The amount of aid is calculated under a formula devised by former Minister of Finance Yaakov Neeman and then-Israel’s Economic Minister to Washington Ohad Marani. The Clinton administration and Congress approved the formula. Under the formula, US military aid is increased by $60 million a year, up to a ceiling of $2.4 billion, and civilian aid is cut by $120 million a year, until it is finally eliminated. 2007 will be the last year in which Israel will receive US civilian aid.

The US fiscal year begins on October 1, and Israel receives the full amount of annual aid a few weeks later, assuming there are no legislative delays, which occur almost every year. Israel is the only recipient of US aid that receives it in a single tranche.

The 2007 US budget request includes $150 million in aid for the Palestinians, the same amount as in the 2006 budget. US spokespersons quickly emphasized that aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) would be subject to review, depending on developments in the PA.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said US financing of ongoing PA projects would continue, but each project would be examined on its own merits. The budget proposal states that aid for the Palestinians is intended to promote democracy, the rule of law, and economic recovery.

The 2007 US budget proposal also includes $1.3 billion in military aid and $455 million in civilian aid for Egypt. US civilian aid to Egypt is cut by $40 million a year. Jordan will receive $245 million in civilian aid and $206 million in military aid, the same as in previous years.

That Bush refers to Karl Rove as "Turd Blossom" doesn't make me smile and it's not because I'm uptight about doo-doo. It's just that "Turd Blossom" is too nice a nickname for the diabolical brain responsible for molding a man who should be impeached, cuffed, and, then, shunted off to some place of isolation because his insatiable lust for illegal power is as out of control as Bill Clinton's Jennifer- Paula- Monica - anybody-in-a-skirt-addiction.

George Bush likes nicknames and it's a good thing because he has so many. The moniker "Dubya," created by Molly Ivins is pretty good but "Uncurious George" is more appropriate. On The Simpsons, he was referred to as "Commander Cuckoobananas."

Probably, most presidents have been bestowed with nicknames. I suppose many of their wives have as well. Some of these descriptions are compliments while others are quite unflattering.

Everybody remembers Clinton as "Slick Willy," "Bubba," or his favorite, "The Comeback Kid."

I never thought George H.W. Bush was a mental Goliath, but compared to the fruit of his loins, he is. "Poppy" suits him just fine, but when I look at his Mrs., I'd prefer to call him "Whipped."

Ronald Reagan was "The Gipper" and "The Great Communicator" but what would anybody expect? He was an actor, good at memorizing those lines and his speech writers could turn not just a clever phrase but an inspirational one as well.

Jimmy Carter was known as "Peanut Farmer." I know he's smart but it did make me wince each time he pronounced nuclear, "nukyulur," just as I do when our current occupier of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Iraq says it the same way.

Gerald Ford was "Mr. Nice Guy" and there's certainly nothing wrong with that. He was so kind that he very generously pardoned Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon.

Nixon must be smiling from his grave right now since George Bush makes him look like "Mr. Congeniality." But take a good look at "Mommy Dearest." "Barbarian Bush" certainly is one of the reasons "Whipped" is globe-trotting with "Slick." Who'd want to be in her presence after that category five gaffe she made about the Katrina displaced: "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them." I'm sure if I said something that insensitive, my husband would want to take an extended trip away from me with anybody, even a former nemesis. He, in fact, might say that it's time for me to swallow my hemlock cocktail, putting both of us out of our misery.

And imagine Barbarian's wrath when she hears that so many people are calling her son "Hitler."

It's little wonder "Poppy" prefers traveling with the enemy. I'm sure he'd rather be hit by the forces of Mother Nature than by the First Mother's nasty nature.

I've always appreciated the other inspiration by Molly Ivins, "Shrub," but it makes "Dubya" look insignificant and he's anything but. In fact, he's the most significantly evil president we've ever had. Think of his policies of imperialism. The murder of almost 2,300 troops and over 100,000 Iraqis in a war based on lies. White phosphorous. His response to Katrina. The platitudes. The eavesdropping. His "America is addicted to oil" statement when he gave tax breaks to those who purchased Hummers. The deficit and his obscenely stupid bragging about earning "political capital" in the election and his intention to spend it. Calling himself the peace president one week and the war president the next. The slaughter in Iraq. Endless slaughter. Iran. Reflect on his speech at the funeral of Coretta Scott King, a woman whose life was devoted to all that Bush has tried to destroy and continues to crush with his policies that deny freedom and access to so many people here and abroad. Think of the cost of Iraq and Bush's latest domestic budget cuts.

