The World As I Know It

I’m so done with you people. And by “you people”, I mean every one of you self-indulgent, whiny, possessed of an overweening sense of entitlement, self-absorbed ass-hats who STILL refuse to wear a fucking mask or get fucking vaccinated. I was a nurse in an ICU tasked with caring for COVID 19 patients. For nearly a year and a half, we fought for every COVID 19 patient that came through our doors. Many died...some made it to an LTAC to attempt vent weaning and PT/OT. Many of them died as well, mostly from secondary infections and the other sequelae of COVID 19. But after vaccines became widely available, things changed with the Delta variant. We saw younger patients coming into our unit. And the outcomes were much as I described above. But the common denominator was that the most of them were unvaccinated. Those vaccinated patients that did come to us were already immunocompromised and had multiple comorbidities, predisposing them to COVID 19 infection regardless of their vacc...

For months now, the GOP troglodytes infesting the General Assembly have made it their mission to undermine every effort to mitigate the community spread of COVID 19. They have passed legislation which limits the authority of the Ohio Board of Health to deal with this pandemic and will undermine efforts to deal with future pandemics. They have passed legislation limiting the ability of state and local agencies and governments and boards of education, to impose mask mandates. They are debating legislation to ban ALL vaccine mandates. And...of course...Dave Yost has joined 23 other GOP death cult attorneys general in threatening to sue the Biden administration over the COVID 19 vaccine mandates that were recently announced. The depraved indifference displayed by the Ohio GOP to the consequences of their actions is an atrocity bordering on, if not stepping over the line, into sociopathy. Their actions have led us to the point where hospital ED's, ICU's and medical units are at...

In my experinece, the answer to that question is a resounding "NO!" They are simply going through the motions...saying the asked...and ignoring every suggestion offered by frontline hospital staff. Ath which point they embark on whatever stupid, ill-conceived, half-baked, bonus-securing plan they were goinbg to do anyways. But here goes anyways... Firstly, stop treating the frontline staff...nurses, PCT RT, PT/OT, Rad techs et al...like plug-and-play devices for a computer or tv. We're not. Speaking from a nurse's perspective, every unit has a specific skill set that can take 2-3 years to achieve competency. Five, or more years to achieve mastery. You cannot simply take nurses from one clinical setting or new hires/travelers , drop them into another clinical setting and expect them to function at an optimal level. We try mightily, but often leave at the end of a shift full of doubts, misgivings and the stress of caring for patients in a setting we are simply not f...

On June 30th Governor Mike Dewine (R-OH) signed Ohio's two year budget. Given that it was crafted by the Trump loving Ohio GOP, it was heavy on tax cuts and gimme's for the donor class. Buried in that budget bill, however, was a provision that was pure...red...meat for the religious extremist wing of the GOP. The budget contains a provision which codifies discrimination against the LGBTQ community into law. This measure allows "health care workers, hospitals and health insurance providers to deny services that violate their moral or religious beliefs". There is so much wrong with this, but let me start by saying, as a critical care nurse myself, any physician, nurse, pharmacist, or any other member of the allied healthcare professions who would deny care to anyone...on the basis of "moral or religious beliefs", needs to surrender their licenses and leave their respective professions. DeWine had the option to use the line item veto to remove this pernicious, ...

 Over the last 20 years, healthcare in America, especially in tertiary and quaternary care centers, has adopted Lean and Six Sigma assembly line practices to squeeze efficiencies from the healthcare system and their workers. Patients are introduced and one end of the line and emerge intact and improved health, declining or,,,dead. The Lean/Sigma Six models effectively ignore the fact that patients are NOT standardized widgets to be knocked off on an assembly line and nurses are, most definitely, not low skill, interchangeable workers on an assembly line.  The drive to squeeze efficiencies from the healthcare system has become ever more acute in the wake of the COVID 19 pandemic. Data shows that, even before the pandemic, hospitals had thin operating models. Add to that the toll taken by COVID 19, as hospitals had to halt profitable elective treatments and procedures, and devote hospital resources to caring for those suffering from COVID 19 and those operating margins took a no...

  In the wake of the November 2020 election, the GOP could have done some serious soul searching and change the direction of the party. Instead, Republicans towards the dark side. They embraced the murderously, malignantly narcissistic depravity of Donald…fucking…Trump. No longer the “Party of Lincoln” or even Eisenhower, the GOP has turned it’s back on democracy and has become a corrupt, decayed, shambling corpse, fouled by Trump’s utter corruption and depravity. In the weeks following November 3, 2020, the orange-hued shit-gibbon’s campaign filed more than 60 lawsuits challenging the outcome of the election of which, all but one, were thrown out of court. And, in every case brought before the Supreme Court by Donnie’s toadies and lick-spittles, they were told…in the most legalistic terms possible to “Fuck off…”. But that didn’t deter them as they lobbied states to “find votes”, which was again fruitless and have resulted in a criminal investigation into Cheetolini’s efforts to ...

  On Tuesday, Derek Chauvin was convicted on all three counts… 1.       Second-Degree Murder 2.       Third-Degree Murder 3.       Second-Degree Manslaughter The look of confusion and disbelief on his face as the judge read the jury’s verdict was readily apparent. He never expected to be held accountable for his actions leading to the death of George Floyd, as so many other police officers have escaped responsibility for the actions that have led to the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Stephon Clark, Breonna Taylor, and too many others.   There are those…too many in fact…that attribute the violence against Black and Brown Americans by the police as just cases of “bad apples” and, indeed, Chauvin was the quintessential “bad apple”, having 18 complaints filed against him regarding excessive use of force. Of those complaints only two were “clos...

                                                Source: Steve Sack - Star Tribune With legislation before the Senate, which includes the For The People Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the administration’s infrastructure bill, there is an expressed desire for bipartisanship in passing this legislation. President Biden has stated that he is seeking bipartisanship on these issues, but qualified that search for bipartisanship in saying, “Inaction is simply not an option”. Others, having a more absolutist bent, seek bipartisanship at any cost. Key among these voices is Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV). He steadfastly refuses to support the elimination of, or changes to, the Senate Republicans weapon of choice…the filibuster. But more on this later. After the failure of any Republican in either the House or Senate to vote in favor of the COVID 19 Relie...

                                                Source: Georgia Governor's Office On March 25 th Georgia’s Governor, Brian Kemp, signed sweeping legislation aimed at disenfranchising black and brown voters in the state. In signing this misbegotten bill into law, he effectively resurrected the rotting, diseased corpse of Jim Crow. He signed this legislation with a group of white lawmakers surrounding him, in front of a painting fraught with blatantly obvious symbolism. A painting of the Callaway Plantation, where more than 300 slaves were forced to labor in producing the wealth and power these men seek to maintain…at any cost (Wicker, 2021) . As Kemp was signing the bill, Rep. Park Cannon, was knocking at the door in an effort to gain entry to this private livestream of the signing of this pernicious legislation....

  I think we all know, by this point, Twitter's system for reporting violations of its TOS is irreparably broken...burnt...fucked...fried. I've used the system myself to report offenders who have a demonstrable record of hate-filled, racist, misogynistic posts or make clear, unambiguous threats against others. And holding these individuals accountable for their actions is a good thing. At least until they open up an alt account and start all over again.  What I have never done, is report an individual for posting something I disagree with as a "gotcha!" for posting a tweet which is utterly innocuous, but disagreeable to me. Yet this abuse of Twitter's system for reporting TOS violations is being used by right wing trolls, trumpists and other misanthropes to punish those they disagree with...on a daily basis.  The other day, I posted this to Twitter in response to a tweet by some one I follow: Similar observations have been made by others far more qualified than I ...