Eastwood vs. Obama

Historians like Toynbee and Vico have argued long argued that civilizations have life-cycles that are similar to the arc of the human lifespan.  That is, societies pass through golden ages of youthful vitality, periods of stability and maturity, and eras of inertia and decline.

The actor Clint Eastwood unscripted and somewhat incoherent endorsement of Mitt Romney at the Republican national convention is only a small blemish on an otherwise distinguished career, but his rambling and unbecoming diatribe against President Obama only reinforces the notion that the Republican party is dangerously out of touch with reality and even a tad senescent. 

Eastwood’s performance undoubtedly left Republican image makers wincing.  However, the 82-year old actor’s views – and his crude attempts to caricature President Obama – are hardly an anomaly in the Republican Party.  Chastising Obama for failing to fulfill his campaign pledge to close Guantanamo, when in fact Republicans have obstructed all attempts to shutter the facility, is as disingenuous and reality-defying as Paul Ryan’s attempt to blame candidate Obama for the closure of a Detroit auto plant that shut its doors in the waning days of the Bush administration.

Eastwood’s and Ryan’s jabs at President Obama were reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s false but sincerely held belief that acid rain was caused by trees.  But what happens to a political party, or a country, when so many demonstrably false beliefs are widely held by the population?

Conservatives deny the possibility that global warming could be a real or manmade phenomenon.  They also hew to a demonstrably false ideology, which insists that free markets never fail, tax cuts pay for themselves, and government regulations are unnecessary to prevent economic crises.

The Republican ideology failed spectacularly last time it was tried.  Bush’s tax cuts busted the budget and deregulation allowed the financial sector to run amok.  As a result, America’s financial system nearly collapsed.  Astonishingly, Republicans refuses to acknowledge the bankruptcy of its ideological agenda.  Instead, they’ve taken to blaming the Obama administration for the ills the Republican agenda inflicted on the United States.

This sorry state of affairs was symbolized by Clint Eastwood’s rather lame mock interview with an empty chair, which supposedly represented President Obama. Eastwood’s shtick may have come across as entertaining to a certain segment of angry white male voters, but his crude characterizations of Obama will probably come across as the vulgar stereotypical distortions they are to the demographic groups that will decide the election (namely, Hispanics, women, and independents).  No wonder, Romney’s political operatives were reportedly cringing during Eastwood’s performance.

Eastwood is not senile, but a certain segment of the Republican Party – the birthers, those who think Obama is closet Muslim or a covert socialist, or those who think Obama bears primary responsibility for the jobs crisis in America – is dangerously untethered to reality.  Ironically, the politician most responsible for America’s current misfortune – George W. Bush – was absent once again from the Republican convention.  The American icon Clint Eastwood’s showdown with an empty chair may have fell flat.  But what is more telling is the Republican Party’s failure to engage in an honest dialogue about the legacy of George W. Bush, a man who can’t show up at his own party’s convention because he is so deservedly reviled.

Sphere: Related Content

Bush’s Big Lie

“This government does not torture people.”
-- George W. Bush

George Bush’s credibility has sunk further and deeper than a Russian submarine. Invariably, the divergence of Bush’s rhetoric from reality has been excused as the result of sincere and honest error. Bush may have misled, the apologists insisted, but he did not lie to the American people. The latter offence of course, is considered far graver than the former, especially by Bush’s Christian base, which tends to take Commandments like “Thou Shalt Not Lie’ very seriously.

Personally, I agree with the Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu, author of the classic, The Art of War, that a statesman is better off lying if doing so will keep us out of war. Statecraft is an art, not a science. And the same can be said about morality.

Bush, however, stands revealed a complete charlatan, a hypocrite, and a war criminal. He and Dick Cheney ran on a platform that was heavy on things liberals supposedly lacked: namely, moral clarity and accountability. When it came to crafting torture memos, however, Bush & Cheney utterly failed to draw bright moral lines against techniques that have been recognized by U.S and International Law as torture for centuries. Put simply, Japanese officials who used water boarding during WWII were prosecuted and found guilty for committing war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials. What the Bush administration’s torture memos did, of course, was to torture the law until interrogators could use any abusive technique Bush, Cheney, & Rumsfeld wanted to authorize.

Defining torture out of existence, by insisting all practices that didn’t lead directly to organ failure or death were acceptable, is the epitome of moral vacuity and evasiveness. In essence, Bush & Cheney thought they could evade moral culpability through legal locutions and hairsplitting: Sure, water boarding is fine, just as long as the water temperature isn’t too hot or cold, and the victim has a pillow, and is tied down with nylon rope that he doesn’t burn his wrists.

Bush & Cheney are intent on evading responsibility in a no less cowardly way. For years they have feigned outrage at lower-level military personnel for committing abuses that they in fact authorized. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice not only lied when they insisted the U.S. did not utilize torture. They lied in the most self-serving way by allowing low-level military personnel to pay the price for the crimes they knowingly sanctioned. The way Bush and Cheney evaded military service in Vietnam was less than honorable; the way Bush & Cheney are evading responsibility for the abusive techniques they authorized is cowardly and despicable.

The release of the torture memos indisputably show that top administration officials – including the president himself – repeatedly lied to the American people. Their deceptions were not aimed at protecting national security, but avoiding responsibility for policies they knew crossed the line into war crimes.

Sphere: Related Content

The Torture Memos

“Are thumbs fingers?” The question is posed by an obtuse but efficient Nazi interrogator in the film version of “The English Patient.” The scene jumped into my mind as I pondered the tortured legal locutions the Bush administration concocted to justify interrogation techniques that went out of style in most of the civilized world following the Inquisition.

Apologists for the Bush administration, of course, would prefer that these torture memos never saw the light of day. They claim self-servingly, that revealing the “legal rationales” behind the Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation” methods can only aid the enemy. In truth, the Bush administration’s harsh interrogation methods were never as effective as advertised. However, the administration’s defenders do have a point; the memos are such a complete legal, logical, and moral embarrassment that their publication amounts to a propaganda victory for al-Qaeda.

The Justice Department has long since repudiated the shoddy legal opinions devised by Bush’s Three Legal Stooges, John Yoo, David Addington, and Alberto Gonzales. They are viewed as cranks by their peers and pariahs by the international community. It is probably only a matter of time before they face prosecution for providing the legal rationale for war crimes.

Many conservatives are apoplectic because they believe legitimate policy differences are being criminalized. This view does not hold up to scrutiny. Simply put, the Bush administration’s lawyers were not looking to the law for guidance; they were looking for ways around the law. Incidentally, the same perversion of justice was at work in the legal rationalizations that culminated in the debacle of Bush vs. Gore, and the run-up to the Iraq War for that matter. In each case, the “legal principles” involved functioned as a blunt extension of political power, rather than as objective standards. This is a pretty cynical approach to the law.

The same ad hoc quality that infects the Bush administration’s quasi-legal reasoning is on display by those who insist torture techniques are what kept America safe since 9/11. Bush’s speechwriter, Marc A. Theissen, writing in the Washington Post for instance, insists that “without enhanced interrogations, there could be a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New York.” What Thiessen fails to mention, however, is that torture also led to “intelligence” that apparently “confirmed” the Bush administration’s preconception that Saddam possessed WMD. In other words, torture also helped lead the United States into a strategic debacle. This illustrates what most counterterrorism experts believe is the fatal flaw from using torture: It is exceeding difficult to distinguish bad information from good. Too often, interrogators who use torture will hear what they want to hear.

Theissen goes on to cite the “success” of using harsh interrogation methods on Abu Zubaydah. However, it is now clear that President Bush overstated the importance of Zubaydah and the information he apparently divulged after being tortured. As the Post’s Eugene Robinson notes, Zubaydah was hardly the pivotal figure the administration claimed he was. And the “vital information” Zubaydah provided after being tortured was in fact information that was already known to the intelligence community from other sources.

