John Montgomery  Presents This Week's Creep Logo by Lynn Kauczka

George W Bush You Eat a Tax Cut, I Eat a Banana

Unemployment is up. The stock market is down. The surplus is gone. Social Security is threatened. And presidential intelligence levels have tumbled to bargain basement depths.

Let's face it. This guy is stupid. Incredibly stupid. Grotesquely stupid. Indescribably stupid. Unbelievably stupid. George W Bush has not one clue in hell about why our economy sucks so bad or what to do about it now that it's sucking.

A year ago, in a booming economy with a record surplus, Snippy campaigned on a tax cut for the rich, saying those who paid the taxes ought to get some of them back. Earlier this year, with the bottom falling out of all the financial indicators, he sold us the very same rich man's tax cut, this time saying it would stimulate the economy. Spend your $300 and save the country from this economic cesspool we created. Stupid.

This week, our already aching economic asses received two more bruising kicks. First, the unemployment rate has risen to 4.9%, the highest level in four years and a full point higher than it was on that fateful day last November when the American people said they'd rather have Al Gore as president. The stock market, which recently has been taking dives more often than Dick Cheney at an energy executive's retreat, reacted to the unemployment rise by dropping another 235 points. Stupid.

Second, the White House budget director, Mitch Daniels, went to Capital Hill behind closed doors to inform Republicans that in order to balance the budget this year, the government would have to use at least $10 billion from the Social Security surplus. Raiding Social Security, of course, is something Snippy has solemnly sworn not to do, and in fact still won't admit to contemplating. Mitch's confession caused the Republicans' barf bags and toilet bowls to fill up as quickly as the nation's unemployment lines and they demanded to see their Boy Leader immediately. Really stupid.

They all got together for a hastily arranged news conference where Snippy let us know we could sleep easier tonight because great minds were working on our economic problems. "The slowdown is real, and it's affecting too many lives, and we're concerned about it," he read from the index card some aide had written for him. "Any American out of work is too many Americans out of work." Any stupid president is too many stupid presidents.

The wise men then assured us that the tax rebates and the Federal Reserve's constant interest rate cuts would fix all our woes by the end of the year. 80% of the rebate checks have already been distributed. The Fed has cut interest rates five times this year. You see the results. We're in deep doo doo, as a previous Bush used to tell us, and we're not being led by the swiftest rat on the sinking economic ship.

Do I have some grand plan that will put us back on the road to the prosperity we enjoyed back when, say, Bill Clinton was president? No. But then, I'm not the president, am I? I didn't make a deal with a bunch of my father's wealthy, right-wing friends that as long as they'd put up the money and get me elected, I'd give them their tax cut, their drill-and-burn energy policy, and anything else their greedy little hearts desired, did I? I'm not masquerading as a thoughtful, decisive leader who's really just an intellectually lazy, morally corrupt, emotionally petty, brain-dead prostitute, am I?

Sounds like good work if you can get it.