…and His Heart Ain’t In Great Shape, Either

Building on my last post about the president’s rather curious priorities, here’s yet another example of Bush’s selective concern for his electorate:

Native Americans across the country -- including tribal leaders, academics and rank-and-file tribe members -- voiced anger and frustration Thursday that President Bush has responded to the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history with silence.

Three days after 16-year-old Jeff Weise killed nine members of his Red Lake tribe before taking his own life, grief-stricken American Indians complained that the White House has offered little in the way of sympathy for the tribe situated in the uppermost region of Minnesota.

"From all over the world we are getting letters of condolence, the Red Cross has come, but the so-called Great White Father in Washington hasn't said or done a thing," said Clyde Bellecourt, a Chippewa Indian who is the founder and national director of the American Indian Movement here. "When people's children are murdered and others are in the hospital hanging on to life, he should be the first one to offer his condolences. . . . If this was a white community, I don't think he'd have any problem doing that."

You know what, Clyde? I don’t think so, either. Unless, of course, it was a poor white community, or one which looked decidedly blue on an electoral map, or for any other reason didn’t tickle his political fancy. See, Bush just continues to prove that he doesn’t give a shit about anyone unless he’s going to garner more political capital that he can spend on behalf of furthering the agenda of his beloved corporatists or throwing a bone to the voracious fundies, who are so determined to claw their way to preeminence that they ignore the corporate monolith-favoring policies of which their great leader is so fond, that will eventually come back to bite them in their poor, bankrupt, minimum-wage, no-healthcare, no-legal recourse asses.

The reaction to Bush's silence was particularly bitter given his high-profile, late-night intervention on behalf of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman caught in a legal battle over whether her feeding tube should be reinserted.

"The fact that Bush preempted his vacation to say something about Ms. Schiavo and here you have 10 native people gunned down and he can't take time to speak is very telling," said David Wilkins, interim chairman of the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and a member of the North Carolina-based Lumbee tribe.

Yeah, it tells you what an absolute plonker he is.

Even more alarming than Bush's silence, he said, is the president's proposal to cut $100 million from several Indian programs next year.

Alarming. Right. Par for the motherfucking course.

Why is it that every time there’s some group that’s been offended, ignored, affronted, or otherwise slighted, or conversely, cynically celebrated as a cause de jour, by Bush & Co., a quick look at the budget shows massive cuts in funding to some sort of program or other that would have benefited them?

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, in an informal discussion with reporters Tuesday, said: "Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those who were killed."

How about instead of thoughts and prayers, you put that $100 million back into the budget? If you can’t, because your rampant warmongering and insistence on further padding the pockets of the already-wealthy with further tax cuts won’t allow such “discretionary spending,” maybe you ought to just shut the fuck up.