Insiders point to the his increasingly bizarre behavior: an inpromptu "massage" of Angela Merkel at the recent G8 conference, his penchant for farting in front of new West Wing aides and his rambling, incoherent answers to reporters' questions.

With every passing week, President Bush marches deeper and deeper into a world of his own making.

Central to Bush's world is an iron will which demands that external reality be changed to conform to his personal view of how things are.

As far as Bush is concerned, he is telling the truth; as Madeleine Albright recently said to Columbia Magazine: "the most serious problem is that George Bush now believes what he says."

Like many of my hospitalized patients, Bush has created a vast, detailed but vague delusional system he feels compelled to maintain at all costs. This system helps him manage the terrifying anxiety that threatens to make his already endangered inner world more chaotic.

Psychoanalytic theory suggests that Bush's true enemy is an aspect of himself -- the overwhelming anxiety he works so hard to manage.   more »

Maybe, as with messages on cigarette packets, we should pass legislation to ensure that every item produced in inhumane conditions comes with a warning.

This is exactly what Jonah Peretti, an American student, tried to do in 2001. He responded to Nike's offer of a personalised ID in every pair of shoes with a tongue-in-cheek request to have the word "sweatshop" stitched into his.

The company refused. One of the reasons cited was: "Your personal ID contains profanity or inappropriate slang."

I hope the multinationals remember this notion of sweatshop being an obscenity the next time they squeeze suppliers in the developing world.   more »

It’s not surprising that CBS would hand over the Nightly News to talk-show chatterbox Katie Couric.

After all, the networks care less about propping up their shaky credibility than they do about winning the ratings game. That’s why they nabbed America’s sweetheart to replace the "oh-too-liberal" Dan Rather.

She’ll keep the viewers glued to their Lay-Z-Boys while the news jumps from the carnage in Baghdad to 5 minutes of selling erectile dysfunction drugs to flaccid American males.

Couric is already dolled up and ready for the evening coronation. They coaxed her into shedding a few lbs. for her debut and she’s bound to be coifed and lacquered for the media extravaganza.   more »

Last week, top administration officials, including Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, equated the war in Iraq with fighting Nazis in World War II. As part of this analogy, the Bush gang made its critics out to be Neville Chamberlain — as if troop redeployment in Iraq is the moral equivalent of appeasing Hitler.

As if that weren't quite offensive enough, Condoleezza Rice has upped the ante a bit, suggesting that opponents of the war are the moral equivalent of those who would tolerate slavery in 19th century America.

Secretary of State Rice compared the Iraq war with the American Civil War, telling a magazine that slavery might have lasted longer in this country if the North had decided to end the fight early.

"I'm sure there are people who thought it was a mistake to fight the Civil War to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold," Rice said in the new issue of Essence magazine.   more »

Will falling house prices and skyrocketing energy costs drive the U.S. into a recession in the months ahead? And what will happen to workers, already left out of the boom, when the downturn does finally come?

These questions finally emerged in the corporate media last month, cutting through months of economic happy talk and denial from White House propagandists, Wall Street analysts and the real estate industry alike.

Recent statistics on housing prices and construction make it clear that the booming market of the past few years has ended.

As of July, prices of previously owned homes rose at their slowest pace in 11 years, and real housing prices--that is, after inflation is taken into account--have declined. New housing starts were down 13.3 percent over a year earlier.   more »

The Americans can't quite believe it. Getting rid of Tony Blair? Are you Brits crazy? Like Thatcher before him, Blair finds that the acclaim abroad lingers even when there is derision at home.

Maggie was a legend in the States when she was shoved aside by the Tories, and the same is true of Blair. When he does his farewell tour - part Sinatra, part royal goodbye - he'd be a fool not to make a stop in America. Here the ovations are guaranteed.

And yet here, he might also reflect, is where his troubles began. Next week marks the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks which radically altered the course of American foreign policy.

Blair's great error, the one that historians will identify as the cause of his decline and eventual downfall, was to sign up for that new programme in full - even when it led to disaster.   more »

6 SEPTEMBER

Maureen Dowd: New Themes for the Same Old Songs...Bush and Katie Couric Chase the Ratings

The 'War on Terror': A Cover for Western Imperialism

War Is As American As Apple Pie

Unconditional Support for the Iraqi Resistance

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld: The War Pornographers

The World's Most Powerful Dictatorship: The International Monetary Fund