Well, he did it again.

U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday vetoed a bill expanding a popular children's health care program for the second time, angering Democrats who are locked in a fight with the administration over the budget and spending.

Pushed by the Democratic-led Congress but also supported by many Republicans, the bill was aimed at providing health insurance to about 10 million children in low- and moderate-income families. Taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products would have been increased to pay for the aid.

Bush vetoed a version of the bill in October but Congress quickly passed another one that included some changes but not enough to satisfy the White House.

I posted this as a comment to another diary but it got buried under 90 comments while I was revising it, so I decided to post an expanded version. Detail after the bump.

1. Why Science is not just another opinion

2. Why Intelligent Design is laughable as a scientific theory

3. Why Evolution the concept is in no dispute whatsoever

4. How Evolution the Origin theory disproves Genesis, not God

5. How Social Darwinism leads to Eugenics, and Eugenics leads to suf-fer-ing

6. Why Murder by Spreadsheet is For-Profit No-Fault Eugenics

7. How Murder by Spreadsheet reveals hypocrisy in the "Culture of Life"

[First, a cheap plug for my blog Senate 2008 Guru: Following the Races.]

A few interesting questions were asked last night.  Among the best: "Do you believe in evolution?"  While simple, the answers reveal much about the answerers.

Here are five brief but provocative questions I hope will get asked in future GOP Presidential debates, questions that'd reveal much about the candidates' character and priorities.

1. Would you be disappointed if your child told you that he/she was gay?

2. Which is more important: keeping gays out of the military or preventing acts of terrorism?

3. To preserve the sanctity of marriage, would you support a Constitutional ban on divorce?  (This one is my favorite.)

4. Would you say that a healthy, 40-year-old married mother of two has the exact same value in terms of human life as a frozen embryo?

5. How do you reconcile supporting a "Culture of Life" with supporting the death penalty (for those that do support the death penalty)?

What intriguing, probing, thought-provoking questions would you ask of the ten old white guys who were on the stage last night?

Have you ever read something that has made you wanna just tear your hair out and hurl explitaves at your computer screen?

I just did.

In Turnabout, Infant Deaths Climb in South

For decades, Mississippi and neighboring states with large black populations and expanses of enduring poverty made steady progress in reducing infant death. But, in what health experts call an ominous portent, progress has stalled and in recent years the death rate has risen in Mississippi and several other states....

There are many reasons behind this ominous trend, but one in particular jumed out at me:

In 2004, Gov. Haley Barbour came to office promising not to raise taxes and to cut Medicaid. Face-to-face meetings were required for annual re-enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP, the children’s health insurance program; locations and hours for enrollment changed, and documentation requirements became more stringent.

As a result, the number of non-elderly people, mainly children, covered by the Medicaid and CHIP programs declined by 54,000 in the 2005 and 2006 fiscal years.

More on the flip.

John Boehner holding a portrait of the late Anna Nicole Smith for reporters assembled at the House of Representatives


Washington, DC (UPSI) - A tearful House Minority leader John Boehner (R-OH) yesterday pledged to reporters that he intended to end what he called a "destructive partisan bickering" over the Iraq War by the Democrats and return the business of the house to issues that the majority of Americans find important. He pledged to adopt the cause of Anna Nicole Smith, the controversial recently deceased reality TV star, and bring binding resolutions and legislation to the floor of the house designed to protect the average American from the exploitation the late Smith and her orphaned daughter have endured. "We will refocus and reunite the Republican Party around the family values that Americans have entrusted to our stewardship," stated Boehner.

A Caveat:  This is both a personal and a political statement. It's subject is one many Americans consider unpleasant or inappropriate, or simply in poor taste.  If you are one of those people, rather than warn you away with the standard disclaimer one so often sees when the writer raises a subject that is socially unacceptable, awkward, potentially offensive or simply considered impolite, I urge you to read further. Because this essay, this story, this rant, this manifesto, if you will, is meant for you.

Death stalked my family and I in 2006, more so than at any other time in my fifty years on this earth.  And as this crucial and horrid year wobbled to its inglorious end, death's gaze seemed evermore fixed in my direction.  Under other circumstances I suppose I would simply avert my face from its terror and its omnipresence, finding something, anything to distract my mind away from the fear and anger and helplessness which always bubbles up from the emotions I usually keep well buried within the subterranean regions of my unconscious.  But, in some strange sense, I feel death itself has a message it wants me to relate, one it wishes told to anyone to whom my poor words may reach.  Call me mad, perhaps, but I swear it to be true.

(cont.)

I hesitate to wade into this debate, but after hearing Michael Steele this morning tell Tim Russert that rather than dispose of unwanted embryos they should be adopted, I just can't keep quiet.

Let me state very clearly up front, that I adamently believe that a woman's body is her own and that she, not the government, has the absolute right to determine whether or not to reproduce.

But here is my thesis for today:

"Life" does NOT BEGIN at conception.

"Life" EXISTS BEFORE conception.

Anesthetic is administered to the patient in an innovative, cost-sensitive manner that respects the sanctity of his/her religious beliefs (aversion in the Muslim faith to alcohol/drug use).

Hopefully this has been diaried before, but if not here goes. We know all those frozen fetuses are awfully important, but look how unimportant actual people are to the Republicans.

