It’s Not About Terri Schiavo
from the March 20th, 2005 Laura Flanders Show
About that posturing in Congress on Palm Sunday, I’ve got just one thing to say: it’s not about Terri Schiavo.
Accidentally in uttering the words “she’s my life,” in her conversation with the media Terri Schiavo’s mother revealed what’s at the very heart of this whole dismal story. None of this is about poor brain-destroyed Terri Schiavo. It’s all about someone else’s life, or various someone-elses.
Tom DeLay knows nothing about morality or ethics. He dragged congress back to Washington for a special session so he could put his fellow members through a loyalty test on Palm Sunday. According to Robert Novak (who, as we know, knows these folks) analysts at the RNC sent out a warning this week to the House of Representatives that the GOP’s in danger of losing 25 seats in the 2006 election. The Schiavo case “is a great political issue” for Republicans, anonymous advisors told party senators in an unsigned memo this weekend. It isn’t about Terri Schiavo’s life; it’s about the life of this GOP-ruled congress.
It isn’t about Terri Schiavo, it’s about tossing a bone to poor Christian voters who voted Republican this November but haven't gotten a thing for those votes so far, except a slap around the face with another brass knuckle budget and tougher treatment for poor folks who go bankrupt. It’s about performing compassion when this congress is really only-and-all about profits. And it’s about obscuring the corruption and fraud on which Delay’s power is built, and hoping poor voters will forget that once they’ve cast their votes, the GOP doesn’t care about them anymore. Their first order of business is well, business.
It isn’t about what DeLay calls “a culture life." When he was governor of Texas, George Bush signed into effect a law that grants hospitals the right to cut off life support in cases that are even more controversial than Schiavo's. Under Texas law, hospitals can cease to feed a patient whose prognosis is so poor that further care would be futile if that patient has no way to pay his or her medical expenses. A baby was pulled of life support under that legislation this past week, against his mother’s wishes. It was ok with the National Right to Life committee in 1999 and it was ok with Governor George W. Bush. What changed? Only political expediency.
Exactly. See the rest here.
-The Oklahoma Hippy
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