Looking at the Whole Problem Backwards

Mark hails from Clear Springs, Maryland, and blogs at Left Field Perspectives.

I believe we are looking at the whole problem backwards. We are constantly trying to focus on how to pay the high costs of health care, and not on how to lower the cost of health care, which I consider more practical.

I am unashamedly Conservative, which already puts me at odds with Shaun and the majority of the readers of his blog. Be that as it may, my solution to the health care crisis in America is one which I formulated many years ago, when I fancied myself a Liberal.

So it may be a Liberal solution. I don't know. Nevertheless, I still think it's a very good solution.

We regulate many types of businesses in this country. We put a ceiling on what private enterprise can charge for goods and services. The oil industry is a good example. Gas gouging is illegal. Independent oil companies are not allowed to charge more than a set amount for gasoline.

Similarly, other industries are equally regulated. Grocery stores have a ceiling on prices. As do most industries dealing with essential human needs. Telephone, gas, electric, and trash companies have to obtain permission from the government to raise prices, and then they are limited to how much of a raise they can institute.

Why not healthcare? Doctors and pharmaceutical companies currently have no restrictions on how much they can charge for their goods and services. Why not? Are they somehow better than the oil companies, and the utilities?

Here is my solution: Do not allow doctors and pharmacists to be paid more than a set figure per year. When I first entertained this idea, my original dollar figure was $50,000.00 per year, but with inflation, that is much too low in my opinion. However, I do think $100,000.00 a year is quite enough for doctors and pharmacists to live on.

Besides, a doctor who is a good manager of his money can turn a little money into riches through other means. This plan would not prevent doctors from getting rich. It merely forces them to find more inventive ways to reach a fiduciary goal. Doctors who manage their money well can still become millionaires with this plan.

This will have several related benefits.

First, and most importantly, healthcare costs will plummet, making health care much more affordable for the average American.

Second, this plan would eliminate the mercenary doctor, who only became a doctor to get rich, and couldn't care less about the welfare of his patients, as long as he gets his fee.

The only doctors and pharmacists left would be the ones that genuinely care about the patient’s health and will do whatever it takes, and explore every avenue to that end.

Additionally, the research scientists would have no more reason to milk the coffers of charitable organizations such as the American Cancer institute, etc., and would likely miraculously find a cure. A cure that I am quite sure they already know about, but it is relatively inexpensive and if it was permitted to be used would seriously affect he yearly incomes of the doctors.

In short, don't regulate the patients. Regulate the healthcare profession itself.

A Vote for Universal Care

Adam Silva is a 21-year-old University of North Texas student majoring in Political Science and International Studies. He blogs at Three Wise Men.

Most of us have at one time or another been without health insurance, many of you probably do not have health insurance or otherwise have problems with the health insurance you do have. I have seen the consequences of lack of health care in just the last year.

My parents being unemployed at the time and my job offering no such benefit, I found myself extremely ill for several weeks. I put off seeking treatment but eventually had to go to the Emergency Room. Though I really only needed a simply prescription for antibiotics, the affair has ended up costing me $450 and $50 for the prescription, and though I have paid it, has cost me some unfortunate affairs with credit agencies.

Just a few weeks ago I was sick again with the same symptoms, but as I am now covered because my dad is employed and I am enrolled full-time at a university, the trip to the doctor and subsequent prescription cost me no more than $25, far less than before. Since I did not feel the need to wait on seeking treatment this time around, I got better after just a few days.

It is my feeling that too many times does the average American find themselves in a similar situation under our current private health care system. In fact, 46 million are insured and millions more underinsured and even those who have health insurance encounter many problems.

What is my solution?

I believe the U.S. should adopt universal health care because it offers the same benefits as our current system but would be available to all at all times. To help you understand how I came to this conclusion, I will discuss the facts and figures regarding health insurance in American, present studies on health care, and address how you can make a difference in this debate.

As I said, many Americas are currently uninsured yet there is little push for major reform.

One out of every six Americans don’t have access to healthcare. In Texas, it’s one out of every four, including 25 percent of children. More than 40 percent of Americans making between $20,000 and $40,000 a year went without insurance for at least part of the year last year.

But beyond the millions without health insurance, many Americans that do find themselves unsatisfied with the integrity and stability of the health coverage they have. Forty percent of bankruptcies occur because of catastrophic health care costs. Also, worker mobility has increased tremendously over the last few decades, rendering it impossible for anyone to take health care benefits from job to job. Worse still, a recent study has shown health insurance companies to hold a monopoly on the health care industry.

Now that we’ve discussed the problems, let me share what I see as the best solution.

The United States is the only industrialized nation in the world without a universal health care (UHC) system. Even Costa Rica has one! Much of the resistance can be attributed to the perpetuation by conservatives of many myths about UHC that have prevailed so much it has scared many lawmakers who would naturally by sympathetic to the cause, especially Democrats, away from the idea. However, most of these myths are unfounded and I will detail each one here.

The most common misperception is that universal health care equals "socialized medicine,” which would mean hospitals and doctors becoming employees of the state. But UHC only provides funding for people's health care, not the health care itself, debunking the arguments that UHC would eliminate private competition and thus stifle research and development.

Basically, all UHC would be is “Medicare for all.”

Another myth about UHC is that is would be too expensive. However, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that UHC would actually save up to $14 billion annually in health care costs. Sure, we'd have to raise taxes to pay for it, but that would just replace the health care premiums we already pay, so there'd be no difference - and as I said, it would actually be cheaper. I don't know about you, but if I’m given the choice between paying a tax and something called a premium, my only question is going to be: which costs less?

UHC would actually improve on the system in several other, unexpected ways.

Wouldn’t it require a huge, inefficient bureaucracy, conservatives say? Anyone who has ever dealt with a health care provider (my mother has worked for one for 20-odd years) knows the current system is a huge, inefficient bureaucracy now! However, with UHC, much of the unnecessary overhead and micromanaging that's in the private system would be eliminated. For example, the bureaucracy and paperwork involved in determining patient eligibility would be completely unnecessary if everyone were eligible and covered. Insurance companies spend an estimated 25 cents of every dollar on administration. In fact, Canada, which already has a comprehensive UHC in place and still manages to pay 70 percent less per citizen on health care, spends about the equivalent of about 12 cents of every dollar on administration.

Another criticism is that it would restrict patient choice. Aside from the fact that this probably doesn't resonate with the 46 million who are uninsured, and the millions more who are under-insured, UHC would enable the same choice or more in selecting a physician than the current system under which HMOs and insurance companies restrict patients to a strict list of complying physicians. As for the common complaint of long wait lines - this is true. However, the wait would be no longer than it is already! It's almost as if these critics have never gotten ill and had to deal with all this before.

A final added economic bonus of UHC would be that it would free private businesses from having to worry about health care benefits for their employers, increasing their ability to compete with foreign businesses which don't have to and/or aren't required to. It's always been foolish to rely on a health care system built on employment, especially since worker mobility has increased as mentioned earlier.

In conclusion, lack of health coverage is a severe crisis for many, if not most, Americans today and we must undertake bold reform ideas to end it.

Only Congress has the power to enact UHC and I encourage you all to write to your senators and representatives and tell them you support the idea and support candidates in future elections that support the idea (or likewise, encourage them to do so).

