Suddenly, the doctor was at the door to my mother’s room again. He waved me out into the hall. He needed a medical directive. Immediately. Her vital signs were tanking. If we were going to put a tube in her, and put her on machines that could breathe for her, it had to be now. Right now. So it fell to me to walk back into my mother’s room, tell her she was going to die, and lay out her rather limited options. She could be put under and put on machines and live for a day or two in a coma, long enough for her other two children to get down to Tucson and say their good-byes, which she wouldn’t be able to hear. Or she could live for maybe another six hours if she continued to wear an oxygen mask that forced air into her lungs with so much force it made her whole body convulse. Or she could take the mask off and suffocate to death. Slowly, painfully, over an hour or two.

It was her choice.

“No mask,” she said, “no pain.”

Her nurse promised to give her enough morphine to deaden any pain she might feel after my mother made her choice: She would take off the mask. She would go now. I told the doctor and then ran sobbing—no longer trying to hold it together—into the waiting room to get my stepfather, my sister, and my aunt. Things were worse than they were five minutes ago. Get in here, I said, get in here now.

We said our good-byes—doesn’t that sound dignified? But her mask was still on and her body still convulsing. Good-byes reduced my affable stepfather to wracking sobs; good-byes sent me and my sister falling to the floor beside our mother’s deathbed. We held a phone up to my mother’s ear so she could hear one of my brothers shout his good-bye over the whir and thump of the oxygen machine, while we tried desperately to get my other brother on the phone . . . [Snip}

Then my mother was ready. The mask came off, she held tight to our hands, and the morphine went in. Her grip slackened. My mother was still alive, in there somewhere, beyond our reach. Was she in pain? We don’t know. She couldn’t talk to us now, or focus on us, but she was awake, her eyes open. She gasped for breath, again and again, and we sat there, traumatized, waiting for her heart to stop, waiting for the very first sound that I had ever heard—my mother’s heart beating—to go silent.

People must accept death at “the hour chosen by God,” according to Pope Benedict XVI, leader of the Catholic Church, which is pouring money into the campaign against I-1000.

The hour chosen by God? What does that even mean? Without the intervention of man—and medical science—my mother would have died years earlier. And at the end, even without assisted suicide as an option, my mother had to make her choices. Two hours with the mask off? Six with the mask on? Another two days hooked up to machines? Once things were hopeless, she chose the quickest, if not the easiest, exit. Mask off, two hours. That was my mother’s choice, not God’s.

Did my mother commit suicide? I wonder what the pope might say.

I know what my mother would say: The same church leaders who can’t manage to keep priests from raping children aren’t entitled to micromanage the final moments of our lives.

If religious people believe assisted suicide is wrong, they have a right to say so. Same for gay marriage and abortion. They oppose them for religious reasons, but it’s somehow not enough for them to deny those things to themselves. They have to rush into your intimate life and deny them to you, too—deny you control over your own reproductive organs, deny you the spouse of your choosing, condemn you to pain (or the terror of it) at the end of your life.

The proper response to religious opposition to choice or love or death can be reduced to a series of bumper stickers: Don’t approve of abortion? Don’t have one. Don’t approve of gay marriage? Don’t have one. Don’t approve of physician-assisted suicide? For Christ’s sake, don’t have one. But don’t tell me I can’t have one—each one—because it offends your God.

Fuck your God.

At it’s core, it’s about choice isn’t it and the Religious Right wants to make our choices for us.

It is important evidence of the kind of gratuitous deception that has been allowed and swallowed whole by many of our fellow countrymen. People like Sarah Palin who have never had a passport and therefore sense of proportion or context, just fear.

The problem is Gov. Avon Lady, she takes the Old Testament literally too, and in that one, God is an insecure, rage-filled hybrid of Bobby Knight and Suge Knight. He’s been alive forever and He has anger issues. He’s like John McCain if John McCain could fart hail. He’s pro-slavery, pro-polygamy and homophobic and he’ll kill you for masturbating. More people get stoned in the Old Testament than in my Jacuzzi. That’s what I have to tell you guys… If there was a video of Barack Obama standing in front of his congregation being healed by a black witch doctor, this election would be over.

An anatomically correct sculpture of the humpbacked flute player Kokopelli has been moved from the front of Edge of the Cedars State Park Museum in Blanding after complaints from a local group calling itself the “Values Committee.”
Park manager Teri Paul said she planned to remove the Kokopelli sculpture from the park entirely after a group of Blanding residents threatened a protest because the sculpture has a penis.

