I have occasional suspicions that the bedbug epidemic may be a form of financial terrorism. Allow me to adjust my tinfoil hat. We had to completely revamp our paper currency because of a well-funded, highly professional counterfeiting operation that the Secret Service traced to the Middle East. It was deemed a form of "unconventional warfare" by some in our government, since it was an attempt to destabilize US currency and because profits were funneled to various enterprises, including funding groups like Hamas and what we now call Al Qaeda. North Korea has also been a center for counterfeiting US currency. If the threat of destabilizing our currency - and thus effecting our economy - wasn't serious, would we have changed our currency?

Anyway.... pointing my tinhat towards the sun..... I note that the bedbug epidemic seems to have started in NY hotels. It would be easy formembers of certain groups to fly to New York with plastic containers full of bedbugs in their various luggage carriers and let 'em loose in the hotel one has booked.. particularly in fine hotels. Also, New York City is a home to many immigrants. An immigrant from a country which might seek to financially destabilize the United States might get a job in a hotel and help loose some of the biting buggers into a few rooms. The reasoning may be that NY's finest hotels may have to close for a time to debug, leading to financial loss in the tourist trade. Especially if the hotels kept getting reinfested with the bugs by nefarious means. The city is also a second home to many wealthy foreigners, who keep apartments here (you'd be surprised how many). If bedbugs spread throughout the city, maybe wealthy foreigners might leave. Their money is very important to us in NYC. (For one example, