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Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung under a headline of “The Failure:” “He confused stubbornness with principles. America has become intolerant and it will take a long time to repair that damage.”

Canada’s Toronto Star: “Goodbye to the worst president ever. Bush was an unmitigated disaster, failing on the big issues from the invasion of Iraq to global warming, Hurricane Katrina and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.”

Sunday Times in London: “Bush leaves a country and an economy in tatters.”

Britain’s Daily Mail: “He leaves the world facing its biggest crisis since the Depression, the Middle East in flames and U.S. standing at an all-time low. How will history judge George W.? Have we, perhaps, to quote his own mangled malapropisms, ‘misunderestimated’ him? On the plus side, after 9/11 he achieved what became his number one priority: to prevent his country suffering further attack on its own soil. Al Qaeda has been hugely weakened.”

The Scottish Daily Record: “America is now hated in many parts of the world. Bush leaves a legacy of wars and the world economy in meltdown. He has been dismissed as a buffoon and a war-monger, a man who made the world a more dangerous place while sending it to the brink of economic collapse.”

The Economist: “He leaves as one of the least popular and most divisive presidents in American history. Bush has presided over the most catastrophic collapse in America’s reputation since World War Two.”

The Sydney Morning Herald: “Farewell to a flawed and unpopular commander-in-chief” [who had a] “singular lack of curiosity in international matters.”

France’s Le Monde: “It’s hard to find a historian who won’t say that Bush was the most catastrophic leader the U.S. has ever known. One success: since September 11, 2001, there was no attack on U.S. soil. But this sits alongside an interminable list of failures, starting with the war in Iraq.”

Germany’s Die Zeit: “Bush brought great misery to the world with his ‘friend-or-foe’ mentality.”

Germany’s Stern magazine: “Bush led the world’s most powerful nation to ruin. He lied to the world, tortured in the name of freedom and caused lasting damage to America’s standing.”

Austria’s Wiener Zeitung: “The United States was once the symbol of justice in the world but that has been damaged by Bush. A web of manipulation has cost America $900 billion and the lives of 4,000 soldiers — along with at least 500,000 Iraqis.”

Warsaw’s daily Dziennik: “It was empty rhetoric.”

“It’s sad to say, but we really went nowhere for almost ten years, after you extract the boost provided by the housing and mortgage boom. It’s almost a lost economic decade.” –Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com, and an informal adviser to John McCain’s campaign.

That epitaph is as good as any for describing the eight-year nightmare called the Bush Administration, as we finally count down the seconds where we see him board a plane, turn around and wave good-bye one last time. The Bush years witnessed, like no other in recent memory, a strong America brought to its knees by corrupt ideology, economic incompetence, and the complete destruction of its image around the world. That’s what happens when you run this nation like a third-world despotic regime.

From pre-emptive invasion to torture, from “Mission Accomplished” to “heck of a job, Brownie,” from foisting an “ownership society” of McMansions on janitors to de-regulating a corrupt Wall Street to oblivion, from gutting environmental laws to ignoring global warming, from hundreds of billions in surplus to trillions in debt, from tax cuts for those who need it least to 500,000+ monthly job losses–in every single issue of importance to this nation and its people, George W. Bush and the years over which he presided will go down in history as the worst EVER to afflict our Republic.

It has been a profile in arrogance from a leader who could sincerely see no wrong in anything he did–a harsh lesson on the limits of a hyper empire that saw the post 9/11 world in harsh tones of black and white, good and evil, you’re either with us or against us. It has been an exercise in humiliation, as we have witnessed the destruction of America’s economic might and the consequent destruction of wealth all over the world as a result of our own government-pimped profligacy, our deluded belief that we could have it all without sacrifice–guns, butter, 25% of the world’s oil, an SUV in every garage.

No president since Herbert Hoover has left his successor with so many profoundly difficult problems to solve. Yet in spite of Bush’s incompetence he hands Obama an opportunity. If he plays his cards right Obama will have carte blanche to fix much of what ails America, providing jobs to renew our decaying infrastructure, fix our schools, upgrade our broadband capabilities to compete with the rest of the world, and eliminate our energy dependence on countries that despise us. The tab will be enormously expensive, and there is no guarantee of success–but it will be a down payment on an investment that will yield many times itself in future dividends if done right. That’s a much better use of money than handing it over to a financial industry that’s more like a black hole that swallows up every dollar, never to be seen again.

