So what ever happened to George W. Bush, the worst chief executive this nation has ever endured?

This is an election year. Aren't we supposed to be evaluating the legacy of the previous administration?

In this case, we have a man whose approval ratings are subterranean. Who's sunk us into an endless war based on impeachable lies. Who's dragged our national honor into the toxic mud. Who's brought us to the brink of depression. Who's dropped the dollar into the toilet. Who wants more subsidies for terror-target nuke reactors and more tax breaks for CO2-spewing oil barons.

Who screams "Terror! Terror! Terror!" at every possible moment, but lets Osama bin Laden run free.

What would Limbaugh, O'Reilly and the rest of the corporate bloviators be screaming today if a Democrat had hosted the 9/11 attacks and then let their perpetrator roam the world without capture for more than six years?

The only thing the American people can say with pride about George W. Bush is that we never elected him president of the United States.

If politics is the art of saying nothing, then Barack Obama is sure blowing it, isn’t he?

His latest “gaffe,” to proclaim at a private fundraiser in San Francisco (of all places) that small-town Americans are bitter and cling to guns and God in lieu of financial security — these words purveyed to the American public by way of a scratchy, Osama-quality recording — triggered such heartfelt hypocrisy from his opponents.

“It is hard to imagine,” said John McCain, “someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans.”

I almost agree with this. Obama is definitely out of touch with something. However, it isn’t “average Americans” — who, it turns out, really are bitter in large numbers — so much as what I would call “the tacit covenant of presidential politics.”

From the beginning of Barack Obama's quest for the Democratic presidential nomination, there were African-American critics who accused him of not being "black enough." Ironically, some of those questioning his ethnic credentials were neoconservatives, or apologists for the Republican Right Wing.

For example, conservative writer Debra Dickerson, author of The End of Blackness declared in January, 2007, that "Obama would be the great black hope in the next presidential race, if he were actually black." Journalist Stanley Crouch took a similarly negative approach, stating that while Obama "has experienced some light versions of typical racial stereotypes, he cannot claim those problems as his own – nor has he lived the life of a black American." Juan Williams, of FOX News, warned that "there are widespread questions whether this son of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father really understands the black American experience." Even Al Sharpton challenged Obama's legitimacy, stating, "Just because you are our color doesn't make you our kind … It's not about his genealogy, it's about his policies … What is it that you're going to represent?"

The Three Trillion Dollar War – The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.
Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes.
W.W. Norton & Company, N.Y. 2008.

Following on their previous pronouncement that war costs could amount to as much as 1 trillion to 2 trillion dollars, ten times more than even then previously thought [1], Stiglitz and Bilmes have furthered their research into the cost of the war with their new title The Three Trillion Dollar War.  But it isn’t – three trillion dollars that is.  More than likely it will be much higher, as this "realistic-moderate" appraisal is continually described as conservative, with comments about always using the conservative numbers and even discounting certain costs as they could not be properly quantified.   The "full tally" indicates "the numbers that we believe (conservatively) best captures the costs of the Iraq venture, even without counting interest – the total for Iraq alone is more then $4 trillion; including Afghanistan, it increases to $5 trillion."

Dedicated to Bobbie L.

In the sermon just minutes before his death, Archbishop Oscar Romero (a man who truly practiced the teachings of Christ) reminded his congregation of the parable of the wheat. "Those who surrender to the service of the poor through love of Christ, will live like the grains of wheat that dies. It only apparently dies. If it were not to die, it would remain a solitary grain. The harvest comes because of the grain that dies We know that every effort to improve society, above all when society is so full of injustice and sin, is an effort that God blesses; that God wants; that God demands of us. I am bound, as a pastor, by divine command to give my life for those whom I love, and that is all Salvadoreans, even those who are going to kill me."

--These words appeared in a newspaper just two weeks before Archbishop Romero was shot (by a filthy Right Wing Death Squad supported by the US) while celebrating Holy Communion in the hospital which had been his home since his enthronement in 1977.

"You could piss off Jesus Christ himself!"

--Russ Miller