Okay, I’m a liberal in a red state. I admit it freely. If you’re already offended, don’t bother reading on because I’m not in the mood to try to change anyone’s mind. I just want to bitch about George W. Bush and his administration.

On NPR the other day, I heard the most amazing statistic. From George Washington to Bill Clinton, the U.S. presidents had signed a total of about 600 signing statements, which are basically the equivalent of “Get Out of Jail Free” cards in Monopoly. They’re little notes that a president can attach to a law when he signs it that explains how they expect the executive branch to interpret and enforce the new law. Quite convenient, really, especially if the president intends to not enforce the law, or better yet, break it.

Which brings us to George W. Bush, who, all by himself, has signed more than 800 signing statements. In other words, this president has signed new laws which the rest of the government and the citizens of this country must abide by, but he’s exempted himself from following them. It’s good to be the king.

As a mom, this tactic really bugs me even more than it bothers me as a Democrat. Throughout this entire administration, I’ve felt that George is a lousy president in the same way that many people are lousy parents - they set horrible examples. As a mother, I try to live the way I want my kids to live. I set down rules for them, and then I make sure that I abide by those rules too. If I break them, how can I expect my kids not to do the same?

Aside from the signing statements, Bush has set a poor example in the international community as well. He was determined to go to war with Iraq even without the assistance or input of any of our allies, and he trampled all over the United Nations to do it. Then he turns around and expects Iran and North Korea and all these other countries to adhere to United Nations resolutions. Who can blame them for telling the U.S. to kiss off? Especially when we’re preaching to them about human rights all the time and using holier-than-thou rhetoric to condemn the way they treat their citizens while our president is spying on his own people and refuses to adhere to a law he signed making it illegal to torture prisoners of war.

Last but certainly not least is a bewildering new “behavior” for the Republican party. When I was growing up, the Republicans were the ones who were always screaming about “deficit spending,” and rightly so. I mean, if I write checks without money in the bank, I go to jail. The government should have to operate in the black too, right? Obviously not. This particular issue really goes beyond party lines and into the realms of common sense: you simply cannot spend money you don’t have. And yet, Bush’s administration is cheering a $296 billion deficit because it’s lower than $423 billion they were expecting. $296 billion?!? If I were $296 overdrawn in my checking account, I would be freaking out. Multiply that by a billion, and the president calls it “good news?” Have I fallen down a rabbit hole and landed in a world where nonsense rules?

Somebody needs to be accountable. Somebody needs to set the example, be the leader, say and really mean: “THE BUCK STOPS HERE.” Where’s Harry S. Truman when you need him?

You know those people you see on the news after some kind of disaster? Somehow, those reporters always manage to find the dumbest people to interview - people with only six teeth and fewer IQ points. Well, I’m starting to think that those idiots are multiplying exponentially, and they’re beginning to speak out more and more! What’s particularly mortifying to me is that many of these outspoken morons are from my home state.

Today, for instance, I was reading an article on Yahoo! and was disappointed to see an editorial comment about stem cell research from some guy in Indianapolis. Here is the exact quote: “If stem cells were proved to prolong life, rather than just imagined to do so, we would need no research.” Brilliant, huh? Obviously, the guy’s a little confused about the scientific process. I mean, how are you going to prove something without doing research?

I ran across another doozy in the Indianapolis Star last week. A woman was outraged at an article that dared to mention a new mother was breastfeeding her child. The editorial writer insisted that this detail was offensive and unnecessary since breastfeeding has nothing to do with giving birth. Hmm… has she tried to breastfeed a child without giving birth first?

Most of these morons seem to be very conservative. I don’t know if that’s a cause or an effect: are they morons because they’re conservative or are they conservative because they’re morons? Not sure which is the case, but there certainly appears to be some kind of connection. Maybe they’re just really poor writers, and they need help expressing their ideas more clearly.

