it's my wife and it's my life

Apparently Afghanistan, the country we liberated before we liberated Iraq, has a great bumper crop, according to Robert Scheer's latest article. Heroin.

The good news, for drug fiends, is that Afghanistan has just harvested its biggest opium crop ever, up a whopping 59 percent from last year and big enough to cover 130 percent of the entire world market. The street price for illegal heroin, 92 percent of which now comes from Afghanistan, should be way down from Bangkok to London, and for those shooting up in the back alleys of Chicago. The bad news, for the rest of us, is that in Bush-liberated Afghanistan, billions in drug profits are financing the Taliban.

Remember them, the guys who harbored the al-Qaida terrorists, who gifted us with the 9-11 attacks five years ago, that President Bush promised to eliminate? Well, it turns out that while he was distracted with Iraq, the patrons of terrorism were very much in business back where the 9-11 attack was hatched, turning Afghanistan into a narco-state that provides a lucrative source of cash for the "evildoers" Bush forgot about.

Nice to see people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.

President Bush and the Knee Jerk Reaction

I think that President Bush has earned a bit of a Knee Jerk Reaction at this point. He has screwed up so consistently over the last 5 years that predicting he will screw up in the future is a safe bet. But it's not always the best response to the President, as Robert Scheer points out in his latest article.

What is different about Bush's stance on immigration is that the president is, at long last, dealing with a subject he actually knows something about -- as opposed to his failed war of words against terrorism, Iraq, nuclear weapons proliferation and even Social Security. On this subject, the former governor of a state with a 1,200- mile border with Mexico grasps that the problem is complex, the solution elusive, and fact and logic do matter.

Scheer makes the point that President Bush's plan does provide some way to deal with those who are here currently.

"What I've just described is not amnesty, it is a way for those who have broken the law to pay their debt to society, and demonstrate the character that makes a good citizen," Bush said, in what is certainly one of his milder stretches of the truth.

This de facto amnesty would allow those already here without papers to go about their work and lives without fear of deportation. This is crucial, because the alternative is social chaos of a dimension not experienced in this country since the Civil War and Reconstruction.

As Bush put it with uncharacteristic clarity: "It is neither wise nor realistic to round up millions of people, many with deep roots in the United States, and send them across the border."

Anyway, something worth considering.

Thank Goodness the Adults are In Charge Pt. 2

Of course you all know that Tom Delay has had to step down from his position of power because of questions of whether or not he solicited corporate moneys to support Texas campaigns. And of course Bill Frist is in trouble because he may have pulled a Martha Stewart and set up his own reality show ripping off Donald Trump. No I'm just kidding (but I would watch that show), he's actually possibly guilty of insider trading.

But another name high up in this little scandal you may not be ware of is a dude named Jack Abramoff. Actually you probably have heard of him, but if you haven't now you have. He's the subject of a recent article by Robert Sheer, and apparently a real piece of work.

It was reported last week that Timothy Flanigan, Tyco International Ltd. general counsel and Bush's nominee for deputy attorney general, stated that Abramoff's lobbying firm had boasted that his access to the highest levels of Congress could help Tyco fight tax liability legislation and that Abramoff later said he "had contact with Mr. Karl Rove" about the issue.

Comforting isn't it?

Republicans read that, throw up their hands and say "That sort of thing happens all the time. It's no big deal." And it isn't to them. If you expect government to fail, it's no big deal when it fails. But since I expect government to work, I do get annoyed when I read this kind of story.

This story takes on greater weight given the rebuilding of New Orleans.

The hurricane season is proving to be a windfall for GOP-connected companies such as Halliburton, which are being rewarded with lucrative contracts despite their shoddy performance in Iraq. In the vocabulary of crony capitalism, the word "shame" does not exist.

Indeed.