Terri Schiavo: The good, the bad, and the ugly

The media: They've been extremely hard on the the Legislature and the President because they're basically wasting time by micromanaging the country, be it with Terri or Major League Baseball. Maybe it's a valid point, but where were these people when Barbara Boxer started her little cat fight against Condoleezza Rice. Even Rice's most vocal opponents to her being Secretary of State readily admitted that Rice would easily get the Senate's blessing. Yet all legislative progress was put on hold so people like John Kerry and Barbara Boxer throw little hissey fits. What the heck was that?!

Senator John McCain, do you have any insight into this nonsense?
Dr. Rice has the confidence of the President of the United States. Dr. Rice has the confidence of the majority of this Senate. We know, as many of her critics have admitted on this floor, she will be easily confirmed.

So I wonder why we are starting this new Congress with a debate about a foregone conclusion. It cannot be for a lack of priorities because we surely have enough on our legislative plate this year. It can't be because Dr. Rice has suggested she has some flaw so fundamental that the Senate must block the President's choice. I can only conclude we are doing this for no other reason than because of lingering bitterness at the outcome of the elections.

McCain 2008. Woot! Woot!

Ehem, anyway, what McCain is trying to say (or what I'd like to pretend to say on behalf of him) is that you should pay no attention to anyone that is criticizing the Federal Government for getting involved in the Schiavo case if they also weren't critical of the delay tactics the Democrats employed because of their "lingering bitterness".

Yes, Jon Stewart, that goes for you. Now knock it off!

Ok, now the media rant is over with. Now onto congress. I can't but feel pandered to by Bill Frist who says the following: ONCE AGAIN IN THE VIDEO FOOTAGE, WHICH YOU CAN ACTUALLY SEASON (sic?) A WEB SITE TODAY, BUT IN THE VIDEO FOOTAGE, SHE CERTAINLY SEEMS TO RESPOND TO VISUAL STIMULI. THAT THE NEUROLOGIST PUTS FORTH.

Maybe a layman can make these claims, but Frist is a medical doctor. And not just "any" medical doctor, a freggin cardiac surgeon! What doctor makes a diagnosis based on a videotape? What doctor would neglect their knowledge of medicine to engage in shameless pandering? What Bill Frist did is simply inexcusable.

Last year, when Frist was asked if AIDS can be spread by tears and sweat he said "I don't know." Connect the dots. Frist is an ideologue first and a doctor second -a very distant second. Americans deserve politicians that level straight with them. Frist has shown he's a guy that will contort his own vast knowledge of medicine so egregiously that even a layman can easily recognize it.

Now onto the Schiavo family: Whether it's fair or not, Terri's husband Michael looks like an ass. Check out this timeline:

1990 - Terri falls and is brain damaged

1993 - Terri is awarded $750,000 in a malpractice suit (also $300,000 is awarded to Michael)

1998 - 8 YEARS after she was injured, Michael starts lobbying to have his wife's feeding tube removed. Presumably because he remembered some 13 years ago that Terri told him she wanted to die if she was ever in a vegetative state. Apparently, Michael's memory gets better when two things happen. 1) Time goes by, and 2) as things become more financially beneficial for him.

1990 to Now - Terri's family has tenaciously fought to have Terri live. It's pretty clear they would have no objections if Michael wanted to completely turn Terri over to the rest of her family. Yet in spite of the admirable efforts of Terri's family, Michael still wants to pull the plug on her.

I'm sorry Michael, that makes you look like an ass. Tough luck. Circumstantial evidence made Scott Peterson look like an ass and that greatly contributed to him getting the death penalty. I didn't shed a tear over him, and I'm not going to over you.

My take: Anyway you look at this story, it's inevitably tragic. What makes it worse people like Bill Frist who forsake any kind of medical logic for pandering, and liberals who have no problems saying Michael should exercise his right to kill his wife, like a farmer would shoot his horse. I find both extremes completely unnecessary and offensive.