So seriously, when are the grown ups going to take charge?

“We are here to stand up for the unborn, to stand up against the dogs of hate who defend abortion on demand,” Wimmer said. [snip]
The supporters said the cost of the fight will not be an issue. Wimmer said that a group based out of Washington, D.C., which he would not identify, has committed to doing all of the legal work defending the bill for the state.

Cause, you know, that can’t turn out badly for Utah. **cough**Vouchers**cough**

What is Carl Wimmer smoking? “Dogs of hate who defend abortion on demand”? Is that some kind of free association quote from the AmTaliban Weekly Reader?

From fifty-thousand feet all the way down to pebbles on the beach, the distribution of this anti-Muslim DVD on behalf of the Republican candidate for President evokes the Nazi rise to power.

photo credit: Kier42

From Chris Rodda. On Friday, September 26, the end of a week in which thousands of copies of Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West — the fear-mongering, anti-Muslim documentary being distributed by the millions in swing states via DVDs inserted in major newspapers and through the U.S. mail — were distributed by mail in Ohio, a "chemical irritant" was sprayed through a window of the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton, where 300 people were gathered for a Ramadan prayer service. The room that the chemical was sprayed into was the room where babies and children were being kept while their mothers were engaged in prayers. This, apparently, is what the scare tactic political campaigning of John McCain’s supporters has led to — Americans perpetrating a terrorist attack against innocent children on American soil.

While there, I plucked a couple of quotes for entertainment purposes. This is why I love the permanency of blogging. I applaud Richard for leaving it up.

Richard on Idiots and Peace:

When I see someone with a “Support Our Troops: Bring Them Home” or “US out UN in” sign in their yard, I can’t help think to myself, “what a total idiot.” - Richard Okleberry, March 2006

Richard on Morality based preemptive war:

However, we must not shy away from using our military to enforce international moral standards when necessary. I hope the next time you see an idiotic peace sign in someone’s yard that you remember one thing. While these people say they are against war they are also telling us what they are for. They are for the shooting of women in the back of the head for simply wanting to learn how to read. They are for midnight abductions and rape houses. They are for the torture and murder of political and religious dissenters. They are for genocide in the form of chemical and biological warfare. Richard Okleberry, March 2006

Richard on Military History:

In reality, the war in Iraq has been one of the most successful military campaigns in US history. When averaging the number of US combat casualties per day we find that the Iraq war is second only to the Revolutionary war for the lowest number of combat fatalities per day. Richard Okelberry - March 2007

Richard on Choosing a President OR “‘picking your Bible Study group:

As for me, I will likely vote for Mitt Romney because of this reason. I am also looking forward to a national discussion about the difference between Mormonism and traditional Christian faiths because bigotry is a product of fear that comes primarily from a lack of understanding and information. - Richard Okleberry - March 2007

That’s all for now folks.

Morris Berman, a distinguished professor and writer is known as an innovative cultural historian and social critic. His most recent book, Dark Ages America, is not pretty. I first saw him on C-Span book TV. It was interesting because even among the predictably liberal sympathetic crowd in attendance, some got angry.

Why? Why did liberals get angry with another liberal? Because Morris not only describes all the ways we are screwed, but that we are beyond the point of salvation. Kaput. Finito. Buh, bye.

Listen: …An interview you will not forget.

HOW BAD IS IT?

In 1984 Ronald Reagan announced, with characteristic indifference to fact, that it was “morning in America.” A quarter-century later, the twilight, then already perceptible, has deepened. The international financial position of the United States is ruinous. Globally, attitudes toward American policy range from misgiving to loathing. The foreseeable consequences of climate change and environmental pollution range from painful to catastrophic. For most Americans (especially the tens of millions without health insurance), medical care is the worst in any advanced industrial society. Economic insecurity is epidemic; overwork and high stress are the rule rather than the exception; inequality is at an all-time high; trust in government is at an all-time low (though perhaps not low enough, in the present circumstances). The (until recently) governing party openly aspires to permanent one-party rule and a Caesarist executive. Civic virtue, lately renamed “social capital,” is waning; neighborliness has dwindled to the point of near-anomie. Functional illiteracy is rampant: in most non-affluent school districts, the public schools are not merely ineffectual but often unsafe as well. Nearly half of all Americans believe that the earth is 10,000 years old or less and that angels and other supernatural beings regularly intervene in terrestrial affairs. The average American’s day includes six minutes playing sports, five minutes reading books, one minute making music, thirty seconds attending a play or concert, twenty-five seconds making or viewing art, and four hours watching television. And even Americans who don’t watch television are perfused by a stream of commercial messages so intense and ubiquitous as to constitute a culture (in the biological as well as social sense) of consumption. Compared with the imagined noonday brilliance of that vibrant idyll, Walt Whitman’s Democratic Vistas, the prospects for contemporary American civilization are heartbreakingly bleak.

