But is he a failure? Try Googling the word "failure" and the first non-sponsored link that comes up is the George W. Bush official biography at the White House website.

As Google explains, this occurs as a result of "Googlebombing" - a concerted campaign to get the search term "failure" associated with Bush's web page.

It's a cute prank.

But is Bush really a failure? What is it he has "failed" to accomplish that he set out to do? He has certainly succeeded in terrorizing his own people into submission. He has succeeded in creating a plutocracy that allows his own corporate cronies to plunder the public treasury at will. He has succeeded in effecting regime change in Iraq, Haiti, and Afghanistan. He has won the softwood lumber war with Canada. He won re-election to a second term. He has increased the US influence on the United Nations Security Council, so that it now pretty much goes along with whatever he wants to do. He has empowered the Christian religious right in a way it has never been before. He has appointed judges who will uphold his conservative agenda long after he is gone. He has succeeded in turning USian voters into cynical and demoralized robots who won't even consider the possibility of trying to take political power away from the capitalist tag-team of Republicans and Democrats.

Bush has also helped many industries by lowering or eliminating environmental standards as they pertain to air and water. I believe he has further eroded the oversight of logging on federal lands (have to check). He lost on the Alaskan Wildlife oil drilling thing -- so far.

He has performed splendidly for the religious right in reducing access to abortion and funneling federal funds into "faith based" initiatives.

His commitment to big pharma resulted in terribly obscure drug plans for the elderly. Though he lost on privatizing social security.

Iraq war a disaster? Not so for Bush and Cheney's buddies. The price of oil is through the second floor, billions in no bid contracts are being funneled to partisan boosters. Even if the US can't pump Iraq's oil right now -- neither can anyone else.

Military industrial complex; five year orgasm and counting.

Rest of the world thinks America is toe jam? Who? The cheese eating surrender monkeys? The chocolate makers? Old Europe? That place with all them blacks, Brazil is it? Fuck em.

Also, this list of accomplishments are given as if there was some sort of opposition, which there wasn't. There was some squeaking from the activists, but nobody in any position of power has opposed the Repub agenda one iota, so referring to these as accomplishments is stretching things a bit. An accomplishment is what you have when you overcome something.

Yes, the Bush administration has picked up the pace on the corruption and military profiteering, but it's still business as usual in the land that democracy forgot. All Bush has done is get nailed as a mast-head on top of the snowball. He didn't get it rolling or even give it any momentum. At least, not of his own merit.

The real question is, has the plutocrats' recent step up in global domination been a failure? I think in most regards it has. Domestically, they are getting away with murder (literally), but this threatens to come crashing down with a vengeance if they can't cement ultimate power internationally, and on that front everything is going to shit. Iraq, Afghanistan, and even Haiti were completely defenseless, so regime change wasn't the problem. It was securing their interests for the long term in these areas that was the real challenge, and it's becoming increasingly clear that this just ain't happenin'.

Rather, these areas are albatrosses around their necks, costing tons of money and squandering good will left, right, and center. These guys are well aware that controlling public opinion is central to their hold on power, which why they always try to PR out of every problem, but barely anyone sees them and their struggles as justified anymore. Even the US public is turning against them, and as each military venture becomes a new catastrophe, it decreases the odds of another.

So they may have transformed the US into a robber baron's paradise, but it wasn't much of a leap, and how long can that continue when their international pull is completely gone? Solidifying US power was dependent on the success of these half-baked adventures, and just like pyramid schemes have to keep pulling in more suckers to stay afloat, the US economy will collapse under its own dysfunction on the near day that they are finally pushed back to their borders. My prediction, which is the same one I made three years ago, is that once they are forced out of Iraq, the bubble will pop.