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 Bush Gets Tightfisted With Sick KidsPosted on Oct 5, 2007WASHINGTON—To say that George W. Bush spends money like a drunken sailor is to insult every gin-soaked patron of every dockside dive in every dubious port of call. If Bush gets his way, the cost of his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will soon reach a mind-blowing $600 billion. Despite turning a budget surplus into a huge deficit, the man still hasn’t met a tax cut he doesn’t like. And when the Republicans were in charge of Congress, Bush might as well have signed their pork-stuffed spending bills with a one-word rubber stamp: “Whatever.” So for Bush to get religion on fiscal responsibility at this late date is, well, a joke. And for him to take his stand on a measure that would have provided health insurance to needy children is a punch line that hasn’t left many Republicans laughing. Bush’s veto Wednesday of a bipartisan bill reauthorizing the State Children’s Health Insurance Program was infuriatingly bad policy. An estimated 9 million children in this country are not covered by health insurance—a circumstance that should shock the conscience of every American. Democrats and Republicans worked together to craft an expansion of an existing state-run program that would have provided insurance coverage for about 4 million children who currently don’t have it. It was one of those art-of-the-possible compromises designed to advance the ball toward what has become a national goal. Health care is arguably the biggest domestic issue in the presidential contest and, while the candidates and the country may be all over the map in terms of comprehensive solutions, there’s a pretty broad consensus that some way has to be found to ensure that children, at least, are covered. Make that an extremely broad consensus: According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released this week, 72 percent of Americans supported the bill Bush vetoed. The program Congress voted to expand provides health insurance for children who fall into a perilous gap: Their families make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but don’t make enough to afford health insurance. The cost of covering an additional 4 million children was estimated at around $35 billion over five years. That’s a lot of money. But in the context of a $13-trillion economy—and set against Bush’s history of devil-may-care, “buy the house another round” spending—it’s chump change. Bush’s stated reasons for vetoing the SCHIP bill left even reliable congressional allies—such as Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Charles Grassley of Iowa, both of whom supported the legislation—sputtering in incomprehension. As for me, I don’t know what to call the president’s rationale but a pack of flat-out lies. The president said Congress was trying to “federalize health care,” even though the program in question is run by the states. The president said that “I don’t want the federal government making decisions for doctors and customers,” even though the vetoed bill authorizes no such decisions—the program enrolls children in private, I repeat private, health insurance plans. And here’s my favorite: “This program expands coverage, federal coverage, up to families earning $83,000 a year. That doesn’t sound poor to me.” But the bill he vetoed prohibits states from using the program to aid families who make more than three times the federal poverty limit, or about $60,000 a year for a family of four. Most of the aid would go to families earning substantially less. Bush’s spurious $83,000 figure comes from a request by New York state to be able to use the program for some families earning four times the poverty limit. That request was denied by the Bush administration last month—and that upper limit is not in the bill Bush vetoed. End of story. If New York or any other state were to ask again to be able to raise the income limits, the administration could simply say no. Bush seems to be upset that Congress didn’t adopt his pet idea to tackle the health insurance issue through—guess what?—tax breaks. None of the major players on Capitol Hill thought this would work. When the White House persisted, Congress moved ahead on its own. Hatch said he believed Bush had been given bad advice from his staff. He didn’t take the next step and draw what seems to me the obvious conclusion: Either Bush didn’t understand the bill he vetoed, or he’s just being petulant—with the health of 4 million children at stake. “I hope the folks at home raise Cain,” Hatch said. Oh, I think they will. Eugene Robinson’s e-mail address is eugenerobinson(at)washpost.com. © 2007, Washington Post Writers Group Previous item: Breaking the Taboo: Why We Took On the Israel Lobby Next item: The Quickest Way to End the War Elsewhere: . CommentsAre you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig. Add Your Comment |
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By Dr Richrad Blackmoor, October 10, 2007 at 10:45 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
I support this program if ALL Americans pay for it.
Report thisIt is easy to support somthing you don’t actually have to pay for ...so unless you are a smoker shut up.
I would pay for this and I don’t want to start buying packs of cigs to do it.
