Dissolving the Dilemmas over Stem Cells

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein cautioned that we must be on guard against “the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” What the most important philosopher of the 20th century was concerned about here are the problems and confusions dualistic terms (i.e., mind & body) can generate when language goes on holiday. More concretely, the use of conceptually separate terms like mind and body force us to think that there must be real ontological entities to which those terms refer. If I say “It is raining,” for instance, I certainly do not mean to suggest there is an entity called “It” that is raining.

Virtually every neuroscientist recognizes that the terms mind and brain are two ways of talking about the same thing. Of course, brains are “things” only in a loose way of speaking. After all, brains give rise to subjectivity, which is a rather awe inspiring phenomenon. As Wittgenstein noted, “It is the “I,” it is the I that is deeply mysterious.” However, Wittgenstein – like most scientists today – was a monist, which is the say he believed the brain/mind was a single substance (or process).

This is a good thing, since dualism, the notion than the mind is a separate entity from the physical brain, has for all practical purposes been discredited as incoherent and unempirical. Unfortunately, dualism lives on for the scientifically and philosophically illiterate. In fact, dualistic thinking permeates pro-life arguments against abortion. Put simply, if dualism is false – and the scientific and philosophical case against dualism is overwhelming – then the central arguments pro-lifers make against abortion and stem cell research rest on unsound assumptions.

Pro-life groups maintain every embryo is an individual from the moment of conception. From this it follows that every embryo is: 1) sacred, 2) part of the human community, and 3) entitled to the rights and protections we afford every member of the human family. Using words like “scared,” “community,” and “family” in association with the embryo, of course, primes audiences to see things a certain way. Science uses similar rhetorical techniques, but the way scientists use language tends to make objects seem more impersonal. Language, in a sense, can create reality, or at least frame our perception of reality.

The way pro-life advocates use language in relationship to embryos is instrumental in creating moral dilemmas that evaporate if one approaches the matter more objectively. To begin with, the notion that the “moment of conception” marks some miraculous, transcendental, or non-physical event is not an idea that holds up to rational scrutiny. First of all, the so-called moment of conception is not a moment at all, it is an entirely biochemical process that lasts several hours at a minimum. Second, individuality is not something present (or created) at the moment of conception. After all, many zygotes split in two several weeks after conception, a phenomenon which leads to twins.

But the most damning argument against assuming there is anything sacred or miraculous about the typical embryo comes from Mother Nature. Simply put, most embryos never develop into human beings because embryos frequently fail to implant or because they spontaneously and naturally abort.

Pro-lifers frequently resort to false choices. Writing in the Washington Post, for instance, Michael Gerson offers the following either/or choice: 1) embryos are sacred or 2) embryos are protoplasmic rubbish.

Thinking in terms of moral absolutes is what gets us in to trouble here. Put simply, context matters. For instance, imagine the following thought experiment: a fertility clinic housing 1,000,000 surplus embryos is on fire. There is a fifty-fifty chance the embryos can be saved, but only at great risk to the firefighters. Should we ask the firefighters to risk their lives to save the embryos? I would argue, the loss of 1,000,000 insentient embryos is not worth the life of even one human being embedded within a family and a community.

Conversely, it is possible to imagine another thought experiment: a plague has broken out which has rendered every woman of childbearing age on the planet infertile. Only a handful of viable embryos remain anywhere on earth. Under such circumstances, shouldn’t the safety and well-being of such embryos be preserved at all costs until some way is found to perpetuate the human race?

The moral value of an embryo is not nil, nor is it absolute. To a large extent, the moral dilemma of using embryos to create stem cell lines exists because of the way pro-life advocate use – and very often misuse – language. Wittgenstein recognized that the mind/body problem was a function of our language games. There is a lesson here for pro-life advocates.

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How the Bush Administration Bankrupted America; How the Obama Administration can Restore America's Prosperity

Conservatives are like the comedian Rodney Dangerfield these days, they can't get no respect. In the public mind, figures like Rush Limbaugh, Bobby Jindal, Joe the Plumber, and Sarah Palin are a source of bemusement, a slightly annoying but nonetheless chuckle-producing diversion from the calamities the conservative movement helped engineer.

The same cannot be said, alas, for conservative commentators like Charles Krauthhammer, Michael Gerson, and Sean Hannity (a trio of humorless blowhards oozing animus from every pore). I suspect their vinegary dispositions stem from the fact that their most cherished beliefs are constantly at variance with reality. As William James recognized, there is nothing more painful than false belief.

The financial pain America is currently facing can be traced to a set of false beliefs that constitute the core of conservatism's economic doctrine. These discredited principles include: the notion that tax cuts pay for themselves, the idea markets are self-correcting, and the belief that deregulation serves the common good.

Tax cuts are to conservatives what crack cocaine is to lab rats. The basic idea behind supply-side economics is that taxes must be lowered on America's most productive (i.e., wealthiest) citizens because they alone possess the wherewithal to put capital to work. Conversely, transferring resources to the poor, so the thinking goes, will only insure that wealth is squandered on unproductive forms of consumption.

The wealthy received their tax breaks under the Bush administration, but the promised investment glut never materialized. Conservatives have peddled the notion that taxes are a form of punishment, or a disincentive to productivity. But a truer view of taxes comes from Oliver Wendell Holmes, who held that taxes are the price of civilization. If Holmes is right, then it follows that those who benefit the most from society (i.e., the wealthiest) owe the greatest share in return.

The origins of the current financial crisis are complex. Americans had been living beyond their means on borrowed credit for too long. The United States staked its future on financial services and products, as opposed to manufactured goods. To make up for the trade deficit the United States borrowed heavily from countries like China to keep the good times rolling. Debt-ridden consumers, however, found they could no longer afford to products once housing prices were undermined by deadbeat sub-prime borrowers. By this stage, as British historian Niall Ferguson observes, the United States has become a sub-prime superpower.

