Pornography of Power

In the end, the shame of Vice President Dick Cheney was total: unmitigated by any notion of a graceful departure, let alone the slightest obligation of honest accounting.

Let the record show that it was George W. Bush, the rich Texas Republican, who brought socialism to America, so don't blame it on that community organizer who made it into the White House.

If there is a grand arc to Obama's appointments strategy, it seems aimed at providing the appearance of continuity on the part of a leader who still promises to be very different.

This is not change we can believe in -- not if Robert Rubin or his protégé, Lawrence Summers, get to call the shots on the economy in Obama's incoming administration.

Improved relations with Russia are critical, but it is disquieting that some of Obama's closest advisers have a history of needlessly provoking tension with the Russians during the Cold War days.

The battle for Barack Obama's economic soul is on in earnest, and it has nothing to do with the "European socialism" that John McCain attempted to use as an epithet against him.

The hero of the hour is FDR, as the essential wisdom of his New Deal is now embraced by most Republicans as well as Democrats.

How dare you throw that tea into Boston Harbor! Such is the anti-democratic arrogance of telling us if we don't instantly give Wall Street $700 billion, then we are destroying America.

Gag me with a spoon, as Valley girls used to say. Did you see that McCain-Palin ad promising "tougher rules on Wall Street to protect your life savings, no special interest giveaways"? How dumb do they think we are?

Ignorance is bliss, which perhaps explains Gov. Sarah Palin being so confidently wrong about the root cause of the federalization of most of the nation's mortgage market. But what is McCain's excuse?

Looking to Palin for advice on helping the rest of us during the oil crunch is a bit like asking Putin to provide a model for our nation's economic woes. They hardly feel our pain at the pump.

McCain needs a new Cold War. He can win only as a war president. He neither knows nor cares much about the economic meltdown, the consequence of the deregulation mania that he supports.

Our "reason" for developing an arsenal of biological weapons is that the US needs to learn how to prevent attacks from deranged outsiders. Now we have another reminder that the enemy may be us.

Both candidates are embracing, rather than challenging, the fundamental irrationality of Bush's "war on terror," which substitutes hysteria for rational analysis in appraising the dangers the country faces.

Indifference to economics does not explain the prominence of Phil Gramm in the McCain campaign during the U.S. financial crisis. Indifference to the folks losing their homes is a more plausible explanation.

To the Chinese, irrespective of past allegiances, the prospect of war has come to be viewed as counterproductive, and they now have the confidence to show it.

It was always about the oil -- that's why "we" invaded Iraq -- only "we" aren't getting any, at least not at a reasonable price. The oil companies are.

The DNC's attack on McCain speaks volumes to the bipartisan gut-checking in favor of military waste that has led us to squander trillions of taxpayer dollars since 9/11.

Will the real John McCain stand up? Actually, I don't expect him to, now that he is the Republican presidential candidate, he is pandering to the irrationalities that drive his party.

Are we Americans truly savages or merely tone-deaf in matters of morality, and therefore more guilty of terminal indifference than venality?

There is no better measure of the failure of Bush's foreign policy than that the American taxpayers who paid for the invasion of Iraq are now being rewarded with skyrocketing prices at the pump.