By Dr Richard Blackmoor, October 10, 2007 at 10:22 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
The problem with this bill, and reason help me, I support this veto is that unless you are a smoker you don’t actually support the sCHIP program.
Report thisI totally support helping poor kids get health care but ALL AMERICANS SHOULD PAY FOR IT>
If you support this bill and don’t smoke it is kinda sleazy because you aren’t paying anything for it except with hot air.
Please don’t state your prejudice against smokers. They pay more for health coverage and most states added lots of tax to smokes take care of uninsured smokers.
Second hand smoke is as silly as the denial that smoking was harmful. There is no true scientific study that shows this though there are some independent ones that refute it.
Driving a car, being obese,using cell phones, so many things have a much bigger impact on things than smoking. It has simply become an acceptable scapegoat.
Fund sCHIP with a tax that all Americans pay. If you want it pay for it.
By boggs, October 8, 2007 at 12:41 pm #
Bush has had second thoughts because, he wants these kids to be well enough to be foot soldiers in ten years.
Report thisBy farmertx, October 8, 2007 at 7:53 am #
Evidently Pigpen called Shrub and told him which way the wind was blowing as Shrub announced over the weekend that he would be willing to try and find a few dollars more for the program.
Report this“Find”? Heck, just reach into thin air where he “found” all the other money he has spent making his buds even richer.
By Outraged, October 7, 2007 at 7:13 pm #
RE: #105402 by Mike Mid-City on 10/07
FINAL JEOPARDY QUESTION:
“Why are they (the republicans) letting him get away with running the party (never mind the country) into a crevices that it will disappear in?”
ALEX, MY FINAL JEOPARDY ANSWER IS:
What is for the billions of missing dollars in Iraq.
Remember: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/10/ir aq_billions200710
Report thisBy gogs, October 7, 2007 at 12:52 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
Wonder what Jesus would do?
Report thisBy TAO Walker, October 7, 2007 at 8:23 am #
As Douglas Chalmers and several others point out here, the cut-poison-and-burn-medical-attention delivery system, in its entirety, is a virtual clone of the blank-checks-on-the-U.S.-Treasury delivery system. The slick operators of both want to be perceived by a gullible and disinformed public as wrestling heroically and interminably with various problematical situations in their (increasingly interlocked) areas of responsibility....yet somehow never actually coming-up with any real solutions to any of them. Genuine healthcare and socially responsible governance would only get in the way these neoliberalcons’ lucrative confidence schemes.
The gangsters are also fully aware of how much better-off the “marks” would be, instantly, without all the false-front boiler-room electro-mechanical and institutional apparatus serving so effectively here in these latter days to pick clean the pockets of even the next several generations of “the sheeple.” Keeping the masses milling-around fearfully in that carefully manufactured artificial darkness has itself always been a big money-maker for those who specialize in it.
It is all just “civilization” by The-Book. Better buy the book, eh? Wonder how it compares to the movie?
HokaHey!
Report thisBy Douglas Chalmers, October 7, 2007 at 6:17 am #
#105318 by Douglas Chalmers on 10/07 at 6:05 am: “...There is a well-developed and successful electronic diagnostic test system (MORA-Vega) which can be used in conjunction with natural therapies such as homeopathy and naturopathy...”
Search terms “Mora diagnostic” or see:-
Report this“Standard MORA-Therapy with EAV or VEGA-Type Diagnostics” http://www.oirf.com/recinstr/mora3.html and the manufacturer http://www.med-tronik.de/produkte-e.html
By Douglas Chalmers, October 7, 2007 at 6:05 am #
The health debate that is not healing, uhh! It is interesting that the government continues to split portions of health care away instead of addressing the needs of everybody. That is a cheap stunt in itself. S-CHIP is “ for Families & Children” only despite this being an era in which there are more singles than ever before. That is discrimination in order to save a buck!