Tell them this idea is not outside the mainstream. According to a nationwide ABC-Washington Post poll in 2003, Americans by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, 62 to 32 percent, prefer a universal health insurance programs "run by the government and financed with taxpayers" over the current healthcare system. The poll showed four in five Americans said it is more important to provide universal health care, even if it meant raising taxes, than to hold down taxes and leave some citizens with no coverage.

Finally, rather than tolerating a system where the goal is to make as much money as possible, leaving millions without such an essential need as health care, America should move to one which would keep or improve on all the benefits of the old private system, but in which they would be available to every one and not just those who can afford them.

Wouldn’t that be worth it?

Toward a Two-Tier Solution

Carl Smith is a self-described political animal from the Philadelphia area with a keen interest in fixing health care.

Why wouldn't a two-tiered approach work?

One tier, for those people with income who can afford the latest advances in health care, and another system for those who either can't afford the latest, or who choose to not pay for it? The first tier will continue with health care as we currently have it.

The second tier can consist of providers with less training, meds that are off patent protection, x-ray instead of MRI, and longer waiting times. Was medicine so bad in the 1960's? They weren't really complaining about it back then, were they?

We should have government-sponsored clinics, where the care providers don't have to have current medical school education. Like you have mentioned, nurses do most of the front-line work anyway, that in theory, doctors should be doing. If an MD isn't really necessary, is an RN certification really necessary? With a little experience and a little bit of bedside manner, 90% of health care needs should be able to be covered in such a free clinic.

It makes liberals happy because it's a government program, and it makes conservatives happy because it eliminates market externalities such as the regulated market power that is assigned to certified doctors and nurses.

Poor people may be able to get better health care through such a system, and the affluent, or those who are willing to pay will get better access, with cheaper insurance rates, which would then allow more people to be covered by insurance. The only ones who will lose are the certified doctors and nurses who for the first time will be facing price competition for their services. My heart goes out to them as they suffer driving home in their German imports.

Funding Nurses, Calling For Price Controls

Doomsy, as he calls himself, lives in suburban Philadelphia and runs liberaldoomsayer, which is a political and current event blog that he writes "to see through hypocrisy on as may fronts as possible for the purposes of promoting informed dialogue."

I am married to a nurse, and I can tell you that the reason why she is in private home care now is because she couldn't give the kind of care she was trained to give given the nurse/patient ratio of the hospital where she used to work. The hospital also paid at a below-market rate for nurses with her speciality and experience, and that had a lot to do with the turnover and perpetual short staffing.

I also think more government funding is needed for our colleges and institutions where nursing students can earn a four-year degree as an RN so there would be more slots available for likely candidates. My sister-in-law completed her basic courses but had to wait for years to get into a clinical rotation, and she was only recently able to do that (and her grades were excellent).

As far as reform goes, I think we need tighter price controls on the pharma and insurance industries before we can even seriously discuss something like so-called "tort reform" and caps on awards for pain and suffering. I don't understand why Canada, for example, gets better delivery for their health-care dollar than we do in this country in the way of expanded services.

I also know what the probability is that the pharma or insurance industries would ever be properly regulated in this country, especially with the cabal currently running our country as well as the Democrats, in all likelihood.

Think Globally, Act Locally

And now a final thought from Yours Truly:

It was the spring of 1993, Washington's famous cherry blossoms were in full flower and change was in the air.

I was at the White House. Bill Clinton, in office less than a week, announced the formation of a Task Force on National Health Reform. Its goal was to prepare health-care reform legislation to be sent to Congress within 100 days. Clinton's wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, would head the task force, sending a strong signal that if anyone wanted to mess with the initiative they'd have to mess with the president.

My editors had told me that I was to cover the reform initiative fulltime. I was excited. History was about to be made, and I was already well into the massive briefing book I'd been given as the Amtrak train hurtled up the Northeast Corridor to Philadelphia that evening.

A SPECTACULAR CRASH AND BURN

One hundred days later, the reform initiative and it's centerpiece -- health care for all Americans -- were dead on arrival.

The imperious Mrs. Clinton and her task force had committed a cardinal sin by working behind closed doors. Vice President Cheyney and his Energy Task Force would do the same thing a decade later, but Congress was not as forgiving of the outsider First Lady as they would be of the veteran insider veep.

But that was not the primary reason for this spectacular crash and burn.

While many Americans endorsed universal health care, Congress and the powerful health insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies to which they were beholden were adamantly against it, and they were the tail wagging this particular dog.

Fast forward 13 years.

Universal coverage remains the solution of choice for dealing with America's health-care ills, but stands even less chance than it did in those heady days when the Clintons were going to shake up the Washington establishment.

There are two primary reasons:

The devil's deal between Congress and the health-care lobbies is even more insidious. It matters not whether Republicans, Democrats or Little Green Men From Mars control Capitol Hill. The tail is still wagging the dog and universal coverage is still a non starter.

Health care has become increasingly balkanized. This is in part because of market forces and in part because it is becoming even more profit driven. Fewer corporations own more hospitals. Fewer health insurance companies cover more Americans. Fewer pharmaceutical companies control the market, stiffling innovation in new antibiotics, for example, while spending extraordinary sums on erecticle dysfunction medications.

THE MASSACHUSETTS WAY

What then to do?

Pardon the cliche, but the only way to begin to solve America's health-care woes is to think globally and act locally.

The burghers of Massachusetts are showing the way in creating a trailblazing system of near-universal coverage that will be phased in beginning next year.

Under the plan, all state residents will be required to take responsibility for their own health insurance and all companies with 11 or more employees will be required to help pay for health insurance. Low-income residents, of which some 200,000 are currently uninsured, will be eligible for substantial state subsidies.

The plan takes a carrrot-and-stick approach. Insurance will become easier and cheaper to purchase, but beginning in 2008, uninsured residents will have to pay a hefty penalty if they fail to fall into line.

What accounts for this lightning strike?

First and foremost, Democrats and Republicans alike checked their egos and heeded calls by Republican Gov. Mitt Romney and Democratic U.S. Sen. Teddy Kennedy to do the deed.

There were other factors as well.

Curiously, a federal government that has been deaf to universal coverage threatened to cut nearly $400 million in aid if the number of uninsured Massachusetts residents was not reduced, while a coalition of advocates, including religious leaders, had gathered enough signatures to approve a ballot measure more liberal than the bill passed by the legislature that was likely to be approved by voters.

1 DOWN, 49 TO GO

The Massachusetts plan is very much a work in progress. It undoubtedly has flaws. But it is a start, and there is great appeal to the provisions that require state residents to take responsibility for their own health-care coverage with the state taking responsibility for the people who can't afford that coverage.

Now that lightning has struck in Massachusetts, can it happen elsewhere? There are indications that it can, especially in similarly forward looking states like California, which is the home of Kaiser Permanente, one of the largest non-government health-care providers in the U.S. and an innovator in preventive care.

But the for-profit corporations that are balkanizing health care have powerful voices and deep pockets. What's good for Massachusetts and could be good for California is not good for these players if it impacts their almighty bottom line.