1-800-SUICIDE, the nation's best known, private and confidential suicide prevention hotline network, will be shut off at midnight tonight unless action is taken. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA), a division of HHS, has decided to end all funding for KBHC while continuing to owe them $266,000 from over 2 years ago. Instead of sending the funds that were already allocated, SAMHSA has gone on to create their own competing crisis hotline -- which gives them access to callers' private information through phone records. 1-800-SUICIDE does not disclose its phone records to the federal government.

Nice, huh. Over 30,000 Americans commit suicide every year and they can't provide funds to help prevent many of these deaths, because the hotline doesn't give callers' confidential info to the government.

Well I'm not sure that this has been addressed on this awesome site, but I would like to address the fact that Bush doesn't lift a finger about private stem cell research companies that conduct OMG, embryonic stem-cell research!

(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom)

Our dear leader was finally confronted with a bill that he couldn't simply sign and disavow with a signing statement. At the ripe old age of 60, Bush was forced to veto a bill supporting federally funded stem cell research.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush cast his first veto on Wednesday to block legislation to expand embryonic stem cell research, putting him at odds with top scientists, most Americans and some fellow Republicans.

"It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect, so I vetoed it," Bush said of the research that involves tiny human embryos.

[...]

"I made it clear to the Congress that I will not allow our nation to cross this moral line," he told a White House audience including women who had children after adopting and gestating "spare" embryos from fertility clinics. "I felt like crossing this line would be a mistake and once crossed we would find it almost impossible to turn back."

Well, we have been hearing how Bush is going to use his first veto to strike down bills allowing for the use of federal funds for stem cell research.  Never mind the fact that a large number of Americans are in favor of embryonic stem cell research as I really don't want to talk about the merits of federal funding for stem cell research or get into a discussion of the "slippery slope" argument regarding cloning.

No, what I want to discuss is the "culture of life" meme that really only means "make a big stink about things related to before someone is born or when they are about to die, but you're on your own while on this earth".  We hear "culture of life" as it relates to abortion, to euthanasia, to stem cell research and what/whoever else the lunatics on the right want to distract and divide the country over.

In a 5-4 ruling (PDF file) handed down yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative justices made clear their beliefs about the value of adult human life. In essence, they ruled that, everything else being equal, it's better to execute a criminal than to give him life in prison.

We hold that the Kansas capital sentencing system, which directs imposition of the death penalty when a jury finds that aggravating and mitigating circumstances are in equipoise, is constitutional.

wrote Justice Clarence Thomas, in his majority opinion.

(Cross-posted at My Left Wing)

Wisconsin, my adopted state for the past 12 years, abolished the death penalty in 1853. Not 1953, 1853. (As far as states go, only Michigan abolished it earlier, in 1846, the first English-speaking government in the world to do so!) Now, certain state legislators want to put a non-binding referendum on the fall ballot, asking voters if they favor capital punishment for murders where there is a DNA match.

Can you guess which side of the aisle the folks putting this forth sit on?

Despite decades after Roe v Wade, abortion remains a central issue in American polticics. Why, given that the other issues of the age have been long since buried, does this continue to pose not only a contentious problem, but a rallying cry to the Christian right? There are some that believe that this debate lives on because it could never reach its natural conclusion through civil discourse; however the Loving case ended debate on interracial marriage in a similar abrupt and activist manner, and the national fabric has adopted it thoroughly. Why not so with Roe?

I suspect we continue to argue about Roe, and about abortion, because we have miscontextualized the debate as a womens' issue.

This isn't an earth-shattering observation, but every time James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Lou Sheldon, and James Kennedy - the Crusading Quartet of "christian" leaders who help the GOP distract their followers from most of the issues that directly affect their lives by hyping things like the "War on Christianity" or the "radical homosexual agenda - talk about the importance of promoting a "culture of life," they only add to the thickest, largest, most impenetrable monument to hypocrisy ever seen on this planet.

What do you suppose their response will be to this?

An estimated 2 million babies die within their first 24 hours each year worldwide and the United States has the second worst newborn mortality rate in the developed world, according to a new report.

The Bush administration and its conservative, Christian fundamental base have espoused what together they call a "culture of life", a phrase that has been invoked repeatedly in opposition to abortion, repeatedly in opposition to stem cell research, and -- in one remarkable case -- the invasion of privacy of a husband and his long-suffering wife.

A culture of life. It's difficult to contemplate arguing such a noble sentiment... that we all have a duty to protect the weak, and to value each life, especially those who are the mercy of others. So why is the theme interpreted so narrowly? How is it that such a weighty and impactful idea is deployed only to serve the means and intent of the President's office, and those religious conservatives who support him?

If we're really to espouse a culture of life, we need to broaden the theme and apply it universally, without regard to political agenda, or geopolitical borders. Here then, are my suggestions for how we might implement universal standard for a true Culture of Life:

The culture of life is really the culture of White Christian Heterosexual Males who hate or fear those not like them and deeply adore the unborn and braindead that are incapable of telling the pandering bigots to stop trying to represent them.

You see, the insider-trading Bill Frist plans to Bring in da' Homophobia on the Senate floor just in time to rile up some gay-bashin' good times.