The real question is not ‘either-or’ as regards the Western-style medical system which is increasingly expensive and only really suits emergencies - a kind of ‘military medicine’ - but when will natural therapies be accepted into government funding as a means of reducing reliance on the vastly more expensive model? The problem is that functional disorders are being ignored until they become chronic conditions involving gross pathology. They are then effectively conditions which are unsurvivable and can only be treated by resorting to drastic surgery and/or palliated until death, however long that takes.
The health industry makes untold billions of dollars out of that approach while thousands of us die every year from preventable ‘iatrogenic’ illnesses. That is, the medical system is causing much of this suffering which we seem to blindly accept in our ignorance. It is a delusion to believe that anyone other than yourself is going to solve all of your health-care issues. We need to take the attitude of being personally responsible - and that includes carefully choosing what we will accept as treatment. Waiting until your life is threatened by a chronic condition is leaving things rather late.
There is a well-developed and successful electronic diagnostic test system (MORA-Vega) which can be used in conjunction with natural therapies such as homeopathy and naturopathy but, except in countries like Germany, it is utterly ignored. Instead of using such methodologies, we foolishly listen to the self-serving prattling of greedy medicos and the pampered medical scientists who will tell us that these therapies are mere placebos while they still want us to ignore the fact that they themselves caused antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria to appear as a result of decades of their deliberate misuse of penicillin as a clinical placebo for their own anxious patients.
Changing that to reduce actual overall costs and to improve the overall general health of the community is still being intentionally avoided. In other words, the medical system depends on having a continuous flow of sick people to survive. Any decrease by actually improving things and healing people of functional disorders before they become either acute or chronic by any kind of ‘natural therapies’ is anathema to their precious existence!
Closed minds have a propensity for finding out things the hard way as a result of their own inaction. But, then, the WHO’s Codex Alimentarius has also been set up to eliminate all natural medicines in future as a threat to the medical system, too. The politicians simply don’t have the courage and they want everyone else to be as fearful of positive change as they are. In the end, we are now experiencing negative change and an unaffordable and intrinsically dishonest health system instead.
Report thisBy Conservative Yankee, October 7, 2007 at 4:36 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
EC
“the lives of our nation’s poorer children hang in the balance,”
This is the kind of left wing clap-trap that keeps me in the “conservative camp”
Because I see a different reality I’m “deluded” “heartless” or I’m “applauding Bush’s mugging of children’s healthcare”
In this thread (the part you did not quote) I touted “single payer” “Universal” health care. Maybe you missed it because it wasn’t my first sentence, and also I mentioned it would help US business compete.
Again (if you get this far) families making 60K are not poor. Children needing medical care for catastrophic illnesses can get same from any hospital accepting any federal funds before 1997 when Clinton signed the bill to kill the program (hummm why would he do this?) 300 hospitals are still obligated to provide free and reduced cost health care. there are at least two of these hospitals in every state. California and New York have the most.
Of course I want children to have health care. I also want them to have food, equal education, and the RIGHT to employment that pays a living wage. The system will not work with a significant population of “underclass”
BUT
If you take out all the major negatives Children, old folks etc, the Universal health care plan will never get here BECAUSE the process called “marginalization” comes into effect, and no one is moved by a 56-year-old white upper-middle class businessman, with prostrate cancer (unless he happens to be your father, brother, or friend.
We’ve already lost the old folks, if we lose the children, we lose the battle, and you will NEVER see an adaquate health care program in your lifetime.
That’s my whole argument.
Report thisBy thomas billis, October 6, 2007 at 11:50 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
I have read some of the comments and I will tell you at some point in the future we will have single payer health care because,hold onto your brain,it works for the greater majority of people who live in civilized countries around the world.I know all knowledge is contained in America and we can never look anywhere else for an idea but energy self sufficient Brazil and single payer health care in every country in the civilized world are two ideas that originated outside of the US that we will in time mimic.The only reason they have not been mimicked yet is the energy companies have slowed down the implementation of one and the HMOs have slowed down the implementation of the other.Sooner or later the screwed middle class will realize the wisdom of the two approaches.I hope sooner rather than later.
Report thisBy cann4ing, October 6, 2007 at 7:52 pm #
Hmmm, CY, so you think I misquoted you.
