Bush parties; Americans pay

This inauguration was brought to you by Pepsi, the Ford Motor Company, Home Depot, UPS, Tyson Foods, Hunting Engineering Company, New Energy Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb pharmaceuticals and the mighty San Diego Chargers.

The corporate sponsorship of the presidential inauguration is appalling. The businesses listed above are just a few that contributed more than $100,000 to the Presidential Inaugural Committee. Oh, what a reminder this is for the American public. Lest we not forget where Bush’s alliances lie: It’s not with the homeless — it’s with Haliburton.

Why didn’t they slap an advertisement on Dubya’s freakin’ forehead? Or maybe he could have worn a duck bill and quacked like the Aflac duck after he gave his oath of office. Jenna and Barbara could have flung cans of Budweiser (or should we make it Busch?) beer into the crowd and sold Teen People subscriptions to girls on the sidewalks.

And Lynn Cheney could have done a stage dive onto the hood of a police cruiser, flapping her arms like a Tyson chicken before letting out a bellowing rifle shot into the air for the NRA — all weird scenes that point to the fall of the American Empire.

Greedheads and oil pigs are poisoning the highest offices in the nation.

That’s right. All those companies that benefited from Bushy’s first rodeo are back again to ensure they are politically wet-nursed for another four years. There goes the environment, my friends. And safe foods and medicines, and hopes for renewable energy, and … .

But it’s not just the corporate sponsorship that is so disgusting — it’s the entire price tag. A whopping $2.8 million was spent on sprucing up the west front of the Capitol, where the ceremony took place. Another $2.9 million went to boxed lunches, water and granola bars to feed the personnel who guarded the president. Homeland Security alone paid $11.9 million toward the event.

More than $40 million was spent altogether so the president could take an oath that lasted less than one minute. There are your tax dollars at work — all so Laura Bush could flit around in her Oscar de la Renta gown, and George W. could mumble all 2,083 words of his speech (none of them being “Iraq” or “mistake”).

How could he forget about Iraq!? He rode the coattails of the system of fear and war and the WMDs he meticulously created into a second term.

While Bush was busy partying Thursday, four suicide bombings ravaged Baghdad, killing 25 Iraqi citizens and wounding several coalition soldiers. And he couldn’t mention the war once? There is no cowboy hat large enough to cover the shameful inappropriateness of this inauguration.

But the Idiot King does have a reason to be happy these days. He whipped the American public into a fever pitch on the matter of national security. He fed us sleazy pick-up lines and led a low-blow campaign to get our votes. He was laughing on Inauguration Day. He was laughing at us because he tricked us into another four years of his leadership.

He won.

And now we all have to pay the price.

Erin Roof is a junior magazine journalism major and a columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact her at [email protected].