Extraordinary Measures

[Lightning Rod]

Compassionate Conservatism?

Extraordinary Measures
for releases 03-22-05
Washington D.C.

I don't want to think about this subject, it's too painful. You probably don't want to think about it either. I'm talking about the Terri Shaivo case. You know the case where the entire might of the federal government is being invested in meddling in the business of one family.

There is no doubt that this subject is heartbreaking. Nobody likes to consider slow vegetative death. Terri Shaivo doesn't know what is going on and is beyond caring about it. Surely she doesn't know that she is being used as a political pawn. She could have saved herself a great deal of tedium if she had signed a living will, but what 29 year old wants to think about the possibility of having a debilitating heart attack that will leave her in a coma?

A living will stipulates that, in the case of accident or catastrophic illness, the signatory will not be kept alive by 'extraordinary measures.' This is a legalistic way to say, "Let's don't prolong the agony." It is a document to announce, "Spare me the pain, and yourself the expense, of keeping me alive if I am a vegetable and hooked up to devices to keep my carcass animated while the legal details are worked out and my property is divvied up."

Unfortunately Terri Shaivo didn't draft such a document in writing, but her husband, Michael, maintains that she imparted her wishes to him in this respect. She didn't, he tells us, want to be kept alive by 'extraordinary means.' Six Florida State Courts have upheld his right, as her legal guardian, to honor Terri's wishes and let her die.

Michael Schiavo correctly described this week's Congressional action as a mockery. He said, “These people in Congress are walking all over my personal and private life. I'm telling you, the United States citizens, you better start speaking up, because these people are going to trample into your personal, private affairs."

At this point it gets down to who wants to water the plant. If Terri Shaivo's parents want to care for and maintain their daughter until she is as old as King Tut, I say good on them. The gentlemanly thing to do to end this affair gracefully would be for Michael Shiavo to relinquish his rights of guardianship and get a divorce and allow Terri's parents to water the plant. But we're not concerned with a graceful resolution here. This is politics. If there is anything that can top drugs and baseball players as dramatic content for the Congressional Reality Show, it's a highly sensationalized matter of life and death where good Republicans can rush to the rescue of an innocent woman condemned to slow starvation, and show the heathen agnostic Democrats to be the anti-religious and anti-life heretics that they are.

Too bad Terri didn't have a living will. She would have been spared these gruesome details. Talk about 'extraordinary measures.' The Congress of the United States was called back from Easter recess just to draft a law to benefit a special interest group consisting of exactly One person. But I suppose it is not unusual for our legislature to make laws favoring One industry or One company. Why not One person? The President Himself hopped on Air Force One and returned from Crawford to Washington to sign the bill. This was to prove that he was indeed a compassionate conservative and that he was a part of 'the culture of life' (which is a newspeak phrase that is code for "I'm anti-abortion.")

Not often am I ashamed to be a Texan. But when I watch Tom DeLay and George Bush, both my fellow Texans, adopt the phony and sanctimonious posture that they have in the Shaivo case, I have to hang my head. This is the most transparent example of political opportunism that The Poet's Eye has ever seen. The maneuver is exemplary of the type of slimy tactics that Delay and Bushco habitually employ.

If Delay will use a phony children's fund to solicit and hide illegal contributions from his corporate buddies, why should he hesitate to make a political straw-woman of Terri Shaivo? This is worse sanctimony than Jimmy Swaggart preaching the word of god on national TV while he's shtupping whores in motels out on Route 16.

The Poet's Eye can't see well enough to determine if keeping Terri Shaivo alive is an act of compassion or an act of cruelty. Who knows if a persistent vegetative state is closer to heaven or hell? But it is very clear that to take the trials and pain of this woman and her family and turn them into a political circus, has nothing to do with compassion, it's the cheapest brand of slime-ball whoredom that I can imagine, but we have come to expect that from DeLay and Bushco.

If George W. Bush will make the grand gesture of flying back to Washington like the Lone Ranger to sign a bill that is designed to keep one woman alive who is in a persistent vegetative state, if he is really part of 'the culture of life,' why wouldn't he raise a pen as the Governor of Texas to save these people?


