The New York Times has a great article today on the budget crisis facing many states. If you are one of the few delusional people in America who still believes that we are not in a recession, or that Bush's tax cuts are somehow making the economy better, this article should snap you back into reality with quotes like this: "We worked hard; we paid our taxes. If there is enough money for wars, shouldn't there be enough to help seniors?"

Bush told the National Governors Association that states cannot look to the federal government for aid, "It's because we went through a recession and we're at war." What a bald-faced fucking lie. After this asshole gives billions in tax cuts to his rich buddies and brings us into a war that never needed to be fought, he tells the rest of America to screw. Teachers being laid off or working without pay? Who cares! Are some residents in your state about to lose medical benefits, which some people need to live? Dubya mine as well tell them to drop dead. The audacity of this two-faced sack of shit that the partisan Supreme Court forced upon us as President, called for large federal tax cuts for his rich buddies and going cowboy in Iraq when our states are having trouble affording the most basic of services to US citizens. How dare he tell us that the federal government cannot afford to help the states when he damn well knows that it can. You don't cut taxes if the nation can't afford it, Mr. Bush. Simple fucking economics.

For more of that fantastic Republican attitude, here's a few paragraphs near the end of the article:

In Washington State, after legislators said they would have to renege on a promise to raise the salary of home health care workers to $8.70 an hour from $7.86, the Senate majority leader, James West, a Republican, complained that the health care workers were 'perpetual pathetics' who were always whining.

In response, the workers union produced a woman, Sherry Beebe, who had cared for Mr. West's ailing mother.

'I was one of the workers who took care of your mom,' said Ms. Beebe in a letter to Senator West. 'Stop being so selfish and think about where you would be if you had to care for your mom for almost no pay or benefits.'

If there was any justice in this nation, politicians would be shot dead for calling health care workers who make less than your average Burger King employee "perpetual pathetics".