Thursday, March 31, 2005

The Gloss Over Will Not Take Part II

How Innocent Terri Schiavo And Our Constitution Got Distorted, While True Suffering Goes Ignored Every Day.



Let’s first of all, let’s examine the sincerity of The Schindler’s New Friends shall we?

Lets first get a perspective on where we begin from:


“Persistent Vegetative State” is another word for “cortical death”.

As stated in Healthlink.com, PVS is:

“A persistent vegetative state, which sometimes follows a coma, refers to a condition in which individuals have lost cognitive neurological function and awareness of the environment but retain noncognitive function and a perserved sleep-wake cycle.

It is sometimes described as when a person is technically alive, but his/her brain is dead. However, that description is not completely accurate. In persistent vegetative state the individual loses the higher cerebral powers of the brain, but the functions of the brainstem, such as respiration (breathing) and circulation, remain relatively intact. Spontaneous movements may occur and the eyes may open in response to external stimuli, but the patient does not speak or obey commands. Patients in a vegetative state may appear somewhat normal. They may occasionally grimace, cry, or laugh.”

In 1999 Governor George W. Bush of Texas signed a law stating that a hospital has the right to cease all life support functions for a terminal patient even over the objections of parents or spouses, if it is determined that such efforts are no longer useful, or if the responsible party could no longer pay.

Last year President Bush straddled the fence when the Right To Lifers held a “Culture of Life” march in Washington DC. In an election year, instead of being there in person, he addressed the march via remote control. His presence was manifest in a PA squawkbox. He never looked better.

In 1988 Tom DeLay’s father was in an accident where he suffered a brain hemorrhage and the family was told that he had become a “vegetable”, and his organs were ceasing to function. Per the family’s agreement, a “do not resuscitate order was in effect. On December 14 of that year, Charles DeLay died.

Yet when Terri Schiavo’s tube was going to be pulled, George W. Bush got in a plane and leapt over mountains and rivers to “save” Terri’s “life”.

At the moment when Tom DeLay took up the cause to keep Terri alive he was in a heap of trouble concerning ethics violations, and election fraud, with TRMPAC and ARMPAC which allowed him to gerrymander the legislative districts in Texas to insure a Republican majority in Texas and in Congress, so he could remain Majority Leader in the House. And two of is friends Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Scanlon, are in trouble for swindling Indian tribes out of their casino money out of tens of millions of dollars. Mr. DeLay’s name was used as a lure, and he received contributions from Mr. Abramoff,

As for Bill Frist, though he was the driving force for Senate action on the Schiavo case, he was not known as someone averse to pulling the plug. Strangely, he, a heart surgeon felt qualified to do a neurology diagnosis. All by viewing a 5 minute video, from an armchair.

According to the Daily News:

“Medical ethicists like Dr. Kenneth Prager, chairman of the Medical Ethics Committee at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, say it's ‘inappropriate’ for Frist to make an armchair diagnosis. ‘A diagnosis should be made bedside by a neurologist. He's not a neurologist, and he wasn't bedside,’ Prager said.”

And yet “Pull the Plug” Frist thought his so-called “diagnosis” for the “life” of Terri Schiavo was sufficient for him to subvert the Constitution, and cause potentially irreparable damage to our system of checks and balances.

Much hay was made by the Republicans about saving Terri’s “life” and while the alleged "Schiavo Memo's" veracity has come into question by the Right, this excerpt from it portrays clearly the sentiment that drove the congressional “heroes”.

“Teri (sic) Schiavo is subject to an order that her feeding tubes will be disconnected on March 18, 2005 at 1p.m.

The Senate needs to act this week, before the Budget Act is pending business, or Terri's family will not have a remedy in federal court.

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.”

And if you don’t buy the authenticity of this memo, here is something you can buy, a documented recording of Tom DeLay giving a speech to the Family Research Council recorded by the Americans For the Separation Of Church and State:

"It is more than just Terri Schiavo. This is a critical issue for people in this position, and it is also a critical issue to fight that fight for life, whether it be euthanasia or abortion. I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, one thing God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo to elevate the visibility of what's going on in America. That Americans would be so barbaric as to pull a feeding tube out of a person that is lucid and starve them to death for two weeks. I mean, in America that's going to happen if we don't win this fight.