On the MACRO level, this is what I think needs to happen is this: Congress should stop micromanaging these types of cases and they should somehow tie in patients with vegetative conditions to missing persons. In the eyes of the law, after seven(?) years a missing is as dead as George Washington. After that time, the spouse is widowed, even if they're the healthiest person on earth. Congress should pass a law allowing for the spouse of a vegetative patient to be widowed after a certain period of time. A year? I don't know.

Is there a legal can of worms there? Yes, but not anywhere as big as the following scenario: A husband disappears for seven years, then he meets up with his wife who's married to someone else. In the eyes of the law, the husband is dead, and his widowed wife simply remarries. In actuality, his wife is now a polygamist. Now THAT'S a can of worms.

If congress can take a shotgun approach to solving the missing persons problem, surely they can do the same for people with a vegetative spouse. Unfortunately, Frist lowered the congressional dialogue to calling his critics pooh-pooh heads, so expecting them to adopt my plan is just a waste of time.

On the MICRO level here's what I think should happen: Michael should give his wife over to the rest of her family. I'm not sure I'd want to claim the responsibility to care for someone in Terri's condition, and the fact that they are willing to 1) care for her and 2) fight this fierce legal battle, is a testament to Terri's family's generosity and character.

Here's what I think should NOT happen: I find it very disturbing that someone would "pull the plug" on any human being who, 1) Is not in pain, 2) has survived 15 years after their injury, and 3) has not made it emphatically clear they wish to die. How people can "just pull the plug" on such a person is beyond me. If people who side with Michael are so gung-ho to have Terri killed, then why don't they put her to sleep like they would a dog? As sick as that sounds, it's unequivocally more humane. Should dogs get more humane treatment than human beings? Of course not! Then why does Terri have to suffer a worse death than a dog being put to sleep? Because all those willing to let her starve to death are too cowardly to put Terri to sleep.

Now I'm all pissed.

P.S. If I find the the name of the guy that actually pulled the plug on Schiavo to kill her, I will post it. If I find trash on that person, I may actually relish it.

Cronkite

So the drudgereport.com says "Cronkite: Dan should have stepped down long time ago."

I feel sorry for people who get all their news from Matt. That's just a flat out lie. Go to the source people!

CRONKITE: Well, I think it's going to be hard to find anybody who is going to be as much liked and appreciated and does such a job as Bob Schieffer. I think he's one of the great television journalists of our time. And he was a good journalist when he came to television from Fort Worth [Texas].

He is, to my mind, the man who, quite frankly -- although Dan did a fine job -- I would like to have seen him there a long time ago. He would have given the others a real run for their money.

BLITZER: Better than Dan Rather would have done? Because he was perennially in third place in the ratings behind Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings.

CRONKITE: Well, that's certainly true. And it's quite a tribute to him that he -- that CBS held on to him so long under those circumstances. It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long.

BLITZER: So, you would have been happier if Bob Schieffer would have replaced Dan Rather a while ago?

CRONKITE: I would have thought so, certainly -- if not Bob, someone else.

...later...

BLITZER: Do you sense right now that being the anchor of a major broadcast network is the same as it was when you were the chief anchor at CBS News? In other words, has the situation changed now given the Internet, cable news, all the various ways that people are getting their information?

CRONKITE: Yes, Wolf. It's turned -- it's over on its head. It is vastly different.

When I was there, we -- the three traditional networks, NBC, ABC and CBS -- we shared 100 percent, practically, of the audience. There were just maybe 98 percent or 99 percent of the audience, we had every night. That other half a percentage or 1 percent were the few independent stations in the country. We had no other competition.

Today, of course, we've got all of these other channels that are competing. And, actually, the traditional networks are sharing down around 50 percent of the audience, which is still remarkably high, considering all of the excellent competition they have with such networks as yours.

Maybe it's just me, but why do I feel like Cronkite is making it sound like a bad thing that 3 people no longer control what news everyone in the country sees?

...finally...

BLITZER: What would you do if you had your way? What would you advise all the broadcast news organizations to do right now?

