#3 - The Final Countdown: Social Issues

Try to find the acts of compassion from our compassionate conservative president:

June 2003: After his administration filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court outlining its opposition to the University of Michigan's affirmative action program, Bush spins it big time when the Supreme Court decides in favor of Michigan:

“I applaud the Supreme Court for recognizing the value of diversity on our Nation's campuses. Diversity is one of America's greatest strengths.”

July 2003: The Washington Monthly identifies a growing divide between scientific fact and the GOP.

July 2003: Bush shuns the NCAAP, which has met with every president at the White House Since the days of Warren G. Harding.

While Bush, who got only 9 percent of the Black vote in 2000, has shunned meeting with established Black groups, he has reached out to carefully chosen minority audiences and to civil rights advocates less critical of his policies.

July 2003: Bush makes the first announcement that he's for codifying the definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman. But he reminds Americans to be inclusive:

"I am mindful that we're all sinners," the president said, and borrowing from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, added: "And I caution those who may try to take the speck out of their neighbor's eye when they got a log in their own."

August 2003: Compassionate Conservatism is dead. Long live Calculated Conservatism!

President Bush is running for re-election as a "compassionate conservative" who has sought to bring a new Republican approach to poverty and other social ills.

But supporters, some administration officials among them, acknowledge that Mr. Bush's "compassionate conservative" agenda has fallen so far short of its ambitious goals, in a number of cases undercut by pressure from his conservative backers, that they fear he will be politically vulnerable on the issue in 2004.

September 2003: The Census Bureau reports that Americans living in poverty increased by 1.7 million and the median household income declined by 1.1 percent in 2002.

November 2003: Bush signs legislation banning late-term abortions, and starts along that slippery slope to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

November 2003: Bush talks big on Veterans Day and then screws veterans over the very next day:

The morning after President George W. Bush delivered his Veterans Day message at Arlington National Cemetery, the administration's Office of Management and Budget - in writing - opposed an additional $1.3 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs health care budget and reiterated its call to charge many veterans seeking treatment at VA a $250 annual enrollment fee and to raise the pharmacy co-payment from $7 to $15.

January 2004: A proposed Labor Department rule suggests ways employers can avoid paying overtime to some of the 1.3 million low-income workers who become eligible in 2004.

January 2004: The next big idea from the Bush administration? $1.5 billion for a "healthy marriage" initiative.

February 2004: Scientists and Environmentalists accuse the Bush administration of suppressing and distorting scientific findings that run counter to its own policies.

May 2004: The Bush administration quietly removes 25 reports from its Women's Bureau Web site, deleting or distorting crucial information on issues from pay equity to reproductive healthcare.

June 2004: Three and a half years into his four year term, Bush admits that condoms stop the spread of AIDS.

"I can't believe the president actually used the C-word," said Amy Coen, the president of Population Action International, which has long backed birth control and AIDS prevention in underdeveloped countries. "That's not one that comes easily to him. But it's one thing to use the word and another thing to actually fund it."

July 2004: Bush withdrew $34 million in promised funding from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) the world's largest international source of funding for population and reproductive health programs in developing countries for the third year in a row, and he does it based on unproven allegations.

August 2004: Federal data shows that children in charter schools are performing worse on math and reading tests than their counterparts in regular public schools. It's official: Bush leaves children behind.

October 2004: Government data shows that the wealth gap between white families and black and Hispanic families grew larger after the most recent recession.