To reverse America's economic fortunes, the Obama administration must increase the earnings power of the vast majority of ordinary Americans. Doing this will require substantial and sustained investment to upgrade public education, our healthcare system, and our infrastructure. Investments along these lines are necessary to insure that Americans are the brightest, healthiest, and productive workforce on the planet. When we are once again making the products and services the world wants to buy, then incomes will rise. This will revitalize consumer spending, leading to corporate profits, which will translate into rising stock prices.

Tax cuts disproportionally aimed at the wealthy did not lead to broad-based income gains or the kind of investments America needs to ensure sustainable prosperity. Free market fundamentalism has also proved to be a false creed. Put simply, if the last eight years have shown anything it is that free markers do not inexorably allocate resources efficiently or rationally. In fact, free market fundamentalism has proven to be nothing but a cover for crony capitalism, whereby the powerful and well-connected rewarded themselves by feeding at the public trough. The fact that the financial wizards that created the current crisis walked away with billions, while America's healthcare, education, and infrastructure needs were starved, illustrates the total intellectual and moral bankruptcy of free market fundamentalism.

Looting the financial system and cannibalizing companies could not have happened to the extent it did without wholesale deregulation. The invasion of Iraq was another conservative enterprise predicated on false premises that helped bankrupt the United States, and not just economically but morally too. Of course, conservatives are loath to admit they are wrong, which explains why Krauthhammer and others are trying to portray the Iraq War as a victory. A pyrrhic victory, perhaps, but mostly the Iraq War has been a strategic debacle that siphoned America's blood and treasure in a failed bid to leverage our military might to transform the Middle East. As the historian Arnold Toynbee recognized, societies that attempt to remake far off outposts on the periphery of empire are invariably less successful than societies that remake themselves.

Revitalizing America is a herculean task facing Obama. Conservative commentators have generally heaped scorn upon the Obama administration's approach, which will make government a more central partner in shaping the economic landscape of the future. As Michael Gerson ludicrously puts it, "governments don't invest, they spend." Obviously, Gerson is thinking of the Bush administration, not the far-sighted administrations that initiated the GI bill, the interstate highway system, and the Internet.

Krauthammer is even more obtuse than Gerson. The dyspeptic Krauthammer completely fails to see how healthcare has anything to do with the current financial crisis or its cure. Let me enlighten this vapid windbag. The current healthcare system is an inefficient monstrosity with private insurance companies gobbling up resources to feed a vast bureaucratic apparatus collecting premiums from those who don't need healthcare while denying treatment to those who need it.

Ok, that's a bit of a caricature, but it captures an essential truth: private insurers represent a vast layer absorbing our healthcare dollars, but this layer does not deliver healthcare. This system has become an albatross for businesses and individuals. For instance, the cost of health insurance has to be factored into every product, which makes U.S. goods less competitive. Additionally, it stifles individual initiative – i.e., under the current system, employees will be less inclined to leave dead end jobs to pursue more rewarding opportunities if they fear they'll lose their health coverage in the process.

Conservatives like Krauthhammer, Gerson, and Hannity appear congenitally incapable of connecting the dots. These guys are like Rodney Dangerfield – the joke always seems to be on them and they don't get no respect.

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You Can Bank on It

In John Ford's classic western, Stagecoach, a self-righteous bank president browbeats and berates his fellow travelers while he's in the process of absconding his firm's funds. Ford was a filmmaker with a social conscience and the themes explored in his movies seem more timeless than ever.

Once again, life has been caught imitating art. Bank robbers like Jesse James, Willie Sutton, and Bonnie & Clyde, have long been part of American folklore, but the reality is that the biggest and most audacious bank robberies have invariably been inside jobs. The Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s proved one observer right; the best way to rob a bank is to own one.

The current crisis in the financial system dwarfs the S&L debacle. Americans have recently woken up to the fact that the country's most hallowed banks and financial institutions are basically insolvent. Many observers single out subprime mortgage defaulters as the main culprits in the current calamity. However, the true causes of the present economic meltdown are far deeper and more insidious than most Americans realize.

There are vested interests, of course, intent on diverting attention away from the real reasons so much hard-earned savings poured into the financial sector, but vanished down the proverbial drain. Here, Rick Santelli's much-publicized faux-populist rant serves his masters in the predatory class well. Santelli, like many of his fellow carnival barkers at CNBC, have served as avid cheerleaders during the inflation of one of the greatest financial bubbles of all-time. Their shtick, which masquerades as objective analysis, has undoubtedly led innumerable credulous investors astray.

Santelli, of course, would have his audience, many of whom have been burned by bad advice they gleaned from CNBC, direct their fury towards the "losers" that bought subprime mortgages they can no longer afford, a group allegedly at the epicenter of the current crisis.

To be sure, the so-called NINJA loans (loans made to borrowers with no income, no credit, and no job) were a recipe for disaster, but the focus on defaulters ignores the other side of a faulty equation. Thanks to Reagan era deregulation, and Bush administration policies aimed at promoting an "ownership society," irresponsible lenders collected lucrative fees but failed to screen the creditworthiness of their clients. As a result of the way they sliced and diced mortgages, these lenders effectively privatized profits but socialized risk.

Santelli and his ilk have an inherent tendency to attack the economically powerless but fawn over the financially powerful. Thus, taxpayer bailouts for financial titans are pardoned as necessarily evils aimed at saving our financial system, but mortgage restructuring and refinancing that would keep subprime borrowers in their homes is condemned as a socialist blasphemy.

Ironically, America's capitalistic financial bubble was underwritten by the People's Republic of China. In effect, a country where the average worker makes $2,000 a years has used its savings rate to subsidize the consumption rate of the most spendthrift nation in the world. Put simply, Easy credit from lenders like China made it possible for Americans to borrow against their homes -- and against the future -- to pay for tax cuts and consumer goodies.