CRONKITE: Give news a little more time and don't request that they also, in their news time, entertain. We're not entertainers. We're journalists. And we need more time to do our job well.

I think he took a shot at Fox News. But even if he didn't, he certainly took a shot at the Daily Show. Funny too because I feel like i can watch 20 minutes of the Daily Show and know more of what's going on in the world than if I watch an hour of Larry King. So I guess you can come to two conclusions: A) Cronkite is wrong --entertainment and news DO go together, or B) the news media is so bad that they actually make Comedy Central's Daily Show look good.

My money is on A).

Bono to head world bank?

There's something different about Bono that separates him from all the other activists out there. Recently it hit me, Bono is one of the precious few activists that doesn't hate people. I guess it's easy to start thinking that hating is a prerequisite to activist-ing, but Bono is living proof that it's unnecessary. How refreshing. I'm not sure of he's cut out for the job, but I think it would serve as a great example for those activists out there that should be spending their energy helping people rather than hating people --who they perceive-- to be standing in their way.

Ward Churchill

I realize this post is late in the game. There's always nuts out there that hate their own, and in the US, some of them even thrive. What makes his case so special?

I think in retrospect, a few things stand out.

1.) People jump to his defense saying he shouldn't be fired because of his right to freedom of speech. I think that's crazy. I could lose my job by saying 2 words. That's the world we live in, deal with it.

2.) I think there's a striking resemblence beteween Ward Churchill and Timothy Mcveigh. One of Ward's initial reactions was to write about how the United States had it coming. Mcveigh also was defiant even after he was captured. Years later, Chrurchill expressed grief for some of the people killed on September 11: bystanders, firefighters, and janitors. Timothy Mcveigh did all he could to remain defiant until his execution, but his lawyers have hinted that Mcveigh had expressed grief for the 19 children that he killed in the Oaklahoma City bombing. Interesting indeed.

If I was to ask Ward Churchill one thing it would be this:
Can you name a single Iraqi that was as as outpoken against Saddam as you are outspoken against the US Government. Did he flourish in his own country like you currently are? Why or why not.

Pandering

So I'm reading this editorial. What a bunch of shameless, blatant pandering. Whoever wrote it took it upon himself to pander no less than 7 times!

Pander Count:
=============
Blacks - 4
South L.A. - 2
African Americans - 1

Total:7

But it doesn't stop there:
Different circumstances, different police agencies, different culprits. But to many, the incidents delivered a single message: Society says that you don't count. The rules of fair treatment by police don't apply to young black males.

-and then-

Now the peacemakers are at it again. Ministers, gang workers, community activists and elected officials are trying to channel anger into activism, to push for better youth services, more cooperation among neighbors and a continuing dialogue with police. Their efforts should be encouraged, not feared or disparaged.

So I guess this means we can derive the formula:
Social injustice -> Anger -> Leaders -> Activism that we should all encourage.

At the risk of oversimplifying things every bit as much as the editorial I'd like to suggest the my formula:
Pandering to specific groups -> perceived injustice -> Angry mobs that are controlled by powerful people and groups. That's hardly something that should be encouraged.

So which formula is right? I don't know, but if the second one is, the editorial is unquestionably part of the problem.

Homo Sapians

A couple archaeologists discover that the human species is several thousand years older than previously thought. According to them, humans are 195,000 years old. Hmm, interesting.

So here it is, the history of the world. 189,000 years go by (that's 97% of the lifespan of the human race), and humans live like a bunch of animals. After almost 189 milleniums go by, a bunch of groups get together on new year's day and say, "Enough of this, let's resolve to make millennium 190 a good one!." So a bunch of PARALLEL societies get together and build some of the most awesome architectural achievements ever: the pyramids of Egypt, the pyramids South America, and Stonehenge. Another thing they decided to do overnight was to invent writing. Then they invent forms of governments that were able to rule over tens of thousands of people. It's these same people that were previously running around touting fire as the pinnacle of human achievement that, almost overnight, were able to buil the pyramids! How the heck could that possibly happen? If humans were able to flaunt these magnificent achievements 6,000 years ago what was preventing them from doing the same thing 50,000, 100,000, or 175,000 years ago? What magically made them decide to make these shocking breakthroughs in architecture, literature, and government, and why did so many societies that were not even in contact with other developing societies somehow do it all at the same time?