So my suggestion is that Americans who truly want to fix the health-care mess forget about Uncle Sam bailing them out. The promised land is in Sacramento, Albany or Madison, not Washington.

Gratuitous Kitty Shot of the Week

Here's Kiko, the namesake of Kiko's House, enjoying some well deserved down time with the Dear Friend & Conscience.

Why well deserved? For one thing, Kiko is a mouser extraordinaire and no rodent escapes her clutches for very long. For another, she is a mentor and steadying influence for young Kimba, who is a sweetheart but a bit, uh . . . shall we say, slow.

* * * * *

Want your cat to be more famous than you are?  Just attach a JPG of him or her -- or them -- to an email and send it along with a few choice words to kikokimba@gmail.com

Science Saturday I: Update on Eagle Eye

I reported yesterday with great enthusiasm about the webcam showing two bald eagles patiently incubating their two eggs in a nest high in a tree on Hornby Island, British Columbia, Canada. The pair were attracting worldwide attention to the tune of 10 million hits a day.

It now appears that the eggs were infertile and the parents have left the nest.

Naturalist David Hancock said he's not sure why this occurred, but made some educated guesses:

* The adult eagles are possibly old:

This is the 19th year for known nesting results from this tree. It could have been occupied for 50 or more years earlier. Was the same pair occupying the nest all that time? We do not know. Eagles could live that long.

If the birds are very old it is possible that they have simply run out of reproductive ability. Perhaps they simply can’t produce viable eggs any longer.

Alternatively, it is possible with very old birds that they have accumulated so many pesticides and heavy metals that their reproductive track is no longer able to function properly. This is not at all out of the question. I am told that orcas (killer whales) that now periodically die along the British Columbia and Washington coasts are so polluted and their bodies so loaded with poisons that it is illegal to tow their bodies out to sea or have them hauled to land fills. They carcasses have to be burned. A very sad statement on our polluted earth. Are these eagles, who also occupy the top of the food chain and eat the same basic foods as orcas, also contaminated. Very possibly. Maybe the reproductive success is going to be restricted to younger eagles that have not had so long to accumulated the poisons.

* One or more of the adult eagles is young and inexperienced:

This is possible – but not liklely. Last year when the territory only hatched one young which died at 6 days of age and the other egg did not hatch, both adults were in full adult plumage – not even just newly matured at 5 years as this would have been indicated by the dark streaking in their white head or dark tail band. These birds appear to be fully mature both last year and this year. Furthermore, this pair appear to e very experienced in nest building that we got to witness in such marvelous detail, and in fullfulling the incubating duties. They hardly left the eggs unattended more than 12 to 40 seconds during any exchange that I witnessed. They are not just good, and I assume experienced parents, but so compatible with each other. I take this beautiful pair to be very experienced parents. So the loss again this year of their eggs I also view as most likely due to loss of fertility due to age or polution.

* There are other alternatives:

There are infinite options but none seem logical than my first option above. The pair are very used to human disturbance, constantly perching near houses and human activity with no noticeable alarm or concern. While I have received lots of concerned calls and emails at the sounds of power movers, cars, chain saws and dogs we have had an unprecedented opportunity to watch the eagles in the cam and correlate their behavior with disturbances. The noise of civilizations does not seem to phase them a bit.

I found one call from an irate and annoyed caller quite interesting. She heard the disturbance of barking dogs and instantly called me. I was actually calling Doug [Carrick, who set up the webcam] to question him about this. After many rings he answered the phone and reported that he delayed coming in to the phone until the herd of barking sea lions has passed by his porch. I hardly think barking sea lions would be a disturbance to bald eagles – and indeed barking dogs elicit no interest from the nesting birds either.

* Then there is the matter of survival:

Eagles like most creatures in the wild are constantly subjected to the test of survival. Can they find food and make a living? Can they avoid being killed and eaten. Can they avoid hurting and damaging themselves? If they can’t keep their feathers in good condition they won’t be able to fly efficiently and hunt effectively and they will die.

Almost half of the eagles that start nesting loose their eggs or young. Surviving in the wild is not easy. Of those young that survive to fledging only a small percentage are likely to survive the five years to maturity. Once they have proven themselves as good hunters and they enter the breeding population they can produce young for 15 to 25 or more years. Now pause for a moment to contemplate how many eagle there would or could be it the adults were successful lin raising one or two young every year for 20 years! That could be that each pair produced 30 or 40 young – far more than necessary to keep the population stable. And stable would mean producing a new eagle for every one that died.

Therefore, with such a long live potential, their has to be a lot of nest failures or early deaths otherwise the world would be full of eagles – and no room for any other species. Not a balanced system.

* * * * *

So as much as I was very saddened to not see our beautiful pair of adult bald eagles produce eagles this year it is not an unexpected happening that they should fail. If, as I suspect, these are old eagles, they have already produced many replacements for themselves and they have been great contributors to the very successful and expanding eagle population that we have been experiencing the past 50 years. It is not a good thought that they have stopped reproducing because they have become sterile from pollution and this is also not confirmed.

We will hope and expect that other eagles will be more successful and they their young will be flying over our waters. If our adult pair is at the end of its reproductive life we can anticipate younger birds moving into the territory shortly and becoming the parents of the next generations.

Meanwhile, Hancock says that he will be activating another eagle's nest webcam.

Science Saturday II: Meet Red Spot Jr.

Astronomers are tracking an emerging second red spot on Jupiter that is about one-half the diameter of the planet's trademark Great Red Spot but is growing rapidly.

The Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first detailed pictures of what some observers are calling Red Spot Jr.

Astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore said this was the first time scientists had witnessed the birth of one of these huge oval spots (at left in photo), presumably a convective phenomenon like a powerful thunderstorm. The Great Red Spot was already present when observers first looked with telescopes at the planet some 400 years ago.

Though Red Spot Jr. is half the size, the astronomers said it appeared in near-infrared images to be as bright in Jupiter's cloudy atmosphere as its large companion. They suggested that the new storm might rise higher above the main cloud deck than the older spot.

The photos made public this week by NASA, including the one above, do not represent the planet's true colors and their contrast has been enhanced. But the red spots, new and old, really are red.

For more info and photos, go here.

Science Saturday III: Pass the Fish and Chips

Older British citizens are far healthier than their U.S. counterparts—even though twice as much is spent on health care per person in the United States annually, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study's authors are unable to explain the heath gap.

"Everybody should be discussing it: Why isn't the richest country in the world the healthiest country in the world?" co-author Michael Marmot asked in an interview with the Associated Press. Marmot is an epidemiologist at University College London.

Marmot and colleagues found that middle-aged to older Americans were twice as likely to have diabetes and 10 percent more likely to be afflicted by hypertension than their British counterparts. Americans also displayed higher rates of heart disease, heart attack, stroke, lung disease, and cancer.

Experts have known for years that the U.S. lags behind other developed countries in some key health indicators.

The World Health Organization examined the 23 countries that spent the most money per capita on health care in 2001. While the U.S. outspent everyone, only the Czech Republic had a lower "healthy life expectancy"—that is, total average life expectancy minus the average number of years of illness.

But this new study reveals that even those Americans receiving the nation's best care fall short of British health standards.

