RIP - Mitch Hedberg

One of my all time favorites.

Rest In Peace, Mitch.

Back, and to the ... Right.

He never saw it coming.

It's Over (at least, we're hoping...)

According to Jesse at Pandagon, Schiavo's body finally shut down at a little before 10am, this morning.

RIP.

And now, her loving parents can make further spectacle over her body.

Least. Dignified. Death. Ever.

Holy Crap. When You Put It That Way...

Just as I suspected all along about those terrorist loving "libruls"...

Some hypocrisy knows no bounds.

(via Oliver Willis)

This is Great

Via Juls (et al.) at Kos. Here's the original source.

What Kind of Twisted...

Yeah, I'm going straight to hell, too.

Just look for yourself...

He's Back

Krugman's back from vacation with another must read. He's swinging for the fences today...

"America isn't yet a place where liberal politicians, and even conservatives who aren't sufficiently hard-line, fear assassination. But unless moderates take a stand against the growing power of domestic extremists, it can happen here."

So go read it.

Schindlers say "Thanks, Wackos!"

NYT:

The parents of Terri Schiavo have authorized a conservative direct-mailing firm to sell a list of donors to their legal expenses, making it likely that thousands of strangers moved by her plight will receive a steady stream of solicitations from anti-abortion and conservative groups.

Kick 'Em When They're Down

Much like Trot Nixon's approach when facing the Anaheim Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the ALDS...

"When you get a guy hanging over a cliff, hanging on with his fingers, you don't want to let him up," Boston outfielder Trot Nixon said. "You want to step on his fingers."

...the Rude Pundit knows that, in certain situations, one needs not only to knock one's enemies down, but also kick them bloody senseless once they hit the floor...

"But of course the delicate question is how the Democrats use the glazed eyes of Terri Schiavo against the Republicans. And, as with most matters political, the Rude Pundit has the ready, easy solution: it's all about the inference of language. If a Democrat is up against a Schiavo Republican (and, good, wise, vaguely left pundits everywhere should start calling the wacked-out, ultra-Christian Republicans by this nom de guerre), don't bring out Schiavo's corpse. Instead, just say that you support the government staying out of "the most intimate decisions a person" (or "family") "can make." Or some such shit. You see what that does? It evokes Schiavo without saying her name and, frankly, it also covers things like abortion rights, gay rights, and more. If the Schiavo Republican wants to question you about it, then you have free rein to bring up Schiavo. Despite the cries to the contrary that the Schiavo matter will go away, rest assured: by 2006, the Republican party will have either been eaten by its most rabid members or be silent on Schiavo to the point of suffocation."

The GOPer Winger Nutjob Fundies and the congressmen they love are all on the floor after this Schiavo mess. Let's not let them up without a good beatdown first. As my mom asked me earlier today, "Just who the hell do they think they are?"

On Hitting the Nail on the Head...

Isn't it awesome when someone points something out that should've been so obviously clear for so long, and then it actually is, and you think to yourself, "Damn, why didn't I think of that?"

Well, Amanda's got one right here...

I have also noticed that two values that BushCo likes to fling around are "life" and "freedom", but I have also noticed that the two are opposite values in their rhetoric. You can have freedom or life, but not both. They are pretty consistent in this viewpoint, and if they evoke freedom, you can be sure they are covering up for someone's death, and if they evoke "life", you can be sure they are trying to take away your freedoms.

(from Crooks and Liars...via Respectful of Otters)

This got me laughing.

I'm laughing at this comic for reasons only one other person out there might understand.



(via oliver willis)

It's the hypocrisy, stupid

It's not about whether we (as outsiders) think Terri should live or die; it's about leaving a private family matter private and upholding the rule of law. I would never want to be in the situation that Terri Schiavo's family is forced to deal with. And I certainly wouldn't want Congress meddling in an intensely emotional and personal tragedy.

And, not surprisingly, Tom Delay knows from personal experience. From Salon:

Over the course of the last two weeks, House Majority Leader has referred to the withdrawal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube as "barbarism," "murder" and an "act of judicial terrorism." A question one might ask: If withholding life support from Schiavo is such a crime, why did DeLay acquiesce in the decision to withhold life support from his own father in 1988?

As the Los Angeles Times reported over the weekend, DeLay's father, Charles Ray DeLay, was gravely injured in 1988 in an accident involving a homemade tram that was supposed to carry family members from the DeLays' home to a lake down a steep hillside.

DeLay, then a third-term congressman, flew home to be at his father's bedside. Weeks later, as the elder DeLay's organ began to fail, the family decided to deny the man treatments that would have extended his life. The congressman "went along" with that decision, his mother told the Times.

DeLay refused to talk to the Times about the case. A spokesman told the paper: "The situation faced by the congressman's family was entirely different than Terri Schiavo's." The spokesman meant that DeLay's father needed "a ventilator and other machines to sustain him," while Schiavo "only" needs a feeding tube. But the DeLays' situation was different in another way, too: When the DeLays were forced to confront their own horrible decision, they were able to do so peacefully and in private -- without a member of Congress using their pain to score political points and accusing them of murder in the process.