Am I the only one who finds this new discovery to be odd?

If a bunch of people were simply dumped in an earth-like lab, how long would it take for them to produce a historically surviving culture? A few generations maybe? Certinaly not 200,000 years! Yet that's supposedly how long it took earth to produce one.

Transsexuals can play in the LPGA?

Are you kidding me?! This is crazy!

I thought transformers were making a come back, but this is just dumb.

Chalk this one up as blogger against transformers in the LPGA.

More on Steam

A couple weeks ago googleing "Steam is having trouble connecting to the steam servers", returned 16 hits, now it's 177. Quite an increase. There's a whole lot more to the controversy over here. Interesting...

Among other things is the question of whether or not the EULA (End User License Agreement) that is required to play Half-Life2 is legal or not.

Gosh, I hope not.

Dean?!

Are you kidding me? Dean makes the short list for DNC head?

Dean is actually one of the person that inspired me start this blog. Why? Because because I think the general public has grossly confused Dean's divisive popularity with his actual popularity.

If you start splitting the population just a couple of times, you can end up with an extremely dangerous sect. If that same sect starts touting someone's popularity, beware.

Dean is the poster child of that. Here's how he divides the population, 1) Are you a Democrat, and 2) Will you vote for the most anti-war candidate on the Democratic ballot? Dean is a hit among the crowd that answers yes to both questions, the only catch is this crowd speaks for about 15% of the American population. Why's that so bad? Well, considering about that many people think Neil Armstrong never set foot on the moon, quite a bit.

So anyhoo, this nut has the unwavering support of a generous 1-in-6 American. However, the majority of Americans have an unfavorable view of the guy.

Is this a person that should head a party that has lost control of the White House and has actually decreased it's presence in the House, and the Senate? If the Republicans had lost control of all three sects of D.C. would they be trying to get Pat Buchanan to head their party? Only if they were suicidal.

Steam sucks.

So I'm trying to play half-life 2 but I can't because the online Steam server is down. Don't ask me why I even need to actually log in to the server as it makes as much sense as logging in to nintendo.com to play tetris on my gameboy. What's more, if you go to steam's webpage it doesn't even make mention of their colossal screwup. Good job boys.

How do I know it's down then? I had to go the slashdot and usenet to find out it was down.

The error message I get when I try to login is "steam is having trouble connecting to the steam servers." At present, googleing that returns exactly 16 hits. I have a feeling it's going to be a lot more than that in a very short amount of time.


I want my money back.

Microsoft Windows

So I'm trying to associate movie files on any program BUT Windows Media Player. Why? Because Media Player is bloatware, none of the buttons make any sense, and I can't even use the hotkeys. What's the point of having hotkeys for media if your.. er. media player doesn't even use them.

Anyway, I do some googleing and find that you flat out CAN'T change the associations of media files to another media player (even mplayer2.exe -which is actually decent). So I think to myself, how on earth can Microsoft get away with this? Wouldn't the makers of Quicktime and Real Player have a good lawsuit on their hands?

Then I install Real Player, another player high on bloat and low on ware. During installation, I'm amused when it asks me if I want to associate movie files with Real Player. I choose yes. Low and behold, It actually worked. Then I wonder if Media Player somehow hacked media files so that I can play them with a different player, but it wasn't. File associations are locked to Real Player.

So then I decide to use the old right click, "open with" function and then check the "always use this program" button and with that, I just associated my movie files with VLC player. (Previously, the "open with" feature would not allow me to de-associate programs with Media Player.)

What did I learn from all this? Microsoft knows they'll run into legal trouble if they stick it to competing companies like they are currently sticking it to their customers. Isn't there something wrong with that picture?