Try reading your own post, #105192--"Democrats have for years played the ‘fear game’...”
from post #10496--"BUT this was a lousy bill, and if Bush killed it, he did something (one thing) right, if for the wrong reasons.”
I appreciate that elsewhere on Truthdig you have expressed admiration for the Conyers/Kucinich “single-payer” bill as fiscally responsible, but right now we were not presented with that up-or-down choice. Would I prefer single-payer to this stop gap protection of our children. You bet. But since S-CHIP was the only thing on the table, and since the lives of our nation’s poorer children hang in the balance, the veto of this legislation was a mugging. Your post applauded that mugging, irrespective of the fact that “you” believe you did so for the “right” reasons.
Report thisBy cann4ing, October 6, 2007 at 7:37 pm #
gungotin, Kucinich describes “single-payer” as “Medicare for all.” Unlike the system in the UK, the Conyers/Kucinich bill would not provide socialized medicine because the physicians would not be government employees. (Perhaps explaining why Conyers/Kucinich draws support from American physicians). Conyers/Kucinich would eliminate the waste engendered by having middle men in the form of for-profit health care insurers and HMOs.
Under the current system, 31% of health care costs go to these unnecessary middle men--money that flows to the coffers of corporations and which is used for advertising, lobbying and making billionaires of the healthcare insurer CEOs. In single-payer countries, the costs of administration is usually only around 1% to 2% of total health care costs.
The most corrupting aspect of our current system is that it creates a financial incentive to refuse to authorize necessary treatment. This problem was highlighted in Michael Moore’s “Sicko!” As an attorney who represents seriously injured workers, I see it happening every day. Here in California, one of the first things our celebrity governor did was to “reform” our workers’ compensation system by placing control over treatment in the hands of the insurance carriers and providing them with “utilization review"--a perverted device through which carriers routinely deny needed care. In one case, I represent an injured employee who lost both arms and both legs. I had to take the case to trial just to get him physical therapy. That is truly sick!
This conflict of interest between the health care needs of the insured and carrier bottom line cannot be resolved by any so-called “reform” which fails to remove the for-profit healthcare insurers and HMOs from the equation. Assuming Hillary or one of the other corporate shills were to succeed in bringing about “universal coverage” by schemes that would pay public monies to private insurers the same way the Bush administration transfers what is left of our national Treasury to Halliburton, Blackwater and the other war profiteers, the conflict between the insured and insurer will remain.
Report thisBy Douglas Chalmers, October 6, 2007 at 4:37 pm #
#105212 by guntotin ganglion on 10/06 at 12:48 pm: “...Please Mommy...make the bad man go away...!”
And in the land of the FREE! Such BRAVERY, uhhh!?!?
Report thisBy guntotin ganglion, October 6, 2007 at 12:48 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
Re: #105171 by Ernest Canning on 10/06 at 8:30 am
What does the term “single payer” mean? Is it the single payer paying taxes? I’m not clear on this.
And I’m there with you on Kucinich...he’s the only candidate on either side of this debacle (we call governance) that I can vote for. He’s the only one I see (other than Mike Gravel) who actually understands the meaning of the words ethics and morality.
I guess, whatever you call it, I’m for making medical care a right, not a privilege. I’m also for remaking medicine as a not for profit endeavor. This is basic ethics, to not take advantage of those in need, to pack your pockets. There’s lots of other ways to make profit in this world...so let’s leave medicine out of it.
Also, if there ever was a person who made me even more intransigent about “socialized” medicine, it’s our imitation-of-a-human President we have, who pulls the rug out from under millions of low income people’s children, because it might mean “federalizing” health care...which is of course idiotic, since, as Mr. Robinson points out, it’s a state program, and thus the term S in SCHIP, not FCHIP. The Liar-In-Chief is a BCHIP though (Buffalo Chip) and he just goes on and on and on lying to everyone, because there’s no other way for him other than the Big Lie, the Small Lie, The Tiny Lie and every other variation on a lie one might think of.
Please Mommy...make the bad man go away!
Report thisBy Conservative Yankee, October 6, 2007 at 10:41 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
“Wow! Six years into an Orwellian “war on terror” and CY tells us that Democrats play the “fear game.”
