I lied when I said that I wasn't going to ever write about my old place of employment ever again. I made a mistake, and went and really poked around the web site, and I'm so disgusted, that I just have to share.

But this time, I really mean it. Never again. Unless they sue me for this.
On the front page, the word "surgeon" is spelled wrong. And spelled wrong again on the jump. Of course, who needs to use spell check, a dictionary, or even proof read anything, because, (repeat the PR mantra after me)"It doesn't have to be done right, it only has to be done."

There is no more interactivity on the site. Newsletters, meeting reports, minutes, everything is now a PDF, and not a third generation, interactive PDF either. Just a straight PDF, and not even those are made correctly. The pagination is off, leaving widows and orphans in the text, page headers floating in the middle of a page and blank pages piling up at the end of the document.

Things that are done with cut and paste include things like header for a page jump, stuck in the middle of the rest of the pasted text. Paragraphs are not spaced with any regularity, so sometimes there is a double space, and other times it's just a long, mashed run on.

The cafeteria menus are particularly wretched, appearing in a variety of type faces and sizes, and with items repeated because (again) there is no proof reading done by the Pointy Haired Boss or his new pet girl.

Finally, just to make you laugh, the so-called media section consists of the listing of the PR staff. It is also out of date, seeing as half of the people on the list are no longer in the employ of the institution. While you're looking at that page, take a good hard look at the phone numbers listed for the PR staff. Most of them don't take their own calls. They all list the front desk as their private number.

At JMH, we have a single standard of care: we treat everyone like shit.

Really. I promise. I have to spew this, and then I can let it go forever. I think. Maybe.

The RLA and I went out the other day to a pretty good Mexican restaurant, and who did we see there but the Boy Wonder, my former co-worker. And did he have stories to tell.
Which, as it happens, I would rather have not heard.

The Big Guy, one of our other team members, left to go to the Health Plan. The Database Guru took early retirement. Took is a liberal use of the word, because it was really more of a "You will retire now, take the pathetic excuse for a package we are offering, be glad of it and don't let the door hit you on the way out. You have four days to pack and go."

That left the Boy Wonder and the Pointy Haired Boss as the only two people in the web group. Boy Wonder had to pick up all the work from the Big Guy and the Database Guru, in addition to the work he already did, and that was pretty much everything to do with the intranet.

The Pointy Haired Boss was left doing my work, which was the web site. But. The PR director left a couple of weeks after I did, and Loogie never came back from medical leave (the hospital wouldn't let her, even though she wanted to) and the interim staff over in PR wouldn't know how to supply content to a web site if their lives or jobs depended on it... and we all know that it doesn't.

That meant that all the PHB was doing was updating the cafeteria menus once a week, and the employee newsletter once every other week, and the calendar on an as-needed basis. He does this by cut and paste, and he doesn't do it right, because when the page displays there are misspellings and various type faces and sizes.

Nevertheless, the PHB was "overworked" by all of this (it was cutting into his solitaire time and his on-line hunt for dates) and so he got a new employee. The department secretary/billing clerk who had taken a class or two in web design at night school and wanted most desperately to join the web team, finally got her wish and is on half duty learning from the PHB how to do the cut and paste.

In the meantime, the entire medical information services group is being outsourced piecemeal. The guys who sold us our web program are back in town, pitching new services. Since we didn't buy what we really needed the first time, and since we didn't buy enough licenses for everyone to do their work, I'm guessing that they'll just pick up the whole thing.

None of which is what I was told by the Senior Vice Weasel President when they threw me out the door.

Further, the PHB will be staying on at the hospital until he retires. Now, he's over 60. He was eligle for early retirement. He is a manager. He was in the DROP, which was an early/extended retirement program. According to all the promises made to the hospital staff, only managers would be laid off, only people eligible for early retirement (55 and older) would be forced into early retirement, and only people in the DROP would be expedited through the process and sent home.

Except for the PHB, beloved by his incompetent director, the Balding Middle Management Ken Doll. Beloved and protected and allowed to continue on, playing solitaire, sleeping at his desk, and searching for love on the internet while I file for unemployement and wonder what the fuck happened to being good at your job as a requirement for staying employed.

The Rude Pundit has all there is to say about the horrible spectacle that has just (I hope and pray) ended. I suspect we'll keep hearing more and more in days to come, but I hope against hope that it's over.