As the Age of Obama dawns amidst great hope and uncertainty, the world is happy to throw a huge collective shoe at Bush’s rear end as his plane’s door shuts behind him. Good riddance, and never may we see your face again.

A new study by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism proved what we on the left have known all along: Bush lied about Iraq–and he lied, and he lied some more.

In fact, he lied at least 259 times about Iraq’s possession of WMD’s and its links to al-Qaeda in the months leading up to the war in 2003.

Said the study:

“It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida. In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003.

…

“[The statements] were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.”

The study didn’t spare the media, either:

“[The statements] were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.”

“The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war. Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, ‘independent’ validation of the Bush administration’s false statements about Iraq.”

This all has bearing on the current presidential election going on, as people try to sling mud at some candidate or other (Hillary, Edwards, etc.) over their having initially voted for the war. Well excuse me, but if I had been subjected to a relentless months-long misinformation campaign emanating from the president himself over the certainty of WMD’s and terrorism in Iraq I probably would have voted the same way. In fact I supported the war to begin with, having been played for a fool just like everyone else. This is why I consider these votes to be non-issues and pin the blame fully and squarely on Bush.

So this is is what our oil addiction has come down to–the leader of the free world figuratively getting on his knees and begging for more oil from OPEC and the Saudis.

Said Bush:

“When [US] consumers have less purchasing power, it could cause the economy to slow down. I hope OPEC nations put more supply on the market. It would be helpful.”

How utterly embarrassing. It underscores American helplessness in its addiction to these foreign powers that are taking the humongous sums of money we’re sending to them for oil or debt to turn around and buy pieces of our own banks to save them from the mortgage crisis. Yep–we’re paying other countries to come over here and buy pieces of our own country so as to feed our debt and oil addictions.

It’s like the prince with land but no money who insists on partying by selling pieces of his land to continue his habit, until he eventually ends up being nothing but a renter on his own property.

The Saudis are playing their own little game too. Their response to Bush’s bleating was:

“Our interest is to keep oil supplies matching demand with minimum volatility in the oil market,” Oil Minister Ali Naimi told reporters. “We will raise production when the market justifies it. This is our policy.”

Sorry for the stupid question–but what more justification than historically high $100+/barrel prices is needed to convince the Saudis the market justifies it? Why are they leaving extreme wealth on the table when they could generate insane amounts of money by pumping more oil?

Hmmm…maybe it’s because they can’t.

Am I the only liberal out there who thinks the various foreclosure fixes being thrown around in Washington are a really bad idea?

Yesterday Bush announced an agreement with the banking industry that would freeze the teaser rates on adjustable rate mortgages given out in the last couple of years to subprime borrowers. The freeze would apply for five years, and would be granted only to people who a) are current in their mortgages; b) can pay under the teaser rate but wouldn’t be able to pay when the mortgage adjusts higher. This would exclude anyone who’s already behind in payments and anyone deemed to make too much money to get relief.

The Democratic candidates are falling all over themselves to outdo each others’ and Bush’s proposals. Enough already!

Why is it bad to freeze rates and prevent people from losing their homes?

Because it relieves people from the consequences of their own bad decisions. Everyone who signs a contract has a responsibility to know what they’re signing. Ignorance is no excuse. Every real estate closing I’ve been to has the closing officer state the terms of the loan clearly to borrowers so that they know exactly what they’re signing. They always have the chance to get up and walk away, but they don’t.

They don’t walk away for a myriad reasons–everything from wanting to keep up with or exceed the Joneses to wanting to get a piece of the American dream. It had to be obvious to the janitor buying the McMansion that he couldn’t really afford that property, and that sooner or later his financial reckoning day would arrive. People of limited means don’t live in mansions for a reason–they can’t afford them.

People have to learn to live within their means and accept responsibility for their own choices, and having the “nanny state” swoop in and rescue people from really dumb real estate purchases flies in the face of that.

