Many Bush critics make the mistake of underestimating him.  This is one area where he has surprised with his ability to take a presumably bottomed out status and bottom it some more.

Bush's latest return with the same brash cockiness that has been a staple item recalls the words of a professor of his at Harvard, where he pursued a master of business administration degree.  

What the professor found in Bush's behavior, which included coming to class equipped with chewing tobacco and spitting pieces of it into a cup, was not so much a fundamental deficiency of intelligence but a glaring absence of parental development.

His father, George H.W. Bush, was criticized for a spoiled patrician's manner.  Critics said that he resembled someone who had been born on third base and was convinced that he had hit a triple.

One of the grave tragedies of our times is how Iraqi deaths receive no accountability.  This occurs at the point where President Obama and others hold the U.S. out as a major source to achieve global stability.  

The question is this:  How can the U.S. hold itself out as a guardian of peace and security when the subject of Iraqi deaths extending from that first "shock and awe" aerial assault to the present is ignored?  

It should be recalled that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sought to assure Americans that newly developed U.S. "smart bombs" would penetrate the forces of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein but would bypass Iraq's citizenry.

As for the U.S. dodging accountability, a comment made by General Colin Powell in the aftermath of the earlier Gulf War is instructive for the tragedy of avoiding responsibility that it denotes.

Americans can take solace from the fact that Canada has its own home-grown version of George W. Bush in the person of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Even though abortion is legal in Canada, Harper continues to push the envelope on this issue.  Some people believe part of his hidden agenda has always been to re-open the abortion debate.

Last week, the Harper government announced that it would no longer suport abortion as any part of its foreign-aid focus on maternal health.  This far-right Tory government will consider funding family planning measures, such as contraception, but not abortion under any circumstances.  

Even U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton admonished the Canadian government in her recent visit to Canada, stating the health initiative should include access to safe and legal abortion.  As Bob Rae, foreign affairs critic for the Liberal Opposition said, the Conservatives have re-opened the abortion debate by telling countries that are the poorest that we won't apply the law that we have in Canada.

If you want a stern dose of reality I recommend visiting an important website, one to keep you in touch with the real world in a society where media and political spin abound.

The site is USDebtClock.Org and all you need to do is look at the steadily changing, ever flickering numbers that literally jump out at you to get in touch with the real economic world.  As I write this the grand total stands at over $12.4 trillion.  

That encompasses $40,239 owed per citizen.  While this figure has been quoted frequently when this verboten topic has been discussed the real figure of overriding importance that has tended to be overlooked is the amount per taxpayer.

While $40,239 is a far from insignificant figure, it is nowhere near as calamitous as the salient number determined by taxpayer in that the aforementioned figure includes a large population of children as well as numerous other citizens not paying current taxes.  

Sarah Palin is the same type of dream come true for media spin control operatives as was Ronald Reagan.

As a trained actor Ronald Reagan was accustomed to doing as directors told him.  He was easily manageable for the Kitchen Cabinet of millionaires that launched him into politics in sixties' California for his first run for governor along with his political strategy guiding hand, seasoned professional Stuart Spencer.

Spencer in concert with other handlers Reagan obtained when moving from state to national politics in a successful run for the presidency, resulting in two terms served, sought to turn a potential negative into a positive.  

When skepticism was voiced over Reagan's experience deficiencies in the political realm Spencer's spin control campaign was to turn him into a  "citizen politician" able to rise above partisan political considerations.

The latest effort of the Republican right and the leader they vigilantly rallied around not that long ago and have now forgotten is reminiscent of a ploy that occurred regularly within the now defunct Soviet Union.

When a former leader became too huge a burden to explain then he would be banished.  Children would no longer study this leader's period of history. An effort would be made within top leadership circles to erase that leader from memory.

The most celebrated example of Soviet attempted erasure came when Nikita Khrushchev took great pains to erase Joseph Stalin from memory.  There were all those gulags, those knocks on doors in the middle of the night, then the transporting of opponents to undisclosed locations never to be heard from again.

The strategy was to treat the embarrassing historical period and the leader behind it as if those events and that individual never existed.  Those Russians initiating that strategy are tactically similar to the Republican right and the eight years when they not only rallied mightily behind George W. Bush.

Visit any right wing propaganda outlet such as Fox News and listen to "analysts" such as Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity and one message reverberates repeatedly:  We are in Aghanistan to help its people overcome the scourge of terrorism and only those who side with terrorists are opposed to that mission.

One important element to the post 9/11 attack response that an alert few noticed and discussed was that the government did not seek to investigate how the tragedies occurred, treating them instead as old news and expressing a desire to move on from there.  

The problem is that such a response is illogical and that the first thing one must do following any tragedy is to investigate, learn, and carry out policies benefiting from such investigation.

When George W. Bush stood side by side with New York City police and fire department personnel at Ground Zero he stated that he felt their outrage over the attacks and received a strong ovation when he promised to seek out the perpetrators and deliver fitting punishment in the names of the victims of 9/11.

Now that we have fallen as the world's leading economic giant, the burning question is why has the U.S. fallen into a crushing deficit?

First and foremost, we ignored the winged warning of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower to beware of the unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex.

