Much of what has gone down at the Democratic National Convention in Boston early this week was thoroughly predictable: Howard Dean and Ted Kennedy as rabid, foam-mouthed rabble rousers, Jimmy Carter furthering his status as our noblest ex-president, and Bill Clinton delivering the best oratory we’ve heard in years. And who but the mentally ill could have failed to anticipate the insignificance of Al Gore or the sequestering of Michael Dukakis in a Worchester farmhouse? Even Michael Moore’s hirsute avoirdupois as the center of gravity seemed scripted.

What surprised even seasoned pundits was a speech given by Ron Reagan so soon after his father’s funeral. With gravesite dirt still on his Bruno Maglis, fils Reagan told delegates they had a choice between “the future and the past, between reason and ignorance, between true compassion and mere ideology.” He wasn’t simply contrasting the candidates, but rather highlighting their disparate views on utilizing “what may be the greatest medical breakthrough in our or any lifetime… to cure a wide range of fatal and debilitating diseases.” Yes, the controversial use of dilithium crystals. It seems that James Doohan, aka Scotty, has been diagnosed (as was our 40th President) with Alzheimer’s. Unlike the Gipper, however, U.S.S. Enterprise’s engineer also wears the yoke of Parkinson’s and diabetes. “So if we don’t use stem cells to cure these ailments, and soon,” warned Reagan, “any hopes of warp drives or transporters saving humanity will be lost forever.” “It does not follow,” he concluded, “that the theology of a few should be allowed to forestall the health and well-being of the many.”

What hasn’t failed to accrue during this administration is the padding of Dick Cheney’s bank account. Though the Veep stated publicly that, “I’ve severed all my ties with the company, [and] have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven’t had, now, for over three years,” he still pulls down over $100,000 in deferred salary and holds over a quarter million stock options. Cheney should thank himself, because absent government largesse, the Houston-based energy conglomerate would have gone Enron years ago. Just last week they posted a second-quarter loss of $663 million as charges from silica and asbestos litigation offset gains from contract work in Iraq. It is a well-traveled class-action road that Halliburton swallowed these liabilities because of Cheney’s idiotic purchase of Dresser Industries in 1998. In the final analysis, the numbers don’t lie; stupidity will trump cunning every time.

Though the Justice Department is investigating $61 million in fuel-delivery overcharges, and the military is withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in payments for meal services while it reviews the company’s bills, Washington’s tax dollars keep on flowing south to Texas. The Navy announced on Tuesday that it signed a $500 million construction deal with Halliburton. The fresh half a bil quickly silenced Republican chatter of dropping Cheney from the ticket and transformed Bush’s number two from a growing burden into a Steinbrenneresque icon. To wit: $1.4 billion in no-bid contracts divided by 40 dead employees means that a Halliburton worker in Iraq is worth more than Alex Rodriguez in the Bronx.

As for Bush’s own legacy, wacky conspiracy theories linking him to mid-East terror groups are beginning to flesh out. A Federal grand jury handed down a 42-count indictment of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. The sheer number of charges means that quite a bit more was going on than parking in a few handicapped spaces. The Dallas-based Islamic charity engaged in tax evasion and money laundering while funneling $12.4 million to Hamas from 1995 to 2001, precisely W’s term as governor. Chairman Ghassan Elashi was separately convicted (along with his four brothers) of illegally transferring technology to terrorist states. In the late 90s, again during the aegis of Bush, Elashi’s company, InfoCom, made 11 shipments of computer equipment to Syria and Libya while falsifying export documents. Like 9/11, can these events really be laid at the President’s feet? Though history may attempt to deflect blame from the likes of Herbert Hoover and Edward John Smith, it remains their indelible legacy that catastrophe struck during the hour of their command.