The Bush administration has deservedly acquired a reputation for concocting self-serving ad hoc rationalizations: America has not been attacked since 9/11, so naturally it must be because we employed enhanced interrogation methods. To paraphrase Bush’s CIA director, Michael Haydn, enhanced interrogations were done according to the best legal advice available at the time, and those methods worked.

The first part of Haydn’s conclusion is patently ridiculous; even the Bush administration has repudiated the early legal memos that supposedly legitimated the president’s authority to order techniques like water boarding. That tells you how shoddy and scholarly deficient they were. However, it’s no surprise that torture can yield important intelligence. The real question, of course, is this: Could legal interrogation techniques have yielded the same or better results? Members of the Bush administration say no, but most counterterrorism experts insist torture is counterproductive in the long-term.

There are good reasons to side with the vast majority of counterterrorism experts on this one. To begin with, the appalling level of deliberation the Bush administration engaged in prior to authorizing enhanced interrogation methods provides no confidence alternatives were debated or even discussed. As with the decision to invade Iraq, dissension was virtually non-existent, and top administration figures simply chose a course of action and then charged underlings with finding a way to legitimate and rationalize a foregone conclusion.

George Bush believed in a leadership style in which displays of strength and success would breed legitimacy. He got it backwards; legitimacy is what leads to strength and success. Simply put, George Bush and his policies have weakened America precisely because they lacked legitimacy. There is a common thread linking the corrupt decision of Bush vs. Gore, the corruption of the intelligence gathering process that led to the Iraq War, the corruption on Wall Street, and the corruption of American ideals that bred the torture scandals of Abu Ghraib and elsewhere; in each case objective standards of decision-making, rationality and accountability were discarded to meet the self-serving interests of those who wielded power.

To be sure, many of the minions who served Bush believed they were protecting America when they justified the use of torture. Let there be no doubt, however; they were not safeguarding America’s ideals or values. America was founded on the principle that all individuals are endowed through Natural Law with certain inalienable rights. These are rights that no sovereign or government can grant or take away without due process of law. The Bush administration, however, made the preposterous and indefensible argument that a single individual -- the commander-in-chief -- could effectively strip any individual of their right to due process under the Constitution, the Geneva Convention, or virtually any meaningful legal framework whatsoever. Anyone who challenged this perverse perspective was accused of caring more about the rights of terrorists than the safety of America’s citizens. This is pure demagoguery that rests on fallacy of a false choice.

Statecraft is an art, not a science. Though torture is odious, there may be some limited instances where its use can be justified. If it is necessary to torture a suspect to save a city, then those circumstances should count heavily as mitigating circumstances when those officials are prosecuted. If I were a judge, prosecutor, or juror in such a case, then I’d recommend only a token sentence if the defendants are found guilty. The bright lines civilization has drawn against torture should not be erased by third-rate legal scriveners. After all, the institutionalization of torture is bound to corrupt the body politic as the practice brutalizes and desensitizes those who use and rationalize it. The practice has certainly demoralized Americans, inflamed our adversaries, and delegitimized America in the eyes of the world. When the debate descends to whether thumbs are fingers, well, that’s an indication that things have gone seriously wrong.

Sphere: Related Content

Bush Kept us Safe?

Osama bin Laden once noted, "Americans may have the watches, but Arabs have the time." As the clock wound down on President Bush's tenure many of the administration's apologists were quick note that there were no further attacks on American soil in the 2,688 days following 9/11. This is a welcome fact. And I hope historians and future generations will find that for all his faults, President Bush did do some things right. However, it is dangerously simplistic to assume that 2,688 without an attack should count as evidence in favor of Bush's counter terrorism policies.

In his book The Black Swan authorNassim Taleb, a philosopher and statistician who studies improbable events, relates the parable of the turkey who takes each day he is fed and cared as further evidence that the farmer loves him. The turkey's inductive reasoning seems sounder and sounder every day of the year, until Thanksgiving.

Marc A. Thiessen, chief speechwriter for President Bush, is the kind of figure Taleb would likely call a turkey. Writing in the Washington Post, Thiessen cites the 2,688 day figure and then fallaciously deduces that if there is another attack it will be because an Obama Administration weakened the Bush administration's "enhanced interrogation" policy and other counterterrorism methods.

Thiessen's logic fails on so many levels that it's easy to see how such defective thinking contributed to one of the worst administration's in American history. To begin with, al-Qaeda and other Arab terror organizations operate according to a vastly different time-frame than we do in the West. Put simply, al-Qaeda and it like-minded affiliates are thinking in terms of generations and centuries, while much of America's political class are thinking in terms of election cycles. Insisting a relatively narrow sliver of time without an attack constitutes evidence of success (in a war that Bush himself said will be a generational affair) is not all that different from a turkey crowing "Mission Accomplished" right after feeding time.

Basically, the 2,688 days without an attack spiel is little more than a demagogic ploy, the political equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig. A more accurate slogan might go like this: At least Bush kept us safe and secure, excepting for 9/11, Katrina, and the financial meltdown.

Arguing that "enhanced interrogation" methods have kept America safe is patently bogus too. To begin with, "enhanced interrogation" is nothing but a euphemism for torture. The Bush administration resorted to legal sophistry in its Alice in Wonderland interpretation of the Constitution, leading it to define torture in terms so narrow that the concept no longer had any practical meaning. President Obama has brought some much needed moral clarity to the issue by insisting that the Army Field Manual and the Geneva Conventions will govern how detainees in U.S. custody are treated.

Thiessen claims torture works. Undoubtedly, in some cases this is true. But most counterterrorism experts agree that torture frequently leads to false confessions. When torture is involved, it is exceedingly difficult to sort out good information from bad. Indeed, some of the "evidence" the Bush administration used to substantiate its case that Saddam possessed WMD was gleaned through torture. It may be true that torture has prevented attacks, but torture also helped lead to the foolish war with Iraq. Ironically, the subsequent torture and abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib will in all likelihood help breed a new generation of jihadists determined to attack the United States.

Torture also brutalizes, desensitizes, and corrupts the personnel and the institutions that resort to barbarism to extract information. The America people correctly sensed that dispensing with our values, as the Bush administration most assuredly did, would not lead to greater security over the long haul. Put simply, the Bush administration's radical departure from America's traditional ideals regarding the humane treatment of prisoners sapped American morale and expanded the ranks of our enemies.

Theissen's most outrageous fallacy is his claim that if there is a future attack during Obama's tenure, then the fault will lay with his administration. This is typical of the divisive fear mongering the American people are rightly revolted with following eight years of Bush's political demagoguery. If there is another attack, then the blame will lie with those who carried out the attack. America will need to come together to work towards the common purpose of defeating our enemies. Pointing fingers to score political points will be a recipe for self-defeat. There was a moment after 9/11 when President Bush had the goodwill and trust of the American people behind him, but he blew it.

The claim that Bush's extra-legal policies kept the polis safe are not dissimilar to an athlete using steroids who insists a great run is proof of his fitness. Over time, the extra legal techniques of torture will weaken the body politic, just as steroids will weaken the athlete's body. America is a less resilient country because of Bush's policies. The American people were right to reject the self-defeating policies of Bush/Cheney

Sphere: Related Content

Senator Al Franken

America owes an incalculable debt to President George W. Bush. Indeed, the mountain of red ink the Bush administration has piled up on our behalf would make Everest seem like a molehill in comparison. However, Bush's legacy is not entirely awful. After all, no one has done more to discredit the Republican Party than Bush, which has paved the way for a permanent Democratic majority.

The anti-Bush backlash probably helped elect comedian Al Franken to the Senate. Franken, fittingly, trailed his opponent Norm Coleman on election night, but has since prevailed in the recount. The idea of sending the Saturday Live alumni to the nation's highest deliberative body once seemed like a bad joke to the reactionary-right, but it seems the ultra-liberal Franken is poised to have the last laugh.

