- Being well past middle age, I admit to being too old to be young. But I’ll never be too old to be immature. Still, I nobly resist juvenile impulses to tie this in with lame conservative excuses for Trump-Russia illegalities:
In an unusual post, author and book reviewer John Scalzi at Whatever purchases and reviews a product designed to eliminate a specific bathroom odor nanoseconds after it is produced during a common biological event.
- Jonathan Bernstein considers the argument that the Trump campaign meeting with a Russian government operative was an event anyone would have attended.
- Stinque examines by photograph the new conservative thought that, when Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort accompanied Donald Junior to that illegal meeting, the Trump campaign was actually being set up by very clever Democratic agents.
- So a self-described Trump operative kills himself. Green Eagle speculates about the meaning of this latest piece of the Trump-Russia jigsaw.
- Frances Langum watches as Michael Steele, the former chair of the Republican National Committee, is asked for his reaction to Russia-Gate and the flow of new revelations. He gives it with the bark off.
- Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post doesn’t much like the way America is continuously embarrassed by my President.
- Yellow Dog at Blue in the Bluegrass considers the gleeful decision by Kentucky’s governor to throw 90,000 elderly folks out of nursing homes. Our beloved Aunt Tildy has seen the language and begs any children who click the link to cover their ears while they read.
- T. Paine, at Saving Common Sense, joins in the outrage at the resistance of British medical folks to keeping alive a newborn with severe mitochondrial disease. My old friend T. Paine is especially angry at the medical explanation: letting the little one die is for his own benefit. The heart of the controversy is whether the parents should be allowed to transport the baby to a US expert for last ditch treatment. To an uninformed person, which is to say me, that seems like a clear case of parental jurisdiction.
T. Paine blames the medical intrusion on the universal availability of free health care. I do recall a similar case of jurisdiction in Florida, where the government lost, and Terri Schiavo was allowed to die. That seems to have been before Obamacare.
- In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce experiences yet another effort by an evangelical to reach out to him. The first email explains that “You are filth to it’s core.”
- David Brooks writes a well meaning, condescending, article about unreported glass ceilings that are unintentionally constructed against the lower classes. PZ Myers manages to cool down enough from his irritation to explain where Brooks goes wrong.
- driftglass explains to Matthew Dowd why he is not Galileo.
- The Intersection of Madness and Reality suggests that about the only purpose Rob Kardashian was put on Earth was to prove men are trash. I’m guessing this is not an endorsement.
- The Journal of Improbable Research finds a scientific study on whether bees are attracted to pictures of flowers.
- Neil Bamforth at MadMikesAmerica cites statistical data, as well as personal experience, in a sad lament of how man’s best friend kind of isn’t anymore, at least in Britain.
- This week’s note in Trumpian ‘Alternative Facts’ comes from People.com with a profile of Kellyanne Conway. Featured is Chuck Todd explaining patiently to her that alternative facts are not facts. They’re falsehoods.
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Mr. Deming, the medical intrusion by the British health care system is precisely the kind of de facto death panels that all government run systems inevitably have. Charlie Gard was offered to be taken care of financially for additional possibly life saving treatment by American hospitals, and the U.K. deemed it was in Charlie’s best interest to simply die. The state was making this choice over the objections of his parents.
With Terri Schiavo, her HUSBAND chose to let her die a ghoulish death by removing fluids and nutrition from her. It was not a decision made by the state. The argument came because Terri’s parents and family were wanting to step in and care for her when her husband no longer did. Indeed, Terri’s brother even went to the U.K. to stand beside Charlie Gard’s parents in their fight against this state-sponsored “compassion” for Charlie’s rights.
What government intrusion? As far as I can tell this has been a disagreement between the family and the doctors. The U.K. didn’t deem anything of the sort. The doctors and hospital deemed that it was the best course of action, as unfortunate as it is.
For Terri Schiavo, her husband and next of kin, decided the best course of action. Family members not provided next of kin rights and the government stepped in.
I do not see how you do not see how ridiculous the inconsistancy is here.
“the medical intrusion by the British health care system is precisely the kind of de facto death panels that all government run systems inevitably have”
No, it isn’t. One can support a system like the NHS without also supporting giving the state the power to decide that people cannot seek treatment elsewhere or pay for it out of their own pocket. (In fact, there is still a private sector in the UK.) If you’re talking about government-run systems rationing care based on available funds and cost-benefit analyses of treatments, then you might be right, but health insurance companies do the same thing and rationing effectively occurs anyway when people cannot afford the treatments that they need. At least a single-payer system in a democratic country can be altered by voting for different representatives, should the people desire it.
Really, Trey? Do you not see the intrusion of the doctors, which are a part of the government-run health care system in the UK, overruling the parents wishes on whether their son should live or die? Do you not see the government intrusion with Judge Francis siding with the doctors on their prescribed death sentence for Charlie because it is in his “best interest”?
It should not be up to the doctors and the British government to decide that Charlie Gard cannot be treated by an American hospital and doctor, thereby giving him some hope of living. The costs of transferring and treating him here was not going to be a burden on the British taxpayers, so that cannot be used as a valid excuse. The only remaining reason for the doctors/government overruling Charlie’s parents on his life is the fact that they think they know what is best for Charlie; the termination of his life.
Terri Schiavo was a case between her husband and her parents. The court got involved to help adjudicate who had next of kin rights. It wasn’t a matter of the government dictating her demise. It sided with the husband’s argument in the dispute.
Surely you can see the difference and realize that this is absolutely NOT an inconsistency, sir.
Absolutely not.
Do you not remember the Schiavo case? It wasn’t just a matter of next of kin rights. In the United States, it is written into statutes that the Spouse is the legal next of kin. When Michael Shiavo wanted to pull the plug citing that he believed that was what she would have wanted, it should have ended there. Terri’s parents kicked up a storm and “conservatives” in the media made this family decision into something way more than it should have been. Florida literally passed a law to give Jeb Bush the authority to personally intervene in this family decision. This is the literal definition of the State intrusion. The precedent for this should be scary to someone such as yourself bemoaning what’s going on to poor Charlie and his family. Except, it’s not scary for you. As it had the outcome you sided with, apparently.
The inconsistency I’m referring to is this. It’s ok for Jeb Bush to literally order Schiavo’s feeding tube to be re-inserted and by-pass the will of her next of kin. It’s not okay for doctors in the UK to come to reality and say there’s nothing more they can do for a terminal patient but initiate palliative care simply because they are part of the NHS? You’re literally saying it’s ok for the Government to step in during Shiavo’s case, but it’s not ok for the Government to step in during Charlie’s case.
Nevermind the difference in Government interaction in these two cases. Literally had the Governor step in and personally get involved in one case due to politics and in the other you have Doctors who just happened to be part of the NHS making a medical decision.
Also nevermind the fact that replace NHS Doctors with Blue Cross/United Healthcare/CIGNA/AETNA Doctors, and it would surprise no one that the decision to initiate palliative care would still be the likely outcome for Little Mister Gard.