Almost as impressive as your applauding Bush’s mugging of children’s healthcare, CY. Keep it up. Somewhere out there you’ll find a mean spirited convert to the conservative cause. “
You read what you wish to read, and your take on what I said is what is in your head. It certainly is not what I wrote. “Mugging children’s health care” That’s worthy of a Karl Rove smear.
Careful Mr. Canning “converts” sometimes don’t know they are converts until they are well across the line…
Report thisBy cann4ing, October 6, 2007 at 9:46 am #
Wow! Six years into an Orwellian “war on terror” and CY tells us that Democrats play the “fear game.”
Almost as impressive as your applauding Bush’s mugging of children’s healthcare, CY. Keep it up. Somewhere out there you’ll find a mean spirited convert to the conservative cause.
Report thisBy cann4ing, October 6, 2007 at 8:30 am #
gungotin: Your head is in the right place, but you have to apply the correct terminology. “Universal coverage” is a scam. It entails variable schemes for subsidizing the for-profit health care insurance industry. What your post seeks is a “single-payer” system in which we eliminate for-profit health care insurers and HMOs (which make up 31% of the spiraling cost of health care in this country). A single-payer system would bring the U.S. in line with the single-payer systems in place in every other industrialized nation and would eliminate the competitive disadvantage created because American businesses absorb the cost of “coverage” when business elsewhere does not.
There is only one presidential candidate who is advocating a single-payer system--Dennis Kucinich.
Report thisBy Conservative Yankee, October 6, 2007 at 5:35 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
EC
“Thanks for revealing your true colors, CY.”
and what “true colors” have I been hiding?
Democrats have for years played “the fear game” sometimes surreptitiously, and sometimes (like now) out-in-the-open. (I know I will be the first to admit the Republicans play this game too too maybe even better as they have won 7 to 3 in the presidential elections games over the past 40 years, and 4 in landslide victories) but the Democratic fear game is always predicated on the “fear” that although they offer 1% of almost nothing, The Republicans will tear into your lives and up-end them making you slaves, implanted zombies, or worse (and both those examples are directly from truthdig threads.)
Actually, though I tend to vote Republican (always locally, less-often nationally) I’m no fan of either party. The Republicans push for garbage like national identification cards (and they don’t have the balls to come right out and call them that, instead they hold drivers hostage to this simple shit) and the Democrats say since they are giving us health care (damn little health care as I see it) they have the right to tell us to buckle our seat belts, and cease smoking in our apartments (notice the new proposed California does not say no smoking in homes, just apartments) Then they have the effrontery to come back and say THE BIG BAD REPUBLICANS are “tareting the poor. As I see it EVERYONE targets the poor. there is no greater criticism of “welfare” programs than in the 3-decker flat next door to the person getting checks.
Anyway that is a far piece from the children’s health insurance program, WHICH I WOULD SUPPORT if it was all inclusive.
Universal single-payer health insurance (which neither party wants to touch) is good for everyone, poor and rich alike. It even benefits corporate entities like Ford. That company would be in black ink were the retired employees health-care costs removed. I know, you don’t give a rat’s behind about Ford. But people must work somewhere, and Ford’s jobs supported hundreds of mom & pop businesses and those small businesses are the source of 80% of all US jobs. When health care becomes ensconced, like Social Security and Medicare it will be untouchable, for after folks use it for awhile, they would never want to give it up.
People talk about Canadians being “dissatisfied” with their single payer plan. I live 13 miles from the Canadian border, I have family and friends who are Canadian citizens. their only dissatisfaction is that they would like their medical care to include “extras” like flu shots, and dental care (which are currently unfunded) and get this… They have convinced me that in the case of health care higher taxes are not a bad thing! In fact the program is SO popular that all three major political parties support continuing it.
So I hope I’ve revealed more of my “true colors”
Go ahead, rip it apart, I await your response with bated breath.
