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Will someone please ask Nader if he's ever heard of aspiration pneumonia? And to explain why it's bad?
Nader seems to be trying to build a disaffected right-left coalition. Remember all that talk about how he was going to draw equally from both parties? I guess after 2004, and the pittance of support he received from Greens and other progressives, he's decided to take it seriously.
So, having trashed his reputation on theleft, he's now hustling for support among the ding-dong corners of the right. Look for him to start addressing militia groups and add Waco and Ruby Ridge (and ZOG?) to his standard speech in a couple of months.
Has it just become reflex with him?
Yes.
Nader long ago crossed over into a reality of his own making. Fortunately, not too many people share that reality any longer.
I'm sure he came out with this statement just to get a little publicity.
What a jerk.
Ralph always had a streak of exaggeration for effect (as seen in Unsafe at any Speed) but he seemed to me to be fairly sensible at his core. And he's smart, as are his sisters (I have met and talked to Laura briefly). But he's just gone down a really strange road lately where he seems to be trying to cozy up to people like Bush and people who like Bush. He (and Colin Powell, and apparently now McCain) will be remembered in history in ways they will not like.
Has it just become reflex with him?
Yes. And don't be alarmed; the poor brain-dead among us often make thes strange, nearly sentient-sounding noises from time to time.
Duuuhhh, I thought you knew Dept.:
This is just payback from Nader for all the REPUBLICAN money that funded both his campaigns.
Hello? Earth to Naderites? He'll be carrying messages to anti-abortion rallies now on behalf of Duhhbya, who he helped select.
People don't need to be able to swallow to clear their mouths of saliva. That's not true for food and water, which is why Terri Schiavo can't have food by spoon feeding.
this debate is silly. you can tell bloggers are real journalists - the republicans pay them just like they pay real journalists.
"Has it just become reflex with him?"
I don't know. I just know which reflex is triggered in ME whenever he opens his mouth lately.
Ralph Nader has truly "jumped the shark."
This can't be real. Digby I hope you did your momework on this. I don't mean to be presumptuous, but I find this so hard to believe. That would be a side of Ralph I've never seen before.
God. My apologies. Fuck. I'm going to lose my mind. fuck
Nader just wants attention to be paid to him, like Lieberman. He's addicted to it.
And now nader is a metaphysical wizard right up there with delay and "doktor mengele" frist?
somedays you just gotta wonder if you went on a long sleep and dreamt of an alternate universe that keeps eroding your freedoms and faith in human beings .. not that I had much faith in nader to start with ... he's actually more of the same problem with a different sales pitch when you get right down to it.
but say it ain't so ....
Thank you Betsy. As much fun as Nader bashing is, I'm glad someone actually explained the flawed logic there. If y'all don't first explain why Nader's wrong, your credibility kinda goes down the drain. Much like his has.
To liberals, as James Traficant is to the Dems. Is his brain liquefying?
Free Radical: If y'all don't first explain why Nader's wrong, your credibility kinda goes down the drain. Much like his has.
Dude, if you don't already know why he's wrong you must be an "independent". Welcome to Hullabaloo.
DIgby, he's got a bit of a point. When my grandmother died of a stroke, we made sure she got some fluids, even though she wouldn't eat. She was ready to go. Still, she took a little ice cream, a little water, and a glucose drip. It was surely more comfortable than without fluids; anyone saying otherwise is shading the truth.
Let TS finish dying; the poor woman has been doing it by degrees for the last decade and a half. But dehydration is truly nasty, and unnecessary. I know it; before the IV was hooked up, I saw it myself.
I'm going to take what cold comfort I can:
Ralph Nader will live long enough to see everything he accomplished systematicaly dismantalled.
After that I plan to enjoy watching the Fundies, the Libertarians, and the Chamber of Commerce types fall uppon one another.
It won't do me any good, but it will be one hell of a show.