For all these reasons, I'm nicknaming this Crawford cretin "George W. Butcher."

Missy Beattie lives in New York City. She's written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. An outspoken critic of the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq, she's a member of Gold Star Families for Peace. She completed a novel last year, but since the death of her nephew, Marine Lance Cpl. Chase J. Comley, in Iraq on August 6,'05, she has been writing political articles.

The worst part is, while pretending to be fiscally prudent, Mr. Bush still wants to make his tax cuts permanent -- a populist measure that will only fuel annual deficits and raise the national debt on America's next generation. If the president were a true fiscal conservative, he would not spend money he doesn't have -- on Iraq or anything else -- and he would not dump on tomorrow's taxpayers the free-spending ways of his administration.

The whole scheme shows how bogus are the president's entreaties for Americans at home to support the troops abroad. If the war is worth fighting and Middle East democracy worth spreading, then President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should be the first to argue that Americans must pay for them and that new tax cuts can wait. Instead, they lack the courage of their convictions and seek to spend more on war and defense while requiring Americans to sacrifice nothing.

Call it the feel-good presidency of George Bush, in which only the old and the young face consequences from administration choices -- the old by absorbing cuts in programs like Medicare, the young by inheriting massive debt for adventures long past.

The president and his minions try to mask the domestic cuts by pitching something called an "ownership society." But, in practice, it amounts to a fend-for-yourself nation in which individuals with little or no resources must claw their way to health insurance and retirement savings with little support from government.

This budget and this administration promise all that and less. It would be refreshing to have a president who is brave enough to ask the adult public -- and not Americans being conceived in the womb today -- to pay for his agenda. George W. Bush still doesn't have the spine for it, but maybe the Congress does.

"I have no plans to pursue these proposals," said GOP Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

The budget that Bush submitted to Congress on Monday proposes eliminating a $255 lump-sum death benefit that has been part of Social Security for more than 50 years. It also urges Congress to cut off monthly survivor benefits to 16- and 17-year-old high school dropouts.

If approved, the two proposals would save a combined $3.4 billion over the next decade, according to administration estimates.

Based on early reaction, or lack of it, prospects for congressional passage seemed remote.

Democrats hastened to criticize the proposals on Tuesday and continued their attack into a second day.

Both Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and House Speaker
Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., were quick to applaud Bush's overall budget proposals on Monday, but their aides declined repeated requests over two days for comments on the president's suggested change in Social Security.

Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Calif., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, also offered no reaction.

Sen. Jon Kyl (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., a member of the Senate GOP leadership, said, "I haven't looked at that," adding he was unable to offer an opinion.

As the Finance Committee chairman, Grassley has jurisdiction over Social Security, and he made clear the administration's proposals would not be on the year's agenda.

"The administration didn't consult with me on these proposals. Even if someone had, I'd be hard-pressed to give them a second look," he said in a statement.

"I can't see how ending a pittance for widows and widowers, and modest benefits for kids who have lost a parent, would be good policy decisions," Grassley said.

Bush's budget also renewed the president's call for a complete overhaul of Social Security, including creation of personal savings accounts and a reduction in future benefits promised to younger workers.

Despite congressional majorities strengthened in the last elections, Republicans flinched from his proposals a year ago, and legislation failed to make it to the floor of either the House or Senate.

Grassley has said he does not intend to spend time this year on those proposals.

Administration officials have described the $255 death benefit as an administrative burden because it is paid in some cases but not all, and said its elimination is unlikely to cause hardship.

They also say the provision relating to 16- and 17-year-olds is an incentive for them to remain in school.

Dave Alberswerth of the Wilderness Society dubbed the new sell-off proposal "a billion-dollar privatization program."

And Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., sees it as a destructive way to pay for what he considers reckless tax cuts. "It's like selling your homestead to pay your credit cards," he said.

Administration officials, however, say they're merely tinkering with existing programs that let them sell scattered lands with little natural value.

"We have 350,000 acres of small, isolated tracts that are difficult to manage and no longer serve National Forest System needs," said Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who oversees the Forest Service. He also said the agency adds more than 100,000 acres a year.

The Forest Service proposes selling 150,000 to 200,000 acres to raise $800 million over five years.

The agency is trying to maintain a program that supported rural schools with timber proceeds but ran into financial trouble when logging declined.