Report thisBy Douglas Chalmers, October 6, 2007 at 4:23 am #
#105096 by TAO Walker on 10/05 at 11:41 pm: “...Tightfisted, tight-lipped, tight-assed....it’s the terrifying reign of the Tight’uns all over again.... tightening the screws with abandon on the used-to-being-mollycoddled allamericanpeople..... A few alert ones saw all this coming over . They were shouted-down....and worse....”
Sadly, not only “two hundred years ago”, Tao Walker, but 1,000 years ago if you trace the development of the Anglo-Saxon ancestry of the invaders. When England was invaded by the Normans, they brought with them an ideology of repression and suppression which changed the English landscape and demography something like the Spanish conquest of the New World.
Ever since, things have been made to go around in that manner. It is happening in modern-day USA as much as it happened 500 years ago and 1,000 years ago somewhere else.
Report thisBy TAO Walker, October 5, 2007 at 11:41 pm #
Tightfisted, tight-lipped, tight-assed....it’s the terrifying reign of the Tight’uns all over again, tightening the screws with abandon on the used-to-being-mollycoddled allamericanpeople. A few alert ones saw all this coming over two hundred years ago. They were shouted-down....and worse.
Their “modern” descendants can only weep and wail, and hang their heads in-shame. Or they could go wild, get free....with the momentary sacrifice of a little hide and a lot of short-hairs. There’s the permanent loss of all their self-serving delusions, of course, not to mention their “property,” “power,” and “prestige”....much too high a price to pay, probably.
It’s maybe too late already anyhow.
HokaHey!
Report thisBy guntotin ganglion, October 5, 2007 at 10:36 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
Universal coverage now. No insurance company involvement.
The Declaration of Independence established that we all have a right to...and please note the order...life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Life comes first.
One essential element of life, is the need for medical care...everyone eventually needs healthcare to keep from losing the life you have a right to...this is your first right people. Pursuit of profit falls under the tertiary clause, aka “pursuit of happiness”...it’s third after life and liberty. Which is to say, we the people have a right to our lives, before anyone of us has a right to pursue profit. Life is first.
And to add real depth and meaning to the whole thing, Medical care should be an essential right for ALL people, not just Americans. If someone is in need, they should be provided for. Is this a Christian nation or not? You can’t have it both ways. You can’t be a self-serving, self-possessed, self-centered money grubbing miser holding every penny for yourself and think that Jesus would have anything good to say about you. I’m not a Christian, but the whole ethic makes a lot of sense to me even if I don’t happen to believe JC died for our sins. Take care of your brother and sister...period. Good ideology. With it, the world might find peace...in about ten thousand years if we all try real hard now.
Medical care should not be a privilege afforded only those who’ve managed to move their tertiary rights to the front of the line, in violation of our founding fathers wishes. Medical care being naturally partnered with life, and life being primary, trumps pursuits of happiness. So...insurance companies, HMO’s, find some other way to fleece the rubes, some way that doesn’t violate their right to life.
Universal coverage now. No insurance company bloodsuckers.
Report thisBy cann4ing, October 5, 2007 at 3:17 pm #
Your absolutely right, CW, programs for the poor are short-lived. Programs for the rich--subsidies like the seven billion dollars given to the oil companies at a time when they are securing record profits, outright gifts of federal property that gave rise to the railroad barons of the 19th Centuries, opening the federal treasury to the no-bid contracts of Halliburton, Bechtel, Blackwater and a host of war profiteers aided by policies of endless warfare--now your talking. Federal programs that open the public tills to the wealthy and the powerful. Now there you have it. The government program that amounts to the gift that just keeps on giving.
Yeah, you really seem to have something there, CY. I can see how a veto of funds needed for the healthcare of impoverished children will really win converts to your “conservative” cause. Thanks for revealing your true colors, CY.
Report thisBy Paul_GA, October 5, 2007 at 2:11 pm #
Bush shot himself in the foot, that’s for sure; but why should he care? He’s not running for office again (though he might try to remain in office indefinitely if there’s a new 9/11-style attack; “national emergency” and all that, and I hope everyone knows he thinks the Constitution is just a “g_dd_mned piece of paper").