National Geographic has more here. Meanwhile, Kiko's House will tackle the question of how to fix America's health-care mess on Monday.

Science Saturday IV: 'A Teachable Moment'

A stop-smoking program for New York City firefighters in the months after the 9/11 attacks has proven to be surprisingly successful.

The stress of work at ground zero at the destroyed World Trade Center caused many smokers to smoke more and prompted others who had quit to start again.

"Tobacco calms your nerves, increases awareness, allows you to stay up," Dr. David J. Prezant, the FDNY's chief medical officer, told the New York Times. "These are all things that people want in the middle of a disaster. It's not their fault that they start smoking more."

At the same time, the disaster provided what Dr. Prezant called "a reachable, teachable moment," when the message about the dangers of smoking could come through.

Ninety-eight percent of FDNY's rescue workers, whether they used tobacco or not, reported respiratory problems during their exposure to dust and debris at the disaster site. Of almost 12,000 workers screened (including firefighters, health care workers and officers), 15 percent said they regularly smoked tobacco. Of the 1,767 smokers, 29 percent said they increased their daily tobacco use after the disaster, and 23 percent said they were ex-smokers who started again after it.

The program was free and voluntary, and 164 rescue workers enrolled — 9 percent of those who said they smoked. Fifty-six family members also participated. At the end of 12 months, 33 percent of the participants were abstinent, compared with the usual 20 to 27 percent abstinence rates for other programs cited in the study. The results were confirmed with biochemical assays and the testimony of family members. Smoking can be confirmed by testing carbon monoxide in exhaled breath.

The Times has more here.

Science Saturday V: A Rock Grows in Washington

A huge slab of rock is rapidly growing inside the crater of Mount St. Helens in Washington state.

Scientists say the fin-shaped mass is one of seven lobes of fresh volcanic rock that have been pushing their way through the surface of the crater since October 2004. It is growing 4 to 5 feet a day.

Mount St. Helens, located in the Cascades of Washington, has been quietly erupting since a flurry of tiny earthquakes began in late September 2004. Scientists initially mistook the quakes as rainwater seeping into the hot interior of the older lava dome.

But it soon became clear that magma was on the move, confirmed by the emergence of fire-red lava between the old lava dome and the south crater rim a few weeks after the seismic activity began.

The volcano has continued pumping out lava ever since. Eventually, scientists expect the volcano will rebuild its conical peak that was obliterated in the May 1980 eruption that left 57 people dead.

The current growth of the new lava dome has been accompanied by low seismicity rates, low emissions of steam and volcanic gases and minor production of ash, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

"Given the way things are going now, there's no hint of any sort of catastrophic eruptions," USGS geologist Tom Pierson said. "At any time, however, things can change."

Scientists flew a helicopter into the crater late last week to adjust equipment and take photographs that will likely be used to determine just how much the new lava dome has grown the last several months.

The Return of the King

Pope Karl summons King George for a meeting.

Nearly two weeks ago, I made a commitment to Kiko's House visitors to not blog on anything having to do with King George for a whole week in a self-induced effort to try to lighten up. Pardoning the term, but Mission Accomplished -- and then some considering that I was off sniffing flowers for another four days after that.

Well, folks, the party's over.

It has been a semi-eventful and regretably predictable week and a half for The Great Decider.

A half step forward, one step back.

Congress has done nothing that the king asked for, including immigration reform and cutting $17 billion in pork out of the Iraq-Afghanistan-Katrina spending bill.

Both the White House and Capitol Hill have responded to spiking gasoline prices by trying to outdo each other for sheer silliness. (Hope you didn't already spend that $100 rebate because the idea is DOA.)

The theatrics were so transparent that when the king, for a change, actually asked Congress for its permission to do something -- set fuel economy standards -- the response was underwhelming. This might have been because the big story that day was that 10 states are suing the feds for having such low standards to begin with.

Meanwhile, a Republican-led committee reported that the king has so totally destroyed the effectiveness of the Federal Emergency Management Agency that it recommended digging a big hole and burying the whole damned thing.

Just in time for the 2006 hurricane season.

Elsewhere in the homeland insecurity front, the king surely knew that Porter Goss would be quitting after only a year as CIA director. This is a mixed blessing. Goss was an insider who didn't stand a chance of reforming a dysfunctional agency in desperate need of an outsider, but made such a hash of things that he was driving away CIA veterans in droves.

Goss apparently also was grouchy that he had been passed over for the new position of director of national intelligence. Then there's his allegedly uncomfortable proximity to Hookergate, a whores-for-VIPs scandal that has been bubbling in the blogosphere.

The news out of Iraq has been relatively good, which means there have been no huge bombings or a new round of mass beheadings recently. (Understand that by the perverse calculus of this war, the fact that only nine people were blown to bits in a Baghdad courthouse bombing on Thursday was a positive development.)

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey's assessment (see yesterday's post on Iraq: The McCaffrey Memo) seems to be a fair sum-up of the Mess in Mesapotamia. The glass is half full or half empty, depending on your perspective.

(Speaking of Mission Accomplished, Princess Botox, er . . . Princess Laura actually had the nerve to tell CNN that when her hubby infamously declared "Mission Accomplished" on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln three years ago this week, he actually meant that the aircraft carrier had accomplished its mission. Well, I'm glad that we finally cleared that up!)

The news out of the Wilson-Plame grand jury wasn't so rosy. Pope Karl was called back for a fifth time to testify, which apparently means that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is stilling sizing up the king's right-hand man for a possible duck walk.

Meanwhile, the king's long slide in the public-opinion polls continued apace. (An astonishing 45 percent of conservatives said they were unhappy with his performance in one poll.)

Oh, yeah, it also was revealed that the king isn't nearly as proficient at speaking Spanish as he claims to be. Parle vous Espanol? And a new TV Guide poll finds that 35 percent of "American Idol" viewers believe their votes count as much or more than voting in a presidential election.

Is this a great kingdom or what?

HITTING THE WALL . . .

Kiko's House was but a gleam in mine eye when I first posited the notion to the small handful of readers of Web Blatherings, its email predecessor, that the Bush presidency had reached a tipping point with the explosion of the Wilson-Plame leak investigation into what passes for the public consciousness.

What I meant was that a presidency built on secrecy and stonewalling, intimidation and disrespect, deceit and lies, power grabbing and an overweaning hubris was going to hit the wall sooner or later. And that those behaviors would come back to haunt the king and his court, rendering them nearly ineffectual.

I did not know then -- and am still a little surprised now -- at how right I was. If you disagree with that assessment, scroll up and reread my recap of the last week and a half. Or give some thought to what Frank Rich has to say in a New York Times op-ed piece:

The demons that keep rising up from the past to grab Mr. Bush are the fictional W.M.D. he wielded to take us into Iraq. They stalk him as relentlessly a Banquo's ghost did Macbeth. From that original sin, all else flows. Mr. Rove wouldn't be in jeopardy if the White House hadn't hatched a clumsy plot to cover up its fictions. Mr. Bush's poll numbers wouldn't be in the toilet if American blood was not being spilled daily because of his fictions. By recruiting a practiced Fox news performer to better spin this history, the White House reveals that it has learned nothing. Made-for-TV propoganda propelled the Bush presidency into its quagmire in the first place. At this late date only the truth, the whole truth and nothing but, can set it free.

