The serial shoe-thrower Muntader al Zaidi will be released from prison today to a hero's welcome. The entire Arab world sees him as a hero who called the swaggering US President, George W. Bush ' a dog '. This will always remain the defining moment of the Bush presidency, the only US president to have shoes thrown at him. Not an assassin's bullet,, which would wash away all his disastrous mistakes in his own blood and for generations to pen poems about ' Camelot ' so cruelly cut short, but dodging shoes in front of world's cameras while the Iraqi Prime Minister puts out a hand to deflect the flying footwear. What should have been a final farewell with the heartfelt gratitude of the Iraqi people for having rid them of the bad Saddam turned into a fiasco and made Bush into a joke for all time to come. And since he was their president the entire Republican Party has turned into a snarling, rabid pack of canines led by the biggest snarl of all, the former Vice, Dick Cheney. This explains why a nonentity like Joe Wilson has become a celebrity by an act of supreme bad manners showing his lack of class as well as that of his party. Unfortunately people in the US are so terrified by the mother of all recessions and unemployment that all they care about is the future. They do not care that the Republicans are responsible for all the ills plaguing the country. All they want is reassurance for the future. Like all shameless politicians, the Republicans are stoking their terror and blocking all attempts at reform. Considering that they are staunch capitalists they are behaving exactly like our communists. Curious.