Titan

Maybe I'm just a complete nerd, but for whatever reason, I was really looking forward to the Cassini/Huygens probe landing on Titan. I think I can remember when they launched the mission in the mid to late 90's, but I've definitely been counting the days since the media talked it up last summer. Scientists talked it up like saying stuff like:

We can find out where where we came from. (As if there will be a sign when we get there that reads: "Earthlings came from aliens on planet X").

Maybe we'll see lakes of flowing liquids, not seen on any other body in the solar system. (That would be cool to see.)

Artists rendered these really cool looking images of what they thought me might see:
.




Now I don't want to ruin it for you if you don't already know, but here's what we got:
.

Now, I realize the differences are subtle, but if you'll look closely, you'll notice we've got better quality of pictures of bigfoot. And even if the pics were of better quality, they'd just be clearer pictures of rocks and dust --Hardly something to write home about. Much less travel 2 billion miles for and then transmit messages half way across the solar system.

I guess I'm a bit disappointed. I think some have called Titan the last great mystery of the solar system. Well, if that's the case, the solar system must be pretty boring other than what's here on Earth.

Copy Cat: Cloning 101

So there's this cat that was cloned. Now if my calculation and understanding on DNA and cloning are correct (and I have no reason why they wouldn't be), we have a problem. If the owner that dished out 50 grand to pay for a cloned cat used the DNA from her old cat when it was mature and/or aging, the cloned cat is going to age really quickly.

Because DNA taken from young life has these long tail thingies on the end of the DNA strands. As the animal ages, the tail thingies get short and the DNA starts to get all fudged up and then you get old and stuff. So if you use this old DNA, you'd be starting off with fudged up DNA and pet would seem old before it actually was old. Get it? Supposedly that's what happened to Dolly. I haven't seen anyone address this. What's the deal?

Merry Christmas!

I've been saying that a lot lately, and whenever I do it makes me happy. Maybe it's because it's the most wonderful time of the year. Or maybe it's because anyone that does is labled a culturally insensitive yahoo by a handful of agenda-controlling journalists out there.

Whatever the reason, Christmas totally rocks and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it from rocking.

Players Unions in Pro Sports

This rant is in response to the NHL which is very likely to strike this year:

I have no doubt that the most egregious abuses caused by workers unions (and believe me, they're definitely out there) are professional athletes. Workers unions were a necessary counter to over-demanding, under-paying, and dangerous work environments imposed by "the man". There's a slough of incompetent and overly-selfserving "mans" out there and the ability to strike is just about the only way most blue collar workers can "stick it to him".

Enter professional sports. Home of the most cushy and high paying jobs on the planet. The revenues professional sports generate are enormous so obviously the players have salaries to match. But that's not enough, and as Dr. Evil once said, why make billions when you can make millions (er, or something to that effect). Professional athletes got together and figured let's "stick it to the FAN" and demand more money by threatening to strike for a season or two.

It makes me sick to think that professional athletes can threaten to strike if "management" does not raise the league "minimum wage" of a six-digit salary the exact same way that a blue collar worker would threaten to strike if he wanted to raise his pay by a few cents per hour. The power that worker's unions give pro-athletes is the most abusive and insulting implementation of union laws in the country (and that's saying a lot). When will fans wake up and demand that this blatant loophole be closed?!

There is absolutely no valid reason that professional athletes, namely in the NHL, NFL, MLB, and the NBA should be given the right to strike. PERIOD

Kyoto Protocol

Stuff that divides the world is often dumb, real dumb. Take the Kyoto Protocol for example. Even advocates for it agree that it will prevent global warming by .15 degrees Celsius over the next 96 years! That's .0015625 degrees per year!

How many jobs is that worth sacrificing? How much hardship is that worth imposing on the economy? How much higher are we willing to see gas prices go?

Advocates for it say it's a good "first step." Er, not really. We barely have enough fossil fuels to make it thru the first half of this century. Sounds an awful lot like a "last step" if you ask me.

