Spinning something that can't be spun... again

Yesterday I posted about how, in the eyes of the Bush(whacked) Administration, that an up-tick in violence in Afghanistan was a good thing… and this administration's knack of spinning bad things as good. They’re doing it again...

This time it’s healthcare.

Back in 2000, the WHO ranked the US 37th in health care out of 191 countries… not soon after, “President” Bush said; “we have fabulous health care.” All fine and good, but when millions of your citizens aren’t covered, something’s amiss… and it’s not fabulous.

Fast-forward to this week and OMB Director Jim Nussle echoing Bush’s inaccurate claim while explaining Bush’s new (historical – and not in a good way) budget... that US healthcare is the “best,” saying;

“So beneficiaries, I don’t think, will see the differences. … We have the best health care in the world. And our seniors especially get great health care. And that will not be affected by this small drop in percentage increases over the next five years.”

He apparently wants all of us to ignore the $200 billion in Medicare and Medicaid cuts over the next five years, which will make the dismal state of U.S. health care even worse… yes, that’s possible. Scary, but possible…

The way that Bush’s budget cuts Medicaid, by $18.2 billion over five years, essentially shifts costs to the states and thus will force the states to institute even bigger program cuts or tax increases to cover the expenses. So who gets screwed in the end? Well, it’s the Bush(whacked) Administration… so naturally it will be the little guy… and senior citizens, and in turn the people that care for them.

Nussle wasn’t done spinning as he continued by saying that Medicare “access and quality should not suffer at all.”

Uh-huh… why do I not believe that? And I’m not the only one, as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) also disagrees, strongly;

“Many of the proposed cuts go well beyond the reductions that MedPAC, Congress’ expert advisory commission on Medicare payments, recommended and considers safe. […] These reductions could drive some health care providers to limit the number of Medicare patients they see or drop out of the program entirely. That, in turn, would jeopardize health care for significant numbers of people who are elderly or have serious disabilities.”

Remember that a majority of Medicare savings would be achieved by reducing the annual update in federal payments to hospitals, many of which service large numbers of the uninsured… thus creating an incredibly large lack of funds to help the uninsured…

Bush is a lame duck and it’s high time Congress starts treating him like one. They need to get it through his thick skull that he’s screwed up big time and that he needs to stop doing stupid things before he pushes the populace even further into an economic pit of darkness… the likes of which this country has not seen in a very long time.

As if his legacy is not battered enough and rife with both moral and fiscal irresponsibility, he has to pull something like this in the last act of what is a very sad presidency… and an even sadder time in the history of the United States.

Spinning something that can't be spun

Once again the unique way this administration views things is coming to the front… and by unique I mean naïve, inane, muddled…

Two reports are being released this week, one from The Atlantic Council of the United States (ACUS) and the other from Center for the Study of the Presidency (CSP), and both paint starkly negative views about Afghanistan (AKA The War that George Forgot).

Retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones led the ACUS report which concludes that

“progress achieved after six years” in Afghanistan “is under serious threat. […] Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan,”

This is not totally suprsiring as many critics have been saying that the success of ousting the Taliban and, in turn, putting al-Qaeda on the run has been ebbed by the lack of attention this adminstration has paid to that war… now it’s getting a little more attention with the release of these reports.

Though that isn’t going to stop the Bush(whacked) Administration from donning its rose-colored glasses and spinning the violence that has befell the country.

Case in point; Defense Secretary Robert Gates…

Gates is not only downplaying the upswing in violence in Afghanistan but is trying to spin the violence the administration is acknowledging as being good…

You read that right… something that most 5-year olds can distinguish between, violence is bad, no violence is good, is being spun as good by a supposed intelligent adult.

Last week Gates attempted to claim that “NATO has had a very successful year in 2007″ and that the significant increase in suicide bombings in 2007 was the “manifestations of a group that has lost in regular military terms.”I’m sorry… what? An increase in violence is a positive? Are we living in opposite land?

And what’s more, Gates wasn’t done… while he admitted that there is a “rising security issue” there, he spun that by saying that that was because the Taliban are turning to terrorism, having failed in conventional military conflict with the NATO allies…

Huh?

Maybe reading his whole comment verbatim would clear it up…

““And so we are seeing more suicide bombings, more use of (improvised explosive devices), and so on. These are actions of people whose conventional military efforts have failed,” […] The rise in violence and attacks like we saw in Kabul are manifestations of a group that has lost in regular military terms in 2007 and is turning to terrorism as a substitute for that.”

Yeah, that didn’t work…

Granted, spinning an upward spike in violence as signs of progress is a common Bush(whacked) Administration tactic used in Iraq as well as Afghanistan… in fact, ThinkProgress even reminds us of some of them:

June 2007, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow described intense new levels of violence in Iraq as “signs of success.”

May 2005, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared “So suicide attacks, whether in Okinawa or in Baghdad today, are not a sign of strength. They’re a sign of desperation.”

March 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney brushed off the (insurgent) attacks as a sign of ‘desperation’ among U.S. foes…

What I see reek is more so a sign of desperation from this administration… trying to tie an increase of attacks and overall violence as any kind of success… it just doesn’t work that way, no matter what political ideologies you may have. So allow me to put this into words that even Bush could understand;

More violence… baaaaaaaaad.

Less violence… goooooooood.

Is there a way to ingrain this into the administration’s collective brain?I didn’t think so…