shorter dubya

Today at his press conference about children's health insurance:

"Children of the poor: go fuck yourselves. Or go pull out your own teeth, or perform your own surgery. Ask yourselves: what would Horatio Alger do?"

“I have a different view,” Mr. Bush went on. “I believe the best approach is to put more power in the hands of individuals by empowering people and their doctors to make health care decisions that are right for them. Instead of expanding S-Chip beyond its original purpose, we should return it to its original focus, and that is helping poor children, those who are most in need.”

So, we can help poor children...by cutting the funding for their healthcare...because then they are more empowered...to make their own choices...like not going to the fucking dentist and dying because of an abcessed tooth.

But hey, death is a choice, right? I think Bush should empower Fetus-Americans* to make their own health care decisions, too.

*h/t the Rude Pundit

thou shalt not bitch about thy life. thou shalt be fucking grateful.

From The Independent:

An al-Jazeera journalist captured in Afghanistan six years ago and sent to Guantanamo Bay is close to becoming the fifth detainee at the US naval base to take his own life, according to a medical report written by a team of British and American psychiatrists

Sami al-Haj, a Sudanese national, is 250 days into a hunger strike which he began in protest over his detention without charge or trial in January 2002. But British and American doctors, who have been given exclusive access to his interview notes, say there is very strong evidence that he has given up his fight for life, experiencing what doctors recognise as "passive suicide", a condition suffered by female victims of Darfur.

Dr Dan Creson, a US psychiatrist who has worked with the United Nations in Darfur, said Mr Haj was suffering from severe depression and may be deteriorating to the point of imminent death.

He said the detainee's condition was similar to that of Darfuri women in Sudan whose mind suddenly experiences an irreversible decline after enduring months of starvation and abuse. He said: "In the midst of rape, slow starvation, and abject humiliation, they did whatever they could to survive and save their children; then, suddenly, something happened in their psyche, and, without warning, they would just sit down with their small children beneath the first small area of available shade and with no apparent emotion wait for death."

birdwatching

So, this morning, gazing rather blearily out my kitchen window at the tree which chose to grace my yard by falling on it, I noticed that the tree was rustling with busy birds. There were 10 or 15 of them, all different kinds: large pale grey ones, with white spots; tan with white-tipped feathers, small brown/black/red ones. They were inhabiting the tree--reclaiming it, perhaps--with vigor, like they had just found a new and particularly auspicious spot for a bird settlement. I will be sorry to see the tree go: who knows what other gifts it might bring?

Preznit McFuckwit

So, there's a new book out, in which Bush demonstrates for the world (again! in case we missed it the first seventeen hundred times) his general fucktardedness. The line about "replenishing the ol' coffers" is my favorite.

Time for some David Rees.

sigh.

The Great Iraq Swindle.

On a funnier note: Enjoy Your Non-Socialist Day of Rest, Laborers! is Wonkette at their best.