The current Hospice and medical community thought is that dying by dehydration is a blessing and helps the person be more calm and comfortable. This is the way god helps the body die peacefully. IVs, suctioning, foley catheters, etc, are all uncomfortable. People don't understand how coding someone who is dead is not only torturing a dead body but the family and the medical staff having to do it.
Ralph Nader wrote an interesting book about the dangers of the Corvair which made some news but not that much. Then GM had the brilliant idea of siccing a PI on him and lo and behold a new consumer hero was born! Democrats, when they controlled Congress, loved to call him to testify and use him as a cudgel to bash GOP presidents and big businesses they disagreed with. Well this frankenstein's monster has now screwed them royally in 2000 and, having alienated old allies, now goes on to new ones leaving Dems, Greens, and Public Citizen licking their assorted wounds!
Why are people saying offhand that dehydration is so horrible? I see no evidence, for that, and in fact the evidence I've seen--personal experience at the bedsides--says opposite.
One was my sister, who died in August. after 17 months of brain cancer. She didn't want her life prolonged by any means if it became apparent, by all gatherable evidence, that she was not going to make it. That became obvious after chemo and radiation and two brain surgeries and another tumor came back faster and wickeder than the other two.
When she died, it was after two weeks of unconsciousness--no water and no fluids. That was her wish. Sure, my sister died because she got a horrible cancer--but the exact cause of her death was probably dehydration. We had plenty of morphine on hand and used it when pain was evident, as was also her wish.
An important point: She knew we always wouldn't know exactly how to do it, and that it would be hard, and that we would want her to stay sometimes and not know what to do. She trusted us nevertheless. Trusted our love, and trusted that we would do her right.
We die. It's not horrible to die. It's not even horrible to feel pain. The grace with which my sister walked to her deah will never leave my eyes or skin or mind. It was truly truly truly sad, but it was also beautiful, in that other sense of that beautiful word. We assume much to much and we are also not exactly honest when we say that Terri Schiavo is being subject to unneccesary pain and death.
Someone send this link to Ralph:
http://www.miami.edu/ethics2/sch...vo/
timeline.htm
That way, he'll know that Terri had years and years and YEARS of therapy, but it didn't do any good because her cerebral cortex no longer exists:
http://phoenixwoman.blogspot.com...-two-
scans.html
Well now, there's our Ralph. Aren't all you Nader-lovers so glad you blew the election in 2000? Bush would have never happened but for a few hundred votes.
Now, look at him. I hope you see Ralph for what he is. And remember, it is because you voted for this nutcase instead of Al Gore, we now have war, torture, assaults on the environment and social security, etc.
How does that feel?
Nader's fundamental conservatism has been apparent for a long time; it's just tragic that a small but curicial number of people were suckered into believing that in 2000 he was some kind of progressive icon.
richard lo cicero
Nader did a lot of good for consumer protection (although as I said he was prone to exaggeration in his Unsafe at any Speed). If Democrats more often called on him than Republicans during the 1960s and 1970s it's because both Democratic politicians and Nander cared about consumer protection far more than Republican politicians. Once he got into politics as an office seeker, he's done little if any good, and has progressively gotten worse in that regard.
That doesn't mean that his work on consumer safety wasn't important and useful. That Republicans now reap the benefit of his actions even as they earlier fought against his work on behalf of Americans is certainly ironic -- he seems to have become a corporate lackey, whether wittingly or not, even as he was a nemesis before.
Nader clearly isn't seeing what the Bugman, Jeb, and company weren't seeing either: that this isn't about metaphysics but about temperament. It's not a left-vs.-right thing. It's not even a faith-vs.-reason thing.
It's a sheep-vs.-cats thing. The polls do seem to suggest that people are relating this to their own experiences without the intervention of "leaders" -- about which they've formed the conclusion that said intervention stinks.
The question was never the basis on which "we" decide what happens to Terri Sciavo's husk. It was always (as the courts recognized) about who decides it, and when it is to be regarded as having been decided -- res judicata.
