STRANGLE A PUPPY WHILE YOU'RE AT IT

Once again, I must appeal for knowledge, wisdom, insight.

President Bush recently vetoed a bill that would have expanded and extended the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) — a program that helps pay for health insurance for children whose families aren't poor enough for Medicaid, but who still don't have health insurance. Families, by the way, that will soon have serious anger-management issues if the veto is not overridden by Congress.

SCHIP currently helps about 6.6 million kids across the country.

The bill would have increased spending on the program by $35 billion over five years with the hope of adding another 4 million kids to the program.

In vetoing SCHIP, President Bush said the bill was a step toward "socialized medicine." Yet, government-funded health insurance seems to be fine for him, his family, members of Congress, their families.

I was going to include military veterans in that list — but the VA said they misplaced the $5 brothersmcc inclusion fee. Then an hour later, they said they didn't misplace it all — they never had it in the first place. They were still waiting for it from Capitol Hill.

But I digress ...

President Bush seems to think that the $35 billion is too much to spend on the program — a program that enjoys bipartisan support, by the way. It's kids, for God's sake. What's not to like? Cute little moppets with stuffy noses and strep throat and asthma and allergies and diabetes and diarrhea.


I'm beginning to think President Bush doesn't like sick people. Or injured people.

Am I wrong? Am I misguided in thinking that President Bush is cynical enough to put millions of kids at risk because he wants to privatize their health insurance — a boon to the already filthy-rich and morally dubious insurance companies.
(except Anthem, of course, because they have pure souls and good hearts and a few claims forms coming their way from a certain over-caffeinated, highly-opinionated blowhard who doesn't know when to zip it.)

Am I just dead wrong when I muse out loud on the golf course that President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and the entire government have shirked their moral duty to care for our veterans by any and all means necessary?

If you believe I am, please set me straight. Persuade me that I am barking up the wrong callous, rotting, fantastically wealthy executive branch.

We are spending $1 billion a week on the war in Iraq — and President Bush wants tax cuts, and wants to freeze health care for kids in working families and leaves far too many military veterans out in the cold.
("1" being the empirical equivalent of "far too many.")

He wants to curb this wild federal spending spree.

Irony
i·ro·ny n
1. a type of humor based on using words to suggest the opposite of their literal meaning
2. something said or written that uses sardonic humor
3. incongruity between what actually happens and what might be expected to happen, especially when this disparity seems absurd or laughable
4. something that happens that is incongruous with what might be expected to happen, especially when this seems absurd or laughable
5. See dramatic irony
6. See Socratic irony
7. See $1 billion a week, President Bush, you muttonhead

The sweaty, wild histrionics of Sen. Ted Kennedy notwithstanding, there's a petition you can sign if you want to help these soon-to-be-uninsured kids. It's at Kennedy's own website, which gave me the willies when I went there but sometimes you just have to buck up.

http://www.democraticmajority.com/schip

I don't think you have to watch Kennedy's speech first but if you do, my apologies. Dude needs a bib.