The elephant in the budget office

Well, this is it, folks. The elephant is out of the bag, and it's a damn big elephant, heavy as hell. Big enough to squash a donkey. Big enough to squash a country. Even THIS country.

President Bush has just released his most honest, forthright, post-haste government-hating budget to date. Give the guy re-election, and watch the not so lame duck try to gain the low ground (calling it the high ground) even without using up much if any of his "political capital."

That budget is the elephant meant to not look like the Trojan Horse it really is. This budget represents the clearest cut turn toward outright, anti-democratic militarism ever presented to the U.S. Congress. Do we have enough Congress members BRAVE enough to turn this elephantine budget around and make it not only Sane but Sensible and Responsible?

The 'conservative think tank' chain gang behind Bush intend OUTRIGHT to GUT the federal government. They'll escalate their ploy to make government perform poorly (insult it, confound it, starve it, corporatize it) and then turn around and say, "See? It doesn't work worth a damn. We can do without it. Who needs government anyway? The poor? To hell with the poor/those IN NEED. Let's PRIVATIZE the whole thing. Let the 'free market' run things."

Which really means let the rich investors run things - and profit from their Mephistopholian bargains. Give me a "U" for RepUblicanism, yes, the BUsh Republicans. Yep, it's the party of "U" - "U" for the dUmbest and most cUnning of all our citizens, the dUmbest at the bottom of the heap and the most cUnning at the TOP. who but the richest 1%, raking in so many tax cuts it would make the middle class feel it had won the lottery, can be running this country into a blizzard of defense spending, social program defeats and run amok debts and deficits? Who but the most cUnning?

This sort of budget has been headed our way for most of the last 25 years, ever since "trickle down" Reaganomics turned out to be a myth (and a government-dismantling machine) the American people would REALLY FALL FOR. Father Bush was wise enough to call it for what it was, "voodoo economics." Son G. W. Bush was cUnning enough to buy into that very same "voodoo economics" hook, line and (unfortunately, whether he knows it or not) SINKER.

And if budgets such as Bush's current proposal make it past the Congress, we will be using the verb form - "to sink." As in: you and me. Brother, can you spare a lifesaver? So deep in debt, so at the mercy of foreign banks and nations and global pacts ganged up against our arrogance, we'll be leaking like a sieve and sinking fast.

How do you spell S.O.S?