March 2, 2012

Gongs, Cymbals, and Pharisees

Much of what I know about love I learned in a ramshackle crisis pregnancy center on the wrong side of the tracks.  For more than five years I volunteered every week at a little crisis pregnancy center.  I helped in the clothing ministry, ta...

January 25, 2012

We Know How You Feel

Before we first-year nursing students were let loose on the hospital floor, we had to take a communication class, also known as "How to Talk to a Patient."  We learned useful techniques such as active listening and interpreting non-verbal cues....

September 30, 2011

What If We Held a Debate and Nobody Came?

When it comes to radio personalities, Michael Savage is usually not my cup of tea.  But I nearly stood up and cheered when I recently heard him on Laura Ingraham's show. Ms. Ingraham had earlier in the program exhaustively analyzed the previous ...

August 2, 2011

Does This Deficit Make Me Look Fat?

It's the question that strikes terror into the heart of every new husband.  His wife emerges from the bedroom and asks, "Does this dress make me look fat?"  Happily married men will tell the newbie husband this is not the time for honesty. ...

July 26, 2011

Be Our President, Not Our Parent

Almost twenty years ago, ponytailed Denton Walthall stood in the first ever town hall-style presidential debate and asked a question that shall forever live in infamy: The focus of my work as a domestic mediator is meeting the needs of the children ...

July 15, 2011

Negotiating with Lunatics

One of the benefits of having been a nurse for over thirty years is that people will occasionally allow me to be brutally honest.  For example, I can get away with telling an acquaintance, "God did not create gastric reflux medication just so yo...

June 27, 2011

Pavlov's Voters

In the early twentieth century, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, a Russian scientist, became renowned for his landmark research of the digestive system in mammals.  While Ivan Pavlov worked to unveil the secrets of the digestive system, he also studied w...

May 8, 2011

How to Raise a President

If America ever needed more proof that Barack Obama is a little kid playing at being president, last week was the icing on the cake.  And if Barack Obama is going to continue to act like a spoiled, slacker teenager, then it's high time someone s...

March 19, 2011

Just Say the Magic Words

Frank Luntz -- pollster, political consultant, and author -- recently appeared on C-SPAN's Washington Journal program.  Dr. Luntz is a linguist (a "word nerd") best-known for his Instant Response dial sessions, in which focus groups li...

February 26, 2011

The Media's Deadly Sin

Sixteen years ago, the  Republican House of Representatives, led by Speaker Newt Gingrich, passed a federal budget containing spending cuts and slowing of growth in some programs.  President Bill Clinton vetoed it.  This caused the fed...

December 26, 2010

A Plague of Blowhards

My husband and I took our seats for the long flight home after another visit with the family. The rental car return, security screening and fight for the overhead bins had all gone surprisingly smoothly.  I sighed and relaxed.  Then it star...

October 17, 2010

It's Not Personal. It's Politics.

Last Saturday, I took a granola bar and a travel mug of coffee to a church fellowship hall to help with a bulk mailing for our Republican candidate for Congress. The race, between a conservative small business owner and a two-term Blue Dog Democrat, ...

September 24, 2010

Whatever Happened to the Counterculture?

What a long, strange trip it's been.In the 1960s, young people, moved by opposition to the Vietnam War, rebelled against the values of their parents' generation in what came to be known as the "Counterculture." They detested authority. They...

September 19, 2010

The Muslim Next Door

Fifteen months ago, a moving van pulled in next door. I watched the items being unloaded.  Two bikes, one with training wheels. "They've got kids!" I thought happily.A man came out of the house. I crossed the yard to introduce myself a...

August 26, 2010

Public Service: Nice Work If You Can Get It

Recently, Congressman Charlie Rangel went to the floor of the House of Representatives to make a spirited defense against the thirteen ethics charges laid against him. This caught my attention:Hey, I'm 80 years old. All my life has been from the begi...

July 26, 2010

The Party of Despair

California Congressman Fortney "Pete" Stark was caught on tape in June insulting a constituent at a town hall meeting. When the voter identified himself as a member of the Minutemen, Representative Stark asked him, "Who are you gonna k...

June 25, 2010

The Presidential Rorschach Test

In his book The Audacity of Hope, Obama wrote: "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views."As a campaign strategy, the Blank Screen candidacy was wildly successful. After all, ho...

June 19, 2010

How Do You Spell Response?

When my children were in elementary school, one of my favorite volunteer activities was assisting at the yearly spelling bee. The best spellers from the third, fourth, and fifth grades would battle it out for trophies and medals. My job was to be the...

June 3, 2010

The (Not So) Great Pretender

A few years ago, the film Catch Me if You Can told the story of Frank Abagnale, Jr., an extraordinary con man who managed to successfully impersonate a pilot, a doctor, and a legal prosecutor all before the age of nineteen. I've noticed a number of s...

May 19, 2010

I Think, Therefore I Profile

Two recent events have propelled the issue of profiling to the forefront. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed an immigration bill that "requires police to question people if there is reason to suspect that they're in the United States illegally....

May 11, 2010

Building a Consensus of One

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April 30, 2010

When Will They Take Us Seriously?

When voters attending a Tea Party are surveyed about their top concerns, the answers will be emphatic and varied: unemployment at almost ten percent with no decline in sight. An $800-billion-plus stimulus bill that has accomplished absolutely nothing...