Meanwhile this is a real hot button issue in the world. The biggest impact it will ever have is in making the United States look bad just because they won't bow to a completely worthless agreement.

And how does that make you feel, Mr Saddam?

"As a result, I have asked the International Red Cross to send urgently Western medical experts to file an independent report on the current situation and to see if Mr. Saddam is on a hunger strike or not — and what the motives are," Ludot said.

here

Since when did a rational person give a care what Saddam's motives were? Who cares?! And why am I not surprised this Ludot guy is French?

Hey Ludot, no one cares. If Saddam wants to die in his cell by his own hand, I don't care. I'd prefer that over another B.S. Milosevic trial.

Putin weighs in on the Ukraine

A few days ago I said that Powell's excessive support for Viktor Yushchenko would invite ire from the international community. Thanks to Putin, we can now put a face on that angst. According to him, the United States is a dictatorship.

"Even if dictatorship is packaged in beautiful pseudo-democratic phraseology, it will not be able to solve systemic problems," Putin said. "It may even make them worse."

I guess there's several points I'd like to make. 1) See, I told you so. 2) Putin, don't be lecturing the U.S. on making the world safe. Last time I checked, it was your country that was having serious problems with preventing terrorism in the past 3 years -NOT OURS. 3) I can't even remember the last time Bush took a cheap shot at Schroeder or Chirac who perpetually spew anti-American garbage from all their bodily orifices. How is it that Putin can get away with such strong words directed at the United States? Conclusion: Many of the anti-American sentiment going around isn't fair, but still, it has to be considered in U.S. foreign poilicy.

Oil for food program

So I decided to try to educate myself over what happened with the oil for food scandal by reading wikipedia's account of it. That's here. It's long and somewhat boring, but I have kind of changed my feelings of the program. I used to think the problem with it was unaccountable elites that ran the U.N. I think the core problem with the oil for food program is that after the first Golf War, unrealistic sanctions were placed on Iraq. The amount of oil the country is sitting on is second only to Saudi Arabia I believe and oil for food program was more like a breeding ground for kickbacks, bribes, and corruption. I hate to say it, but it actually reminds me of post WWI Germany and the unrealistic sanctions that were put on the country led to a revolt by Hitler which climaxed with WW2. Or it's kind of like the "proverb" in Baseketball, "What a terrible thing to happen on dozen egg night."

Oil for food was doomed from it's conception. If I had a lot of time on my hands, I'm confident I could come up with a very strong argument that the "rebuilding" process after the first Golf War was actually more damaging than the one we've got going on now. If the sanctions we imposed after the first war didn't fester so much corruption, I find it very likely that Saddam's perceived threat to the United States would not have provoked us to go to war.

Colin Powell vs. Ukraine

If there's one dove in the Bush administration, it's Colin Powell. His quote regarding Iraq has become quite famous: You break it you own it.

That's why I was really surprised to hear Powell give a speech directed at the Ukraine and say stuff like:
"[The Ukraine needs] to decide whether they are on the side of democracy or not."

-How patronizing...

"If the Ukrainian government does not act immediately and responsibly there will be consequences for our relationship, for Ukraine's hopes for a Euro-Atlantic integration and for individuals responsible for perpetrating fraud,"

-Wait! Weren't criticisms of voters being threatened directed at people within the Ukrainian government?

"We cannot accept this result as legitimate, because it does not meet international standards and because there has not been an investigation of the numerous and credible reports of fraud and abuse"

-Powell knows darn well he, along with the entire country, would give the rest of the world the finger if they tried to impose "international standards" on our elections. Nothing says "we defy another country's sovereignty" more than not accepting election results.

Sure the United States would be better off if the Ukrainians opted for Viktor Yushchenko over Viktor Yanukovych.

Questioning your own country's election results are bad enough. What Powel is doing here is giving validity to the argument that United States is this big Evil Empire. It's this type of foreitn policy that, in some areas, gives bin Laden a higher approval rating than Bush.

Please people! LET THE CHIPS FALL WHERE THEY MAY!