The last refuge for out of work intellectuals...

The stock market.

It it's a throw-away line from a book my students might have read last week. Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is fast becoming one of my favorites. It's a grim noir, sci-fi parable about a world in which firemen start fires and books are burned. They are burned, not just because the government made them illegal, but because people couldn't be bothered reading them anymore.

The resulting culture in the book is made up of self absorbed people who tune the world out through technological distractions that resemble flat-screen TVs and IPODs and who casually make habits out of abortion and overdosing on sleeping pills. Life is cheap: "disposable tissue" With good reason, I suppose. They are engaged in a never-ending war against some nefarious, indeterminate foe.

Let me say right now that this little grimmoir was written in the intercession of Nazi book burning in the 30s and 40s and the heyday of censorship during the Cold War. So, while it's doubtful George Bush read it either, all the book needs is an update on the USA PATRIOT Act and our journey to the dark side is complete.

Apparently, many of the students in my class didn't get that irony: Many of them didn't bother to read the assignment.

In Fahrenheit, a character named Faber, a retired English professor, was turned out of his job because students stopped signing up for his classes and university English departments were closed.

The last refuge comment is one I didn't bother to point out to the kids. As I said, it's a throw away line - you either get it or you don't. It's not funny enough to bother with explaining.

Anyway, it's also a line I may follow.

Bush has only one answer for every question

DATELINE IDIOTSVILLE: King George. He now wants another $250 million for Iraq because the Halliburton contractors are running out of graft and may be forced to retreat from their five-star digs.

Bush wants more troops to be sent (Finally. But it's a day late and too many dollars) -- Yes, the man who consistantly refused to put enough troops on the ground before -- now wants more. He thinks we should escalate.

The American people went to the polls and gave him a clear mandate: Get out. (I think they meant Iraq, but they could have meant get out of the White House, too.)

In his most recent State of the Union address, Bush persisted in speaking at length about the war in Iraq. I think that is meant to indicate that he thinks Iraq is part of the Union. Afterall, the mess in New Orleans was not even mentioned, suggesting that he thinks they aren't part of the Union - or maybe doesn't want them to be.

Polar bears are falling through the arctic ice, and Bush is the last man in America to think that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by Zippo weilding liberals. Well, no. Zippo weilding realists really just want to return decency and sanity to the White House.

It's one thing to be stupid. But it's something else to be stupid and recalcitrant.

We do know that Bush has remarkably few tools in his intellectual arsenal. After six years of the Bush Error, the American people have seen enough and have said so.

Even so, if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. That about hits the nail on the head.