The Bush Legacy: We Wish Your Children Sickness and Death:
When he heard the news - that in the same week that President George W. Bush requested $190 billion to fund the eternal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for a few more months, he also vetoed the SCHIP bill, which would have cost $7 billion extra a year to get kids regular doctor visits - Jesus just said, "What the fuck? Are you fuckin' kiddin' me?" When his hand and foot wounds started to bleed again, he exclaimed, "Ah, shit, I just got this carpet cleaned."

In one of those head-slapping moments for Republicans, who knew this was coming, the Bush administration and many of its loyal lackeys in the Congress and media went old school to attack the expansion of the States Children's Health Insurance Program, dragging hoary old bugaboo of "socialized medicine" out of the rhetorical attic to face the light of day again.

Senators attacking the bill had varying strategies. Mitch "Upper Lip of Doom" McConnell took it out on New Jersey: "For millions of hard-working Americans who have to pay for their insurance, it doesn't seem right that they should have to subsidize the families in New Jersey who can and should be paying for their own. And a lot of poor families in New Jersey are also right to wonder why Trenton is suddenly enrolling middle-class families for SCHIP when their kids still lack coverage - about 120,000 of them by one count." It's an argument that bites itself in the ass from the get-go: yeah, Mitch, yer right, we should get all those Jersey kids insured. What can we do to ensure that happens?

New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg was passionately upset about anyone using the "back door": "Now, I do not happen to support a nationalized system of health care. But I think if we are going to have a nationalized system of health care, we should not do it through the back door...I do not support a single-payer plan. But I especially find it inappropriate that the way the other side of the aisle is trying to get to a single-payer program is through this surreptitious back door of taking one chunk of the population--kids who are already insured by the private sector--and moving them over to the public sector in the name of protecting children who are from lower or moderate-income families." Gregg's blatant homophobia aside, can anyone explain how a bill passed by Congress is in any way "surreptitious"?

Texas Senator John Cornyn affirmed Gregg: "It is not conspiracy theories, it is not an exaggeration to say this is an incremental step toward that single-payer, Washington-controlled health care system." Yeah, those sneaky Democrats and, well, a lot of Republicans, they're just evilly talking in smoky backrooms, plotting and making vile plans to...make...people...healthy? Those bastards. Those motherfucking bastards.

They tried it all. One of the Rude Pundit's favorite feints to the right was from Louisiana's whoremongering David Vitter, who was so pissy that Harry Reid wouldn't allow debate on his amendment that said no medicine for illegal immigrant kids: "[T]here is nothing in the SCHIP legislation to prevent this fraud, to prevent these very significant costly benefits coming from the Federal taxpayers from going to illegal aliens in the country." Hell, they may as well have had Karl Marx and Che Guevara puppets yelling, "Workers of the world, unite" before fucking a puppet corpse of Ronald Reagan.

Still, despite the "courage" of a few Republicans to stand up to a White House that is despised for a bill that has vast public support, President Bush vetoed it. Capitalism above all, theory over reality, as in Iraq, as in America.

The Devil, who was playing online chess with Jesus when he heard the news, giggled, which just pissed Jesus off even more. "Shut the fuck up," Jesus said. "I've got enough to deal with here."

The Devil has been winning so many more of their games lately, whether it's Scrabble, Risk, or Cribbage. He merely shook his horned head and said, "Checkmate. C'mon, you're not even trying anymore."