It's a tough contest to win

But I'm saying the most depressing line from this morning's news is

The bill, the Deficit Reduction Act, reduces government spending in all areas except those related to defense and national security for the period of 2006-2010.

Although it could be this line:

The Deficit Reduction Act provides for the opening of oil and gas development of Alaska's environmentally sensitive Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in an effort to ease the United States's dependence on imported energy.

And let me take a minute here and say how much I fucking hate reporting like this that reprints the White House talking points ("...in an effort to ease...") as if they are part of the news. This is called objective reporting. If you said, on the other hand, "...though even very basic gas mileage regulations would save an equivalent amount of fuel..." that would be biased reporting though it is clearly no less true and no less biased.

Here's another one from the same story:

The bill's biggest savings would come in health and education, worth a combined total of more than 16 billion dollars.

Let's think about the word "savings" in this context and mull over the dozens of other words we could use in its place ("evisceration" is my personal choice). You see what I'm saying?

My two other depressing news line candidates today both come from a story that, on the face of it, should be almost as cheery as reading Brownie's sartorial emails (yes, roll up your sleeves, no to the tie) "Bush Public Support at Lowest Level Yet."

First there's this one:

Four in five Republicans still back the president.

"I think he's done a wonderful job," said Gloria Bloecher, a Republican from Sherman, Texas. "He's done wonderful things for the economy. He rescued people who needed help in Iraq--it was the Christian thing to do. I still trust his people and the people he picks for the Supreme Court."

God help me I read stuff like that and it brings out some latent Fascist side of myself that wants to say, "You know what Gloria--we're enrolling you in our mandatory sterilization program because you just shouldn't be allowed to breed." For fuck's sake--the Christian thing to do--I guess if I cast my mind back on the Inquisition and the Crusades I can see the argument (but then I'm Jewish; what do I know).

The article closes with this gem:

"I think the war in Iraq being on the front page every day has taken its toll," said Van Poole, former Florida GOP chairman and now a Tallahassee lobbyist, who expects Bush to bounce back. "Americans are impatient. Whatever our job is, Americans want us to get it done."

It's all so obvious it hardly bears comment I know (and here we get to some of why I have been such a lax blogger I think--I start to feel like we need more words for "criminal" and "pig" and "venal." Otherwise it just begins to be so repetitive). So yeah, the problem is not that we are in an endless war against "terror" that is like an eight headed hydra--the more we fight the more we lose--and that we are not even fighting it on the most logical front, even if you believed in this war--and that we have had all the strategy of Pee Wee Herman in this. No, the problem is that we've been reporting about it. And that we are impatient. Right. I'd like to supersize that carnage please. Yes, that's to go. Thanks.