Is anyone surprised that NOW, the National Organization for Women, came out (to coin a phrase) against President Bush's healthy marriage initiative? I know I'm not.

Since its inception, NOW has shifted from an organisation that once protected women and promoted equality to one that pushes its own harmful Liberal social-engineering agenda, more involved in gay and minority issues than those of women. These organisations encourage women, minorities and homosexuals to think of themselves as the helpless victims of Evil Rich Straight White Men instead of the thinking human beings they are. That creates a need for groups like NOW, GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) or the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) to "protect" them, in a self-perpetuating cult of victimhood. Anything that reduces the amount of self-described "victims" in the world reduces the power of the cult, and so the groups have to oppose anything that actually addresses social problems, like Bush's healthy marriage initiative.  NOW's objection to promoting healthy marriages and two-parent families is that somehow it "forces" the victims of domestic violence to "hook up" with abusers, according to Lisalyn Jacobs, vice president for government relations for the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund.  Huh?

Where do they get that? Is there a secret alternate version that only NOW members get to see?  Or is it that they're so wrapped up in their own hatred of men and their own percieved victimhood that the phrase "healthy marriage" looks like so much cuneiform to them?

For me, as for many people, NOW lost much of their credibility as a legitimate women's rights organisation when they sided with Bill Clinton instead of the victims of his sexual predation. One chapter of NOW even threatened to break away from the national group over this.  When they openly attacked Dr. Laura Schlessinger, then a radio talk show host, for advocating raising children in traditional families (gasp!), they lost whatever legitimacy they had left.  Aren't mothers women, too?  Mine certainly was. 

I haven't read every detail of President Bush's plan to promote healthy marriages, nor do I need to in order to understand that helping couples who intend to marry form a stable, loving, healthy relationship is a good idea.  Why is the divorce rate so high? Is it because movies and television denigrate family values, glorify infidelity and paint an unrealistic, or worse, downright nihilistic portrait of marriage?  Is it simply because with the rising divorce rate over the last half century, fewer and fewer people have an example of a real, working, stable marriage to emulate? According to Joel Cohen's article, "Human Population: The Next Half Century" (from the 14 November 2003 issue of Science), "...the rise in divorce and cohabitation is weakening the ties between fathers and children.  Nonmarital births increased as a percentage of all births in the United States from 5.3% in 1960 to 33.0% in 1999."  How many social ills stem from broken homes, single parents struggling to raise children, and abusive marriages? I wouldn't be far off the mark if I said "most of them".

Once again, President Bush seems to be trying to do something about the root cause of a problem instead of merely patching over the symptoms.  Helping couples work out their problems before they even arise -- a "preemptive strike", I suppose you could call it -- will reduce the number of single-parent families in the future.  President Bush plans to make sure couples interested in marriage have access to counseling to teach them how to get along with each other, how to resolve differences and conflicts, how to manage money and chores, and how to deal with the strain of raising children.  Who could possibly be against that? 

Groups like NOW and GLAAD that subsist on the "victim cult", that's who.

Let me play among the stars... Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars...

Hold on a minute... that's not Frank Sinatra singing! It's President Bush!

Tomorrow, the President will unveil his plan to return to the Moon and build a permanent Lunar research station and settlement. His plan also includes sending astronauts to Mars as the next natural step in the exploration and expansion of humans into space.

Once again, President Bush proves he's a man after my own heart.  Not only will his push for space exploration redeem NASA, create jobs, spur scientific research and give America a vision for the future, but it's sure to anger many Liberals while, at the same time, keeping the USA ahead of the ambitious Chinese.  A winning situation, six different ways.

Since the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded in its final minutes of re-entry a year ago, killing all aboard, America's space exploration has been in a holding pattern. There's been widespread doubt that the agency could even survive.  Challenging NASA to meet a definite goal will revitalise not only the organisation itself, but all the dependent firms with aerospace ties. Handing NASA a mandate for this kind of effort will create a trickle-down positive effect in the tech sector as well. 

Few people could disagree with the fact that space exploration has brought huge research and development advances in every field of human endeavor. From health care to sports to communication and other technologies, nearly every industry has benefitted in some way from the development of space. Research into such problems as the bone loss all long-term astronauts experience, for instance, could be a huge boon to America's aging population.  And more than that, we Americans need a common goal that could lift us out of the media quagmire muddying our achievements in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries (fifty million people freed from oppression and counting...), as well as the constant petty political attacks on the President by the Democrats.  Returning to space could give all Americans a sense of common pride and accomplishment. We belong at the forefront of science. We belong at the forefront of technology. We belong at the forefront of exploration.  We belong in space.  In every possible way, space exploration is worth the cost.

Naturally, some people will disagree, and in the most vitriolic ways. 

