Plowshares into swords/Everyone else left behind

This is just one of dozens of stories on the budget Bush just submitted to Congress, and I'm sure there will be lots of analysis and hand wringing between now and November, but you've got to give them credit for nerve. Of course, defense spending goes way up and everything else - particularly programs aimed at the neediest among us - gets cut.

There is so much smoke and mirrors and just plain lies coming out of the White House about the budget it's truly astonishing. Even for them, the masters of up is downism. And not one thing they say is actually true, in the sense that true means based in fact and not intended to mislead or misdirect.

This Knight-Ridder article, which the St. Louis Post Dispatch headlined, "Defense, debt continue to grow", really lays bare the essence of the budget: 7% bump in defense spending, 8% in homeland security (perhaps for better wiretapping equipment or torture equipment for leakers) and everything else gets a cut.

Education (Lots of Children Left Behind), Army Corps of Engineers (because who needs a those pesky flood control things, anyway), food stamps (because those people should be living on faith based programs) and, of course, everyone's favorite, Medicare (old people are really sucking the life out this country) and Medicaid (because poor people shouldn't be healthy).

Meanwhile, no recognition of the war in Iraq going forward, no accounting for spending in New Orleans and Mississippi past this year, and still massive deficits as far as the eye can see. So what does W have to say about all this?

Bush called the growing cost of entitlement programs "the biggest challenge to our nation's fiscal health."

Perhaps a quick glance in the mirror might disabuse him of that notion.