Baghdad Bush Returns

Good to know that in the wake of natural disaster, bipartisan criticism, and plummeting favorables in the opinion polls, the president still isn’t afraid to make an utterly stupid decision.

Mr Bush decided today that he won’t raise any taxes in order to help pay for the reconstruction and relief efforts the Gulf Coast and that instead he’ll just continue to cut programs. I’m not a professional prognosticator or anything, but I’m willing to bet just about any sum that you put in front of me, those programs are going to be things like education, health promotion and low-level civic safety programs. In other words, the very same programs that would have gone to assisting victims of national disasters.

I have something of a background in psychology, so I know a little something about the Oedipus complex. While I understand a child’s desire to overthrow his father figuratively, if not literally, doesn’t this seem to be a strange twist on it all? I can just hear the current Bush administration in their meeting with each other starting out all conversations with “Now remember: none of our statements can start with the phrase ‘read my lips…’.”

The president also stated that Congress was just going to have to find a way to make this all work and that they would just have to figure out a budget that didn’t involve taxing anyone, which to me sounds a little like a surgeon saying that the triple by-pass is going to have to performed by the intern. In other hospital. Three cities away.

In other laughable news, Mr Bush’s assistant for economic policy also assured the American people that despite the estimated $62 billion needed for Gulf Coast assistance, the needed funding will in no way dampen the president’s plan to have the deficit cut completely in half by 2009. Don’t you just love the end-date? Perfectly timed so that if the deficit isn’t cut in half by that time, it will be one year into the next president’s term, thus assuring plausible deniability on behalf of Mssrs. Bush, Cheney et al.

Finally, somewhat tangentially but still within the realm of the important, the government has decided that it won’t be allowing reporters to ride along with them while search and rescue crews find bodies in the Katrina aftermath. So much for embedded journalism. Apparently it’s fine for journalists to view carnage when the administration looks like its fighting a noble, valiant war but not when it has to clean up after itself. Wouldn’t want the public seeing that.

What's the take-away message here? To all you good people of the Gulf Coast: Don't call us, we'll call you. You thought your government failed you before August 28th? I'm sorry to say its just outdone itself.