Shortly after George W. Bush was selected president, the Onion joked that "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is over [3]." Now Bush is making the same joke himself and using it as an excuse for breaking his campaign pledge to avoid defecit spending. "You know, when I was running for president, in Chicago, somebody said, would you ever have deficit spending?" Bush says. "I said, only if we were at war, or only if we had a recession, or only if we had a national emergency. Never did I dream we'd get the trifecta." But as MSNBC's David Neiwert points out, Bush's favorite joke about 9/11 is not only in bad taste, it's a lie.