Whatever the reason, they’re only adding to the state’s reputation for being backward. Indiana has more fat people and more smokers than the rest of the country. We also lose more of our college graduates than most other states. So I guess we’re left with all the uneducated people who eat and smoke all they want, ignoring the wisdom of medical science. Hey, now, that explains the two idiots above pretty well, huh?

It’s 91 degrees Fahrenheit in Indianapolis today. Tomorrow it’s supposed to be around 93. I read in The Washington Post that over 130 people have died in California from the over 100-degree heat. Global warming’s gettin’ pretty ugly.

Now, my husband and I have a running “discussion” about the fact that I hate summer. My reasoning is always the same: winter may make the landscape ugly, but summer heat makes people ugly. Too many people with no business showing off their bodies wear bikinis, Speedos, shorts, tank tops, halter tops, or no tops. Guys with more hair and their backs than on their heads cut the grass in nothing but cut-off jeans, and we have to look at their large sweaty beer guts jiggling with the vibration of the lawnmower. Yuck. Toss in the fact that the U.S. is in the midst of an obesity epidemic, and we’ve got the makings of an aesthetic disaster.

So here comes this killer heat. And the summers are just going to get hotter as the greenhouse gases insulate the planet. Accordingly, people are wearing skimpier and skimpier clothing. Thong bikins, low-rise Daisy Dukes, halter tops that aren’t much more than handkerchiefs. The problem is that you can take off only so many clothes before you end up naked. I figure that’s next, and nudism is on the rise.

Personally, I will miss clothes. They are fascinating; they serve so many purposes. Not only do they cover up our private parts to preserve our modesty and keep us out of jail, but they also cover up other parts we’d rather not expose for various reasons - scars, deformities, unattractive bits. Some clothes, like uniforms, can identify us as members of a group; others, like costumes, can keep us from being identified at all. Some people use their clothes to tell people about themselves. Sometimes we use clothes to pretend to be something we’re not. They can make us feel more confident, more beautiful, more relaxed. They can attract attention or divert it. We can dress up or dress down. Clothes have spawned entire industries: fashion designers, fashion magazines, textile plants, clothing retail. People spend hundreds of dollars on all those skimpy outfits. A lot of money will be lost when we lose our clothes. Not to mention the loss of our dignity.

Now the one thing that may save us from all this ugliness is that clothes keep us protected from the sun. So we come back to the whole global warming thing. No ozone layer means a lot of sunburned butts if we all go naked to beat the heat. I’m counting on the threat of skin cancer to keep people dressed. I can handle only so much ugly.

I’m so sick of nagging my husband. I have been after him for months. I really don’t know how many times I have to beg and plead and wheedle and cajole before he will finally do what I’ve been asking him to do - take a break from the family and go biking with his best friend.

It is amazing when I think about it. When I met my husband, I was a jaded 24-year-old looking for a good time. He was a heavy metal fan, guitar player, chain-smoking truck driver. I had no idea that we’d fall in love, get married and have kids. I didn’t ask him to explain his philosophies on marriage and parenthood when we started dating. I had no clue what I would want or need from the father of my children, so there was no way for me to find out if he would be the right guy for me and our future offspring. It was pure luck.

And what luck it was. Now don’t get me wrong; we’ve had our rough patches. Like any couple, we have periods when we’re “out of sync.” But all I have to do is read the paper, watch the news, or spend time with other couples to realize what a prize I lucked into.

Last night, for example, we were at a party. Around 9:00, they started a card tournament. Because our two kids were present, my husband declined to play but insisted on my playing. He chased our rambunctious 5-year-old and held our sleepy 1-year-old FOR 3 HOURS while I played cards. I watched the other fathers of little children saunter around, kid-free, drinking beer, talking about their guys’ nights (or weekends) out, showing off their latest toys. I felt so sorry for my husband, walking our 20-pound baby to sleep while his wife enjoyed herself; I kept trying to trade places with him, but he wouldn’t do it. He was ridiculously proud of what he was doing, determined to be different. Somehow, while the rest of the men his age are desperately trying to maintain the freedom and selfishness of their bachelorhood, my man discovered that basking in the responsibility and sacrifice of father/husbandhood has its own rewards.