The Minnesota recount was far from perfect, but it appears to have been a process that respected the will of the voters by striving to ascertain the most accurate vote tally possible. The legal process is still playing out; Coleman is entitled to a final appeal that could drag on some weeks, but the principle of a examining every ballot in exceedingly close elections has been vindicated. After all, if the interests of expediency had triumphed on election night, then the wrong man would have been sworn in and the will of the electorate would have been nullified.

Of course, this is precisely what happened eight years ago when Bush succeeded in shutting down a perfectly legal and entirely appropriate recount in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential contest. At the time, Bush vs. Gore was seen for what it was: a legally dubious and blatantly political decision that was unworthy of the Supreme Court. The subsequent colossal failure of the Bush administration will only serve to reinforce the verdict the Bush v. Gore was a horrendous miscarriage of justice.

The recount process in Minnesota appears to have been transparent and fair. Eight years ago, George W. Bush made a fateful choice in response to a cloudy election: he would rather "win" in an unfair process than risk losing in a fair process. His campaign did everything it could to impede and discredit a process that would have conferred legitimacy on whoever prevailed.

It was right to view Bush's victory as illegitimate. The wrong man was sworn in and the nation has paid a huge price ever since. The verdict of history will be harsh on Forty-three, and on Majority that arrogantly overturned the judgment of the American people and replaced it with their own myopic preference. Still, it's only fair to thank Bush for his help in bringing about a Democratic majority. And if I could say just one thing to the President as he leaves office it would be this: "Don't let the door hit you too hard on the way out, sir."

Sphere: Related Content

Bush and the Black Swan

For eight years, George W. Bush has tortured the axis-of-information – language, truth, and logic – yet reality steadfastly refuses to yield to his delusions. Bush has overseen the destruction of New Orleans, Iraq, the U.S. economy, America's credibility, and the Republican Party, but he ludicrously clings to the vain hope that history will overturn the verdict the American people have arrived at: namely, that the Bush administration has been a colossal failure.

Bush admits no doubt. His absolute certainty is façade that conceals his ignorance. This admixture of arrogance and ignorance has proven to be central to Bush's downfall. For Bush, doubt is a weakness. For the wise, embracing doubt and uncertainty is the beginning of wisdom. After all, Socrates was the wisest man in Athens precisely because he acknowledged the gaps in his knowledge.

Bush's confidence that he'll be vindicated by history is shallow, self-serving, and incoherent. Bush has been parroting the lame talking point that if historians are still debating George Washington's legacy, then it's way too early to speculate about Forty-three's legacy. Bush has a point; it is within the realm of possibility that future historians will view Bush's mishandling of Katrina, the botched reconstruction of Iraq, and the economic meltdown as an axis-of-triumphs, but the odds of this are vanishingly small.

We recognize Washington as a great leader who made many wise decisions: 1) He adamantly rejected torture. 2) He wisely recognized that the best way to defeat the British was to avoid engaging them directly. And 3) he harbored a deep suspicion towards unfettered executive power. Simply put, Washington's instincts seem diametrically opposed to Bush's (and the results appear to speak for themselves).

Another of Bush's feeble talking points is the notion that at least he's kept us safe since 9/11. "Since 9/11," of course, happens to be one heck of a qualifier, especially given that Bush spent the weeks prior to the worst terror attacks on American soil blissfully ensconced at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, dismissing and ignoring intelligence briefings warning that al-Qaeda was preparing to strike the homeland.

9/11, of course, is a prime example of what the philosopher/statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb terms a black swan
– a highly improbable event that entails massive consequences. By their nature, black swans are singular, seismic, unpredictable, and history altering occurrences. As a species, humans are not particularly good at forecasting and preparing for the unexpected. We tend to assume that tomorrow will be like today and that next week will be like this week, and so on. In other words, we infer that the future will resemble the past.

We also tend to deduce, incorrectly, that the next black swan will resemble a previous black swan. After a rare but devastating earthquake, for instance, it's only human nature to expect the next disaster will be an earthquake. However, the next black swan is invariably something nobody anticipated.

The Bush administration never saw the black swan of 9/11 coming, at least in part, because so many of its key figures were trapped in a tunnel vision mindset that was incapable of imagining that non-state actors could pose a significant national security threat. It then assumed that the United States was facing a new wave of unconventional attacks from rogue states like Iraq. In other words, it failed to connect the dots that might have prevented 9/11. And then it connected dots where it shouldn't have – i.e., between Iraq and a future 9/11.

Bush and his defenders claim that everyone expected that we'd be hit again following 9/11, but since we haven't then it can't be an accident. Therefore, the syllogism concludes, Bush deserves extraordinary credit. In fairness, the president and his national security team undoubtedly devote a great deal of time and effort trying to safeguard the public from a variety of threats. One of Bush's far-sighted initiatives is a program to combat the AIDS epidemic in Africa, which is a sensible way of reducing the chances of an international pandemic while simultaneously mitigating the kind of misery that breeds the chaos that feeds civil wars, terrorism, etc.

By and large, however, Bush's gloating about preventing another attack falls into the same category as "mission accomplished" and "bring em' on" – it's premature and irresponsible in so far as it practically invites an attack. Al-Qaeda does not operate according to a Western timeframe; eight years is an eternity according to America's political calendar, but the jihadists are thinking in terms of decades and centuries. The invasion of Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo has probably helped recruit more terrorists than the Bush administration has been able to kill. Bush as almost certainly inadvertently helped spawn a new generation of dark birds of prey bent on devising the kind of monstrous surprises narrow-minded men and conventional thinkers can scarcely imagine.

Sphere: Related Content

Top Ten Reasons Bush is NOT to Blame for America’s Economic Meltdown

10). “It was that major league a-hole, Dick Cheney, who absolutely, positively assured me “Deficits don’t matter.”” – G.W.B

9). “Wall Street got drunk, drove into a ditch, and totaled America’s economic engine. And for that, you blame the bartender? I don’t think so.” – Barbara Bush

8). “I think it’s fair to say that George Jr. is not responsible for anything.” -- George H.W. Bush on truth serum

7). “Bush is already responsible for the debacle in Iraq, Katrina, global warming, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo. Blaming him for the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression as well would seem to me to be too much for any one individual to bear.” – Dr. Phil

6). “We are in a crisis mode here, but it would be a mistake . . . and we can’t blink on this . . . because we couldn’t see Russia from our backyard if we did . . . but it would a mistake to blame the current economic meltdown on either global warming or the Bush Doctrine.” -- Governor Sarah Palin

5). “Taxpayers will come out ahead on this fifty or sixty years from now on account of the fact that my administration led the way in burying the Death Tax.” -- Dubya

4). “Capitalism is nothing more than socialism for the rich. The current crisis is simply the inevitability of historical forces engaged in a dialectical process that seeks to reconcile opposing ideologies on a higher plane. President Bush is merely a cog in a predestined historical process through which tragedy and farce are synthesized” -- Groucho Marx

3). Bush has super-duper secret plan to wager $700 billion of bailout money in on-line poker competition against China, North Korea, and Iran. The president is absolutely 100% certain that he’ll win enough money to save the economy.

2). “Where there is crisis, there is opportunity.” – Chinese fortune cookie Bush got at the Beijing Olympics.

1). 53 million Americans voted for a bozo like Bush, a candidate who peddled his economic snake oil with slogans like, “It’s your money, you paid for it.” If you voted for our nincompoop-in chief, then I think it’s fair to say this joke is at your expense.

Sphere: Related Content

Panic in the Street -- The Wall Street Meltdown

Wall Street is melting faster than the polar icecaps. Savings and retirement accounts are evaporating faster than an ice cube in a microwave. America’s wealth is being siphoned off quicker than a keg of beer at a frat house. George W. Bush’s party is almost over, but the national hangover is just beginning.