But didn’t the banks and investment companies encourage the real estate frenzy and even encourage fraud to sign people up for mortgages?

You betcha, and for that they need to pay. But how do you make a corporation pay? You hit them where it hurts–and that’s on their bottom lines. The reward they have gotten for all this ridiculous lending has been the tanking of their stock prices and drying up of their credit lines. The CEO’s of Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch have all been sacked in the last six weeks. These companies are in very serious trouble, and that’s exactly what they deserve.

The banks that made these loans and then sold them off to the enabling companies mentioned above are also being hurt–mortgage lending has almost dried up, and the credit crunch is making it very hard for them to stay in business. Plenty of punishment all around.

But no matter what the banks and hedge funds encouraged, it ultimately came down to each individual signing his or her name on the dotted line for a mortgage he knew or should have known he would eventually be unable to afford. They took a greedy gamble that they would probably sell the property in the future for much more money, and they lost the bet.

Why is interference in the foreclosure problem bad for the economy?

BECAUSE IT’S ONLY PROLONGING THE PAIN! The people who will benefit from the interest rate freeze in all likelihood will not be any more able to pay the increased interest rate 5 years from now than they will today. Five years from now, then, they will all try to do what they’re doing today–sell their properties. Instead of taking the pain all at once now, forcing people and especially builders to slash their prices to whatever amount is needed to regain balance in the market, we are drawing out the process far longer than it has to be. Instead of an extremely sharp real estate downturn that lasts three years and then recovers, we’re probably extending a not quite-so-severe downturn for up to a decade. Don’t be putting your money in real estate folks–it will probably go nowhere anytime soon.

Should the government do anything about this mess?

Yes–make sure it never happens again. How?

a) Manage the economy better, and never again lower interest rates like Greenspan did, which were so low that they started the frenzy of cheap lending.

b) Make sure all parties tell the truth–from making it a crime for a borrower to lie about his income, to banks making it crystal clear by how much the monthly payments will increase when loans re-adjust in the future, to the investment rating firms correctly marking mortgages as toxic waste instead of putting A++ labels on them and deceiving investment companies into buying them!

c) Keep the banks who make the loans accountable for losses on them–once upon a time, banks didn’t make stupid loans because they’d be stuck with them in the books if they went sour. But in recent years a new market opened up and they could now sell their mortgages to hedge funds and investment companies, thus losing all incentive to make sensible loans. They instead became incentivized to make as many loans as possible. The market may do this on its own, since the hedge funds seem to have suddenly lost their appetite for these mortgages–but either way the banks should somehow remain accountable.

At the end of the day, all parties involved–banks, investment companies, bond rating companies, the Fed, realtors, real estate appraisers, and individual borrowers–all colluded to create a mass delusion that real estate could only go up in price and was a 100% safe investment. They were wrong, just like they were all wrong about everything from dutch tulips to dot-com stocks.

Now, each and every one of them needs to take their harsh medicine to make sure that a debacle like this never, ever happens again. It’s time to return to personal accountability, where each individual and entity is responsible for his own mistakes and must accept the consequences. Otherwise, we create moral hazard by simply issuing an invitation to repeat history down the road–after all, if the government bails you out today for your screw ups or greed, it will probably do it again tomorrow–so why not just throw concern about risk out the window and do it all again someday?

That’s what happened to Japan–they kept bailing out bad loans until one day the music stopped when they realized the foolishness of throwing good money after bad, and they’re still stuck in a stagnant, deflating economy almost two decades after their real estate and stock bubbles popped.

Let’s stop pointing fingers to others for our own mistakes, and point them to ourselves. Let the excess wring itself out of the economy, get the whole debacle over with, and then move on to recovery as quickly as possible.

Conservative Australian Prime Minister John Howard has suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of his left-leaning Labor opponent Kevin Rudd, ending over a decade of conservative rule. His party also scored a clear majority in the lower house of Parliament.

Like Bush, Howard had refused to join the Kyoto Protocol and had maintained troops in Iraq. Both factors led to his historic ouster. Rudd intends to join Kyoto immediately and also plans to withdraw Australia’s troops from Iraq.

