I didn't get a check in the mail. What I got was a little note from the IRS saying that I owe an additional $12K from 2001, which is bogus. But enough about me.

My husband doesn't show up in the jobless figures any more because he's just scrambling for consulting and not applying for unemployment. But enough about him.

Say, what about those folks in Iraq and Afghanistan? Where's their break? George is asking the UN to help "rebuild" Iraq. This is the organization that didn't go along with his scheme of invading the country without good evidence and a plan for what he was going to do next. (Well, you stack the blocks up and then you line up the toy soldiers and then you knock everything down and then you start over. Daddy said so.) And so the UN is supposed to say, "OK, George, we didn't think it was a good idea, but now that you've blown up these people's country, sure we'll help you out with reconstruction. No problem. We have lots of money and lots of expendable non-American bodies and lots of good will. Not.

The recent magnanimous tax break would go about halfway to "reconstructing" Iraq and Afghanistan, our latest conquests. That would mean putting basic human services and security in place and doing the hard job of mentoring folks towards governments more in line with ideas of social justice. Trouble is I don't know if anybody in the State Department is familiar with that term. Let's just "give" 'em democracy.

"Democracy" in this context - meaning rule by the people - equals chaos that will lead to things that would make Saddam look like small fry. You don't just drop democracy onto people who have no experience with it (SEE Soviet Union, Russia). Hell, "democracy" has almost ruined California. The founders, for those who remember what that coded noun means, went for what was called a democratic republic. In the beginning, senators weren't even elected. Representative democracy came to mean giving citizens the power to elect people with good enough values and judgment to be trusted with making big decisions. It did not mean throwing out a governor you don't like if you have enough money to pull off a recall so you can have a movie star at the top again. It did not mean saying, here, people of Iraq, here's your country rid of the evil Saddam and don't worry about the water and electricity cuz' you have religious and tribal differences to sort out and good luck to y'all.

It amazes me that all these here burger-eatin' Amurrcans think that their pis-ant tax break (excuse me, you .001 percent) was such a slick deal and who will go on to reelect the bozos who gave it to them. Yee haw, let's go to Wal Mart. We all know who gets the tax break. We all know it's "better for business". We all know that big business has exported nearly half a million jobs overseas to "serve the shareholders" who aren't us, and who aren't the poor folks who don't have a job and have fallen off the stats because they're either robbing 7-11s or "consulting" or collecting Coke bottles or sitting at home in a depressed stupor eating consumer products and watching FearTV. Honk if you drive an RV. Take my job, please. Screw those people in those countries we didn't know existed until they showed up on FearTV. Is it football season yet? Dude, where's my tax break?