DR. BULLSHIT, TAKE 2
September 26, 2010. ITEM 1: Brandon Joseph Rhode, a convicted child killer on death row in Georgia, had his execution postponed for a few days because he tried to kill himself.
Rhodes used razor blades to slash his throat, so he had to be hospitalized.
I assume lethal injection on a table is considered more humane than letting him bleed out in his cell. It’s cleaner, right? It’s organized. Doctor is present. They can call time of death to the second.
How thoroughly did they patch him up in the infirmary? Prurient minds want to know.
ITEM 2: In a related issue, the state of Ohio is trying to find medical experts who are willing to step forward and offer advice on better killing-drugs for murderers. And the US Supreme Court is hearing a case in which the defendants are arguing that the present 3-drug cocktail is an inhumane “treatment,” and more skilled med techs are needed to administer them.
What’s the problem? Uneducated people off themselves every day with prescription meds. They know how to do it. Pay an ER doctor a hundred bucks and he’ll give you the names of the pills.
Of course, there’s an obsession to make state-administered death to a lone individual a medical procedure. Just like birth. The mother isn’t pushing a child out into the world; she’s undergoing treatment.
Personally, I’ve always thought a firing squad was the best way to handle executions, as long as the prisoner is marched into the courtyard quickly and the riflemen are ready. Ten or twenty bullets hit you and you’re gone.
But at my execution, I don’t want some damn kid holding his weapon, sweating, fumbling with the strap, having second thoughts, pissing in his pants. I want seasoned pros who’re already thinking about having a drink at the local saloon.
ITEM 3: In ancient Rome, if you killed your parents, they put you in a sack and dropped you in a lake. Inside the sack with you were a dog, a rooster, a poisonous snake, and an ape. Wonder how they figured out that party. Odds are, the snake was the last to go.
ITEM 4: In case you’ve been living on Mars or Pluto, the United States is becoming a Medical State. Doctors are accorded a degree of wisdom that used to accrue to Egyptian priests.
I don’t care how much doctors know. I only care that people have the freedom to reject medical care when they want to.
In other words, if I want to ingest cigarette ashes to cure my arthritic elbow, nobody is going to intervene. And if my neighbor wants to pay me to feed him the ashes for his gout, and we sign a contract to that effect, forgoing liability, the state has no business getting in our way or demanding proof of a license to practice medicine.
Freedom trumps knowledge or pretended knowledge. If you don’t understand what that means, you wasted years of schooling. Start over again.
Of course, I would like to see a law banning doctors from prescribing ADHD drugs or antidepressants to children. Penalties would include public lashing. The parents of these children would be punished as well. All the shoes of the mothers would be placed inside a mound of maggots, and the fathers would be forbidden from watching football for the rest of their lives.
ITEM 5: NBC. Brian Williams. His resume reveals he was a Sears underwear model. One night he was pulled out of the Hudson, where he was diving for used condoms.
After an emergency brain operation, he was suddenly able to speak in complete sentences.
In fact, he could remember everything he read. Articles, books, labels on products, billboards in Missouri.
The Pentagon flew him to a secret base in Florida. He received a new head of hair that required no washing or combing. Experts injected him with a mild cynicism drug that rounded out his new character, and kind matrons came into his room every day, smiled, and bathed him in warm water and Epsom salts.
With the assistance of a rapid flashing device attached to his cerebral cortex, he was given a four-year college education in eight minutes.
He arrived at NBC studios in New York with clean papers.
The rest is history.
Except for one thing.
We’ll eventually find out what that is.
DR. BULLSHIT