I found some Republican humor on the company copier yesterday. It was a picture of a toddler in a T-shirt with the following political statement ironed on the front: “The mess I just made is nothing compared to what the Democrats will do if they get elected in November.”

The mess referred to was presumably of the diaper variety. Aside from this being unfunny and an unwieldy message to put on even a XXXL T-shirt, it was disheartening. It is discouraging to think that anyone, conservative or otherwise, could be so in denial about what a mess our Republican president has made of our country for close to eight years.

I really don’t want to waste your time or mine enumerating all of the “not so good” decisions of the current administration. Our tanking economy should be an obvious sign that the past eight years could have been put to better use than just piddling away our money and resources.

A short list of W’s legacy includes leaving U.S. with a $9.5 trillion national debt (after starting with a surplus), cutting veterans’ benefits, wire-tapping of Americans, Dick Cheney’s secret energy meetings (those wouldn’t have been about oil would they?), yellowcake uranium, Halliburton, privately contracted mercenaries, extreme rendition, an unnecessary war which has brought us nothing but military funerals in return, funerals which W refuses to attend … I could go on but it would only frustrate me and cause conservatives to dig themselves further into their denial burrows.

If they can’t see by now that there is some serious ka-ka going down it is because they do not want to see it. They don’t want to see that the way we have been living for pretty much our entire lives is about to change drastically. They don’t want to acknowledge that as a people we could have spent the past eight years preparing for the end of oil. Our car culture is on the skids. Get used to walking. And growing vegetables. And buy some candles; you’ll need them.

The Democrats have certainly helped this mess along. Clinton made sure he could fast track NAFTA and GATT and is responsible for the resultant loss of any U.S. jobs that actually produced something, but W is the guy who jumped into the driver’s seat and put the pedal to the metal with an idiot grin on his face. Bush can afford to grin. He has a golden parachute and access to the door. He can catch the next flight to Dubai and kick back in some swank air-conditioned presidential suite while our country unravels.

He is just the wheelman for the world’s greatest heist. It has been his job to keep us preoccupied with homosexual marriage, illegal immigrants and offshore drilling while his corporate buddies clean out the American bank vault. No messy explosions or safe cracking. Just transferring bits and bauds from one account to another.

The most honest moment of his term was when he let New Orleans fend for itself in the wake of natural catastrophe. It was honest because that is the shape of future government intervention. Meanwhile conservatives are getting themselves in a lather about what a mess the Democrats will make of this country if they get elected?

If Barack Obama gets elected, he’ll be inheriting W’s mess. The American people are going to be seriously upset when cold and hunger become a reality. My big fear is that he is going to be another serving of Republican Lite, brewed by the same corporations that have made our government a tool for serving their own interests.

Conservatives try to be funny. They had that show on Fox News that tried to be another Daily Show but it was pathetic and lame. You can’t do irony without acknowledging that the emperor is wearing no clothes, not even a T-shirt. Maybe that picture on the copier would have been funnier if W had been wearing that T-shirt and it had a caption like, “Look honey! The little scamp left us a present!”