So he doesn’t spend money on “big boy toys,” and he doesn’t ditch his family every other weekend to go out with his buddies. But he does have two children who are quite sure he hung the moon and would do absolutely anything for him. And he has a mother-in-law who constantly sings his praises to anyone who’ll listen. And his wife’s girlfriends all think he’s some kind of saint. And I’d be willing to bet that he was the only dad at that party who got lucky last night. (Can you blame me? I mean, what could be sexier than a guy who would do anything for his wife and kids?!)

Right now he’s downstairs doing the dishes. I didn’t ask him to. But I am going to ask him again about that biking trip. Nag, nag, nag.

It occurred to me today that life in 21st century America is pretty much centered on the management of stuff. Today, for example, my mother called me at work and asked me to stop by her house on my way home to pick up a couple things she had bought for me. I gratefully obliged and put the stuff she had bought me into my van. When I arrived at my house, I found my children’s stuff everywhere; my son and I spent half an hour just trying to get most of the stuff off the floor and into its proper room. Then I had to go to one of those “parties” where women try to sell more stuff to their friends. Since I had some stuff that belonged to one of my friends who was going to be there, I put her stuff in my van and took it to the party to give it back to her. Ironically, she had some stuff of mine that I’d left at her house, so we exchanged our stuff before we bought some more stuff from our hostess. When I finally got home at 9:30, my van was full of stuff - the stuff my mother had given me, the stuff my friend had brought back to me, the stuff I’d bought at the party, not to mention the stuff I’d brought home from work.

I’m really sick of stuff - spending money to buy it, finding a place to put it, putting it back in its place when it gets moved, looking for it when it gets lost, cleaning it and fixing it and finally getting rid of it when it’s beyond repair or obsolete. Sometimes I wish a tornado would hit our house (when we’re not in it, of course!) and suck up all our stuff like a gigantic vacuum cleaner so we could just start over with a clean slate. I’m sure people who have actually been hit by tornados would disagree, but it sounds lovely to me.

In the midst of acquiring, exchanging, and moving all that stuff, I began to wonder if it has always been this way everywhere. Did cavemen in ancient Africa have to manage stuff all the time? Did peasants in medieval Europe have to manage their stuff? Did pioneers in the American West? Surely those folks didn’t have as much stuff as we do now in these United States. Mass production hadn’t been invented yet, and the culture of consumerism was not yet cultivated. Still, our ancestors spent a lot of their time worrying about stuff too, I suspect. The cavemen needed to get materials to make tools and weapons to kill animals for food and clothing. The peasants had to work so they could trade for shelter, clothes, and food. The pioneers had to tned their farms so they could sell their produce and livestock so they could buy the things they needed to survive.

So I guess it’s not a new phenomenon - it’s just grown exponentially in the last hundred years. Plus, we have so much stuff we don’t need nowadays. Our ancestors’ main concern was the stuff of survival. Our great-grandparents probably had one-tenth as many clothes as we have. They had just enough dishes to serve the family; just enough linens to get by. Many families had just one car. No computers with all the peripherals; no DVD players with a collection of 100 DVD’s; no cell phones, iPods, or digital cameras like the ones littering my family room. I’m sure most children didn’t have the kind of cripplingly huge toy collections mine have today.

Is there a way out? I really don’t see one at the moment. Personally, I make it a point not to buy anything unless I know exactly what I need it for and where I’m going to put it, but I still wind up with ridiculous amounts of stuff! If I don’t buy it, people give it to us. At my son’s hairdresser today, they gave him a balloon, a cookie cutter and a sucker. His doctor gave him three stickers last week. He got another plastic toy in his fast food kid’s meal yesterday. I suppose it’s just an unfortunate side effect of living in such a prosperous society. I guess I could wish the country’s economy would collapse, but that would be like my tornado wish - short-sighted and selfish. Still I look forward to a day when I won’t spend most of my day dealing with stuff.