Heads of State

If you were the Bush administration, and you had $2 billion to spend on a healthcare issue, would you choose:

A) Stem cell research
B) Traumatic brain injury research
C) Children’s medical coverage
D) Male impotence drugs

If you guessed A, well, you’ve clearly forgotten that nearly any and all stem cell research is verboten, and that the administration finds discarding unused fetuses from fertility centers a better option than allowing the couples who produced the fetuses to donate them to research.

If you guessed B, then you’ve forgotten this little news item I wrote about in April, during the height of the Schiavo fiasco, when the Bush administration cancelled all funding for the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Federal Traumatic Brain Injury Program, in spite of the fact that fully 60% of wounded soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan have traumatic brain injuries.

If you guessed C, then you probably haven’t read about the $1.1 billion of federal funds taken away from the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, leaving nearly a million children without health insurance.

If you guessed D, then you are correct…and obviously well aware of the truly revolting priorities of this administration. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that $2 billion will be spent by the federal government over the next decade on male impotence drugs—through the new Medicare program, by the way, which means that these drugs are likely going mostly to older guys, which makes any claims that this is about helping men who want to have families highly suspect.

This is just about horny old duffers who still want to get some, and more power to them; I’ve got no problem with that, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of children’s health insurance or medical research that is integral to finding new information about a devastating injury that’s plaguing our troops. And here’s another confounding question: If abortion, abortifacients, and contraceptives, sex outside of marriage (or sex for fun), and homosexual sex are all bad because they interfere with God’s plan regarding childbearing—that is, they’re unnatural—then can someone please explain to me how drugs which allow men, who would not otherwise be able to do so, to have sex, is not as equally unnatural as all of the above? Maybe God’s plan for some dudes is a limp dick. Who are we mere mortals to mess with that?

It’s quite a coincidence that God’s laws about unnatural sex and sex-related decisions seem to only apply to controlling gays and women. Don’tcha think?

(Hat tip Think Progress.)