Don't hold your breath, Frank.

. . . AND ITS AFTERMATH

The Bush regency has about 1,000 days to run before the king turns in his crown for a Stetson and hightails it back to his Texas ranch for some longterm brush clearing.

Even if he were inclined to do so, the king cannot undo the damage he has wrought, although I hold out hope that he can cobble together a modestly positive legacy before the historians set about drawing and quartering him. But alas, I also suspect that he'll merely try to stick it out and with Pope Karl at the controls, put all of his administration's waning energy into keeping Congress in Republican hands. And when it comes to Iraq, dump the whole mess in the next president's lap.

The marvelous Peggy Noonan has stolen a march on me in suggesting in her Wall Street Journal column three things that Bush can do:

* Stabilize, fortify and succeed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the Age of Terror:

Keep America safe. All this will require ruthless concentration. Back up all action with illustration and explanation. Inform the public--constantly--as to what is happening, and why, and what is being done, and why. We already know liberty is God's gift to man; make statements that are less emotive and more fact-filled, more strategically coherent.

Renew attention to Afghanistan. The American invasion of that country had the support of the world. Don't let anything endanger the stability and health of the endeavor. Public confidence in the administration's management of homeland security went down after Katrina. Talk about what's being done, and how, and why. Find Osama--it is a scandal that the man who started the new era is still free, still taunting the West, still inspiring those who see the world as he does. It was a mistake to think finding him was not as important as a wider war on terror. Finding him is key. It is almost five years since he did what he did. Get him, try him, kill him.

* Capitalize on a "resurgent" economy:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is at new post-9/11 highs; there's little unemployment. New home sales are up, productivity up, profits up. This is President Bush's triumph. And yet in polls Americans don't credit him with it. (My hunch: Americans, a deeply savvy lot, never want to tell a politician he's doing well on the economy because their applause may lead him to feel he can shift focus to, say, colonizing Mars. Americans always name prosperity in retrospect. In real time they like to keep the pressure on.)

There are problems, challenges, changes that require thought. The biggest complaint I hear now from people who email me from all parts of the country is that they're being worked to death, longer hours at the office, can't see the kids. Gas prices are up and up, etc. The president should talk about the economy--not in a braying, bragging way but in an instructive, engaged way that discusses the philosophy and actions that allowed the market to do what it wants to do, grow.

Presidents always--all of them--like to say they created 50,000 jobs last month. No president has ever created a job, except in the public sector. But presidents can take steps that keep jobs from being created, and deserve credit when they don't. And they can take steps that are helpful to job creators, and deserve credit when they do.

Did the tax cuts, at the end of the day, help the economy? Why? How? Will a change in the tax structure, or will making permanent the tax cuts, help? What impact does high federal government spending have on the economy? Where should we go on that, and why? Talk about the flow of money in America.

*Insure the integrity of America's borders:

That is, the right and ability to decide who comes here and when, the right and ability to make judgments based on our nation's needs. This is both an economic issue and a national security issue; it naturally connects to issues 1 and 2.

On this, Washington is talking a lot and doing nothing.

Congress and the White House right now are like people who live in a big house who have finally noticed the kitchen is on fire. So they all meet in the living room and debate how exactly to rebuild the kitchen, what color to repaint the walls, and how to get the best deal on a new microwave. And while they are holding their discussion they're forgetting to do the most important thing. They're forgetting to put out the fire. You can lose a house this way. Putting out the fire in this case is closing and policing the essentially open border with Mexico--now. Close down illegal immigration, now. Then talk. (A hunch for liberals: Your views will be received with greater generosity once the air of daily crisis is removed.)

I happen to disagree with Noonan on the economy. She's being atypically naive. The king isn't getting credit because the recovery is false and many Americans can see that by looking in their wallets. This is something most economists are unable to do because they're looking up their backsides.

What do you think? And what would you like to see King George do?

Blair Takes a Drubbing

Tony Blair's Labor Party has been clobbered by reinvigorated Conservatives in regional elections, triggering a cabinet reshuffle and prompting renewed calls for the prime minister's resignation.

President Bush, of course, has done only modest reshuffling and won't be going anywhere should the Republicans share the same fate as Labor in the November elections, but there are apt comparisons between the British and U.S. political situation.

The Labor losses -- the worst since the 1982 Falklands War -- followed repeated scandals, political setbacks and other humiliations for Blair not unlike those suffered by Bush. Chief among these were controversies over homeland security, also a pungent issue in the U.S.

And Blair's woes opened the door for Conservative gains, although the Tories, like the Democrats, have no real message.

Hmm.

Eagle Eye

A webcam showing two bald eagles patiently incubating their two eggs in a nest high in a tree on Hornby Island, British Columbia, Canada, is attracting worldwide attention to the tune of 10 million hits a day.

The eagle chicks are due to hatch at any time and online viewers are hoping to witness live the moment the eggs begin to crack.

Doug Carrick, a 73-year-old retired accountant, set up the webcam after noticing the nest. A small plexiglass housing was put in place to protect the mini-camera, the device was connected to his computer and Carrick started broadcasting images last month.

A forum also has been established for fans of the eagles to chat and post their favorite images from the webcam.

Carrick tells the Guardian News Blog that he hopes the webcam will expose people to the beauty of the eagles and convince them of the importance of protecting their habitats.

Quote du Jour

New Yorker writer George Packer ponders the Iraq conundrum:

The choice in Iraq should not be between the Administration’s failed eschatology and the growing eagerness of most politicians to be rid of the problem. Both moral obligation and self-interest require that Americans accept the consequences of the war and, if the Administration will not, imagine new ways to resolve it. Leslie Gelb and Senator Joseph Biden, in an Op-Ed they have written for the Times, propose that the United States, with the involvement of Iraq’s neighbors, broker a political deal among the country’s three main groups, based on terms set down in Iraq’s new constitution: a division into three autonomous regions, a weak federal capital in Baghdad, and a fair share of the oil revenue for the Sunnis. The premise is that if the Iraqis are to have a chance of living together in the future, they need a period of separation now. This is, admittedly, the logic of desperation, raising a thousand questions and provoking as many vexing problems. Nor is it entirely a new idea. But, after three years of war and a chronic inability of leaders in both countries to think beyond next month, a fundamental change of policy deserves to be taken seriously. If there are no more Wise Men in Washington, can there at least be wisdom?

'Welcome to the Party, Pal'

There's a rather unpleasant public spat going on between two fine wordsmiths, Christopher Hitchens and Juan Cole. The disagreement began over their respective views on the relative toxicity of Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who has made Israel bashing a cottage industry while determinedly building a nuclear program.

As Tigerhawk notes here, the disagreement degenerated into a no-holds-barred slugfest, with Hitchens accusing Cole of being soft on terrorism and intellectually dishonest (ouch!) and Cole accusing Hitchens of being a blathering idiot who hits the sauce (double ouch!).

