Now that President Bush has put forward his proposal to give legal status to tens of millions of illegal immigrants -- sorry, "undocumented alien workers" -- who have broken America's immigration laws (an amnesty by any other name...), many other large groups of people who have performed "illegal" acts have lobbied Washington to have their crimes officially ignored.  Next up on the list of such programs is America's vast numbers of car thieves, and legal status -- don't call it amnesty -- will be granted to them for the exact same reasons.

1. Millions of people have already done it, so why not just make car "theft" legal?

2. It would be a drain on our resources to track down and prosecute the millions of "unregistered car owners" already in America.

3. Car "theft" is actually an important part of the economy because it creates a market for new cars, and that means jobs.

4. Car "thieves" who come forward and register will be given a temporary three-year registration for their vehicles, reducing the number of illegally owned vehicles overnight.

5. Once all the car "thieves" who just want to be legal, law-abiding owners of their cars come forward and register, law enforcement can concentrate on the few remaining diehard illegals with greater efficiency.

Of course, this does seem to send a message to people who have never stolen a car before that it's okay to steal cars, but the Administration doesn't seem overly concerned about that. Republican detractors of the "guest car registration" program, outraged on behalf of people who purchased their cars, claim that millions of new cars will be stolen because this bill removes any penalty for car theft. Democrats are against the program because it doesn't go far enough towards giving unregistered vehicle owners full and permanent legal registration for their vehicles.

Future decriminalisation bills may include murderers and arsonists, both of whom can also claim to number in the millions and whose "crimes" can be considered important parts of the economy.

Once again, President Bush is attacking the source of a problem instead of the symptoms. This time, however, I'm not as certain it's going to work as well.

Take terrorism.  When we were attacked by al-Qaeda terrorists who tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, the Clinton administration treated it as a simple criminal investigation.  Find the perpetrators, arrest them, end of story... right?  As we all know now, that wasn't the end.  Al-Qaeda terrorists attacked us again by exploding a truck bomb at Khobar Towers in 1996. Two years later, al-Qaeda operatives detonated almost simultaneous truck bombs at Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.  In 2000, al-Qaeda terrorists attacked the USS Cole, docked in Yemen.  All of these and other incidents were treated as individual criminal cases. To explain their activities as separate cases, the Clinton administration invented the myth of a whole new kind of terrorism: small loose networks, operating independently of State sponsorship. 

The Bush Administration, faced with multiple terror attacks on 9/11, didn't waste time trying to prosecute the individual groups of terrorists who carried out the attacks in law courts. For one thing, most of the actual perpetrators were already dead.  As I said, instead of treating the symptoms of the disease, the Bush administration went after the cause: the countries sponsoring the terrorists.  Instead of curing the symptoms, President Bush started work on eradicating the disease.  Without State sponsorship, huge, precisely-coordinated terrorist attacks are far less likely to occur.

Now, faced with the problem of corporations moving overseas due to increased globalisation, it looks like he's trying to do something about the root cause of it: overpriced labor. 

One of the main reasons manufacturing jobs have been flowing overseas for the last thirty years, and at an accelerated rate since the 1990's, is that it's just too expensive to pay Americans to do those jobs anymore.  Everyone knows this, yet it's like the elephant in the room -- if no one mentions it, it's not really there.  Everyone complains about jobs going overseas, but no one mentions the fact that for what a company has to pay an American worker for a year, it can hire a thousand workers in almost any other country.

With an influx of foreign labor desperate for jobs, and willing to work cheaper than union labor, I believe we're going to see a loosening of the death-grip unions have had on American-based companies for over fifty years.  Unions were a great idea when they started, but -- like a lot of good ideas -- became the thing they hated. Today, unions are even more oppressive to the American worker than the corporate barons that inspired their formation.  So, in an attempt to keep corporations from moving their manufacturing facilities overseas to take advantage of cheap labor, the President proposes to bring that labor to them. 

