With the end of the three presidential debates, American voters are finding it increasingly difficult to choose between George Bush and John Kerry
AMERICA is facing an acute shortage of flu vaccine, announced George Bush in the presidential debate last week, as if to say it was no fault of his. He told over 60 million domestic viewers that the British company meant to have sent the shots had run into manufacturing problems. No further details. In fact, the vaccine is unsafe.
So how does this translate for people in Pakistan? You guessed it! Fluvirin, produced by a known company, that was to immunize America, could now well end up in Pakistani cities.
Don’t we all know that Third World countries are the dumping ground for medicines garbaged by the West? And since it’s become quite the fashion to get a flu shot in Pakistan, some unethical distributor may already be hand in glove with the makers of Fluvirin to buy the bulk, repackage the contaminated vaccine and sell it with a different label.
Caveat emptor or let the buyer be aware!
President Bush jealously guards the health of his citizens, or so he claims. Rebutting his opponent’s charge that his administration refused to allow people without medical insurance — a whopping 45 million of them — to import cheap medicines from Canada, he shouted back during the debate “medicines from the Third World and Canada are unsafe”, and therefore he will not play with people’s health.
Are you there President Musharraf? At least tell your health minister and his buddies not to license medicines that harm Pakistanis. Can someone make sure that Fluvirin does not sneak into the country under a different name? And I hope that the health ministry has, by the way, banned the sale of a popularly prescribed arthritis medication, which has been recalled in America just a short while ago, because it can cause heart attacks.
Pakistanis unfortunately don’t believe in medical malpractice suits. The doctors there have a field day, as do the multinational pharmaceutical companies enjoying a monopoly, both over patent and generic drugs.
President Bush too doesn’t care for patients taking their doctors and big pharma to the cleaners because as a “compassionate conservative” — a term only Bush understands — he funnily likes siding side with big pharmaceuticals that not only rake in billions in profits, but are quite happy to share the booty with Bush’s slush fund. This group is so hawkish with its network of big time lobbyists swarming like flies on Capitol Hill, that it may carry the day on Nov 2 given the big bucks its spending on Bush’s re-election.
“Doctors practice defensive medicine,” Bush said in the first debate when John Kerry attacked him for depriving millions of Americans prescription drugs because they could not afford the price fixed by the greedy pharmaceutical companies.
Blaming Kerry for choosing the country’s famous trial lawyer, John Edwards, as his vice-president, he said many like Edwards were raking in fortunes suing doctors and pharmaceuticals on frivolous lawsuits. Therefore, the doctors, Bush said, are so scared to prescribe medicines to their patients.
The whole affair is so bizarre. Not only on health, but other issues that are so vital to everyday life in America, both the gray-haired gentlemen born of privilege — white, patrician and millionaires — played the blame game, without really explaining in lay man’s terms, how they intended closing the growing gap between the rich and the poor.
Also, they are not exercised — a verb Americans love to use — about their hopeless image abroad. They failed to come up with a tangible foreign policy agenda to end global hostility and hatred against America during the debates. While it’s naive for Bush to dismiss it as “jealously” and “envy for our freedoms”, Kerry has mentioned often America’s plummeting popularity graph, but just in passing.
Why would Pakistani-Americans or Muslims want Kerry as their president is still a mystery to me. He’s done and said nothing to convince the Muslim voters that he’s a better choice than the present incumbent.
Unsurprisingly then, with just over a week left to E-Day, American Muslims are looking to spending a month of fasting and meditation while the rest of the country is more interested in displaying giant orange pumpkins, ragtag scarecrows and spooky skeletons in their lawns and on their front doors instead of Bush or Kerry stickers. Halloween is far more important in their lives than these two politicians, sparring over facts and figures, trying to score cheap shots that they hope will land one of them in the White House as the world’s most important man.
Fall colours are upon us once again. There’s a nip in the air, but when the sun shines, it lights up the leaves in a divine light that simply blows the breath away. So, in the soul’s eye is the loveliness descending all around and conspicuous by their absence are the Bush/Kerry banners and signs that should have been planted everywhere.
SLOTUS (Second Lady of the United States) Lynne Cheney is fuming mad at John Kerry and has declared him “not a good man” after Kerry pointedly mentioned the vice-president’s “lesbian daughter” when asked about gay marriages.
POTUS (President of the United States) has his own anger issues with Kerry who linked terrorism with prostitution in his interview with the New York Times Magazine, saying: “We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance. As a former law-enforcement person, I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn’t on the rise. It isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and fundamentally, it’s something that you continue to fight, but it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.”
Such an argument punctures George W’s catchphrase ‘terrorism’ and that he alone can protect America.
Nothing new got said during the debates. It reminded one of the times when you came crammed with material during exams, wanting to offload everything without caring if it answered the questions. We called it padding and got a C-minus.
These two seasoned parrots came prepared with their one-liners and zingers. Bush and Kerry had memorized their stuff so well that vomiting it out came easy irrespective of the questions with an attitude, let the devil take the details!
Kerry stuck to his pet lines about Bush being reckless and without a plan for Iraq and that he cared more for the one per cent of the richest Americans whom he gave a tax break amounting to $89 billion, letting the rest of the 99 per cent Americans to go take a hike.
Bush on the other hand unflinchingly branded Kerry as the most liberal senator who voted over 300 times to raise taxes but never spearheaded a bill that would have comforted the middle classes during his 20 years in the senate.
Both men fudged their facts, making truth the casualty.
Kerry is an accomplished debater. But, there are times when passion is not present in his viscera, while Bush showcases his heart and looks earnest; some call it arrogance bordering on humility. Whatever ... right at the end of the third debate, both men showed their human side to the voters when asked about the influence that women in their lives wielded.
“I listen to them”, said President Bush of his wife Laura and his twins, Barbara and Jenna, “when they tell me to stand up straight and not scowl”.
Kerry preferred to quote his mother’s dying words who told him as he was starting out on his campaign trail, “always remember the three words: integrity, integrity and integrity.”
With the end of the three presidential debates, American voters are finding it increasingly difficult to choose between George Bush and John Kerry