Nader is motivated by personal
spite. During Gore/Bush, he indicated
that he was ready to support Gore if
Gore got in touch with him and offered
to do certain things. In essence,
he wanted Gore to invite him out
on a political date. When Gore never
called, Nader became crazy with rage
and hate. He ran specifically to
get Gore defeated.
If Nader really has said what
Digby reports he said, Gore has
expanded the circle of his hatred
to all the liberal/progressives who
shunned his run, and voted for
Kerry.
And if that is true, I will have
to think of Nader as a Christian
Satanist collaborator, and a
Secular Satanist in his own right.
Progressives will continue to be
appalled at just how closely Nader
will work with the Christian Satanist
Right from now on.
Congratulations Ralph! You have at last attained the statesmanlike stature of John Edward, Sci-Fi Channel Psykik. I for one am looking forward to your brand-name fragrance and line of stove-top broiler appliances. For then, verily, shall we know you for the Great Man of Destiny that you truly are.
And that is unfortunate, because
a lot of his other ideas remain good
ones.
Consider the swallowing reflex in the brain-dead.
This, to me, explains why half the country believes what the MSM tells them.
It also might explain the bland, homogenous consistency of the pap they serve up.
If there were any ideas or issues they had to chew on, they'd probably choke to death.
Nader may well be doing this for the same reason he worked to tip the election to Bush in 2000. Eternally bitter from feeling "spurned" by Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, he wants to destroy the Democratic Party, and he knows this is an issue where Democrats can score some serious political gain.
Wonder if a phone call from his pal Grover Norquist prompted him to speak up in this case.
The 800 pound gorilla in this argument is that the "culture of life" red state fascists (+ Nader) would invalidate every living will written. They don't care what you wanted. They know better.
The national media should pin these clowns down on this issue. Namely: "Bill Bennett, do you think living wills should be respected? If so, why are you concerned about the dehydration being torture? Is a spouse who follows the wishes of a dying person a murderer?"
By the way, for some patients dying of cancer, if they are dying imminently, feeding can increase pain and nausea. In these cases, the starvation is part of the dying, and the patients have no hunger. I am not saying that Terri Schiavo's feedings cause her discomfort (she doen't feel any, in fact), but applying kindergarten-level generalizations to the issue results in some dreadful conclusions.
Well, you can't help but wonder whether the poor anti-scientific rightwingers who have created this travesty are identifying so closely with Terri for unspoken reasons having to do with their own, shall we say, ambiguous feelings about the value of the cerebral cortex. Kind of the perfect logical outcome of fundamentalism.
Now Ralph clamors for admission to the ranks of the willingly self-lobotomized. If he wants to do it for real, I think there are a lot of people who'd gladly hand him the icepick. Question: would we be able to tell the difference?
I'm afraid it's even uglier than Nader jumping on the galvanized corpse of Terry Schiavo for imaginary political gain; look where he's doing it from and with whom! The press release is from wretched hive of scum and villainy the Discovery Institute, co-authored with Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith. Smith has been working for the Schindlers for a couple of years now, writing all sorts of misleading bullshit trying to equate Schiavo's PVS with some sort of locked in coma, all of which has been addressed thoroughly by noted science journalist Carl Zimmer.
Smith claims to have written for Nader before. Is the Discovery Institute, a cabal of well-funded creationist crackpots trying to replace science with theology in classrooms everywhere, what we could have expected from Nader for a science cabinet? If he follows the bioethics positions of Smith, then Nader would oppose assisted suicide and euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human genetic manipulation, human cloning, and the animal rights movement.
Wow, Ken, great catch. That's just dreadful.
Earl, that was a beautiful post, and thank you for sharing your experience.
Have you considered the case of Lyndon LaRouche as a clear model. An ego-driven cult leader with a following who think that the man is God on Earth when facing old age, and the obvious failure of his messiahship staring him in the face goes all religo-fascist?