As George Soros observed, we are entering one of the intensive periods of wealth destruction since the Great Depression. The value of the dollar is plummeting, inflation is rising, economic growth is stagnating, unemployment is increasing, and the stock market is tumbling.

History will probably blame all this on George W. Bush, but in fairness he’s only part of the problem. Besides, Forty-three will have to shoulder responsibility for the Iraq debacle, the bungled response to Katrina, the torture and abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the failure to recognize and respond to the challenge of global warming, and the unraveling of the Republican Party. There’s only so much blame one person can handle.

Still, the unfolding financial catastrophe represents the complete discrediting of the economic philosophy of conservative Republicans like Bush. Supply side economics (the notion that tax cuts are self-financing) and Laissez-faire economics (the idea that markets are self-regulating and self-correcting) are as officially defunct as Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Lehman Brothers.

Everyone likes tax cuts and rebate checks. But if you cut taxes and fail to cut spending you increase the deficit, which amounts to a tax increase on future generations. Rebate checks are nice too, but there are only two ways the government can afford to send you money: 1) borrow or 2) raise taxes. If you think about it, George W. Bush really made sense when he justified his tax cut plan by saying, “It’s your money, you paid for it.”

George W. Bush has presided over the weakest economic and jobs growth rates in decades. To put things in perspective, Bill Clinton presided over an economy that created over 20 million new jobs while George Bush’s administration as presided over just 5 million jobs created. Of course, Clinton’s exceptional jobs creation numbers were achieved while he raised taxes and balanced the budget. Bush, on the other hand, inherited a budget surplus and managed to turn it into the largest deficit in history.

Thanks to the Bush administration, America now owes a trillion or two (or three) to pay for the Iraq War. America is on the hook for a couple of trillion from assuming the obligations of Fannie May and Freddie Mac. And let’s not forget the expense of Bush’s Medicare package, a corporate welfare boondoggle that should cost taxpayers another trillion or two. Hey, a trillion here and a trillion there. Pretty soon we’re talking about real money.

The myth of the free markets has obscured a predatory form of crony-capitalism where government insiders steer corporate benefactors to the public trough. Enron was just the canary in the coalmine. George W. Bush has cannibalized America with his socialism for the rich policies.

Sphere: Related Content

Sarah Palin -- Not Ready for Primetime

The only difference between Sarah Palin and George W. Bush is lipstick. Actually, that’s not entirely fair to the president, since he presumably knows what the Bush Doctrine is. In fairness to Sarah Plain, however, there have been five Bush Doctrines: 1) America’s right to engage in preventive war, 2) America’s right to act unilaterally, 3) America’s right to establish a Pax Americana, and 4) America’s duty to spread liberty across the Middle East. Ok, off the top of my head I can only name four out of the five Bush Doctrines, but then I’m not running for Vice-President. However, some of my friends think I should run for high office, especially since I can see the Russian coastline from my backyard, which is pretty impressive since I live in Connecticut.

Watching Sarah Palin’s interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson left me with the feeling that America has long since slipped into a Twilight Zone where the lunatics will be running the asylum for the duration. Palin, of course, showed plenty of grit and gumption in her one-on-one, but no gravitas. She’s clearly smart, but her vacuity on foreign affairs was disconcerting to say the least. As David Brooks of the NYT noted, Palin has tendency to use decisiveness to cover up for her lack of knowledge and experience. This is precisely the same defect that has gotten the current occupant of the Oval Office into so much trouble.

Palin shares another character trait with the much reviled and discredited Bush; both have displayed a glib and even cavalier attitude towards war. One can debate whether including the Ukraine and Georgia in NATO makes strategic sense for the United States, but it was unsettling to see the ease with which Plain accepted and espoused logic that could commit the U.S. to war with Russia. She also seemed unperturbed by the thought that Israel might take unilateral against Iran without consulting the United States, action which would have profound implications for America’s foreign policy and national security.

Palin is clearly not ready for primetime. Just a few weeks ago McCain was lambasting Obama as a celebrity, but the geriatric Senator has clearly pinned his presidential hopes to a political glamour queen. The country is facing a financial meltdown – both on Main Street and Wall Street – severe weather patterns associated with climate change, two protracted and indecisive wars, and the prospect that terror groups like al-Qaeda will acquire WMD. But it seems that throwing in a few cosmetic changes is all that it will take to convince tens of millions of citizens to vote for Bush redux.

Sphere: Related Content

Russian Offensive Against Georgia

In 1990, following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, the first President Bush (George H.W. Bush) worked with his Soviet counterpart (Mikhail Gorbachev) to roll back the dictator’s unprovoked aggression. With the Cold War over, the elder (and wiser) Bush viewed Saddam’s invasion as an opportunity to establish a precedent whereby the United States (and other responsible powers) would establish and enforce international norms aimed at creating and sustaining a more peaceful and stable world order. Chief among these standards, Bush argued, was the basic principle that the world community could not sit back and allow predatory regimes to violate the sovereignty of weaker states without inviting anarchy.

The senior Bush’s “new world order” was much derided at the time, particularly among paleoconservatives who thought international law was for wimps. But the logic and wisdom of Bush’s concept was rooted in ethical and political precedents that had a proven track record (compared to the alternatives) of engendering a more peaceful global order – i.e., the Treaty of Westphalia and FDR’s vision of the United Nations as a arbiter of international disputes.

It is one of history’s ironies George W. Bush has simultaneously undone his father’s legacy while proving the wisdom of it. Bush Junior’s invasion of Iraq, of course, was a not too subtle repudiation of everything the realists in the first Bush administration (Bush Sr., Brent Scowcroft, and James Baker) stood for, such as building a consensus among allies and establishing legitimacy by working through international institutions. Bush Jr., and the neoconservative idealists that steered him into the disaster of a “preventive” war to remake Iraq, in contrast, extolled the virtues of imperial hegemony, unilateralism, and the doctrine that might makes right. Their attitude at the time could be summed up by the ancient Roman dictum, “let them hate us so long as they fear us.”

The war in Iraq has brought about the worst of all possible worlds; the United States is neither liked nor respected. Russia’s invasion of neighboring Georgia – timed as it was while George W. Bush was attending the Olympic ceremonies with his buddy Vladimir Putin -- is symptomatic of how little respect the cagey Russian leadership has for the lame duck Bush. With the U.S. tied down in two inconclusive, mismanaged, and immensely draining wars the Bush administration can ill afford to open up another front by defending Georgia. As a result, Bush’s rhetoric about defending and spreading democracy will soon ring even more hollow as the administration is viewed as impotent by Eastern Europeans and others.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia may be viewed as ironic extension of Bush’s doctrine of preemption. In this case, Russia’s aggression was meant to preempt Georgia’s inclusion in NATO, which would have obligated a NATO response to Russia’s invasion. The Russian gambit, of course, is of great geo-strategic significance. After all, a crucial oil-pipeline passes through Georgia, and a pro-Western government in that country will help to contain an increasingly authoritarian Russia. Conversely, Russian autocrats would dearly love to reverse what they view as Washington’s (through NATO) encroachment on their sphere of influence.

For those of us who opposed the Iraq War -- on the grounds that the Bush administration’s unilateralism would weaken America’s position strategically and set the stage for resource wars -- the Russia-Georgia conflict may be a prelude of things to come.

Sphere: Related Content

The Conservative Meltdown

The conservative movement is melting faster than the polar ice caps. Speaking of which, a seven square mile chunk of ice just broke off from an arctic glacier the other day. But global warming is hardly the only issue that conservative curmudgeons have mussed up. The Republican establishment has virtually imploded thanks to its incestuous relationships with corrupt lobbyists, rampant sexual hypocrisy among the rank and file of the supposed “values” Party, and the bankruptcy of its economic and social ideologies.

Katrina, Iraq, and the looming Bush Recession. Talk about an axis-of-evils. There’s an overwhelming consensus that when Bush finally leaves office he’ll bequeath his successor the most formidable set of foreign and domestic challenges since Herbert Hoover dropped the Great Depression on to FDR’s lap.

