Glenn, you are my hero. Eloquent, precise, and relevant.

Here are my questions for our Leaders and their Friends in The Media:

Why, after the Oklahoma City bombing, did our leaders not consider torture, secret prisons, or waterboarding to be adequate and useful law enforcement tools to apprehend the suspects? I seem to recall with OKC that there were manhunts, indictments, trials, and punishment. The Standard Drill that we hold up to the world as a shining example of the greatness of our system.

Why, after the first WTC bombing, did our leaders not consider using these techniques (at least not publicly)?

I know, the typical response is "Everything was different after 9/11. Everything changed."

Apparently that includes our basic humanity.

There is no greater indictment of MSM than the "coverage" of the I/P conflict. (Other than, of course, their complicity in the "War on Terror...")

Reading European media on the same events almost always yields a completely different scenario than what is "reported" in America. This is why Americans simply shrug when hearing about yet another attack in Gaza or Israel - most will not bother to find out another perspective and even more are unaware that there IS another perspective.

It is also my impression that the slant has gotten more extreme over the past decade or more. My first suspicions of Israeli motives arose probably 25 years ago from a "60 Minutes" episode in which Israeli settlers were interviewed. The things they said on camera about their Arab neighbors were simply racist and cruel. And the self righteousness and sense of entitlement were simply ugly. I cannot imagine such an interview being aired today.

I can imagine that long-ago interview being shown today. However, I am sure that the Talking Heads on TV would then spend another hour articulating in detail why racist attitudes are now Serious Policy Positions worthy of support.

For the foreseeable future those of us who actually KNOW that Wall Street and its lapdogs were wrong will have to keep saying it over and over. And pointing to specific, real world examples ad nauseum.

This isn't just a "numbers game" that can be neatly combated: it is a belief system with the all the intricacies of a religion. "Free Market" Conservatives will not be disabused of their mantras so quickly, EVEN IN THE FACE OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. Witness the blaming of "minority homeowners" or Fannie and Freddie, (or,incredibly, Bill Clinton,) to explain why we are in the mess we are in. Anything but poor planning, deregulation, or ordinary human greed.

I think Mr. Greenspan probably experienced a Biblical-grade revelation. (How else to explain a three word sentence from him?)

He saw, first hand, irrefutably, that applying cash to people (even People with Money) does not magically transform them into Responsible,Forward-Thinking, Benevolent Geniuses. Instead, it turns them into the same greed heads populating the world's casinos and three card monte stands. This, according to the mantra, was Not Supposed to Happen.

However, Mr. Greenspan has the benefits of intelligence and long life, regardless of his backward ideology. Many, many others do not possess these gifts. They will latch on to any of a number of "reasons" to explain the Collapse, most of which will have nothing to do with reality. (I do not exclude our elected officials from this group. In fact, I imagine them leading the pack.)

Which is why the clear-eyed among us will have to keep repeating the facts.

Even worse than all the wasted money, I would argue that the elevation of bullying to Official Policy is among the worst outcomes from Bushco. The bully mentality does not represent a lack of confidence. On the contrary, it is a display of over-confidence that veers headlong into self righteousness, vanity and stupidity. There is no reflection, no thought, no intellectual work on that trajectory.

My second place nominee for Worst Legacy of Bushco is the Orwellian level of discourse, the whole "we create our own reality" routine of Bush, Cheney, Condi, and everyone else both inside and outside this administration who baldly denied truth and crammed everything into a political box of their own creation.

We've always been at war with Eastasia...We don't torture...If the President does it, it's not illegal...the birth pangs of the New Middle East...War is Peace.

I would laugh at all this if I weren't so scared.

These guys actually believe their own crap. I love how they "inherited" Global Terr'ism and how that problem "wasn't managed properly" before they came along. And now everything is just skookum. (Let's see, OBL still on the loose, the Taliban still in charge, nothing much changed in the ME except one tyrant is dead and another country is in ruins, etc.)

I'm sure more posters will continue this vein, but I for one am always, always astonished at this man's hubris.

"Lies are truth and truth is lies; this is the Bush administration's enduring legacy."

The Orwellian tactics of this crowd disturb me more than almost anything they've done or not done. And I fear the technique will be around long after Bushco et al are gone to ground.

(My blood pressure still spikes, too, when I hear the Willful Ignorance.)