Today's Sign That the Apocalypse is Upon Us...

On a quick aside, I'd like to add to my thoughts on the nomination of John Bolton to the post of U.N. Ambassador. Please take a second to visit StopBolton.org, watch the clip, and tell your Senator not to confirm this scary man to such an important post. If your Senator is not listed, you can find his/her contact info here. Seriously, watch the video, Bolton throws a Kruschev-style hissy fit that would be hilarious, if it wasn't so scary...

Now, this news: In what has become a routine, almost weekly, affront to all that is good in the world, President Bush announced his intention to nominate Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank Group. When asked about his choice of "a chief architect of one of the most unpopular wars in our history" during today's Presidential press conference, a cartoonish Mr. Bush tried to be funny, said Wolfowitz is a good guy, and moved on.

The President was extremely convincing as he explained Mr. Wolfowitz's qualifications. "He helped manage a large organization. The World Bank is a large organization; the Pentagon is a large organization -- he's been involved in the management of that organization." Let that be a lesson to you job hunters out there, play up irrelevant similarities between completely unrelated fields in order to increase your options.

I guess now we sit back and watch for increases in World Bank aid to Iraq, assuming of course that Europe lets the nomination go forward unchallenged. It is frightening, though, that this is only the last in a series of nominations that nobody outside of the White House can seem to understand. The President is installing sycophants into every position in which our government interacts with the outside world: State Department, U.N., World Bank, etc. I find it frightening that Mr. Bush has entered deep enough into a vicious cycle of isolationism that the loud and repeated criticisms over the most recent nominations go completely unheard. Wouldn't it be normal to expect a few "compromise nominees" after a particularly bitterly opposed one? Each of these individuals is meeting more opposition in the Senate than the previous one, and it is telling that Mr. Bush is relentlessly pressing on, without so much as paying lip service to mounting opposition. Simply put, the actions of this President suggest strongly that he has simply stopped listening to the world, and it's too bad, because it's only a matter of time before the world stops listening to us. I wonder who they will listen to instead...