Fantasy Land

The rhetoric of party politicians and world leaders in recent days causes me to wonder what planet these folks think they are on.

The State of Union Address by President Bush put me to sleep within minutes. Nothing new, nothing particularly hopeful.

The Democratic Response was even worse - let's roll out our alternative stats on the economy, critique the Iraq policy (not hard to do), but offer no real solutions in foreign or domestic affairs.

CNN and Fox News battle over Barak Obama's elemenatry education, as if there have been no intervening experiences in his life. It looks like CNN has it right. Obama is not a dangerous terrorist - I think he is another empty-suited politician, but that is for another column.

The EU thinks it can bring peace to the Middle East and help run a Palestinian State - but Abbas and Co. are still unwilling to give real guarantees to Israel. Meanwhile, an aging Jimmy Carter continues to mix shoe polish and toothpaste when speaking on world affairs. Carter is not a Holocaust denier, but he is anti-Israeli and in his dotage he is moving dangerously to the extreme on this issue. If only he could have been content building houses...

Global warming is a fact - but the amount of human contribution remains a legitimate subject for debate. Now we have Weather Channel celebs calling for the decertification of anyone who departs from the party line. The U.N. is about to publish a major report "with the most evidence yet" of human contributions to climate change. Why the hysteria? It is simple - money for research and the hope of globalists to coercively direct the USA's economy. By the way, serious ecological issues in Europe, Russia, China and India go almost unreported. There is a dirty little fact about the EU - they already have all the nuclear power they need!

Two Border Patrol officers are in prison for shooting a drug dealer, who, even after being given immunity, kept on smuggling drugs into the USA. Democrats shout "justice" (cheap votes eventually) and Republicans "opportunity" (cheap non-union labor) - but no one has a plan to secure our borders. WalMart wants a port in Kansas and the Left is still singing "Imagine."

After listening to all the rhetoric, I conclude that most of our leaders are marooned on Fantasy Island. We have horrible deficits and trade imbalances, illegal immigration out of control, war-on-terror strategies in shambles and find the headlines dominated by the content of a movie no distributor will purchase.

The Republicans moved to Fantasy Island in the 1980s as they cut taxes (a good thing) but have not curtailed the growth of spending. The Democrats moved to the Island in the late 90s when Clinton claimed that the "surplus" (it does not exist) in Social Security could eliminate the deficit and pay down the national debt.

The UN is the caretaker of this Island. The UN honors Palestinian martrys and shows maps without an Israeli state, all the while claiming to be an honest broker. The billions embezelled by UN officials in the oil-for-food scandal under Saddam Hussein remain in the Caymans.

The EU, especially France, in in charge of the blueprints for the Island's buildings. French politicians suffer collectively from Multiple Personality Disorder (Yes, my therapist friends, I know that MPD is now called Associateve Disorder - AD) - they rule a state run by elite technocrats, yet their international language is leftist and always anti-American. They claim to be cultural leaders, yet they are about to be conquered by foreign Muslims who refuse to assimilate.

Finally, our Fantasy Island needs a host. Who better for this than Hugo Chavez? His Marxist, nationalist and racialist language is straight from Che and Fidel's playbooks of the 1960s, backed by street mobs and oil money.

Ricardo Montalban, where are you in our hour of need?