Category: News & Comment

St. Petersburg Times:

Like other Republican lawmakers championing Schiavo’s bill, DeLay often suggests she is alert and potentially treatable.

“She talks and she laughs and she expresses likes and discomforts,” he said Sunday evening. “It won’t take a miracle to help Terri Schiavo. It will only take the medical care and therapy that patients require.”

After years of review, a Florida circuit court judge found that Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state, and any emotions she appears to express are simply reflexive. Based largely on the testimony of her husband and friends, a judge ruled she would not want to be kept alive, and ordered her feeding tube removed Friday.

Americablog has two related articles on the Schiavo travesty. For both horror and amusement, check out DC’s Inside Scoop, which has the GOP talking points on Schiavo that were leaked. The Scoop says rumor has it that these gem were the handiwork of folks at the office of Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA).

Here are three of the GOP message points:

* This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue.
* This is a great political issue, because Senator Nelson of Florida – has already refused to become a cosponsor and this is a tough issue for Democrats.
* This legislation ensures that individuals like Teri Schiavo are guaranteed the same legal protections as convicted murderers like Ted Bundy.

The second AmericaBlog article points to an ABC News poll that indicates that Americans support removing Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube 63-28.

The politics propelling this tragic tomfoolery are no surprise to anyone reading this, I’m sure. Nor are the Gops’ syrupy denials of political motivation. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” I heard one of them purr, on CNN.

If there’s anything to the ABC poll, it would seem to indicate that the Gops may have gotten ahead of the public on this. Amazingly, Tom DeLay and crew even got Bush involved, meaning Karl and Karen approved it. It’s hard to believe those geniuses didn’t know they only had 28 percent of the public – basically their base – in their pockets when they flew George in early from his weekend in Crawford to sign the bill. Talk about believing your own press!

Unlike with the Gannon scandal, the media has all guns trained on this one. We’d like to think that such brazen political trampling into a woman’s tragic life – not to mention the sanctity of her heterosexual marriage – would raise a stink among the voters, but Americans seems to have endless tolerance for the shenanigans of George Bush and his crowd of Republicans in the Capitol these days.

Still, if the wind shifts in the way the ABC poll indicates, the Gops are going to have trouble blaming this one on 9/11 – or even the Democrats.

I don’t care.

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Right-to-life wingers in Florida have gone over the edge this time. In their battle to keep Terri Schiavo dying a little longer (and my heart really does go out to Terri and her husband), they entered a new bill in the Florida legislature.

If passed as expected, the bill will ensure that unless you had the foresight to specifically define all the conditions under which you would not want to prolong your death via feeding tube, hydration tube, excretion tube, etc. you would automatically be forced on to all of the above. I’m not kidding. A story in the Miami Herald explains it all.

“In an effort to get around another legal challenge, legislators have crafted a much broader bill. It says that no patients in a persistent vegetative state — Schiavo’s diagnosis — can have their feeding tubes removed unless they meet one of several conditions, including:

€ They have left written instructions approving the denial of food and water.

€ There is ”clear and convincing evidence” that before becoming incapacitated, they ”expressly” directed the withholding of food and water.

€ Death is imminent and a feeding tube would not help.

The state will merrily intrude over the wishes of the family if the new legislation goes through.

“Gelber said he fears the bill would deny the rights of parents to decide what to do with incapacitated children, since it would be hard to decide if a child made an informed decision on end-of-life issues.

Some Floridians, the story said, have already given up protesting:

“‘I don’t think I want the government in my bedroom and I certainly don’t want them on my deathbed,” said Jean Harden, a Lakeland resident who initially planned to speak in opposition to the bill but decided against it when she realized the committee planned to vote in favor of it.

My flamboyant 50-something South Florida friend Will actually made out a new living will in reaction to all this. It contains a provision outlining precisely what Jeb Bush is to do with his bad self in the event of Will’s near-death.

What attic does Jeb go to to find these wingnut freaks he populates Florida government with? I mean, when you pull back the layer of insulation and hear the scurrying scratches and see the droppings, you just know there¹s a Jeb appointee in there somewhere.

Latest case: one Cecilia Burke, whom the world’s most cynical and swarmy governor placed on the Pinellas County (St. Petersburg) Juvenile Welfare Board. Her remarks, equating homosexuals to pedophiles, offended everyone who isn’t a like-minded nut case. According to AP in the Miami Herald,

Cecilia Burke, who was appointed to the children’s advocacy board of directors by Gov. Jeb Bush, made her statements in a memo Feb. 7 asking the board to sever ties with the support groups Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education NetworkŠ Burke’s memo also said the groups support “unhealthy sexual practices among youth.” She cited maintaining relationships with these groups as a reason to deny the juvenile welfare board’s director, Jim Mills, a raise. That move failed.

St. Petersburg Times columnist Howard Troxler represents the rest of us:

But as for this constant attempt to equate all gay people with child molesters: At the very best, it is based in lack of knowledge; at the worst, something much darker.”

“And yet, some (not all, but some) gay-rights opponents try to work “homosexual” and “pedophile” into the same sentence.

Hence a 2002 speech by the then-president of the Southern Baptists condemning “the pornographer, the adulterer, the homosexual, the pedophile, the abortionist.”

Among the groups calling for an apology from Burke are Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), and Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). I’m not holding my breath.

“The goal of the modern conservative movement, as embodied by George W. Bush, is not just a simple majority of conservative thought – rather, it is the elimination of everything but conservative thought.” – Oliver Willis

He was living proof that there’s a lot of good in a bad example.

I just watched the entire episode of This Week with George Stephanopoulos, thinking it would be the best shot for hearing SOMETHING about the Jeff Gannon story on a broadcast network. Instead, their big news item was the “secret” George Bush tapes, which I can’t help but notice show W in the most flattering light. It was noted that only a few minutes were being released, with the other nearly nine hours to be shipped to the Bush Library.

I am tired of saying, “If this were Bill Clinton…” I am tired of waiting for a negative Bush White House story the MSM will deem big enough to cover. I’m saying now it can’t be done. If the Jeff Gannon thing can be ignored, I give up. There is no way to penetrate the wall of protection around this president.

We’re screwed.

But I hope someone will disagree with me.