Republican stalwart Phil Graam, until recently McCain’s economic advisor, contends America is in a “mental recession.” But by any measure America’s economic outlook has been pretty bleak of late. After all, the economy has shed jobs seven straight months and the United States is drowning in red ink. Indeed, impending bailout of mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae will effectively double the size of America’s debt obligations virtually overnight.

The fiasco at the heart of Freddie and Fannie is symptomatic of how the Bush administration mortgaged America’s future to pay for yesterday’s tax cuts, which mainly benefited those who benefited the most from rigging the system to their advantage. On the assumption that some institutions are too important to fail (i.e., institutions that spend hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbyists) America’s taxpayers will be expected bailout foreign investors who bought bad loans (in the form of complex financial instruments) peddled by Wall Street.

Here’s the essence of the problem: the collateralized debt obligations the financial wizards packaged and sold to foreign interests have proven to be as toxic as the dog food the Chinese sell to us with the money we borrow from them. If the American taxpayer doesn’t make good on their losses, then they’ll stop lending us money and interest rates will soar.

Sure, the apple juice the Chinese sell us tastes like radiator fluid, but if foreign creditors like China stop lending us money we won’t be able to afford to buy gasoline from regimes that hate us. The whole economic order will collapse and the United States will descend into a Hobbesian nightmare where life is “short, nasty, and brutish.” Oddly enough, this brings me to Dick Cheney, architect of the Bush administration’s “enhanced” interrogation policy. Enhanced interrogation, of course, is a euphemism for the torture techniques perfected during the Dark Ages by inquisitors and witch hunters.

The civilized world has equated torture as barbarism ever since the Geneva Conventions were ratified. The United States was a signatory and the custodian of that treaty, until George W. Bush unilaterally (and unlawfully) cast them aside as “quaint” relics of a bygone era. In doing so he ignored the advice of counter terrorism officials, law enforcement experts, and human rights activists. Put simply, the experts recognized that torture yields false confessions at least as often as valuable intelligence, as detainees tell their captors what they think they want to hear in order to stop the pain. The case of Ibn al-Shaykh al Libi, for instance, is instructive; after being tortured, al-Libi told his captors that Saddam was in cahoots with bin Laden. In other words, it wasn’t just the Bush administration’s tortured reasoning that brought about the strategic blunder of Iraq.

There is an insidious connection between the Bush administration’s moral bankruptcy and America’s dire economic predicament. The administration has treated laws, regulations, and oversight as impediments to the brute exercise of force. Indeed, with Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, and John Yoo (the infamous trio who crafted Bush’s torture memos) the law was parsed and twisted so finely that the barbarism associated with the Middle Ages was codified and bureaucratized for the 21st century. Simply put, they provided the veneer of legality for criminal acts. Such mediocre political hacks, of course, have been the rule rather than the exception in the Bush administration. Their legal contortions have since been rejected multiple times by the Supreme Court, but the damage to America’s reputation has been as damaging as the images the world saw in the aftermath of the Bush administration’s shameful response to Katrina.

The conservative movement has squandered America’s economic, intellectual, and moral capital at a time when environmental, financial, and military challenges are mounting exponentially. It’s not hard to see where the Bush administration went wrong. Torture and preventive war cannot serve as the basis for a sound national security policy. Rigid ideological assumptions, like the ones that treated the scientific evidence of global warming as a hoax, or the ones that insisted that less taxes and less regulation always led to economic growth, are invariably pernicious. Support for the conservative movement has evaporated, in no small measure because it has been so radically wrong.

Sphere: Related Content

Torture and the Soul of the Nation

In the wake of 9/11 George W. Bush unilaterally scrapped the Geneva Conventions. The decision, which amounted to a lawless power grab, has proven to be one of the most fateful and pernicious choices made by an administration identified almost exclusively its colossal blunders. There is now no doubt that Bush’s executive overreach has led directly to a systematic pattern of human rights abuses so appalling that it rivals the war crimes perpetrated by the Nazis and the Japanese during the Second World War. That the United States, a signatory and custodian of Geneva Conventions, effectively bureaucratized torture and sadism under the Bush administration, must rank as one of the greatest tragedies in our nation’s history.

For more than two centuries, the United States distinguished itself by rejecting the brutalizing and abusive treatment of prisoners of war. George Washington, for instance, insisted that the Continental Army would not stoop to the barbarous and inhumane treatment meted out by British soldiers and Hessian mercenaries. Scholars and historians universally recognize Washington’s stand against torture was not just a moral gesture; it was a shrewd calculation that brutality undermines discipline in the ranks and strengthens the resolve of adversaries.

Following WWII, the United States led the effort to develop the Geneva Conventions so that the treaty covered every aspect of warfare. Embraced by the entire civilized world the treaty was the law of the land until George W. Bush decreed otherwise. His decision was not debated or subject to a formal policy review. Indeed, Dick Cheney and the vice-president’s top aides circumvented normal policy-review channels and simply had the historically illiterate president sign off on what would euphemistically be called “enhanced” interrogation techniques.

In an Orwellian twist, Bush claimed that although the Geneva Conventions were no longer law, nevertheless the United States would still abide by them as a matter of policy. His assurances would prove false, big time. The “special” interrogation methods employed systematically by the administration included: sexual humiliation, sleep and sensory depravation, waterboarding, numerous other techniques designed to induce extreme stress and discomfort. By any standard – the Geneva Convention, the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, and U.S law – these methods constituted torture. However, legal goons allied with the vice-president, most notoriously David Addington and John Yoo, concocted such a narrow definition of torture -- only procedures that led to pain associated with death and organ failure would be considered torture -- that the administration effectively codified the kind of irrational barbarism one normally associated with the Inquisition or the Salem witch trials.

Times columnist Anthony Lewis has rightly characterized the legal guidance Bush was given to the kind of advice a Mafia don would get from his concilierge on how to stay out of prison. Indeed, most of the infamous legal memos have an Alice in Wonderland quality in so far as they attempt to stretch language and push logic beyond the breaking point. Needless to say, the loopholes the Bush administration created were used to asphyxiate far more than common sense.
Harsh interrogation methods, the Bush administration assured the public, were necessary to deal with terrorists. Most counter terrorism experts agree, however, that physically and psychologically coercive techniques are more likely to lead to unreliable intelligence than good information. For instance, the Bush administration adopted techniques used by the Communists designed to break the will of interviewees. But the Communists had only been interested in eliciting false confessions, which they used at show trials, rather than truthful confessions.

It is now clear, contrary to the Bush administration’s claims, the much of the so-called “intelligence” gleaned from coercive interrogations is of the false confession category. In one notorious case, for example, a supposedly high level al-Qaeda figure, Ibn al-Shaykh al Libi, admitted after being tortured that he knew of links between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden. In reality, al-Libi was a comparatively small fish that simply told interrogators what they wanted to hear in order to stop the abuse he was undergoing. President Bush cited al-Libi’s confession as proof for going after Saddam. The Iraq War, in other words, was at least partially a product of a demonstrably false confession.

The corruption of law and language has led inextricably to a degeneration of decency and morality on the part of our elected leaders, civic officials, and military personnel. Those charged with protecting our values have donned black hoods, treated detainees like dogs, and forced prisoners under their supervision to perform unspeakable acts. The origins of such abuses stem directly from Bush’s directive that “enemy combatants” constitute a class of un-persons not subject to even the most rudimentary traditional legal safeguards.

The Supreme Court has since slapped down the administration’s brazen assertion of unfettered executive authority. But there are still a great many hard-line conservatives that believe affording terror suspects any legal protections whatsoever is scandalous. They are mistaken. As Alberto Mora, former General Counsel of the U.S Navy, puts it “The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America.” If we try and carve out exceptions, Mora goes on to note, the Constitution crumbles. That, in essence, is why the Bush administration’s policies, in so far as they have condoned and sanctioned torture, have been so inimical and corrosive of our values.

