The Alligator

In his State of the Union address, President Bush proposed major changes in tax incentives for health insurance and health care. His plan would eliminate most current tax exclusions and deductions for health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs and in their place substitute a separate standard deduction in the federal income tax for all taxpayers who obtain qualifying health insurance. This special deduction would also apply to earnings subject to payroll taxes. The plan’s intent is to increase the tax incentive to purchase some form of insurance while eliminating the current system’s bias in favor of insurance provided through employers and reducing the current tax incentives for over-consumption of health care services (and thus under-consumption of other valued goods like food and shelter).

In some respects, the plan is very innovative and a cursory glance makes it look like a step in the right direction but while the plan would improve the market for health insurance, an analysis by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute concludes, elements could actually reduce insurance coverage, particularly for low-income families and people in poor health.

The president’s plan effectively turns the tax subsidy for health insurance into a kind of voucher. It would increase the amount of tax relief that subsidizes acquisition of health insurance while eliminating the tax advantages for increased consumption of health care over all other goods. The proposal will almost certainly encourage some people who currently lack insurance, particularly middle-income families, to get it. And the core of the new proposal is not biased towards the provision of favored forms of insurance (e.g., high deductible policies) over other forms  of insurance that could reduce spending (e.g., managed care or plans with higher co-payments).  

However, as under current law, the subsidy will be more valuable for high-income people than for those with lower incomes who most need help. In fact, low-income households with no income tax liability would get virtually no help, as is true under the current structure. These limitations could easily be addressed by converting the proposed standard deduction into a flat credit or even a sliding-scale credit that is larger for low-income families.  

Because the standard deduction would be available to all who obtained qualifying insurance, whether through an employer or as an individual, the proposal would level the playing field between employer-sponsored insurance and insurance purchased in the individual market. The plan would lead some employers, especially small and medium-sized businesses, to stop offering health insurance to their employees, exacerbating a trend that is already well underway. Even if such employers increase wages by the amount of the firm’s previous contribution, this would fragment risk pooling and insurance, forcing some higher-risk people, especially those with low incomes, into the ranks of the uninsured. Mitigating or remedying these problems would require some combination of expanded public programs, new pooling arrangements, fundamental reform of the individual market, or additional tax subsidies for small employers that offer health insurance.

The administration does propose to provide states with incentives to address the problems in the non-group market, but those promises may not be backed by adequate funding to deal with the serious challenges facing those in the non-group market. Moreover, the tax changes would go into effect regardless of whether or when states adopted the complementary changes to the non-group market.

Congress must look at some of the innovations within the President’s proposal, keep the positive aspects, fix the problems inherent in the proposal and meaningfully flesh out some of the generalities. And most of the proposal was presented in sweeping generalities.   The devil is always in the detail and the President’s record is not one that should trust the big statements.   

Health care coverage is one of the biggest domestic issues facing this country.  It is unlikely that a single payer system will ever move forward due to the inordinate influence of health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry.  Finding ways to work meaningfully with states that are looking to address the preponderance of uninsured Americans (e.g. Massachusetts and potentially California) and looking for ways that will help lower income and middle income families is vital.  Let’s hope that President Bush will work with the Democratic Congress on this and that he and Republican members of Congress will not, as is all too usual, cave to the special interests of the drug companies and insurance companies.

    Three recent events cause me to ask the question – “Is the African-American community homophobic?  First is the recent fracas about Isaiah Washington’s use of the work faggot in a derogatory manner in relation to his “Grey’s Anatomy” gay co-star T.R. Knight.  Second was the withdrawal from the “Episcopal Church of the United Sates” by parishes that object to the elevation of a gay man to Bishop and their move to the see of a Bishop in Africa.  The African church is very intolerant of the progressive movement in the church- specifically regarding homosexuality. Third was the memorial service of an African American colleague who recently died unexpectedly and whose family acknowledged neither his homosexuality nor his status as an HIV positive man.  What made this memorial colossally peculiar was that this man worked in the HIV field and had a history with a boy friend.

    Attitudes and affective reactions to lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals are slowly improving in this country. As more lesbians and gays come forward and people see them for the people they are rather than the label, the level of acceptance has improved- although it is hardly universal. Various authors have noted that anti-gay attitudes and sentiments may be even more pronounced among African Americans. For example, Fullilove and Fullilove (1999) have commented that “homophobia is very common in the African American community” (p. 1,123). That sentiment was echoed by Kennamer, Honnold, Bradford, and Hendricks (2000), who reported that homophobia appears to be “a major part of the African American culture, driven by both religious forces and political forces” (p. 522).

