Post #200,892
3/28/05 12:55:15 PM
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All that needs to be said about Terri Schiavo
Unconscious? Vegetative? And yet she blinks furiously. The case of [link|http://www.discardedlies.com/entries/2005/03/kate_adamson_speaks_out_on_terri.php|Kate Adamson] leaves no excuses intact.
Excerpt:
Kate Adamson has written a book about her experiences. Kate's Journey: Triumph Over Adversity, details her journey back from the isolation caused by her stroke and the resulting catastrophic brain injury. You can find more information about Kate Adamson's work, links to her writing, and to articles written about her at her web site: KatesJourney.com . Her book can be ordered through the web site as well.
When asked about Terri Schiavo, Kate answered, "I believe because of my chance for recovery, the right environment and love, I was able to thrive. Terri deserves that opportunity. This is a woman who has had no opportunity at rehab. Who knows what she can do?"
When asked for advice on how families and friends can best help their loved ones who are "locked out," Kate says, "It's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease." She encourages families to become actively involved in the medical decisions, even insisting on treatments when necessary, as her husband did for her. She also recommends playing music, human touch, and talking to the patient assuming he or she can hear you. "Treat anyone," she says, "as you would want to be treated."
[link|http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/41590.htm|John Podhoretz] asks what the fight's really about.
Excerpts:
The scientific rationalists see a vegetable in human form, a life only in the strictest sense of the word. They see a human machine that is broken and cannot be repaired...
Then there are those who look at Terri Schiavo and see something else. They see a helpless person, a trapped person, a tragic person. But they do not see a vegetable. They see a human being with a soul.
I say:
There can be no reconciliation between these two camps. Either we err on the side of life, or we err on the side of death. And this all depends on whether we are sincerely humanists or sincerely materialists. The truth is, we can't have it both ways. Materialistic humanism is a contradiction. It is incoherent. Anyone who claims he is both at the same time is simply not telling the truth.
Also, it's a very, very small step from materialism to moral nihilism. Beware those who would err on the side of death. They don't have anyone's best interests at heart. The Nazi regime erred on the side of death, first with the retarded and insane, then later with those who lacked the requisite Aryan purity, and finally with the besieged residents of Berlin. Never trust anyone who elevates anything - be it his own pocketbook, social policy, or an abstract Volk - above the dignity of individual human lives.
Obligatory link: [link|http://www.notdeadyet.org/|Not Dead Yet] - an advocacy group for the disabled at risk of euthanasia
Oh, I suppose I should allude to the allegations that the Republicans are just playing politics with this whole thing. [link|http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/416virea.asp|That's bulls**t].
Excerpt:
More basic features of the memo also raised questions. There is nothing on the face of the memo to indicate who authored it. Contrary to normal congressional practice, not only is it anonymous, but it is on plain white paper, not the letterhead of any congressional or Senatorial office. It could, literally, have been created by anyone.
What, then, was the evidence for the claim that it was created and distributed by Republicans? As far as the public record shows: There is none. On the contrary, the only published report identifying the purveyors of the memo on March 17 states that they were Democrats.
I say:
Smells like the National Guard memo story all over again.
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/#20050328|Angelfire link] (turn off Javascript to avoid popups)
Freenet: /SSK@jbf~W~x49RjZfyJwplqwurpNmg0PAgM/marlowe/#20050328
[link|http://fnmarlowe.blogspot.com/2005/03/all-that-needs-to-be-said-about-terri.html|Comment at blogger.com]
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Well, pardon us for winning the election.
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Post #200,893
3/28/05 12:59:25 PM
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Yawn
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail ... but, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "Damn...that was fun!"
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Post #200,894
3/28/05 1:00:06 PM
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Day late. Several Billion short.
bcnu,
Mikem
Eine Leute. Eine Welt. Ein F\ufffdhrer.
God Bless America.
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Post #200,895
3/28/05 1:10:41 PM
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Hmmm, Marlowe?
Where were you when they completely exhausted this topic in the Open Forum?
I'll add only one comment, and it's the only one I've made in this issue anywhere.
It's pretty much in God's hands now. If he wants Terri to live she will, and if it's her time to die, she'll go. All we can do is wait and see.
Brenda
"The people of the world having once been deceived, suspect deceit in truth itself." -- Hitopadesa 600?-1100? AD, Sanskrit Fable From Panchatantr
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Post #200,901
3/28/05 1:39:28 PM
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*fap*fap*fap*
Peter
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Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
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Post #200,907
3/28/05 2:00:01 PM
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Not a bad theory
Either we err on the side of life, or we err on the side of death. Not a bad theory, really. But coming from the guy that ran the Texas Death Mill and started a war based on faulty intelligence it sorta falls flat. He has already made it clear which side he favors, and it isn't life. Jay
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Post #200,915
3/28/05 2:49:32 PM
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Suggestion...move to Texas...
Oh, I suppose I should allude to the allegations that the Republicans are just playing politics with this whole thing. That's bulls**t [*]. And take a look at the law that George W. Bush (then Governor) signed into law. Sun's death marks the first time a U.S. judge has allowed a hospital to discontinue an infant's life-sustaining care against a parent's wishes, according to bioethical experts. A similar case involving a 68-year-old man in a vegetative state at another Houston hospital is before a court now. [link|http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3087387| Source ] Yep..it's them damn liberal's fault.