Now that the media circus is shutting down outside the hospice, I hope we can get a little focus on some other stories I've seen buried in the back pages of my local rag.
Item 1: It is important to remember, in the coming days, as the right wing will start to demonize the judge who wrote this, that Judge Stanley F. Birch Jr. is generally conservative, and was appointed by President George H. W. Bush. The Shrub's very own daddy, and no milquetoast liberal his own self.

"In resolving the Schiavo controversy, it is my judgement that, despite sincere and altruistic motivation, the Legislative and Executive branches of our government have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people -- our constitution.

"I conclude that Pub.L.109-3[Congress' March 21 law] is unconstitutional and, therefore, this court and the district court are without jurisdiction in this case.

"Because these provisions constitute legislative dictation of how a federal court should exercise its judicial functions, the act invades the province of the judiciary and violates the separation of powers principle.

"When the fervor of political passions moves the Executive and Legislative branches to act in ways inimical to basic constitutional principles, it is the duty of the judiciary to intervene. If sacrifices to the independence of the judiciary are permitted today, precedent is established for the constitutional transgressions of tomorrow. Accordingly, we ust conscientiously guard the independence of our judiciary and safeguard the Constitution, even in the face of the unfathomable human tragedy that has befallen Mrs. Schiavo and her family and the recent events related to her plight which have troubled the consciences of many."

Got it? Separation of powers. Violating the principles of the Constitution.

Item 2. This was published in yesterday's New York Times. It is an op-ed piece written by a Republican.

In the Name of Politics
By JOHN C. DANFORTH, Published: March 30, 2005

St. Louis — BY a series of recent initiatives, Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians. The elements of this transformation have included advocacy of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, opposition to stem cell research involving both frozen embryos and human cells in petri dishes, and the extraordinary effort to keep Terri Schiavo hooked up to a feeding tube.

Standing alone, each of these initiatives has its advocates, within the Republican Party and beyond. But the distinct elements do not stand alone. Rather they are parts of a larger package, an agenda of positions common to conservative Christians and the dominant wing of the Republican Party.

Christian activists, eager to take credit for recent electoral successes, would not be likely to concede that Republican adoption of their political agenda is merely the natural convergence of conservative religious and political values. Correctly, they would see a causal relationship between the activism of the churches and the responsiveness of Republican politicians. In turn, pragmatic Republicans would agree that motivating Christian conservatives has contributed to their successes.

High-profile Republican efforts to prolong the life of Ms. Schiavo, including departures from Republican principles like approving Congressional involvement in private decisions and empowering a federal court to overrule a state court, can rightfully be interpreted as yielding to the pressure of religious power blocs.

In my state, Missouri, Republicans in the General Assembly have advanced legislation to criminalize even stem cell research in which the cells are artificially produced in petri dishes and will never be transplanted into the human uterus. They argue that such cells are human life that must be protected, by threat of criminal prosecution, from promising research on diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and juvenile diabetes.

It is not evident to many of us that cells in a petri dish are equivalent to identifiable people suffering from terrible diseases. I am and have always been pro-life. But the only explanation for legislators comparing cells in a petri dish to babies in the womb is the extension of religious doctrine into statutory law.

I do not fault religious people for political action. Since Moses confronted the pharaoh, faithful people have heard God's call to political involvement. Nor has political action been unique to conservative Christians. Religious liberals have been politically active in support of gay rights and against nuclear weapons and the death penalty. In America, everyone has the right to try to influence political issues, regardless of his religious motivations.

The problem is not with people or churches that are politically active. It is with a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement.

When government becomes the means of carrying out a religious program, it raises obvious questions under the First Amendment. But even in the absence of constitutional issues, a political party should resist identification with a religious movement. While religions are free to advocate for their own sectarian causes, the work of government and those who engage in it is to hold together as one people a very diverse country. At its best, religion can be a uniting influence, but in practice, nothing is more divisive. For politicians to advance the cause of one religious group is often to oppose the cause of another.

Take stem cell research. Criminalizing the work of scientists doing such research would give strong support to one religious doctrine, and it would punish people who believe it is their religious duty to use science to heal the sick.

During the 18 years I served in the Senate, Republicans often disagreed with each other. But there was much that held us together. We believed in limited government, in keeping light the burden of taxation and regulation. We encouraged the private sector, so that a free economy might thrive. We believed that judges should interpret the law, not legislate. We were internationalists who supported an engaged foreign policy, a strong national defense and free trade. These were principles shared by virtually all Republicans.

