Eight Feet Deep

The blood is in the water and the sharks are attacking!

I am referring to the announcement made by Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire saying he was withdrawing his name for Commerce Secretary. This bit of news is, metaphorically, the blood of the Obama administration and the sharks are the punditry and anti-Obaministas.

Every time Obama’s heart beats it is examined in depth by the pundits to detect a murmur. I wish the same pundits and some of the media had been that dogged with Bush the Younger leading up to the Iraq war.

It will be interesting reading someday to know why Gregg REALLY dropped out, but right now I am not all that curious to hear rampant speculation.

I do admit the Census Bureau thing is odd. I don’t know enough about the proposal — which is to share the 2010 Census leadership with White House senior staff as well as the Commerce Secretary. Politically, it could be a political job machine, not to mention a lock on congressional redistricting were the Census Bureau to be put under the White House. I am not much in favor of creating more political jobs, being the good union man that I am. But the White House insists it isn’t taking control of the Census so who are going to believe? Me? Ha! You crack me up.

Favre: I am so re-tired of all of this crap.

Legendary quarterback and Mississippi boy Brett Favre announced his retirement today from the New York Jets. It was his second retirement from pro football within a year’s span having said au revoir or perhaps something more colorful earlier with the Green Bay Packers with whom he spent an eternity.

I have a problem with athletes who can’t give it up when they say they’re giving it up. It makes that person look like a flake. Likewise it gives that athlete a pathetic appearance, one that says: “I have a money jones.” Or, one that says: “I have a glory jones.”

Who cares about appearances in sports? Perhaps many greats will say they don’t. But look at people like Barry Bonds. He hit more home runs than The Babe and Hammering Hank and because of all the intrigue about his alleged steroid use not to mention that he comes off publicly as a prima donna, he doesn’t generate near the fan juice than say a Mark McGuire or a Sammy Sosa. I know I am talking about a football player (Favre) okay? So don’t get your knickers all in a wad. I just wanted to use some baseball dudes as an example.

While I say I have a problem with the unretiring retired jock that doesn’t mean I feel they are fatally flawed. I hope each time that the player will have a great season with their new team after becoming un-re-tired. But it doesn’t often happen that way. Sometimes the unretired finds out quite quickly that they should have stayed retired.

Though I am by no means an expert in pro football, or sports in general, I am a data collector and by looking at Favre’s one season with the Jets the stats don’t show all that terrible of a picture. Let’s do a little comparison shopping between Favre’s season and perhaps one of the tip top if not the best NFL quarterback in the 2008 season, Peyton Manning.

–Favre completed 65.7 percent of his passes. Manning connected 66.8 percent for the Hoosier-by-God Colts.
–No. 4 threw 22 TD passes. Manning threw 27.
–Manning had 4002 passing yards. Favre passed for 3472.
–Viva la difference! Manning was intercepted 12 times. Favre was picked off 22 times.
–And the big a la difference: The Manning-led Colts had a 12-4 season in 2008, losing the wild card playoff game in OT to San Diego. The Jets finished 9-7, which is a winning season but not a wildly winning season.

Well, as many of you know or suspect, the quarterback is but one player. With my limited knowledge of football, I would be willing to bet that not all of Favre’s interceptions were directly attributable to his bad passing and ditto with winning and losing games.

So Favre could have done worse which should be an object lesson to one of the best who has ever played football — not just quarterback but football. The next unretirement — let’s say Brett gets a wild hair to lead the Detroit Lions to the Promised Land — might not go as well as his stint with the Jets.

Therefore, Mr. Favre, I don’t want to see a good ol’ Mississippi boy, genu-wine legend and damn good athlete finish his career on the scrap heap. This time if you quit, then please good sir, quit damn it.

Today I wrote my first e-mail to President Obama. I’m sure he will read and get right back to me on his BlackBerry, or perhaps he will Tweet me with Twitter.

Seriously, I did use every one of the 500 characters allowed on the White House Office of Public Liaison Web Page to e-mail a concern of mine which the president alluded to during his Monday-night press conference.

More than once as well as last night, Obama has touted the need for the use of electronic medical records such as those which have been used for quite some time by the Department of Veterans Affairs. The president apparently feels there can be some linkage between expanding electronic medical records throughout the nation’s healthcare system and stimulating the economy:

“We know that health care is crippling businesses and making us less competitive as well as breaking the banks of families all across America, and part of the reason is we’ve got the most inefficient health care system imaginable. We’re still using paper — we’re still filing things in triplicate. Nurses can’t read the prescriptions that doctors have written out. Why wouldn’t we want to put that on an electronic medical record that will reduce error rates, reduce our long-term cost of health care, and create jobs right now?”

Why wouldn’t we? Well, I am not totally sold that electronic medical records can do all three of those things for one. Do they have the potential? Just making a half-assed educated guess I would say yes. However, my concerns with computerized medical charts are more fundamental.

My own VA medical records have been computerized for somewhere around eight years or so. As I mentioned in my e-mail today, my guestimate is that in somewhere around 70 percent of my interactions with VA medical personnel, the practitioner doesn’t bother to look past the first or second page of the chart. My primary physician is a younger, Indian-educated and board-certified internist. He is much better at navigating around the pages, thus he is able to explore more of my electronic chart than some of the people I have encountered previously.

