Famous Last Words: Possible Diplomatic Breakthrough In Israel. I hope this doesn't lead to anything awful, like EVERY OTHER TIME the Israelis go through this anthropomorphic ritual with the Baal worshipping Philistine animals.

Oh no, this commentary expresses disagreement with an aspect of the President's foreign policy, and I concur! The neo-crypto-facist Thought Police must be coming to get me as I write!

This news article touches on many points of interest to this blogger: Lawyers' transparently self-interested support for gay marriage as a prelude to gay divorce laws, an obvious boon to lawyers at the expense of humans; the unchecked power of judges who let the fact that their job description is much to close to that of God go to their heads; the Bible as potential hate speech; and the creeping Canadianism that threatens to overtake us all.

It's not time to rest on our laurels yet, where Terri Schiavo is concerned. Here is an update.

BTW, B O O O !

Excerpt from my correspondence with a Ukranian (I'm so terribly lonely):

>Besides, it would be very curiously to get to know your opinion of
>the President's Policy. Please, don't be offended, but I
>think that the epopee of Bush-junior's election was the best
>political anecdote of a current millennium. Many other countries will >have a headache and the heart attacks repeatedly. I am agree, that it >is tactlessly of me to tell like that. That's why I'd like to tell
>you once more - far be it from me to offend you and your political
>believes. Never the less we are not able to understand your
>President's reaction well and truly; sometimes it is very strange.

I might be offended by your opinion about the President if you were an American, but it seems like a much less unreasonable position for a European. Americans who say the exact same things do so for totally different, and somewhat despicable reasons, in my opinion. I think that people are forgetting to take differing national interests into account. Countries like France, Germany, and Russia did a lot of business with Iraq (they build lots of nuclear power plants in countries that have the least apparent need for them, being virtually made out of fossil fuels). In a way it is just sensible for European governments to present only the side of the story that promotes their own national interests, especially in places where the government tightly controls the media, and one cannot blame citizens for believing what they are told and sticking up for their own countries. Nevertheless, I believe that France in particular took it too far and made it personal. Sometimes I feel very much as if my country is being treated the way I am sometimes treated; Ridiculed, obstructed, and ostracized just for trying to do the right thing.

Here, we are dividing into two camps: Those with European sympathies see Iraq as a new Vietnam for us (something like Afganistan was for the Soviets). Those who see things as I do believe that the war on terrorism is very much like the second world war. Germany never attacked us, just as it is said that Iraq never attacked us. The occupation of Germany took years, and more of our occupying troops were killed after the war than were killed taking over Iraq. One of the reasons for the urgency behind the Normandy invasion was that our intelligence indicated that the Nazis were much closer to developing an atomic bomb than they really were, no one said this made Roosevelt a "liar". Internationalizing the occupation of Germany nearly resulted in the destruction of all life on Earth.

Sometimes it's hard for me to know what to say to the more extreme critics of the administration, because what they say has more absurd assumptions and implications than I can keep track of. Debating the matter of Iraq in the UN for nearly a year is called "rushing to war". All of the reasons that were given for invading are now ignored except for the weapons of mass destruction, which is called a false charge because we did not find warehouses full of H-bombs (when there is no legal or traditional reason for the burden of proof to fall on the US instead of the Baathists, who promised to account for all of the mustard gas, etc that they were already known to have used on the Kurds as a condition of the surrender we won from them in the previous war), and the argument that the threat from Iraq was imminent, which is what Tony Blair said, not Bush (Bush's position was that if we waited for the threat to become imminent, it would be too late to do anything about it without fear of retaliation).

I've written more than I intended to, although I would like to know some more about your views on these subjects. As for Bush's election, nothing about that was actually very unusual up to the point at which Gore refused to concede and it went to the courts. He's our only losing presidential candidate never to have conceded (he "withdrew"). Many of our presidents (Lincoln and Clinton come to mind) didn't win a majority of the popular vote, especially in three man races (the Greens ran Ralph Nader, the man who made it imposible for Americans to buy very small cars, because they're not safe enough. Now he's trying to ban the big ones because they're ineffecient).

