In my opinion, it serves his agenda. He's a schmuck and plays by his own rules. All those dumb people out there are waiting for him to "fix" the things HE says are broke. When he fixes them, people give him the credit. Credit means more votes. They never look to see who broke them in the first place. By the time they find out HE broke them, he would be re-elected.

By keeping people paranoid about "Terrorists" he reminds them to listen to all the filth coming out of his mouth, slowly swaying them into submission, guarenteeing him their vote.

But this is to assume they have no mind of their own. Which, pretty much, they don't.

Oh, I agree with you completely. I think that's EXACTLY what he's doing. My question is, why don't we turn his whole "Ooooh, fear the evil nasty terrorists, only I will lead you into salvation" malarkey on his head and start saying, "Look, you've been president for a while now, so why haven't you delivered that salvation yet? We want someone who will deliver RESULTS!"

There you go sounding logical again.

What did I tell you about being logical???

What I can't get over is how everyone’s blasting Howard Dean for pointing out that we are not “safer” with the capture of Saddam Hussein. He wasn’t a threat to us in the first place — that is, not until we invaded his country. Sure, the guy’s a tyrant, and a threat to the Iraqi people, but not to the American people. (If you’d made the “humanitarian” case you’re now — in true revisionist fashion — claiming was your motive all along, you might actually have been able to build that elusive international coalition.)

Not to mention the fact that we hit “Code Ernie” just a few days after Hussein’s capture. Hmmm... doesn’t really sound all that “safer” to me.

But frankly, I don’t think we’ll be “safer” (and really able to hit those cooler hues) until we get rid of the real threats to our security: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Ashcroft.

There's a lot of truth to that, Bill. I'd love to see what Howard Dean would do with that color-coded system if he steps into office. How fast do you think we'd hit Code Grover? Worse, would we ever hit Code Grover, or would there always be some foreign country that steps up to Villain Number One status to keep us at Codes Ernie and Bert? Or worse, Code Elmo?

Dear god, code Elmo... what a horrible concept...

To quote my goddaughter, Bailey's favorite toy, "Elmo loves you!"

(followed by maniacal laughter....)