Report thisBy Conservative Yankee, October 5, 2007 at 12:18 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
Can’t stand Bush. Didn’t vote for him twice. BUT this was a lousy bill, and if Bush killed it, well, he did something (one thing) right, if for the wrong reasons.
Programs for the poor (even those which save taxpayers money and poor folks lives) are notoriously short lived. The enormous success of Medicare, and Social Security in avoiding the axe lies in the “universality” of these programs. If we’re gonna insure folks....insure all of them, or this will be nothing but a one term side-show.
Also if all the children and old folks are insured there will be far less pressure on government to find a real solution to health care problems. I have a flash for folks. If the child’s mother is sick, the child still suffers.
a patchwork quilt won’t work. Insure all through single payer / no insurance involved./
Report thisBy ocjim, October 5, 2007 at 11:03 am #
#104928 by steve
Kudos to Steve. He sounds like a caring, thoughtful, and engaged citizen. We need about 100 million more.
Report thisBy farmertx, October 5, 2007 at 9:29 am #
Shrub, for all his talk of being a Texan, has never had to really mix with ordinary American’s. Everyone he has associated with has had a trust fund and he thinks that short order cooks have them as well.
Report thisMany people who did willingly vote twice for him are now regretting that they ever heard of him.
Pigpen was able to fool a lot of folks for several years, but the truth is really hard to hide, especially on the scale that he was trying to hide it.
Shrub could care less about future generations of American’s because he will be long gone to his estancia in the Southern Cone, where he can, as Mexicos’ Presidente Fox says, be a windshield cowboy.
Windshield cowboy is one who is afraid of horses, but wants to be a rancher.
America will long remember Shrub, because it will take a minimum of 12 years to undo what he has FUBAR.
And that is providing that the Shootist doesn’t have his own secret plan. He is too greedy to walk away easily.
By steve, October 5, 2007 at 9:03 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
Maybe the only good thing that could possibly come from this veto is it will finally wake people up to the cruelty of this presidential dictator and his administration. Besides this site and a few others I read, I still don’t hear people talking about this from day to day. I mean at the water cooler at work for example. Sure most people hate the war and are tired of Bush; but most people I see at work are still talking about the same stupid bullshit: britney spears, the dimondbacks (i am in arizona), and their fantasy football team. It’s just sick. Honestly, this may say more about us as a country than it does about President Bush because we continue to put up with it day after day and bascially do nothing. Are we afraid? Are we already living in a police state? Sure he is a loser and easily the worst president in American history; but he and his administration control our lives as he continues this very unpopular and illegal war...the needless deaths of both American soldiers and Iraqi civilians and the bankrupcy of our country...and most recently this absolutely heartless veto of the SCHIP bill. Good luck. Our children and all of us are going to need it
Report thisBy Marie, October 5, 2007 at 8:30 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
Don’t get me wrong, I truly think Bush the worst president ever. That said, WHY is our health care so unaffordable??? The insurance I have, paid $43 toward a $291 bill for blood work. I paid the $15 co-pay. What happened to the $233 left to be paid???
Report thisAn uninsured person, however, would have had to pay the entire bill. THAT is why the uninsured are left out there. To make up the difference the insurance companies won’t cover, because the charges are outrageous!
Bush doesn’t want national health care because his buddies in the health care industry wouldn’t make as much money.
By Mudwollow, October 5, 2007 at 7:56 am #
Some things are not that difficult to understand.
Unlike the very lucrative, nebulous and (as we are told over and over again) “permanent"-"war on terror”, there is no easy way to siphon off billions from a program funding children’s healthcare.
Report thisBy Patricia Lavins, October 5, 2007 at 7:55 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
As usual the Bush regime has used a faulty brand of logic to support its position on an issue. The reality is that the S-CHIP program is NOT another step closer to “socialized medicine” or “an incremental step toward the Democrats goal of a government-run health system.” The S-Chip program is NOT an entitlement program like Medicare or Medicaid. It provides block grants to the states which can curtail the program if the funds are depleted. Nor is S-CHIP permanent. It is only a five year authorization.
