Well, fellow Americans, we are hip-deep in it now, aren't we?

We've been sloshing around in this Orwellian barnyard for a while, long before Hank Paulson and Dubya started swatting at flies and way before Johnny-Come-Lately caught wind of the putrid pileup and still couldn't tell it from Shinola.

Some are starting to think John McCain is bipolar and off his meds.

One minute the "fundamentals of our economy are strong." Then he was as serious as a heart attack that if he didn't rush to D.C. to solve this "serious financial crisis," little Timmy would have no toys under the tree come Christmas.

McCain's highs are high, and his lows are low. At this rate, we won't know who in a John McCain White House would answer that phone at 3 a.m. My money's on Sarah Palin, who's as ambitious as an understudy who replaces talc with itching powder in the star's dressing room. Watch your back, Johnny Mc!

One minute McCain is as nonplussed and bullish as Herbert Hoover. The next he's as frantic and foolish as Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and making about as much sense, too.

In McCain's defense, the one area in which he is least like President George W. Bush is his ability to convey emotion, even if it's insincere. Catch Dubya's prime-time address on the financial crisis? His lips said, "Buy! Buy!" but his eyes said, "Sell! Sell!" He's so much better with the TV on mute.

The markets fluctuate with McCain's mood swings. Oil prices shot up as usual, but Wall Street held its breath waiting for McCain to show up after congressional leaders convened to offer a bipartisan alternative to the Treasury secretary's financial scheme to bilk generations of taxpayers and ensure that the Bush administration's abuses of power are in perpetuity.

After McCain's heroic parachute drop into D.C., which politicized the bipartisan process, another investment bank, Washington Mutual, was kaput. Republicans and Democrats, who were vehemently opposed to Paulson's original plan and who had worked together, suddenly were trading barbs. Mission accomplished!

If ever there's a President John McCain, it's King Phil, not King Henry, we should worry about. Former Sen. Phil Gramm is McCain's key economic adviser and his likely choice for Treasury secretary. Let the good times roll!

McCain said he shuns Secretary Paulson's no-strings-attached $700 billion plan — which saner heads agree is extraordinarily awful — because he says he wants to protect Main Street interests. Hah! Didn't he just call for another Resolution Trust Corp.? Why doesn't he just reunite the Keating Five for old times' sake?

McCain is among those who believe the marketplace decides best when government governs least. It's why we're in the fix we're in, Jethro.

McCain and Gramm have Senate reputations for rewarding corporate greed with tax cuts and setting up regulatory roadblocks that infringe upon congressional oversight. McCain publicly plays up the merits of Adam Smith's invisible hand. Yet he and other loyal Bushies have championed their economic sleight of hand to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the middle class and working poor. When you're working-class and need help, they call it welfare. When you're rich, they call it a bailout.

If McCain is pushing back now — long after investment banks were nationalized and CEOs got their golden tickets to Dubai — it's because someone told him we were heading toward socialism, which, as opponents of universal health care cautioned, is "un-American."

Bush-McCain Republicans don't mind if we're cash-rich China, just so long as we aren't cash-strapped Cuba. As we say in Kansas City, "Ni hao."

Apologists see a maverick in McCain. Others see someone unstable, reckless and as stubborn as a mule.

Come to think of it, the Bush-McCain Republicans have provided a sequel to "Animal Farm," George Orwell's cautionary tale.

Along with Orwell's barnyard fare, we now have the pit bull in lipstick, the lame duck, the mule and the pig in a poke, aka the Bush-Paulson $700 billion bilking.

"Animal Farm" reminded us, "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." We all know how that story ends: with man looking to pig and pig looking to man and neither of them able to tell the difference.

On that note, fellow Americans, "Here is my toast: To the prosperity of The Manor Farm!" Like Orwell's Farmer Jones, we're in for one heckuva hangover.

Rhonda Chriss Lokeman (RCLCreators@kc.rr.com) is a contributing editor to The Kansas City Star. To find out more about Rhonda Chriss Lokeman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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