How Tough Is Beating Bush Gonna Be?

Bush & Co. know they stole the last election. They know they have run amok, assuming a radical mandate with only 17% of the US people's support. They have polarized US opinion like never before and they know there is about 40% of voters they will simply NOT be able to entice. Another 40% will vote for them almost no matter what they do, provided they actually bother to vote. But it's the remaining 20% that both sides are focussing on now.

Apparently Karl Rove, Bush's senior advisor and the real Top Dog in the White House, carries a batch of bar graphs in his briefaces every day, showing in stark green the numbers of "undecided" voters who will swing the next election.

Bush's campaign Web site already has signed up 6 million supporters, 10 times more than Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean.

In other news:

Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan doubled between 2002 and 2003 to a level 36 times higher than in the last year of rule by the Taliban. That's poppy as in opium, as in drugs for your kids. A White House statement said, "A challenging security situation... has complicated significantly the task of implementing counter-narcotics assistance programs and will continue to do so for the immediate future". In other words, warlords rule the "liberated" country and will continue to do so.