To the Moon, Condi, To the Moon:
So at 5 a.m., in his quiet apartment, weary from another evening of tossing and turning over images of men in Bush masks sodomizing Saddam Hussein repeatedly even as he screamed over and over that there were no weapons of mass destruction, the Rude Pundit arose and turned on CNN, as is his way. And there, lo and behold, was an announcement of miracles to come: a space mission - and not just any ordinary unmanned rocket or firecracker space shuttle. Oh, no, it was a proposal to come for a space station on the moon, just like in the old show Space 1999, except, you know, not in 1999. And it doesn't stop there, stargazers, for we have a President with grandiose ideas: the moon station will be a place from which humans may leap to, oh, my god, Mars so that we can have first hand experience with all the red dirt there (which is presumably different, much, much different, than the grey dirt on the moon). Oh, what a grand and wonderful time we live in, thought the Rude Pundit as he toddled out in his underwear and robe, coffee cup in hand, to grab his morning New York Times from the stoop, where, lo and behold, there it was again. Why, the Rude Pundit was giddy with joy, remembering his childhood erections at the sight of Neil Armstrong and that flag.

And then the Rude Pundit turned to the Op-Ed section, where he read this in Bob Herbert's column today: "A new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that 34 states have made potentially devastating cuts over the past two years in public health insurance programs, including Medicaid and the very successful children's health insurance programs known as CHIPS. More cuts are expected this year." And the potential cost of a moon station and Mars mission by 2015? Why, nearly $1 trillion dollars.

Do we have a group of teenagers with their first credit cards in the White House or what? Like an angry parent seeing the Visa bill that he'll have to pay instead of the teenager, the American people need to say, "What the fuck are you thinking, you stupid cocksuckers?" Not to get into the whole "What else would $1 trillion dollars over 10 years cost?" debate (although, really, and c'mon, $100 billion dollars a year would pretty much set up the entire country with good jobs, health insurance, elite private school education, and free Starbucks in the morning), but what's the game here? Did the President, after spanking Laura while staring at pictures of dead Iraqis in order to get a hard-on, think, seeing Laura's red ass, "I wanna go to the moon. No, wait, first the moon, then Mars. That'd be cool"? Did Karl Rove say, "Let's say we're going to Mars. Then, if that little fucker Dean opposes us, we'll say, 'What, you don't want to go to Mars?'"? Did Donald Rumsfeld say, "Well, Mars is the god of war"? Or did someone say there might be oil there?

Or, how about these possibilities: A space journey has the potential to be the ultimate corporate welfare program (and didn't Republicans used to call this kind of shit "socialism"? Just asking). Oh, all the contracts, all the outsourcing, all the newly-minted pseudo-residents who'll be forced to work for minimum wage no matter what. Christ, the money that will go to Boeing/McDonnell-Douglas. Christ, all the oil that'll be needed for fuel.

Or, maybe, just maybe, this is another way for the Bush administration to avoid the problems of the United States. Fuck, make Bush President of Iraq. Make him Great Grand Poobah of Mars for all we care. But somebody needs to tell these idiots in the administration to stop spending money like ten bucks a blow hookers with unlimited credit at Frederick's.

Christ, the Rude Pundit can't wait until they start saying that the moon station and the Mars trip are for homeland security. Maybe it'll be that from the moon we can launch a missle defense system. Maybe it'll be for better spying. But the connection's coming and you know it is.