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Post #200,959
3/28/05 6:13:14 PM
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she's a veg, and after she dies cut her in half
give thetop half so the sorry sonabitching parents can have an open coffin funeral and burn the bottom half so the sorry sonabitching spouse can bury his half in wherever the fuck he wants to. A pox on both their houses. In florida, the spouse has the right, and the old folks down there made it very plain to the legislature not to touch tht in the last attempt to pass terri legislation. Oh,thats right you dont beleive in voting or the rule of law, only fiats dictated from your betters.
thanx,
bill
All tribal myths are true, for a given value of "true" Terry Pratchett
[link|http://boxleys.blogspot.com/|http://boxleys.blogspot.com/]
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 48 years. meep
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Post #200,960
3/28/05 6:19:59 PM
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All knowing LRPD Sez
You are so wrong philosophers weep at the sound of your voice.
"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein
"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
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Post #201,012
3/29/05 12:05:59 AM
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Yes, as we all know...
The five years Michael spent pursuing both conventional and experimental treatments for Terri never happened. Nobody's ever tried to treat this woman at all. Anything you hear to the contrary is a lie spread by liberals who eat aborted fetuses every night for dinner. --\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
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Post #201,024
3/29/05 4:04:48 AM
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How utterly predictable
that, given the non-interchangeability of any two of such 'cases' - you Would promulgate your usual Yes/No Objective Morality\ufffd exact snap solution:
Keep every cell alive forever.
Just to be Certain.
BTW, I happen to agree (from experience) re the completely un-spreadsheet-able effects of intense personal involvement early-on. 'Love' will do for a synonym. But not everyone is Loved. That Much. And you fucking well can't Buy Love, therefore Legislate Love, let alone Enforce Love, you twit..
And as to How Long Doth One Persist? Stick that in your stupid fucking -WhenI'mElectedDictatorandFixEverything- generalization too, you insufferably smarmy Twit.
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Post #201,058
3/29/05 10:05:55 AM
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tough to relate, Phil
...but even your wingman Hitchens declines to join this formation. The immediate crisis has apparently passed. But all through Easter Sunday, one had to be alert to the possibility that, at any moment, the late and long-dead Terri Schiavo would receive the stigmata on both palms and both feet and be wafted across the Florida strait, borne up by wonder-working dolphins, to be united in eternal bliss with the man-child Eli\ufffdn Gonz\ufffdle.
I had sincerely intended to be the only scribbler in America who stayed out of this most stupid and degrading argument. I ought to have left that phone call from Hardball unreturned. Not a single toe should have been dipped into the water. But, once you engage for even an instant, you are drawn into a vortex of irrationality and nastiness that generates its own energy. A family lawyer appears before an American court and solemnly proposes that his client's "client" might have to spend extra time in Purgatory, or even in Hell, if the feeding-tube decision is adjudicated the wrong way. One Catholic fanatic, Patrick Buchanan, argues that federal marshals ought to burst in and preserve a corpse. Another Catholic fundamentalist, William Donahue, says that this would be unwise, but only because it might set a precedent for the rescue of living people on Death Row. Presiding from a distance is a nodding, senile pope whose church may possibly want to change the subject from its indulgence of the rape and torture of real-life children.
...
[A]s it is\ufffdand here is my reply to the man who demanded that we ignore all responsible medical evidence yet still treat her as if she were alive\ufffdI think it is obscene that she is held in absentia to exert power from beyond the grave. As for the idea that this assumed power can be arrogantly ventriloquized by clerical demagogues and self-appointed witch doctors, one quivers at the sheer indecency of the thing. The end of the brain, or the replacement of the brain by a liquefied and shrunken void, is (to return to my earlier point) if not the absolute end of "life," the unarguable conclusion of human life. It disqualifies the victim from any further say in human affairs. Tragic, perhaps, unless you believe in a better life to come (as, oddly enough, the parents of this now non-human entity claim that they do).
Meanwhile, the rest of us also have lives to live. And I hope and believe that we shall say, as politely and compassionately as we can, that we do not intend to pass our remaining days listening to any hysteria from the morbid and the superstitious. It is an abuse of our courts and our Constitution to have judges and congressmen and governors bullied by those who believe in resurrection but not in physical death. Which post-terminal patient could not now be employed, regardless of his or her expressed wish, to convene a midnight court or assemble a hasty nocturnal presidency? Not content with telling us that we once used to share the earth with dinosaurs and that we should grimly instruct our children in this falsehood, religious fanatics now present their cult of death as if it were a joyous celebration of the only life we have. They have gone too far, and they should be made to regret it most bitterly. [link|http://slate.msn.com/id/2115860/|source] It's droll to watch the GOP leadership, having first charged forward on this with standards flying and many a lusty huzzah and clarion call (playing politics with a family's suffering? Us? Heaven forfend!), now attempting to look nonchalant once results from a wider assortment of focus groups reached them. cordially, Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.
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