It's also sure to increase Bush's votes among Hispanics dramatically in the upcoming election. It might even put a few states that seem to be solidly Democratic back into play as possible Republican states.  California, for instance, has 55 electoral votes (270 are needed to win).  Over 80% of their population increase since 1990, according to the 2000 census, was due to Hispanic immigration. That's a powerful voting block, for a huge number of electoral votes.  Florida, with a heavy Hispanic population, has 27 electoral votes.  The state of Washington, though it only carries 11 electoral votes, increased its Hispanic population by 106% during the 1990s. New Jersey's 15 electoral votes, may vote Republican as well due to this proposal, due to a staggering 258% increase in the Hispanic population since 1990.

The questions is, are those benefits worth the cost?

It's bad enough that those who have already broken our laws to enter this country will get a free pass. That's an amnesty, whatever the President wants to call it.  The real down side to this proposal is that it would send the message around the world that if you can just get here, legally or not, you'll be treated as a legal immigrant.  That's the wrong message. Also, the proposal make absolutely no provision for tightening our borders, even putting the National Guard there to, well, guard the nation.  Without tighter border control, we might just as well do away with the USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) and border patrols altogether.

I have a feeling, though, a hope that the President is playing "good cop, bad cop" with the issue. I believe that he's making all the "up side" proposals, and leaving it up to Congress to insert all the "down side" items.  In other words, President Bush is holding out the carrot, while Congress's job is to wield the stick. Have you had enough metaphors in a single paragraph yet?

Before this immigration overhaul goes to the President's desk, Congress will likely have inserted provisions for better border control and (if we're lucky) criminal prosecution and deportation of those who break our immigration laws in the future.  If this isn't done, then this proposal is a HUGE mistake.  The good side of this proposal I haven't yet mentioned is that the immigrants who want to be legal will come out of the woodwork and register, freeing law enforcement from wasting time tracking them down.  They'll be able to devote their time and energy to tracking down the true illegals and criminals... and terrorists.  That's only possible with tighter border controls.

But we have to make sure that our Representatives and Senators do their job and secure the country's borders.  Make sure you contact them to let them know that you want them to add a provision for border protection to the President's immigration reform proposal.

Either that, or sign up for a course in Spanish today, amigo.

Bush lied about the reason for it.

Wrong. All the reasons given for removing Saddam Hussein from power in the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq, dated 16 October 2002, were correct and true.  See this line-by-line analysis of that document and whether each reason was, in fact, justified: Justification: A Post-War Review

He claimed Iraq was a threat to America because of WMDs and connections to terrorists.

Correct, and proven.
1997 UNSCOM final report on Iraq's unresolved disarmament issues
Iraq's Unresolved Disarmament Issues -- 6 March 2003
Evidence of cooperation between Saddam and Osama
Saddam and Osama part II
Ansar al-Islam, Iraqi intelligence, and al-Qaeda
Iraqi Intelligence Chief met with bin Laden in Khartoum
Saddam Killed Abu Nidal over al-Qaeda Training
Sabah Khodada: Iraqi Intelligence trained al-Qaeda
Iraq and al-Qaeda: Connecting the Dots in 1998
Second 9/11 hijacker tied to Abu Nidal, Iraq
9/11 Plaintiffs Win Case Against Iraq

It was only after these reasons failed to sway global opinion to support his war that the reason shifted to liberating the people of Iraq.

Wrong. See again the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq, in which all the reasons for the liberation of Iraq were listed, at the same time, and voted into law by the Congress of the United States. Also, see President Bush's speech to the United Nations, given on 12 September 2002.

Maybe if Bush really did want to liberate Iraq and had said so from the start instead of lying, there would have been less opposition to the war.

Wrong. France, Germany, Russia and China still had lucrative economic ties to Iraq, supplying them with military equipment in return for oil contracts. France and Russia also had deals to work towards getting the sanctions lifted, in return for exploitation rights in Iraq's vast untapped oil fields.

The world is not comfortable with the US being the arbiter of what is right and wrong in the world.

