"After all, next to big-ticket administration horrors like Abu Ghraib,
Guantánamo and the politicized hiring and firing at Alberto Gonzales’s
Justice Department, the wreckage of Iraq reconstruction is what Ralph
Kramden of “The Honeymooners” would dismiss as “a mere bag of shells.”
The $50 billion also pales next to other sums that remain unaccounted
for in the Bush era, from the $345 billion in lost tax revenue due to
unpoliced offshore corporate tax havens to the far-from-transparent
disposition of some $350 billion in Wall Street bailout money. In the
old Pat Moynihan phrase, the Bush years have “defined deviancy down” in
terms of how low a standard of ethical behavior we now tolerate as the
norm from public officials."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/opinion/11rich.html