So, whatever happened to all those terror alerts that Homeland Security was issuing prior to the Presidential election? As I recall, we were going Code Orange about 3 times a week. I guess Karl Rove decided that the alerts have outlived their political utility....

Thinking about the nomination of the odious John Bolton to be our Ambassador to the UN, it occurs to me that there is a cost, in both national security terms and in real dollars, associated with the Bush policy of dismissiveness toward other nations. It might be an interesting project for a think tank to enumerate and analyze the various ways that we lose when we alienate foreign governments. At the moment there are probably not a handful of countries in the world who would be willing to join us on another military adventure in the Middle East; thus, we would bear the $$ costs almost exclusively, and would suffer most of all of the casualties as well. And, I would think a good case can be made that trade with the rest of the world will be on less favorable terms if we are regarded as a pariah.

Quantifying the cost of the BushCo foreign policy in real terms that Wall St. can understand might be very useful.