Over on Dr. Mark Thoma’s blog, Economists View, Thoma has posted Dr. L. Randall Wray’s review of Jamie Galbraith's The Predator State from a forthcoming edition of the Journal of Economic Issues.
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/05/the-predator-st...

Review of the Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too, by James K. Galbraith. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Free Press, 2008. (Note: review is based on Advance Uncorrected Proofs.):

"Willful and malicious" may not apply, but "negligent and clueless" certainly does with regard to how the failure of Conservative ideology has continued to manifest under the auspices of the Bush Administration and the Republicans in Congress.

From a post on Delphiforums by JRichards33, the following article is excerpted:

War demands strain US military readiness

By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer, 1 hour, 29 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - A classified Pentagon assessment concludes that long battlefield tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with persistent terrorist activity and other threats, have prevented the U.S. military from improving its ability to respond to any new crisis, The Associated Press has learned.

Despite security gains in Iraq, there is still a "significant" risk that the strained U.S. military cannot quickly and fully respond to another outbreak elsewhere in the world, according to the report.

[...story continues at link in title...]

This isn't good, and for more than one reason. Aside from the impact on national security on both the foreign and domestic fronts, and completely ignoring the rising tide of PTSD-related incidents and contractor deaths, our military is being left with fewer options on how to deal with new threats...

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...if by a liberal they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, their civil liberties..if that is what they mean by a "liberal" then I am proud to be a liberal.

          --   John F. Kennedy

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In the conservative world, the word "liberal" is often used as a smear and an epithet in an attempt to denounce anyone who they dislike or who stands opposed to their ideas and idiot ideology. But now, after seven years of utter disaster at the hands of a conservative Administration -- one that inherited a conservative Republican majority in Congress, only to lose it six years later -- the nation and Conservatives have seen the disaster that their beliefs and policies lead to in terms of economic, political, military and social debacles, any one of which should give any sane citizen pause.

Conservatives, however, are not ones to reflect or reconsider failed positions or evidence that their flawed approach to government, to money, to military and political strategy and to social reform are simply bad policy.