The BLM doesn't have an estimate of how many acres it might sell under the plan, but it expects to sell land worth $40 million to $50 million per year. Some of the money

I am in the middle of my usual George Orwell-inspired dissection of the George W. Bush's "State of the Union" address (SOUA). A soon-to-be-published ZNet commentary of mine will grace readers with my critical analysis of how Bush's speech took repeated authoritarian liberties with the word "freedom."

In a future essay, I will treat (or perhaps torture) readers with my reflections on other phrases and words the president used last Tuesday night. Among the leading statements and phrases I will interrogate and deconstruct:

"Terrorists like bin-Laden are serious about mass murder."

"Tax relief."

"The United States will not retreat from the world and we will never surrender to evil."

The "men and women who wear our nation's uniform" are making "sacrifices" to "protect" America.

"There is a difference between responsible criticism that aims for success, and defeatism that refuses to acknowledge anything but failure. Hindsight alone is not wisdom, and second-guessing is not a strategy."

"Our economy is healthy and vigorous."

"Human life is a gift from the Creator."

"In New Orleans, as in other places, many of our fellow citizens have felt excluded from the promises of our country."

"Wise policies, such as welfare reform have made a [positive] difference in our country," reflecting "a revolution of conscience" based on the idea that "a life of personal responsibility is a life of fulfillment."

To nobody's surprise, I will attempt (and it won't be hard) to show different ways in which each of these and other Bush statements and phrases were used in deceptive and propagandistic ways carefully constructed to hide more than they reveal and to encourage mass consent to concentrated power.

Today, however, I want to briefly mention a revealing and slightly noted moment of candor in Bush's big speech.

I am not, I repeat NOT, referring to he president's supposedly earth-shattering, headline-making statement (in the third paragraph of the seventh page of the SOUA transcript released to the press on February 1, 2006) statement that "America is ADDICTED TO OIL which is often imported from unstable parts of the world."

Much of Bush's lecture was meant, of course, to address the citizenry's deep concern about the unpopular quagmire in Iraq. In his "addicted to oil" section, Bush was trying, among other things, to calm the people's fears by suggesting that we won't "have" to fight bloody (and illegal) wars in the Middle East forever.

We're over there, he wants us to believe, because, we are just too dependent on all that damn oil beneath the Arabs' "unstable" lands. He gets it, the president wishes us to know, and he's working on it. His solution, by the way, for what it's worth, is all-too simply and typically American: "technology," including nuclear.

But contrary to conventional wisdom in dominant media, Bush's supposed super-candid "addicted to oil" statement was more about deception than frankness. This is for two reasons. The first one is simple: the U.S. imports just 20 percent of its petroleum from the Middle East, the obvious geographic meaning (though he may also have had Venezuela in mind) of Bush's phrase "unstable parts of the world."

The second reason is a bit more complex. When it comes to America, Iraq, oil, war, and world geography, the really honest and relevant point regarding U.S. policy is that Uncle Sam is addicted to global dominance and empire. That addiction and not any direct-use reliance on Persian Gulf petroleum is the real reason "we" are in Iraq (against the wishes of "our" own populace not to mention those of the Iraqis) and not likely to leave anytime soon.

U.S. policymakers have long known that Middle Eastern oil is critical to their dominance in the world. They've long exhibited an obsessive but logical concern with controlling world petroleum supplies, which are disproportionately concentrated in the Middle East. That concern is all about the "critical leverage" (to use President Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's telling phrase) such control gives the United States over its major competitor states in Europe and Asia. And as Noam Chomsky observes, U.S. policymakers' determination to guarantee and expand American hegemony in the world system through manipulation of this "critical leverage" goes back to World War II. It would be no less relevant today if the U.S. enjoyed full energy self-sufficiency.

Many serious analysts (including Chomsky, and the prolific Marxian world system writers David Harvey and Giovanni Arrighi), and most of the moderately cognizant world that isn't hopelessly enthralled with and/or beholden to U.S. power understands quite well that this is what the invasion and occupation of Iraq is about. Speaking of the administration's war aims in Iraq, Chomsky says it very well: "anyone with a gray cell functioning knows that [the U.S] invaded to establish control over Middle Eastern oil more firmly."

