By Arun Kumar,

Washington, April 1 (IANS) As President George Bush and the Congress headed for a face-off over the Iraq war, no olive branch came his way. Instead the Senate offered the Commander-in-Chief a Christmas tree or rather a whole bunch of them and some strawberries too!

If the House had added $20 billion of pork - unrelated expenses given a piggyback ride on an essential legislation - to the C-in-C's request for $103 billion to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the upper chamber loaded it up with its own "ornaments" worth $18.5 billion.

That's why spending bills are nicknamed "Christmas trees", for the goodies that they bring to individual legislators' constituents without the usual scrutiny under the budget rules.

But the bill that the Senate passed asking the president to bring US troops in Iraq home by March 31, 2008, was literally so. It added among scores of other nonessential items, $40 million for growers of Christmas trees and ornamental shrubs. It had some strawberries too, but that's another story.

As the Senate took up the "emergency" spending bill for Iraq, Barbara Boxer stood up to speak in favour with an aide displaying a poster of an icy patch - no, not anywhere in Baghdad where it gets pretty hot even in the green zone, but in the feisty Democrat's beloved California.

"This is a strawberry field. It looks like an ice rink. The strawberries are somewhere in there; they are destroyed. I also want to show you oranges... Here you can see the icicles near the avocados," she said recalling a song called "Strawberry Fields Forever".

Republican Lindsay Graham was at a loss to understand how spending money to save strawberries, sugar beets, asparagus and spinach "helps us win in Iraq?" Minutes after making this righteous plea before the media, he went down to the Senate floor to vote for an amendment to the Iraq bill directing an additional $5 billion to rural schools - right here in the US of A.

The Senate ignored another Republican's plea to "stand up as Americans, not as spinach growers, not as milk producers, not as tree farmers" as they voted 73-24 to keep all the farm goodies, not counting the support for shrimp and peanuts in the House bill.

Bush has vowed to veto the legislation - loaded as it's with goodies and a more unpalatable timetable for withdrawal - when it reaches his table. But that poses another timetable problem.

The bill can't reach the president until the two chambers agree on a common one. But the legislators wouldn't be back from their Easter break until April 16 - and the money for the troops runs out a day earlier.

The C-in-C has let it be known that he's not going anywhere and would be waiting in the White House to kill the bill or sign it if the new bosses at the Capitol Hill choose to come back before the deadline and clean it up - of the pork and the timetable.

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Bloomberg's blooming plan

As fellow New Yorkers, Republican 'red' Rudolph Giuliani and Democratic 'blue' Hillary Clinton lead the pack, a self-made billionaire Michael R. Bloomberg is said to be itching to join the 2008 presidential race.

Now tending the Big Apple, the blue-turned-red mayor professes no interest in public for the top job at the White House, but political junkies suggest that he has dropped enough tantalising hints about throwing his hat into the ring.

The irreverent ones believe it might well all be part of a bigger blooming plan. For hasn't the 65-year-old financial wizard often told his friends that his definition of good financial planning is making sure the cheque to the undertaker bounces when it's finally time to go.

Could then it be part of the Bloomberg plan to spend all his money before he dies? For he can simply drop a cool half-billion on a long-shot bid to become America's first modern president from outside the two major political parties.

As a third-party candidate, consumer activist Ralph Nader won about 2.7 percent of the vote in 2000 and H. Ross Perot, another billionaire businessman, drew about 19 percent in 1992 after spending about $60 million of his personal fortune.

Going by these previous runs, a commentator suggested, "clear thinking might lead a politician to decide that running for president as a third-party candidate would be a fool's errand."

"It's the water," joked former New York mayor Edward I. Koch, who is supporting Clinton but said he would welcome Bloomberg to the race. "There's no lead in it, which can cloud your thinking."

And a presidential run clearly gels with Bloomberg's plans to blow it all up before he goes!

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Beg your pardon

As Bush mulls a pardon for a convicted key former aide of his vice president, a Republican legislator wanted former president Bill Clinton to be at a House judiciary committee hearing on "the appropriate use of the presidential pardoning power".

Clinton is "no stranger to controversial pardons, most notably the pardon of Marc Rich on his last day in his office", said Bush's fellow Texan Lamar Smith. The fugitive financier's wife donated $450,000 to the Clinton Library. "I can think of no better person to address this issue."

But a day before the hearing, Clinton's office begged his pardon to tell Smith that Clinton won't make it because he will not be in Washington.

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Hey, I get along with my mother!

For once the C-in-C dropped his combative tone over the Iraq emergency war spending bill and let loose a litany of Bushisms at a traditional annual media dinner as he stood up to the new boss on Capitol Hill - House speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Recalling that in the good old days, his vice president had gone hunting and shot a friend, Bush said he had no intention of becoming a lame-duck president, unless Dick Cheney shot him in the leg. But with only a number of days left in office, he said he guessed he was just a temporary worker.

But working with Pelosi, is, well, not a big deal, said he. "Well, some have wondered how the two of us would get along. Some say she's bossy, she's opinionated, she's not to be crossed. Hey, I get along with my mother!"

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)