    Various critics contend that homophobia among African Americans is partly responsible for slowing an African American mobilization against the AIDS epidemic in their communities (e.g., Brandt, 1999; Fullilove & Fullilove, 1999; Morales & Fullilove, 1992; Peterson & Marin, 1988).A modest number of studies have investigated African Americans’ views of LGBs and have yielded contradictory findings. Some of those studies have failed to find significant differences in homphobia between African Americans and Whites (e.g., Glenn & Weaver, 1979; Herek & Capitanio, 1995; Irwin & Thompson, 1977; Marsiglio, 1993). Other studies have found African Americans, on average, to be more homophobic than Whites (e.g., Hudson & Ricketts, 1980; Lewis, 2003; Schneider & Lewis, 1984; Tiemeyer, 1993; Waldner, Sikka, & Baig, 1999).

    The more noteworthy of those studies is the one by Lewis (2003), who attempted to compare the opinions of approximately 7,000 African Americans and 43,000 Whites on homosexual relationships, civil liberties for gays and lesbians, and employment rights of homosexuals. Lewis compiled data from 31 national surveys conducted between 1973 and 2000, mostly by news or popular survey organizations, such as the Times Mirror and Gallup polls. His goal was to identify demographic variables, including education and commitment to religion, that may account for racial differences in opinions in these three areas.

     The findings were somewhat paradoxical. Even after controlling for frequency of church attendance, education, age, and gender, he found that African Americans were more homophobic than Whites. More specifically, Lewis found that African Americans were 11 percentage points more likely than Whites to condemn homosexual relations as “always wrong” and 14 percentage points more likely than Whites to see LGBs as deserving of “God’s punishment” in the form of AIDS. Moreover, African Americans indicated that they would support removing pro-gay books from their public library by 6 percentage points more than Whites and would be less willing to allow an openly gay person make a speech in their community by 4 percentage points more than Whites. Ironically, however, African Americans were more supportive than Whites of gay civil liberties and significantly more opposed to antigay employment discrimination than Whites.

    Lewis commented that “Blacks appear to be more likely than Whites to both see homosexuality as wrong and to favor gay rights laws” (p. 66), and he interpreted those findings in light of African Americans’ historically strong opposition to discrimination in political and economic spheres. Given that religiosity, education, age, and gender did not meaningfully eliminate African Americans’ relatively high levels of homophobia, Lewis concluded that additional research is needed to understand the variables at the heart of African Americans’ homophobia, particularly as a means for developing more effective, culture-specific campaigns against homophobia.

    Charles Negy did a comparison of African American and White college students’ affective and attitudinal reactions to lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals that was published in The Journal of Sex Research in November 2005.   In the study African American (n = 70) university students were compared with White students (n = 140) on their affective (homophobia) and attitudinal (homonegativity) reactions to lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals. The results initially suggested that African Americans had modestly higher homophobia and homonegativity scores than Whites. However, those ethnic differences vanished after controlling for frequency of church attendance, religious commitment, and socioeconomic status. For both ethnic groups, gender and religiosity variables significantly predicted homophobia and homonegativity. Men in both ethnic groups had significantly higher homophobia and homonegativity scores than their female counterparts. Lastly, additional regression analyses revealed that one aspect of African American culture–family practices–significantly predicted homophobia, but not homonegativity, above the predictive ability of religiosity.

    Research on lesbian and gay populations within the African American community has covered a great deal of ground over the last quarter century. While early work on homophobia was based on the assumption that the fear of Black gays and lesbians was justified because homosexuality was either a disease or a strategy of European domination, the latest research starts with the recognition that gays and lesbians are a significant part of the Black community. Though such research has, for the most part, clearly moved from intolerance to tolerance, it has tended to stop short of acceptance.There is clearly room for further research which is not focused so much on the ways in which the problems of the past continue to haunt Black gays and lesbians — from oppression and its negative effects to HIV/AIDS — but on their hopes and dreams for the future that are unfolding in the present.

    The paradox of the African American Community having religious based issues with homosexuality while overwhelming supporting civil rights for gay and lesbian Americans is an interesting one.  My conclsuion is that they African Americans know from their own oppression the need to promote civil rights for all groups and thus it isn’t being African-American that causes homophobia- it isn’t that African-Americans see homosexuality as a “white man’s sin and disease” rather it is the socially conservative churches which often figure prominently in the family lives of African Americans that breed the intolerance. It just happens that many African-Americans in this country grew up with a significant influence from socially conservative churches.

