It’s hard to tell which course this administration is following is more self-destructive. Foreign policy, domestic policy, or the budget. All seem designed to screw up America as much as possible.

No President, not even Ronald Reagan, willingly clung to a economic model that so clearly showed economic catastrophe for the country. We’ve seen an eight-trillion turnaround in the national budgetary picture for the next eight years or so, from a $5 trillion surplus to a $3 trillion deficit, and that’s not even counting the immense costs of our little adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Putsch swears the money will not be paid for by taxes, but will, instead, be financed by loans and bonds. Which means that our kids will get stuck for it.

Putsch wants this $87 billion, on top of the $40 billion Congress foolishly allowed him last year, to fund his frantic efforts to control Iraq and Afghanistan. And as incredibly big as it is, most observers think that the $87 billion is too optimistic. Even if Iraq’s resistance doesn’t find ways to make America spend more and more money (and folks are reminded that we invaded their country and so they probably don’t have our best interests at heart) there are any number of other parts of the world who realize that America’s military might is largely defused by the twin quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq, and are doubtlessly noting with interest how much those incursions are costing and how much they are weakening America. One of the problems with power is that you appear much stronger when you don’t use it, because your flaws and limitations don’t show. Everyone who wishes America ill must be watching Afghanistan and Iraq and feeling elation that America is not only not invincible, but is surprisingly easy to flummox.

Powell is in Iraq right now, blaming all the troubles on outside agitators. Despite our quaint habit of blowing innocent bystanders and people around check points all to hell, and despite our inability to restore electricity and water, and despite our hiring Saddam’s thugs as policeman and civic administrators, Powell is convinced that no native Iraqi except Baathists would have any reason not to cooperate with us, the alien invaders. Of course, this is the same Powell who told the same UN he lied to so shamelessly a few months ago that they had an "opportunity" to send troops to Iraq to draw fire from the Americans and to help bail us out on the costs.

OK, so Powell is an idiot. At least we found that out BEFORE he became President.

But the Admin isn’t interested in backing away. I suspect they know that they are going to fail in Iraq, and are asking the Europeans for help so that when the Europeans refuse and we get our asses kicked, the admin will have someone to point fingers at. The reason America fell in Iraq is because Liechtenstein didn’t send troops. It would explain why admin figures keep insulting the Europeans even as they beg for help.

The "free trade" talks are disintegrating in Cancun because this administration wants "free trade" while maintaining subsidies for domestic farmers. This devastates farmers in other countries, who can’t compete with the subsidized prices, and it doesn’t do anything for the mom-and-pop outfits here, since the subsidies are mostly geared to the big agribusiness outfits.

Even the IMF is expressing alarm over what the US budget is doing. The optimistic forecast for the ‘04 budget deficit is now $578 billion. And that’s the lyrically optimistic one that uses supply-side accounting, which assumes that the tax cuts will cause the economy to take off like a bottle rocket.

Right. Just like it did following the big tax cut of ‘01.

Domestic policy is getting nuttier and nuttier. The House is quietly passing an energy omnibus bill that will, among other things, lift the legal sanctions against fraud by utilities that were passed in 1935. Just look at your electric bill and think, "California, here we come." The rest of the country is going to take the same shafting that California got. The industry is supposed to be contained by FERC, which has a voting majority consisting of GOP whores who have no interest at all in regulating the industry that they are there to regulate.

The EPA, which disgraced itself by failing to warn rescue personnel and residents of New York of the high toxicity levels of the air in Lower Manhattan following the fall of the towers may just have killed more Americans than Osama bin Laden did. Thank you, Christine Whitman, you treasonous coward. That didn’t stop them from ruling that up is down, night is day, good is bad, and when Congress mandated new pollution equipment for smokestack factories that were expanding, that really meant they didn’t want new pollution equipment for smokestack factories that were expanding.

Texas passed a constitutional amendment under the guise of "tort reform" and "protecting doctors" that effectively blocks legal redress in the courts. You can bet that Tom DeLay or one of his sock puppets will have similar legislation before the House this fall.

Once the Ninth rules either way on whether the California recall election should proceed (the problem is that most California counties are still using the old punch-card ballots, which California mandated be replaced by the 2004 election after the 2000 fiasco) that case will go to the Supreme Court on appeal. The same Supreme Court that allowed Putsch and his buddies to overthrow the government in December 2000, that’s right.

When you make really grim predictions, you usually have mixed feelings when they come true.

This is a time of mixed feelings.

I remember the sense of dread I felt that day the Supreme Court handed America over to Bush, and I started calling him Putsch to remind everyone of how he came to office. During the campaign, I had viewed him as a personable flyweight who would, if elected, be an inept president with a tendency to kowtow to big business and big religion at the expense of the American people.

But the coup of December 2000 made it clear that the people who were presented as Putsch’s supporters but were, in fact, his owners, were playing for keeps. They weren’t just opposed to government involvement in social programs or having government acknowledge the social value of "faith-based organizations;" they wanted something far more comprehensive and sweeping: first, to remove the American people from any say in how their country was to be run. Second, to create an authoritarian structure where big business, above the law and owing nothing to America beyond proprietary interest, would wield power. Third, to create a situation where churches and a well-funded propaganda machine would keep the people in line, along with a formal state gestapo.

From time to time, I take that attitude out and examine it, and ask if events really merited such a belief, and if not, what modifications should be made. The net is full of angry people with big conspiracy theories, and I didn’t want to become just another one of those.

But the evidence and plain facts do little but support that notion, that America has suffered a coup, and is in the hands of traitors who deeply oppose the Constitution and all that it stands for.

What else could explain the insane and anti-American actions of this administration?