Just when you thought life couldn’t get any better, rich white people are here again to save the day! First they put Bill ‘Persistent Vegetation‘ Frist in charge of the One Vote ’08 campaign, and now this! A wonderful video where over-privileged people come together for a few minutes in front of a camera to let you know, dear pathetic peasant, just how very sorry they feel for you! You know, for being born and all.
Via C&L and FireDogLake, I learned of One Vote ’08. As described by famous Hollywood Actor Matt Damon, One Vote ’08 is a campaign to reach voters and make the fight against global disease and extreme poverty a key issue in the 2008 presidential election. While I praise the idea of making global issues at least on the agenda for future elections, I’m really baffled by the choice of One Vote to team up with Bill Frist (says their page: “We’re kicking off the campaign with a press conference on June 11th at 11:15am with Senators Tom Daschle and Bill Frist”).
Frist was a physician and is a former Republican Senator from Tennessee who was for a time the Senate Majority Leader. Apart from his years of public service, Frist is most known for his lack of knowledge regarding the transmission of HIV: In a December 5, 2004 interview on “This Week with George Stephenopolous”, when asked whether HIV could be transmitted via sweat or tears (a suggestion made in a sex education study funded by the White House), Frist refused to reject the possibility, even though the Centers for Disease Control state that, “contact with saliva, tears, or sweat has never been shown to result in transmission of HIV.”
Now, I’m no doctor, but I’m almost positive that HIV is a sexually transmitted disease, yet somehow, Frist, a medical doctor, wasn’t sure how HIV/AIDS was transferred. And here we are, Frist joining the One Campaign to raise awareness of global disease and poverty when AIDS is at the forefront for international concern, especially in Africa. Needless to say, AIDS has ravaged Africa both physically and economically, with resources being consumed by overwhelming health burdens created by the epidemic:
Inhabited by just over 12% of the world’s population, Africa is estimated to have more than 60% of the AIDS-infected population. The economic impact of AIDS is noticed in slower economic growth, a distortion in spending, increased inflows of international assistance, and changing demographic structure of the population. There are also fears that a major long-term drop in adult life-expectancy will change the rationale for economic decision-making, contributing to lower savings and investment rates.
Bill Frist, a politician who doesn’t know how HIV is transmitted, is on a campaign to make ‘global disease and poverty’ a national issue. Couldn’t One Vote have found someone more knowledgeable?
Apparently it’s real fashionable now a days to call attractive wives of candidates ‘strippers‘! In the Post-Imus media world, this is called having an Imus moment. What this means is that insulting blacks is off the table, and apparently not so sly gendered comments about tit size and the age differential for our famous future presidential couples is not the greatest idea either. Unless, that is, you’re trying to get your nuts stomped on.
Thank you Andrew Sullivan, your used Etan Thomas comb is in the mail.
A couple of rich white guys talking about how they’re being undermined as rich white guys! McCain and O’Reilly, white power virtuosos:
O’REILLY: But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you’re a part, and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have. In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right. So I say you’ve got to cap with a number.
MCCAIN: In America today we’ve got a very strong economy and low unemployment, so we need addition farm workers, including by the way agriculture, but there may come a time where we have an economic downturn, and we don’t need so many.
O’REILLY: But in this bill, you guys have got to cap it. Because estimation is 12 million, there may be 20 [million]. You don’t know, I don’t know. We’ve got to cap it.
MCCAIN: We do, we do. I agree with you.
Oops, except……. Males – As of the 2006 congress, 83.7% of the Congress is male, while the percentage of males of the voting age population (18 plus) is only 48.4. If this is further evaluated to include the over-representation of white males, the figure is even more staggering: 36.3% of the voting age population are white males, yet there are 79 White Male senators making up the Senate (79%).