On the same page, pun intended, and — my oh my do I know about this one — a computer is not going to prevent a nurse or doctor or mental health counselor from making a mistake on your record that could conceivably be perpetuated for the patient’s life (or death if that mistake is sufficiently serious).

It’s like my old computer programming friends from way back in the 70s used to say: “GIGO.” Garbage In Garbage Out.

Plenty of reasons exist as to why electronic medical records are the kitty’s PJs. The fact that someday a paramedic might be able to see your records on the scene of an accident or a heart attack could be a fantastic advance in medicine. It also could be a nightmare. I have known instances of VA personnel accessing medical records who really — at least in my opinion — didn’t have “the need to know.” I know that because I asked those people to look something up pertaining to my own medical records even though those people I asked really were not medical personnel. Plenty more concerns exist depending on your proximity to patients. Donald Lindberg, M.D, the Director of the U.S. National Library of Medicine said a study of private practice physicians revealed their own reasons for not adopting electronic records:

“Some other statistically significant, stiff barriers reported by physicians who do not use electronic medical records include:

* Uncertainty about the yield of electronic medical records on a physician’s time and financial investment
* Finding a electronic record system compatible with an individual practice or tailored office setting
* Concern about a loss of productivity during the transition from paper to electronic records
* Concern that an electronic medical records system will become prematurely obsolete.”

Finally, electronic medical charts also have features which may fall both toward the positive and negative sides depending upon where you are sitting. The computerized systems provide various reminders and alerts which are less dependent on human memory. “The good news is it’s time for your prostate exam. The bad news is it’s time for your prostate exam.”

Eventually most U.S. medical practitioners will use electronic records within the next 20 years, by my guess, but I am a nobody when it comes to authority. It’s just a guess and Joe the Plumber might come closer guessing than I would although I seriously doubt it. As long as doctors, nurses, other medical professionals and patients remember that such records are tools and not a miracle cure then everything should be pretty cool. We just have to remind ourselves that computers are only as good as their operators. That, as those who have any sense at all knows, is pretty scary as well.

Brad sez: Where is that drunk chick you speak of?

A tall drunk chick, or perhaps drunk tall chick or maybe not chick maybe female of the species … Anyway, she was a woman, tall and drunk, just knocked on my door looking for Brad Paisley. It wasn’t that she particularly thought Brad was hanging out with me. I don’t know why she knocked on my door. She was looking for another apartment and that is where Brad Paisley supposedly lurked, or whatever. When I made some kind of disparaging sound she, said drunk tall tall drunk woman, looked at me like I was an idiot. Maybe I am. I hope she finds whatever she is looking for though, somehow I don’t think she is going to find Brad Paisley. I need to quit answering my door.

My Dad was a self-employed sign painter and was quite good at it. He also, on occasion, would take a drink and could be quite good at that too.

Actually, Daddy was very talented at a lot of pursuits he just happened to pick sign-writing as he called it as a way to contribute to his family. He certainly never got rich at doing it.

Even though I can remember my Dad laying out as well as painting his signs, I also recall a few quite artistic “sailor” words which would storm from his lips indicating a mistake. Nevertheless, I can’t remember any permanent errors which his lettering brushes had made.

Thinking back about how good my Dad was at his job, I can’t imagine what he would say seeing the two signs above I caught with my cell phone camera at the laundromat this afternoon. Well, actually I can imagine. I’m sure his response would likely include those words he no doubt honed as a merchant seaman during the second World War. In case you are wondering what I am speaking about, I invite you to find the misspelled words in the two signs.

Now I have made my share of mistake over the years in print and perhaps have one or six in this little missive. A good many of those mistakes I have made are still out there for all to see even though one would be hard-pressed to find the correction printed after the fact to say: “Oh golly gee, sorry!” But making mistakes on signs are a totally different beast than those on the news page.

Granted if you have a young child advertising his lemonade stand or neighborhood porno movie kiosk you might excuse an errant word here or there, perhaps even a backwards “S” or the like would add a little childhood charm in the marketing effort. Or if you have a sign by a down-home fellow who perhaps never finished his education and he is just trying to scrape by selling tomatoes on the side of the road or has a two-fer rooster sale and will fix your lawnmower engine.

But these signs above come from a mini-market which sells a major gasoline as well as having thousands invested in, albeit worn-out, washers and dryers.

What does the above signs say to me? Well, knowing the fellows who run the place who are of Southern Asian extraction I have to say it could be an ESL (English as Second Language) gilflirt. I am not certain that the word “gilflirt” is a real world, but I have always heard it mean something like the acronym SNAFU (Situation Normal All F***ed Up) or FUBAR (F***ed Up Beyond All Recognition). In other words, the words in the above signs got lost a little in translation or spelling or both.

The second possibility is that the people who run the “premisis” just don’t give a rat’s ass. That is not a deadly sin but one would think such thought doesn’t exactly translate into a lot of the work and business ethic in this nation.

Finally, all the above reasons plus others might be at work. Who knows? And who knows how long the signs have been there? They actually may have pre-dated the Asian fellows.

I am just saying that in the mind of some the sign is a work of art and while it might not stay around long enough for anthropologists or art historians to study for hundreds of years, they say a lot about the here and now. Plus, the spelling looks downright funky.