If I may borrow a line from Get Your War On, “Do you ever get the feeling that a secret game is being played in America, and nobody will tell you the rules?”

All sorts of media outlets are reporting that Halliburton, Dick Cheney’s old company, is actually taking a far larger, more lucrative role in the rebuilding of Iraq than previously disclosed. Did Halliburton have to bid for this opportunity? Hell no. Is Cheney still on their payroll? Hell yes. (To the tune of up to a million dollars a year.)

If Bill Clinton had tried anything even remotely as inbred as this, can you imagine what would have happened? Several top Republican heads would have simply exploded in sheer outrage. Or perhaps not: Right-wingers tend to have no problem looking the other way when money and greed are involved. But receive a blow job where you’re not supposed to and look out, brother — all hell breaks loose!

The evil bastards running the country these days (yes, I mean you, John, Dick, and Donald) don’t even bother trying to set things up so as to pass the smell test. And why should they? With the Democratic party as impotent and rudderless as it is, why waste the energy making things look kosher? All they have to do is keep repeating their flat-out lies: that what’s going on in the Middle East has nothing at all to do with oil (yes, the oil that Cheney’s company will be paid to pump and ship), that cutting taxes and pushing the deficit to levels that would have made Reagan salivate will create jobs, and that you don’t have to worry about the erosion of civil rights because you can trust the government to only go after the Bad Guys In Our Midst. (They’re easy enough to spot. They all have dark skin.)

The Fox News-lovin’ constituents of the Red States just eat that garbage up. They don’t even have the brainpower to spell “liberal,” let alone tell you what one is; they’ve just had Rush and his ilk beat it into them for so many years that “liberals” will take away their guns and put fornicating queers in their classrooms and prevent them from celebrating Christmas that they believe it. In the meantime, they wonder why it is that they have to work two or three McJobs just to make ends meet (barely). They wonder why mom’s hip operation cost so damn much, and why dad’s retirement plan vanished overnight. These issues don’t get discussed on the talk radio they listen to all day. Instead, they hear about (and get incensed over) the “liberal judges” who want to change the Pledge of Allegiance. At least these folks have their priorities straight.

I am beginning to fully expect that Bush will be reelected simply by dint of the fact that there hasn’t been another major terrorist attack since September 11. What a thoroughly disheartening and depressing time we find ourselves in.