Sphere: Related Content

The Bush Administration Announces Capture of Bin Laden

(AP) – April 1st 2008

In a stunning development, the White House announced today the capture of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. The apprehension of the world’s most wanted terrorist marks an extraordinary reversal for the Bush administration, which has drawn considerable flack over its handling of the war on terror, the economy, and the conflict in Iraq. Supporters of President Bush are hailing the capture as a “masterstroke.” And new details are emerging that are sure to change the perception Americans have of their president, who has endured historically low approval ratings while being maligned by critics as an “incompetent bungler.”

Bush’s image is certain to change as White House officials are confirming that the President personally commanded the Special Forces team that tracked bin Laden to his mountain lair, and then executed the daring daylight raid that captured the notorious evil doer. Indeed, in perhaps the most extraordinary twist of this amazing turn of events, it has been established that the “President Bush” who has governed in Washington since September 29th, 2001 – the president Americans have come to loath, despise, and revile – is actually a double. In fact, while Bush’s stand-in was donning a flight suit, bungling Katrina, and mishandling Iraq the real President Bush has been doggedly leading a crack team of Green Berets as they tracked the most notorious terrorist through some of the challenging and treacherous mountain biking terrain in the world.

Harry Smitten Jr., the versatile character actor who impersonated a seemingly hapless President Bush – “the role of a lifetime,” as he described it – bore such a close physical resemblance to the actual President Bush that not even the First Lady noticed the difference. Indeed, the ruse was so top-secret the president’s father, George H.W. Bush, wasn’t privy to the deception either. “He seemed a little clueless when it came to fly-fishing, golf, and horseshoes,” the elder Bush confessed. “Heck, I can’t tell you how many times he poked me in the eye with his fishing pole, shanked a drive, or drove into a ditch with the golf cart. “But I chalked it up to the immense pressures of being Commander-in-Chief. Gosh dang if this whole thing doesn’t put a lump in a dad’s throat. God bless my boy. And God bless America, now that we don’t have to worry about Obama anymore”

Grainy video of bin Laden’s capture quickly made it on to Youtube, providing incontrovertible proof of Bush’s success in bringing America’s most wanted fugitive to justice. The clip, which has already attracted nearly as many viewers as Brittany Spears’ latest breakdown, shows the real President Bush in combat fatigues single-handedly wrestling bin Laden to the ground in a dank cave. A spokesperson for al-Qaeda confirmed the authenticity of the video, but accused Bush of using an “illegal chokehold.” An administration official disagreed, insisting that the chokehold was legal in both the WWF and the UFC. The official later released a secret Justice Department memo, signed by former Attorney General Gonzales, which officially scrapped the Marquis of Queensbury rules that govern hand-to-hand combat involving a head of state and enemy combatants. Gonzales dismissed the Marquis of Queensbury rules as “quaint” in signing off in favor of the no-holds barred “rules” associated with ex-cons using mixed martial arts in cage fighting as seen on Pay Per View.

The dramatic circumstances surroundings bin Laden’s capture is certain to alter the political landscape. Already, Hillary is ducking for cover and Obama is taking legal steps to have his name changed to Michael Jackson. Not surprisingly, Bush’s approval ratings have soared and the Dow Jones greeted the news by rising 1,200 points minutes after Martha Stewart rang the opening bell on Wall Street. “This is the end of the Bush Recession,” quipped one market analyst, who predicted that paper gains in the stock market would soon wipe out losses in the housing market. Likewise, military experts now foresee a quick resolution to the situation Iraq as Al Sadr, the Sunni insurgents, the Shiite militias, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recognize that they are no longer up against the most incompetent military commander since George Armstrong Custer.

Presidential scholars, too, are marveling at the stunning turnaround in Bush’s reputation. As historian Doris Kearns Goodwin put it, “Here’s a guy who looked for all the world like the biggest loser in American presidential history, but then suddenly the country realizes we’ve witnessed one of the most audacious cover-ups and successful character reversals that ever played out on the world stage. George W. Bush is certain to go down in history as one of the boldest, most creative, and beloved presidents in American history.” And what does Harry Smitten Jr., the actor who played his part to perfection as a bumbling boob of a president have to say about his role in all of this? Mr. Smitten didn’t have any immediate comment, except to wish everyone a happy April Fool’s Day

Sphere: Related Content

Is the Surge Really Working?

The surge in Iraq may be succeeding (at least on a superficial tactical level) but America is sinking thanks to the strategic ineptitude of the Bush administration. John McCain, according to the Washington Post’s Michael Gerson, is close to clinching the Republican nomination because he courageously embraced Bush’s troop surge, and now that unpopular decision, Gerson argues, is in the process of being vindicated.

To be sure, any reduction in violence is a welcome sign, but the notion that the United States is achieving momentum towards “victory” reflects a tragic misunderstanding on part of Republicans. The United States could eventually achieve stability in Iraq, but at this stage any victory is likely to prove phyrric. That is, any “benefits” will amount to averting and mitigating consequences and potential worst-case scenarios set in motion by the ill-considered invasion and disastrously managed occupation itself. Stabilizing Iraq may have at best a neutral impact on global terrorism, though in all-likelihood America’s presence in region will be a rallying cry for jihadists for decades to come. Put simply, Iraq became the spawning ground for a new generation of anti-Western foot soldiers who can take battlefield experience and techniques gleaned in Iraq to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Europe, and elsewhere.

Bush’s theory that a democratic Iraq would transform the Middle East has been turned on its head. Spreading liberty as a way of reducing terrorism was a tempting panacea at best, but it is proving simplistic and false. The United States can continue to pour blood and treasure into Iraq, but in the interim it is neglecting its own crumbling infrastructure and the investments it needs to secure a more prosperous economic future. Ironically, at the very moment it’s own resilience is being sorely tested the country is facing a series of virtually unprecedented environmental calamities. Responsible scientists will not attribute any one event to global warming, but taken as a whole the wildfires, tornadoes, and other natural disasters we’ve seen of late are beginning to represent a scale of devastation forecast by Al Gore and experts on global climate change. On this issue, tragically, George Bush and his conservative minions resemble nothing so much as a flock of ostriches with their collective heads in the sand.

The cultural anthropologist Jared Diamond, in his book Collapse, observes how the decline of great powers are often associated with military defeats on the periphery of empire, which in truth mask ecological collapse at home. There is no doubt – none whatsoever – that the seven years of the Bush administration have led to an unprecedented decline in America’s strategic, moral, and economic strength. In simple terms, the United States is in a vicious cycle: Borrowing money to purchase oil from Middle East, which empowers anti-American forces, while simultaneously contributing to the high level of carbon emissions that fuel global warming. Bush, for his part, seems oblivious to the fact that American taxpayers are funding both sides in the terror war. To add insult to injury, many victims of Katrina and the tornadoes in the South have family members serving in Iraq. We are stuck in a war we never should have launched while the Bush administration completely ignored the gathering threat posed by environmental calamities fueled by global warming, which our own imprudent and unsustainable energy habits helped bring about.

Great leaders have a sense for the arc of history. That is, they see where history is going and they prepare their people to face the challenges of the future. Al Gore, for instance, has been trying to educate the public on global warming for three decades. He was also prescient – in a way Bush is incapable of – in recognizing the potential the U.S. led invasion and occupation of Iraq would have to ignite sectarian conflict that could destabilize the entire Middle East.

Gore (and most Democrats) understand that confronting the challenge of Islamic extremism will take a lot more that marshalling America’s military power; it will take diplomatic suasion and bi-partisan cooperation to rally the world behind a comprehensive strategy to increase the ideological appeal of America and its Western values (especially women’s rights and the separation of church and state) while reducing the appeal of Islamic extremism. It will also entail taking the United States beyond the carbon era.

