The "Trousers of Time," referring to parallel timelines forking from a single point, is courtesy of the great Terry Pratchett.

If we had gone into Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia for that matter, with a military force, the Left would be shrieking just as loudly about Bush stomping all over their precious sovereign rights. About the only thing Bush could do right now that would win their approval is dive under a moving steamroller.

My point on Gore is that he would have behaved no differently than any other Democrat, or Republican for that matter, towards Saudi Arabia.

The Democratic idea of increasing automobile efficiency is to simply pass a law requiring cars to increase their mileage, like it's simply a matter of passing a decree to make the engineering appear. The crap I had to put up with years ago, like tinfoil bumpers, tiny vehicles, and engines that can't get you up a hill, were one consequence. And don't even get me started on early pollution control equipment. If it hadn't been for the blessed truck loophole, responsible for the entire SUV industry BTW, I and other people with families would have been forced to jam our kids and luggage into rice grinders. Naturally, the people who make laws like this wouldn't know how a car worked if you dropped on on them.

I don't know why they don't take the obvious step and simply pass a law requiring that cars not need fuel at all after 2008. How? Not their problem, right? Somehow.

If you want to know what got people into smaller cars in the 1970s, it was when gas prices were decontrolled and gas suddenly wasn't 35 cents a gallon any more. Ironically, the same people screaming about how we burn too much oil are screaming right now about how gas prices are too high. Go figure. Now, if the high gas prices were due to adding a dollar tax to gas, they would be beaming like jack-o-lanterns. I guess it all depends on who's raking in the loot.

You can turn Norton's warnings off. I can't turn off the e-mail warnings on the same damn virus from my service. Argh!