I now shall partake of the traditional pastime of Right-Libertarian bloggers, distancing myself from Ann Coultier, who I have just caught LYING:

Among Bush's "many unworthy judicial nominees," the Times said, Brown is "among the very worst" – more "out of the mainstream" than all the rest! Even Teddy Kennedy, who might be well advised to withhold comment on a woman's position relative to a moving body of water, has described Brown as "out of the mainstream," adding, "Let's just hope this one can swim."

She's lying! Ted didn't really say that last part!! I hearby denounce this lying, bomb-throwing liar who is extreme and tells lies!!! By distancing myself from lie-lady, I show myself to be above such bourgeois partisanship and lying!!!!

Quote of the Moment ______________________________

"A truck hit him, crushed his back legs. He dragged himself under the house. Once in awhile he'd make a noise like a cat fight and thrash around a little, but mostly he just lay quietly and waited. 'He ought to be destroyed,' they kept telling me. After a few hours he dragged himself from under the house. Crying for help. 'He ought to be destroyed,' they said. I wouldn't let them do it. They said it was cruel to let him live. So finally I said I'd do it myself, if it had to be done. I got a gun and a shovel and took him out to the edge of the woods. I stretched him out on the ground while I dug a hole. Then I shot him through the head. It was a small-bore rifle. Zeke thrashed a couple of times, then got up and started dragging himself toward some bushes. I shot him again. It knocked him flat, so I thought he was dead, and put him in the hole. After a couple of shovels of dirt, Zeke got up and pulled himself out of the hole and started for the bushes again. I was crying louder than the cat. I had to kill him with the shovel. I had to put him back in the hole and use the blade of the shovel like a cleaver, and while I was chopping with it, Zeke was still thrashing around. They told me later it was just spinal reflex, but I didn't believe it. I knew that cat. He wanted to get to those bushes and just lie there and wait. I wished to God that I had only let him get to those bushes, and die the way a cat would if you just let it alone - with dignity."
...

"Therefore you're are asking me to let her die slowly and -"

"No! I'm not asking you. As a priest of Christ I am commanding you by the authority of Almighty God not to lay hands on your child, not to offer her life in sacrifice to a false god of expedient mercy. I do not advise you, I adjure and command you in the name of Christ the King. Is that clear?"

... For an instant he had feared that the girl would laugh in his face."

- A Canticle For Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller Jr.

III? Answer me these questions three:
What does the President think of the legislation Jeb signed? How much of a joke is the Communist News Network willing to make of itself? When will we see comprehensive coverage of the Terri Schiavo situation?

___ ASSORTED ASSERTIONS ___

Have you ever noticed that when you're coughing and someone else starts to cough, it pisses you off just a little, like they stole your idea?

The people who decide what we need to know and when we need to know it have decided that we are now to be terribly concerned about home schooling on the grounds that abusive or neglectful parents may use the privacy afforded by home schooling to isolate their children and cover up their abuse and neglect. This may just as truly be said of ANY form of privacy. It's easier to get away with crimes in a house than in an apartment. Should this make house-dwelling families suspect?

Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?

Let me get this straight: Iraq has become a "Mecca" for suicidal Islamofacist sniper-types, so that we can now kill Syrian, Pakistani, and Saudi terrorists without having to invade Syria, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia, and this is a BAD thing? In my wildest genocidal fantasies of September aught-one, I never imagined they'd just deliver themselves to us like this.

If you have any use for a bandanna, then society has no use for you.

Ronald Bailey of Reason magazine has chosen to simply disregard everything about the Terri Schiavo situation that Judge Greer disregarded. The networks reduced the footage of Terri laughing, speaking, and tracking movement to a virtual slide show. Worldnet Daily has run a far from comprehensive feature about the misinformation being uncritically parroted in the mainstream media (such as the notion that medical opinion is in unanimous agreement with the diagnosis made by a bunch of lawyers, which the public must be disabused of. What gets to me is what the papers and the networks omit, which I hesitate to begin listing here (such as the possibility that a crime is being concealed by denying Terri Schiavo medical treatment and arraigning ahead of time to have her cremated without an autopsy, the fact that the lack of drooling likely indicates some ability to swallow, her tracking of objects, and the orders given by Judge Greer that only make sense as efforts to cover up any errors he may have made). Some other neglected pertinent matters are brought up in this fact sheet and this Barbara Simpson commentary (this last link will work now).

