--Praise to DU'ers on the Schiavo issue--

If you were anything like myself you didn't know much about the history, parties, and/or the facts on the terrible situation that Terri Schiavo faces and the issue itself until it was unavoidable on Friday.

Very quickly the threads started flying and DU'ers applied the same high standards as usual on sources cited as well as the logic of the argument itself AND the peripheral issues.

I learned a whole lot about this on short notice. I can't say that I remember seeing any discussion of this here or on other Lib/Prog/Dem boards or in op-ed articles-this clearly is a rightwing creation which they had been discussing amongst themselves (about us) for the last few weeks.

The hearing is coming up shortly and I have to be away so I just wanted to offer this praise for DU'ers on this issue. Lots of great perspectives came out on this and I ran into several DU'ers whom I was unaware of before this. Thanks to all.

Lastly it seems to me that the fundies RW Christian forced/demanded action from those they have supported but that has dragged them into a negative news story and illustrated what they are truly all about. Aside from that last part we might learn something from this concerning making sure OUR leadership is more responsive to what WE want.

That is all.

I've been waiting for the Right to start throwing their weight around like this.

Honestly, I was hoping they'd go after IVF clinics (since thousands of fertilized eggs are destroyed each year - like stem cell research would do), but this is a start and does show them for what they are.

I think they showed their hand. They thought it was a wedge issue but the intrusiveness of it and the stinking hypocracy hasn't settled too well with those other than the hard core fundie types.

They may have been letting the Republicans coil up thousands upon thousands of miles of rope while uncrating boxes and boxes of Uzis so there would be a mass self-hanging while shooting themselves in the foot.

vote just like little Repubs?

plus they are probably in religious insanity land, too.

Not only do I hope that is correct I think it will be.

I think it's a legitimate strategy to let people expose themselves for what they are, but there are ways to do it without aping the same behavior.

I was pretty passive about the Schiavo case until Congress and the Chimp got involved. Now, it's plain to me that this is only a small part of a larger beachhead being established by the RWCFN (right wing Christian fundie nuts) that hopes to accomplish two things:

1) To take the abortion debate out of the statehouses and place it in the repug-dominated US Congress.

2) To distract us from a myriad of other topics, such as DeLay's ethics issues and the upcoming judicial appointments and their possible use of the "nuclear option."

At least nobody's talking about the fact that Michael Jackson showed up late for court yet again!

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/03/21/jackson.trial.ap/index.html

Again?

45 minutes.

:eyes:

Even the Michael show can't outdo the Shiavo Circus, though.

Should we try to save it? How about we fly in 250 Congress people to vote on a Bill to save Michaels nose?

ROFLMAO!!!

I'm glad many here have seen through the filters and faced one of the toughest issues any of us WILL face in our lives...death. Be it a parent or, forbid, a child or other near one, the process can be shocking just because our society ignores this topic so thoroughly. Except for the occasional funeral, death and aging are kept far away and when issues like these come forward, many are not really aware of the very basic issues involved here.

When I heard the wingnut spin point last night (almost every GOOP shill invoked some, if not all, of the DeLay, Inc. hammer points) that Terri was "alert and laughing and joking"...it was so blatanly outrageous, but then it called back an incident I witnessed in my mother's illness.

She had been suffering from several degenerative illnesses, including altzheimers in her last years...suffering small strokes that would affect her brain...destroying her ability to control her body...requiring a feeding tube and slowly fading away.

Her condition was progressive and regressive...while she remained alert in many ways, her ability to remember or even speak became difficult. From a woman who had an encyclopedic memory of all sorts of interests, now she couldn't tell you the time of day or who had just visited her 5 minutes earlier. It's one of the toughest parts of this road...and one where you're always hoping for a miracle...looking for the simplest signs of her former self.

After two years, her feeding tube had started to harden (it's made of latex) and had clogged up. We had to replace it and she was taken in for the simple surgery to replace the tube. In the process, her medications were altered for the procedure. The night before the procedure I went to visit her and for the first time in months she said hello to me by name...then we chatted for the next 45 minutes...her speech was very fluid and I stood in amazement.

The next day, after the simple procedure I went to visit her and she had again drifted back into the quiet state she her illness had forced her to endure. While she still would speak and was never comatose or in a clinically vegetative state, she gradually faded as her illness affected more and more of her brain.

The hypocrisies I've seen from the right wing and fundies these past couple days is beyond even my cynical imagination. Their selective picking of this family's inner battles for their own political and economic gain reeks for the many "principals" this bowls over and the reality that millions have faced in their own confrontations with death and the dying.

Shame on the corporate media for exploiting this story as well and manufacturing it as some morality play. They have their own ethics they better look after, before they start telling me how I should view mine.

:hi:

on the real issues: The continued undermining of our system of government.