Year: 2005

Get Out of My Death Bed

Jon Ponder

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.

Schwarzenegger Tries Bush-Style Media Manipulation

Jon Ponder

Deploying propaganda through paid surrogates, fake news reporters and tricked out video reports that are passed off as news is a de facto admission that the policies of the Bush Administration – and now the Schwarzenegger crew in Sacramento – can’t stand on their own.

Adding salt to the wound in the body politic is the fact that all this GOP chicanery is paid out of the public dole. (Now there’s a place to cut the budget.)

On the federal level, it is illegal to produce propaganda using taxpayer money. Fortunately for President Bush, the corrupt conservatives who control the US Congress will never investigate anything this Administration does.

On the other hand, Governor Schwarzenegger faces a legislature controlled by Democrats. And while the Pravdazation of government news reporting needs to be exposed to the antiseptic of endless committee hearings, it would be uncharacteristic of the Dems in Sacramento to make a fuss. More likely the fake news tapes will resurface as an issue in the governor’s race next year.

[…]

An Attic Full of Wingnuts

Trish

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.

MSM MIA

Trish

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.

The White House Hopes You Won’t Read This

Jon Ponder

As is its habit, late yesterday, after the million-dollar babies in the Washington press had adjourned for the weekend, the White House released details of the programs it plans to cut in education, children’s health and small business support. The AP gives us a skim:

In the new list, Bush asked lawmakers to eliminate programs worth $4.3 billion from education, $1 billion from health and $1.5 billion from law enforcement.Reductions include cuts totaling $2.5 billion from agriculture, $690 million from health and $470 million from housing.

What? No corporate welfare programs are being eliminated? I’m shocked. But there’s more:

In all, the targeted programs include 99 that the White House wants to eliminate, for a total of $8.8 billion in savings. The president wants to save an additional $6.5 billion by cutting spending on 55 programs, including:
– End the Small Business Administration’s $15 million micro-loan program because it costs taxpayers yearly $1 for each $1 lent.
– Eliminate $496 million in educational technology state grants to free more money for higher priority programs that focus on student achievement and show clearer results.
– Cut half of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership and move the program closer to self-reliance.
– Cut one-third of the Children’s Hospitals Graduate Medical Education Payment Program because an assessment determined there was no demonstrated need for the program.
– Eliminate the National Drug Intelligence Center because it duplicates programs run by a new, multi-agency Drug Intelligence Fusion Center.

Plight of the Swingsters

Jon Ponder

On Monday, in the afterglow of the media’s positive reports about the Iraqi elections, the February 7 Gallup Poll/CNN poll gave Bush a 57 percent approval rating – his highest rating since the capture of Saddam Hussein. Now, just four days later, the glow has apparently faded completely. According to the Associated Press, Bush’s approval in their latest poll is 45 percent.

Could be a polling fluke, God knows, but it’s more likely a reminder that the swing voters are still out there – and they still haven’t made up their minds about George Bush. The media says we’re a divided nation, like it’s 50/50. But it’s really more like 40/40/20, with 40 percent who love Bush no matter what, and 40 percent who absolutely do not. The remaining 20 percent – a group I like to call the “Swingsters” – are still on the fence.

Swingsters think of themselves as “independents” whose opinions aren’t captive to either party. Their judgments are not sullied by ideology, they say, but rather are based on objective analysis of the character of the candidate and his policies. The rest of us are a lot less charitable. We tend to think of them as wishy-washy and, well, dim. The central irony of the debacle of the elections last November is that this group of voters who bend with whatever breeze comes down the pike finally couldn’t bring themselves to vote for John Kerry because they believed he was a flip-flopper.

One bit of analysis we could take away from this drop in the polls (assuming its real) is that the Swingsters have very low expectations of President Bush. So it only takes one or two good press reports to get them singing his Hosannnas. During the Iraqi elections, the massive suicide attacks that had been threatened never transpired and just a few dozen voters were killed – so the elections were deemed a big success. At the State of the Union, on February 2, Bush read his speech without a noteworthy gaffe, and it was filled with even more flowery, upbeat rhetoric than most, perhaps to counter his natural, involuntary snarkiness. Plus, he did not appear to have electronic devices hidden in his coat. Another triumph. Bush also did a round of television interviews, including one with Brian Lamb at C-SPAN in which he discussed a book a book he’d read, “The Case for Democracy,” by Natan Sharansky. He’d have to be smart to read something like that. Right?

As a result, good buzz emanated from water coolers across the land and over the weekend, when the polls were taken, the poor Swingsters – who want to like Bush, they really, really do – were swept up in the euphoria. But as the week wore on, them ol’ devilish details about the SOTU speech came out. Turns out the Preznint’s flowery rhetoric hid the fact that what he really plans to do is phase out Social Security and cut education funding and veterans benefits, among other things. Disappointed again, by Friday the Swingsters had turned on Bush again, slapping him with a 12 point drop in popularity.

The Swingsters aren’t bad people. They’re just looking for a leader. Maybe they gravitate to Bush because he fulfills a familiar idea of a modern leader: the corporate division manager at the company where they work. But if the poll drop is as real, maybe he’s looking less like that guy every day.

The Usual Rabid Suspects

Trish

Florida is looking into the money behind the fight to keep Terri Schiavo on life support. Her parents’ Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation is receiving funding from big right to life groups, but what it’s doing with that money isn’t clear.

According to a story in the Palm Beach Post, donations are being solicited at terrisfight.org to, “offset some of the expenses associated with protecting Terri.”

“While the Web site says the donations help offset legal expenses, the majority of the Schindlers’ representation during the protracted legal struggle with their daughter’s husband, Michael Schiavo, has been paid for by two anti-abortion groups — the Life Legal Defense Foundation and the Alliance Defense Fund — according to the Schindlers’ current attorney, Barbara Weller.”

The California-based groups promote the usual hot button, right-wing agendas.

“Alliance Defense Fund ‘is funding litigation that is going on to confront and challenge the radical legal agenda advocating homosexual behavior, defending parental rights, and to restore the Constitution’s guarantee of free exercise of religion,’ IRS documents read. “

Schiavo’s parents never filed state paperwork to solicit donations, and the money does not seem to be paying the legal bills.

“…attorneys for the Schindlers offered conflicting statements of how much they have been paid and how much has been spent fighting on behalf of Terri. “

Jeb Bush jumped in to “save” Terri’s life when her husband attempted to unhook her in 2003. He exerted his power with the Florida legislature, getting them to pass a law that Republican Senate President Jim King later called one of the worst decisions of his life.

The law was rejected by the Florida Supreme Court, and despite being argued by Ken Connor, the former head of the Family Research Council, the U.S. Supreme Court recently refused to hear the case, letting the lower court decision stand. But Jeb continues to interfere in the matter, vowing to force Terri to remain on a feeding tube and entertaining suggestions he actually take her into “protective custody.”