Current status of Terri Schiavo: Tenuous.
The segment of the population that has any idea what's going on here is still very small.

Notice anything missing from this State Department map of the Middle East?

Like a certain nation that the Koran said would never exist?
Anyone still wonder who’s side the State Department is on?

Life should definitely be WAY more like this.

The mischief continues, and a lot could still go wrong, but events have reached a stage where I can foresee blogging about matters other than Terri Schiavo as soon as this weekend. I’ll probably move the Terri’s Fight banner link to a semi-permanent position at the top of the page.

The stories that need to be reported on now are the immense cognitive gulf between the two sides of this thing, and the uncanny new depths of bias in mainstream press accounts. Stories about Terri’s Bill not only fail to mention the reasons why the bill was drafted, but even that there were any reasons.

Correction to previous post: The vote did not take place until today, and Jim King has tentatively supported Terri’s Bill. Here’s a Miami Herald story that omits much. I guess little details like whether Terri Schiavo is actually in a vegetative state or not, or why the judge would forbid any attempts to confirm whether this is true or not are only of interest to the wild-eyed fanatics of the religious-right.

Here’s an email I just sent to Jim King, the President of the Florida State legislature, who blocked a vote to delay the killing of Terri Schiavo for long enough to investigate the numerous special circumstances around this case.

* * *

Dear Sir:

The right to die movement will be irredeemably discredited if Terri Schiavo is killed without due process of law, while such serious doubts remain as to the quality of care she has received, her wishes, and the objectivity of Judge Greer. None of the legitimate arguments for medically assisted suicide apply to Terri Schiavo.

Allowing the Florida State legislature to do it's duty would do nothing to harm the cause of humane euthanasia, and not doing so will give credence to the notion that legal recognition of a right to death with dignity inevitably leads down a "slippery slope" slope to incautious, arbitrary killing of brain damaged patients who otherwise might recover. Your removal from office is likely to be the least severe consequence of the inevitable backlash.

For God's sake, just let them vote.

* * *

Here are my thoughts exactly, as expressed by Joseph Farrah.

The Terri Schiavo situation is desperate. There is very little time left. This website has very important, pertinent information that you need to know NOW (not just some argument about the merits of right to die laws or something, like you would expect to see on this blog). It also has a petition that you can sign and send to Jeb Bush, but please don't be content to stop at that. Someone think of something, if Reno was any indication, the Attorney General should be able to just storm the place and rescue her no matter what anyone says.

Here are some excerpts from a WND commentary on the Terri Schiavo case.

* * *
...Could they have imagined that these same judges would also restrict their final few days of opportunity to visit with or see Terri, to take pictures, final video of her? Could they have imagined that because the court had ordered them not to give "therapeutic support" and barring them from video taping, that they themselves would have to defy a court order for the public to see that Terri was not brain-dead?

Is it fair or proper for this son-in-law to try to deny the rights of Terri's parents to tell the truth about Terri's condition? Shouldn't people know that when Terri's mom walks into her hospice room and calls her name that Terri's eyes widen with joy, a smile comes on her face and she tries to sit up? Shouldn't people know the truth that when Terri's mom nuzzles with her and kisses her on the cheek that it tickles Terri's heart so much that she breaks out with laughter? Shouldn't people know that Terri began to cry when she was told of what was going to happen to her ...

When Mary Schindler was brushing Terri's hair out at night when she was little could she have ever dreamed that Terri's future husband would prevent her from being with her in the final 10 days of life?

Terri began starving two days ago. Doctors say she will be dead within 10 to 14 days of when it began.
* * *

Here is another update of the situation.

Here is a Terri Schiavo update

There is really no time left for debating this thing in ideological terms. Imagine how you would feel if you hadn’t had any food or water since Wednesday. She’s also being given morphine which will hasten her death. In a matter of days, America will no longer be the best country in the world.

