I read this earlier on Atrios:
The global increase in HIV infection rates has been cited as "one of the greatest threats to U.S. and global security."
Yet the Bush administration has cut the number of US representatives to the international AIDS conference in Bangkok Sunday by 75% because poor Tommy Thompson was heckled last year:The U.S. government will send only one-quarter as many people to the huge international AIDS conference starting Sunday in Bangkok as it sent to the last one in Barcelona.
The decision to cut attendance, which comes as the Bush administration is rolling out its five-year, $15 billion global AIDS treatment plan, was reached long after many government scientists had made plans to attend the conference, which is held every two years. Dozens of scientific presentations were withdrawn, about 50 will be published only as summaries and not presented publicly, and dozens of meetings -- many designed to train Third World AIDS researchers and foster international collaboration -- were canceled.
The move, which officials say is to save money, is interpreted by many AIDS experts as payback for the heckling of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson at the last AIDS conference and further evidence of a "go-it-alone" attitude in the administration's global AIDS program.
And now I just read this on my yahoo...
Bush to Skip NAACP Meeting Due to Hostile Comments
KUTZTOWN, Pa. (Reuters) - President Bush has decided not to speak to the country's largest civil rights group, the White House said on Friday, citing openly hostile comments by its leaders about the president.
The White House initially attributed Bush's decision not to accept the invitation to speak at the NAACP annual convention to a scheduling conflict. The convention opens on Saturday in Philadelphia.
But White House spokesman Scott McClellan, traveling with Bush on a campaign bus trip through Pennsylvania cited "hostile political rhetoric about the president" from the group's leaders.
Besides the obvious "we can't handle criticism" attitude, does anyone else notice a trend in the above two articles????