GRRR

The NY Times has editorial on Bush's desire to cut money out of the AIDS program he proposed! In my best Marvin The Martian voice, "that makes me very angry".

In his last State of the Union address, the president announced a new program to fight AIDS in Africa and pledged $15 billion over the next five years. But instead of using existing channels, Mr. Bush created a new bureaucracy. Now the White House and Congressional Republicans argue that since the bureaucracy is not ready, dying patients must wait.

The Senate is scheduled to vote soon on an appropriations bill that contains $2 billion for the AIDS initiative — only $500 million more than this year's spending. The House has approved even less. This is the White House's doing. It is twisting arms to get Congress to cut its own program. The House and Senate had authorized $3 billion for next year.

Of course, nobody is surprised. And hey, the far right wing is pleased! They saw the allocation of money to fight a global disaster as wasteful, and as a obstacle to tax cuts for the 1%-types. And everyone from the center left who smelled bullshit (aside from the WMD bits) in the SOtU address has had their opinion validated. Life goes on, and people in southern countries get screwed.