Gore’s rational approach to problem solving contrasts sharply with Bush’s disastrous faith-based approach to governing. Conservative ideologues like Bush see terrorism as a manifestation of ontological Evil, a superstitious outlook that engenders a historical form of madness akin to the Salem witch trials or the Inquisition. It is no accident, for instance, that Bush’s response to the challenge of terrorism includes waterboarding and other forms of torture generally associated with the Middle Ages. Indeed, his style of leadership hearkens back to the Divine Right of Kings, the long discredited notion that a political leader functions as God’s regent here on earth.

The historian Arnold Toynbee observed that the rise of religious fundamentalism is invariably a sign of civil decline. He also observed that civilizations that attempt meet existential challenges by remaking the rest of the world (especially far-flung outposts on the periphery of empire) are invariably less successful that than civilizations that remake and renew themselves from within. This insight goes along way in explaining the Bush tragedy; the Bush administration has effectively outsourced America’s national security to Iraq’s security forces.

The surge has produced some tactical advantages, but there are compelling reasons to doubt they can be sustained. For one thing, widespread corruption governing the dispersion of oil revenues does not bode well for a political reconciliation. Further, Iraq’s various militias recognize the surge is by its nature of limited duration. Thus, they have every incentive to lay low and/or play-up their al-Qaeda fighting bona fides in the hopes of procuring as much American aid and equipment before Iraq enters the next phase when American troops begin to draw down in the Spring/Summer of 2008.

America’s predicament in Iraq resembles a Zugswang, which is a situation in chess where every possible move you make will leave you worse off. The United States may prevail in Iraq, yet maintaining the present commitment is likely to further hasten America’s decline. Those among Bush’s dwindling number of apologist who still believe that some decades from now the United States will be able to declare “Mission Accomplished” should remember the words of King Pyrrhus: “one more victory such as this and we are ruined.”

Sphere: Related Content

Top Ten Reasons the Declining Dollar is a Good Thing

10). Greedy oil sheiks will get what they deserve when they discover just how worthless all those greenbacks they’ve been accumulating from their petrol profits.

9). “When you multiply 4% inflation times a 50% decline in the dollar, then a 199% increase in the deficit doesn’t seem too bad. Heck, we may actually be making a profit.” – Alan Greenspan (author of “Irrational Exuberance” and “Fuzzy Math).

8). “I feel a lot better knowing the IRS is getting currency that is losing value as we speak.” – Wesley Snipes (Black belt bad-ass & spokesperson for H&R Block).

7). “If the value of the dollar declines to zero, then it will prove my point: deficits don’t matter.” -- Dick Cheney (from a secure location).

6). “Declining dollar will raise the costs of food, which will force Americans to eat less, thereby solving our obesity problem. Every day the dollar drops I suggest American drop and do some pushups too.” – Jack la Lalanne (Fitness Guru).

5). If dollar declines enough Bill Gates will be as poor as everyone else.

4). The Iraq war will be priceless if the dollar continues to slide.

3). “If the dollar continues to plummet we’ll need more tax cuts and rebate checks to stimulate investment in things America really needs, like even bigger plasma TVs and cooler I-Pods.” – (James Cramer who won recently the Nobel Prize in Economics for his financial treatise, Mad Money).

2). When the dollar is replaced by the euro as the world’s reserve currency (sometime in 2009) we should replace George Washington’s likeness with George W. Bush’s mug. By that time, it may more economic sense to use our worthless currency as a substitute for Charmin toilet paper.

1). Replacing “In God we Trust” on our currency with “It’s you money, you paid for it” will be a fitting testament to the legacy of George W. Bush.

Sphere: Related Content

Top Ten Accomplishments of the Bush Administration (from a liberal perspective).

10). Bush has managed to do what even Bill and Hillary could never hope to do: he has destroyed the Republican Party.

9). Rather than soak the rich through tax hikes he simply bankrupted the country so everyone is poor.

8). Dubya’s close identification with private retirement accounts virtually ensures no politician will ever try to privatize Social Security again.

7). G.W.B. is likely to be the last white guy from a backward southern state to make it to the Oval Office for a long time.

6). Bush has managed to turn Clinton fatigue into Clinton nostalgia. Filegate, Pardongate, Travelgate, Monicagate, & Hillarycare. Ah . . . those were the days!

5). Bush’s flight suit photo-op antics makes Michael Dukakis look like Patton in comparison.

4). Hey, it’s only poetic justice for Bush himself to do more than anyone else to overturn Bush vs. Gore in the eyes of History.

3). After three recessions and four wars under two George Bushes we can be damn well sure the country will never elect another George Bush again.

2). Bush’s malapropisms, the so-called Bushisms, represent some of the greatest political humor ever conceived.

1). Bush managed to fuse elements of Elizabethan tragedy and vaudevillian farce. It’s like having Adam Sandler play King Lear. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, but I can’t stop watching.

Sphere: Related Content

Endorsing Obama: Restoring and Fulfilling the American Dream

Bill Clinton deserves credit for leaving the country better off following his eight years in the White House. Incomes for working Americans were rising, the federal government was running a $236 billion surplus, and military readiness was at an all-time high. Enter George W. Bush: income gains have stagnated and even dropped, health care costs are soaring, the country has mortgaged its future by acquiring $ 3.5 trillion in debt, and the U.S. military is stretched to the breaking point. Even worse, America’s reputation is in tatters while the threats from nuclear proliferation, terrorism, an unstable Middle East, and a rising China have mushroomed exponentially. The United States has never been so isolated, divided, and drained. The next U.S. president must reverse this trend or America’s influence (and its standard of living) will continue in a steep decline.

The candidate most qualified to restore America’s image, articulate and chart a new course for the country, and offer the visionary leadership we so desperately need is Barack Obama. Put simply, everything I’ve seen from the senator from Illinois suggests that he has the character, judgement, and leadership abilities to move the country in positive and progressive direction.
George W. Bush has tarnished the American brand; essentially making the U.S. synonymous with imperial hubris, torture, pre-emptive war, and incompetence. Barack Obama is the one candidate who can transform America’s image from day one following his election. Restoring America’s soft power (its ability to persuade through ideals and example) is not a superfluous luxury. Rather, it is an essential pillar for projecting America’s values by inspiring other countries to emulate the American model.

For example, with the Bush administration’s hegemonic designs in ruins we are rapidly moving to a multipolar world where a rising China and the E.U (already an economic colossus) can check America’s influence and compete on equal terms. It is true, of course, that neither China nor the E.U. can compete with the U.S. militarily, but each can and will seek to extend its sphere of influence and leverage their economic clout to America’s disadvantage. Competition to acquire energy and natural resources from second and third world countries to fuel first world prosperity will depend on economic inducements and diplomatic suasion, proficiencies that have atrophied under the current administration. Put simply, the next American president will have to manage America in a way that suggests to the average second and third world citizen (be they in Africa, the Middle East, or South America) that the American way and an American partnership has more to offer them than competing models.

After eight years of the Bush administration this is a very tall order, but American prosperity cannot be sustained by America’s military power alone (as Iraq has shown). And America will be unable to sustain its military prowess without restoring its economic health (no, borrowing money to pay for tax cuts is not sustainable as the looming Bush Recession is showing).
The run-up to the South Carolina primary, which Obama won handily, revealed just how uninspiring, divisive, and even venal the Clintons can be. Hillary, if you will, is all prose and no poetry. Like her husband she is smart, competent, and part of the reality-based community. But like Bill, she is more of a policy wonk and a technocrat than a visionary statesman.

To be sure, we need leaders who understand how to operate the levers of government. But even more than that we need leaders who will chart a strategic vision for the United States that will revive our country’s long-term economic fortunes and shape an international order where the rule of law supplants the philosophy that has animated both al-Qaeda and the Bush administration: the notion that might makes right. Put simply, double standards and legitimacy are incompatible. And it is the Bush administration’s double standards – "we have the right to use force to impose democracy, launch preventive wars, and torture suspected terrorists" – that has discredited the United States in the eyes of the world.