The world seems pretty comfortable castigating us for NOT being the global policeman, when they want us to be. Two words: North Korea.

Forcing democracy on a nation has been proven by history to be an uneffective way of democratizing the world

US to Iraqis: You can now decide your own future!
Iraqis in Liberalworld: But we don't WANT to!!

Reminder: Japan was not a democracy until 1945. They seem to be doing quite well today.

The US did not explore any alternatives to war.

Twelve years of sanctions which only hurt the Iraqi people. Twelve years of practically begging Saddam on our hands and knees to please keep his promises so we didn't have to keep ours. Giving him one last chance after one last chance after one last chance to do so.

Bush is just plain ignorant.

HAHAHAHA!!! I just knew you couldn't maintain that false tone of rationality without resorting to an ad hominem attack on President Bush!

He is so unskilled at diplomacy that he can't even get support for an idea like removing a brutal, murderous dictator from power.

United Nations Security Council resolution number 1441, passed 15 to 0.
A Coalition of Nations was formed to free Iraq, with over 48 countries openly  supporting it as of March 2003.
Japan forgives Iraqi debt
France and Germany work to forgive Iraqi debt
Russia forgives Iraqi debt
North Korea agrees to nuclear inspections

Master-strokes of international diplomacy, actually.

All nations are free to chose what they will or will not support in the world.

Except, apparently, America... which must have the blessing and support of the UN in Liberalworld.

Liberals have a way of trying to rewrite history, like the totalitarian government in George Orwell's classic 1984. They figure that if they repeat a lie often enough, it will become the truth.  They did so with the memory of the hated (by Liberals) J. Edgar Hoover, repeating the story about his dressing in drag so often and in such a smirking stage-whisper that they made it seem like a fact. (It's especially odd in light of the fact that they support any other cross-dresser with equal fervor.) Most people today don't even know it was started by just one person with a personal grudge against him who made up a vicious story about seeing Hoover arrive at a big Washington party in a dress. No one ever corroborated it (especially not the others at that party), yet it's been referred to so many times in newspapers, magazines, and television that it's now almost indistinguishable from the truth.

With the advent of cable news, talk radio and especially the Internet, the "Hoover effect" isn't going to work anymore. Luckily, the Liberals haven't yet figured that out.

One of the dozens of lies created by the Left for the purpose of discrediting President Bush was the Nigerian uranium tale.  The Liberal version goes something like this:

"Bush and Blair concocted a story about Saddam trying to buy uranium (in a form called called yellowcake) from Niger. The CIA told Bush it wasn't true even after he sent an ambassador to investigate. Determined to publish this lie anyway, Bush and Blair forged documents to substantiate it, which the CIA told him were forged.  Neverthless, Bush inserted the deliberate lie into the State of the Union Address of 2002 to support his rush to war a year later. When the ambassador published the truth about the false uranium story, Karl Rove punished him by having his wife, an undercover CIA agent, exposed by calling a half-dozen journalists and telling them to publish her name. Only one -- Robert Novak -- was low enough to do so."

The only parts of that paragraph that are true were the statements that uranium oxide is called yellowcake, and that Robert Novak was the first person to publish Wilson's wife's connection to the CIA.

(With apologies to Monty Python) And now, for something completely different: the truth.

British intelligence was given proof that a trade delegation Iraq sent to Niger in 1999 was seeking to purchase uranium.  This required no stretch of the imagination -- Niger's main exports are uranium, cowpeas and onions, and I don't see Saddam making a secret of his taste for French Onion Soup a la Niger.  The problem was, the British were given this information by a third country. By the rules of the international intelligence community, a country may only share source documents with the permission of the original country. As our allies, the Brits shared the information with us, but not the source, and President Bush decided to inform the American public about it.  Since the British couldn't turn over the source documents, the CIA was told to find its own proof.

Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife had once been an operative for the CIA, though she'd been retired from field work for years. In spite of (or perhaps due to) the fact that she and her husband were among Bush's detractors, she maneuvered to get her husband named as the CIA's choice to investigate this critical information.  Unfortunately, Wilson's method of investigation was to sip mint tea with the Nigerian ambassador and ask, "So... did you sign a trade agreement with Iraq?" "Why, no, Mr. Wilson, no agreement was signed." "Well, that settles that, then. Excellent tea." Not exactly Hercule Poirot, is it?

Meanwhile, faced with the inexplicable failure of Wilson to conduct an actual investigation, British and American intelligence questioned other sources to see whether a fourth country -- one that wouldn't refuse to let America have the source -- might have found evidence of the uranium buy.  An Italian journalist gave the American embassy documents corroborating the story. Still cautious, perhaps torn between the CIA's and Britain's differing conclusions, President Bush would not definitively state that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger. The statement in the State of the Union address became, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."  This was an absolutely true statement, and passed the scrutiny of CIA director George Tenet for inclusion in the speech.  A month later, the CIA finally recieved the actual Italian documents, which they immediately recognised as forgeries, and the media witch hunt began. In July 2002, Wilson wrote a vehemently anti-Bush article identifying himself as the investigator into the uranium question, stating with certainty that Saddam had never tried to buy any uranium, and admitting that he never filed a report. It really must have been those onions Saddam wanted, since Wilson did corroborate the trade delegation's visit. British intelligence, by the way, still stands by the story to this day.

Columnist Robert Novak was curious about why Wilson -- now a flamboyant Bush-basher who worked as an unpaid advisor to John Kerry as well as contributing $2,000 to his campaign -- had been sent on such a sensitive mission in the first place. One of his sources (yet unknown) told him off-handedly that Wilson's wife, who worked for the CIA, was instrumental in his choice.  According to Novak,

During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger. When I called another official for confirmation, he said: "Oh, you know about it." The published report that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue.

When Novak's column came out naming Valerie Plame in July 2003, Wilson was livid.  Using the same sort of acute investigative techniques that served him so well in Niger (in other words, "gut instinct"), he determined that not just the Administration, not just the White House, but President Bush's chief strategist Karl Rove must have been Novak's source.  He went on record saying, "At the end of the day it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs." Unable to offer any actual proof that Rove was the source of the leak, he later changed his assertion to say that Rove condoned it.  The CIA, as it always does in the case of such leaks, began an investigation (not yet concluded), but Rove was tried, convicted and sentenced by Wilson and most Liberals within minutes of Novak's column hitting the press.

The reason this story is back in the media is that John Ashcroft recused (removed) himself from the investigation.  Why? He obviously decided that an independent investigation would avoid any appearance of impropriety, as well as the fact that he has far more important cases to work on personally (we ARE in the middle of a war with terrorism).  Unless Novak gives up his source, or the source decides to come forward him- or herself, no one will ever know who told him Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. 

And yet... if you listen carefully, you can hear the grating wails of those who've already made up their minds without needing all that messy "proof" getting in the way.

Well, it's taken long enough, but the New York Times and the BBC have finally found that "blood for oil" story they've been dying to print for over a year. Only... it took place in 1973.

"The United States government seriously contemplated using military force to seize oil fields in the Middle East during the Arab oil embargo 30 years ago, according to a declassified British government document made public on Thursday," reported the New York Times. Not to be outdone, the BBC chimed in, "The papers, released under the 30-year-rule, show that the British government took the threat so seriously that it drew up a detailed assessment of what the Americans might do."  Thirty-year-old invasion plans for a war that never took place?  Stop the presses!

