Escalating woes, escalating worries, escalating cost

No fewer than 8 candidates have already signed on for the 2008 campaign even as our current president, enduring some of the worst ratings in presidential history, makes a final stab at escalating his historical legacy to something above awful. Unfortunately, the president may have sealed his historical fate when he launched this ill-conceived war, an "adventure without return," back in March 2003. Even as it has engulfed the Iraqi people in a nightmare of dislocation and violence, it has swallowed up the Bush presidency as one bad decision has "logically" led into the next.

The cost in national treasure and lives for this escapade appear about the only thing certain to escalate, and though some are beginning to wonder at Bush's almost pathological inability to acknowledge the depth and breadth of the Iraqi quagmire or the flawed decision-making process which landed us there, apparently none dare call the president out on his failures. I'll have more thoughts on the war's most recent turn in the next (March) issue of U.S. Catholic.

Some other issues of note: even as war drums begin to sound along the persian gulf, more evidence emerges that diminishes the validity of some claims that are propelling the Iran confrontation, America's apparent next debacle in the region. Sound familiar?

Other news worth tracking: Hillary's choice to decline public financing for her campaign, (matched by other 2008 campaigners and ironically enuf likely to be matched by John McCain himself, the heretofore champion of campaign finance reform) may doom the whole effort to diminish the influence of $ in America's political process. Look for campaign finance reform to continue, however, at the state level.

And speaking of states, the state of Illinois, perhaps queasy about running a ginormous numbers racket and sucking dry the meagre savings of Illnois' poor, will offer up its Lotto system to the highest bidder, opening up a new vista in robbing-Peter-to-Pay-Paulism. They should make just enough $ to pay for the state's new universal gamblers' anonymous program.