When I saw this on the news, it made me want to write about it here. When I saw the people at the Daily Show make fun of it, it made me want to write about it here even more. Last week, our President made a trip to St. Louis to drum up support for his economic stimulus plan, a bold, if flawed, plan to boost the economy a couple percent this year. (It's too big, doesn't help the middle class enough and provides no help to the states, which will raise taxes anyway, neutralizing Bush's intended effect.) Anyway, he decided to make his speech in a warehouse, where supposedly the heart of the economy occurs, in the shipping process to various stores.

This particular warehouse is full of boxes. He could have chosen anywhere to stand and there would be boxes behind him. Yet, where they set up the podium, they also put up a large poster board with a picture of boxes, which looked awfully weird and totally fake. You could also see wording on each of the boxes, prominently saying Made in the USA. This would be no problem except for the boxes in front of the president's podium. These had tape on them in one particular area. It was covering up the fact that each of the boxes had Made in China written on them.

Now, scenery was only half the problem. The other half was Bushisms. President Bush decided to tell the audience about an encounter he had with a small business owner supposedly enthusiastic about the economic plan.

"So I met a guy today named Joe. He runs Software-to-Go. He's got three employees. He said, I looked at your plan. Where are you, Joe? There you are. He said, I looked at your plan. He said, by allowing businesses to expense up to $75,000, it means somebody is more likely to buy a copying machine, or in this case, an architectural fancy machine. But the point is, is that he then has more business opportunity, even though this tax relief doesn't affect him directly. It affects his customers. It makes his customers more likely to buy a product. And when Joe's customers are more likely to buy a product, he's more likely to be able to employ people."

If you can figure out what an architectural fancy machine is, you're on the president's level. And I'm really sure Joe looked at the plan and said those exact words. But hey, the president's a nice guy, isn't he?

Also of interest was that "should any Iraqi officer or soldier receive an order from Saddam Hussein, or his sons, or any of the killers who occupy the high levels of their government, my advice is, don't follow that order. Because if you choose to do so, when Iraq is liberated, you will be treated, tried and persecuted as a war criminal."

Hopefully, he meant prosecute.