Dammit, Bush was right.

[Bucky]

A year and a half ago, I took Dubya to task for saying after the 2004 election "I've earned some political capital and now I'm going to spend it." At the time I said this indicated profound economic ignorance on the president's part.

I thought, "You idiot," (for in my mind I frequently address the president that way), "You idiot, you don't spend capital. Any first year accounting major knows that. You invest capital and spend the dividends. Dur."

But it seems that the president was right. There are times when you should expend capital. When it's in limited supply and it's all going to mostly disappear anyway, as this useful chart of the president's shriveling credibility documents, then you go ahead and blow the bank. It's kind of like the earth's ecology--it doesn't matter how much is left over once you're dead, so it's better to use it all up now.



If the president had wasted his time and political capital over the past 18 months on such transitory things like "education" or "health care" or the so-called "national interest" instead of raiding the treasury for Halliburton and Boeing, pissing off every country in the world, and gutting professionals out of FEMA, the State Department, and the CIA so his friends' sons could finally get jobs, then when on earth could he have looted our children's future? After the midterm elections? I don't think so!

It's the early bird who catches the worms, or in this case the pork. And so the president was right. If you don't trash the country when you can, there's no way you can destroy it later, once the public starts to catch onto you.

Let's look at this beautiful Cartesian plane again, shall we?

Ah, that's music!