Posted on 03/21/2005 8:45:58 PM PST by Captain Peter Blood
Anyone watch the O'Reilly Factor tonight?
I try not to watch O'Reilly too much anymore since he has become so smug and egotistical but I sometimes catch the first few minute of his Talking Points to see what the major topic is.
Of course tonight was the Terri Schiavo situation and it's impact.
I was almost horrified when O'Reilly laid out his feelings for what should happen to Terri Schaivo and people in Persistent Vegetative States, etc..
O'Reilly feels that the State and more important the Doctors should be the final arbiters of who should live and who should die according to their criteria and theirs alone.
I thought O'Reilly, who claims he is a devout Catholic, would be on the other side of this since I have heard him claim how precious life is. But no he isn't it, he would prefer to see Terri Schiavo die a horrible death and doesn't even feel her family should have any input into the situation.
Life no matter how you look at it is a precious and wonderful gift and every effort should be made to help those who are most in need, people like Terri Schiavo.
Any of you out there remember the Sunny Von Bulow case? Mrs. Von Bulow was given a overdose of insulin by her husband Claus and out into a deep coma or PVS state. There is no hope of her ever coming out it.
Yet it may surprise many of you out there to know Mrs. Von Bulow is still alive 25 years later and in a hospital in New York City. Her two children have paid the bills all these years to keep her well taken care of and have never once even publicly talked about pulling her feeding tube and allowing her to die "With Dignity" from starvation. God knows what it has cost them but they feel they are doing the right thing.
For those people like Terri Schaivo, who certainly is not in the shape Mrs. Von Bulow is in, where the State, i.e. Medicare & Medicaid are paying the bill there is a presumption that if there is no hope, as determined by the Doctors, then legally the State can have the plug pulled or the patient can either be moved somewhere else or die, most likely by starvation.
So according to the new O'Reilly Principles all people in a so called PVS, there are approximately 10,000 in this condition, should be evaluated by the Doctors or Powers That Be and if there is no hope have their feeding tubes and plugs pulled to make the bed available to someone else and not tie up resources on "Hopeless and Forgotten Souls" like Terri Schiavo and Sunny Von Bulow.
Also where is the Humanity in letting someone slowly starve to death? My God you treat your pets better than that. If it must come to making such a decision then at least have the guts to give those poor souls a lethal injection and get it over with quickly. Prisoners on Death Row get a better deal although if they were being starved to death it would be called Cruel and Unusual Punishment, a Violation of their Constitutional Rights.
Where are Terri's Constitutional and Civil Rights? Did she cease having them when she became a non-person and unable to communicate?
We as a Nation are now on that Slippery Slope when we allow the State and Doctors to now call the shots on who lives and who dies if the medical bills are being paid by Medicare and Medicaid. It's just a short hop to the other side when the private insurance companies are making that same assessment also and are probably doing so now, we just don't see it out there being talked about.
There is a larger issue than just Terri Schaivo here, she just put a face on it that we can see.
It is appalling to me to see that the polls on this issue seem to be so lopsided in favor of letting this woman die. Have we truly become a nation that has somehow embraced a "Culture of Death"? If so then we are in worse trouble than I thought for we are slowly losing our soul as a country and the values that made this country and helped found it are going down a long drain pipe. I truly fear for our future if this is the course of action that is deemed proper. All this really tells me is that most people have not thought this out and if confronted with this kind of burden and decision may have a different feeling about it.
I Pray for Terri Schaivo and hope for the best, but it is hard to think that will happen with so a committed group of people that are in favor of and pushing for her death as if it were some kind of Prize.
O'Reilly is a fraud.
O'Reilly is apparently an apostate. He says he goes to Mass. If he receives communnion, then he is guilty of sacrilege. I'm starting to believe that sexual harrasment story!
I saw it and I have to say I didn't see it the way you did. He was more trying to play both sides of the fence. He said he thought that end of life situations should be decides by doctors, family, etc. but said that Congress was right to try to save Terri Schiavo. Or something like that. I don't know. He bounces around.
Yes, Bellow Riley, he is no friend of the innocent. Glad he's not in charge of the Terri Schiavo situation, she'd already be dead.
He's lookin out for who? Himself.
BO is a pompous a--!!
Hey O'Reilly! Why don't you do some "looking out" for Terri?
Well I got a different take on it. It seemed that he felt Terri was in PVS as determined by Doctors and that she should go on and die.
Oreily is just a suit. His succes is only because he has no competition. Seriously, if MSNBC or CNN would just dump their BS 8:00 people and put in a true conservative OReily would be gone in six months.
His pretense of bein inteligent by looking at the FL SC opinion only shows what a Mediot Oreily turly is. He does not even understant the only admitted facts are those allowed by Greer. The appeals were based on "law" not "fact" and certainly not facts not allowed in.
I only saw the first minute of the talking point but I had to change the channel.
John Gibson nailed it today with his Word editorial.
That is one they should rush so we can post it here.
O'Reilly is, as my old nun might say, a big bluff. An articulate buffoon without integrity who over-values his own opinions and is grossly obsequious with so-called celebrities. He's trash with lots of money.
Did anyone else think he seemed a little drunk tonight?
Dutch courage?
or
Dutch Journaism
O'Reilly reads the headlines, but never takes the time to read the whole story.
He tries to stay in the middle of the road so much, he's slowly turning into road kill. I can't watch him either. He has no idea what the facts are 99% of the time. He spins his way through the hour.
I didn't see the tv show. But I listened to part of his radio show and my take on O'Reilly's position is the same as yours. He had a lady named "Lise"(sp?) on the radio with him; I think she is an attorney who appears fairly often on Fox. Anyway, she was indicating that the Court documents she has seen indicate that much of Terri's brain is liquid or "mush". It was disgusting.
The 4 doctors that diagnosed Terry were paid for by her husbands attorney. Other doctors aren't allowed near her.
Lise is a member of the ACLU.
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