This prompted the following comment by a reader of Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish:

It's alleged that Hitchens has a drinking problem. If so, perhaps you'd be kind enough to pass on specifics regarding his daily intake, so I can emulate. Though I don't always agree with him, I have nothing but admiration for someone who can knock out a weekly Slate column, an erudite review for the Atlantic each month, a longer, bimonthly piece for Vanity Fair and a book a year. I'm a journalist, and I just spent a week laboring over a relatively straightforward 1,200-word essay (on wine, coincidentally.) But I'm obviously not drinking the right stuff.

Me too. The last time I spoke with Hitchens, I tossed him one of those dreaded three-part questions (about Iraq), which he parried adeptly and answered in detail and at great length.

And, I should add, soberly.

Wretchard at the Belmont Club takes the long view:

When I used to write anonymously only my arguments mattered. If they were persuasive they persuaded; if they were ridiculous they were held up to contempt. But there were no hard feelings because it was the arguments themselves that bore the weight of both praise and opprobrium. There was no ego to puff up or to be bruised. If an argument achieved fame it did so on its own terms and took wing of its own into the wide world. Nor was there much incentive, even among the ideologically hostile, in heaping abuse upon a pseudonym. It was too faceless to hate.

All that changes with bylined blogging. All of a sudden Cole has a vision of Hitchens -- the actual Hitchens -- swilling liquor from a bottle when he defends himself. And Hitchens, with or without the bottle, has a vision of Professor Cole's face before him, and all it represents, as he crafts his reply. And there is something feral in the resulting spectacle. It were better they were X and Y arguing over whether [Iraqi PM] Ahmadinejad actually threatened to wipe Israel off the map. But it's too late now. The innocent days of blogging are over. With popularity comes talk of ad revenues, syndication, appearances and reputation. It used to be that no one on the Internet knew if you were a dog. Sadly, no longer. And now, as the Bruce Willis character said in Die Hard, "welcome to the party pal."

Now I'll drink to that.

Last Call For Posts on Health-Care Reform

Kiko's House would like to know how you would fix the American health-care mess. Scroll down to my April 25 post for details. We've gotten some great submissions and will publish them -- and hopefully yours -- on Monday.

Guest Blog: New Orleans and the Damage Done

Hugh Cutler is a dear friend and inveterate music lover who wouldn't think of missing the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

This year was different, however. The festival was on, but how about New Orleans itself after the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina? Should he go?

Why, of course!

Hugh posted this commentary after returning home:

Heard some great music, ate a real good meal, hit my favorite taverns, saw some friends, rebonded with my younger son and his pal down from the Northeast and enjoyed m'lady Carla's fine company one more time.

Then Monday, we bought a two-hour minibus tour of the levee devastation. I hope I never see anything like it again. Much as I -- and so many others -- want that town to recover every bit of its former soul and lifeblood, seeing what we did makes me know that can never really be. I imagine that post-war Dresden is a fair comparison. It'd take a Marshal Plan plus the W.P.A. to put things right in any reasonable time.

Still, one could do the fest as usual -- hitting traditional wateringholes in the Quarter, Uptown in Carrollton and throughout the Arts district, then head out to the racetrack fairgrounds daily and see sights no more remarkable than any serious storm anybody's seen. As a tourist, it's possible to have your stereotypical passing good time in New Orleans even now, though it's apparent that every restaurant and hotel could use a lot more service help and some of them are just not opened yet or won't ever be. But the musicians came back, and the fest itself was what folks there would call a passing good time.

It's when you get near the levee breaks that your heart really breaks too. How does one cope with seeing a car peeking out beneath a hopelessly damaged house? Or a Mack CL heavy-duty dumptruck upended? Or a gas station signpost bent like a soda flexistraw, its top sign through the station roof? Or hundreds of block s upon blocks of row houses with no power and nobody at all home, or swaths the size of a dozen pro football fields where row houses once stood, now -- still, nine months after the storm -- just rubble?

After seeing that, it was hard to work up as much empathy for the guy near the lakefront whose half-million-plus manse looked as if it'd been caught between opposing militias in a downtown Baghdad firefight, the garage and front side wrecked and light shining through it. On the front, he'd spray-painted, like ghetto graffiti, "Allstate gave me $10,000 for this."

Nor much pain for the couple I met at an incredible Allen Toussaint show at Harrah's Casino whose home had sustained damage enough to make them decide to move, but also to renovate it as an investment property. They lost substantial household goods, she said, but when her husband first came back to see the hit they'd taken, "I told him to save the artwork and the wine."

* * * * *

In New Orleans, there's an innate preservationist sense, of course, for all things in the French Quarter and the Garden District. Nowadays, there's obviously a sense that the soul of the city that gave rise to Mardi Gras Indians, jazz funeral processions and second-line parades and the marching brass bands -- the community that birthed Buddy Bolden, Louis Armstrong and, more lately, Kermit Ruffins and Irving Mayfield -- is the one embodied by the former denizens of the Lower Ninth Ward, now a diaspora in Houston, Atlanta and God knows where.

And there are warring factions in those who believe their neighborhood streets, now so fully decimated, must somehow be reconstituted to a semblance of that fomer community, and the others who think the cost is just hopelessly prohibitive, that the destruction should just be razed and cleared and the area either turned into greensward or left vacant because of the ongoing risk.

Before this tour, I was squarely in the former camp. Seeing the extent of the carnage, and knowing realistically the unlikelihood that this present regime would undertake a Marshall Plan for these deprived folks, I am wavering about what can actually be done to salvage this scene. It may take me some weeks, and a look at who actually is elected mayor May 20, to decide for myself what is really possible to fix this. It might be that the likes of Bill Gates and his foundation or some series of similar entities will be the ultimate salvation, if there is to be one. Caring music-lovers like myself will continue to pitch our nickle-and-dime assistance toward the musicians' side of the ledger, yet that's just a pittance compared with the extent of the community need.

* * * * *

Yes, some things about New Orleans will stay the same as ever. But significant parts of it will never be the same.

Yet the music lasts. So many others had to see every awesome note that Boss Springsteen's new hoedown aggregation lent to the proceedings Sunday afternoon til sundown. But I felt a pull to cross the fairgrounds to get to the far stage to see the original Meters regroup one more time, to hear once more the free flight of Leo Nocentelli on the break of Ain't No Use, to join the chorus on "People Say" and to boogie til we dropped on the closing "Hey, Pocky-Way," George Porter Jr.'s loping bass laying down the groove while Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews sitting in switched over to trumpet to add his Gabriel touch to the sunset proceedings.

It was then I knew for sure I could always find my funky second home again.

Iraq: The McCaffrey Memo

Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey has been making annual trips to Iraq to see for himself the progress -- or lack of progress -- of the U.S.-led effort to rebuild the war-torn country.

McCaffrey is back from his third fact-finding trip and has written a summary laden with good and bad news.

The good news is that the U.S. military is doing a heckuva job, the Iraqi Army is getting its act together and most Iraqis want a real national government. The bad news is that it will take at least 10 years to accomplish these goals.

McCaffrey, who is chairman of the social science department at West Point, has been a steady supporter of the war's aims and critic of the Bush administration's conduct of it.

I suppose whether McCaffrey's Iraq glass is half empty or half full depends upon one's perspective.