But in recent times, we Republicans have allowed this shared agenda to become secondary to the agenda of Christian conservatives. As a senator, I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I did not spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of marriage. Today it seems to be the other way around.

The historic principles of the Republican Party offer America its best hope for a prosperous and secure future. Our current fixation on a religious agenda has turned us in the wrong direction. It is time for Republicans to rediscover our roots.

John C. Danforth, a former United States senator from Missouri, resigned in January as United States ambassador to the United Nations. He is an Episcopal minister.

Item 3. Privatizing the Border Patrol. This story makes me think of Kevin Costner's agonizingly bad "The Postman", because I think that it could be the genesis of that film's army. You know, the cavalry led by the lunatic former copier salesman.

By ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN

TOMBSTONE, Ariz. (AP) - Hundreds of volunteers, some of them armed, are expected to take up positions along the Mexican border Friday and begin patrolling for illegal immigrants - an exercise some fear could attract racist crackpots and lead to vigilante violence.

Organizers of the Minuteman Project said the civilian volunteers, many of whom were recruited over the Internet, will meet first for a rally in this one-time silver mining town, then fan out across 23 miles of the San Pedro Valley to watch the border for a month and report sightings of illegal activity to Border Patrol agents.

Minuteman field operations director Chris Simcox described the project as "the nation's largest neighborhood watch group" and said one of the goals is to make the public aware of how porous the border is.

Jim Gilchrist, a retired accountant from Aliso Viejo, Calif., who organized the project, said that some volunteers will carry handguns, which is allowed under Arizona law, but are being instructed to avoid confrontation, even if shot at.

Still, law enforcement officials and human rights advocates are worried about the potential for bloodshed.

Critics contend the project may attract anti-immigrant racists and vigilantes looking to confront illegal immigrants. At least one white supremacist group has mentioned the project on its Web site.

"They are domestic terrorists that represent a danger to the country and could promote a major border conflict that will have serious ramifications and consequences," said Armando Navarro, a University of California-Riverside political science professor and coordinator of the National Alliance for Human Rights, made up mostly of Hispanic activists.

Michael Nicley, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson sector, said the volunteers are "not the kind of help the Border Patrol is asking for."

Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever said he fears immigrant smugglers might open fire on the volunteers.

"I wouldn't anticipate that people of that persuasion would act or react any differently to anybody, citizen or law enforcement alike, if they were confronted and felt like their cargo was in jeopardy," he said.

The project's organizers gave assurances the volunteers will be closely monitored. "If it gets to a situation where someone's life is in danger," said David Helppler, Minuteman security coordinator, "I will end the project."

Project organizers said they expect 800 to 1,000 volunteers. How many might actually show is unclear; similar efforts in the past few years flopped. One of them drew only about a half-dozen people.

On Wednesday, the Homeland Security Department announced that it is assigning 534 additional agents to the porous Arizona border to help keep out potential terrorists and illegal immigrants.

The 370-mile Arizona border is considered the most vulnerable stretch of the 2,000-mile southern border. Of the 1.1 million illegal immigrants caught by the Border Patrol last year, 51 percent crossed into the country at the Arizona border.

Some people in this town nearly 30 miles north of the Mexican border, best known as the site of the 1881 shootout at the OK Corral, are eagerly awaiting the volunteers' arrival.

Tombstone Mayor Andree De Journett thinks of the volunteers as tourists and said they could boost the local economy.

"I've met five or six of them, they haven't been too bad so far," he said, estimating that 500 extra visitors staying for a month could spend $10,000 or more locally per day.

Marilynn Slade, Tombstone's city clerk, said the more attention drawn to illegal immigration, the better.

"The vast majority of the people feel that the feds should be dealing more aggressively with the problem," she said. "There's a huge, huge cry down here."

Item 4: The Draft is Coming, The Draft is Coming. This from Cox News Service.

The United State' all-volunteer military will reach its "breaking point" in Iraq by mid-2006, two experts said, but U.S. and Army officials have rejected plans for a draft

By Bob Dart

Washington - If American forces aren't pulling out of Iraq in a year, a draft will be needed to meet manpower requirements, military analysts warned Wednesday.

With recruitment lagging and no end in sight for U.S. forces in Iraq, the "breaking point" for the nation's all volunteer military will be mid-2006, said Lawrence Korb, a draft opponent and assistant defense secretary in the Reagan administration, and Phillip Carter, a former Army captain and an advocate of conscription.

