And the Bush finally spells out the current administration's vision for the Middle East. Dump Arafat and end the suicide bombings and we're all for a (mumble) provisional Palestinian state. Whoa. Rewind. What's this provisional thing? Care to elaborate? It's like not quite a state? How so? Everybody else is criticizing the decision to dump a foreign leader. They seem to have missed that one word. Big mistake. It was the most important word of the speech. Uhm, wait a minute. Don't they already have a provisional Palestinian state? They can fly their own flag, elect leaders and have their own police force (well those that are still alive). So what exactly in the Bush plan is different? Well get rid of Arafat and stop the bombings and we'll give you what you already have. What a deal. Where do I sign?

When your grandkids ask you how world war 3 started, you can simply answer that it was a grand convergence. One day we woke up and all the great nations of the world were ruled by idiots. I'm gonna' check the translation of that old 'meek shall inherit the earth' thing. The meek will never inherit the earth. Imbeciles, perhaps. Some say this has already happened. My guess is that if you go back to the original text, 'meek' and 'imbeciles' were probably the same word and King James' translators decided to go with the former because it made for a better sound bite than the latter.

I nearly soiled my britches a couple weeks back when I started thinking about how to consolidate the various police and intelligence agencies into a cohesive force, and then the next day the president does just that. Except that he makes the most glaring exceptions by specifically excluding the FBI and CIA. Nothing political happens without a reason. The new department isn't spooks and it isn't investigators per se. It's beat cops that answer directly to the cabinet and prez. So I can't say that this similiar to the Russian style police state I mentioned earlier. No this is more like the SS.