So, this "story" is predicated on 30-year-old contingency plans drawn up by the British government about what they (the Brits) might do just in case the oil problem in America came to blows?  Maybe someone should clue these "reporters" in... governments have entire armies of people whose job it is to draw up contingency plans to cover the most implausible scenarios, just in case.  Of course there were British plans for action in case the United States decided to invade the Middle East.  There are probably plans for action in case Elvis returns from the Crab Nebula at the head of an invasion force of intelligent bees, too.  Does that mean it's a serious possibility?  Of course not.  Keep in mind this is based on a British assesment of what the Americans might do, not actual American plans.  But just on the off-chance it ever did happen, the British government had it covered.  Just because the government makes a plan of what to do in case an event takes place, does not mean the event is or was certain to happen.  The kind of people who seriously believe that the United States was -- in 1973 or 2003 -- going to invade the Middle East to sieze its oil are the kind of wacko conspiracy theorists that would believe the plans to deal with the bee invasion mean it's coming too. If the government has plans to stop it, it must be real, right?

The New York Times and the BBC are obviously still beating the anti-war, anti-America drums as hard as they can.  But if THIS is the best they can do, I think it's safe to say the Leftists are losing their grip.

I was in a mall not long ago (doing my Christmas -- not 'holiday' -- shopping) when I happened to sneeze. A little girl walking nearby, maybe five or six, turned to me and sing-songed, "Bless you!" Before I even had a chance to smile back at her, the woman whose hand she was holding snapped, "No! We say 'gesundheit!" She then turned to me and said, and I quote: "Sorry."

Sorry? I was so shocked I just stared at her until she dragged the confused little girl away.

When did saying "bless you" become such an offense that children are disciplined in public over it, and when did saying it become something to apologise for?  What kind of person could possibly be offended by someone saying 'bless you' when he or she sneezed? 

Well, it's obvious, isn't it? The same kind of people who work to ban Christmas songs from public schools.  The same kind of people who go ballistic over displays of Christian theological imagery during holidays based on Christian theology. (Christmas trees and Santa Claus are secular symbols, according to the Supreme Court. There's not a lot of evergreens in Bethlehem, and that red furry suit would have been too hot even at night.)  The same kind of people who want to ban displays of the Ten Commandments from courthouses in which laws based upon them are supposedly upheld. 

In three words: Liberals, of course.

I'm not a religious person by any means; I'm agnostic. That's my choice. You make yours, other people make theirs, and we all live with that. That's America; that's the First Amendment.  When someone says "bless you" to me, or tells me they'll pray for me (my grandmother surely wore out several sets of rosary beads that way), or wishes for "the Goddess", Buddha, or any other divine or semi-divine being to watch over me, I'm not offended. I always thank them for their good wishes. I understand one important thing that Liberals don't seem able to grasp.

It's not about me or my faith (or lack thereof)... it's about THEIRS.

When someone expresses a wish that a divine Being in whom they actually believe might take the time to do something nice for me or mine, how could it possibly be offensive unless I'm so wrapped up in my own self that I think my worldview is the only one that matters?

Saying things like "God Bless America" or "Merry Christmas" causes Liberals to sneer condescendingly about easily-led sheep blinded by religion. Well, what about those driven by hatred of religion? Are they any less blind?

It's the time of year for predictions. There are plenty I could make that I'd consider less prognostication than pragmatism: Bush wins in November, the Dow hits 12,000 by Easter (though I feel there will also be a slump after that as the bears move in for the summer), jobs rebound, and another successful terrorist attack takes place on US soil (probably soon before the election). Syria desperately staves off disaster by following in Libya's footsteps, giving up WMDs and terrorism support, the situation in Iraq improves drastically and dramatically, and Iraqis participate in free elections in the summer. Those are almost certain to come true, barring some disaster -- like Iran's nuclear "power" program being allowed to come to fruition, and the biggest supporter of terrorism suddenly acquiring nuclear weapons.  There's one prediction, however, that I'm particularly interested in... the breakup of the Democratic Party due to the 2004 election.

There's three possible scenarios involved, and it's not yet possible to predict which will take place. The groundwork is already being laid, the process exposed by Howard Dean's comments about the DLC. When complaining about the other contenders for the Democratic nomination criticising him, Dean said, "even the Democratic Leadership Council, which is sort of the Republican part of the Democratic Party... the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, we're going to need them too, we really are."  This reflects the thinking of his followers, and will reflect back in their actions this year.

