The last third

Where there’s smoke, there’s the Bush brigade starting fires. My mailbox has begun to fill once again with sappy and lachrymose laments about the 2001 al Qaeda attack and of course the subject of Mexican immigration is belching more smoke than a coal-fired power plant is allowed under Bush’s lax regulations.

As you’ve undoubtedly read, there seems to be an effort to dissuade Mexicans from buying US products on May the first as part of a protest that is being dubbed “the great American boycott.” I can’t imagine that this act, if it materializes, would have any significant effect on our economy. It’s difficult enough these days to identify the national origin of any product or the ownership of the company that produces it. We don’t make very much any more.

Why then, the steaming effluent from Right Wing websites and Republican politicians like Georgia Governor Sonny “Chicken” Perdue, demanding that we boycott Mexican products on Cinco De Mayo? As far as I can tell, the jury may be out as concerns the negative economic effect of illegal immigration from our southern neighbor, but the likely verdict is that without cheap labor here, more of our products would have to be imported from abroad and prices for essentials would rise. It’s more than possible that illegal immigration adds to our prosperity, yet we’re being whipped into hysteria about it, while most of us are less fully aware of the dangers to our economy, security and freedom originating from the George W. Bush administration.

Might all the smoke have something to do with Bush’s sinking approval amongst his own party? (hint: this is a rhetorical question.)

It was gratifying indeed to think about how the ogres at Fox News felt when after their usual sneering and snickering at the results of an oh-so-biased CBS poll showing Bush to have a 34% approval rating, their own poll gave him less support with only a third of the nation backing him. Look for more smoke and more hype; more "terror alerts" and more pictures of collapsing skyscrapers as the “decider” loses more of his followers. The falling towers may be more of a metaphor than Bush intended.