Wednesday, February 29, 2012

My Jaw Finally Dropped


On the news this morning I watch Rick Santorum announce to his pleased audience, "do we believe in the smart and elite in this country to manage us?"


Why, no, you moron, the country is hoping that you, a member of the "dumb and tedious" will be leading our country.  


What is wrong with these bizarros?  And by "bizarros" I mean republican (I'll start capitalizing it again when I find one who has a modicum of sense and moral dignity) candidates.  As a short example, here are some of candidate Santorum's statements:


We went into a recession in 2008 because of gasoline prices. The bubble burst in housing because people couldn’t pay their mortgages because of $4 a gallon gasoline.


Yeah, OK, Rick.  That was the reason in your hallucinations.


CO2 is a pollutant? Tell that to the plants.


Sigh.  Too bad we're not marijuana plants.  It would help us believe Santorum's wild ranting.


One of the favorite things of the left is to use your sentimentality, and your proper understanding and belief that we are stewards of this earth and we have a responsibility to hand off a beautiful earth to the next generation. 'They use that and they have used it in the past to try to scare you into supporting radical ideas on the environment. They tried it with this idea, this politicization of science called man-made global warming... I stood up and fought against those things. Why? Because they will destroy the very foundation of prosperity in our country.


Yep, global warming is a leftist plot.


President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob!


I don't really need to say anything, do I?


If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything."


Ummmm, would you please explain your reasoning here, Ricky?  Oh that's right.  There isn't any.  That would be elitist.


In the Netherlands people wear a different bracelet if you're elderly and the bracelet is 'do not euthanize me.' Because they have voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands, but half the people who are euthanized every year, and it's 10 percent of all deaths for the Netherlands, half of those people are euthanized involuntarily at hospitals because they are older and sick. And so elderly people in the Netherlands don't go to the hospital, they go to another country, because they are afraid, because of budget purposes, that they will not come out of that hospital if they go in with sickness.


Absolutely none of that is true.  I'll let FACTcheck.org handle this one:



FactCheck.org on the actual facts:

First, let's review the law. The 2001 Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide (Review Procedures) Act allows Dutch citizens to end their lives if they are suffering from a medical condition that causes "unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement." There are two end-of-life procedures: euthanasia, where a doctor administers a fatal drug, or assisted suicide, where the doctor prescribes the fatal drug and the patient administers it. The law took effecton April 1, 2002.
According to a publication distributed by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, doctors must be satisfied that the patient's request is "voluntary and well-considered," and that there is "unbearable suffering with no prospect for improvement." The patient's doctor must consult at least one other independent doctor, who is responsible for ensuring the "due care criteria" is met.
After the termination of a patient's life, the death must be reported to the government and reviewed by regional committees composed of, at a minimum, a doctor, ethicist and legal expert.
Now, let's look at Santorum's three claims. We'll begin with a stunning claim that the elderly are so afraid of being euthanized for "budget purposes" that they wear "do not euthanize me" bracelets. We were told by a government official and a representative of a Dutch physicians' association that this is simply not true.
When we contacted the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, public health spokeswoman Inge Freriksen told us that "a bracelet asking not to be euthanized doesn't exist." Patients would only be euthanized after they followed the set of guidelines as outlined above.



Idiot?  Devil?  Moron?
You decide.  I don't believe in a devil.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Animal Cruelty

These cows are alive.


Hey Animal lovers out there.  Looks like another politician (Republican - is this a surprise?) wants to protect potential animal abusers from prosecution.


I agree that there are privacy concerns when hidden cameras are part of the process to expose the intense abuse suffered by animals raised to feed us, but I wonder how else it will be exposed?


This is an ongoing, mostly hidden, mostly ignored problem.  We are the caretakers of the earth's animals.  Putting them through a lifetime of intense suffering is not being a caretaker it's being a monster. 


Click here to read the brief article


Click here to watch video of slaughterhouse abuse (very graphic)
(Warning, the above video makes me cry.  I doubt I'll ever eat pork again after seeing this one and I could only watch the start of it.  It's something you should know, however, and if you aren't an animal rights activist after watching this then you might want to check for your missing empathy chip.)