A Special Holiday Message from the SAL Awards…

It’s that time of the week again, time to get angry, and rant & rave about it. But maybe not this week.

It is Christmas time in my house and I’d like to take the time to not be angry, not hand out awards to those I feel “suck at life” and just be happy with the smell of fresh baked goodies and A Christmas Story on TV.

Remember, it’s fun, even therapeutic to come online and bash those in the public eye, but only if we take the time to be equally happy over the good things in life!

Hope everyone on the great world wide web is having a wonderful time celebrating, whether it be Christmas, Hannukah, Solstice, or any other winter holiday! Take the time to remember the real reasons behind the holidays you are recognizing this season and have a great time.

Nancy Grace…You Suck At Life.

I don’t think I am going to face too much argument when I say that TV Personality Nancy Grace sucks at life completely and totally. To sum it up, she is a loud mouthed, inaccurate, sorry excuse for a human being who defines the term schadenfreude and has made her money by exploiting those she is claiming to protect.

As a college student, her finace was murdered, instead of grieving and moving on like most people, she instead sensationalized the story and stated various innacurate “facts” about the case. I think it would be reasonable to assume the reason was to help her look like a real victim’s advocate and not someone who enjoyed getting attention and money for other people’s hardships. Sadly, I think in this case, she failed.

Not only does she rant and rave in her (allegedly) drunken southern drawl about cases that she has NO OFFICIAL evidence or facts to base her opinion on, but she berates her guests. Her interview with kidnap victim and true victim’s rights advocate Elizabeth Smart will go down in history as the best example of a teenage girl taking down an adult who should know better.

But harassing eighteen year old girls who are trying to help victim’s rights laws pass isn’t enough for Nancy Grace, oh no. Instead she openly and aggressively interrogated and harassed the mother of a missing boy on her television show. Ms. Duckett was under the impression that appearing on Grace’s show would possibly help find her son. Instead Grace made thinly veiled accusations that Duckett was responsible for the child’s disappearance (and death, which is interesting, because the child had not been found, dead or alive). The result of this trash-tv bash session? Duckett killed herself. Now, correct me if I am wrong, but aren’t the mothers of missing children also victims? Way to go “Victims’ Rights Activist”.

Turn on CNN during Grace’s show and you don’t have to look hard to see an ego-inflated narcissistic bitch. When she isn’t using her “legal” show as a platform to brag about her personal life, she is making far reaching claims and accusations in reference to the cases she is covering.On more than one occasion she has declared a suspect GUILTY, only for the real perpetrator to be apprehended. Never once has she apologized. When confronted about her declaration of Ricci (the first suspect in the Elizabeth Smart case) after the real kidnapper had been found? She jointly denied any wrong doing while insulting the police force and the hard work they put into the investigation that ended up saving a fourteen year old girl’s life.

The Caylee Anthony case? Forget about it. She has done nothing to help the victims in this awful crime, unless y0u count being insensitive, inflammatory and dead wrong as being helpful. I personally don’t.

Nancy Grace? YOU SUCK AT LIFE. Truly, completely. You do not deserve an audience and the only people who hate themselves enough to watch your television show suck at life even more than you. Wear this award with shame.

Oh, and do us all a favor? Give up television and become a stay at home mom, ok? Then you can spend 24 full hours of everyday going on about your children and I won’t have to hear it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Gracep://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/08/13/lawsuit-against-nancy-grace-cnn-moving-forward/

http://nancygracemustdie.com/

Congratulations, Religious Right!

The religious right in the US always has a way of taking something sensible, and pushing it just a little too far. Regardless of your spiritual or ethical beliefs, I think after reading this article and the links I’ve provided, you too, will agree that the religious right deserves this award.

I am sure that most of us agree that a doctor who is against abortion should not be forced to perform one. Do we agree, however, that a doctor should be given the right to refuse information to a patient asking about vasectomy, birth control, in-vitro fertilization or fertility drugs?

The set of laws known as the “Right to Conscience Laws” have existed for decades, first coming into being after Roe V. Wade was passed in the Supreme Court, however, the religious right wants to take this all one step further, and as the Bush Administration leaves the White House, they plan to push it full force. The new version of the Right to Conscience Laws the Bush Administration is pushing forth in its last days actually state the words “any medical procedure” that a medical professional may find unethical. Any. That’s a pretty scary word to include in legislation. 

