A Response To: 'Death of Terri Schiavo ... Threatens Us All'

Monday, March 28, 2005
By Cal Thomas
Fox News

Editorial Link: Here

My Response:

Your over-simplification of this case is what is dangerous to us all. You have allowed the emotional rhetoric of a very sad state of affairs to create a smoke screen to the issue that was at the crux of this case. Indeed, your own rhetoric and PERSONAL FEELINGS only adds fuel to the fire; a fire that is illogical and ideologically driven.

This case is about the following:

A) A person's right to determine the process by which they CHOOSE to die in circumstances that suggest that recovery is simply not in their future. This stems from our ability to keep someone biologically operative, but not necessarily alive in the sentient sense.

B) State law on guardianship. As it stands now, it is almost unanimous that the spouse has defacto guardianship rights in any case where the other spouse is involved. In essence, once you marry, your parents become secondary. That is the LAW, take it or leave it. If you try to change it, the problems that will be caused for the solution as you see it will be wholly worse than the ONE problem it is intended to solve.

C) Due process and legal procedure. This case, more than most I might add, has received due process at virtually every level of the judiciary; in fact it has been the beneficiary several times over. Imagine the lives that could have been saved if the millions of dollars spent on this case by the "right to life" groups had been spent on anti-poverty programs or local health clinics. Regardless, the process of law functioned not only as it was supposed to, but exceedingly well given the intense emotional pressures.

In short, by all statutes in the state of Florida AND the federal government, Michael's continued right to be the guardian has been upheld...all the way to the Supreme Court. So, all other issues about guardianship are moot from a legal standpoint. Once guardianship is established, then it becomes an issue as to whether there was ever a contract or intent to NOT live under the conditions under which Terri is currently being kept biologically alive. The courts, through the testimony of Michael AND others, determined that Terri had indeed made the choice NOT to live under such conditions. This too has stood the test of scrutiny all the way to the Supreme Court and therefore is, for ALL intents and purposes, fact. New revelations and all other assertion have NOT stood through such scrutiny and therefore the FACT stands on its own.

Given the above, it is clear, in the eyes of the law, that Michael is indeed carrying out the wishes of the person for whom the court deems him legally responsible with respect to medical and end or life decisions. Given this position and the legally accepted fact that she maintained a position that specifically requested that she not be kept alive by the means currently being employed, Michael has chosen to fulfill her wish.

HOW she passes and the attendant emotional revulsion by some is irrelevant. No one deserves to die; yet, we all do; and few ever have a choice in how. Your emotional appeals are just that, emotion. They are not based on how we as a nation of laws conduct business and frankly are more about your ideology than your understanding of how America works or your feelings about the person who is Terri. Your shrill calls to emotion are born of your frustration that life as we know it does not conform to life as you wish it were; something that afflicts all of those who cannot deal with the gray of life that many like you try to shoe-horn into black and white.

The real issue is trying to define what is life, and perhaps death as well, in the eyes of the law. If America could come to a legal consensus of what constitutes "life" with respect to when it begins and when it ends (good luck), then all of these issues would be easily addressed. But, in doing so, it would almost guarantee that life would be viewed as more than just a biological function and would become a question of when does self-aware, sentient life begin and end. This would not mean knowing when the biological body senses pain and sends appropriate signals, but when does the sentient self realize what it means and is capable of reacting without artificial assistance. Given these constraints, it's also easy to see that such a consensus would almost certainly mean that euthanasia and abortion would be legal at some point in the chain of life. Given this, it's even easier to see why the radical social right would much prefer to have the definition of life remain an emotional debate as opposed to a logical and legal debate. It's the hypocrisy of all fundamentalist ideology that, in the end, cannot stand up to, or deal with, the logic that defines the laws of a liberal democracy. The Bible, Koran, Torah, (place your holy book here) are great guides, but lousy constitutions by which to govern the diverse human race - hence the brilliance of our Constitution.

While Terri's situation is indeed tragic on almost any human level, it should not be the rallying cry for the destruction of the very government construct our men and women are supposedly fighting and dying for in Iraq and Afghanistan. Should we allow our emotions and ideology to govern our land, then I ask you, what is the difference between us and the Taliban?

My Take On Terri

A post I made on the Blogs For Terri website after reading all of the conspiracy theories and hate eminating from their collective posts:

What a frightening, self-referential world you all live in. In the intelligence business they call it circular reporting. Here, it's just a way for you all to continue to spin yourselves into a self-righteous frenzy.

