While Africans die

A congressional battle looms over increases and amendments to the $15 billion AIDS program focusing primarily on sub-Saharan Africa. Desperately seeking a legacy that involves saving rather than snuffing out peoples' lives, Bush wants to double spending, the Democrats want to triple it -- everyone's on the same general page, for a change -- so who's the dissenting voice? If you guessed "pearl-clutching fetus fetishists", dingdingding! you win. What are they griping about now?

"Democrats also want to slash spending on a multimillion-dollar component that emphasizes sexual abstinence. And that has conservative groups furious."

That's right! The Democrats intend to stop throwing good money after bad into the areas that are provably ineffective, and concentrate funding on things that actually, um, work. And that's got the fundies feverishly beating their bibles and shrieking like hyenas in heat.

"Democrats have angered conservative groups with plans to remove a provision, inserted by the then-GOP controlled Congress five years ago, requiring that one-third of HIV/AIDS prevention money go to abstinence programs.

That's about 7 percent of all spending. Another controversial provision that could come out forbids grants to groups that provide medical care to prostitutes." (Emphasis, and disgust, mine.)

Wow. I don't know about you, but I sure can't think of anything more Christian than refusing medical care to prostitutes, especially in an area of the world so devastatingly poverty-stricken that prostitution runs rampant. Have the foaming fundies revised their bibles to censor out the story of Mary Magdalene?

Finally, a spokesfetishist for that fount of bigotry and misogyny, the Family Research Council, removes any and all doubt that he and his ilk are batshit insane:

"McClusky accuses Democrats of trying to change the program into a bill that would promote sex trafficking and fund family planning programs that are involved in abortion."

Family planning = sex trafficking, got that? Jesus Christ in a flame-festooned sidecar, how long before these nitwits' ridiculous blatherings are relegated to the garbage dump of irrelevancy where they belong? Must we wait another year??

More religious right stupidity

It doesn't take much to get me going on the idiocy of the religious right, but once in awhile one of them does or says something that's so destructively imbecilic that my outrage almost makes me spin out and burst into flames. Here we go: in an interview with the BBC, a Catholic archbishop in AIDS-ravaged Mozambique said that European condoms are deliberately infected with the AIDS virus as a conspiracy to wipe out the African population:

"The head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique has told the BBC he believes some European-made condoms are infected with HIV deliberately.

Maputo Archbishop Francisco Chimoio claimed some anti-retroviral drugs were also infected "in order to finish quickly the African people".

The Catholic Church formally opposes any use of condoms, advising fidelity within marriage or sexual abstinence." [...]

Archbishop Chimoio told our reporter that abstention, not condoms, was the best way to fight HIV/Aids.

"Condoms are not sure because I know that there are two countries in Europe, they are making condoms with the virus on purpose," he alleged, refusing to name the countries."

The combined stupidity and reckless ignorant evil personified by such a statement is breathtaking. Think about it. Sure, we know it's ridiculous, but someone, somewhere (particularly in Mozambique) doesn't know, looks up to this crackpot as a high-level religious figure, and assumes he knows what he's talking about. So they might give "sexual abstinence" a whirl, but in the imminent event that it doesn't work, they're left thinking whatever you do, don't use a condom! They're infected!

16.2% of Mozambicans are HIV-positive. 17.5% are Catholic. Coincidence?

When Georgie met Ratzi

King Georgie met Pope Ratzi for the first time when they had an "audience" earlier today:

"In a statement, the Vatican said Bush had "warm" talks with the pope and the Vatican's No. 2 official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. They discussed international politics, particularly in the Middle East, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Lebanon, the "worrisome situation in Iraq" and the "critical conditions in which the Christian communities (in Iraq) are found," the statement said.

The pontiff expressed his hope for a `'regional" and `'negotiated" solution of conflicts and crises that afflict the region, the Vatican said. Attention was also give to Africa, the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and Latin America."

During the discussion, the pope asked that the US double its current commitment to fighting AIDS in Africa. Sounds like an excellent idea, but:

"Skeptics say a significant proportion of the funds are channeled to religious groups advocating abstinence until marriage and refusing to distribute condoms, an approach that many believe is counter-productive and cost lives."

Counter-productive? Stupid even? Well, yes, but it actually makes sense considering both georgie and the pope believe in miracles.