Is Bush’s Iraq deabacle in its last throes?  Well if you define last throes the way that the Bush defined the “last throes of the insurgency” – the answer is YUP!  It seems that Mr. Bush has learned a thing or two from the insurgency in Iraq about last throes.  Last throes in fact last for years and are responsible for untold carnage and unlike the human body these “last throes” never end! But like those in the human body they inevitably lead to death.

True Mr. Bush’s cowboy “Bring ‘em on!” rhetoric has been slapped down- all you have to do is look at that pathetic speech he gave at the library in the White House where he did his best to avoid words like victory and winning.  As Frank Rich wrote in the New York Times on Sunday- Bush went from being the slick and confident snake oil salesman Professor Henry Hill in “The Music Man” to the pathetic Willie Loman in “Death of a Salesman.  But don’t forget Willie Loman still attempted some bravado- how ever self delusional that may have been.  Same is true of the current President.

But behind that pathetic speech was a dangerous bravado that, like the “last throes” of the insurgency is ratcheting up the death and destruction in Iraq – not leading to its end.  The New York Times in an editorial the day after Mr. Bush’s speech said:

“Mr. Bush did announce his plan for 20,000 more troops, and the White House trumpeted a $1 billion contribution to reconstruction efforts. Congress will debate these as if they are the real issues. But they are not. Talk of a “surge” ignores the other 132,000 American troops trapped by a failed strategy.

We have argued that the United States has a moral obligation to stay in Iraq as long as there is a chance to mitigate the damage that a quick withdrawal might cause. We have called for an effort to secure Baghdad, but as part of the sort of comprehensive political solution utterly lacking in Mr. Bush’s speech. This war has reached the point that merely prolonging it could make a bad ending even worse. Without a real plan to bring it to a close, there is no point in talking about jobs programs and military offensives. There is nothing ahead but even greater disaster in Iraq.”

And Mr. Bush is saber rattling with Iran.  What can he and the neo-con nincompoops possibly be thinking?  Is this an administration on crack?  For more than two years after Saddam Hussein’s fall, the war in Iraq was about chasing down insurgents and Al Qaeda in Iraq. Last year it expanded to tamping down sectarian warfare.  But over the past three weeks, in two sets of raids and newly revealed orders issued by President George W. Bush, a third front has opened — against Iran.

Bush vowed that US forces would “seek out and destroy” any networks funneling weapons or fighters from Syria or Iran into Iraq, and said he had ordered another US aircraft carrier strike group to the region. A senior military official said US planned to keep two aircraft carrier battle groups in the Gulf for months - the first such deployment since the first year of the Iraq war. The Pentagon also announced that an air defense battalion equipped with Patriot missile defense systems will go to the region.  

For now, administration officials say, that effort has a limited goal: preventing Iranians from aiding in attacks on American and Iraqi forces inside Iraq. But in recent interviews and public statements, senior members of the Bush administration have made clear that their real agenda goes significantly further, toward a goal of containing Iran’s ability to exploit America’s troubles and realizing its dream of re- emerging as the greatest power in the Middle East.

In an interview in her office Friday, before she left on her latest Mideast trip, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described what she called an “evolving” administration strategy to confront “destabilizing behavior” by Iran across the region. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, went further Sunday, when he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the United States was resisting an Iranian effort “to basically establish hegemony” throughout the region.

All that sabre rattling mixed with the administration’s attempts to play down the consequences combined with justification rhetoric is a confluence that seems eerily similar to what was being done just before we invaded Iraq.

Mr. Bush is not contrite- even if he said mistakes were made – he did not admit the biggest mistake of all- the invasion of Iraq.  Now he is risking more troops and potentially creating a regional catastrophe by bringing Iran into the mess (does that remind anyone of President Nixon and Cambodia?).  This seems odd to me since Mr. Bush says that if we withdraw one of the negative ramifications could be that the entire region blows up. I guess its okay for him to actively blow up the region than to leave the area to its own devices and let it happen organically if at all. 

Well- I guess when Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, Ms. Rice and Mr. Bush all said the insurgency was in its last throes- they were neither deluded nor lying.  They just redefined what “last throes” is and our new policy is an example of just what that new definition is.  Move over Mr. Orwell… Mr. Bush has entered the room!

