Death and taxes

Mortality has been on my agenda these days with my friend Renee passing away last week and the current news coverage. I am kind of hoping that it goes away sometime soon.

If you have watched CNN or MSNBC these days, the coverage is dominated by the Terri Schiavo case and a lot of it is really biased towards the religious right. The worst offender would be Joe Scarborough with his 'Scarborough Country' show which seems to show endless interviews with religious fundamentalists who are calling the judges nazis and stalinists.

I just don't get it, if I was incapacitated even to half the degree that that girl is, I would not want some religious or medical fanatic keeping me alive just because they can. I don't want to be a dimwitted pet for my parents for the sake of gurgling out a few grunts for their amusement every now and then. For the record, if I am a vegetable or permanently incoherent, I absolutely want to die quickly and with dignity.

The thing that bugs me is that these religious people are using the right to life argument and at the same time they (we) are constantly interfering with any purported god by playing God and keeping people alive with machines and chemicals. If that is the will of their God then I don't want any part of it, they don't speak for my God. I'm mostly agnostic by the way.

Another thing that bugs me is that they are painting the husband to be a guy who just wants his wife killed so he can move on with his new girlfriend. I don't know about you but my girlfriend knows more about my mortality opinions and about me in general than my parents ever will.

And finally, George Bush has cut medical scientific research, eliminated brain trauma grants and has opposed stem cell research. This guy killed way more people just from these actions than all of the right wing religious fruitcakes will ever save with prayer and protests in all of eternity.

George and Jeb, fuck the both of you for making this thing into the circus that it is.