Those days are over. The easy credit binge fueled the housing bubble, propped up the stock market, kept the good times rolling, and made people feel wealthier than they really were. At the same time, the Bush administration and the Republican Congress spent money like drunken sailors, but "investments" like the Iraq War have proven to be money pits with no return. The IOUs have been piling up, and taxpayers are waking up to the fact that they're on the hook for Bush's imprudent fiscal and foreign policies, a myriad of corporate excesses, and the irresponsibility of greedy lenders and borrowers in the subprime sector.

Santelli's rant is typical of the drivel one finds on cable news, a medium that generates much heat but little light. In truth, America's market system, which is supposed to allocate resources rationally and efficiently, was exploited by a predatory class that rigged the system in its favor. Insiders, paying themselves humongous bonuses, while driving their businesses into the ground, are perfect example of what sociologist Thorstein Veblen termed the "predatory class," a ruling elite that feeds at the public trough while contributing nothing to the social welfare. Don't expect Santelli and his ilk to point fingers in that direction; to do so would be to bite the hand that feeds them.

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Top Ten Reasons Bush and Cheney are Pissed Off at Each Other.

10). Bush insisted Cheney go through metal detector just like everyone else before entering Oval Office, which jolted VP's pacemaker every time.

9). Bush refused to sign executive order rescinding the war-profiteering tax, which cost Cheney, big time.

8). Cheney resented being called Mini-Me, the pet nickname Bush used when referring to the VP in the presence of the military brass.

7). The VP was absolutely certain his incompetent boss would have a serious mountain biking accident in the first 100 days of the Bush administration, which would have paved the way for ten years of a right-wing dream team, Cheney/Rumsfeld. But Bush thwarted his Machiavellian #2 by using a heavily-padded Commander-in-Chief helmet and super-stealth training wheels.

6). Bush vetoed top-secret Cheney plot to use genetically-engineered anti-follicle agent aimed at de-bearding Islamic extremists.

5). Cheney felt snubbed when the president failed to award him combat ribbon following the sharpshooting VP's close-quarter engagement with a trial lawyer while duck hunting.

4). Cheney consistently refused to divulge the whereabouts of his secure location, even to the president, which freaked out the normally unflappable Bush.

3). One person stood between Dick Cheney and his goal of being Master of the Universe. And you don't think Cheney resented his boss?

2). Unbeknown to the media and the public, Bush insisted Cheney dress up as the Easter Bunny every year for the annual egg roll on the White House lawn. Apparently, it was Bush's way of ensuring his overweight and out of shape VP got enough exercise, but Cheney deeply resented hopping around in a hot furry suit for several hours while children laughed at the sight of him.

1). Bush refused every single invitation Cheney made to take him duck hunting.

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Taxing Times for Obama

These are taxing times for Obama's nominees. It would seem only fair that Washington's powerbrokers – the same people responsible for our convoluted tax system – ought to set an example by forking over their fair share of the onerous taxes they impose on everyone.

Of course, like a lot of people I know -- or at least one person I know -- I pay my taxes, which explains why I can't afford a nanny, a chauffeur, or even the $49.95 it costs to buy Turbo-Tax. I suppose the reigning sentiment among the political elite has been "Don't ask. Don't tell" – "Sure I want to be Treasury Secretary. But don't ask me about back taxes, and I won't tell you how much I owe."

Let's face it, "Don't ask. Don't tell" never worked in the military, so it sure won't work with the IRS. Just ask Willie Nelson, Wesley Snipes, and Nicholas Cage. I suppose, however, that former Governor Ron Blagojevich might have invoked the principle to hide any proceeds he might have gained had he been able to sell Obama's senate seat to the highest bidder.

Personally, I think Blagojevich would have been on much firmer ethical ground had he auctioned off the Illinois senate seat on EBay. After all, let Caroline Kennedy and some deep pocket Republican get in a bidding war where the winner has to pay a 7.5% sales tax on the senate seat. This sure would beat the process that is dragging on in Minnesota between Al Franken and Norm Coleman, which has got to be costing the taxpayers in that state plenty.

If it were up to me, which thankfully it is isn't, I'd seat both Coleman and Franken and be done with it. The election was a statistical tie, so giving them half-a-vote each seems an equitable solution; they could cancel each other out all term for all I care. In any event, I do believe Coleman & Franken could rival Abbott & Costello, Laurel & Hardy, and Bill & Hillary as one of the funniest duos in history.

As far as the stimulus goes, I have a few recommendations. Instead of bailing out banks that made bad loans why not use government bailout money to directly bolster the true driving force of the our economy – the American couch potato. After all, we're the ones that buy Plasma TVs, plastic surgery, junk food, weight-loss programs, and all the amenities of life we don't necessarily need, but that nevertheless make both ourselves and the economy grow. Helping overextended dead beats like me pay off debt would in turn help banks balance their books, which would lead to bigger bonuses for CEOs, which would mean more money for influencing peddling and lobbyists, which would allow Washington insiders to once again starting hiring chauffeurs, nannies, and dog walkers. Undoubtedly, this would lead to millions of new jobs and maybe even some tax revenue.

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Obamanomics

Barack Obama is inheriting the most challenging circumstances of any president since FDR. The United States is engaged in two major land wars, it is confronting increasing ecological challenges as its infrastructure crumbles, and it is the midst of a global financial meltdown. Such is the legacy of George W. Bush.

The task Obama faces is monumental. His diagnosis and prescription for America's economic ills, which he outlines in a Washington Post Op-Ed, "The Action America Needs," strike me as commmonsensical and fundamentally sound. In short, he must retool the U.S. economy for the 21^st century. To grasp what Obama must do it is important to understand what America failed to do under the previous administration, which will almost certainly go down as one the worst in our country's history.

For the past thirty years, Washington has largely been enthralled by market fundamentalism. This is the superstition that economic, social, and environmental decisions are best left to a rarified entity known as the "free market." The dogma goes something like this: countless rational actors pursuing their self interest (as they buy and sell with each other) can generate a collective wisdom that no government or bureaucracy could ever hope to attain.

