherever the fuck you want.Check below for even more wits of wisdom thats been posted to this official site.

***Update: I obviously screwed up. This is not an official site. Please see the comments.

Well I bought my new phone tonight, it’s charging away. I’m glad to be rid of my other piece of crap. The Sanyo 8100.I’ll give you the review in a couple of weeks.

***Update: Well I’m not off to a good start, when I called to activate it the Sprint rep stated it didn’t have a recognizable valid ID #. To take it back to Best Buy. Well I got to BestBuy at 8:55, let me tell you they are not nearly as nice and agreeable at that moment. After arguing with the sales rep for 10 minutes, they finally exchanged the phone and activated it there..I highly insisted. Well it’s done, I’m back home…and the jury has left the building.

I had another incident with my male Indian nurse Friday, which carried over to today. Friday one of the Unit Managers wrote a disciplinary action for him for 2 serious offenses…failure to give a medication, and failure to properly monitor an IV infusion. Actually these were both termination offenses. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt..offer more training and counseling, my managers are against it, but being the boss I get the last word.He has several excellent qualities and I feel is definitely trainable. His biggest weakness is asking for assistance with something he just don’t get..mainly, which he won’t admit too, is because the managers are women.Well Friday in serving these disciplinary actions he didn’t take it well at all, but better than the last time I talked to him. At least he agreed to sit down this time and listen to what I was telling him. At least when the 2 other managers were in there.Well the meeting ended and he was to follow the inservice director for immediate inservicing on IV’s…which he did for about 10 feet came back in the office and closed the door so it was just the two of us.Well at that point he got in my face and asked why I am not treating him like a man. He told me you do not give men disciplinary actions. I am supposed to treat men with respect and tell them what they are doing wrong. That in his country women treat men with more respect. Alrighty then.I’ve said before I don’t quite respond well when I feel threatened, so at that point I took a step towards him as I pushed him away. Which he continued to try and rant at me…until I told him to shut the hell up. To make a long story short, I gave him a rapid education that I was his boss, woman or not, and he could leave at any time he so chooses or if he continues to screw up it will be at my choosing. I reminded him that in this country…and this is the US, not HIS prior country, nursing is predominately female and no matter where he goes he’s probably going to be working under a female. If he can’t deal with that it’s time to change fields. With that I told him to get the hell out of my office or leave the building. He chose to go back to work.Well this morning he came in to talk to me and said that the Unit Manager who he is currently working under lies and he doesn’t want to work under her anymore. I told him when I had an opening on another unit, he could move.well his wife works there also, has for years and is an excellent nurse. There hasn’t been any problems because I keep them on separate floors. So today he informs me “You move my wife, I’ll take her unit.” Of course I told him it doesn’t work that way. He says, I’ll tell her to move. I told him no he won’t.Anyway..he wasn’t threatening today, but he’s supposed to be decide by tomorrow if he’s going to quit. At this point….good riddance.Damn it, but I think my managers were right this time.

Buffy had a rant. What totally amazed me, she can rant without cussing. I can not drive a mile from my home without cussing. I can’t put on my makeup without cussing. Even my first cup of coffee in the morning I’m thinking “Shit..that’s good.”I can not remember a time I didn’t cuss. I used to be able to cuss in Italian, still remember a few of the words but English has won out over the years.I usually don’t cuss at work or around children. Usually. Sometimes things have slipped out over the years. I remember once when my youngest son was 15 months old and called his Grandpa a jackass that I knew I needed to be more careful. Thankfully it wasn’t worse.Since I’ve moved to Michigan I’ve learned to cuss with “clean” words thanks to my staff. I didn’t even know what a cracker was until four years ago. Not that the clean words help any more. Somebody in another department actually was fired yesterday for saying to another employee “you’re just a pigeon, a buston.” Whatever. Try and figure that out.Cussing is just not what it used to be.

About 9:45am this morning Hell Week officially opened. We had a state surveyor show up to follow up on a complaint we had reported. The complaint was a former employee stole a bank statement from a patient, apparently the same week she did this was when she walked out and quit. That happened to be the week in July I was on vacation.Our business manager about 30 days ago noticed some suspicious withdrawals from the account. Well the stupid ass paid her bills with it and had direct TV installed at her house. Under federal law this is considered abuse and when we discovered it, we reported it. This is kind of a fucked up law, because when you self report you get a federal defiency tag.Ok, fine I knew somebody would be dropping by for a day of survey. So in he comes and during the intake interview with him and my boss I notice another state car pull up, then another, then another…total of 5. Well shit..this isn’t looking good. I asked him how many surveyors he brought with him and of course he says none. Uh oh.Well this week it’s annual survey time. My facility is crawling with surveyors. They usually show up in December but have a 90 day window either side of last years survey. Our window opened up 9/18.Anyway, this will probably be it for me blogging the rest of the week until Saturday. For some reason the song phrase…Send Lawyers, Guns and Money won’t quit going through my head.

See you on the other side.