Howard Dean is the darling of the radical left-wing of the Democratic Party. They've dragged the party as a whole so far to the left of center as to make a general election unwinnable.  The Classic Democrats, those who still have sense and care about America's future (and there are a few still around) are so appalled by this as to vote against their party line.  Senator Zell Miller (D-GA) and Senator John Breaux (D-LA) are among the most conservative Democrats, considered "traitors to the party" for supporting the defense of America and other sensible policies. As one ranting Liberal wrote in April, "helpers to these traitors to democracy who will join the ranks of Stalin, Hitler and Saddam include centrist Democrats like Zell Miller and John Breaux. And we should also identify the voting districts that send the evil ones and their assistants, and we should boycott their products and services."

Well, at least he had the grace to identify Saddam Hussein as a bad man.

The first possibility is that Howard Dean becomes the Democratic candidate for President.  If this happens, the angry rhetoric from the Left will get more vitriolic and vociferous as we draw closer to November. If you think Howard Dean's "Bush knew about 9/11 in advance and did nothing" conspiracy theory sounds wacko, just wait!  Not only the "swing voters" but many Democrats will vote for Bush (or not vote at all) rather than support that kind of ranting, raving lunacy.  Bush will be re-elected, of course. The more centrist Democrats will blame the Liberal Democrats (or, as Howard Dean calls them, "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party") for the loss, and they'll form their own fringe party.  The Classic Democratic party will take years to recover.

The second scenario is that Dick Gephardt (D-MO) will actually do quite well in the 2004 Democratic primaries, especially Iowa (19 Jan), New Hampshire (27 Jan) and Michigan (7 Feb).  That will give Terry McAuliffe, head of (that is, Bill Clinton's mouthpiece in) the Democratic National Committee, the grounds he needs to declare Gephardt the official Democratic Presidential Candidate.  After all, Gephardt's an affable, long-time politician who's done his time in the trenches. His biggest gaffe so far has been to state off-handedly, "When I'm President, we'll do executive orders to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day," but most people missed that one (or so McAuliffe and Gephardt hope).  Howard Dean's Liberals will, over the course of the summer, grow more bitter and angry at their own party, until they declare Howard Dean the "real" Democratic candidate.  With the Democratic vote badly split, President Bush will easily win. Again, the Classic Democratic party will take years to recover.

The third possibility, as likely as the others, is that Gephardt is pronounced the official candidate, but the Democrats manage to hold the party together until after the election. This will result in a much closer race, but a much more violent split after their defeat.  The Democrats might never fully recover from this scenario... at least not until 2008 when they rally behind Hillary Clinton.  And the only thing that would stop her from running would be a defeat in her re-election bid for New York Senator in 2006.

Who's the one person that could beat her with his hands tied behind his back? Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, it's time to rise to the occasion again!  But I'm getting ahead of myself... one election at a time.

I was going to write a satire about the recent discovery of a cow with "mad cow disease" (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, to be exact) in which leading Democrats blame President Bush for it.  Unfortunately, they (Kerry, Dean, Gephardt, Clark and Edwards) really did attack him over it, beating me to the punch line!  What a world.

Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean says the Bush administration missed an opportunity to soften the impact of the country's first mad cow scare and that the American beef industry should receive federal aid to weather the crisis.
The former governor, whose state has a large dairy cow population, said the Bush administration failed to aggressively set up a tracking system that would allow the government to quickly track the origins of the sick cow, quarantine other animals it came in contact with and assure the marketplace the rest of the meat supply is safe.
"What we need in this country is instant traceability," he said.

WHAT CRISIS?  That's what I'd like to know.  A single cow with this disease has been discovered.  "Look, the system is working! It must be a crisis! Throw money at it!"  If a hundred sick animals had been found in different areas, I might agree that perhaps it wasn't detected as quickly as it should have been.  But one single cow? And one that was imported from Canada, at that? 