Unbridled faith in free markets was supposed to lead to economic equilibrium; instead it has brought the entire global economic system to the brink of collapse.

Unfettered free markets were supposed to allocate resources optimally, obviate the need for long-range planning, and inexorably expand our economic and political freedoms. Instead, a narrow segment of "financial wizards" enriched themselves, cannibalized their companies, banks, and other financial institutions, while leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for a huge government bailout necessary to keep the financial system from collapsing entirely. As a result, most Americans find themselves financially overextended and insecure.

For the past thirty years, we have had a system that privatized profits, but socialized risk. Not long ago, Wall Street was soaring. But much of the paper profits generated by the financial sector have proven to be a mirage. Wall Street was adept at making money out of money, so long as its customers didn't ask any too many questions about the complex financial instruments that were in fact cobbled together with sub-prime mortgages.

Herein lays the essence of America's current misfortune: making money out of money is not the same thing as making something real. As America's financial sector swelled its manufacturing base dwindled. The United States cannot be a prosperous country without making and selling the goods and services the world needs and wants. Enlisting America's best and brightest to repackage and sell debt was never a sustainable strategy for ensuring our nation's economic success.

The most promising new American growth industry will involve so-called "green jobs." Put simply, inventing and selling the next generation of energy sources and energy efficient technologies is America's best hope of transforming our economy and restoring the United States as the world's leading economic innovator.

Accomplishing this goal will require a new social compact, one that recognizes education, infrastructure, and healthcare as public goods that require sustained and substantial investment from taxpayers. For instance, soon after the United States embraced public education it rapidly eclipsed its European rivals economically. Likewise, the G.I Bill paid enormous dividends for decades in terms of productivity and prosperity. Similarly, both Eisenhower's interstate highway program and the government initiative that led to the Internet demonstrate how far-sighted government policies can open up entire new economic vistas.

Universal single-payer healthcare is a matter of both moral and financial necessity. The current system is grossly inefficient on many levels. By design, private insurers seek to cover those that need healthcare the least and exclude those that need it the most. Therefore, taxpayers that pay for private health insurance also cough up tax dollars to pay for public clinics and emergency room visits by the uninsured. Once again, profits are privatized but risk is socialized.

Employers and employees are increasingly burdened by the current system. After all, the high-cost of mandated health insurance discourages companies from adding and retaining employees. And fear of losing employer-sponsored health insurance discourages many workers from seeking more satisfying and rewarding work. In short, universal healthcare can deliver better care to more people, thus leading to a healthier and more productive workforce.

The Obama administration has opportunity to tie short-term stimulus measures to longer-term investments along the lines I've outlined. Most Republicans remain wedded to the discredited mindset that got us into this mess in the first place. For instance, Linda Chavez proposes giving every American a debit card, presumably so we can by a gas-guzzler or another plasma TV. However, if the last eight years have taught us anything it is that an economy predicated on perpetual consumerism is a dead end.

The sagest economists I've read say that the United States can grow its way out of the economic mess the Bush administration has bequeathed us. However, to do so it will have to invest heavily in education, infrastructure, and healthcare, the things that will ultimately help America reinvent the economy. One thing is certain, pouring money into bailouts or consumer toys is not the way create the prosperity of tomorrow.

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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

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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."

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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.

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Top Ten Cool Things About Obama’s Victory

10). Breaks down the biggest barrier of all. Having a funny name no longer disqualifies you from becoming president.

9). Obama will have the executive authority to designate Dick Cheney an enemy combatant.

8). Obama vs. Osama: With George W. Bush out of the equation it will be a lot easier to tell the good guys from the bad.

7). I will no longer have to apologize to every international airline stewardess, foreign taxi driver, and Third World hotel clerk for being an American.

6). Obama has the power to appoint Bill and Hillary to the Supreme Court (so we’ll never have to worry about having another Clinton in the White House again).

5). Sarah Palin will have time to fill in for Tina Fey should the star of 30 Rock and SNL need a break from her busy schedule. After all, let’s face it, the Alaska governor has more potential as a comedian than as commander-in-chief.

4). Joe the Plumber’s hopes of parlaying his 15-minutes of fame into a political career or a position in a McCain/Palin administration have gone down the drain.

3). The Axis-of Idiots – Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage – are exposed as impotent, washed-up, useless old farts who can no longer stir up enough angry & ignorant voters to tip an election.

2). Democratic Congress with full investigative and subpoena powers can make George W. Bush’s retirement a living hell.

1). After eight years of enduring “Dubya,” it will be great to have a president who is not a joke for a change.

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The No Voter Left Behind Quiz

Presidential “hopeful” John McCain insists none of his colleagues would confuse him with Miss Congeniality. But if the truth be told, the vitriolic voters mouthing off at McCain’s campaign rallies could make the late Queen of Mean, Leona Helmsley, seem like Miss Manners in comparison. In order to alleviate extreme voter ignorance and anger, Congress has passed emergency education measures designed to enlighten the America’s dimmest citizens. Take the test now to ensure your political IQ is up to snuff.

1). Barack Obama hails from which foreign country?

a) Barackistan
b) Guantanamo
c) Hawaii
d) Iraq

The correct answer is C. Technically, Hawaii is sovereign U.S. territory, but you need a passport to get there and most real Americans do not have passports. The discerning reader will note that Iraq is de facto America’s 51st state. Of course, Guantanomo both is and isn’t U.S. territory at the same time, so this was a trick question. Deduct 15 points only if you picked A.

2). Barack Obama will _____ if he’s elected.

a) Raise your taxes to pay for the Bush deficits.
b) Convert America to Islam.
c) Take away your God given right to own the assault weapon of your choice.
d) Institutes educational reform which scraps silly multiple choice tests that emphasize rote learning.

