good will living

SCHIAVO
* johngibson on fox: 'michaelschiavo shouldnt have guardianship cos he is fooling around with someone else - he isnt really married to terry'. sweet. so all those married repugs with lovers ought to give half their estate to their original 'wife' and get the hell outta the house.

* digby: "I've been thinking that I'm going to have to ask whether a doctor is a Republican or a Democrat before I trust my health to him or her from now on. Doctors who vote for Republicans obviously have no fealty to science or reason or they wouldn't vote for them." LINK
indeed. and the same for pharmacists - u need to be able to get your condoms and viagra when u require it.

* speaking of which, write yerself a living will. heres mine: i reserve the right to die. if i have a persistent cold and cant communicate, please knock me on the head.
if theres any doubt, kill me. if the religio-crazies get a hold of the case, tell em im really in a hurry to shake hands with Dog.

* "STEPHANOPOULOS: But, sir, isn't this a classic case of states'
rights? It's been looked at by six courts; I think, 19 judges; the
state courts have ruled; the state legislature has ruled; it's been
reviewed by the federal courts, even the Supreme Court of the United
States. Isn't this a states' rights issue?
MCCAIN: I don't think so." LINK

* " Rita Crosby interviewed the parent's lawyer and the brother of Terri. This is one of her questions:
Crosby: What do you think his motives are? I've taked to some folks close to you guys and they believe that maybe he did something to her and maybe he's covering it up?" she is a truly disgusting woman. LINK

* "But what's really appalling about Frist's latest I'm-not-a-neurologist-but-I-play-one-in-the-Senate routine is that he does this all the time. For at least eight years, Frist has been making medical pronouncements on all manner of medical issues outside his speciality (he's a heart surgeon), and his message is always the same: You can't trust all those other doctors, but you can trust me because I am a doctor."
LINK

* "Some people ask why Terri Schiavo matters in the grand scheme of things. Why should we care about the fate of one oblivious individual and her squabbling relatives?
Because behind the Republican veneer of crass political opportunism lurks a much more sinister agenda. The Republicans aren't just pandering to evangelicals this time. Their real objective is to crush the authority of the judicial branch." LINK

* cnn interviewed a brain-alive person with a feeding tube. just like terri

* georgia10 tees off, asking the demleaders to use the schiavo case to introduce universal healthcare. LINK

* i commmented to g10 thusly.

"perhaps the dems can use the terri schiavo case to push the case for universal healthcare by focusing on the joint issues of the right to dignity and the total costs (health & legal & others) of keeping her alive.

surveys indicate that many people (i think i read somewhere 80+%) want the right to die with some dignity, and many of us dont want to suffer the ignominy that terri schiavo has been through.

the medical costs of keeping americans who are in a 'persistent vegetative state' alive for 15 years (in this case) is presumably well into the 7 figures. on top of that you can add the total legal costs and other economic and non-economic costs.

i dont know how many americans there are in a 'persistent vegetative state', but if we find that number and then multiply through the total cost, and then multiply that by the % of us who would prefer to be allowed to die then the total savings might go some ways to financing universal health care.

as a starting point, according to this article, for example, there are 40,000 americans in a 'persistent vegetative state' and 2/3rds of americans 'would rather die a little sooner'.

the dems could use the schiavo case to promote that they respect the dignity of the individual et al and promote the idea of the living will, and then use the projected savings to pay, in part, for universal health care.

im sure the math has already been conducted for the Texas Futile Care Law, for example.

and perhaps the dems could reclaim the compassionate label juxtaposed against the purported 'compassionate conservatives' aka the radical, fanatical, corrupt extremists of which you speak.

LINK