Matters of Life and Death

You know that sketchy guy working at the local c-store? The nervous one with the shifty eyes and the strange accent who showed up out of nowhere a couple of weeks ago? The one who works his prayer beads like an abacus to make change for your gas and lottery tickets? You may want to keep a close eye on him (just in case), but according to the latest hysterics, we don't have to worry about him or his friends killing us any more. Why? Because it looks like a great big bunch of us are going down at the hands of some combination of Colonel Sanders, Frank Perdue or my sister, Susan (at Thanksgiving dinner). That's right! Hundreds of millions of us are going to die in a pandemic of something called "Bird Flu." I know exactly what you're thinking: "We spent the better part of four centuries and hundreds of dollars to kill and displace countless savage squatters so we could "Kelo" their land, build malls and refineries, and celebrate it all by spending one good day out of the whole year with our liberal brother-in-law watching over-hyped football games and chowing down on some great turkey with all the trimmings. For what? So we can all be incurably and fatally-sick before we even have our first piece of pie? And all because somebody's pig yakked on a Korean poultry farmer who never washes his hands?" If that's the way it shakes out, so be it, but "Bird Flu" is not high on the list of things that should keep any of us awake tonight (or even the night before Thanksgiving). In life's great dead pool, it's a safe bet that other, more clear and present, dangers will take us out in a more spectacular fashion and in larger numbers.... The signs are there for anyone to read: the Democrats, their many friends in the liberal mainstream media and the United Nations are three good reasons we should all sleep with one eye open. All three have placed their own pursuits of political power and influence over the rest of us above any pretense of principled concern for any American interests anywhere. This week the leadership of the minority (for many good reasons) party joined with the New York Times and the other dimming lights of the left to celebrate the death of our 2,000th American soldier in Iraq. With morbid headlines, historic distortions and outright lies about the conflict, they trivialized the loss of that soldier-hero as "a milestone" in their never-ending debate with the administration about our policy and purpose. Unconvicted murderer and famous drunk Ted Kennedy (D-Dewar's) described the soldier's death as "an auspicious occasion." And when they weren't marginalizing the sacrifice and significant success of our military, they were clucking about Dick Cheney's scooter, openly campaigning for the indictment of Karl Rove and trying to tell the President who and what they want him to install on the Supreme Court. Did these people miss the last election? They lost. The war is on. We've no choice but to win it. And the guy in the White House gets to nominate judges. None of their screams or deceits make a constructive contribution to any debate but it all added up to enough noise this week to drown out the release of the Volcker Commission Report on the UN oil-for-food program. The final report details the top-down corruption of the United Nations (as well as that of many foreign government officials) that kept the UN from doing its duty in the war on terror, most specifically in Iraq. The report provides a stunning, specific and comprehensive case that the United Nations is so rife with corruption that it can't be fixed. We should all be grateful to Paul Volcker for wading around in the East Side cess-pool long enough to get us the information we need to turn the whole toxic dump over to the EPA. As bad as this report might be for many deserving Eurotrash and third-world-all-stars, we're sure that once "Kofis Kash 'n Karry" is padlocked, we'll see a good number of those former UN bag boys working for Howard Dean at the DNC or on the editorial mastheads of The New York Times and Newsweak.... "The King is dead. Long live the King!" Whether we die by downing that tainted drumstick or we die by the bunches for any number of reasons after Hillary's inauguration, we know there's hope for a rich afterlife on the other side. Especially if you're a popular artist. According to the latest rankings released by FORBES, Elvis Presley earned $45 million in 2005, making the late King of Rock 'n Roll the leading moneymaker among dead celebrities for the year. Presley was tagged and bagged in Memphis on August 16, 1977 shortly after his king-sized body was found wedged between a toilet bowl and a wall inside a Graceland mansion bathroom. Did Elvis die of drug abuse, as has long been believed... or did he die-in-distress in the bathroom because he had pounded down a party-pack of poisonous poultry from Popeye's Chicken? It's been 38 years so we may never know, but it doesn't really matter. Thanks to Elvis we know that if you dare and do great things (and do them all with style and flair), dying isn't the end of the world.... Requiem for a Lightweight. The Supreme Court nomination of White House Counsel and longtime personal attorney to the President, Harriet Miers, passed away on October 24 following a four week illness. The official cause of death was listed as "inadequate credentials" with complications from "incomprehensible and unrealistic aspirations." A quiet memorial service for Ms. Miers' ambition was attended by all of her friends and supporters in a very small room at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. Miers is survived by Janice Rogers Brown, 56, of Sacramento, California, Michael Luttig, 51, of Richmond, Virginia and Samuel "Scalito" Alito, 55, of Philadelphia....