In the mythos of conservative Americana President Ronald Wilson Reagan is seen as an iconic figure that single handedly ended the Cold War.  He has become the United States’ Siegfried who slew the Dragon named the Soviet Union with one slice of his sword Nothung which here would be a military buildup not the sword per se.  (Writer’s note: This blog article was inspired by an article in the New York Times reporting on interviews President Gerald R. Ford gave assessing other Presidents and his belief that President Reagan received too much credit for ending the Cold War.  President Ford signed the Helsinki Accords.)

Gosh we just love to make our leaders mythic.  Now don’t get me wrong- I admire and revere George Washington but I do not think that he has become a deity.  But go the Capitol Dome and view “The Apotheosis of Washington” in the dome’s eye.  This fresco by Brumidi depicted George Washington rising to the heavens in glory, flanked by female figures representing Liberty and Victory/Fame. A rainbow arches at his feet, and thirteen maidens symbolizing the original states flank the three central figures. (The word “apotheosis” in the title means literally the raising of a person to the rank of a god).  Roman emperors were regularly elevated to the “god” status.  Are we the new Rome?  I won’t talk about our current President’s hubris and its kinship to the fall of Rome here- I’ll leave that to another time.

But I get back to Ronald Reagan’s myth.  He is our modern equivalent and if the conservatives had their way he would be up there with George munching on manna with the angels.

But let’s be real- Reagan was in the right place at the right time.  The foundations for the demise of the Eastern bloc and the Soviet Union were put in place before Reagan.  As part of the emerging East-West détente, in November 1972 talks opened in Helsinki to prepare for a Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Between 3 July 1973 and 1 August 1975, representatives of thirty-five states, including the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union, the Vatican, and all of the European states except
Albania, discussed the future of Europe.  The Helsinki Accords, however, legitimized human rights in the most repressive parts of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

Dissidents, like the founders of “Charter 77″ in Czechoslovakia, used the language of the Helsinki Accords to justify their criticisms of communist governments. Many of the dissidents inspired by the Helsinki Accords led the anticommunist revolutions of 1989. In addition, many of the “new thinkers” in the Soviet Union who attained power after 1985—including Mikhail Gorbachev—explained that they hoped to build a more humane European civilization, as outlined in the Helsinki Accords. Seeking stability, Soviet leaders signed the Final Act in 1975; in so doing they unleashed domestic forces they could not control.

In ”Reagan and Gorbachev,” Jack F. Matlock Jr. says that Mikhail Gorbachev deserves “at least” double billing for the demise of the Cold War.  And he should know since he was a veteran foreign service officer and respected expert on the Soviet Union, he reached the pinnacle of his career under Reagan, serving first as the White House’s senior coordinator of policy toward the Soviet Union, then as ambassador to Moscow.

Reagan himself went even farther. Asked at a press conference in Moscow in 1988, his last year in office, about the role he played in the great drama of the late 20th century, he described himself essentially as a supporting actor. ”Mr. Gorbachev,” he said, ”deserves most of the credit, as the leader of this country.”   Of course most conservatives just chalk up this remark to Mr. Regan being gracious while he was winking to the world and knowing that he was the one to whom we all genuflect and give thanks.

Reagan was not a geopolitical visionary who jettisoned the supposedly accommodationist policies of containment and detente, but an arch-pragmatist and operational optimist who adjusted his own attitudes and conduct in order to encourage a new kind of Kremlin leader.  

Getting back into the business of diplomacy with the principal adversary of the United States appealed to Reagan, just as it had to six previous occupants of the Oval Office. Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy had tried to make the most of Nikita S. Khrushchev’s slogan of ”peaceful coexistence”; Lyndon B. Johnson jump-started arms control talks with Aleksei N. Kosygin; Richard Nixon, Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter signed strategic-arms limitation agreements with Leonid I. Brezhnev. But those Soviet leaders were committed, above all, to preserving the status quo. Sooner or later, each caused a setback or a showdown with the United States through some act of barbarity or recklessness: the crushing of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the invasions of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979 (don’t forget folks- this is event that led to Reagan shoring up the Taliban in the 1980’s), and the destruction of a South Korean airliner that had wandered off course in 1983.  

