We're on Bush's hit list now: "But how will that help America?" It won't.

My friend the election fraud expert was on a roll again. "Contrary to popular belief, voting machine manufacturers do NOT make tons of money selling their products," he told me. "Voting machines are only used once a year and they last forever. There is no planned obsolescence. It is not an expanding market. There are 3351 counties in the US and each county only needs a few machines per precinct. The market is quickly saturated. Sequoia wants to get out of the business because it is unprofitable." So. Why don't Diebold and ES&S want to get out also?

"Because they are making their money elsewhere." Election rigging? Hummm....

"The tragedy of election rigging," my friend continued, "is that Bush no longer has to appeal to his constituency. If he KNOWS that he will get elected no matter what he does, then he can follow his own agenda." That sounds about right. Even though Bush always campaigns on a very nasty bring-out-the-worst-in-people anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-Gospel platform, he hasn't even followed through on those campaign promises.

So. What IS George Bush's hidden agenda? Pay attention here. THIS IS IMPORTANT.

In his book entitled "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man," John Perkins talked about America's foreign policies after World War II. The blurb on the dust jacket read, "[Perkins's] job was to convince countries that are strategically important to...accept enormous loans for infrastructure development, and to make sure that the lucrative projects were contracted to U.S. corporations. Saddled with huge debts, these countries came under the control of the United States government, World Bank and other U.S.-dominated aid agencies that acted like loan sharks -- dictating repayment terms and bullying foreign governments into submission."

Got the picture? For third-world countries such Nigeria, Indonesia, Ecuador and Panama, it was like having the Mafia loan them money that they neither wanted nor needed -- but if they didn't take the money, bankrupt themselves trying to pay it back and grovel and be a servant, the Godfather knee-capped them.

Perkins was talking with a group of Indonesian students in Jakarta in 1971. One student commented, "Doesn't your government look at Indonesia and other countries as though we are just a bunch of..." She searched for the word.

"Grapes," one of her friends coached.

"Exactly. A bunch of grapes. You can pick and choose. Keep England. Eat China. And throw away Indonesia."

After reading this book, I realized that the one major difference between the Eisenhower-Johnson-Carter-Nixon-Reagan-Clinton era and the current Bush era is this: Before Bush, America was the one eating the grapes. Since Bush, America has BECOME one of the grapes.

To George Bush and his backers, America is just one more grape -- to be eaten or thrown away. Just look at the pattern here: They have forced us to borrow money we don't need (NOBODY in America needed that stupid war on Iraq); we handed all that money over to folks like Bechtel and Halliburton and Brown & Root -- and then we got knee-capped.

"You mean that instead of America benefiting from being the boss of other countries, we are now down at the bottom of the ladder like some banana republic -- totally in debt and being forced to kiss the [bottoms] of large corporations, the 'globalization' mafia and the World Bank?" asked my daughter who is taking an economics class in high school and is forced to think about these sort of things.

"Exactly."

"But how will that help America?"

"It won't."