Mark my words, the coming weeks and months will hear fevered objections to President Bush's determination to return to space.  We'll hear over and over about how the government's money (your money, my money) should be spent on more social programs, which (as we all know) might alleviate the problems of a few, for the short term only.  One of the main problems with these people, mostly Liberals, is their inablility to see anything but the short term -- witness their impatience with the slowly-but-steadily improving Iraq situation. The kind of people who could whine that nine months has already been too long to rebuild an entire country and acclimate its people to a democratic form of government will be unable to understand the kind of sustained national effort space exploration takes.  The people who had the same opinion in the 1960's wasted no time taking advantage of the benefits it brought, nor will today's objectors.

I can just hear the cries of objection now, from people who want to sacrifice the advance of science and technology to their own ideological agendas. Perhaps they'll say, "No blood for science!" or "It's all about the helium-3!"  What kind of people protest the advance of science and the general betterment of the human condition?  A few more years of Liberal cultural domination will see us all living in caves, instead of reaching for the stars.

The latest sensation in the online world is the letter recently published on the Iraqi blog Healing Iraq, about a missing young man named Zaydun Ma'mun Fadhil Hassun Al-Samarrai.  The letter, purportedly written by Zaydun's mother, describes his murder by drowning at the hands of US soldiers, as related by a cousin who was with him and "survived miraculously". 

If it hadn't been for a single phrase of Zeyad's, it would be easy to dismiss this letter instantly as something fabricated by anti-Coalition forces due to the many details that don't make sense, even if you're able to assume (an easy task for anti-Americans, of course) that somehow, an entire patrol consisted solely of "bad apples" who would commit deliberate murder.  Stop drooling, Oliver Stone, we haven't gone over the details yet.

But Zeyad said, "Zaydun is a relative of mine". Therefore, since Zeyad has always proved a credible source in the past, I believe that Zaydun exists. 

Something official must be done to determine the veracity of this account. More than likely, the account of Zaydun's cousin as to the fate of Zaydun is false. It's as full of holes as Swiss cheese. I'm not even certain the letter was written by Zaydun's mother.  Zeyad himself says, "I never implied that I was 100% convinced about the details. They were really really troubled when I talked to them and they just handed me the letter and the picture and asked me to do whatever I can do about it."

The writer of the letter takes great pains to induce pathos as well as anger at the US, describing Iraq as "a country torn by wars and sanctions", and saying of herself, "I was a victim, and there are and will be many more".  If that seems a little overdone, the writer continues to speak of the "suffering of Iraqi mothers, we are reaping misery every day from actions of American soldiers with no regard to our human life, our dignity, and our culture and values". 

So, is this a letter about a missing young man, or a general diatribe against the US and the Coalition?  "The devil is in the details", they say.

The story told by the unnamed cousin was that the soldiers caught him and Zaydun returning to Samarra after the curfew, when their cargo truck broke down. After searching the truck, they tied both men up.  They abandoned their post to lead the men to a dam three kilometers (a little less than 2 miles) away, where they made them jump into the water.  The cousin's account tells that he got lucky, and was caught by a tree branch and escaped. The cousin says he tried to save Zaydun, but the water was too strong.  He hid when he saw the soldiers searching for them with flashlights.  

Zaydun and his cousin took their work truck and went somewhere, returning at night -- the letter specifies midnight -- with something in it that made soldiers at the checkpoint place them under arrest when they searched it. What was in the truck? Did Zaydun and the cousin actually escape? Did they run to the river to hide, chased by a few of the soldiers with flashlights?  Did Zaydun, perhaps while removing his jacket to change his appearance, fall into the fast-moving water beneath the dam?  Did the cousin indeed try to save him, only to be defeated by the fast-moving water?

The letter goes on to say, "After days of search we found my sons jacket floating with the stream".  If the current was so strong that two young men couldn't fight it, how far did the jacket travel over the course of days?  And how did Zaydun remove it, if he was tied up?  In an update, Zeyad tells us the cousin later stated that the handcuffs were removed before the men were told to jump into the water. However, anyone that has seen a television in the last year has seen Coalition troops arresting people with the use of plastic zip-strips, not handcuffs. Perhaps it's another translation error or omission, which is all the more reason to have the matter investigated.  

It's the last part of the story about the jacket in which the hard play for sympathy combined with hatred for America rings most false... "it shall remain with me as a memory and a symbol of the injustice brought against him by soldiers of the United States of America's army, who came to our country under the banners of human rights and democracy only to send my son to his demise on his wedding days." (Emphasis mine)  "Ahh, those bastards!" we are supposed to say at this point. The reference to it being his actual wedding day was later explained as a translation error on Zeyad's part, but the reference is still obvious: the beginning of the letter tells us that Zaydun was "engaged to marry a relative of his very recently".

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.