Executions in the State of Texas while George Bush was governor:

1995

Karl Hammond
Vernon Satterwhite
Carl Johnson Jr.
Harold Joe Lane
Bernard Amos
Hai Hai Vuong
Esequel Banda
James Briddle

1996

Leo Jenkins
Kenneth Granviel
Joe Gonzales

1997

Richard Brimage Jr.
John Barefield
David Lee Herman
David Spence
Billy Woods
Kenneth Gentry
Benjamin Boyle
Ernest Orville Baldree
Terry Washington
Anthony Ray Westley
Clifton Belyeu
Richard Drinkard
Clarence Lackey
Bruce Callins
Larry Wayne White
Robert Madden
Patrick Roberts
Kenneth Harris
Davis Losada
Dorsie Johnson
Earl Behringer
David Stoker
Eddie James Johnson
Irineo Montoya
Robert West Jr.
James Carl Lee Davis
Jessel Turner
Benjamin Stone
John Cockrum
Dwight Adanandus
Ricky Lee Green
Kenneth Ransom
Aua Lauti
Aaron Lee Fuller
Michael Sharp
Charlie Lee Livingston
Michael Lockhart

1998

Karla Faye Tucker
Steven Renfro
Jerry Lee Hogue
Joseph Cannon
Lesley Gosch
Frank McFarland
Robert A. Carter
Pedro Cruz Muniz
Clifford Boggs
Johnny Pyles
Leopoldo Narvaiz
Genaro Ruiz Camacho
Delbert Teague
David Castillo
Javier Cruz
Jonathan Nobles
Kenneth McDuff
Daniel Lee Corwin
Jeff Emery
James Meanes

1999

John Glenn Moody
Troy Farris
Martin Vega
Jorge Cordova
Danny Lee Barber
Andrew Cantu
Norman Green
Charles Rector
Robert Excell White
Aaron C. Foust
Jose De La Cruz
Clydell Coleman
William Little
Joseph Stanley Faulder
Charles Daniel Tuttle
Tyrone Fuller
Ricky Blackmon
Charles Anthony Boyd
kenneth Dunn
James Earhart
Joe Trevino
Raymond James Jones
Willis Barnes
William Price Davis
Richard Wayne Smith
Alvin Wayne Crane
Jerry McFadden
Domingo Cantu
Desmond Jennings
John Michael Lamb
Jose Gutierrez
David Long
James Beathard
Robert Atworth
Sammie Felder Jr.

2000
Earl Heiselbetz, Jr.
Spencer Goodman
David Hicks
Larry Robison
Billy Hughes, Jr.
Glen McGinnis
James Moreland
Cornelius Goss
Betty Lou Beets
Odell Barnes Jr.
Ponchai Wilkerson
Timothy Gribble
Tommy Ray Jackson
William Kitchens
Michael McBride
James Richardson
Richard Foster
James Clayton
Robert Carter
Thomas Mason
John Burks
Paul Nuncio
Gary Graham
Jessy San Miguel
Orien Joiner
Juan Soria
Brian Roberson
Oliver Cruz
John Satterwhite
Richard Jones
David Gibbs
Jeff Caldwell
Ricky McGinn
Jeffrey Dillingham
Miguel Flores
Stacey Lawton
Garry Miller
Daniel Hittle
Claude Jones

[hester_prynne]

Indeed, this says it all Lrod, and I thank you for an excellent read on it.

I've never seen legislature like this before. This is blatent invasion of privacy by the religious right, for the religious right. (that's our government after all, the religious right!)

Why in the FUCK don't they spend this kind of time for the many of us without health care that are not in a vegetative state, but maybe are cancer survivors, like me? I haven't had a check up in two years because I have no insurance and cannot pay the thousands of dollars for the yearly scan I'm supposed to have as followups (Thank Goddess I was employed (50+ hours a week!), and fully insured at the time the cancer was found! But I could be full of it now and never know. I have a friend here in town, who is a doctor and who gives me blood tests, which are not real accurate but can give indications of anything wrong. He does this for free, because he knows I've been laid off twice in the past 2 years from career jobs due to this administration's budget cuts, certainly not because of me or the quality of my work! And now, I can't even get a job!