Dean's comment that the beef industry must immediately recieve government money (that is, yours and mine) to "weather the crisis" is nothing more than another pathetic attempt to pander to an interest group in order to recieve their endorsement.  Is there anyone who actually thinks Dean is genuinely concerned about beef farmers and wants to help them?  No, I meant anyone not in a mental institution, or the Democratic party.  Let's get something straight: if some countries ban beef imports from the US, the role of the Federal government is NOT to make up for the lost income with other peoples' money. It's to put diplomatic pressure on those nations to halt the ban.  That's how it's supposed to work.

As for Dean's "instant traceability", we can't get the Democrats to agree on that for immigrant humans, much less cattle! Which is more important to keep track of, al-Qaeda terrorists planning to blow up buildings full of innocent people or a single sick cow?  Maybe we ought to declare terrorism a disease. Then people like Howard Dean, John Kerry (who called for "a national system to make diseased livestock easier to track and contain"), and Wesley Clark (who said the Bush administration needs to "take proactive steps to improve tracking and testing that should have been taken months ago") will finally get on board with the war against terrorism.

The deal with mad cow disease is that the virus resides in the nervous system of an infected animal -- brain and spine.  These parts, in many other countries, are commonly ground up (you've heard of bone meal?) and used in feed for other cattle, spreading the disease.  However, we don't do that in the US; it's illegal.  Cow brains are eaten as a delicacy in some parts of the world. Most people don't do that here, either.  Spread of disease checked, "crisis" averted. 

Time for a thick juicy steak with President Bush.

Howard Dean seems to be trying a new tactic to win the "hearts and minds" of Americans.  Having completely failed so far in his quest to convince Southerners that he's the right person to represent them, he's decided to pose as a deeply religious man to appeal to churchgoers as his campaign makes its upcoming Southern stops.

Have you ever heard anything more deeply cynical?  This is the man who left his church because he had a dispute with them over a bike path, of all the insignificant things.  Suddenly, he's the religious candidate? Watch out, Reverend Al!

After alienating the entire voting population of the South when he chastised them for basing their votes on "race, guns, God and gays," Dean still apparently thinks he has a chance to get a single Southern vote by pretending to be a religious man himself.  "Keep your religion out of the vote -- but vote for me because I'm religious," seems to be Dean's message. More than any of his others so far, this latest lie shows Dean's deeply-rooted elitism, his belief that people are just ignorant sheep to be led around by the nose.  Stupid rednecks, what do they know about running the country?

Polls report that President Bush enjoys an even higher percentage of support from regular churchgoers (by 38%) than from the population in general. Is that because they see him as a genuine person of faith? Because they see him as someone with a moral compass? Because they see him as someone who tries to do what's right (though not always what's Right -- many Conservatives are deeply disgruntled by his Medicare package, for instance)? 

Not if you're someone like Howard Dean.  To elitists like him, people who spend their lives striking a pose, there's no such thing as a genuine person who actually believes in what he or she says.  Every speech is a sham, every position, a posture.  It would never occur to them that Bush actually does what he thinks best for the country instead of what's best for his poll results.  For instance, the elite media gleefully reported that President Bush's surprise Thanksgiving visit to the troops in Baghdad didn't significantly raise his approval ratings (although they actually DID rise immediately afterwards; I guess it just wasn't "significant").  Frankly, I don't think Bush gave a damn.  Rather than understand why he appeals to so many people, the elitists just think they can emulate him and "steal" his votes.  To them, people are too stupid to tell the difference.

So get ready for the newly-religious Howard Dean, Man of Faith, coming soon to a stump near you.

It amazes and frightens me how much Liberals have in common with the terrorists we're fighting.  I'm not saying they're in league with them or anything like that (most of them), I'm merely observing that they share a great many aims (for different reasons, to be sure).  Take the following similarities, for instance...

• Terrorists hate the PATRIOT Act because it curtails their freedom to move in and out of the USA at will, gives terrorism investigations the same powers as drug or organised crime investigations have had for years, and makes their activities against the USA harder to commit.
  
