"It's gonna be a tough summer"

George Bush says so.

He, and the rest of the crooks in Washington, have given us a postmodern version of cartoon character Wimpy's famous plea: instead of saying "I will pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today" as Wimpy did, they say "you will get nothing today and pay for it on Tuesday."

Where I live, gasoline now costs $3.21 per gallon. Well, it did yesterday. Who knows what its price is today?

If the way business operates today isn't bad enough, the ways of government are worse.

Interesting, isn't it, that there is a bipartisan effort in government to extract the last bit of our lifeblood in a spirit of "sacrifice" that they see no reason to emulate.

The politicos want to allow the flood of cheap, illegal labor to keep pouring into the country, depressing wages for Americans or simply throwing them out of work. At the same time, their answer to the thievery of the oil companies seems to be some kind of added tax on Big Oil's obscene profits.

That way, they get even more of our money for their own nefarious purposes, and can claim they are "helping" us.

Don't believe for one second that any new tax on oil companies won't result in even higher prices.

The root problem is simple. No matter what they say to the contrary, neither business nor government feel any sense of moral responsibility for the damage they do to the people who make them rich and fat.

It's easy to say that a $400 million retirement package for the departing head of ExxonMobil is "good business." Heck, it isn't illegal. It's easy to say that business executives deserve the huge salaries and magnificent perks they get, that today's profit is all that matters. Just as it's easy to say that politicians are "doing the people's business."

What remains unsaid: All of this comes at the expense of people who cannot afford it, who are having more and more trouble keeping their heads above water.

I'm certainly not calling for George Bush's impeachment. That wouldn't do any good unless we also throw 95% of the blood-sucking Congresscrooks and a majority of State and local elected officials out of office as well.

And since business is allowed to act more or less as it wishes, without worrying about how its practices affect customers, there is no point in raging at them.

We have lost all sense of morality and community in this country. Sadly, moral behavior cannot be legislated.

At this rate, the majority of Americans will end up being "helped" by the bloated government welfare system that is one of Franklin Roosevelt's most disgusting legacies.

The writers of our Consitution would be horrified to see how their system, in which government provided essential services only and operated based on the will of the people, has been distorted and perverted.

I am not unusual in that I'd love to be wealthy. But I can't imagine being able to sleep at night knowing that my fat, happy lifestyle was founded on the misery of others. I guess that's an outdated attitude.

All that is bad enough. I'm not even going to start in on my feelings about the notion that we somehow are compelled to sacrifice some of our children and even more of our dwindling resources to promote some kind of "democracy" in a country halfway around the world.

It is gonna be a tough summer.

And a tough year.

And there is no sign of future improvement as far as I can see.