Can nations as well as individuals grow ‘too big for their britches’? The Bush government nostalgically reverts to the Cold War strategy of containment, this time not only with Russia  — the world’s largest country — but, for good measure, with China as well — the world’s most populous. Missiles to Taiwan, China’s breakaway province and, in a stunt of towering buffoonery, some for Poland too, aimed at you-know-where. All supposedly to fight communism — no, terrorism!

In the mathematics of war, Hitler killed the most people, but the United States leads in the amount of money expended. Our current ‘fight for freedom’ (not freedom from debt) has already cost a trillion dollars — there are many zeroes in that number — and has filled our hospitals with countless blind and limbless veterans. We fund Israel’s ongoing conflict with the Palestinians while thumbing our noses at the world’s other 1.3 billion Muslims.

The Bush government refuses to ‘negotiate’ with others until they agree to all American demands before any meeting. Senator McCain vows to stay in Iraq for another hundred years. The Reagan administration torpedoed President Carter’s ‘Laws of the Sea’ initiative and fish stocks have largely disappeared. We bombed Somalia again recently — didn’t Bill Clinton get us out of there a couple of years ago, after that Blackhawk went down?

China now makes about 99.9% of the world’s shoes. Several states in America like Maine once had a solid hold of that industry and supplied the bulk of the domestic market. Will the next Academy Awards ceremony find those elegantly attired actresses walking around barefoot? Stuff happens.