This is not just some argument about euthanasia or the right to die. There is no time for that. If we stipulate that the position of Kevorkian (who is starting to look like Mr. Rodgers) is entirely correct and legal, and that Mr. Schiavo is totally in the right, it is still necessary to keep Terri Schiavo alive for long enough to make that determination in a proper and open matter. Then, go ahead and kill her, at least we wouldn’t be setting the precedent that this can now be done without due process. What the hell is the judge in this case so afraid of, that he can’t allow her to be videotaped, or visited by people who might try to give her water? Right now she is essentially being imprisoned. What happens if she rolls out of bed and tries to crawl away? We’re not allowed to know what, that’s what.

Here are a few pertinent matters that you might not know if you’ve been relying on this blog and the TV news for information about Terri Schiavo:

- She was not being sustained by artificial means, she was being sustained by food and water. Many cerebral palsy patients need feeding tubes to live.

- During this entire period, she was being denied medical treatments, which, had she received them, may have resulted in her being able to communicate years ago.

- Judge Greer has disregarded all of the medical testimony that didn’t simply tell him whatever he wanted to hear, and prevented one side in this case from presenting evidence, or trying to find out whether Terri might respond to treatment were it attempted. He has not seen Terri in person. For whatever reason, he apparently has no interest in doing his duty of trying to determine the truth, and in fact, has bent over backwards to conceal any facts that might tend to support the case against killing Terri Schiavo.

- She is in no state resembling a coma; Videotapes which Mr. Schiavo and Judge Greer tried to suppress show her responding to being touched and spoken to by smiling and laughing. There is no clearer indication of quality of life than smiling and laughing.

Here’s an email I’m trying to get to Governor Jeb Bush (jeb@jeb.org)

Dear Sir:

The Terri Schiavo case is just beginning to get some serious national coverage (I'm in the Seattle area). It would be prudent at this time, to say the least, for you to instruct the Department of Children and Families to do an investigation of their own to see if Mrs. Schiavo has been getting proper care and rehabilitation. It seems quite likely that they would find that she has not, at which time you could have the Department take over the guardianship of Terri Schiavo. I'd also like to urge you to consider any possibilities that may exist of having Judge Greer promptly removed from the bench, or at least temporarily relieved. Even if Mr. Schiavo's version of facts were true, this would not excuse the Judge's bizarre decrees barring basic medical treatments and efforts to produce evidence in favor of the Schindlers' case. The logic behind his order that no one be allowed to attempt to feed her (that she could aspirate the food and die of pneumonia instead of thirst and starvation), is straight out of Monty Python. If separation of powers means letting judges do anything they want, then it means nothing at all.

My father, a retired special education teacher, tells me that he has had students in worse shape than Mrs. Schiavo, fed with tubes, and capable of learning. This woman is moving, smiling, and laughing in response to other people. She could still survive if only she is somehow hydrated long enough to straighten this situation out and get her real medical treatment. If not, then the reputation of Florida is sealed. Thank you for your consideration of this serious violation of Constitutional rights.

Sincerely -

Dave Munger

Here are a couple of phone numbers that might get you through to Jeb’s office: 1-850-488-4441 or 1-850-488-7146.

A few far out possibilities occur to me, such as having Terri arrested on some trumped up charge, since sick prisoners are required to be kept in real hospitals (she’s in a hospice now, under guard like a prisoner), placing Judge Greer under psychiatric observation so that some other judge could take his place, getting the President to issue some kind of executive order, or just sending some National Guardsmen in to rescue her and sorting out the paperwork later.

Basically though, I’m stumped. Someone out there had better think of something FAST.

More on that situation Here, Here, and Here

The news before it happens (AKA, conjecture):Will Denver be the next Waco?

- And now, a moment of sarcasm -
The Left is just as patriotic as the Right, in fact more so, since theirs is a ~true~ patriotism, not just an ignorant parroting of xenophobic sentiments. If you disagree with this statement, you are Hitler.

- End of sarcastic moment -
Here are a few links in which leftists conflate patriotism with racism, assert that the two are corrolaries, or otherwise imply that patriotism is, in itself, a bad thing:

The Myth Of Misandry (In which I am informed that the people who call me names, blame me for everything, exclude me from their reindeer games, and keep trying to castrate me, actually have nothing against me in particular.)

Oy, sod off, bloody wanker! (This one’s from England, and I’m trying to have some fun with that. Sue me.)

