nabeepchen

Today seems to be a day for Bush bashing, but how can you help it? This man lives in some strange little world, with visions of the apocalypse and people (non-gay, of course) all sitting around and holding hands singing “Kumbaya.”

But it’s a brutal world out there, Mr. Bush. One that Daddy’s money and influence has always protected you from.

In keeping with his compassionate views of life and health, Bush has no intention of relaxing restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research and plans to pursue “stricter limits” on all human embryo research, an unnamed senior administration official said, according to a Reuters report. This is in response to the news that all of the approved stem cell lines are contaminated and worthless.

In his State of the Union speech, he pledged to support a “culture of life” in his second term and called for a ban on creating embryos for experimentation.

Apparently, the only “culture of life” that Bush is interested in is the “culture” used to grow pre-embryos in petri dishes. Pre-embryos are the only form of life that Bush deems worthy of life and well being. He doesn’t even care much for fetuses anymore, the ones actually growing in Mommy’s womb, considering the public health funding that he wants to cut.

But then, I guess we already knew this. Perhaps Bush acknowledges that pre-embryos are the ones least likely to argue with him about his policies, and question his warped judgment.

For the next four years, or however long Bush’s butt will be sitting in the White House (one can hope, can’t they–afterall, Tricky Dicky left office before his time), I have only three words to the general public: DON’T GET SICK!

On Monday, we will see our compassionate president in full action, the same man who thinks that the shortened longevity of black Americans merely proves that they are not reaping the full benefits of Social Security, rather than a problem that needs to be addressed.

The grim reaper is proposing cuts in essential health services, including several to protect the nation against bioterrorist attacks and those that deal with epidemics, chronic diseases and obesity.

First, we begin with the CDC. Their budget will be chisled overall by 9%; the CDC’s public health emergency fund, which helps state and local agencies prepare for bioterror attacks, by 12.6%; and a Public Health Service program for “chronic disease prevention and health promotion,” by 6.5%.

And now, the drum roll. We’ve all heard of the nursing shortage right? Well even though I believe that the roots of the problem aren’t being addressed, money is still always welcome for scholarships, fellowships, teacher salaries, etc. But now hear ye, hear ye…the president has declared open warfare on health professionals and little children. Bush plans to slash the budget for training nurses, dentists and other health professionals by 64%!!!! He also wants to destroy a program that trains doctors at children’s hospitals, and cut their budget by 33%. The grim reaper has gone insane. Well, more insane than usual.

Totally eliminated will be a block grant of $131 million for preventive health services, a $9 million program for treating people with traumatic brain injury, and a $9.9 million program to collect stem cells from umbilical cord blood.

This is a really good one. The budget also includes some half-assed proposal to spend $140 billion to help people obtain health insurance–a program that is heavy on tax credits for people who buy their own (which would benefit me, can’t complain), but generally useless for most people who can’t afford insurance in the first place. Without some kind of insurance reform, getting tax credits are meaningless if you can’t pay for the insurance in the first place. And while pushing the poor to buy their own insurance, his plan will cut $60 billion from Medicaid, the health care for low-income and older Americans.

But hey, abstinence-only sex ed programs are getting hefty increases. Wow, that’s a relief. For a second, I thought the president was intent on destroying the health of our nation. Thank God for small favors. I guess that as long as schoolchildren learn that they mustn’t have sex until they are married, it won’t matter much if they have no defense against a bioterrorist attack. Or if their hospital has no nurses. Or if they have a traumatic brain injury, but science has come to a standstill for lack of money, and therefore, they die. No matter, at least they will be pure and pristine until they marry.

And best to keep cutting the taxes of the richest citizens, rather than provide health services to the dirty, festering masses. We surely would not want the rich and famous to be inconvenienced in any way, shape or form–although being rich surely isn’t going to protect you against some vile bioterrorism germ.

“African American males die sooner than other males do, which means the system is inherently unfair to a certain group of people. And that needs to be fixed.”

These words were uttered from the squirmy little lips of our president, George W. Bush. At first glance it sounds compassionate, concerned, doesn’t it? That it is referring to the fact that because black men die sooner than other men in this great country, something needs to be done about it. Better health care, better outreach, something, anything.

But no, this is the Bush talking. The “fixing” he’s talking about is social security, not the health of the men. He’s saying that because they die young, they’re being ripped off by having to pay into the social security system. In other words, he’s trying to convince black men that his privatization monstrosity is a good thing, because they die young.

It really is enough to make you puke. I can see if this was a skit on Saturday Night Live. In bad taste, no less, but still a comic skit. But horror of horrors, this is our president talking. He doesn’t want to help black men stay alive long enough to collect social security, he wants them to die young so he can get his plan put through.

Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy eloquently writes, “It’s bad enough that a president would take the early death rates of African American men as a given. But in Bush, we also have a president with a vested interest in our untimely demise: Forget about living long enough to spend time with the grandchildren; with private investment accounts instead of Social Security, early black deaths mean our kids can inherit more dough even faster.

Why would Bush care about anything that correlates with lower life expectancy for blacks — violence in urban areas, racial disparities in income, higher unemployment and a lack of access to health care, for instance — when part of his pitch to reform Social Security is based on that outcome?

I know Bush is dumb, or at least, publicly pretends to be. But how can anyone be this dumb, as to announce to black Americans his “concern” about their overpaying into the Social Security system because their life expectancy is lower. He’s using a rather shameful statistic to advance this mad scientist plan of his–which is to enrich Wall Street and possibly leave millions of older Americans without any safety net.

And so blatantly, says nothing about improving the health of this segment of the population. In fact, he probably wishes that they died even younger so as to maximize the relative benefits of privatization. This is being morally compassionate, by Bush standards. Even for Bush, this is so pathetic, so racist, so shameful. And this is the man who says that he is being led by God on a moral crusade.

However, even Bush’s statistics are skewed, although that really shouldn’t be surprising. His view that black Americans don’t really use the current benefits is way off base, same as most things that come out of his mouth.

From the LA Times:

We’re very concerned that the administration has been less forthcoming on the real impact of these individual accounts on African-American families,” said Maya Rockeymoore, vice president of research and programs for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. “When you look at the different ways that African-Americans rely on Social Security … we’re likely to be devastated.”

Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., a Black Caucus member, estimated that 68 percent of disabled blacks were being kept out of poverty by current disability benefits, while almost 80 percent of blacks age 65 and older were dependent on Social Security for more than half their income.