This case has been reviewed by no less than 19 judges. Enough doctors have come to the same conclusion about Terri to satisfy even the most rigorous confidence factor. The one doctor that says he can save her has NEVER treated a similar condition, only conditions with similar symptoms, i.e. strokes. No THERAPY can replace an organ that no longer exists. Get over it. We won't even delve into the doctor's problems with the law and the fact that he treats only patients who pay in cash or that his supposed “Nobel Award Nomination” consists of a memo written by a politician who had no authority to do so.

As for Michael, it has been stated repeatedly in court that he has "provided loving care" for Terri THROUGHOUT this ordeal. As for accusations of crimes and other such tripe, through 19+ judicial reviews, NONE OF THIS HAS BEEN ENTERED OR PROVEN. The echo chambers you have created for yourself will not make innuendo and rumor any more factual.

As for the method of death, starvation, that is emotional on its face, but less so upon inspection. In reality, she will die of dehydration. As gruesome as that sounds, the actuality of the death will be mitigated by the drugs and care she will be given to reduce any physical reaction to nil. In essence, even if she could feel something, which is in doubt, she will not. Doctors agree, her passing will be peaceful.

This is a sad case of our science outpacing our understanding of life and death. We can now keep the physical body alive indefinitely in the biological sense, but we have no idea what is the definition of sentient LIFE.

What perplexes me most is that all of you so-called pro-lifers claim such grand religious affinity, yet seem strangely afraid to meet you maker or allow another who so obviously can no longer function in this life to meet hers. If the paradise of love that is your heaven awaits her, why not let her go?

I shall suspend comment on the hypocrisy of pro-life stances that turn a blind eye to preemptive war that kills 10000 or 100000 more innocents; that promote unrestricted gun ownership that kills more innocents than any malpractice event; that live in a state that executes more people than any other besides Texas and Virginia; that praises a man for his compassion that signed the death warrants of 152 people while governor of Texas - more than any other governor in history AND signed a bill into law in Texas that was just used to allow parents to remove the tubes from a family member – a law that allows one to consider FINANCIAL hardship as a reason for ending care.

Cognitive dissonance is a wonderful thing.

In the end, who are you doing this for anyway; for Terri? I doubt it. You're doing if for yourself. You are placing yourself on a self-righteous soap box so all can see what a great and loving person you are; and you’re hoping God might just notice too.

Some philosophies, older than any Abrahamic religion, have noted that the root of all suffering is spawned from clinging. Clinging to life, things, perceptions, ideologies, self. Most of all, you all seem to cling to the delusion that you are in control of your surroundings. The sad fact is that most of us, you included, are barely in control of ourselves – indeed, clinging to the idea of control.

If Terri's parents would simply let go, then they could pray for their child’s ascendance into Heaven; a result that is far more likely than her return to life as we know it. But, instead, they cling. And now their memories upon her eventual and inevitable passing will be of this bitter struggle that will in no way define who she was or how she lived before this terrible tragedy.

I know you all think you are helping, but you're not. And, the strife you cause in your families, your communities, and this country are far more damaging than allowing a person to graciously pass on.

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In the end, the human condition sucks and sometimes our science just makes it worse. Perhaps the only winner in all of this will be Terri when she finally rests in peace.

Kerry Was Right!

Document: Guantanamo Inmate Was Bin Laden Commander
Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Fox News

Story Link: Here

WASHINGTON — A terror suspect held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was a commander for Usama bin Laden during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and helped the Al Qaeda leader escape his mountain hide-out at Tora Bora in 2001, according to a U.S. government document.

The document, provided to The Associated Press in response to a Freedom of Information request, says the unidentified detainee "assisted in the escape of Usama bin Laden from Tora Bora." It is the first definitive statement from the Pentagon that bin Laden was at Tora Bora and evaded U.S. pursuers.

....

Franks, now retired, wrote in an opinion column in The New York Times last Oct. 19, "We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001." He added that intelligence assessments of his location varied, but bin Laden was "never within our grasp."

On several occasions in the days following publication of that column, Bush cited it on the campaign trail as evidence that bin Laden could have been in any of several countries in December 2001. "That's what Tommy Franks, who knew what he's talking about, said," Bush said on Oct. 27.

....

Oh, and now we have a General who is lying or grossly uninformed too.

Yup, it's definitely a liberal conspiracy.

So, just how many lies is it going to take before America wakes up?

Top 10 Reasons Why Paul Wolfowitz Would Make a Good World Bank President

By John Cavanagh
Institute for Policy Studies

1. He would follow in the great tradition of World Bank president Robert McNamara, who also helped kill tens of thousands of people in a poor country most Americans couldn’t find on a map before getting the job.

2. It helps to be a good liar when you run an institution with employees who earn over $100,000 a year to pretend to help billions of people who live on less than $1 a day.