"America's all-volunteer military simply cannot deploy and sustain enough troops to succeed in places like Iraq while still deterring threats elsewhere in the world," Carter concluded in the March issue of Washington Monthly.

Korb is a seniour fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, and a senior advisor to the Center for Defense Information. Carter is an attorney who writes on military affairs for Slate.com and other media. They debated at a symposium on the draft Wednesday.

While conceding that the Army, Marines, National Guard and Army Reseve -- the branches serving most in Iraq -- face recruitment difficulties, military officials have denied any ploans to revive the draft, which was replaced by an all-volunteer force in 1973.

"The 'D-word' is the farthest thing from my thoughts," Army Secretary Francis Harvey said at a Pentagon press briefing last week. He said the all-volunteer force has proved its value and applauded the performance of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"When you get over there, there's no difference between the active, the Reserves and the National Guard. The quality is high across the board... It's seamless," he said.

During his reelection campaign, President BUsh declared flatly that he would not reinstate the draft. And there is little support for conscription on Capitol Hill.

"Today, no leading politician in either party will come anywhere near the idea -- the draft having replaced Social Security as the third rail of American politics," Carter wrote.

However, the analysts said that the all-volunteer army is on the verge of "breaking" under current circumstances. The 3rd Infantry Division based in Fort Stewart, Ga., and the 4th Infantry Division based in Fort Hood, Texas, are among the units that are being sent back for a second tour in Iraq.

The National Guard and Reserves historically depend on men and women leaving active duty to fill their ranks, Carter pointed out. But they're not going to join if it means they will be sent right back to Iraq in an activated unit, he said. Military men, women and machines are all suffering from repeated deployments.

Korb, assistant secretary of defense for manpower from 1981 through 1985, said the current rotation is unfair to the "patriotic" men and women who voklunteered for military service and are stuck in a cycle in and out of Iraq. SInce only a tiny segment of the populace is sacrificing, there is no poitical pressure to change the system, he said.

"If you had a draft right now, I think you'd be out of Iraq," Korb said.

The American society "hasn't gotten the message that we're at war," agreed Carter.

"Those at peril are completely divorced from those in power," said moderator Mark Shields, a syndicated columnist and TV commentator.

--- And here I (Miz Shoes) would like to point out that if the Bush administration hadn't made it illegal to show our own war dead, if this war was on TV like Viet Nam was, if President Bush even once went to a single military funeral, then maybe the American public would know that we are at war. A real, horrible, killing war.

Last night I made a baby portobello mushroom and brocolli rabe risotto. It was magnificent, thank you very much, but that isn't the point. It was merely the starting point for a poignant train of thought.
I was prepping and preparing my "meez" and realized that my knife was dull. One of my crazy neighbors had just sharpened it, too, and so that led me to think of how my father could sharpen a knife so that it held a razor edge. Many scars on my fingers are proof of that.

The thought of my father and his knives led me quickly to a scene in the family kitchen, shortly before his final decline. I had gone up to visit and he made kippers for me and my brother on a Sunday morning. He could barely stand, but he insisted on doing this for us.

Fried kippers were a Sunday morning treat for most of my growing up time. It was Daddy's signature dish. Fried, greasy, fish-stinky and with lots of chopped onions, sauteed in butter until they were carmelized (if not slightly burnt) and eaten hot with garlic toast... for breakfast. My mother hated the smell. My cousins were appalled by them. The RLA nearly passed out the first time he saw/smelled kippers. In fact, in all the years of trying to share this delicacy with friends and family, the only person who ever warmed up to kippers was Star, and she's Swedish.

I finally managed to shake off the funk, and started sauteeing the onions and the baby portobellos. I added the arborio rice and started to think about my mother's cooking as I waited for the rice to become transparent.

My mother was a fine cook and an even better baker, but she was also a homemaker in the 50s and 60s. Even though she owned Julia Child's cookbooks, she was much more at ease with The Joy of Cooking. My mother never made a risotto.

Which thought then led me to her current state, and how the nurses at the home all think I look just like her. An assessment which is only right and fair. And that takes me back to a conversation with my mother maybe thirty years ago, when she told me that, not only did she believe in reincarnation, but she believed that I was her mother, who had died when my mother was only six months old.