TERENCE SMITH: So you’re saying that some Bush voters would come out of the polling places and simply decline to participate; if so, why?

WARREN MITOFSKY: Well, in an exit poll, everybody doesn’t agree to be interviewed. It’s voluntary, and the people refuse usually at about the same rate, regardless of who they support. When you have a very energized electorate, which contributed to the big turnout, sometimes the supporters of one candidate refuse at a greater rate than the supporters of the other candidate.

How about my theory? Young democrats registered in record numbers, as they are this election season, and those numbers were reflected in the exit polls. Above emphasis by me in Mitofsky’s theory points out that his statement contradicts itself.

When McCain picked Palin as his running mate, my first thought was that there was no possibility she would be kept on the ticket, but I keep wanting to forget how devious and dangerous these Republican elites are.

Mark Crispin Miller, who has written more then one book about our latter-day election irregularities, and knows a lot more then you or I, starts from the position that our elections are being stolen.

Read his terrifying article which explains why Palin was really chosen.

Go to Crispin’s website to find out more. Here is Mark explaining the significance of the “US attorney scandal”, (which is closely associated with election fraud at the highest levels of government), with better clarity then I’ve seen anywhere else:

From May 10, 2007:

If you are sick and tired of being seen around the world as stupid and flippant by people who steal your vote and paint you with that brush, then stay comfortable in that role. I can’t!

The last part of Mark’s article has this to say about the issue which will not be discussed in the media:

The theft of this next race is only possible because the Democratic Party and the media, and principled Republicans, have shut their eyes to this regime’s crusade against American democracy. And now the only way to stop it–or, if it does happen yet again, resist it– is to face it at long last, and talk about it openly. It’s therefore not enough to raise more money for the Democrats, and not enough to get more voters registered, and get them to the polls; and not enough to spread the word about McCain and Palin, or to try to get the media to do a decent job; and not enough to fight the smears and lies about Obama, and to demand that he and/or the Democrats get tougher.

While all of those activities are crucial, they’ll amount to nothing if the race is finally rigged, and most Americans don’t know a thing about it. And so, whatever else we’re doing, we must also speak out loud and clear about that possibility. Otherwise, if that disaster should befall us, we will be as much to blame for it as those Republicans who pulled it off, and all those Democrats who let them get away with it.

You know as well as I do, Obama is not going to lose this election. Americans are for the environment, against war, and love their freedom too much!

As predicted, the fact that she didn’t know anything wasn’t a bug, it was a feature. She’s perfect for the neocons: likable on the outside, a blank slate on the inside. To borrow from an old cliché, if Sarah Palin didn’t exist, the neocons would have had to invent her.

How else do you imagine a quote from an avowed racist writer Westbrook Pegler ended up in her acceptance speech, “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity.”

“Pegler was a rabid Joe McCarthyite” and wrote for the John Birch Society.

Surely Palin knows NO MORE about Pegler than she does about the Bush doctrine. But the people around her do, and they will be shaping a Palin presidency. That they would inject not just Pegler’s words but spirit into their candidate’s speech shows where they’re coming from. Rick Davis, the McCain campaign manager, said that the Palin-sparked convention created “a whole new Republican Party,” but what it actually did was exhume an old one from its crypt.

The specifics have changed in our new century, but the vitriolic animus of right-wing populism preached by Pegler and McCarthy and revived by the 1990s culture wars remains the same. The game is always to pit the good, patriotic real Americans against those subversive, probably gay “cosmopolitan” urbanites (as the sometime cross-dresser Rudy Giuliani has it) who threaten to take away everything that small-town folk hold dear.

Idiocy in America was once measured by how many people voted for Bush the second time. Now we have another litmus test, people who think Palin was picked for anything reason other than her Machiavellian willingness to take orders from the fascists lobbyist running McCain’s campaign.

Any American who really believes Palin could, should or would run this country, needs to do the patriotic thing; go straight from Church to some place quiet and blow their brains out with your ‘piece’.