May those who have exploited you be silenced and ashamed. And may your long suffering provide an object lesson to those struggling with eating disorders, that it is better to be healthy than thin.
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Terri and John Paul Sittin' in a Tree...
Guess we found out where Terri's feeding tube went... right down the gullet of his Majesty the Pope!
If you ask me, watching this poor old man struggle day after day to wheeze a single word out into a microphone is powerful testimony to the concept of palliative care and death with dignity. The fact that after almost 2000 years of Catholicism there is no fixed procedure for letting a frail, old, sick, dying pope retire tells us much of what we need to know about this religion's position on end-of-life issues:
SUFFER, BABY, SUFFER! God alone will tell you "when." No one gets to say Uncle in this life, and no decent Catholic likes a quitter. Your agony is not only irrelevant, it may in fact be the whole point.
Mark me well, my friends. The GTL flies no flag, bears no allegiance to any authority beyond the rule of law, and does not see the point of beating - or being - a dead horse.
Saturday, March 26, 2005
handguns, handguns... my first handgun.
Smith and Wesson model 649. A used stainless steel .38 special with wooden grips that I exchanged for a very grippy rubber pair. The salesman didn't return the used pieces, and consequently I got ripped off. He probably knew I was inexperienced and wouldn't think to ask for them back. Score one for the gun store dick at four seasons in Woburn, Mass.
The unique feature of this gun is the "shrouded hammer." This allows the hammer to be cocked by thumb but doesn't leave it sticking out from the frame. This lets you carry it in your pocket and get it out in a jiffy without the hammer getting caught against your clothes.
A simple gun. If I care for it it'll outlast me. It's already twenty-five years old and still works fine.
No wonder there are so many guns out there.
I support gun control, by the way.
It ought to be difficult to get a gun in the first place and IMPOSSIBLE to buy them in large numbers at one time. One a month seems a reasonable compromise. I doubt very many of the revolutionary war's peasant heroes ever bought thirty weapons at one time. Seems a reasonable compromise between liberty and law.
The unique feature of this gun is the "shrouded hammer." This allows the hammer to be cocked by thumb but doesn't leave it sticking out from the frame. This lets you carry it in your pocket and get it out in a jiffy without the hammer getting caught against your clothes.
A simple gun. If I care for it it'll outlast me. It's already twenty-five years old and still works fine.
No wonder there are so many guns out there.
I support gun control, by the way.
It ought to be difficult to get a gun in the first place and IMPOSSIBLE to buy them in large numbers at one time. One a month seems a reasonable compromise. I doubt very many of the revolutionary war's peasant heroes ever bought thirty weapons at one time. Seems a reasonable compromise between liberty and law.
Monday, March 21, 2005
TERRI SCHIAVO FOR PRESIDENT!
Is anybody with me in wondering why one random woman’s suffering means much of anything to the cynics running Congress and the current administration – the morally pure folks that brought us an unprovoked, propaganda-driven war that has cost more than fifty thousand civilian lives so far? A fraudulent war that has devoured two hundred billion dollars’ worth of children’s health insurance, food stamps for poor working families, heating fuel assistance for the elderly, tuition aid for poor college kids, and all kinds of other useful things?
I mean, really, what the hell is so important about some woman who’s been lying comatose and rigid in a bed for fifteen years? Is it worth having Congress violate the tenth amendment and obliterate states’ rights on the thinnest of supposed “moral” grounds in order to protect this great and promising life from being snuffed out?
Is Terri in a persistent vegetative state? I think so. That's what her doctors and the state courts have decided. After all, fifteen years is a long time to just lay there like a lox if you don't have to. If her thinking life is a over, that is, if her soul has left her body (for all you religion people out there), it is her husband’s responsibility – and no one else’s – to make the difficult life or death call about the vessel of her body. This is called Protecting the Sanctity of Marriage. Republicans really, really care about this. Or at least they did in November.
But now Bill Frist and Tom DeLay arrive weirdly from somewhere. They announce that state courts no longer have jurisdiction. Why? Well, because of the fact that this nice elderly couple’s DAUGHTER is going to DIE, because just LOOK at that SWEET YOUNG GIRL and you’re going to tell me that just because of the damn CONSTITUTION we have to stand by and let that girl’s doctors, in conjunction with her husband, the hospital’s ethics panel, the Florida state courts, and the majority of Americans' opinions, just - just - PULL THE PLUG ON HER?!
Will no one stand up for LIFE?!
This isn’t an administration. It’s a group psychosis.
I mean, really, what the hell is so important about some woman who’s been lying comatose and rigid in a bed for fifteen years? Is it worth having Congress violate the tenth amendment and obliterate states’ rights on the thinnest of supposed “moral” grounds in order to protect this great and promising life from being snuffed out?
