Birth of an Idiot Nation

Yes, fellow World-folk, today is the Anniversary of the Death of the American Dream. Everyone of sense and honesty knew before the "Election" of 2000, if only in our deepest hearts, that Shrub was a swaggering countdown to Bombs and Poverty, waiting for an excuse or even a fleeting opportunity to plunge America into a permanent state of War and Fear. Constant fear is the only way that you can get normally sensible people to approve of, or at least ignore, ball-crushingly obvious lies like the Clear Skies Initiative (which shakes a finger at the Power Industry for dumping mercury and arsenic into the clouds, then hands them cotton sacks with $$ printed on the sides for contributing to "America's Energy Independence").

Think of America as a coffee shop that wants to do more business. Following the Bush model, the best way to increase cash flow is to:
1. Cut prices on all your drinks, but most significantly on the expensive ones, while leaving the lower and mid-range prices almost unchanged.
2. Initiate a "service charge" that adds $.50 to the cost of the cheaper drinks because otherwise they don't produce as much revenue as the expensive ones.
3. Build an addition at the same time that has more room for all the extra business those price cuts will bring in.
This will have the effect of both cutting revenue streams and increasing costs, which leads to "growth" and better lives for all. Except, perhaps, for the employees you had to lay off to afford your Price Cuts.

Sound familiar? This isn't all that Bush has gotten away with, no no, this sham of an economic policy is just the beginning. It scratches, barely, the surface of a 5 ton steel block of deception, cronyism, abuse of power, and broken promises. And for every promise that the President of the United States of America breaks, he breaks the dreams of a million citizens. It is nearly too much to bear, the idea that this man's lies kill thousands while those Guardians of Freedom in the press corps transfer such Rhetoric as Fact to the public. It sickens the heart and disgusts the intellect, and on this Anniversary the heroism of a handful of public servants and private citizens seems wasted in the wake of this monstrous War On Terror.