Florida Woman to be Starved to Death

In a society that claims to be as advanced and as enlightened as we do, I find it completely unfathomable that the state of Floriduh is going to allow this. Terry Shiavo has been in what is known as a persistant vegetative state for 15 years. Critics will say that that's reason enough to end her life. Terri's family will say she doesn't meet the definition of persistant vegitative state (PVS). Even if she does, I say she it doesn't mean anything. The term PVS has a history of change. It used to be known as a permanent vegetative state. They had to change the name because so many people were coming out of this "permanent" state. Let's say for the sake of argument that she is in an unrecoverable state. Does anyone have the right to end her life? I find it ironic that the same people calling for her husband to be allowed to kill her (that's what it is) are the same nibble heads that scream for an end to the death penalty. Hell, death row inmates receive a more humane death than she's likely to get. Even animals get a more humane death when they are put down. Where's the ACLU on this one? If it were an animal being put down by starvation PETA would be all over it like stink on you-know-what. Yet here we are about to allow a human being to be starved to death. Do you hear that? Starved to death. Her husband's attorneys say it's a completely natural and peaceful way to die. Have you ever been hungry? I challenge them to go for a week without food and see how it feels. What gives us the right to say that this woman doesn't deserve life? That decision belongs to her family. And no her husband no longer qualifies. He has moved on with his life. He is engaged to be married (yes he's still legally married to Terri), and already has children with his new woman. Why doesn't he just walk away? Let her family take care of her and try to give her rehabilitatvive care? She's going to be STARVED TO DEATH people!!! I welcome any argument with me on this, but before you go calling me names or whatever take my challenge. Go for one day without food or water, no nurishment whatsoever, and then tell me what we're about to do to this woman is humane.

Source link: Fox News

You can read more about Terri here.

20 Years Later

From Fox News:

HUTCHINSON, Kan. — For 20 years, Sarah Scantlin has been mostly oblivious to the world around her — the victim of a drunken driver who struck her down as she walked to her car. Today, after a remarkable recovery, she can talk again.

Scantlin's father knows she will never fully recover, but her newfound ability to speak and her returning memories have given him his daughter back. For years, she could only blink her eyes — one blink for "no," two blinks for "yes" — to respond to questions that no one knew for sure she understood.

"I am astonished how primal communication is. It is a key element of humanity," Jim Scantlin said, blinking back tears.

Sarah Scantlin was an 18-year-old college freshman on Sept. 22, 1984, when she was hit by a drunk driver as she walked to her car after celebrating with friends at a teen club. That week, she had been hired at an upscale clothing store and won a spot on the drill team at Hutchinson Community College.

After two decades of silence, she began talking last month. Doctors are not sure why. On Saturday, Scantlin's parents hosted an open house at her nursing home to introduce her to friends, family members and reporters.

A week ago, her parents got a call from Jennifer Trammell, a licensed nurse at the Golden Plains Health Care Center (search). She asked Betsy Scantlin if she was sitting down, told her someone wanted to talk to her and switched the phone to speaker mode:

"Hi, Mom."

"Sarah, is that you?" her mother asked.

"Yes," came the throaty reply.

"How are you doing?"

"Fine."

"Do you need anything," her mother asked her later.

"More makeup."

"Did she just say more makeup?" the mother asked the nurse.

Scantlin still suffers constantly from the effects of the accident. She habitually crosses her arms across her chest, her fists clenched under her chin. Her legs constantly spasm and thrash. Her right foot is so twisted it is almost reversed. Her neck muscles are so constricted she cannot swallow to eat.

The driver who struck Scantlin served six months in jail for driving under the influence and leaving the scene of an accident.

Scantlin started talking in mid-January but asked staff members not to tell her parents until Valentine's Day (search) to surprise them, Trammell said. But last week she could not wait any longer to talk to them.

"I didn't think it would ever happen, it had been so long," Betsy Scantlin said.

Scantlin's doctor, Bradley Scheel, said physicians are not sure why she suddenly began talking but believe critical pathways in the brain may have regenerated.

"It is extremely unusual to see something like this happen," Scheel said.

The breakthrough came when the nursing home's activity director, Pat Rincon, was working with Scantlin and a small group of other patients, trying to get them to speak.

Rincon had her back to Scantlin while she worked with another resident. She had just gotten that resident to reply "OK," when she suddenly heard Sarah behind her also repeat the words: "OK. OK."

