BUSH-WACKED - AGAIN

The tiny, sneering simulacrum of a circus clown who has been posing, lo these past several years, as the president of what claims to be the largest and most powerful democracy on earth, has done it again.

We posted the other day, Mr. Bush's determination to whack a handsome $70 Billion or so from Medicare and Medicade expenditures. And this in a vast and rich land with 45 million of its imperial subjects without any medical coverage whatsoever.

Now, the Worst Executive America Has Ever Had to Tolerate has released his budget for the coming year. The total near $3 Trillion, if you can get your noodle around that. I can't; why should you?

(This photo, by the way, is built with the pictures of American soldiers who have died in Iraq. Enough said.)

"The President's budget is filled with debt and deception, disconnected from reality...," says Kent Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota and Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. Senator Judd Gregg, the top republican on the Committee, said of the President's budget, "I don't think it has a lot of legs." Or arms or lips.

What is so appalling is that the Pentagon budget now accounts for more than one-fifth of all expenditures! Think about that for a moment. More than twenty per cent of the total federal purse in a nation that is theoretically living in Peace Time is being spent on War.

The fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan is now tagged at something in the neighbourhood of $150 Billion. How few months ago was it that Donald Rumsfeld promised these excursions would not cost more than $50 Billion? Nice work, boys.

I remember so many years ago watching the Republican National Convention and seeing all those good souls cheering on Richard Nixon. I remember feeling pinned to the sofa in horror and disbelief. Didn't they know this guy was a Major Creep, that he would turn out to be what we all knew him to be, a sleazy crook?

Then I watched the good people rallying for Bush. And my feelings at watching that spectacle made my earlier feelings with Nixon seem like euphoria.

Today, the only people who have clarity are the comedians and the satirists. Somebody please help us all.