Yard sale on overused graphs.

Okay, let's review one last time (I promise, never again). Here, then, is a chart of how the national debt has done under presidents Ford through our present one. (Note the first bar on the extreme left of the chart represents the national debt incurred under all thirty-seven previous presidents over 198 years.

Upon inspection, it would appear obvious the national debt fares far better under democratic administrations. You know, those "tax and spend" sons of bitches. And the same interpretation might occur to republicans able to read charts as well. And while those republicans smart enough to interpret the above are a small minority of the right, they're likely the ones reaping the huge benefits from Bush tax cuts and war profiteering. But don't expect them to endorse these data. Instead, a more likely response would be, "Yeh, but all those deficits under republican administrations--at least we didn't have to pay for 'em!"

The republicans who can't interpret graphs are folks in Kansas, Utah, my own hometown, etc. They're everywhere. You can hear 'em on your radios calling Rush and Hannity. And while they're feeling the same economic pinch as the rest of us, they'll continue to support Bush and Cheney while they and their cronies peel off their chunks of the national treasury and dump the rest of it on foreign desert sands at the expense of all Americans making sacrifices so unnoticeable as to seem like we're all getting this hubris and adventurism for nothing!

But that's not why I'm posting this chart again. It's more to do with Bush chiding democrats for proposing a budget with $22 billion dollars more than Bush will approve. (Hence, the reputation, "tax and spend" democrats.) That's total fiscal irresponsibility according to Bush. And as the most unpopular president of all time, he's grasping at this straw in hopes stupid Americans will buy the democrats' fiscal irresponsibility while ignoring Bush's gross kamakaze budget lunacy.

So what exactly has the president's skivvies so twisted and knotted; a president who has no qualms about going to congress once or twice a year for an extra $100 billion or two each time to fund his losing follies in Iraq and Afghanistan, that he's squealing to us, "Congress needs to be responsible with your money"? Well, the extra $22 billion democrats propose is for domestic programs such as education, medical research, Head Start, clean water and health care for veterans.

I know it's pretty amazing how the U.S. is able to fight two losing wars simultaneously without much apparent sacrifice from any of us. Other than those with family members dying in the Middle East or coming home physically or mentally mutilated from Bush's losing campaigns, there's few who seem to be giving up much of anything.

But on the heels of Bush's recent veto of the State's Children's Health Insurance Program and this latest vow to veto a budget that spends too much on kids, health, education, vets and the disadvantaged, the point is driven home that we are, in fact, all paying dearly for the president's pandoras.

Twenty-two billions of dollars for kids, vets, uninsured, under insured, students and the downtrodden is money that could buy Bush lots and lots of bombs to kill people, why, even start a third losing war! So, to all Americans, pause a moment to pat yourselves on the backs. You are sacrificing! Maybe not as much as those thousands who drown and some whose carcasses sat around for days decaying in a New Orleans post-Katrina sun, or those crushed or drowned during a commute over a collapsed interstate bridge, or those who've lost their jobs to Indians. But we are sacrificing. To keep us safe from terrorism, it's a small price to pay, I suppose.