The bad news for those who oppose the bloody, illegal, immoral, and dangerous U.S. occupation of Iraq (most of the human race) is this: the strategic significance of Iraqi and Middle Eastern oil is so great that a rapid American withdrawal from that nation and region is practically unimaginable. As Chomsky recently explained on this website:

"Now let's talk about withdrawal. Take any day's newspapers or journals and so on. They start by saying the United States aims to bring about a sovereign democratic independent Iraq. I mean, is that even a remote possibility? Just consider what the policies would be likely to be of an independent sovereign Iraq. If it's more or less democratic, it'll have a Shiite majority. They will naturally want to improve their linkages with Iran, Shiite Iran. Most of the clerics come from Iran. The Badr Brigade, which basically runs the South, is trained in Iran. They have close and sensible economic relationships which are going to increase. So you get an Iraqi/Iran loose alliance. Furthermore, right across the border in Saudi Arabia, there's a Shiite population which has been bitterly oppressed bythe U.S.-backed fundamentalist tyranny. And any moves toward independence in Iraq are surely going to stimulate them, it's already happening. That happens to be where most of Saudi Arabian oil is. Okay, so you can just imagine the ultimate nightmare in Washington: a loose Shiite alliance controlling most of the world's oil, independent of Washington and probably turning toward the East, where China and others are eager to make relationships with them, and are already doing it. Is that even conceivable? The U.S. would go to nuclear war before allowing that, as things now stand." (Noam Chomsky, "There is no War on Terror,"http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9533)

All of which brings me to what I think is the actually most truly candid line in Bush's SOUA. It came when Bush was making the case for not leaving illegally occupied Iraq in what U.S. Senator Barrack Obama (D-IL) calls "too precipitous"a fashion. "A sudden withdrawal of our forces from Iraq," Bush said, "would abandon Iraqis to death and prison, put men like bin-Laden and Zarqawi in charge of a strategic country, and show that a pledge from America means little."

Now put the propaganda aside for a second and read that sentence again.


Notice anything interesting there? Forget for a moment that the U.S. under both Bushes and Clinton has imposed unimaginable death and (directly after March 19 2003) prisons on Iraq.

Forget that Iraqi and Middle Eastern people have good reasons to see Uncle Sam's "freedom" "pledge" as a cynical cover for imperial domination and criminal assault.

Forget that the Bush administration finds it convenient to use the specter of Zarqawi and bin-Laden to cover the fact that they also and especially don't want the nonviolent majority of the Iraqi citizens to be "in charge of [their own] strategic country," for reasons explained by Chomsky (three paragraphs above).

Pull all that (and much more) aside and for a moment and reflect on the fact that Bush II referred (however briefly and off-handedly) to Iraq as "a strategic country."

"Strategic," Mr. President? Would you care to elaborate? Do you mean because it happens to possess the second or ---- in case the title belongs to that other Middle Eastern country that obsesses U.S. policymakers: Iran ----- third largest known oil reserves in the world?


Gee, but could those petroleum reserves be the basic reason why the president is so concerned with something he likes to call "freedom" in Iraq?

Of course they could. Of course they are.

Nothing else makes Iraq so damn "strategic" that "we" "had" to invade and now can't "too precipitously" leave.

But then there's something curious to reflect upon. Ever since the Big Weapons of Mass Destruction Lie (not taken seriously outside the leading imperial state's homeland and that of its British junior partner) was belatedly exposed within the U.S., the Bush administration has actually been asking us to believe that the "land of freedom's" "leaders" would have occupied Iraq even if the latter country's only and primary natural resources were rice, chicory, nutmeg, and/or pineapples.

"Oil war?" That's an "irresponsible" charge, the White House claimed --- a terrible, even "treasonous" thing to say. The real purposes of "Operation Iraqi Freedom," they've been telling us for the last two years, is simply to "end tyranny in the world" and to move the world's nations "from dictatorship to liberation" (to use two phrases from the latest SOUA).

Except in so many other places, like, well feudal and arch-repressive Saudi Arabia, home (by the way) to the world's largest known oil reserves, where "strategic" petro-imperial considerations have long mandated a deep U.S. partnership with tyranny and dictatorship.

Reading between the Orwellian lines of the latest SOUA, we can catch an admittedly small, partial, and fleeting glimpse of truth about the administration's real mission in Iraq. It's fundamentally oil-related occupation of Mesopotamia is about "strategic" considerations that have less to do with America's very real addiction to petroleum than with its "elite" policymakers' addiction to empire.

Paul Street (pstreet@niu.edu) is the author of Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2004)

Hybrid engines are not a new invention-they have been around for some time. Five years ago, I rode in a taxi that was run by a hybrid engine-in Vancouver, British Columbia-this city at that time was getting ready to switch to hybrid mass transit buses. Not only do hybrid engines use significantly less gasoline and oil, they are vastly less polluting of the environment. Harnessing the power of the wind and sun has been being developed and used for decades in Norway-in Sweden and other progressive countries as well as a few progressive states in our own country.

