4.20.2005
She said
Been following the Bolton nomination. For a while I was thinking about it in terms of checks and balances. Constitution gives Executive broad powers re: ambassadors, splits treaties and warmaking between the Legislative and Executive. Thats not current practice, and I was wondering if maybe - with the White House perhaps pulling a Trent Lott on Delay and Legislature and Executive in general going after the courts - if maybe this was some congressional pushback on a checks and balances level.
But no, seems like its just partisan politics, and some tweaked consciences rebelling against the jerks under Bush, Rove, Cheney, et. all. So now I'm watching mostly because its fun to see people heap dirt on someone.
All sorts of funny stuff comes up. Some of the discussions have hinged on arcane distinctions between normal and abnormal procedure among CIA analysts - get quotes as follows...
is just dramatic. Love it.
Had my first hospital visit on Tuesday too. Everything went well, hospital was hard though, and I can see how it would get to me after a while.
Talked with an ER doc a few weeks ago who was really struggling with a sense of anger and impotence. He said he was getting very angry at patients, very sick of their demands. They seemed to want him to cure their problems, to heal their congenitally defective children, their addictions, their old age. And he knew that the absolute best he could do was restore someone back to how they were before they entered the clinic. So if they were totally f*cked up before they had an accident/stroke/OD, all he could do was put them back to being totally f*cked up.
We were at the Flat Iron with the boy and umbrella, enjoying margaritas and beer. My first thought was that his mistake was thinking of his patients as real people. He should take advantage of the typical doctors coping mechanism, which is to look at patients as bodies that present interesting opportunities for learning and problem solving. And then I realized that that was kind of evil, and wouldn't help him beyond short term.
Anyways, that gets somewhat to how I feel about the hospital experience for rape victims. From what I've seen, I wouldn't recommend the rape kit, the police interview, unless you want to put your perpetrator behind bars, or at least preserve the court option for yourself in the future. Without that goal in mind, I can't imagine its anything more than a harrowing experience.
ER's - at least the ER here has done a lot for rape victims. They've gone past the days of blaming people, etc. The folks who treat rape victims are extremely experienced, and dedicated to putting perps behind bars.
But still, the nature of the experience is fundamentally inhuman, nothing one can do to change that. In the words of the experts, "excellent care for survivors of sexual assault requires the coordination of clinical medicine with forensic science, law enforcement, and victim advocacy."
And thats what I see.
As soon as you walk in the door and tell triage you've been raped, you're a a crime scene, a defendant, a witness and a patient.
Anyways, no sense going into it here - thats my overall observation though.
In other news, weathers fine. I'm sad because Passovers off - no introduction to Elijahs cup and Afikomen and 4 questions for me this year. Looking forward to May, to sunshine, to going to the ocean. She-ra did something sneaky yesterday - went home for lunch and as I was washing my hands, she ran into the bathroom and deposited a live chipmunk at my feet. The chipmunk immediately scrabbled up my pant leg, and I screamed like Nancy Kerrigan until the damn thing ran off. She-ra chased the chipmunk and I chased She-ra, grabbing a colander on my way through the kitchen. I caught them both in the living room and snapped the colander over the chipmunk. She-ra, having no theory of mind, couldn't figure out how the chipmunk dissappeared, even though she watched the colander descend over the poor creature. She meowed, I threw the chipmunk outside and disenfected the place for an hour. Good kitty. Thank you.
But no, seems like its just partisan politics, and some tweaked consciences rebelling against the jerks under Bush, Rove, Cheney, et. all. So now I'm watching mostly because its fun to see people heap dirt on someone.
All sorts of funny stuff comes up. Some of the discussions have hinged on arcane distinctions between normal and abnormal procedure among CIA analysts - get quotes as follows...
normally what we work with is code word. But when we in the more traditional sense, where we are seeking to demarche a country perhaps. Related to a transfer of a commodity, with proliferation concerns, we might ask that certain points, or certain information can be conveyed at the secret level and releasable to particular government, or governments. And all of us in the community play in the process fo finalizing that language. Such that we can then put it into a cable and send it through the state systemn to our posts abroad who can then deliver it as either a non-paper or as a demarche. "Derrida would have a field day. And then the change in language when Bolton enters stage left...
he was quite angry and basically told me that I had no right to do that. And he got very red in the face and shook his finger at me... he just told me to get out and get Tom Fingar, he was yelling and screaming, and red in the face, and wagging his finger. I'll never forget the wagging of the finger. Thats perhaps his style.
is just dramatic. Love it.
Had my first hospital visit on Tuesday too. Everything went well, hospital was hard though, and I can see how it would get to me after a while.
Talked with an ER doc a few weeks ago who was really struggling with a sense of anger and impotence. He said he was getting very angry at patients, very sick of their demands. They seemed to want him to cure their problems, to heal their congenitally defective children, their addictions, their old age. And he knew that the absolute best he could do was restore someone back to how they were before they entered the clinic. So if they were totally f*cked up before they had an accident/stroke/OD, all he could do was put them back to being totally f*cked up.
We were at the Flat Iron with the boy and umbrella, enjoying margaritas and beer. My first thought was that his mistake was thinking of his patients as real people. He should take advantage of the typical doctors coping mechanism, which is to look at patients as bodies that present interesting opportunities for learning and problem solving. And then I realized that that was kind of evil, and wouldn't help him beyond short term.
Anyways, that gets somewhat to how I feel about the hospital experience for rape victims. From what I've seen, I wouldn't recommend the rape kit, the police interview, unless you want to put your perpetrator behind bars, or at least preserve the court option for yourself in the future. Without that goal in mind, I can't imagine its anything more than a harrowing experience.
ER's - at least the ER here has done a lot for rape victims. They've gone past the days of blaming people, etc. The folks who treat rape victims are extremely experienced, and dedicated to putting perps behind bars.
But still, the nature of the experience is fundamentally inhuman, nothing one can do to change that. In the words of the experts, "excellent care for survivors of sexual assault requires the coordination of clinical medicine with forensic science, law enforcement, and victim advocacy."
And thats what I see.
As soon as you walk in the door and tell triage you've been raped, you're a a crime scene, a defendant, a witness and a patient.
Anyways, no sense going into it here - thats my overall observation though.
In other news, weathers fine. I'm sad because Passovers off - no introduction to Elijahs cup and Afikomen and 4 questions for me this year. Looking forward to May, to sunshine, to going to the ocean. She-ra did something sneaky yesterday - went home for lunch and as I was washing my hands, she ran into the bathroom and deposited a live chipmunk at my feet. The chipmunk immediately scrabbled up my pant leg, and I screamed like Nancy Kerrigan until the damn thing ran off. She-ra chased the chipmunk and I chased She-ra, grabbing a colander on my way through the kitchen. I caught them both in the living room and snapped the colander over the chipmunk. She-ra, having no theory of mind, couldn't figure out how the chipmunk dissappeared, even though she watched the colander descend over the poor creature. She meowed, I threw the chipmunk outside and disenfected the place for an hour. Good kitty. Thank you.