As is the case with so many things, George W. Bush is simply WRONG and IMMORAL in his actions in regard to the children of this nation. He has once again demonstrated that he has no concept of Christianity.
Report thisHe needs to read the Bible again and pay special attention to the parts about taking care of the least of us.
By Douglas Chalmers, October 5, 2007 at 7:50 am #
I don’t really undestand how people can’t see this guy as a child-abuser!!!
Report thisBy cann4ing, October 5, 2007 at 7:37 am #
It is simply a question of priorities. When a nation spends nearly $500 billion per year to feed the insatiable military-industrial complex, when it pours the contents of our national treasury into the coffers of Halliburton, Blackwater and other war profiteers via the sinkhole known as Iraq, when it creates an ocean of red ink by providing tax breaks for a tiny class of wealthy elites, when it provides a $7 billion subsidy to an oil industry which is already turning record profits, it simply cannot afford to look out for the lives of its own children. This veto underscores the fact that George W. Bush does not give a damn about anyone who does not fit within what he described as his “base"--"the haves and the have mores.” Whether they drown in a toxic soup of oily, bacteria-contaminated waters in New Orleans or from lack of funds for health care makes no difference to George. Ordinary folks, especially children, do not have sufficient funds to swell the coffers of the Republi-crook Party. Their deaths, in George’s little mind, do not count as a loss.
Report thisBy Akira_Maritias, October 5, 2007 at 6:09 am #
You know it’s bad when even the Bush SUPPORTERS are freaking out. Seriously...I mean...wow. Just...wow!
At what point in time does the president look at 4 million of OUR children getting health care and say: “Yeah, that looks bad.”
Wow...just...wow. Even his God that he claims to follow wants us to be charitable...so why the hell would Bush go against his own God?
What this says is quite simple: I would rather spend billions to kill people than spend billions to SAVE people.
Disgusting. Disgusting, foul, twisted, and evil that would undoubtedly make the terrorists cringe.
I don’t think that the terrorists could even DREAM of leaving 4 million children in such a bad way.
Report thisBy grousefeather, October 5, 2007 at 5:55 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
It’s all about idealogy, not Bush. The Republicans always complain about any policy with the slightest hint of “socialism.” Conversely, they will literally throw money away if they think doing so advances the cause of conservative idealogy. Bush is a very successful and beloved president in Republican eyes because he serves the core constituency of the Republican party very well. So targeting only Bush for policies approved and sponcered by the Republican party is ill advised politically speaking, because it gives the Republicans wiggle room in not taking full responsibility for the shortcomings and flaws inherent in the conservative idealogy.
Report thisBy ocjim, October 5, 2007 at 5:47 am #
A litmus test for admission to the neocon club is to show your distaste for, even amusement toward the stricken, the sick and the vulnerable.
Reagan did it, saying those who go to bed hungry are on a diet not poor. Bush made fun of a woman on death row, William Kristol thought Bush’s veto was great and funny.
Referring to Bush when Bush was Texas governor:
“I think it is nothing short of unbelievable that the governor of a major state running for president thought it was acceptable to mock a woman he decided to put to death,” Bauer said of Bush.
Bush is portrayed in Talk as ridiculing pickax killer Karla Faye Tucker of Houston for an interview she did with CNN broadcaster Larry King shortly before she was executed last year. Just before her execution date, Tucker appealed for clemency on the grounds that she had become a born-again Christian.
“ `Please,’ Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, `don’t kill me,’ “
In anticipation of the veto, William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, had this to say: “First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it’s a good idea. I’m happy that the president’s willing to do something bad for the kids.” Heh-heh-heh.
Want to be a neocon? Show humor and disgust toward the poor.
Report thisBy ocjim, October 5, 2007 at 5:11 am #
What a disgusting display of inhumanity. Bush has so many misanthropic qualities that one wonders how anyone could have voted for him twice.
Report thisBy thomas billis, October 5, 2007 at 3:14 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
I do not understand it.These are the same kids who fight the neo con wars.Pres Bush don’t you want a healthy next generation to fight another useless war over oil.If you are counting on neo cons who can afford health care to send their kids you will not be able to invade Rhode Island.
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