EDITOR'S NOTE

There's nothing like an obscene, ethics-free orgy of influence purchasing-otherwise known as a presidential inauguration-to finally make it sink in that we're in for four more years of the kind of arrogance and sense of entitlement that only a president like George W. Bush can provide.

By the end of the week, special-interest lobbyists will have showered the nation's capital with millions of dollars in exchange for easy access to members of Congress and high-level government regulators. These lobbyists wouldn't spend so much of their clients' money if it didn't work, right? Of course not-their money buys favorable treatment when it comes time to make new laws and alter federal regulations.

And there could be no more apt way to usher Bush into his second term, for his entire life has been steeped in influence, money and favor. Affluence, the oil business, baseball, the governorship of Texas and the U.S. presidency-it's all pretty much been handed to America's most famous former party boy.

You'd think Bush made a deal with the devil, considering how everything seems to go his way. Investigative reporter Greg Palast, featured on the cover of last week's CityBeat, spoke in Hillcrest Monday evening, and he noted how CBS and Dan Rather have been figuratively lynched for reporting a true story that had been broken years before-that people in high places got Bush yanked from the Vietnam draft line and plunked down in a pilot spot in the Texas National Guard that would have been impossible for Bush to get on his own.

Bush managed to parlay his fame as presidential offspring and part owner of the Texas Rangers into a close election win over Texas Gov. Anne Richards, and then used the governorship as a steppingstone to the presidency. He went on to lose the 2000 presidential election to Al Gore but assumed control of the Oval Office anyway, thanks to some deft work on his behalf by brother Jeb, henchwoman Katherine Harris and the Florida Supreme Court. Furthermore, reports Palast, there's a chance Bush also lost the 2004 election to John Kerry, given that so many of the millions of votes nationwide that are tossed out for technical reasons come from Democratic, African-American precincts.

Yeah, a deal with the devil-after all, maybe it's just me, but our president sometimes appears to have no soul.

Take Iraq, for example. He's sent 1,369 American military men and women (and counting) to their deaths after fibbing to us repeatedly about why we invaded. He blames U.S. intelligence agencies for feeding him bad information about nonexistent WMDs, but there's anecdotal evidence that intelligence officials were pressured to tell Bush exactly what he wanted to hear. And he and Dick Cheney flat-out lied about ties between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attackers. He went into Iraq for geopolitical reasons, and now we have a self-fulfilling prophecy on our hands-Iraq has become what it wasn't before, a hotbed of chaos and terrorism. Bush has killed countless Iraqis, devastated 1,369 American families, created tens of thousands of walking (physically and mentally) wounded Americans, spread ill will throughout the world-all to oust a tyrant whose crimes against humanity, although awful, are in league with a handful of other despots who remain on the loose.

Now, as he cruises toward his inauguration, he's hanging his presidential hat on a farcical election in Iraq that will be accessible to less than half the country's citizens, and very few of the Sunni Muslims who suddenly find themselves staring in the face of a Shia-dominated Iraq.

In recent press interviews, Bush has said that last November's election here at home gave the American people a chance to hold him accountable for his Iraq policies, and that they chose to return him to office-so all systems are go. Never mind that the voting public was split right down the middle. Never mind that a Washington Post/ABC News poll this week revealed that only 40 percent of Americans think he's handled Iraq well, only 44 percent think the war is worth fighting and only 52 percent approve of Bush's overall performance, a very low figure for a president entering his second term. Add Bush's domestic agenda to his foreign-policy direction (The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh says Iran is next), and what you get is an unpleasant glimpse of the next few years.

As he was introducing Palast in Hillcrest Monday evening, San Diego activist Martin Eder said with a smile that progressives can look forward to four years of struggle for social justice and human rights. That's looking on the bright side.