Jim Kunstler has a better analysis of Bush and the times in which we live at http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/.

A couple of very good quotes from the article are these:

"GWB won reelection in 2004 -- running against the weak John Kerry, "a haircut in search of a brain," as Kevin Phillips put it so memorably, who was not smart enough to pander successfully (though he tried) to the dominant, Jesus-soaked Nascar fans who inhabit the Moron Crescent that runs from West Virginia south through Dixie and then west into Idaho. GWB was still riding pretty high when Hurricane Katrina slammed into the swamps and beaches east of Lake Ponchartrain, and the president failed to direct anybody to so much as air-drop bottled drinking water for survivors dying on rooftops and highway overpasses in New Orleans. The Left, once again, adopted an idiotic narrative to explain the event -- that Bush acted to punish African-Americans -- when plain incompetence combined with grandiose expectations for a televised happy ending to instead produce tragedy."

Here's another one:

" To me, GWB will remain the perfect representative of his time, place, and culture. During his years in Washington, America became a nation of clowns posturing in cowboy hats, bethinking ourselves righteous agents of Jesus in a Las Vegas of the spirit, where wishing was enough to get something for nothing, where "mistakes were made," but everybody was excused from the consequences of bad choices. The break from that mentality will be very severe, and we may look back in twelve months and wonder how we ever fell for the whole package. The answering of that question will occupy historians for ages to come."

Robert Rubin resigned from the BOD at Citibank, after assisting in "running it into the ground." Citibank is one of those dead banks walking--insolvent, not illiquid, getting $45B in TARP money and still bleeding $10B/month. Citibank is exactly the type of bank that should be closed in a bank holiday so that the "books" can be reviewed by government auditors, in the presence of federal marshals and prosecutors.

Rubin is also a guy who asked for Congress to look the other way while Enron was looting its electrical customers, because Enron was a customer of Citibank.

He seems like a scumbag, not a genius to me. If he becomes the architect of an economic revival plan, we can be sure that it will be for his friends at Goldman Sachs, Citibank, and Morgan Stanley, not the rest of us. Rubin could be Obama's and our doom.

For the first time in American history, 2008 marked the year when more U.S. patents were issued to entities outside of the United States than inside. This investment in science and engineering can only help innovation in the United States. Without it, we are finished.

Upon further reflection, it is possible that the money spent on R&D will not be spent in the US but in places like the Indian Institute of Technology or one of the high tech graduate schools, funded by the Chinese government and US companies such as Microsoft, in Beijing. The money will be funneled outside of the United States by US companies to build up a knowledge base in those countries. The US citizens will, once again, be treated as consumers only--like cows.

We will have to hope for the best.

A majority of voters in the United States had all they could take, and more, of stupid leadership. Bush was an embarassment, a boil on the psyche of the country. The idiot could not put a complete sentence together, with English words, even though English is supposedly his first language.

Barak won because he was and is the best candidate. I am sure that I will not agree with everything that he does, but I know him to be extremely smart, thoughtful, empathetic, and moral.

This is confirmation of MLK's dream: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character".

why my grandpa did not trust banks or bankers. I don't think today's drop had much, if anything, to do with Barak Obama. It was a response to terrible news in GB about its banks, deflation of the pound sterling, and continuing terrible reports coming from Citibank and BofA. If GB is an indicator, Obama does not have much time to take effective action before the Treasuries bubble pops and the dollar inflates.

Barak has not asked for my advice, nor should he. That said, I think that he should forget about bad debt aggregator banks and do it the old fashioned way--close the banks; hire some clean federal auditors to review their books; if the books show the bank is insolvent, shut it down. If the books are ambiguous, bring in federal marshalls and prosecutors and arrest the bastards. Re-open the clean, solvent banks and regulate the heck out of them. Reinstate Glass Steagall and fire everyone in the SEC.

It has been no surprise that TARP has been a failure. The actions of the banksters receiving TARP money has been completely predictable and sickening to the most cynical of us. In India, these jackasses would be arrested. In China, they would be executed. In the United States, they get to buy fancy office furniture and corporate planes before the final blow that takes everything down.

I think that historians will one day describe the United States as a country that defeated fascism and communism and then, shortly after, self-destructed because of a blind faith in the reliability of unbridled capitalism.

How could any living thing ever want to have sex with that!

Good job, Ms Walsh.