History has proven that when we make a law that the words must be specific or that law will be abused. By using the word “any” in reference to the health care afforded to US citizens, we are sliding happily down a legal and ethical slippery slope in our brand new ”ethics” tobaggan. Further, this new version of the law goes one step further than the latest change of including pharmacists (which kept contraceptives from the hands of many patients) and including everyone down to the “person who cleans surgical instruments”. Now logic tells us that this is ridiculous.

What this means is, a doctor has agreed to do a vasectomy (something a Catholic health care provider may very well be against, according to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops), the doctor and patient are comfortable with the procedure and the nurses on hand see no problem with it. They are all ready to snip and the person in charge of sterilization says “Nope, sorry, got to find someone else, I refuse to clean these instruments if they are to be used for a vasectomy”. This is the sort of thing that could completely disrupt a surgery. Should a patient be at the mercy of someone who’s job is to clean things? If we let this guy (who wasn’t good enough to assist in surgery and has to be satisfied with cleaning the instruments that the true professional requires) then why not say that the janitor doesn’t have to mop if the hospital he works in has a doctor prescribing birth control? A stretch? Maybe, but these sort of things start out logical and go into a tail-spin, don’t they?

Now let’s think about it from the other side. Many religions don’t beleive in in-vitro fertilization because it is not a “natural” conception. This law doesn’t just say your doctor can’t be forced to perform the procedure, but that he doesn’t even have to discuss it with you, answer your questions or refer you to someone who will!

Here is a simple solution I have come up with. If using medicine and technology to better your patients’ lives is not what you want to do with your life–then don’t become a freaking doctor! I am sorry, but refusing to perform a surgery you do not agree with is absolutely fine, but all doctors should be required to give patients the medical information they ask for!

Now, what if your doctor decides that he is ethically against chemo therapy. It is unnatural and disrupts the quality of life of the patient (while of course, attempting to save the patient’s life). This law says any medical procedure. ANY. He could be protected in his decision to refuse to even discuss it with you.

Now, I doubt the American Medical Association would ever jump on that band wagon, and no high powered religious orgnaiztion would want to touch it. But, oh! You want information on fertility treatments? Um. No. I don’t wish to speak to you about that. Or birth control, or the actual uses and inner workings of the “morning after pill”. Because if I refuse to give you my medical opinion on the morning after pill, I can continue to allow people to believe the misconception that it causes abortions and isn’t really a contraceptive. Then I can continue to pretend it is a moral issue and not a medical one.

Okay, really? Give me a break. This is not a women’s rights issue, this is a human rights issue. A man wishing to have a vasectomy should be able to get information from his doctor, a referral at the least. A couple wishing to have a child should be capable of finding information from a respected medical professional about the pros and cons of fertility drugs, in-vitro fertilization, or surrogate motherhood. We should not allow our society to become one where people seeking medical advice can be cast out from their doctor’s office to wander the internet aimlessly in hopes of finding a good doctor that will give them the time of day.

The most frightening aspects of this law are the continued misrepresentations of common contraceptives. It is a fact that the morning after pill will have no effect if a woman who has already reached the point of conception takes it. What the morning after pill does is keep conception from happening. However, the people behind these laws would have you believe that this is not true, that it is an abortifacient drug like RU-486 which, by the way, isn’t even legal in the United States.

We are beginning to go backwards, and allow the religious in this country to dictate our laws and our rights. This is a frightening and horrible thing to allow to happen in a country founded on religious freedom. Let me let you in on a little secret, if we continue to allow the extreme religious right wing to make our laws, those of us who do not fit into their version of ethics and morals will not be free to practice as we please. 

Instead, the religious right seem to assume that we are ignorant and will remain so. If the doctor won’t talk to us about birth control, well we’ll just become abstinent…won’t we? I doubt it. Half the people in that situation will go to a Planned Parenthood, or find a doctor that will talk, and the other half will end up with unwanted pregnancies, either contributing to abortion statistics, or the adding a burden to the child welfare system.

Well, here you go Religious Right Wing. You are awarded the first official Sucks At Life Award.

Wear it proudly, for you truly do. Suck at life, that is.

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-na-conscience2-2008dec02,0,1244120.story

http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=2082&ChapAct=745%26nbsp%3BILCS%26nbsp%3B70%2F&ChapterID=58&ChapterName=CIVIL+IMMUNITIES&ActName=Health+Care+Right+of+Conscience+Act.

http://www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/abortion/kansas202.shtml