Here is Wretchard's at the Belmont Club:

Whatever one thinks of McCaffrey's 2005 and 2006 Iraqi memos, [his] observation that "armies do not fight wars - countries fight wars" should be non-controversial. One of the themes of the 2005 memorandum, re-emphasized in 2006, was that while military systems have adapted, two key political systems -- the political and economic reconstruction mechanism; and public diplomacy, including the press -- have not. The first failure is manifested by the inability of civilian agencies to deploy personnel able to "live and work with their Iraqi counterparts" in the manner of the military or to adapt to the challenges of providing economic development assistance in a terrorist-threatened environment. The institutional failure of the Press is no less signal. Unable to cover Iraq in the normal way; unwilling to assign its stars for long periods of embedding with the US military, it has been "degraded to reporting based on secondary sources, press briefings which they do not believe, and alarmist video of the aftermath of suicide bombings obtained from Iraqi employees of unknown reliability". And if it is true that countries, not armies fight wars, then it is a depressing commentary that only one of three legs has adapted to the exigencies of combat.

And Fred Kaplan's at Slate:

He concludes his memo by urging perseverance but conceding some doubt. He asks, "Do we have the political will, do we have the military power, will we spend the resources required to achieve our aims?"

Whether or not McCaffrey meant to imply as much, the answer to all three questions is probably "No." By his own formulation, after all, mustering the will, power, and resources will require 10 more years of occupation, $50 billion to $100 billion in economic aid alone, who knows how many more hundreds of billions of dollars in military spending, who knows how many more thousands of casualties—and even then great uncertainty would remain about the Iraqis' ability to hold their nation together.

The light at the end of the tunnel seems to be a very dim bulb. Blithe talk of "staying the course" is beside the point. Here is the real choice that Gen. McCaffrey's memo thrusts before President Bush and his top aides: If the goals are worth the costs, then state them clearly; if the goals can't be met by the effort they're willing to put out, then scale back and cut losses. Anything in between is not merely a fantasy but a horrible waste.

Zacarias Moussaoui: Justice Is Served (Cold)

Having previously suggest that Zacarias Moussaoui should fry, I am comfortable with a federal jury's decision to give the so-called 20th 9/11 hijacker life in prison.

Here's why:

* As Country Bumpkin and other visitors to Kiko's House have noted, sparing Moussaoui's life denies him the martrydom he sought. He'll just have to look for those seventysomething Islamic virgins at a maximum-security federal lockup in Colorado while watching his back in the shower room.

Moussaoui had one last opportunity to act out at sentencing today, prompting federal Judge Leonie Brinkima to reply: "You came here to be a martyr and die in a big bang

* When all was said and done, the government failed to make the case that Moussaoui had more than a tangential role in the planning for the 9/11 hijackings.

* Moussaoui is a nut, albeit a malevolent one. I have little empathy for his troubled childhood, but you don't give nuts the death penalty just because they's nuts.

* Moussaoui's trials, Brinkima's cool demeanor, the jury's deliberations and their sentence send a message to the world, especially the so-called Arab street: When it works -- and it did in this case -- the U.S. criminal-justice system is transparent and rigorously fair.

I'm less sanguine about due process, which the Justice Department observed only in the breech and when forced to by Brinkima. (And remember, only a measly 10 of the 490 detainees in the Guantanamo brig have even been charged.)

Meanwhile, Citizen Hunter (aka Flavia Colgin) makes a strong case for why the Moussaoui jury did the right thing, while Peggy Noonan begs to differ in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

And legal affairs guru Dahlia Lithwick nicely sums up the whole 'arama in a Slate commentary:

This case was about a conspiracy, about some factual connection, however attenuated, between Zacarias Moussaoui's jihadi heart and the events of 9/11. And although the government has steadfastly stood by its legal claim that it was enough for Moussaoui to have wanted to be on those planes on 9/11, enough for him to have delighted as those planes went down, the jurors recognized . . . that a conspiracy to aid in a terror plot requires more than just a bad heart, and more than mere willingness to participate in the next one.

This decision, which will doubtless bring with it some serious national fallout, is more subtle, and more courageous, than the prosecution itself. Acting as a check on a runaway state, these jurors refused to allow a government needing a scapegoat and a man wishing for martyrdom to stand in the way of the facts. These jurors understood that for this country to kill a terrorist for his ideas, hopes, and dreams is not much different than the terrorist's desire to come here and kill us for ours.

The Israel-Lebanon Crucible

Michael Totten is blogging from the Israel-Lebanon border and says that "Everything could explode at any moment."

The MSM and When the Truth Hurts

The single most cited topic in the emails I got during my just-completed sabbatical was not the latest Washington outrage or saber rattling over Iran. It was the outrageously funny sendup of the Bush administration and its media toadies by comedian Steven Colbert at the White House Correspondents' annual black-tie dinner and the outrageous (if predictable) response of the main stream media, which was to pretty much ignore the whole thing until the outcry in the blogoshere grew too loud.

Salon's Joan Walsh sums it up nicely:

Colbert's deadly performance did more than reveal, with devastating clarity, how Bush's well-oiled myth machine works. It exposed the mainstream press' pathetic collusion with an administration that has treated it -- and the truth -- with contempt from the moment it took office. Intimidated, coddled, fearful of violating propriety, the press corps that for years dutifully repeated Bush talking points was stunned and horrified when someone dared to reveal that the media emperor had no clothes. Colbert refused to play his dutiful, toothless part in the White House correspondents dinner -- an incestuous, backslapping ritual that should be retired. For that, he had to be marginalized. Voilà: "He wasn't funny."

If you want to see what the kerfuffle is all about, here's the video. I also have a modest suggestion to the White House Correspondents Association: Ditch the dinner. It's an embarrassing anachronism.

So You Want to Be a Citizen?

I'm still a day away from returning to Kiko's House and couldn't resist checking my email when I came upon an Internet kiosk run by a black bear out in the woods near where I'm staying. Lo and behold, Tom Marshall had sent me the following essay from Mary Pitt, who describes herself as a "septuagenarian Kansan, a free-thinker and a warrior for truth and justice." I don't necessarily agree with everything she says, but . . .

My Aunt Tildie has been gone for an extended visit with one of her granddaughters and I thought it would be nice to see her again. I love her active mind, her awareness of whar is going on in the world amd had missed her irrepressible commentary on social problems. As I rang her bell, I could hear the bustle inside as she came to the door, threw it open wide, and motioned me to sit in the usual chair. Without the amenity of the usual offer of a cup of tea or other social protocols, she began telling me what was on her mind.

"Did you see it? Well, did you?" she gushed.

"See what, Aunt Tildie?" I queried, "What are you talking about?"

"The so-called immigrants protesting in the streets demanding their rights and citizenship, as if they had earned them!" she blurted.

"Yes, Aunt Tildie, I saw them but I had no idea that they would upset you so."

The very old lady paused for a deep breath, which she obviously needed, since her face had turned bright red from the excitement and the barrage of words. "Well,"she continued, " there were signs saying, 'I am not a criminal", when by the very fact of having sneaked across the border, they all became criminals, whether that was their intent or not. There were signs demanding 'the vote'! How could they possibly think that they could vote when they have no idea of the issues or the candidates. Besides, we have plenty of voters like that already! That's how we got into this mess in the first place."