  
• Liberals also hate the PATRIOT Act. They rail against it at every opportunity, usually without an understanding of its provisions or effects, only a vague charge that it "destroys civil liberties".  I've been waiting since it was first written for a single instance of an actual civil liberty that has been impacted by the Act.  Even the infamous "library clause" -- which allows an investigation in progress to examine what books a suspect has checked out of a library -- is already in use for drug investigations.

• Terrorists would love it if law-abiding Americans were unable to own and carry weapons. They might actually use them when an act of terrorism is in progress, making the terrorists' lives harder and putting them in danger!
  
  
• Liberals also favor rigid gun control. They don't believe any private citizen could have a legitimate excuse for owning a working weapon. They seem to forget that we don't NEED an excuse or reason; it's our right to do so according to the Second Amendment of the US Constitution.  If citizens have no guns, how are we supposed to ensure that the government doesn't really take our rights away (as in the mythical depredations of the PATRIOT Act)?

• Terrorists, being religious extremists, hate Judeo-Christian religions and want to see them destroyed.  They hate any sort of religious display or paraphernalia (Christian and Jewish, that is).  They see their struggle as Islam against Christianity, although they've twisted the basic tenets of modern Islam to make it seem that way.
  
  
• Liberals, many of them anti-religious extremists, also hate Judeo-Christian religions and want to see them banished from the public view. They use the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of religion, to attack any Christian exercising that right.  They also vehemently hate religious displays, including attacking a public-school teacher's aide who wore a small gold cross around her neck.  Liberals are working to ban Christmas and all Judeo-Christian religious holidays, even forcing people to say "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" instead of "Merry Christmas", because someone might be "offended" by another person's offering them good wishes or even mentioning the name of the holiday in a song.

• Terrorists are inflamed by our wealth in the West. Instead of asking themselves "what have they done right?", they decided that we should die for having more than they do.  As a symbolic strike at our wealthy economic system, they attacked the World Trade Center.
  
  
• Liberals also hate the fact that the West is wealthy. The capitalist system combined with the work ethic bequeathed us by our more religious predecessors has brought America as a whole to a level of prosperity unmatched in the world, and this drives the Liberals mad.  They want to raise taxes, regulate and restrict corporations into the ground, and generally create an unfriendly environment overall for business and capitalism, where everyone works for and depends upon the government.

• Terrorists hate the US military.  Osama bin Laden declared his jihad against us because we had troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, in "occupation of the land of the holy places" (Mecca and Medina). Our military drove al-Qaeda from its stronghold in Afghanistan, and is engaged in striking them down around the world.
  
  
• Liberals have hated the US military since the sixties. To them, our modern, intelligent, educated, trained, all-volunteer military are the same violent conscript scum portrayed in Oliver Stones's anti-war, anti-military flick Platoon, just itching to stomp on any non-American for any reason. Or none.

• Terrorists hate President Bush because he's actually doing something about global terrorism.  They hate the fact that he's working to spread democracy to the Middle East, and remove the threat of WMDs from the arsenals of the terrorists.  They hate the fact that he's working to undermine support for terrorism, even going so far as to apply sanctions against countries that support it. They hate the fact that he took the fight to Iraq, a known supporter of terrorism, including al-Qaeda.
  
  
• Liberals hate President Bush, too.  They're mobilising their efforts to get someone -- anyone -- else into the White House in 2004.  Liberal organisations such as MoveOn.org attack the president daily, with the willing cooperation of the "news" media. Billionaires like George Soros pledge obscene amounts of money ($15 million so far) to the fight to elect a different President. They, too, hate the fact that he took the War on Terrorism to Iraq, refusing to believe that Saddam supported and trained al-Qaeda operatives at Salman Pak, possibly even those who flew planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania on 9/11. The Liberals hate President Bush more than they do al-Qaeda.

How do you think the terrorists feel about that?