Is Terri in a persistent vegetative state? I think so. That's what her doctors and the state courts have decided. After all, fifteen years is a long time to just lay there like a lox if you don't have to. If her thinking life is a over, that is, if her soul has left her body (for all you religion people out there), it is her husband’s responsibility – and no one else’s – to make the difficult life or death call about the vessel of her body. This is called Protecting the Sanctity of Marriage. Republicans really, really care about this. Or at least they did in November.
But now Bill Frist and Tom DeLay arrive weirdly from somewhere. They announce that state courts no longer have jurisdiction. Why? Well, because of the fact that this nice elderly couple’s DAUGHTER is going to DIE, because just LOOK at that SWEET YOUNG GIRL and you’re going to tell me that just because of the damn CONSTITUTION we have to stand by and let that girl’s doctors, in conjunction with her husband, the hospital’s ethics panel, the Florida state courts, and the majority of Americans' opinions, just - just - PULL THE PLUG ON HER?!
Will no one stand up for LIFE?!
This isn’t an administration. It’s a group psychosis.
Monday, March 07, 2005
Welcome to the GTL universe
This is a site for liberals who like to shoot and like to talk politics and aren't afraid to do both - AT THE SAME TIME.
Politics is the new Sports. Join me in my low back alley workshop, where the crackerjack GTL team isn't afraid to delve into the minutiae of, say, the history of media conglomeration, or the new bankruptcy bill.
The needs of working people are without question better fulfilled by the so-called "liberal" agenda. Leaving untouched for a moment the Right's claim to fundamental moral superiority, with a liberal agenda you get more subsidies for higher education, better wages, more housing and heating fuel support for the poorest families; you get more aggressive policing of unfair labor practices and the abuse of workers, more access to economical health care, a cleaner environment, less grotesque imbalances between rich and poor. Who knows, maybe even looser women.
It was liberals who brought the world such flashy innovations as the weekend, overtime, child labor laws, public education, the New Deal and the middle class. These things were not achieved easily, but often at the tip of a bayonet or under a Pinkerton's truncheon.
Yes, Radical Right-of-Nixon Republicans deserve some respect and admiration for the power and majesty - and sheer SUCCESS - of their twenty-year propaganda campaign to make us forget these facts. The audacity of these people would be awe-inspiring were it not so profoundly sociopathic and diseased.
And now we come to gun-control. Somehow progressive liberals are automatically expected to hate guns, to cringe at the thought of people buying and enjoying them. Maybe this is a fiction created by the Right. Sure could be, huh? I certainly know quite a few left-leaners who oppose mass greed and yet aren't afraid to plant a few boxes of wadcutter into a rotten tree trunk on a mountainside on a cold Saturday afternoon.
So no more! To liberals today I say, Never again will we bring a knife to a gunfight! Remember the courage of your convictions! Remember the ruthlessness, the greed of our adversaries!
Lets get out to the range on the next sunny Saturday and blast off a few. We'll knock something down and all feel better. Nothing like the smell of powder on your clothes. And in the process we'll reclaim a little space in the heart of Where We're Not Supposed To Be.
Nothing says fun like some lively conversation. With guns!
Politics is the new Sports. Join me in my low back alley workshop, where the crackerjack GTL team isn't afraid to delve into the minutiae of, say, the history of media conglomeration, or the new bankruptcy bill.
The needs of working people are without question better fulfilled by the so-called "liberal" agenda. Leaving untouched for a moment the Right's claim to fundamental moral superiority, with a liberal agenda you get more subsidies for higher education, better wages, more housing and heating fuel support for the poorest families; you get more aggressive policing of unfair labor practices and the abuse of workers, more access to economical health care, a cleaner environment, less grotesque imbalances between rich and poor. Who knows, maybe even looser women.
It was liberals who brought the world such flashy innovations as the weekend, overtime, child labor laws, public education, the New Deal and the middle class. These things were not achieved easily, but often at the tip of a bayonet or under a Pinkerton's truncheon.
Yes, Radical Right-of-Nixon Republicans deserve some respect and admiration for the power and majesty - and sheer SUCCESS - of their twenty-year propaganda campaign to make us forget these facts. The audacity of these people would be awe-inspiring were it not so profoundly sociopathic and diseased.
And now we come to gun-control. Somehow progressive liberals are automatically expected to hate guns, to cringe at the thought of people buying and enjoying them. Maybe this is a fiction created by the Right. Sure could be, huh? I certainly know quite a few left-leaners who oppose mass greed and yet aren't afraid to plant a few boxes of wadcutter into a rotten tree trunk on a mountainside on a cold Saturday afternoon.
So no more! To liberals today I say, Never again will we bring a knife to a gunfight! Remember the courage of your convictions! Remember the ruthlessness, the greed of our adversaries!
Lets get out to the range on the next sunny Saturday and blast off a few. We'll knock something down and all feel better. Nothing like the smell of powder on your clothes. And in the process we'll reclaim a little space in the heart of Where We're Not Supposed To Be.
Nothing says fun like some lively conversation. With guns!
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