You know, I must say, I'm impressed at the way that Satcher is going out. Frankly, he's probably been the most invisible Surgeon General we've had for quite some time -- which was, to be sure, exactly what Clinton wanted from him after Joycelyn Elders. (Pity she never really got a chance; she could have been a really great SG, I think.) First Satcher issues the Sexual Health and Behavior report that so thoroughly pissed off Bush II Fraudulency, who never deigned to even read the thing before condemning it, and now he's issuing a report on minorities and mental health care that's likely to just continue the general trend. (Yes, pissing off the Shrub is a positive in my book. What can I say? I'm a vaguely rabid Democrat. And the Shrub is, you know, a shrub.) It won't piss him off because the report is all that controversial -- there's really nothing in the report itself that we didn't already know. (Well, aside from the fact that foreign-born Hispanics have fewer mental health problems than native-born, which is a shade peculiar on its face. And that for no apparent reason, African Americans are more likely to be incorrectly diagnosed with schizophrenia than some other affective disorders.) It's going to piss him off because Satcher is again saying something that hasn't been pre-approved by the Shrub's string-pullers; after all, some of the government's health-related policies are supposed to come from the various research programs in the Surgeon General's office, and something that says, "We should actually spend a buck or two on mental health care for minorities and the indigent" is not one of Bush II Fraudulency's pre-approved policy areas. (And, I would imagine, that the Shrub will continue his Shrubbery course and not read the thing because then he'd actually have, like, research and information on which to base policy, and you can't base "compassionately conservative" policy on information because then you'd actually have to be, you know, compassionate.)
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
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12/19/2001: vive la france
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12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
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12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!