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I turned on the news for the first time in a month. It's all the same storylines I remember, just advanced forward in time. A collection of 5 minute soap operas re-running all day until the next day, when new information is obtained, or a new 'informed' interviewee/political hack offers rehashed baby food.

Both Michael Jackson the Pedophile and Scott Peterson the Wife Killer still have their spotlights. Their quotes and actions are repeated and debated ad nauseam. Plenty of people have touched little children, but Michael Jackson gets picked for being a washed up superstar. Plenty of people have killed their wives, but Scott Peterson was lucky. They say a large influx of letters from adoring women have already arrived at jail for him. Maybe they want the spotlight, too; or maybe they figure their chances of being murdered are significantly less with him than anybody else right now.

For some reason they're still raising hell about Terri Schiavo, the Comatose, Brain-Damaged Vegetable-Woman Who's Destiny is in Limbo Because Her Family Wants Her Alive and Her Husband Wants to Pull the Plug. Regardless of irrelevant information, the husband claims that her will was to not live this way, and the law is clearly on his side... as well as the Florida Supreme Court, which I guess nobody takes seriously since the Federal Government is always telling it how to run it's business.

It's understandable that people are upset by 'euthanasia', it's a controversial issue. This, however, has nothing to do with euthanasia and everything to do with one family's struggle with the law. The political hacks on television are invoking religions they don't even believe in. For some crazy Protestant Politician to invoke the Vatican and Muslim World is bizarre. Obviously, he missed the statistics that show 50% of American Catholics are Democrats and 50% are Republicans. He also missed the statistics that show 90% of Catholics just use it to repel Mormons and Jehova's Witnesses.

And, I hate to use blatant political labeling, but for a Republican to say anything nice about Islam without saying something not-so-nice in the same sentence is, to say the least, questionable.

So now the federal legislature is trying to get involved. It doesn't matter if they overturn the law of Florida, or even summon God himself. All they want is the mass publicity surrounding this case to get them re-elected. They'll frame it as being anti-euthanasia and get the anti-euthanasia vote, as well as draw attention away from all of their miscomings - issues which can't be summarized and spun in one sentence. News flash: what's happening with Terri Schiavo is nothing new, and there hasn't been a problem until now. Move along. Our government, consisting of the most powerful persons in the world, is wasting its time and resources on one Vegetable-Woman.

Which, I guess, would be fine if they were never involved in important issues. Smart politicians don't care about Terri - they just tow that part of the party line to detract from the other half of the platform. As long as they can get one dumbed-down-and-slanted sentence on the news, they've done their job. Republicans excel at this, and Democratic bone-heads can't figure out how emulate it.

This makes the news much simpler for media corporations. Real News is too hard to make, involving both money and talent. One can get rich much faster by investing little in investigation and littler in talent; ask Rupert Murdoch. Real News is simply not as entertaining to the degenerate masses. Unfortunately, these degenerate masses vote. Politics should be reserved for people who read, and television should stick with monitoring how many expletives Martha Stuart has used.