Health Hazard

by digby

Dover Bitch caught the same Bush health care speech I did earlier and (among other things) makes a good point about Bush’s cavalier attitude in this comment:

He said something pretty wise, though. He said, you can have all the technology that man can conceivably create, but if you continue to smoke, we’re going backwards. If you’re not exercising, if you’re not taking care of the body yourself, all the technology isn’t going to save your life. In other words, there is a certain responsibility that we have as citizens to take care of ourselves.

DB asks:

Have we ever had a president who has been more of an obstacle to average Americans’ ability to make informed decisions about the food and products they consume? Or a president who has been less interested in protecting average Americans from dangerous products and food?

It’s a double whammy. You have to be responsible to take care of yourself, but we’re going to make it as hard for you as humanly possible to do that because the Big Money Boyz need to be free to sell tainted food and pollute your air and water and sell you a bunch of crap with false advertising. Caveat emptor, suckers.

I have no doubt that this lazy, privileged moron truly believes that his good health proves that you only get sick if you aren’t a “disciplined” person like he is. (Never mind the fact that the man is an alcoholic who has substituted exercise addiction for booze.) Like most rich Republicans, his consciousness would only be raised if he or someone he loves got sick, at which point he would be the first to point fingers. They just don’t have the empathy gene — unless they personally know someone who’s gotten sickfrom melamine poisoning or mad cow or tainted prescriptions drugs or e. coli, it just doesn’t matter. (See: Nancy Reagan, stem cell research.) Geez, they don’t even care about wounded soldiers, fergawdsake.

Perhaps our bumper sticker for ’08 should just be “Republicans are hazardous to your health.”

Dover Bitch has a good run-down of the Bush health atrocities.

Update: John Amato has the whole ugly “town meeting.” I’m having 2004 flashbacks.

.