Breakthroughs in United States-Soviet relations were inherently subject to breakdowns. Gorbachev altered that dynamic. He was determined to take the Soviet Union in a radically different direction—away from the Big Lie (through his policy of glasnost), away from a command economy (through perestroika) and away from zero-sum competition with the West.  

Reagan came quickly to recognize that Gorbachev’s goals, far from being traditional, were downright revolutionary. He also saw that the transformation Gorbachev had in mind for his country would, if it came about, serve American interests. As a result, without much fuss and without many of his supporters noticing, Reagan underwent a transformation of his own. The fire-breathing cold warrior set about trying, through intense, sustained personal engagement, to convince Gorbachev that the United States would not make him sorry for the course he had chosen.

Of course now the myth is that Reagan was the protagonist here not Gorbachev.  But look at the facts.  It was the Helsinki Accords that lead to the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev and Gorbachev’s revolutionary policies for the Soviet Union that were most responsible for the end of the Cold War.  Mr. Reagan just supported some of Gorbachev’s goals with a smile and  in reality the house of cards that had been jiggled by the Helsinki Accords came tumbling down.  Reagan was at the right place at the right time.  He should be credited for supporting Mr. Gorbachev’s efforts- but that is a damn site short of being solely responsible for ending the Cold War.

On the operatic stage of world diplomatic history Mr. Reagan is not Siegfried of Der Ring des Nibelungen, he is instead a principle supernumerary watching Valhalla burn to destruction. 

Yes those are the words from the big show stopper in the play, now movie, “Dreamgirls”.  This is the story of an extraordinarily talented singer who is cast aside for a marketable lowest common denominator alternative singer.  Sure the alternative has a good enough voice- but it is her marketability that elevates her to stardom and gives the true talent the boot.

“Dreamgirls” is an allegory for our present society where we prize celebrity, marketing and profitability over talent and merit.  And if you don’t believe me- just look at the marketing of the movie itself.

 Before I continue, I have to admit that it is not usual for me to write about movies on this space or to review them and I do not intend to do that here.  I saw four movies over the holiday season and I found each one interesting in its own way- “The Good Shepherd”, “Children of Men”, “Notes on a Scandal” and “Dreamgirls” but I will leave the reviewing to those that have a better knack at that than I.  But- I don’t think that it is an opinion or a review to say that “Dreamgirls” is Jennifer Hudson’s movie.  More to the point, Jennifer Holiday who played the same role, Effie, on Broadway was nominated and won the Tony for Best Actress in a Musical. 

Given that the movie is dominated by Ms. Hudson and her Broadway counterpart was “Best Actress”, where is she in the marketing of the movie?  All of the advertisements for the movie have big font print and “starring status” for Beyoncé Knowles, Eddie Murphy and Jamie Foxx and leave Ms. Hudson in some small font somewhere else in the ad.  And what about the round of early morning news shows, afternoon talk shows as well as Leno and Letterman?  It was Ms. Knowles, Mr. Murphy and Mr. Foxx.  Are the producers of the movie that immune to the movie’s own message?  I reiterate that I am not a critic and I am not at all making any judgment on the performances of these three stars.   But my goodness- the irony is clear even to someone who considers blunt force trauma to the head to be subtlety.

It so blows me away that the film itself is guilty of the warnings in the film that I was initially astounded.  But should I be?  …Probably not. 

Our culture has become one of marketability and not of merit.  The idea of a society based on merit was introduced by John Locke in his Second Treatise of Government and was a huge influence on founding father Thomas Jefferson.  A society where success is derived from merit- hard work and talent- is the hallmark of our nation’s founding.  Capitalism is also a hallmark of our nation’s founding.  But somewhere Capitalism turned to marketing and saw that in order to garner the most dollars it needed the largest group of consumers and therefore it was important to appeal to the broadest number of people.  Some refer to this as “dumbing down” or “appealing to the lowest common denominator”.  

What is even more distressing is that our political process has been a victim of marketing.  Marketing is so important that obscene amounts of dollars are poured into 30 second commercials that appeal to the fears of the largest number of people.

I do not mean to elevate a film that is good entertainment to something prophetic.  But the film and its own deafness to its message about mediocrity is an allegory for our society where we celebrate market over merit.

While the first use of the word “meritocracy” was negative due to it first appearing in in Michael Young’s 1958 book “Rise of the Meritocracy”, which is set in a dystopian future in which one’s social place is determined by IQ plus effort.  In the book, this social system ultimately leads to a social revolution in which the masses overthrow the elite, who have become arrogant and disconnected from the feelings of the public.  I use the term in the true Lockean sense – where merit is rewarded and mediocrity is not.   

