I'm assuming, also, that extreme precision is one of the many powerful attributes in your arsenal of omnipotence.

If you were looking to wreak vengeance on genuine evil doers, you could have zapped a bolt of lightning up George Bush's ass as he bent over to scrape manure off a boot during his craven avoidance of Cindy Sheehan while vacationing in Crawford.

It's rumored Dubya has started drinking again.

If true, maybe it's because he's unnerved by not only dropping the ball in Katrina's aftermath, but by letting it roll away into the bayou and completely getting lost amid the swamp snakes. Even more lost than his doomed, Mussolini-style war of naked aggression in Iraq.

Man, if I were a walking, chronic, moral disaster like "our" president, I'd be drinking too. Only I wouldn't be doing it on the sly, shocking Laura with a furtive swig in the bedroom.

Bush should get a hose hat like SpongeBob wore on one of his better episodes, then suck beer (undoubtedly Coors) through the tube while trying to convince a television audience of "fellow Americans" how he feels their pain.

He could tell us how poverty troubles his soul even as he rescinds the Davis-Bacon act to allow less than minimum wage pay for those who'll rebuild the devastated Gulf Coast, with vast profits accruing to Halliburton and other sleazy beneficiaries of no-bid, crony contracting.

It wouldn't make him any more ridiculous or patently hypocritical than he's already widely seen to be, absent cans of intoxicating liquid strapped to his head.

I have to tell you, Big Guy, I'm heartbroken by that bus full of old, sick Hurricane Rita evacuees blowing up and burning near Dallas. Why'd you let that happen?

On second thought, maybe it was for the best. After all, it's Hell to be elderly, ill, and have your meager, fixed income mercilessly used as booty by the price-gouging, Bush-friendly pharmaceutical industry -- which is arguably even worse than Big Oil picking our pockets as we're prostrate over a petroleum barrel.

Here's another reason why Smirky is a prime candidate for some ass lightning:

America gets socked by the costliest natural disaster in our nation's history (made so largely by the Bush administration's abysmally bad priorities), and who does he propose should pay for it?

Initially, his sole emphasis was on average citizens' charity, in a glorified version of Sunday morning church, collection-plate giving. What's wrong with that, you ask?

Well, consider that the official poverty rate just went up -- again -- and that typical, workaday folks are increasingly hard pressed to make it from one pay check to the next. Take into account, too, the exorbitant price of gasoline. Precisely those least able to afford charity were cynically urged to give.

The wealthy, however, weren't asked to relinquish their tax-cut bonanzas. Lavish corporate welfare and other subsidies that comprise socialism for the rich weren't tapped. Neither was a bloated Pentagon budget more attuned to imperial warmongering than legitimate defense.

When finally forced by public anger to produce federal money to address the unprecedented disaster, Bush cited "wasteful" and "redundant" government programs that would be diverted for relief funding.

I'm not a gambling man, God, but here's a sure bet for you:

Boondoggle, pork-barrel expenditures that enrich Bush's bourgeois backers will remain absolutely untouched. The last vestiges of New Deal and Great Society legislation -- the final threads of our frayed social safety net -- will be sacrificed.

Conservatives will use Katrina/Rita as an opportunistic excuse to advance their dream agenda of demolishing everything that furthers public welfare and the common good. It'll be a way off killing off what reactionary Republicans have always loved to hate.

It's going to bring impoverished multitudes excruciating pain.

Think of the projected spike in heating oil and natural gas prices this coming winter. How many poor people will freeze to death in our icy, northern cities because they won't be able to afford staying safely warm? No amount of rightwing rhetoric about "personal responsibility" can ward off hypothermia.

Despite the staggering injustice, I'm not really asking you to intercede.

In fact, the only reason why I'm talking to you at all is because I got tired of angrily muttering to myself under my breath.

This horrendous wrongdoing won't be solved by Divine intervention, or isolated, individual rage. It'll take collective commitment to fundamental change, through seamless unity, and mass organization.

The inspiring anti-war protests of Sept. 24 should be expanded upon to network with all constituencies having compelling grievances against Bush and his greedy gang. That makes up most of the American population.

It's been cool talking to you, God, but we'll take it from here.

Enjoy a good, celestial nap. Then have a better tomorrow.

We'll see to it that ours will be, too.