I was at the 2009 AIDS Walk yesterday. It was a beautiful, warm and sunshiny day, perfect for runners and walkers to do their part in raising, thus far, close to $400,000. The event kicked off with some nice speeches from AG Rob McKenna and others including a very moving speech from a woman who's been living with HIV for 23 years, a great testament to how far we've come in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
While overall it was a good morning, unfortunately there were a couple moments that spoiled the morning some. Instead of just cheering on all the teams that did such hard work to raise all this money, celebrating the recent advances in AIDS research and enjoying the weather at Volunteer Park, some speakers just had to get political.
No surprise that one of them was Congressman Jim McDermott. While McDermott was not there in person he sent a letter praising the event's aims and achievements but also giving a plug to Congress's current fight for government run health care. Just leave it alone, Jim. Can't we all just come together for a moment, agree that we all would like to see AIDS gone from the planet and not have to bring in the divisiveness of the health care debate into it?
And perhaps the worst of it came when one of the organizers of the event cheered with glee that finally "we've turned our anger and activism into action and elected a president and congress" that care about the fight against AIDS. Never mind that President Bush gave billions of dollars to combat AIDS, helping millions of people worldwide with the disease earning praise from the likes of the New York Times and erstwhile opponent John Kerry. And never mind that President Obama actually broke campaign promises to devote more funds to the fight against AIDS.
I know that probably 85% of the people at the AIDS Walk yesterday were your typical far-left Seattle liberals but was sliding a sly jab against Republicans into your event really necessary? In the words of Rodney King, "can't we all just get along" if even for a day?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2009930981_aids24.html
Posted by MarkGriswold at September 27, 2009 07:27 AM | Email ThisGWB did more for Africa on AIDS, and got more results, then anybody else in the history of the world. That cannot be seriously disputed.
So suck it.
To everyone else: The AIDS Walk sounds great, other then McDipshit, but that's to be expected.
Posted by: Cliff on September 27, 2009 08:12 PMAnd despite what Bush did, you cannot laud him without condemning Reagan, too.
Posted by: demo kid on September 27, 2009 11:05 PMHe was a former actor and President of the Screen Actors Guild. He had worked with a lot of gay people years before it became fashionable and that particular phobia wasn't a big one for him.
Reagan wasn't a big believer is having the government throw taxpayer money at medical research for just about any reason. He believed that it tended to build an industry around the problem rather than getting it solved. (Which is sort of what the cancer treatment industry has become in many ways IMHO.)
Posted by: johnny on September 28, 2009 05:17 AMRewrite history to suit your needs, but it doesn't change the truth.
Posted by: demo kid on September 28, 2009 07:29 AMYet all we ever hear from the left about Bush is he didn't do anything at all for the poor, for Aids, for peace. You people on the left are ignorant and pathetic. Really. Why should any conservatives want to help you with anything? Whenever they do, you just turn on them like jackals, lie about them, and ignore reality.
Posted by: scott on September 28, 2009 07:34 AMdk? How does Reagan's lack of support for AIDS have anything to do with the fact that an event yesterday that should have been about coming together, was, at times, turned into a Democratic Party rally?
Stay on topic, as you so aptly pointed out on the ELF post below.
Posted by: MarkGriswold on September 28, 2009 07:36 AMA few facts easily gleaned from the internet on the subject of government involvement in AIDS in the early 80's:
The CDC was fully engaged in the disease in 1981 at a time when there were a handful of cases.
In 1983, the Secretary of Health and Human Services Margret Heckler (part of that Reagan cabinet that you've said was silent) announced that they had isolated the virus that cause AIDS. Also by 1983, they were closing the gay bathhouses in 1983, by order of the Department of Public Health. In 1985, the Government licensed the first tests for AIDS testing.
There were less than 20,000 cases of AIDS being tracked in the U.S. by the time all this happened, and the big public events like Rock Hudson and Ryan White dying of AIDS hadn't happened yet. Already at this point, there was a lot of information on the airwaves from the CDC as well as coordinated efforts between the U.S. governmetn and private organizations as varied as the PTA and Playboy Magazine.
So, no, those mean old Reaganites weren't handcuffing the federal government until 1986.
Jeez, Demo Kid, Reagans been dead a while now. Can't you lefties just concentrate on vilifying and hating on live people like Glenn Beck instead of working so hard to try to trash the reputations of people who've been dead more than a decade?
Posted by: Johnny on September 28, 2009 08:18 AMGood to see that you agree about his lack of support. I'm stating that AIDS activists have a LOT to be suspicious about with respect to Republicans and how they've historically dealt with HIV -- pretty much as you just noted. And hey, since the Republican Party certainly doesn't mind using many of the groups actively involved with AIDS awareness as punching bags, I don't really have a lot of sympathy for wayward social conservatives that whine about making things "political".
@10: First of all, stop lying about what I said. If, as president, you are facing a rather scary new disease and you create an "Executive Task Force" to deal with it, aren't you derelict in your duties if you exclude your own Surgeon General? For that matter, why would your administration state specifically that the press wouldn't be allowed to ask him questions about it? Koop saved thousands of lives with his public health report in 1986, while Reagan dithered before that and said he could sympathize with parents that didn't want their kids in the same classroom as HIV-positive children.
And the French found HIV, not the US.
Again, I have no problem with Republicans saying that Bush did a lot for AIDS in Africa. I'll even go so far as to say that many conservative church groups do good work with dealing with HIV in these countries. (Even if abstinence-based education is a foolish way of approaching it, if you ask me.) But if Republicans are being truthful and honest, though, they need to own up to the fact that they sat on their hands because the disease dealt primarily with folks that social conservatives didn't like quite that much.
Take responsibility for your actions. If the absurd wingnut conservatives on here can blame the modern Democratic for slavery, I definitely don't have a problem returning the favor about something much more recent, relevant and reasonable.
For your substance, to talk about AIDS walk in the context of a politics-free event seems naive. This isn't a baseball game. From sex ed, to condoms in Africa, to needle exchanges, to gay rights -- there are policy and political ramifications. In fact, it would be almost a dereliction to not wonder about these things.
Though I do agree Bush did a great job with Africa AIDS money.
Posted by: John Jensen on September 28, 2009 06:42 PM