It’s “Bush hates children” day in the media, leftosphere

The top item at Memeorandum is a story that made the front page of the NYT today. The headline reads:

White House Acts to Limit Health Plan for Children

If you go to the NYT link, though, they’ve revised the headline to read as follows:

Rules May Limit Health Program Aiding Children

The headline from the Washington Post:

New Bush Policies Limit Reach of Child Insurance Plan

From the liberal McClatchy newspaper, we read that Bush is responsible for the lead paint we’ve been seeing in various items imported from China:

Efforts to crack down on lead paint thwarted by China, Bush Administration

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration and China have both undermined efforts to tighten rules designed to ensure that lead paint isn’t used in toys, bibs, jewelry and other children’s products.

Both have fought efforts to better police imported toys from China.

I’m sure there’s a lot more to the story than meets the eye on that one, but for now we’ll just stick to the unfolding drama about Bush not liking kids enough to let more of them have access to health insurance, which is being played out at several far left blogs, per the Memeorandum link. This argument has been dissected and debunked before, but McQ over at QandO does it again here. An excerpt:

Of course it is being characterized as an attempt to deny poor children “free” health care. It’s not. It specifically denies the attempt, by some states, to raise the bar for acceptance to 400% over the poverty rate which means the inclusion of some households making $80,000 a year and “children” up to the age of 25.

Read it all, and you’ll understand why the mischaracterizations of Bush’s argument against expanding this benefit are blatant misrepresentations designed to demagogue and ridicule, rather than to inform and discuss the issue.

Joe Gandelman, I blogger whom I respect, has unfortunately fallen for the mainstream spin on this story hook, line, and sinker. Come on, Joe. Bush might be many things to people who don’t like him, but he is not someone who hates children and wants to ‘deny’ them healthcare. This is just like the old “Reagan wants to starve school kids” lie the left and the media perpetuated back in the early 80s. It wasn’t true, of course, but the media ran with it, just as they are doing now with Bush’s ‘denial of healthcare’ for ‘millions’ of children.

Never underestimate the media’s patented ability to shill for the Democratic party when it comes to issues revolving around the poor, weak, sick, needy, kids, ‘minorities,’ and the elderly. This issue is a classic example of that.