The correct answer, Allah be praised, is D. If you answered C please multiply the number of assault weapons you own by 5 and deduct the answer accordingly. If you answered A, then deduct 500 points and please send a check covering your final point total to the address below.

3). Sarah Palin’s plan to solve America’s energy crisis and climate change can be summed up with which slogan?

a) “We hockey moms are pit bulls with lipstick.”
b) “Say it ain’t so Joe. There you go again”
c) “Drill, baby, drill!”
d) “Our opponents want to raise the white flag of surrender.”

The correct answer in C. What distinguishes this platitude from the other cliches is that it is actually about energy. If you had trouble with this section I suggest you brush up on your banalities. Joe six-packs that got this question wrong should deduct 2 points for every beer you normally consume for breakfast on Election Day (2 x 24 = 48). Hockey moms who got this question wrong should deduct one point for every month your youngest daughter is pregnant out of wedlock.

4) John McCain’s plans on appointing ______ as Treasury Secretary in order to get America back on track.

a) Meg Whitman – the former CEO has a great plan to auction derivatives and credit default swaps on Ebay, which would allow individuals to get a better deal on the toxic mortgages than if the government bought them wholesale on behalf of all taxpayers.
b) Phil Gramm – This is the guy who astutely observed we Americans are in a mental recession. $700 billion in free therapy with Dr. Phil sounds just like what the doctor ordered to cure a nation of whiners.
c) Carla Fiorina – Former HP CEO managed to turn her company around. Unfortunately it was in the wrong direction, but her golden parachute was less obscene than many others were.

d) Joe the Plumber

e) None of the above

The correct answer is E. We hope. Deduct 2000 Dow Jones points for answering A, 5000 points for B, and 3000 points for C. But you can bet the ranch that the economy will really go down the drain if McCain taps Roto Rooter Man, Joe Wurzelbacher, to be Treasury Secretary

5). George W. Bush’s most enduring legacy is likely to be?

a). He single-handedly ruined the Republican Party.
b). He discredited the idea of privatizing Social Security once and for all.
c). Americans will be forever indebted to Bush for his fiscal policies.
d). Succeeded in doing more damage to the United States than Osama bin Laden.
f). All of the above

The correct answer is F, which as it happens is the grade History will give our 43rd president.

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The Collapse of Bush's Market Fundamentalism

George W. Bush’s reputation is sinking deeper than the Dow Jones, which says a lot considering the fact that stock market wealth is vanishing faster today than John McCain’s chances of winning a third Bush term.

Eight years of Republican misrule are coming to an end, big time. The causes of the current economic collapse are myriad, but they were predictable consequences of unwise, unsustainable, and unjust GOP policies. To begin with, the myth of the all-wise marketplace is now deader than Karl Marx’s corpse. Secondly, laissez-faire economics, deregulation, and the simplistic notion than “government is part of the problem” stand revealed as an axis-of-idiotic ideological assumptions. And thirdly, the massive financial bailout plan aimed at preventing a complete economic meltdown proves that capitalism, left to its own devices, entails socialism for the rich.

Years ago, Warren Buffet warned that the United States was well on its way to becoming a nation of sharecroppers. As the billionaire noted, a nation cannot continue to consume more than it produces indefinitely. Dick Cheney, who insisted that Ronald Reagan had proved that “deficits don’t matter,” contradicted Buffet’s common sense. As far as the VP was concerned, America could borrow money from the Chinese to purchase Arab oil without diminishing America’s economic position.

The Bush administration also financed the war in Iraq and its massive tax cuts with borrowed money. Supply-side economics is supposed to pay for itself – just as the Iraq War was supposed to be self-financing – but all taxpayers have for their “investments” so far is a sea of red ink, and blood.

Deficit spending is not bad per se. Borrowing money to invest in public education, universal healthcare, and infrastructure improvements will pay dividends in terms of restoring America’s competitiveness. As historian Arnold Toynbee observed, civilizations that reform themselves are more likely to prosper. On the other hand, those that seek to reform the rest of the world invariably exhaust themselves in the process.

The architects of America’s “shock and awe” campaign have transformed the U.S. model into an object of fear and loathing. The Iraq War, Katrina, and now the implosion of America’s financial institutions have decimated our image in the eyes of world opinion. Eight years ago the Neoconservatives that hijacked the Bush administration proclaimed that the American system of democratic capitalism was the end point of history for all humankind. Today, neither our global adversaries nor our allies view the American model as capable of delivering social justice, economic stability, or the good life.

We have reached this stage of national senescence due to a mixture of imperial hubris, intellectual sloth, moral turpitude, economic shortsightedness, and political cowardice. President Bush has laid the blame for the current financial calamity on the financial sector –“Wall Street got drunk” – and on subprime mortgages that went bad. But these factors are only part of the story. The truth is that for the past thirty years United States has followed a pattern eerily similar to the Spanish Empire’s downfall under Phillip II. In a nutshell, the financialization of Spain’s economy, expensive imperial/military expeditions that failed to pay for themselves, and the erosion of the manufacturing sector bankrupted the empire.

America’s free market fundamentalists insisted that the invisible hand of the market place would cure all national and economic ills. Deregulation was their mantra. In particular, the market fundamentalists argued that government shouldn’t be in the business of picking winners and losers. The problem with this, of course, is now obvious. As economist James K. Galbraith observes, markets are incapable of long-term planning. Deregulation unleashed predatory practices that privatized profits and socialized risk. And a dysfunctional relationship between politicians clamoring for campaign donations and corporate executives pushing for even less regulation created a vicious cycle that reinforced the self-interest of the few at the expense of the public good.