"Now, now, Aunt Tildie," I interjected, "I know that you have a real point in there someplace. Suppose you just settle down, collect your thoughts, and tell me what it is about all this that really bothers you."

"You're right, child," (I love it when she calls me "child".) "Suppose we have a cup of tea and I will tell you why I am so irate."

As we sat and stirred our tea, she began again, more quietly. "You know, we have always taken great pride in our nation and our family's service to it, as patriotic as can be, and we revere our founders and the vision they had which was responsible for their creation of a free country, one of law and order, in which we could all work together for the common good. I lost a husband in World War I and a fiancee in the Spanish flu which followed after. Your own brothers and others of my nephews served in World War II, some perished, and others came home with terrible wounds and mental problems, but none of us, including them, ever questioned the rightness of their sacrifice.

"That's what it means to be a citizen of this great country, to love it enough to sacrifice everything for its continuation. We have seen many immigrants from many nations come to our shores. The Africans, of course, had no choice in the matter, being kidnaped and brought in as slaves. but they became as good citizens as any. So did the Irish in fleeing the potato famine, the Jews fleeing persecution in Europe, and all the rest who dreamed for years of a life of freedom and opportunity. They all suffered prejudice and poverty until they learned our language and adapted to the American way of life.

"They were all different, but they had one thing in common. They knocked on the door, so to speak, made application to immigrate and they waited their turn for admission. They filed their papers and were processed according to our laws and, once here, they worked hard at learning our language and our way of doing things until now, when they are part of our common culture and our destiny. This is also true of those of Mexican ancestry whose ancestors were either here at the time of the founding or legally migrated later.

"But these people have broken down our back door and come into our home, taken the food from our children, stolen our jobs, our schools, and our health care, and now they insist that we put their name on the title to the house! It just is not right!"

Sensing the sweet lady becoming more upset, I attempted to mollify her by suggesting that it was an "interesting" way of looking at the problem, but she had not finished. "I saw a show on CNN today. They had a Mexican lady who was working in Georgia. She had sent money home for a smuggler to bring her children over, but they were stopped and sent back. She went back to visit them! She said that she told them that if they wanted her to, she would stay with them, but they wanted her to come back and send for them so they could go to school. Then she cried because she got caught driving without a license and had to pay bail, so that she is now afraid to drive. Doesn't she know that the same thing would happen to me if I were to drive without a license?

"And why doesn't she have a license? Because she is not a citizen! And she is not a citizen because she doesn't belong here! If she had done the proper paperwork and waited in line as so many of her countrymen are doing, she might have been here legally by now, be going to school to learn to speak English, and have her children with her, growing up and learning to be Americans. Or, if she and all the rest like her had stayed in their own country and worked to make the needed changes as our own pioneers did, they might have had an entirely different country and would not need to leave it to better themselves. But that is the problem the world over, Everyone wants what they want NOW! Instant gratification is the order of the day!'

"But, what are we to do with them? The Democrats seem to agree with the President that we need another amnesty because it would be impossible to round them all up and ship them home. There are just too many!", I asked.

"We don't need to round them up and ship them back! We can enforce the law against hiring them. We can forbid the free medical care, the free education for their children so that they will know that they have to go home. We can set a date, three years, five years, while we secure the border, that they have to go home. Have offices ready in Mexico to issue secure identity cards like the ones some states use for food stamps, a swipe card with a secret PIN number. They will have to go back to get the card and then we can keep track of them and know where they are."

"I don't mean to argue with you," I said, "but what do you think of the idea that would make it a felony for churches and charitable agencies to provide assistance to them or to hide them from law enforcement?"

"Heavens no!" she exclaimed, "That's what they do! We don't want to kill them! We just want them to go home and stay there until they have permission to come back to work, but not to stay. There are no problems in this situation that cannot be worked out with compassion and common sense. Even the status of the children born here can be provided for with a little work, cooperation, and thought."

"Well, they don't seem to want to pay their dues for citizenship but think they only have to get here and then, perhaps pay for the privilege," I suggested.

"Pay their dues! I like that expression!" she chortled, "Previous immigrants paid their dues, for sure. Long before they came here, they applied for visas and then they waited, sometimes for years. During that time, they studied and they planned. They knew that they must know some English and so they studied; they read and talked to people who had been here; they considered which part of this great land would suit them better for climate and have work that they knew how to do. They didn't just throw a pack on their back and sneak across the border in the middle of the night to come here and just take whatever they want!

"Then they come out and parade in our streets under a Mexican flag and claim that they were here first! These people not only do not know a thing about the history of the United States; they don't know much of their own history! First, only the indigenous people of the Southwest and Northern Mexico were 'here first'. The rest are descended from the Conquistadores from Spain just as we come from the Northern Europeans. They also conveniently forget that the United States won the Mexican War! American soldiers took the entire country but, finding nobody with the authority to surrender, the President declared Mexico 'ungovernable', called the soldiers home, re-drew the boundary lines of the United States to the present configuration, and 'declared peace'!"

"That's interesting, Aunt Tildie," I responded, "I grew up in an area that was developed during the Mexican War but never studied much about it while I was in school."

"That's because there wasn't much to it! The Mexicans, under the French and Spanish rulers, had resented our taking of Texas and decided to take it back. In the process of trying, they were totally over-run, a new government was formed, and we lived in peace with them until the present day. But then, globalization took over our own government and they began making treaties like GATT, NAFTA, and CAFTA, American factories moved to Mexico's cheap labor and then, on to Southeast Asia. Their President Fox got together with President Bush and decided that an 'open-borders' policy was a good idea. Mexico virtually abandoned responsibility for their own economy and the welfare of their people. Now the people, having seen the American dream, have decided that it is theirs for the taking and our government has done nothing to stop them.

"One would think, given the seriousness of the situation, that our government could have increased the number of Green Cards that were issued to relieve the pressure, but administration decided to just let it happen! The Republican base were thrilled at the opportunity to obtain cheap labor ‘under the table’ with no benefits and no insurance. This President appears to have no respect whatever for the traditional way of doing things or for the laws that were established for the purpose of establishing an orderly manner of society. He views himself not as an elected agent of the people, but as an absolute monarch! Saddam Hussein would not disarm fast enough to suit George W. Bush so we are now butchering millions of men, women, and children in Iraq, all over nothing at all, and soon it will be happening in Iran. While we are 'fighting them over there', we have been invaded by millions of civilian Mexicans who have no loyalty for our country other than the fulfillment of their own needs."

"Yes, child," she concluded, "I am afraid that the American as we have known him has become a dying breed. Politics and personal gain has trumped patriotism and national sacrifice for the common good. Good old American common sense has gone the way of the dodo. Those who knew the way of life of a few years ago will pass on and the youth and immigrants will become the guides for a nation that will become prey for the other greedy nations. We will go the way of ancient Greece, just history and ruins. It makes me sad and very, very tired."

Not being willing to have the beloved old lady further upset by a discussion of the progress of the "world war on terror", I excused myself and left her, still deep in thought, nodding, in her rocking chair.

Aunt Tildie always leaves me with food for thought and I often enjoy it, but this spoonful of truth will not allow the strongest of antacids to cure the ache that it has put in my belly.