3. With all his experience helping U.S. companies grab Iraq ’s oil profits, he's got just the right experience for doling out lucrative World Bank contracts to U.S. businesses.

4. After predecessor James Wolfensohn blew millions of dollars on "consultations" with citizen groups to give the appearance of openness, Wolfowitz's tough-guy style is just what’s needed to rid the World Bank of those irritating activists.

5. Unlike former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, another one of the four leading candidates, at least Wolfowitz hasn't failed at running a Fortune 500 company.

6. Unlike the Treasury Department’s John Taylor, another leading candidate, at least Wolfowitz doesn't want to get rid of the institution he would head.

7. While earning a University of Chicago Ph.D. , he was exposed to the tenets of market fundamentalism that have reigned at the World Bank for decades.

8. He has experience in constructing echo chambers where only the advice he wants to hear is spoken.

9. He knows some efficient private contractors who build echo chambers for only a few hundred billion dollars (cost plus, of course).

10. He can develop a pre-emptive poverty doctrine where the World Bank could invade countries that fail to make themselves safe for U.S. business, modeled on the U.S. pre-emptive war doctrine he helped craft.

John Cavanagh is the director of Institute for Policy Studies.

Doomed By Our Own Cognitive Dissonance & Ignorance

Americans Believe Iraqis Better Off Today
Majority Still Thinks War Not Worth Fighting, Post-ABC Survey Shows

By Dan Balz and Richard Morin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, March 15, 2005; 5:51 PM

In the new poll, 56 percent said they think Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the start of the war, and six in 10 said they believe Iraq provided direct support to the al Qaeda terrorist network that struck the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

Article Link: Here

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In spite of our own government's reports to the contrary, Americans still believe that there was WMD before we got to Iraq and that Iraq supported Al Qaeda before 9/11 (BOTH assertions have been shown to be un-provable at best and false at worst).

How can you counter ignorance so entrenched that facts are dismissed in favor of a belief that helps support the very mistakes that those who ignore the facts readily admit were made?

There is no more acute sign that this universe lacks intelligent design as one need look no further than the willfully ignorant who cannot bring themselves to believe facts that run counter to their ideologies. So, let them teach ID theory and dim our children's chances of competing in the global market as facts are seemingly useless to us anyway.

Cheerleading Is As Cheerleading Does

Fox News...We Report AND We Decide For You

In covering the Iraq war last year, 73 percent of the stories on Fox News included the opinions of the anchors and journalists reporting them, a new study says.

By contrast, 29 percent of the war reports on MSNBC and 2 percent of those on CNN included the journalists' own views.

These findings -- the figures were similar for coverage of other stories -- "seem to challenge" Fox's slogan of "we report, you decide," says the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

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Duh. The conservative cheerleaders at Fox know what they're doing. It's only surprising that they try to hide it. Just another cog in the conservative propaganda machine. Of course, they'll just dismiss this as another liberal attack from the liberal bomb throwers. After all, fact has an agenda, and it's not conservative.

Power Corrupts...Absolute Power...

Warning: Ethics-Free Zone

Lead Editorial
Washington Post
Monday, March 14, 2005; Page A18

THIS MAY NOT sound like news, but the House of Representatives is now an ethics-free zone. To be precise, it has no mechanism for investigating or disciplining members who violate ethics rules. The proximate cause of this breakdown is the revolt by the five Democrats on the evenly divided ethics committee. Led by the ranking Democrat, Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (W.Va.), committee Democrats understandably balked last week at acceding to new rules for how the panel should conduct its business -- rules dictated by the GOP leadership and slanted toward making the ethics process, already tilted in favor of gridlock, even more feckless.

....

Republicans are now trying, laughably, to portray the impasse as the result of Democrats' refusal to "put the ethics process above partisan politics," as a spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) put it. Democrats have no lack of partisanship on this issue, but the GOP spin is hard to take from the people who rigged the rules and changed the players when they didn't like the result. Mr. Mollohan now has a single Republican, Rep. Christopher Shays (Conn.), co-sponsoring his resolution. We would hope that -- especially in light of new ethical questions involving Mr. DeLay -- additional members of the majority will sign on, putting the long-term good of the institution ahead of the short-term interests of those with the greatest stake in an ineffectual ethics process.

Editorial Link: Here

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What magnitude of cognitive dissonance does it take to not realize that the Republicans are destroying all sense of trust and ethics in government? Is oral sex really looking so bad now?

Just keep telling yourself that they mean what they say and that they want what's best for every American.