Renewing America – and the American idea – will necessitate rejecting the reigning Republican ideology in favor of a new social compact that rejuvenates the liberal ideals that proved so effective in rescuing America from the excesses of the Gilded Age that brought on the Great Depression. Tailoring liberal values to meet the challenges of the 21st century will be a tall order, but the principles are easy enough to articulate. First, as F.D.R. noted more than sixty years ago, “we are all in this together.” This is self-evident, and the current crisis illustrates this only too well; if Wall Street doesn’t get its bailout, then Main Street will sink too. We would do far better, of course, recognizing this up front by investing taxpayer dollars in universal healthcare, public works, and far-sighted economic initiatives (as opposed to funding bailouts for wealthy speculators).

To begin with, universal coverage is inherently more efficient because it eliminates vast bureaucratic layers that do not provide patient care. To put it bluntly, private health insurers spend at least a third of their revenue on overhead designed specifically to deny health coverage. Additionally, universal coverage will allow U.S. businesses to shed the substantial cost of insuring employees, which will make them far more competitive in a global environment.

Treating healthcare as a commodity is inimical to human dignity. Likewise, CEOs making 350 times what their employees earn is inimical to democracy, sound business practices, and ultimately the dignity of work. Put simply, lionizing CEOs who garner huge bonuses by sending jobs overseas and slashing workers is perverse, especially when ponders how often such executives end up running their companies into the ground.

Vast income inequality invariably leads to what Plato once called the worst catastrophe of all, a society divided against itself. Bolstering the minimum wage and setting limits on executive compensation can help restore a dignity of work climate (as opposed to the vanity of wealth climate we have now). Further, contrary to free market fundamentalism, government should and must partner with the private sector to map out strategic economic goals for the nation. The Internet, for instance, began as a government initiative. Only government has the long-term vision and resources to shape the marketplace in ways conducive to achieving national goals. Market fundamentalists have contented that government should not be in the business of picking winners and loser, but their simpleminded ideology has led to the perverse outcome where the government is bailing out losers after the fact, rather than grooming industries and technologies that fit with our national objectives.

Clearly, the United States needs to develop the alternative fuels and energy savings technologies of the future, both to lessen our dependence on foreign sources of oil and also to reduce greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. If the U.S. government doesn’t take the lead in this endeavor, then American consumers will continue to transfer vast sums of our dwindling national wealth to adversarial regimes. Meanwhile, the challenges associated with global warming will mount.

The Bush administration has decimated America’s fortunes because it clung to a bankrupt ideology. When disaster struck, Bush didn’t ask Americans to sacrifice. Instead, he told them to shop. Market fundamentalism is not just economically unsound; it is morally bankrupt. A liberal political philosophy helped America rise following the Great Depression. It can do so again because it recognizes markets are imperfect institutions meant to serve individual and communities, as opposed to gods who demand our blind faith.

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McCain vs. Obama: Strategy vs. Tactics


President Bush insists that the United States has a strategy to defeat terrorism. Most counter terrorism experts, however, have concluded that Bush’s strategy is incoherent or counterproductive. In simple terms, Bush’s strategic vision rests on the following assumptions: (1) undemocratic regimes spawn terrorism because they stifle economic, political, and religious freedoms. (2) Repression breeds violence and resentment, which tends to be aimed at peaceful and successful democracies. (3) Therefore, spreading liberty is best long-term antidote to reducing and eliminating the animus that gives rise to terrorism.

Helping Iraq make the transition from dictatorship into a democracy is, in Bush’s view, the catalyst necessary to transform the entire Middle East. It’s an appealing notion – and it is not without some merit – but it is a dangerously simplistic approach to a very complex challenge. Put simply, Bush fails to understand is that terrorism is the flip side of globalization, a movement where individuals and small groups are gaining power at the expense of nation states. In the past, when non-state actors had grievances their means for wrecking havoc were limited. But now, thanks to the information revolution, disaffected entities are rapidly gaining access the most destructive technologies. It is probably only a matter of time before fringe elements acquire WMD.

America’s homegrown terrorist, Timothy McVeigh, was a product of a prosperous democracy. Similarly, the perpetrators of Columbine style mass shootings invariably hail from the freest of free societies. Spreading democracy will in no way diminish the murderous madness of demented loners, irrational cults, and other fringe elements.

Nevertheless, Bush insists that winning in Iraq will deflate the terrorists, by which he means al-Qaeda. The resurgence of al-Qaeda in Pakistan and the Taliban in Afghanistan contradicts the president’s claims. The United States may well prevail in Iraq (by achieving a tolerable outcome), but this “success” will be offset by setbacks in Pakistan and elsewhere.

At best, Iraq is looking like a tactical success, but a strategic debacle. In chess, it doesn’t matter how many pieces you win if you can’t protect your king. Similarly, winning in Iraq means virtually nothing when one appreciates that the United States under the Bush administration has lost its moral authority, it’s financial health, and its role as a global leader. The United States is a vastly weaker country because it invaded Iraq.

This brings me to the point in the first McCain/Obama debate, where the senator from Arizona accused his opponent of failing to understand the difference between tactics and strategy. If anything, the lesson of distinguishing tactics from strategy appears to be lost on McCain, in so far as he views Iraq as the make or break issue for the United States. We can continue to spend $10 billion dollars a week in Iraq – so long as the Chinese and other foreign creditors continue to lend us the money – while our own infrastructure crumbles and our healthcare system collapses. But the tradeoffs of remaining in Iraq are becoming more and more apparent.

At the end of the First World War, Germany won a series of tactical battles that actually undermined their military’s strategic position. The German public could hardly believe that their heroic victories were for naught. We may be in for a similarly bitter lesson. Those who fail to have a sound strategy, and those who elevate tactics above strategy, usually defeat themselves.

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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.

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It's Your Money, You Paid for It: How the Bush Administration Bankrupted America

Once upon a time -- eight years ago to be precise -- the Bush administration rudely proclaimed that the American economic and political model was the universal blueprint for all humankind. Today, the Bush administration is standing in the rubble of its own hubris.