Anarchists who apparently HAVE heard of Kropotkin (In high school I called myself an anarchist, because I believed in Reganomics, which I thought would eventually cause the state to wither away. This article is clearly written by and for left-wing anarchists though.)

Breeding Terror (BTW, anti-capitalism has nothing to do with Communism or Socialism, you ignorant cracker! OK, NOW I’m finished with the sarcasm.)

Is Society Sane? (A rambling, 70s-style piece by a guy who is very right about some things.)

I did a google search for "patriotism=racism", which I believe I once saw written on some hippy’s forehead or something. I only spent a few minutes picking these from the results.

I've been meaning to link to this site forever. It has information about the films of my friend, Johnny Hassett.

I’ve been listening to a lot of defenses of Rush Limbaugh on the radio, and I have yet to hear anyone point out that he's being accused of hypocrisy for succumbing to a side effect of a medication prescribed to him for a health condition, having previously expressed disapproval of recreational heroin use. This literally could happen to anyone.

This constant expansion of the meaning of the word "hypocrisy" is a symptom of the current global pandemic of terminal adolescence - "You grown-up cats try to bring us down just because we g-g-get around, and lay bad trips on us for shooting blowfish toxin into our heart sacs and smokin' graaaaaaasssss, and then you drink beer and smoke cigars, man, cause you’re hypocrites!"

That last part was my brilliant segue into linking to this excellent article on Iraq, which deals with some other symptoms of the pandemic.

I put some new pictures on the Funnies page.

___ ASSORTED ASSERTIONS ___

It’s time someone came out and said it: 'The Simpsons' has finally jumped the shark. It happened in the episode in which Mr. Burns hired Homer to be his prank monkey, precisely at the part where Homer was dressed up as a panda and a male panda mounted him. Subsequent episodes have been better than that one, but not of classic Simpsons quality.

The ubiquity of opportunities to win a million dollars is begining to have a real negative impact on quality of life. I can’t throw away butterfinger wrappers anymore.

It is important never to object to cloning in principle. One must only
object to cloning in practice. A good rule of thumb is to avoid objecting on religious grounds. Too often, the majority of objections on a given list all amount to either "If God had meant for man to fly, He'd have given us wings", or "I'm afraid that these babies would be born without souls". That, in current practice, human cloning would amount to lethal medical experimentation on unconsenting human subjects, has to be sufficient reason for prohibition. If the opponents of in-vitro fertilization had stuck to this line of arguement, they'd have had a chance.

How many substances exist that are dissolved by sugar? Do our teeth have to be made out of such substances?

Contemporary skateboarders suck. They have 8,000 words for "scrape the
bottom of the board against something." Back in my day, skateboarders did really cool tricks, like they'd jump up off of the board and over a car, while the skateboard went under the car, and they'd land right smack dab back on the board on the other side of the car. They didn't need a bunch of ramps and city-funded skate parks either. Occassionally, one would see a kid unobtrusively using his skateboard as a form of sidewalk transportation to and from school sans mayhem, desperate pleas for attention, or eXtrEmE histrionics. Now that's a neat trick. What really puts a sting in the tail of the new kids' suction is that they are getting laid, and not because they are good at something, but because some Time/Warner executive decided
that ATTITUDE (tm) is the only virtue society will celebrate, reward, and send to the head of the reproduction line. "I just cop'd a bling-blang ollie impossible wing-wang off the hoop-dee smegma hanger, plus, I have colorful plumage, and I breathe through my mouth! That entitles me to the hymens of your daughters, commoner."

The world is going through a sort of adolesence, with the only superpower stuck in the parental role.

Prof. Michael C. Munger of Duke University has put one of my rotating stickman strips on his site. If only for his sake, I suppose I should start rotating that once in awhile, like I’d been planning to do once people started using it on their sites. I’ll hold off for awhile though, because the current strip is one of my better ones. He’s even thrown in a link to this blog! We are not, to my knowledge, related. BTW, check out his senate testimony on campaign finance reform. He’s so totally right! I drew a mr stickman comic to that general effect once, but I haven’t converted it to jpeg format yet. Of course, it was hard to make the point very well with such limited space and no special expertise in the matter, and it wasn’t as funny as it should have been because to fit all the words in I had to change "arse" to "ass".