April 21, 2010

The President Who Won't Grow Up

Everything I need to know about Barack Obama I learned as a Cub Scout den leader.Last week I watched an American president and a Russian leader sign a START treaty. I almost checked the calendar, wondering if I'd been transported back to 1980. In new...

April 10, 2010

In Fond Memory of the Status Quo

"If people vote yes, whatever form that takes, that is going to be a vote for health care reform. And I don't think we should pretend otherwise. ... If they don't, if they vote against it, then they're going to be voting against health care refo...

March 11, 2010

I'm Sorry, Madam Speaker -- the Republicans Won't Let Me Vote for It

When my daughter was a teenager, her friends would occasionally phone with an invitation  to a party or outing which she was reluctant to attend. I'd hear her say, "Let me ask my mom." She'd cover the phone receiver and tell me about t...

March 2, 2010

The Smartest Guys in the Room?

I recently read an article by Joe Klein titled "It's Her Party: The Brilliance of Sarah Palin." I assumed it would be the usual anti-Palin screed we've come to expect from the mainstream media, but before I finished the first paragraph I wa...

February 9, 2010

Democrats, Meet Your Biggest Nightmare

My husband's cousin Paulette called me the morning of January 20 from Massachusetts. Breathless with excitement, her words tumbling out so fast I could barely keep up, she recounted the joy of Scott Brown's win in the special election to the U.S. Sen...

January 14, 2010

Who Will Tell Obama?

My parents, like most of their generation, taught their children that an employee owes his employer a full day's work, performed to the best of his ability. This includes the times when the employee pulls the boss's irons out of the fire. For example...

December 23, 2009

Senator Nelson: The man in the mirror

Over one hundred years ago, GK Chesterton, an influential English writer, decried the loss of ideals in politics, stating they have been "driven out by the cry of efficiency," which may roughly be translated as "politics for politics' ...

December 11, 2009

Political Science and Mammograms

Last month, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) released their study and recommendations for breast cancer screening. There was an immediate universal rejection of the Task Force's work, from Senator Barbara Mikulski on the left to ...

November 17, 2009

Debating Obama's Health Care Clichés

When I was a little girl, we would often purchase Bazooka® bubblegum. The gum wrapper consisted of a small comic strip (featuring a character called Bazooka Joe) and a fortune. The fortune was usually along the lines of "a great adventure aw...

November 3, 2009

Health Care Reform in the Breach

Two weeks ago, I received a letter from the radiology department at a large university medical center in my state. The return address specified their mammography registry. Assuming that it was a reminder to get my yearly exam, I started to toss it ou...

October 1, 2009

Who'll Bell the Cat?

Once upon a time all the mice met together to discuss how to protect themselves from the cat. One mouse got up and said, "I have a plan which will ensure our safety. We should fasten a bell round the neck of our enemy the cat, which will by its ...

August 25, 2009

A Nation of Yellers

The intelligentsia on the left are baffled. It's written on the faces of the congresspeople facing their previously docile, obedient and blessedly ignorant constituents.What the heck happened? Who and what ARE these "constituents" showing u...

August 10, 2009

What if we had comprehensive education reform?

It's very difficult these days for healthcare providers to avoid the belief that Obama and the Democrats have them in the crosshairs.  Listening to Nancy Pelosi excoriate  insurance companies as villains and Barack Obama tell us that doctor...

July 29, 2009

A Health Care Offer We Can't Refuse

There are reports that some hospital associations and the AMA have come to an agreement with President Obama on health care reform. Here's some advice for these hospital administrators:  Run, don't walk, to your neighborhood video store and rent...

June 17, 2009

Back to ACORN General Hospital

Guess who's going to be much better off thanks President Obama's health care scheme? I read a fascinating survey recently. According to Rasmussen,Forty-two percent (42%) of Americans say every one in the United States should have free health care. Th...

May 14, 2009

Republicans Should Just Take the Hit

There may be political lessons for the GOP to be drawn from the world of superfluous bureaucracies. Every three years American hospitals turn themselves inside out preparing for the visit of inspectors from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of He...

May 1, 2009

Cold, Cold Health Care

And he's not cool.  He's cold.  This is a cold, cold guy. - Rush LimbaughLast year I read that Barack Obama not only voted against, but vigorously fought the passage in Illinois of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA).  Th...

March 4, 2009

Two Forms of ID and Your Colonoscopy Report, Please

For the past two years I have been employed in nursing as a medical record reviewer. I've reviewed hundreds of records, the old fashioned handwritten kind, and also the electronic medical record (EMR).I am not ideologically opposed to EMRs. When done...

February 20, 2009

Here Come the Interns

When I started nursing back in the 70's, I witnessed first hand the truth of the old saying that the most dangerous time to be a hospital patient was the month of July, when the shiny new interns arrived. In those first thrilling, scary weeks of resp...

January 7, 2009

Take Two Aspirin and Call Your Congressman in the Morning

When President-Elect Obama nominated Tom Daschle to be his Secretary of Health and Human Services, he proclaimed the former Senate Majority Leader: "one of America's foremost health care experts." Obama stated Daschle will be the "lead...

December 15, 2008

Welcome To ACORN General Hospital

I've been a registered nurse for 30 years, so the future of American health care is one of my greatest concerns. Now that Mr. Obama has won the election, I decided to investigate what may be facing patients and health care workers.I started my resear...