"And so it's bigger than any one of us, and we have to do everything that is in our power to save Terri Schiavo and anybody else that may be in this kind of position, and let me just finish with this:

"This is exactly the kind of issue that's going on in America, that attacks against the conservative moment, against me and against many others. The point is, the other side has figured out how to win and to defeat the conservative movement, and that is to go after people personally, charge them with frivolous charges, link up with all these do-gooder organizations funded by George Soros, and then get the national media on their side. That whole syndicate that they have going on right now is for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to destroy the conservative movement. It is to destroy conservative leaders, and not just in elected office, but leading. I mean, Ed Feulner, of the Heritage Foundation today was under attack in the National Journal. This is a huge nationwide concerted effort to destroy everything we believe in. And you need to look at this, and what's going on and participate in fighting back.”

So this is what Terri Schiavo meant to them, these great humanitarians. It was all about ginning up the base, and saving Tom DeLay’s bacon.

And if they were interested in saving lives from barbaric hospices, then will they go all over the country to stop everyone of nearly 30.000 terminations of life-sustaining care a year? Why because it is accepted that if there is a terminal condition no hope of cure, and the prolongation of attempts to sustain life are too burdensome, and render the quality of life to be unendurable, or prove to be useless, than they are discontinued.

Amazing. And these are the same people who could give a damn when 1500 American GIs and 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians were killed and the killing continues. These are the same people under whose flag people are being tortured in an American gulag like Abu Ghraib, or Camp Packhorse.

Here is an excerpt of a May 19, 2004 Dept. of the Army CID report of an incident that has gone unnoticed, and wouldn’t be noticed except for the Freedom Of Information Act request of the A.C.L.U.:

“3 This investigation was initiated upon notification that detainee Mr. Obeed Hethere RADAD was shot and killed by SPCXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX On 23 Nov 03, the investigation was closed as a final (C) under the provisions on CIDR 195-1, chapt 4-17(6) (SAC prerogative) XXXXXX was reduced to E1 and received a Chapt 10 discharge in lieu of court martial. The XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
a. CID was notified of the incident after a 15-6 determined SPCXXXXX did not follow regulations governing the use of deadly force. The notification occurred 4 days after the fact.

b. Three witness statements and SPC XXXXXXXXXX confession during the 15-6 (without rights advisement) substantiated the CID investigation and 15-6. SPC XXXXXXXX requested a lawyer when advised of his rights by the unit and CID.”

c. The delay in reporting prevented the recovery of forensic evidence specifically:

1. the projectile was not recovered from the deceased nor the scene ( although agents did conduct a CS exam upon notification)
2. no autopsy was conducted of the remains
3. the M16 rifle was not collected as evidence.”

Where was Tom DeLay to investigate that questionable incident?

My point is that if these people had any real wish be the moral Dudley Doorights of Pro Life politics and medicine, than why don’t they stop our own human rights abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan, stop cutting Medicaid, stop trying to destroy Social Security and worry more about the quality of life between birth and death? Maybe that is not their real agenda.

These people need complete, unencumbered power. Power to do whatever they want for friends, powerful friends who can keep them in office, and show then lavish gratitude. These people need things done for them like environmental regulations repealed or defanged. Or maybe they need a less threatening SEC and other law enforcement bodies to be more accommodating to their wish to steal money. Judges tend to stand in the way of these things. They do pesky things like interpret the law without prejudice. They need judges that will do their bidding. Well, they dented the Constitution. They used Terri Schiavo to try to break the Checks and Balances system, where no one branch of government is allowed extraordinary superceding powers over the other branches. They had that in the Soviet Union, called the Politburo. Well they tried to vilify the judges, and didn’t succeed, but now we see what the next act is, open war on the judiciary.

And the tragedy is that Terri Schiavo, a real person once 15 years ago, gets distorted into some kind of cause célébre with the lives of her family contorted beyond belief. If there was a real Terri Schiavo once, no one would recognize her.

Coma and Persistent Vegetative State

DeLay's Own Tragic Crossroads

Daily News World and National Report - Heart surgeon Frist has pulled the plug regularly

ABC News - Schiavo Memo

Americans United for Separation of Church and State - Tom DeLay speech before Family Research Council

A.C.L.U. Torture FOIA

Wikipedia Article - Persistent Vegetative State

Wikipedia Article - Cerebral Cortex

New York Times article - John C. Danforth - In the Name of Politics

David Limbaugh - Schiavo Case Spurs More Christophobia

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