There are many like me, that this government has displaced and left with nothing, not even healthcare. And who do they focus on?
Terry Shiavo. They can do their pro-life shit, and they can undermine the courts, and they can give us a little more Jeb, I mean after all, he'll be the next president, won't he.

Meanwhile, I'll die and no one will even know or care about how it could have been prevented, if I'd a had healthcare. Some right to life I've got, can't even get healthcare.

Fuck it all. May we all live long vegetative lives and prosper!

H

[Arcadia]

What you say, Hester, is really serious and I can avoid to feel angry.
The right to healthcare is basic and also to re-formulate what we need as health care.
Can you demand the goverment for that?. Do you have near you other people that can help you with that?.
Un beso,

Arcadia

[knip]

i really don't understand the republicans' aversion to national health care...anti-health care guys point to canada's program and tell lies about it...they speak of long MRI lineups, as if nobody can ever get one, when that only applies to non-critical cases...some facts

country/%GNP spent on health care/life exp.
US/13.6%/82
Canada/9.9%/84


looks like an efficient and successful system to me...i just don't get it


- shaking my head in canada

[hester_prynne]

Arcadia, I thank you for telling me this makes you angry because it makes me feel like someone cares enough to understand my anger and not just tell me to "calm down" or "quit whining", or just avoid me.

There are so many in this country in the same boat as I've described above...so many just dumped by this administration.
Now scraping the bottom.

And I'm sorely pissed off, i'm out of assets too, they are all used up, and nothing is any better, in fact, it's all worse! Now, I won't even get any Social Security of which I paid thousands and thousands of dollars into every month, it was required! all 25+ years I have worked, I have paid. But I was born in 1953. New changes will affect those born after 1950. Lucky me and millions of others......

It's hard not to be pissed off when everyday, our losses are rubbed in my, and millions of others faces, most recently via the Shiavo case.

Knip, I want to move to Canada......I really do
But they probably hate Americans........
H

[knip]

naw...we don't hate americans...we have an inferiority complex, though



most canadians embrace americans who move to canada...it makes them feel good to be canadians

[hester_prynne]

Heh, thass funny.

"It takes alot to laugh, it takes a train to cry"

H

[Doreen Peri]

hest...

you'll get Social Security payments...

don't let 'em fool you.

You will.

You paid in and you'll get it back.

[Arcadia]

yes, I use to have more grammar mistakes when I´m angry.
otro beso,

Arcadia

[Lightning Rod]

I usually try to keep my religious beliefs to myself, especially when writing about social and political issues. I know it is fashionable these days to wear your religion like a badge, but I find that to be, if not hypocritical, at least tacky. I think you should party in public and pray in private.

If I were going to approach the Terri Shaivo issue from the standpoint of my own personal and religious beliefs, I would have to express my sadness that this political/media/legal circus was impeding her soul's progress.

This is because I'm a borderline Buddhist/agnostic. I believe that our souls progress inevitably toward enlightenment. This may take many lifetimes, but it is the tendency of the soul to progress. Small things like death cannot stop it. Physical bodies are only vehicles for the soul.

My fear is that Terri Shaivo's soul is imprisoned in the wreck of her current vehicle, and that by not allowing her to take leave of it, we do her a disservice.

Maybe my fears are unfounded. Maybe Terri Shaivo's soul left her body fifteen years ago and is now resident in the body of a child somewhere in Africa or some distant planet. In that case she wouldn't care that the whole country is enacting a soap opera over the preservation of her carcass.

[hester_prynne]

Well said LRod, I agree with you about the progress of the soul, however I believe that Ms Schiavo's soul left on the day she had that heart attack.

Most of all, I believe their struggle is a private one, and I am outraged that our leaders decided to use this case for political reasons, in a way that is so blatently two-faced that it insults my intelligence. something this administration seems to constantly do....

Looks like the courts are not going to jump on this bandwagon and for that I am amazed and glad.....but who knows, there's a hearing tonight i'm told......

Let's a bunch of us get together and sucede from this union. I wonder if we could......

H