The meltdown of America’s financial system is a seminal event. The era of America’s financial and geopolitical hegemony is coming to an end. The debacle in Iraq, the bungled federal response to Katrina, and now the virtual collapse of America’s economic order has exposed the moral emptiness that was at the core of the Republican Party’s governing philosophy.

The Bush administration has accomplished the impossible; it has turned a Superpower into Banana Republic. It has managed to reverse and undermine the nation’s economic fortunes by burying America under a mountain of debt. Trillions of dollars have been committed to Iraq -- and the now the looming Wall Street bailout – but the dividends from these “investments” are dubious indeed.

Imagine, for instance, if the United States has spent the trillions it is now spending to buy off Sunni insurgents, and buy out predatory financiers, had been invested in providing universal healthcare, shoring up our infrastructure, and developing alternative sources of energy. We might be well on the road to greater economic competitiveness and energy independence. Instead, we are stuck in a ditch of the Bush administration’s making.

We are mortgaging America’s future to pay for policies that at best simply mitigate the failures and misjudgments of the Bush administration. The Surge has succeeded in lowering violence in Iraq, but growing anarchy in Pakistan, where al-Qaeda has regrouped, is canceling out the increasing stability in Iraq. Put simply, Bush’s simplistic assumption that defeating al-Qaeda in Iraq would deflate the jihadists is nothing more than wishful thinking. Likewise, Bush’s certainty that changing the regime in Iraq would necessarily serve as a catalyst for transforming the Middle East for the better appears more quixotic than ever. In other words, Don Quixote seems like a realist in comparison to Bush.

Invading Iraq has not enhanced America’s strategic position anymore than Bush’s tax cuts enhanced America’s financial health. Indeed, in some sense U.S. troops are hostages in Iraq, and U.S. taxpayers are financing a $10 billion ransom every month to keep the country from exploding. After all, just think what will happen if we stop doling out $300 a month to each member of the Sons of Iraq. The former Sunni insurgents will once again be shooting at U.S troops, but this time with American supplied weaponry.

Bush’s free market fundamentalism has led to a dead end too. Supply side economics, deregulation, and faith that markets are all wise and self-correcting are ideas that now belong in the ash heap of history.

The United States is in the process of finding out what it means to be hostage to foreign lenders. Dick Cheney, who once said we’d be greeted as liberators in Iraq, also insisted that deficits don’t matter. They matter now, however, big time. After all, the federal government either has to borrow the money to finance the roughly trillion-dollar Wall Street bailout or it will have to raise taxes. Needless to say, given America’s already over extended state of indebtedness foreign creditors are certain to insist on higher rates of interest, which will certainly crimp economic growth. The declining strength of the dollar too, will increase the cost commodities like gas and food, thus we are likely facing a period of stagflation – slower economic growth and rising inflation.

Until now, the U.S. has had the luxury of denominating debt in dollars, which is another way of saying that so long as the dollar was the world’s reserve currency the costs of indebtedness were in some sense borne by creditors. With the dollar falling to a nine year low against the euro, however, the U.S. can no longer devalue its debt by simply printing more money.

All this means that average Americans are entering a period of wealth destruction where the value of their assets are eroded by inflation, the declining dollar, negative income growth, higher interest rates, higher state and municipal taxes, and cuts in government services. I can think of no better slogan to sum up this mess than the one Bush used to justify borrowing trillions to finance his tax cut scheme: “It’s your money, you paid for it.”

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Bush and the Power of Prayer

Three centuries ago, as colonists began displacing Native Indians across the continent, smallpox and other epidemics ravaged many indigenous tribes. Undoubtedly, the settlers in so far as they carried and spread infectious diseases, were at least partly to blame for what turned out to be biological genocide. Tragically, by and large the American Indians effected refused Western medical treatment because they believed that supernatural forces caused the illnesses they faced.

It is hard to blame the mistrust Native Americans had for the settlers. In retrospect, however, the triumph of superstitious beliefs over rational forms of explanation and medicine proved catastrophic. History tends to repeat itself, of course. And today large segments of fundamentalist Christians believe that the cataclysmic weather events associated with global warming are really God’s way of punishing the United States for losing its moral bearings, particularly when it comes abortion and gay marriage.

It is tempting to believe that we live in a just world and that a beneficent Deity metes out rewards and punishment to prod individuals (and even nations) in the right direction. History and experience, however, demonstrate that superstitious notions regarding divine interventions are a luxury the human species cannot afford. The Bush administration, in particular, should be Exhibit A when it comes to debunking the religiously inclined notion that a morally righteous leader has anything to do with national flourishing. For instance, the United States enjoyed eight years of peace and prosperity under Bill Clinton, an adulterer who favored abortion and gay marriage. But the United States is in a moral and financial freefall following eight years under the morally abstemious George W. Bush, a leader who championed the pro-life and sanctity of marriage causes dear to his Christian base.

The Bush administration has been characterized by prayer breakfasts, Bible study groups, and an unprecedented merging of faith and public policy. The results, of course, speak for themselves: disastrous decision making, repeated misjudgments, and a general increase in bureaucratic incompetence throughout the government. Put simply, substituting prayer for rational-decision making procedures is a recipe for failure.

To paraphrase Nikos Kazantzakis, the author of Zorba the Greek, praying to God is like knocking on the door of a deaf man. President John F. Kennedy, I believe, took the most mature attitude to problem-solving when he said that the greatest challenges mankind faces have been created by us, therefore they will have to be solved by us. In this respect, religious assumptions concerning the Will of Providence amount to metaphysical baggage that hinder our ability to navigate challenges like global warming, the credit crisis, nuclear proliferation, and the war on terrorism.

It is no secret that George W. Bush relies on his gut instinct to make decisions. He has also said that he derives great comfort from the fact that millions of Americans are praying for him. No doubt, his many religiously inclined followers hoped and believed that God would illumine the president’s conscience and thinking. The fruits of Bush’s presidency – Abu Ghraib, the bungled handling of Katrina, the disastrously managed war in Iraq, and the economic meltdown on Bush’s watch – all belie the notion that God and politics mix.

