Braised Lambchop
a nurse trying to work while suffering with chronic pain - she rambles a bit

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross pioneered the study of death and dying in America. In 1969 she wrote a landmark book, her first book, On Death and Dying. It was and is required reading for every nursing, medical, and psychology student in this country.

In this book she outlined the five stages of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Before Dr. Kubler-Ross began to study death and the reactions of people to death, they were taboo subjects. She brought them into the light, and her work blazed the trail for hospice care and compassionate care for the terminally ill.

I can't stress enough that the five stages were revolutionary. Dying people in this country were warehoused and ignored until they finally expired, thereby getting out of the way of busy, younger Americans. Until the late 1970s, there wasn't a single hospice in the state of Oklahoma. Now there are dozens. Dr. Kubler-Ross changed American society, and gave hope to millions of tired, sick patients.

She went on to write several other books, but the first one is the classic. Every person who has a terminally ill family member, or is facing death themselves, would be comforted and reassured by reading one or more of Kubler-Ross's books.

The manner in which you think about death, or any permanent loss, was influenced in some fashion by the work of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. She is one of my heroes. May her work comfort her own family, as it has comforted so many others.

What actually happened, though, was that the Swiftliars ad went on the air, and Bush was asked -- many times -- to disavow it, due to its high number of factual inaccuracies and the dubious background of the men behind it. He refused. MoveOn, when asked to pass judgment on the Hitler ad, said "no thanks." The Bush campaign, when asked to pass judgment on the Swiftlies ad, said "we don't believe in free speech and we weren't paying attention to the McCain-Feingold Act when I signed it because, after all, at the time I was only pretending to think it was a good idea." I don't think Bush should somehow force the Swiftliars to stop advertising. What he should say is that the charges in that ad are false, he does not believe in slandering his opponent, and, in his opinion, no respectable conservative should have anything to do with such slander. He won't do it, of course, because without slanderous allegations against his opponent Kerry he can't win this election, just as he needed them to win in 2000, and just as his father has needed them in the past. He's never stood on his own two feet, never stood on his record, never stood on an honest presentation of his agenda and his political beliefs, and never accomplished a goddamn thing in his life without a little help from his old family friends. 2004 is no different.

You know, I voted in the 'Bush In 30 Seconds' contest. Most of the submissions weren't very good, but some were. The contest voting was arranged so you only saw five videos at a time, and they were randomly chosen. I never saw the winning commercial in the four or five times I voted. The ones I did see were not very respectful, but none of them compared Bush to Hitler. That wasn't and isn't the objective of the movement.

I get about four emails a week from MoveOn. I can personally assure you that they aren't 'coordinating' with the Kerry campaign; some of those emails are urging me to urge Kerry to come out with a statement about an issue, and that really wouldn't be necessary if MoveOn were 'coordinating' directly with the campaign, would it?

MoveOn.org's name comes from the Clinton/Lewinsky thing; it was a plea for the country to Move On. Can we please move on to things that matter now, instead of listening to this pap?

Nah - probably not. That would mean Bush would have to formulate a complete sentence without assistance.