I wouldn't discount the payback to Democrats, the man seldom misses a beat in his hatred of Democrats solo, and his ties to the Republican right. Those make sense too. You can be twisted in different ways at the same time.
CNN had him on the just awful 'crossfire' last week as the 'liberal' side. And he isn't even playing one on TV these days. He pushed the Little Audrey Schiavo line there, if I heard right between heaves.
If Terri's cerebral cortex has disintegrated, leaving just spinal fluid or some such, then she is not capable of feeling pain or discomfort, is she? Starvation and thirst can only occur when your cerebral cortex is intact. I suspect the morphine drip is to quiet her brain stem, which could cause her to appear restless.
Of course, if you've set up the concept "life is sacred" to be worshipped instead of a living God, then science and medicine are edged out in favor of your idolatry. The religious front to the battle against the Evangelical dingdongs should be fought on these grounds, IMHO.
i did some work for nader this summer in austin, and i can see why, as a consumer rights advocate, he would take this position, but still. ralph is fucking up.
Could Terri Schiavo get pregnant and carry a baby to term in her present condition? Assuming the feeding tube was reinserted, that is.
If so maybe a grandchild would please the Schindlers.
Thanks, other lisa.
Why are people saying offhand that dehydration is so horrible?
Because they hunger for the drama and trauma.
Why, you ask?
Because they want to destroy the power of the government to hold their slimy lying asses accountable for their reprehensible ideas and behaviors and greed and lust and envy.
Other then that, because they're fools and tools.
Maybe Nader could do an expose of the manufacturing company that makes the feeding tubes--"Unsafe at any suction".
Maybe the feeding tube itself is carcinogenic and will give Terri cancer.
Now that the tube has been removed, Terri is saved from getting cancer.
Hallalujah!!
QUESTION:
After being screwed so determinedly by Tom DeLay & the Religious Wrong,
could Terri possibly be pregnant??
Oh my god...THINK OF THE BABY!!!!
LIQUID BRAIN. i think Ralph's developed a liquid brain. Even using the word "starvation" in this case is fucking stupid beyond words.
To starve, you have to be alive.
Returning society to a medieval status quo would certainly do something to stop further degradation of the environment from human technology and industry.
Look for "First Church of Christ, Ecologist" sometime soon, with Nader as its leader to whom Truth was Revealed.
This is starting to seem like a near-future SF satire by Ken MacLeod (s.v. "the barb," short for barbarians, in The Star Fraction series).
I am a regular listener to local radio station WXRT (Chicago) and caught an excellent commentary by their morning DJ, Lin Brehmer. If you go to www.wxrt.com/program/detail/linsbin.html and scroll down towards the bottom of the page, there is a segment dated 3/30/05 entitled "Death?" It is a well written, thoughtful commentary on Shiavo and hypocrisy.
I fear we are starting to turn into the right-wing caricature.
Terri's death is not a good thing it itself. And there is a valid argument against the removal of the feeding tube.
There are two things here:
1) The cynical "culture of life" lies of a bunch of vampires that make the old thugee cults (whether they were real or a figment of the Victorian imagination) look friendly and the Cthulu worshippers (if any really exist) sunny, sane, and Biblically sound. If they actually wanted to save this kind of lives, they would not waste time with one-person laws, they would outlaw the removal of feeding tubes. Or at least not make laws that will inevitably lead to more such disconnections.
2) The fact that this case is decided, and that the people still fighting it are acting against the legaly valid decisions of Terri, her legal guardian, a whole bunch of courts, the will of the people of Florida as expressed in law, and the will of the people of the United States as expressed in polls. I don't agree with the decision, but I absolutely agree with the idea that it isn't MY decision to make.
3) OK, one more - to reconnect the tube at this point is just plain cruel to whatever animal self is left in that ruined body.
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