Dynasties have a tendency to exempt themselves from the rules that bind everyone else. There is a sense of entitlement, of preordainment, and exceptionalism. These habits of mind are characteristic of political aristocracies. And they have proven fatal for George W. Bush. There is much evidence from Hillary’s campaign and character that she shares a mind-set in common with another heir apparent, George W. Bush: particularly an Us vs. Them mentality, a psychological need for enemies, a messianic self-certainty, and a congenital inability to admit mistakes.

Obama is the un-Clinton and the un-Bush. He is not a polarizing triangulator (Clinton) or a demagogic divider (Bush). Rather, his diverse background contains the seeds of a remarkable personal journey and psychological integration that somehow seems to reflect the collective need of our globalized age. It’s not "Us vs. Them" for Barack, it’s "We are all in this together." That’s the story of his life and what he represents. And it says a lot that the Clintons resorted to the Republican playbook to try and take Obama down.

Is America ready for an African American president? I believe it is and I hope so because I’m convinced he’s the best person for the job of restoring and fulfilling the American Dream.

Sphere: Related Content

Bush and the Assasination of Benazir Bhutto

George W. Bush has a habit of putting all his eggs in one basket before splattering them on the sidewalk when he trips up. The assassination of Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto is the latest foreign policy mess that has the administration scrambling to cope with its disastrous decisions and bad judgement.

It took the Bush administration roughly a year to broker a power sharing deal between Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf and Bhutto, but it only took al-Qaeda (or whatever extremist elements were responsible) minutes to effectively derail the Bush administration’s democratization efforts for Pakistan.

The administration’s support for the progressive and pro-Western Bhutto, of course, made sense. The former Prime Minister was ousted on corruption charges more than a decade ago, but most observers believe her relatively secular PPP party represented the best hope for a country being torn apart by religious extremism. There is little doubt that Bhutto was willing to do something Musharraf has not, namely take on the Taliban and al-Qaeda elements that are turning Pakistan into a failed state and the new headquarters of al-Qaeda’s international efforts.

Bush’s blunder has been in making General Musharraf the linchpin of the administration’s efforts to combat Islamic extremism in Pakistan. Since 9/11, the United States has poured more than $10 billion into Pakistan with virtually nothing to show for it. Indeed, Musharraf will be blamed for Bhutto’s death whether he had anything to do with it or not. The Bush administration has placed the United States in the unenviable position of being associated with a dictator who disbanded an independent judiciary, cracked down on a free press, instituted martial law, and arrested political opponents.

Musharraf has never been more loathed, nor has his grip on power ever been shakier. By effectively outsourcing the hunt for bin Laden to Musharraf the Bush administration has gotten the worst of all worlds: 1) ineffectual efforts against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan and 2) to the extent that we have supported an unpopular dictator we have no broad base of support among the Pakistani people.

Experts on Pakistan agree that Musharraf has played Bush for a fool. Clearly, the Bush administration’s strategy for Pakistan is in shambles. But Bush’s misjudgment about Musharraf is just the latest in a serial of errors made by our incompetent "commander-in-chief." Among Bush’s blunders are: the failure to heed urgent warnings about the 9/11 attacks, the decision to go after Saddam Hussein rather than 9/11 mastermind Osama bin laden, the botched occupation of Iraq, the mishandling of Hurricane Katrina, and more recently the administration’s failure to recognize that Iran had suspended its military nuclear program.

Bush and Musharraf have a lot in common. Both came to power in coups, both act as if they are above the law, and both have completely lost credibility. We are witnessing a failed presidency of monumental proportions.

Sphere: Related Content

Charles Krauthammer: Mission Accomplished II

The physicist Wolfgang Pauli once remarked to a colleague about the lecture they were attending, noting that the speaker was so off the mark that "he isn't even wrong." I often have the same feeling reading Charles Krauthammer’s mediocre missives in the Washington Post. According to Krauthammer, Iraq is on the verge of turning out as a major strategic accomplishment for the United States. Before Krauthammer declares Mission Accomplished II, however, there are some inconvenient facts he needs to reckon with.

Krauthammer argues that an enduring U.S. military presence in Iraq will insure America has a critical ally in the heart of the Middle East. Neither the American people nor the Iraqis have signed on to the idea having permanent U.S. bases in Iraq. If the heavily fortified bunker complex that is the Green Zone is any indication, then America’s presence will be like Fort Apache in injun territory – i.e., an unwelcome presence that continues to fuel extremist resentment against what the jihadists view as an imperial and infidel occupation. Put simply, a large American footprint in Iraq is more likely to inspire extremism than defuse it.

General Petraeus’ counterinsurgency strategy is certainly a marked improvement over what came before. However, the welcome reduction in violence probably has much to do with the fact that many of the factions in Iraq are simply waiting the Americans out. They know, for instance, that the surge is temporary and that the Bush administration’s days are numbered. As one Iraqi put it, the current lull in violence is part of the "great deception" as the various Iraq militias prepare for the day when the United States is forced to scale back forces. Iraqis various factions, after all, would rather fight one another tomorrow than take on American firepower today.

What are the prospects for a political reconciliation in Iraq? The whole point of the surge, after all, was to buy time for the various factions to hammer out oil revenue sharing agreements and the like. In fact, pervasive corruption and black market activity – not to mention the reality that petro-politics in the Middle East is a invariably a zero-sum game – makes it highly unlikely that the various factions can arrive at a sustainable political settlement. Presently, the U.S. military is buying off Iraq’s private militias (convincing them it is better to take our money than fight us), but unless the Bush administration can manage a breakthrough on the political front this approach is likely to prove ephemeral.

The Iraq war must be understood in the context of our larger strategic interests. It has hampered our efforts in Afghanistan, diverted resources from capturing or killing bin Laden, worked to the advantage of America’s chief adversary in the region (Iran), and radicalized a new generation of anti-American extremists. The invasion of Iraq has also decimated America’s credibility, leaving it isolated and drained at a time when China appears on a trajectory to eclipse the United States within the next several decades. The extraordinary costs of the whole enterprise (by some estimates the invasion will cost each American $9,250 by the end of the decade), coupled with a very uncertain potential payoff (a less radicalized Arab world), make the whole venture seem about as sensible as buying Lotto tickets to avoid foreclosing on a mortgage one can’t afford.

The historian Arnold Toynbee observed that societies that remake themselves are more apt to succeed than societies that attempt to remake the rest of the world. Would the United States be better off investing in its own infrastructure and the energy efficiencies and alternative fuels of the future than pouring money into Iraq? We have truly outsourced our future. Of course, neoconservatives like Krauthammer will never admit just how far off the mark they’ve been all along.

Sphere: Related Content

Bush's Recession?

The Iraq War has moved off the headlines, but the costs of the war continue to rise. According to Congressperson Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) each and every American citizen is responsible for forking over $4, 125 to cover the cost of what has thus far been the biggest strategic blunder in American foreign policy since the Vietnam War. That figure, incidentally, is expected to rise to $ 9,250 by the end of the decade.

Bush, of course, cut taxes while launching three unfinished wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, and the War on Terror). He also failed to reform the Alternative Minimum Tax (ATM), which will mean many ordinary taxpayers will soon face steep increases in their tax bill. That’s because ATM was never indexed for inflation, thus tax rates meant for the wealthy decades ago will now snare decidedly middle class earners.

The value of the dollar has been in steep decline, the price of oil is at or near an all-time high, inflation is on the rise, home prices are as depressed as Bush’s approval ratings, and even the president acknowledges there are storm clouds on the economic horizon. Here’s a prediction for you: the Bush Recession will be one of the major stories of 2008. Don’t say you weren’t warned. Indeed, as Bush himself said when selling his snake oil tax cuts, "It’s your money, you paid for it." Bush only got the verb tense wrong.

Sphere: Related Content