In so doing he leaves the US as the sole remaining industrialized nation to reject the Kyoto Protocol–and with even Britain withdrawing its troops one has to wonder who remains of Bush’s “coalition of the coerced” in Iraq. More and more, Bush stands completely alone in the world as he deserves for having governed this nation as a rogue state for seven years.

US Republicans must also have a sense of foreboding about next year as a result of this election. The same issues that sent Howard to his political grave are looming front and center for the 2008 contest–and those issues are turning out to be poison pills for anyone associated with conservatism, Republicans, and Bush’s failed policies.

Seven years. That’s as long as we have left to prevent a climate calamity by stopping the growth in carbon emissions entirely, according to the conclusions derived from thousands of studies by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Doing that, along with cutting emissions 50-85% by 2050, will stabilize the climate at a 3.5 degree Fahrenheit increase, which will “merely” cause seas to swell, a reduction in water supplies from glaciers and icecaps with millions of people going thirsty, acidification of the oceans, the dying out of most coral reefs, and increases in flood and storms. Again, ladies and gentlemen, this is what we get if we meet the impossible goal of stopping emissions growth in 7 years.

What if we do not? Well then things go downhill from there, don’t they. If instead we fail to stop emissions growth until 2030, the planet’s temperature will increase by 6.3 degrees F. That would result in the widespread extinction of species, slowing global currents that would wreak havoc on climates all over the developed world, decreases in food production, 30% global loss of wetlands, flooding of millions of people, and many more deaths from heat waves.

To say that these are “extremely serious findings,” as the chairperson of the IPCC said, is an understatement. They are stunning and depressing in their immediacy, inevitability, and seeming impossibility of doing anything in our political world in time to prevent catastrophe.

Seven years is also, by the way, the amount of time the US has wasted in doing absolutely NOTHING about climate change under our current Chimp-in-Chief, who refused to join most of the rest of the world in ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. Even now, when confronted with these dire warnings and mindful that they can no longer play the part of ostriches with their heads stuck in the ground, US climate delegate Sharon Hays had the gall to defend our non-action, saying that “what’s changed since 2001 is the scientific certainty that this is happening”–with no promises that Washington would change its reliance on “voluntary” (aka non-existent) reductions given the “new evidence.”

No Sharon, we knew fully well in 2001 what was happening, which is why Kyoto came about. What hadn’t happened then was Katrina, and Atlanta going dry of water, and Al Gore, and other evidence so clear that even a monkey could understand it. In insisting on evidence as certain as cogito ergo sum, all we have done is waste seven valuable years while allowing the oil industry and other polluting interests increasingly free reign to pollute with impunity. We now have the result–our backs are against the wall with only 7 years left to avoid a worse calamity.

I’m not sure anything CAN be done in 7 more years, despite the good intentions of a few. Our world is just too fragmented politically, with too many competing interests. I also wonder whether the exponential nature of technological advancement is being accounted for in these findings–futurist Ray Kurzweil is severely critical of Al Gore for supposedly failing to account for technological advancements in areas like nanotechnology that could prevent carbon emissions or even suck already-emitted carbon out of the air.

I sure as hell hope Kurzweil is right, because that may be our last best hope. In case he is not, however, we still have a moral obligation to do everything possible to lessen the damage and destruction as much as we can. If we can’t or won’t, then I question whether we even deserve to be on this third rock from the Sun, given our disgraceful stewardship of the planet.

A new report by Congressional Democrats estimates the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars at around $1.5 trillion, almost double the $800 billion “officially” requested by the Bush administration. The report estimates the conflict’s hidden costs, including the drastic rise in the price of oil, the expense of treating wounded veterans, the interest payments that have to be made (primarily to foreign central banks) since the war is being financed by debt, and the costs to US employers of having reservists deployed overseas.

$1.5 trillion amounts to $20,000 per household. How do you feel about your family paying $20,000 to fund the deposing of a dictator who had no weapons of mass destruction, to liberate a country that clearly did not want our Abu Ghraib-stained brand of “liberation,” to financially support the ethnic cleansing of Sunnis and Shiites that has taken place because of our lack of a post-war strategy?

