Bush Signs HIV Plan, Log Cabin Lauds
President Bush did good yesterday when he signed a revised AIDS Relief initiative.
The plan, which allocated $48 billion over five years to fight HIV/AIDS, also lifts a travel ban on infected persons looking to enter the US.
Gay group Log Cabin Republicans applauded the President’s action, of course, with HIV/AIDS policy consultant David Reznick saying,
President Bush has done tremendous work to combat this disease globally and that deserves to be an important part of his legacy. This legislation will continue the dramatic improvements in the lives of millions of people living with this disease.
Recent reports indicate that HIV-infected people are living considerably longer than they did before new brands of life-sustaining drugs.
Consider: His plan alots about 9.6 billion dollars a year for AIDS relief. Approx 1 trillion /yr dollars goes to Military spending. between 2-300 billion dollars goes to war profiteers for doing nothing in Iraq.
This is a 9.6/300 billion ratio.
He spends much muchmore killing and torturing people than saving them.
I trust that these are abstinence programs as well.
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All of this money of course has “faith based†strings attached to it. Like you and your family must convert to Christianity or no help. It will be most likely be lining the pockets of Bush/GOP cronies and of little help to HIV/AIDS worldwide. If Bush wants to be serious about HIV/AIDS funding why has he annihilated the Ryan White Care act by under funding it year after year?
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I don’t understand why everyone talks about Bush signing this bill as being so “pro-gay.” Do you think he gives a shit about queer folk with AIDS? Do you think he would have signed this bill if things had not changed so much since the 1980′s and the queer community was still the focal point of the AIDS epidemic? Yes, this bill will be good for all people with AIDS, including queer people, but let’s not delude ourselves with the thought that Bush signed this because he was genuinely concerned for the welfare of our community.
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I figured that the money was totally fucked like that, with all of the religious bulklshit attached,
As far as lifting the travel ban goes, Dr. Hill said “It’s about time that we joined the rest of the civilized world.”
Some legacy!
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I agree that this is awfully nice of Bush, but like Brendan D. says, it’s delusional to think that Bush is doing this to help gay people. He isn’t. He’s shown time and time again that not only does he hate gay people, but he really, really, really hates gay people.
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I will only acknowledge that this is a mostly non-stupid and non-vile action by the current idiot president. I refuse to “laud” anything he does, since everything he does is tainted with the lost blood, lives, jobs, opportunities, and resources squandered by his myopic, paranoid, selfish and criminal presidency. As has been said above, he wouldn’t be doing this for gays, and he’s not doing it for Africans and he’s not doing it for humanity in general. Dig around a little and you’ll probably find pharaceutical companies doing quite nicely thankyou.
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This bill came out as a result of Franklin Graham, homobigot Billy Graham’s son, going to Africa and making a big case for funds to Bush. Bush saw it as a good political move. If HIV infected gays could be excluded and discriminated against without a big uproar, Bush would leave us out.
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“Like you and your family must convert to Christianity or no help.”
Huh?
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I’m no fan of George Bush. I think his presidency will be remembered with mockery and contempt.
I also have not found him to be supportive of gay people. He has made appointments of folks that have instituted homophobic policies in their departments.
But to think that Bush “really, really, really hates gay people” shows either an astounding lack of awareness of the world around you or astonishing stupidity.
If Bush truly “hates” gay people, how then does one explain a number of openly gay appointements made by the President? How does one square that with the Bush appointees who were accepting of their gay employees and who did instill policies of fairness?
I suspect that Bush doesn’t really care about gay people one way or the other. He clearly doesn’t believe in the principles of equality under the law and he allies himself with some who are obviously bigots and he is more than willing to entertain political favors for those who make fighting our equality their purpose for being. But I’m just not seeing any direct animosity to gay people in general coming from the White House.
Yes, we should recognize this President as an enemy to our equality. And we should never back down on criticizing his flaws.
But we should applaud actions that are in our favor (such as this one) and should never make the mistake of confusing callousness and stupidity with hatred. If you don’t truly know your opponent, you can’t defeat him.
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Um, the ACLU, HRC and other left-leaning groups also applauded Bush. I’m not fan, but only to mention LCR skews it just a tad, doesn’t it?