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Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Maybe it's because you're a moron
Posted by Jill | 7:16 PM
Let's juxtapose two news stories, shall we?

1) To whom would Jesus deny health care?
Family Research Council Action President Tony Perkins has unveiled a new hard hitting ad campaign that lays out what he considers two key threats to his view of the American way of life should President Obama's plan become reality namely, rationing and taxpayer funded legal medical procedures like abortion.The TV ad campaign will initially run in five key states including Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Alaska, Louisiana, and Nebraska.

Perkins explains: "In a world of health care rationing, the elderly, the handicapped and the frail are the most likely to lose their lives because care was delayed or denied. Under the government-run plans in England and Canada, the countries' sick and elderly aren't getting the care they need. As a result, their system isn't improving lives but prematurely taking them. Here in the United States, President Obama's rationing would mean that you and I could be denied basic care while our tax dollars are used to underwrite a mother choosing to end the life of her unborn child."

The ad attempts to instill fear in patients, particularly the elderly, falsely asserting that they will face denial of vital treatments and that Obama’s real goal is to deny care to 'our greatest generation' and deny life to 'our future generation.'


2) I guess now we know:
A central Wisconsin father charged with reckless homicide for not taking his dying daughter to a doctor told police that he believed God would heal her and that he thought she was simply sleeping when she became unconscious.

Madeline Neumann died on March 23, 2008, from undiagnosed diabetes on the floor of the family's rural Weston home as people surrounded the 11-year-old girl and prayed. Someone called 911 when she stopped breathing.

Prosecutors contend her father, Dale Neumann, had a legal duty to take his weakened daughter to a doctor. A videotape of his interview with police after her death was shown to jurors during his trial Wednesday before prosecutors rested their case.

Neumann, 47, told the judge that he planned to testify in his defense.

In the interview with Everest Metro Police Department detective Scott Sleeter, Neumann described the weeks leading up to Madeline's death, when he said she was a "little weak and a little slower," something he attributed to puberty. Her condition deteriorated, and by the day before her death, he said, Madeline could not walk or talk.

"We just trusted the Lord for complete healing," he said. "We didn't really sense it was like a life-and-death situation. We figured there was something really fighting in her body. We asked people to join with us in prayer agreement."

Neumann said it never crossed his mind that his daughter might have lost consciousness.

"She was just sleeping," Neumann said. "I didn't believe at all that the Lord would even allow her to pass."

Neumann also told the detective that "sickness is a result of sin" and that his daughter's death had not shaken his faith.

Do you think this story tells us a little about why Tony Perkins and the rest of the Christofascist Zombie Brigade is so against universal health care? Perhaps they too believe that sickness is the result of sin.

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7 Comments:
Blogger larryo said...
I don't approve of the waste of public resources involved in prosecuting someone who is so benighted and so besotted with religious superstition that he would allow is own child to expire. I see the demise of the children of such people as the operation of the law of survival of the fittest.

However, I think they should be identified and sterilized as quickly as possible. That will help to protect the gene pool from any further toxic pollution.
7/29/09, 8:02 PM  
Blogger Sharon said...
>>Under the government-run plans in England and Canada, the countries' sick and elderly aren't getting the care they need.<<

I HATE these lying sacks of shit. I am 67 and live in British Columbia. My medical care is excellent. Care of the elderly is very good.
Canada overall has a life expectancy of 81.2 years. The US? 78.1.
These people just make stuff up. I have to stop reading this before the stress lowers MY life expectancy.
7/29/09, 8:13 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
I love Sharon's comment. Sometimes I feel like I can't stand another minute of this lunacy.
I am 82 and a liberal and sometimes I want to cry for what has happened to this country; instead I am getting a new dog tomorrow.
Rosalie
7/29/09, 8:41 PM  
Blogger Sharon said...
Thanks Rosalie.
For a long time my motto has been: "The more people I meet, the more I love my dog."
7/30/09, 1:18 AM  
Anonymous Charlie O said...
Sharon,

You must have missed Bill O'Reilly's reasoning for Canadians outliving Americans. According to BIll O, it's because there's less of you. By that rationale, Lichtensteiners should be living to be 200.

