Politics Schmolitics: October 2007

Politics Schmolitics

We are a group of friends and acquaintances -- a merry band of pranksters indeed -- who have been arguing about politics on-and-off, then really on, then a little off... since 1998. On email. But that meant literally thousands of emails a year. That was too many. So here's the blog dedicated to carrying on that spirit of political and pop culture argument and dialogue. You might think of us as "schmoliticians", because while we take politics seriously, we try not to take ourselves quite so.

Friday, October 26, 2007

If only the kids lived in Orange Co. and were rich (or on fire)!

But then, I guess that's the whole point.

Throwing away all pretense, President Bush says poor children are a waste of time. For shame.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

W to the rescue!

President Bush to SoCal: "I'm coming to save you!"

SoCal to nobody in particular: "Thank God we're white and well off!"

New Orleans to the World: "Are you f*cking kidding me?"

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

So you veto health insurance for kids? Really??

THIS is one of President Bush's 4 total vetos? Are you kidding? How do you veto health insurance for children? I guess the White House's new motto is "Billions for offense, not one penny for poor children!" Doesn't exactly have the same ring as its Adam-era predecessor (by Rep. Robert Goodloe Harper).

And what is their excuse, you might ask? Congress asked for $35 billion to cover an additional 7 million kids whose families make too much money to qualify for Medicare, but not enough to actually afford health insurance coverage on their own. The Bushies view this as moving beyond "helping poor children", so they want to only minimally fund $5 billion so that only the poorest of the poor get help. That's fantastic rationale: "We only agreed to help the really poor (so we wouldn't look like heartless bastards with a presidential election coming up), but we're not going to start helping the only kinda poor kids too! Socialized medicine! Socialized medicine!"

Come on! Is this really going to put the health insurance companies out of business? Really? THEY CAN'T AFFORD TO BUY INSURANCE NOW, WE'RE NOT STEALING CUSTOMERS!!

I cannot stomach an administration who would rather see 7 million children go without health insurance than risk harming health insurance companies. Where is the common decency? The only way this gets worse is when the health insurance companies issue their 2007 10-Ks and we learn that its been a record-setting profits year. I hope the tears of poor children have medicinal properties, because that's all the Bush Administration is going to allow them to have.