That being said- it seems sad that we are not a “meritocracy” but more of a “marketocracy” – our culture and our political process seem to be governed by marketing not by merit. And I am telling you- that saddens me.   

Since I last wrote on this blog there have been two notable events in Iraq: the death toll for Americans reached 3,000 and Sadaam Hussein was executed.  

About the execution, I agree with the British government, the European Union, the Vatican and most other civilized countries in the world- I do not support the use of the death penalty, in Iraq or anywhere else and I support an end to the death penalty worldwide, regardless of the individual or the crime (this is actual a paraphrase of a comment from Margaret Beckett – the British foreign secretary with whom I wholeheartedly agree).  Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott said yesterday the manner of Saddam’s execution was “deplorable.” He branded the leaked mobile phone footage of his hanging “totally unacceptable.”  Prescott added that those responsible for capturing and circulating the footage of the deposed Iraqi dictator’s death should be condemned.  

Not only was the execution barbaric; in the footage of the execution, some of those in attendance chanted the name of Muqtada al-Sadr moments before Saddam’s hanging, with the former Iraqi dictator repeating “Muqtada al-Sadr” in a mocking tone.  Regardless of how hard the President and the administration try to distance themselves from this event- their hands are in this and everyone knows it.  With chanting the name of a Shiite terrorist during this event- the Americans look cozy with the Shiites (intentional or not).  The administration did hope to have a different timing for the execution- but when is there ever a good time to execute someone?  I am sure that whatever strategy they had for the execution’s timing had political implications here- after all this administration doesn’t make a move without a political motive. 

Am I cynical?  Where this administration is concerned- you bet I am!  The death toll reached 3,000 almost immediately on the heels of Sadaam’s execution.  Kinda takes the wind out of the sails of any poll bump that the President might get from the execution!  Of course- I think any poll bump is a pipe dream… but I am sure that they didn’t want to lose the news cycle to a death toll milestone- postponing the execution until after the dust settled from the death toll would have been preferable to Rove and Bush. 

With this horrible death toll the President is talking about beefing up our troop levels. Mr. President- these are real people not just numbers!  Did he hear nothing from the American people during the thumping that Republicans took in the 2004 election?  Can he possibly be deluded enough to believe that “winning” is achievable?  Could anyone ACTUALLY believe that adding more troops to a chaotic landscape that has devolved into civil war is a smart idea?  Could anyone ACTUALLY believe that the government we are supporting there is capable of doing anything let alone curtail the violence?  Just look at how the execution was handled.  Even if one supports executions – this one was botched and bungled. There are some that believe that the Iraqi government itself is responsible for the cell phone video footage.

This is where we get into the President’s pathology.  President Bush is the first President in our nation’s history to take us into a war that was not provoked.  Yes there were arguments from the administration that Iraq was a threat- but as we know they were wrong and if you read Bob Woodward’s “State of
Denial” you will wonder if they just didn’t want to know the facts.  They also deftly wove an attack on Iraq with the war on terror when they and everyone with half a brain knew that Iraq had NOTHING to do with 9/11.  They were settled on Iraqi invasion from the outset- it was a neoconservative wet dream.  This was his mission.  In some ways I think that he feels God ordained him for this task.

Now think about it for a moment.  Can you imagine how one’s psyche would totally disassemble if you had think that you were completely wrong about your God given task and worst yet- that your actions had cost tens of thousands of lives (both the “Coalition of the Willing” and Iraqi) and untold numbers of wounded (more than 20,000 Americans alone) AND that these actions had taken the country down a road from which it will take decades to recover, if ever?

Most people could not deal with that sort of psychological pressure and I don’t think that the President is capable of “going there” in his head, his heart or his spirit.  This sort of admission would be difficult for someone with great self awareness.  But for the President who seems to lack any self knowledge and relies on a prefabricated personality and a disturbing arrogance to be able to cope with a life- a life where he is always out-shadowed by his father and incapable of achieving anything without family connections- it would be impossible.

It is sad that this country has been a Petrie dish for dealing with “father / son issues” for the past 6 years.  But far worse is that this President’s pathology has harmed this country due to the arrogance and hubris of a President that feels ordained by God to accomplish a mission and incapable of admitting that he was wrong- he was not preordained and his actions were reckless, irresponsible and made the world a more dangerous place.