Why are you just getting around to the idea of energy producing technology that does not depend on fossil fuels? Where have you been? We, the people, have taken a major financial hit with the cost of home heating and gas prices this year while your administration has supported record profits for big oil. Explain that one to us.

The problem, Mr. Bush, is not that we are addicted to oil; it is that you are addicted to power and control and winning at all costs. How dare you turn this around. This reminds me of the drunk who spends the pay check at the bar and then berates the wife and kids for the bills not being paid or for needing food to eat. Addicted to oil--how could you make such an ignorant and unfounded statement? We are moving into the sixth year of your watch as President and you are just getting around to the fact that we have to look at alternative sources of fuel. Where have you been????

Global warming, caused largely from the emissions that come from burning fossil fuels, is not going to just affect tree huggers-it is going to, and is affecting all of us who inhabit this planet together. Protecting this planet should be the top priority of every country on the planet-we live in and on our lunch box. Where have you been?

I spent four weeks in New Orleans this fall trying to be of a least some small help there. Much of this area looks exactly as it did shortly after the hurricane went through. Your words and your actions do not match Mr. President-your cheerleading speeches in Louisiana and Mississippi about rebuilding this area have not been followed up with action. The greatest natural disaster in our country's history was given token mention at the end of your State of Union speech. Much of this area looks exactly as it did shortly after the hurricane went through. I was stunned that you could actually say in your speech in Tennessee, the day after your State of the Union address, how impressed you were and how proud you were of the American people for reaching out to those made homeless by Hurricane Katrina. Well I am proud of us also, however, I am not proud of, in fact I am deeply ashamed of the slow response by our government to this tragedy, not just initially, but to this day.

The distortion of truth by this administration is an outrage-putting a spin on the facts that leaves itself looking blameless and without fault. It is enough to make a person dizzy. While the people of New Orleans waited and suffered and struggled, while people died, you, the President of the United States were in San Diego pushing your Iraq agenda. No amount of spin can undo that. It is obvious what the priorities of this administration are-this is just one more example of that.

It did not take an expert in emergency response and crisis management in times of disaster to realize that the scope of the disaster along the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina was far beyond the capacity of any local or state government to manage or respond to sufficiently. The American people who watched the images of people crying and begging for help and for evacuation from rooftops and from the Superdome and Convention Center for days knew that. It was also apparent that the local and in some cases regional infrastructure of support and response to disaster had collapsed. We, the American people, watched this live on every news channel in the country-for days. People from around the world watched-saw what was happening for what it was-for days. No amount of spin can undo those painful and compelling images or reframe what happened and what did not happen in a way that makes your or your administration look good or blameless.

The true problem here is the pouring of so much of our natural resources into the black hole that your Iraq agenda has become. I am not talking about just the financial cost; that pales in the face of the cost of lives, both American and Iraqi that have been sacrificed in the service of your Iraq agenda. You started out your first term of office with a large surplus in the budget. Six years into your watch, we are dealing with a staggering deficit that will haunt my grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and yours.

Why was Cindy Sheehan's tee shirt for which she was arrested and thrown out of our Hall of Congress before the State of the Union address considered anti-war or un-American? The tee shirt stated a fact, "2,245 dead", and asked a question. "How many more?" Is a statement of truth and an honest question unpatriotic and un-American? One of the hallmarks of an addictive system is that it is allergic to the truth and to reality. Criticism is perceived as a lack of loyalty or treason.

If there is an addictive process going on here, it lies in you and your agenda in Iraq. An addictive process is never satiated, requires more and more of a system's resources to sustain it, and is powerful, baffling and cunning. An addictive system does not deal with reality or take responsibility. It operates on illusion, delusional thinking and projection of blame. Addictive systems are sustained by denial, distortion of truth, telling of half truths, withholding key information, loyalty to, enabling of, and protection of the addict(s), fear of retribution, slogans, black and white thinking, and preying on people's anxiety and fear. Impression management and the control of information and people's emotions are the modus operandi of an addictive system. Hmmm, I think I have just described your administration Mr. Bush. Be careful who you call an addict; projections have a way of coming home to roost.


Megan Bronson is a mother, grandmother, nurse, psychotherapist and author who has grave concerns regarding the impact of the current administration's decisions on future generations of children, of not only this country, but of the world.

Email: meganbronson@comcast.net