I do not agree that Iraq is solely responsible for the skyrocketing cost of oil–it has nothing to do with dwindling wells in Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and other locations, a frightening topic all on its own but one that is unrelated to Iraq. Of course oil production has been disrupted in the war-torn country so Iraq does contribute somewhat to the higher cost of oil, but it’s impossible to say how much. Nevertheless, even the conservative commentators in the article agree that the war’s cost is far higher than what Bush has tried to feed the public, especially in his attempt to hide costs by using “supplemental” appropriations and not counting the war costs when calculating deficits.

Speaking of outrageous costs, the Boston Globe and National Priorities Project inform us of what we might have purchased (from a uniquely Bostonian perspective) with a “mere” $611 billion out of what the war has cost (thanks to my friend angry-biscuit for the heads up):

Not saying we should be giving free gas to everyone–but some of those stats hurt, such as what we could have done to curb global warming, poverty, lack of educational opportunities, and the like. Not mentioned is how we could have sunk the money into nanotechnology and its promise of millions of future jobs, into increasing energy efficiency and reducing our addiction to fossil fuels, into solving the soaring costs of health care, into desalination plants to address the impending water crisis being felt from Atlanta to Tennessee, and a host of other really urgent matters that would have been a far better use of that money.

The price of seven years of the Bush regime keeps mounting.

Bush confronted the horrors of his war legacy today, as he visited soldiers severely maimed by his misadventure in Iraq.

The rest of the sad gallery depicting his visit can be found here.

I feel so bad for these soldiers, horribly maimed in the name of a meaningless war without purpose.

There is no end to the horror that this president has inflicted on this nation. How can he live with himself?

“Happy” Veteran’s Day.

The remnants of Bush’s remaining Iraq policy are now becoming clear: “six more months,” “six more months” until he’s out of office and can pass this unmitigated fiasco to some other sucker. Only six more months until things REALLY get better..just a few more months until we can DRAW DOWN those troops! Draw them down, of course, back to their original levels.

We hear from Petraus that Iraq is “improving”–tell that to the grieving relatives of the 250+ people mowed down by a truck bomb in August. And while we’re on the subject of Iraqis, what do THEY think about the success of the “surge” and the American presence generally?

Funny you should ask. ABC News did, in one of its recent polls (PDF). Iraqis themselves, who aren’t subject to the spoonfeeding of biased propaganda the military is feeding American news outlets, seem to think that there hasn’t been much if any improvement at all. When asked how things were since the surge, 31% said worse for their local area than before the surge and 45% said the same; when asked about Iraq as a whole, 61% said things had gotten worse overall. Other tidbits: 63% believe the US invasion was “wrong”, 47% believe coalition forces should leave immediately, and 57% believe attacks on US forces are acceptable!

Petraus points to a decrease in violence in Baghdad, without pointing out that most neighborhoods have already been ethnically cleansed, and that tens of thousands of people have had to flee their homes and even the country. The exodus of Iraq’s intellectuals and elites bodes particularly poorly for those who remain.

Iraq is a victim of failure to find a political solution, not a military one. Bush sent in the troops just barely knowing the difference between a Shiite and a Sunni, without any plan for a reconstruction that would cause reconciliation between the various ethnic factions. We now have the incompetent boob Al-Maliki leading a puppet Parliament to nowhere, relying on the fact that US forces are guaranteed to stick around in the face of a feckless Congress. With the US military in their pockets, the Iraqi government can feel free to continue doing what it does best–engage in petty squabbling, bitter rivalries, and otherwise do everything except to serve their countrymen. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson these people are not.

A political failure will not be cured by a military surge or presence of any time or magnitude. Our presence there is serving only to extend the process of non-reconciliation.

Pull the troops out, seal the borders, let the Iraqis have the civil war they seem bent on having in the absence of the American crutch, and let them murder each other into submission until they get tired of it and and either exhaust themselves or get their act together with a government and police force that work. It is horrible and barbaric, but nothing could be more horrible than this gross miscarriage of a war that has now dragged on longer than our involvement in World War II.

Time for it to end, already.