The Single Most Dangerous Assault On Our Culture

Battle on Teaching Evolution Sharpens

By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 14, 2005; Page A01

WICHITA – Propelled by a polished strategy crafted by activists on America's political right, a battle is intensifying across the nation over how students are taught about the origins of life. Policymakers in 19 states are weighing proposals that question the science of evolution.

The proposals typically stop short of overturning evolution or introducing biblical accounts. Instead, they are calculated pleas to teach what advocates consider gaps in long-accepted Darwinian theory, with many relying on the idea of intelligent design, which posits the central role of a creator.

....

A prominent effort is underway in Kansas, where the state Board of Education intends to revise teaching standards. That would be progress, Southern Baptist minister Terry Fox said, because "most people in Kansas don't think we came from monkeys."

....

Some evolution opponents are trying to use Bush's No Child Left Behind law, saying it creates an opening for states to set new teaching standards. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), a Christian who draws on Discovery Institute material, drafted language accompanying the law that said students should be exposed to "the full range of scientific views that exist."

"As the Christian right has success on a variety of issues, it emboldens them to expand their agenda," Hankins said. "When they have losses . . . it gives them fuel for their fire."

....

Meyer said the institute accepts money from such wealthy conservatives as Howard Ahmanson Jr., who once said his goal is "the total integration of biblical law into our lives," and the Maclellan Foundation, which commits itself to "the infallibility of the Scripture."

"We'll take money from anyone who wants to give it to us," Meyer said. "Everyone has motives. Let's acknowledge that and get on with the interesting part."

....

To fundamentalist Christians, Fox said, the fight to teach God's role in creation is becoming the essential front in America's culture war. The issue is on the agenda at every meeting of pastors he attends. If evolution's boosters can be forced to back down, he said, the Christian right's agenda will advance.

Editorial Link: Here

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All you selfish, single-issue voters who voted for Bush to ensure your precious tax cuts and pro-business dismantling of the government, this is what you have wrought. Your child's education is at stake. Your child's ability to compete on the global market with the rest of the connected world is now in the balance.

I ask you, just what is the difference between Christian and Muslim fundamentalists? How is it that we are fermenting the very type of culture that we are fighting overseas?

Wake up...before it's too late.

Domestic Policy As Bad As The Foreign Policy

Deficits and Deceit
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times
Published: March 4, 2005

Editorial Link: Here

Four years ago, Alan Greenspan urged Congress to cut taxes, asserting that the federal government was in imminent danger of paying off too much debt.

On Wednesday the Fed chairman warned Congress of the opposite fiscal danger: he asserted that there would be large budget deficits for the foreseeable future, leading to an unsustainable rise in federal debt. But he counseled against reversing the tax cuts, calling instead for cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Does anyone still take Mr. Greenspan's pose as a nonpartisan font of wisdom seriously?

.....

O.K., enough about Mr. Greenspan. The real news is the growing evidence that the political theory behind the Bush tax cuts was as wrong as the economic theory.

According to starve-the-beast doctrine, right-wing politicians can use the big deficits generated by tax cuts as an excuse to slash social insurance programs. Mr. Bush's advisers thought that it would prove especially easy to sell benefit cuts in the context of Social Security privatization because the president could pretend that a plan that sharply cut benefits would actually be good for workers.

But the theory isn't working. As soon as voters heard that privatization would involve benefit cuts, support for Social Security "reform" plunged. Another sign of the theory's falsity: across the nation, Republican governors, finding that voters really want adequate public services, are talking about tax increases.
The best bet now is that Mr. Bush will manage to make the poor suffer, but fail to make a dent in the great middle-class entitlement programs.

And the consequence of the failure of the starve-the-beast theory is a looming fiscal crisis - Mr. Greenspan isn't wrong about that. The middle class won't give up programs that are essential to its financial security; the right won't give up tax cuts that it sold on false pretenses. The only question now is when foreign investors, who have financed our deficits so far, will decide to pull the plug.

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I recommend you read it all.

Pulling the plug means we could lose a war in which a shot was never fired.

Imagine if China decided to dump all the dollars they own at one time.

Imagine if those that continue to buy our debt no longer think we can make good on repayment.

Imagine those scenarios and others and then think about them happening AFTER the safety net built as a result of the last great crash is dismantled by those who put us in this situation.

If only the Red Staters paid attention in history class when the teacher covered the late 1800's to the 1930's.

A Response To: Managing A Mideast Revolution

By David Ignatius
Wednesday, March 2, 2005; Page A17
Washington Post

Editorial Link: Here

My Response:

I believe two more known terms are "Chaos Theory" and "Complexity Theory". The theories together state the following:

Complex behavior arises from the interaction of several variables or "actors" that may be following a very simple set of rules. Chaos arises when the stability of the complex behavior is acted upon by either an external force that causes a system perturbation OR one of the undefined or unknown variables in the self-feeding (meaning the results of activities effects the next iteration of that activity), iterative system reaches a critical or "tipping point" that causes the perturbation to be expressed from an internal source.