This country is a disgrace. We will end up with a worthless piece of crap healthcare bill that is not reform in any way, shape or form. The Dems are cowards and the Republicans are lying scumbags.

I've had enough. I'm selling out and relocating to the Netherlands as soon as ecomomically viable. It's time for civil war here. I'll be back if that happens.
7/30/09, 6:56 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Charlie,

It's not "civil war", it's a "revolution". We need a radical and complete change in government.

However, I'm becoming more and more in favor of allowing seccession. Let those [formerly Confederate!? Are there any formerly northern states suggesting that?] states that want to separate from the rest of us to go ahead. I'd expect conditions, however, like having to buy back all of the infrastructure paid for by US taxpayers and requiring all current citizens to renounce -- irrevokably -- their US citizenship.
7/30/09, 9:05 AM  
Blogger missy said...
Last week here in Oregon, we had the closing of the trial in the case of 15-month-old Ava Worthington, who asphyxiated when a cyst on her neck and a bout of pneumonia combined to constrict her airway and cutoff the flow of oxygen to her brain. Both the cyst, which had been in evidence for nearly a year, and the pneumonia, which took hold several days before Ava drew her last breath, were easily treatable with antibiotics.

But Carl and Raylene Worthington eschewed medical treatment in favor of prayer and the laying on of hands, as they did when their first child, a son, died during childbirth at home. Just four months after Ava died, her uncle, 16-year-old Neil Jeffrey Beagley, died at his grandmother's home from complications of untreated urinary tract blockage. The teen's condition had been recurring for years, and had the blockage not killed him (it could have been resolved by simple catheterization), the damage to his kidneys would have (presuming his family would have denied him dialysis, as well).

The Worthingtons and their relatives are Followers of Christ, a pentacostal Christian denomination which excommunicates and shuns members that seek medical care for themselves or their children. Statistically, a child born into this sect is 2,600 times less likely to reach adulthood than his hell-bound schoolmates.

But the jury that heard the manslaughter and criminal mistreatment charges against Carl and Raylene Worthington were not allowed to hear those statistics. And so Ava's mother was acquitted of all charges, while her husband, Carl - the source of all important decisions within this traditional Followers of Christ household - escaped a mansalughter conviction but was found guilty of "criminal mistreatment." This misdemeanor carries a maximum sentence of one year in jail. (Neil Jeffrey Beagley's parents are scheduled to go to trial on similar charges in January 2010.)

Though I am an atheist, I am a big fan of the First Amendment: keep your religion out of my state, and keep your laws off my religion.

But as with everything in this life, there are exceptions to the rule: the government will not respect your use of opium poppy wafers and coca leaf tea as your sacramental body and blood; you will not be allowed to sacrifice an endangered Northern Spotted Owl upon your rhinoceros horn alter, or anoint yourself with sperm whale oil before running naked through Wal-Mart in celebration of your savior's birth.

And you should not be allowed to sacrifice your children for your belief that your all-powerful god, to whom you presumably attribute the full scope and span of human achievement and understanding, nonetheless wishes you to abstain from the fruits of that knowledge and wants your children to die.

You may believe that your god loves you - and your children - so much that he cannot abide to be separated from them for even the relative twitch of time that is a human lifespan to an omnipresent deity such as your own.

But, precisely because we have a First Amendment, you cannot demand that your government adopt and enforce your religious tenets. Government has a duty to protect and promote the welfare of its citizens without regard to religious beliefs, and so it must protect your children from you.

Oregon actually has a law on the books which prohibits the use of the "spiritual healing defense" in cases of manslaughter and criminal mistreatment; ironically, the law was written in response to the deaths of three Followers of Christ children in 1997 and 1998. But because the jury in the Ava Worthington case was underinformed as to the history of child deaths among Followers of Christ, and overly sympathetic to the "loving" parents, the law won't punish the very neglect it was written to eliminate.

And it may not save Ava's now 4-year old sister should she become ill, or the sibling her mother is currently carrying should complications arise during that child's home birth (as they evidently did when Ava's infant older brother died during delivery).
7/30/09, 1:20 PM  
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