Staff members brought in a speech therapist and intensified their work with Sarah. They did not want to get her parents' hopes up until they were sure Sarah would not relapse, Trammell said.

On Saturday, Scantlin seemed at times overwhelmed by the attention. Dressed in a blue warm-up suit, she spoke little, mostly answering questions in a single word.

Is she happy she can talk? "Yeah," she replied.

What does she tell her parents when they leave? "I love you," she said.

Family members say Scantlin's understanding of the outside world comes mostly from news and soap operas that played on the television in her room.

On Saturday, her brother asked whether she knew what a CD was. Sarah said she did, and she knew it had music on it.

But when he asked her how old she was, Sarah guessed she was 22. When her brother gently told her she was 38 years old now, she just stared silently back at him. The nurses say she thinks it is still the 1980s.

Her father, Jim Scantlin, understands that Sarah will probably never leave the health care center, but he is grateful for her improvement.

"This place is her home ... They have given me my daughter back," he said.

I personally find this story absolutely amazing. The unbelievable resiliance of the human spirit never ceases to astound me. I find it a bit disturbing that the useless waste of tissue that hit here was let go with with just 6 months in jail. As someone who lost their father to a drunk, I find this absolutely appalling. Something else I find disturbing is that there are some people out there in this world who would have simply had this woman euthanized twenty years ago. Even now, after she has woken to her family and is cognizant of her surroundings, some would say her quality of life is simply not up to standards and she should be put of her misery. These same people would have no problem starving to death a woman who isn't up to their "standards" of quality of life. At what point do we get to judge the quality of life of those around us? Do we begin euthanizing infants immediately after they're born becuase they have some defect? Because they may not have a normal life? Who gets to judge that? Which of us gets to decide who deserves a shot at life and who should be put down?

A Word to the Wise

If you blog, always keep an updated copy of your template saved somewhere. Preferrably on a seperate disk, although your hard drive is ok I suppose. It's really nice when you screw something up and you can save your own arse by just doing a simple copy and paste. Oy...(note to self...STOP F'ING WITH THE TEMPLATE!!!!)

WTF??

I don't know what's more disturbing. That someone was looking for female cleaner douch (they spelled douce wrong) in a Yahoo search, or the fact that I came up at #4.

Uhm, eewww.....

Update: Ok, I'm a tard. Steve points out that I spelled douche wrong also.

Bush a "Progressive"?

Hmm, I knew there was something about him I didn't like. It seems Bush's budget director is proud of the fact that Bush's budget will shift the tax burden on the wealthy.

BUSH BUDGET DIRECTOR BRAGS OF SHIFTING TAX BURDEN TO RICH
Mon Feb 07 2005 15:42:56 ET

The White House budget director Josh Bolten on Monday bragged to reporters how the nation most-wealthy will see an increase in tax burden under Bush's new budget.

"If you look at the president's tax cuts as a totality, the income tax, those at the upper end of the spectrum are now paying a larger share of the income tax than they were before," Bolten explained.

"An example, the top 5 percent in income in this country -- that's people making above about $140,000 -- without the president's tax cuts that top 5 percent would be paying about less than 52 percent of our total income tax revenue.

"After the president's tax cut that group is paying more than 54 percent of our total tax revenue. So the notion that the president's tax cuts have somehow made the code less progressive is wrong. The president's tax cuts have made the tax code more progressive."

The problem with the whole "progressive movement" is that it requires no drive, desire, or passion to make anything out of yourself. Why work your butt off just to be taxed back into poverty when you can be like my neighbor and just sit home all day and have babies while gob'ment cheese pays all (yes all) of your bills? Good Lord what a bunch of tards.

Fallujah Revisited

I've been getting a lot(a really really lot) of hits lately from folks looking for the video of the marines taking Fallujah, so I thought I'd put it up again instead of making folks hunt through the archives (besides, I'm all about some shameless self promotion).

Here's the video link.

Here's the link to the original post.

And to give proper credit, here's the link to the Blackfive post where I first saw the video.

Be thankful these guys are on our side, and be thankful they're out there doing what they do so we don't have to do it here.

Who is this Nibblehead?

From FoxNews.com:

DENVER — The University of Colorado's (search) regents have scheduled a special meeting to consider a professor's essay that said victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks deserved to die because they were a willing part of "the mighty engine of profit."

The essay by Ward Churchill (search), chairman of the ethnic studies department and a longtime Indian activist, was written in the aftermath of the attacks. Its contents became known when he was invited to speak at Hamilton College (search) in Syracuse, N.Y.