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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.

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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.

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The Bush Legacy

George W. Bush is about as popular with Americans as a funeral director visiting a nursing home. The most reviled president in American history, however, is dead certain he’ll be vindicated by posterity. Several prominent pundits – Robert Kagan, Fareed Zakaria, and David Frum – wrote recently that history might go easier on the forty-third president than liberals imagine. They argue, for instance, that the surge is working, liberals are in denial, and Bush has succeeded in his most important responsibility: protecting the nation against another attack. However, an overwhelming body of evidence suggests that Bush’s tenure will almost certainly rank at or near the bottom of American presidents.

When Bush leaves office the world (and most Americans) will breathe a collective sigh of relief. There is no doubt that the next chief executive will inherit the most formidable domestic and foreign policy challenges any American leader has ever faced. The American financial system is on the precipice of the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression, the U.S military is stretched to brink in two indecisive wars, and ecological and weather-related events are taking their toll on America’s resilience and infrastructure as never before. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden is on the loose and the threats stemming from nuclear proliferation and “loose nukes” is growing more urgent by the day. To make matters worse, the precipitous decline in Bush’s short-lived Pax Americana is occurring at the same time that authoritarian regimes like China and Russia appear to be on the rise.

On the economic front, Bush’s supply-side policies have been a complete bust. The administration’s policies have engendered the weakest job growth in the past sixty years, inflation is rising at the most torrid pace in nearly thirty years, and the country is drowning in debt. As Al Gore trenchantly observed some years ago, we’ve been borrowing money from China in order to keep buying Middle Eastern oil, thus mortgaging our future to a rising rival while transferring wealth to a region brimming with anti-Americanism.

The Bush administration has come close to bankrupting America morally too. The so-called “enhanced” interrogation techniques codified by Cheney’s legal scriveners have decimated America’s moral authority. Put simply, Bush’s decision to unilaterally suspend the Geneva Convention when it came to the War on Terror has proven as unwise as it was unlawful. America’s Constitution refers to the inalienable rights that belong to all persons. Thus, Bush’s efforts to deny a certain category of persons – enemy combatants – all due process and legal rights is nothing less than an assault upon the most cherished and fundamental of American values.

Bush is the first American president to hold an MBA, but his management “skills” makes Drew Carey seem like CEO material in comparison. The bungled mishandling of post-war Iraq and post-hurricane New Orleans shattered America’s image as a can-do nation. Bush’s installation of political hacks at FEMA, the Justice Department, and the reconstruction efforts in Iraq corroded the competencies of institutions Americans count on. And Bush’s gut instinct has proven disastrous when it comes to picking subordinates (e.g., the axis-of-incompetents: Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, & Michael Brown) or sizing up world leaders (Vladimir Putin and Pervez Musharraf).

Bush’s apologists and enablers claim that “victory is within sight” in Iraq. It may be possible to win a phyrric victory in Iraq (“one more victory like that and we are doomed”), but America is sacrificing its global strategic position to “win” in Iraq. How long can the United States afford to spend $10 billion dollars a month in Iraq, essentially paying Sunni insurgents to shoot at al-Qaeda instead of us? It may seem like a bargain, except that al-Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq until after we invaded, and the Sunni militias are likely to start shooting at us and/or the Shiite government if their U.S. taxpayer financed monthly stipends are ever cut off. Meanwhile, Iran’s regional ambition, which include acquiring nuclear weapons and dominating the Persian Gulf, have been furthered because the U.S. toppled the Mullahs’ main enemy, the Baathists, and then got bogged down in Iraq where U.S. soldiers would essentially become 160,000 hostages should America attack Iran’s nuclear program.

The invasion of Iraq set a dangerous precedent because the U.S. came to be seen as a rogue nation. Conservatives have a hard time absorbing this, convinced as they are of America’s exceptionalism. But the Bush administration’s attempt to establish a Pax Americana has instead led to a steep decline in America’s power and prestige. Sensing this, Russia and other authoritarian countries are likely to ally themselves against American interests and cite U.S. hypocrisy to cover their own unilateralism and aggression. Russia’s foray into Georgia is likely just a prelude to an era where the “strong do what they can and weak suffer what they must.”

Scrapping the Geneva Conventions, unilaterally abrogating the ABM treaty, heaping scorn upon the Kyoto Accord, trashing the UN, and ignoring international law was in keeping with the Bush administration’s mind-set, namely that “might makes right.” The concept that peace and stability might be promoted through collective security, international legitimacy, and soft power seemed inconceivable for the ideologically rigid reactionaries that made up the administration. Bush has demonstrated greater flexibility, including an increased emphasis on diplomatic suasion, in his second term, but much of the administration’s energy has been consumed undoing the damage wrought during the first term.

It would be hard to pick the most despicable aspect of Bush’s failed presidency. But certainly, Bush and Cheney’s willingness to let a low-level military personnel take the heat for abusive practices approved at the highest level is especially loathsome. Top legal advisors to the president and vice-president (David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, and John Yoo) crafted torture memos that codified barbarism, sexual sadism, and psychological cruelty. These legal scriveners did for the law what Arthur Anderson did for accounting; they made a mockery out of the ideals their respective professions stand for. For Bush and Cheney to deplore the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo that their policies legitimized is cowardly, hypocritical, and dishonest.

Few thinking Americans take the Bush administration seriously anymore. Bush’s rhetoric has been so at variance with reality that most people sensibly ignore what he has to say. Bush’s greatest accomplishment -- prior to his 5 to 4 win in the Supreme Court, which effectively overturned the will of the majority of American voters – was overcoming his chronic alcohol abuse. Power has a way of revealing character – or lack thereof – and so does history. That’s why I wouldn’t bet a wooden nickel that George W. Bush will look much better once the dark recesses of his shady administration are exposed to the light of history.

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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.

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