"'Cuz I'm a space cowboy!"

More federal budget news today, and that's that while President Bush is proposing cutting funding to several health agencies to battle chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes–which the document states account for 70 percent of all deaths in this country, he's tossing a few more billion toward fighting bird flu–a disease 86 people have died from, worldwide, ever. As part of his plan, he hopes to vaccinate every American against the looming avian microbial menace, which will be just dandy if there happens to be a pandemic of the precise strain the vaccine protects against. I know I'll be first in line to get poked by one of Uncle Sam's nefarious needles regardless, hoo boy.

And of course, no Bush budget would be complete without tossing more money into the self-aggrandizings sinkhole of phony international prestige that is the space program. Yes, let's privatize health care on the double, but let's use public money to blast shiny rockets into space and perhaps come up with new innovations we can adapt for terrestrial warfare–yee haw!