That has always stuck with me, that I am my mother's mother. Now that she has Alzheimer's, she has regressed to a point where she thinks she's still in school. She talks about her father's store. And I am her caregiver, so in some sense, I am, in fact, her mother. And so why shouldn't I look just like her, or her me, since this whole thing is becoming a quantum singularity.

Now the rice is ready, and I must shake off all the ghosts, and continue my meal. But my mind? it is a weapon of mass distraction, and many things remind me of many things.

Yesterday the Herald featured yet another story about Terri Schiavo and her disfunctional family. Who knew that she had so many sisters and brothers? But there they are, fomenting civil disobedience and giving us such questionable quotes as this:

"If she is in fact dying so peacefully and easily, why not allow a camera in there to videotape it? This is heinous, what's happening, absolutely heinous. This is absolutely barbaric."
And you know what? I agree with him, except I would apply that statement TO him.

Who the fuck would want to allow cameras to film someone you love dying?

Let me tell you people, I was with my father when he drew his last breath. He was not alone. He was surrounded by family. We loved him. It was as peaceful a death as one could have under the circumstances. There is no way in hell or on earth that I or any of my family would have wanted it taped. It was not fucking beautiful. It was heart-wrenching. And private. Private. Maybe the Schindlers should go look that word up in a dictionary and take themselves out of the spotlight and grieve in private.

Then we have the assertion by her parents that she tried to say "I want to live." What she actually "said" (maybe) was "AHHHHH WAHHHHH".

I want to live. I want to die. Water....

AHHHH WAHHHH. Or maybe it was just ahhhwahh, the only verbalization a person who's merely got pinkish jello where their brain used to be can make.

Let me translate: I want you all to go away and leave me in peace.

I read all of the comments on my previous post. I watched the video that Allie suggested I watch. My interpretation of that video was light years opposed to hers.

She saw a person capable of relating to the things around her. I saw the random grunts and cries that issue from someone in a persistant vegetative state.

I have been in the hospital room with someone in that condition. It is heartbreaking, and one wants to believe that those noises are coming in response to some stimulus one is providing, but it just isn't so. The groans coming from my father in law were just that. Groans. They were in response to the pain of breathing through a respirator.

If I were asked, and I am not, to decipher Ms. Schiavo's moans I would say that they are pleas to be let slip this mortal coil.
Which brings me to the (once more) faulty logic of the so-called Christians who rally to her hospice to beg for her life. If they believe in a just and righteous G-d, then they should be begging for Ms. Schiavo to be disconnected from life support so that their G-d can grant her healing via miracle.

If they don't think their G-d capable of a miracle, or merely disinclined to prove Himself for the likes of us non-believers, then they should be praying for her death so that she can be granted access to the perfect afterlife that they believe awaits her. Why would they want her to "live" like this when in their version of heaven, she can have her complete body back and attain bliss?

In some way or another, this brings me round to this article:

"Evolution Reference Hurts Volcano Movie"

"CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) - IMAX theaters in several Southern cities have decided not to show a film on volcanoes out of concern that its references to evolution might offend those with fundamental religious beliefs." (Read the complete story)

I have a suggestion for all of us not offended by references to evolution (NOT A FUCKING THEORY, asshats) but offended by the ability of a vocal, religious minority to overthrow the rights of the many:

Boycott. Yes. Boycott. If IMAX refuses to show a movie because they don't want to offend the religious right who might boycott them if they do show the movie, then boycott IMAX for being craven cowards. Not just during the run of whatever they show in place of the volcano film, but until they grow a fucking spine. Ditto for anyone and anything else that caves to the right. If some business or other wants to keep the minority among their list of paying customers, then let that be their ONLY customer base.

If the basis for caving in to a threat of a boycott of the religious right is that the money is too great to lose, then let the entity that has caved discover how much more money there is to lose when they lose their integrity.

Which also ties in with this story referrenced in today's Dear Abby:

"The majority of high school students assign little or no value to the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment: freedom of the press, speech and religion." (read the complete story)

And it only gets worse, as 36 percent of them think newspapers should not be allowed to publish without government approval.

Back when I was still a Yellow Puppy, I started an independent student newspaper at my high school. It's title? "The First Amendment" and we published poetry and storied and things that had little to do with what the administration told us was fit to publish.

But that was the 1960s, when the SDS was in full flower, and to question authority was a duty of all youth. Now? Feh. All this latest generation wants is to be, like Ms. Schiavo, force fed what others tell them is the truth. G-d forbid they ever wake up.