Conducting wars has proven to be such a money maker for every industry of the gigantic U.S. war machine.  It appears that the U.S. is now locked into a perpetual war machine mentality.  The airplane industry is making billions supplying the latest aviation technical expertise.  The oil services company Halliburton has made billions for their war services in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Vietnam War was a fiasco where almost 60,000 U.S. service personnel lost their lives, based upon the false fears that if Vietnam fell under Communist rule, a domino effect would take place and all of Asia would ultimately fall into the Red orbit.  

Goodbye Walmart,

Hello inflation.

As the U.S. dollar declines

You can count on inflation

To rock our nation.

Throwing all that cash into Iraq

Nearly 5,000 U.S. Soldiers

Will never come back.

Bush and Cheney got us

Into this tragic mess,

Every honest American

Must confess!

Obama won't look back on Iraq

To properly punish those who

Instigated this ill fated attack.

The Teabaggers turned out for a major Washington, D.C. demonstration September 12 and displayed the seething hate and shameful hypocrisy for which the movement has become infamous.

Two notable elements of the demonstration and the explanations on television and radio that followed from their supporters on their significance were the economic perils America currently faces along with sympathy for the nation's middle class for the beating it is taking.

How interesting that these Teabagger events began after Democratic President Barack Obama took office.  America already had compiled over a $10 trillion debt before Obama and a Democratic Congress assumed office.

Who was minding the store when the U.S. debt became the highest in the history of the planet?  How did this come to pass?  

While aides in Eric Holder's Justice Department stress the importance of investigating the CIA for abuses of suspected terrorists, Obama continues to make one disconcerting point.

On numerous instances, including the issue of investigating Dick Cheney and George W. Bush for numerous abuses, highlighted by taking America to war based on false evidence, Obama has made the point that he prefers looking ahead and not to the past.

As a lawyer and former teacher of constitutional law, Obama should realize that an imperative exists in that vital area.  As president of the United States he is compelled to move in areas where the constitution mandates him to take care that laws be faithfully executed.  

Two of the most precious areas of the Constitution that mandate vigilant action are conducting wars and civil liberty violations.  Instances of such violations abounded during the past administration of Cheney and Bush.

U.S. service personnel are not, definitely not, fighting now for the same reasons as what they fought for in World War Two.

There are those in the government who have propagandized to make Americans think that U.S. service personnel who have died or been wounded in Iraq for the freedom that lives and health were sacrificed for in World War Two, but the facts are proving them wrong.

The charge of being unpatriotic is sometimes leveled against those who dare to point out that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney led the U.S. into the Iraq War on a series of lies calculated to strike fear of a frightful nuclear holocaust.  

Saddam Hussein was terrorizing the U.S.A. with weapons of mass destruction.  The false claim that Saddam Hussein was well on the road to nuclear weapons development was calculated to frighten U.S. citizens into the Iraq War.

Since national health care is so inextricably linked to the public policy beliefs of Senator Edward Kennedy it is essential to recognize the linchpin on which its foundation rested.

When his brother President John Kennedy championed a Medicare proposal that would ultimately become law under his successor President Lyndon  Johnson its foundation rested on public policy.  Such had been the case earlier extending back to the Bull Moose Party platform of Theodore Roosevelt and comparable subsequent proposals by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

Cost containment is the engine driving the historic proposal.  Its four presidential proponents along with Senator Kennedy recognized the need to hold down costs in the private sector in order for such a proposal to succeed.  For instance, I read just this week a figure that, since 2002, the profits of health insurers burgeoned more than 400 percent.

It is with this reality in mind that it was disconcerting to learn about an agreement that President Obama allegedly reached with the same pharmaceutical giants that have driven prescription drug costs up to record levels.  

Vincent T. Bugliosi was one of the most prolific prosecutors of murder cases in the history of America.  Serving as a deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County, he prosecuted the Charles Manson case among many others.

In Bugliosi's recent book, "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder," the former prosecutor excoriated the murder trial of Iraq's former dictator Saddam Hussein.  He specifically criticized the selectivity of murders for which the prosecution sought to try the defendant, restricting the scope to deaths of political opponents seeking to remove him from power.

There was a logical reason why this narrowing occurred, reducing the trial to a kangaroo court.  Photographic evidence could have been introduced at a real trial with the objective of full disclosure within the framework of definitive prosecution.

A picture could have been introduced showing a smiling Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein in his Baghdad presidential office.  

In George W. Bush's ruthless world of abject deceit, fantasy rules and the truth is abandoned.

We now hear that in his new Dallas digs he has one framed souvenir that he treasures above all others.  It is the glass-encased gun owned by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.  Bush continues to take pride that he "got a bad man" to use the phrase that Fox News trumpeted to its slavish media zombies.

The truth is far less pleasant and it was determined early on after Saddam Hussein's capture that the one thing that the Bush administration along with the New World Order command would not tolerate was a trial of the dictator that permitted a proper range of questioning along with subpoenas to United States government high command.

In one of the recently rare instances of the U.S. media furnishing information into international thought, and issues that were broadly discussed in Europe and throughout the Middle East as readily as such information was ignored on the American scene, "Sixty Minutes" in 2004 presented an informative interview with a prominent and highly controversial French attorney.