Given the paraphrase above, we need to realize one thing: truly chaotic systems are NOT predictable. It's not because the math cannot be done, its because the equation is too complex AND we do NOT know the initial conditions that set the system in motion. This is why weather is so hard to predict more than 3 to 4 days in advance. Given the penchant for self-organization of all worldly systems, the system will either continue on a chaotic path, completely unpredictable, and may eventually destroy itself and become something new (usually meaning a complete new SET of systems) or will be "pacified" by another jolt from an external force. (This is the theory behind defibrillators.)

What this means is that we planned for and provided the initial force that caused the perturbation in the "relatively" stable system (a system of which we apparently have little understanding) but did NOT plan for and have NOT dedicated enough resources to supply the follow-up force necessary to put the system back into a relatively stable cycle - forget whether that system cycle ends up being to our liking. The end result is that the costs of doing this are so high in terms of money and time (see the 40+ years it took to recover from WWII and our associated nation building) that we may have started something we cannot finish no matter how good are our intentions.

Can we afford to bankrupt our country on such a theory?

You touched on many of the issues that make our task of bringing stability to the region difficult, but you didn't even come close to the depth of the problems that are a DIRECT result of the judgment and approach of this administration. It has never been the WHAT that this administration has proposed, it has always been the HOW.

The HOW in the past four years both foreign AND domestic has put us into a position in which we may NOT be able to finish what we started. In terms of your editorial, we have mathematically opened a "Pandora's Box" that we neither have the will or resources to close or rebuild to our liking.

HOPE is NOT a planning tool.

As we say in the military, Bush gets an O for Initiative and a U for Judgment. And like in the military, when you do that in war, people die unnecessarily and resources are wasted.

We should never mistake activity for accomplishment.

A Response To: The ACLU vs. Rumsfeld

Wednesday, March 02, 2005
By Bill O'Reilly
FOX News

Editorial Link: Here

My Response:

Bill,

If the "system" by which we prosecute "war" on terrorism, or more accurately, global insurgency, is not up to standards - OUR standards - either legally or morally, than it must be challenged for the good of our nation when the war is eventually over. It should not go unnoticed that we have NOT declared war on anyone or any country. It should be further noted that it would be very dangerous to promote the idea of a never-ending war.

If we are facing a new type of enemy that does not fit within our defined system for prosecuting war or the law, then we need to concentrate on changing the system. If, indeed, extreme measures of interrogation are warranted (and effective - which they are NOT in most cases), then let's define the limits and move forward. But, our system of government is set up to allow for the vetting of such law through the court system. If the laws are inconsistent with our Constitution or moral stance, then they should be challenged.

Those who give up liberty as we know it in this country for the dubious reward of safety, which cannot be assured anyway, deserve neither. And our quest to provide said safety will, in the end, bankrupt us. It is our "economic center of gravity" that OBL attacks.

Liberty comes at a price, and that price should NOT be born only by the soldier. Liberty comes with inherent security flaws. It would be a shame to allow the very thing that makes us great to wither so we can attempt to save ourselves from every peril that presents itself. How you LIVE is under your control, how you DIE never is. I say let the laws allow us to live FREE and well since the length is out of our hands anyway.

Imagine a day when conservative cheerleading is outlawed because it demoralizes our attempts to prosecute some action. The ACLU would be there for you. Those who fall in the "selected group" that benefits from oppressive laws rarely see the dangers in the precedents that those laws set. Slippery slope anyone? When the law finally turns against them, it's usually too late.

If, in the end, the ACLU and their ilk are successful, then the TRUTH is that the laws needed to be rethought. Do not mistake the GOAL of the laws with the APPROACH of how we attain the goal. If the approach is harmful, then let's rethink the APPROACH while maintaining our sights on the GOAL.

Your simplistic reasoning is a direct result of not being able to understand the difference between our GOALS as a nation and our APPROACH and the resultant consequences, both intended and unintended. It's not about seeing Saddam off, but HOW we went about it. From lying to get us into the war, to the poor planning and execution of the invasion follow-on, to the isolation we caused because of our arrogance; all of these things and more have now made the next steps that much harder and have further exacerbated the problem we were supposedly trying to fix - global insurgency via terrorist acts.

Do you get it?

So, let the ACLU do its thing. If there is no fire to the smoke, than the nation and the world will be better off for knowing.