Some relatives of Sept. 11 victims have protested the college's decision to allow Churchill to speak on Thursday, the same day the Colorado regents will meet on the university's Fitzsimons campus.

CU Provost Phil DiStefano last week said Churchill's views do not represent the university, but he had a right to express them.

A critic, U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez (search), R-Colo., said that because Churchill is tenured he apparently is immune from any sanctions by the university but should apologize. There was no answer at Churchill's office phone Sunday, and his private phone is not listed.

Following the attacks, Churchill wrote an essay, "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," that hailed the "gallant sacrifices" of the "combat teams" that struck America.

He said although the victims were civilians they were not innocent. He went on to describe the World Trade Center victims as "little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolf Eichmann (search), who organized Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's plan to exterminate Europe's Jews.

I wasn't aware that Morgan Stanely or the Port Authority were filing people into concentration camps. I assume next Churchill's gonna tell us that Pizza Hut is stuffing all of it's non-conforming employees into blast furnaces (or maybe they'll just use the pizza oven?).

What a tool.

Update #1 2/2/05:

Visitor Matt McCall says

I think people need to leave Ward Churchill alone. I don't necessarily agree with what he said, but it was simply an essay that expressed his feelings. He wasn't talking about the police officers and firefighters who lost their lives, mostly about some New York assholes who nobody likes anyway. So all you haters, FUCK OFF.

At no point did I ever say anyone should go after Churchill. Heck, I don't even think he should be fired, though that decision belongs only to the University. But if Ward Churchill has the right to compare folks who were working in the Towers to Nazis, I/We have the right to call him a moron/tool/nibblehead et al. And by the way, those New York "assholes who nobody likes anyway" were somebody's family. They were mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters etc. If that's the value you have on Human life then I sincerely feel for you. Your life must be very sad. Matt, your welcome to come here and post all you want and by all means disagree with me. Hey, I even encourage it (I really do miss J). But if you continue to devalue human life or tell me or others to buggar off, you will be banned. It is my site after all and the only First Amendment rights protected here are my own.

Freedom of Speech in Danger?

Good Lord high school students are getting dumber and dumber. Is this what they're teaching in public concentration camps schools these days? One can only hope that these nibblehead douchebags will come to love and appreciate the constitution more as they get older. Otherwise........

By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY

One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today.

The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get "government approval" of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion.

Asked whether the press enjoys "too much freedom," not enough or about the right amount, 32% say "too much," and 37% say it has the right amount. Ten percent say it has too little.

The survey of First Amendment rights was commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and conducted last spring by the University of Connecticut. It also questioned 327 principals and 7,889 teachers.

The findings aren't surprising to Jack Dvorak, director of the High School Journalism Institute at Indiana University in Bloomington. "Even professional journalists are often unaware of a lot of the freedoms that might be associated with the First Amendment," he says.

The survey "confirms what a lot of people who are interested in this area have known for a long time," he says: Kids aren't learning enough about the First Amendment in history, civics or English classes. It also tracks closely with recent findings of adults' attitudes.

"It's part of our Constitution, so this should be part of a formal education," says Dvorak, who has worked with student journalists since 1968.

Although a large majority of students surveyed say musicians and others should be allowed to express "unpopular opinions," 74% say people shouldn't be able to burn or deface an American flag as a political statement; 75% mistakenly believe it is illegal.

The U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) in 1989 ruled that burning or defacing a flag is protected free speech. Congress has debated flag-burning amendments regularly since then; none has passed both the House and Senate.

Derek Springer, a first-year student at Ivy Tech State College in Muncie, Ind., credits his journalism adviser at Muncie Central High School with teaching students about the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech, press and religion.

Last year, Springer led a group of student journalists who exposed payments a local basketball coach made to players for such things as attending practices and blocking shots. The newspaper also questioned requirements that students register their cars with the school to get parking passes.

Because they studied the First Amendment, he says, "we know that we can publish our opinion, and that we might be scrutinized, but we know we didn't do anything wrong."

I wonder if we can get a discount if we buy plane tickets in bulk? Find a small island, or some underpopulated Islamo-fascist country and send these morons over there. I'm no fan of the MSM, but as a great American once said "Though I do not agree with what you say I shall defend to the death your right to say it". Gotta love that free public education. School vouchers anyone?

Hat tip to the My Arse from My Elbow blog.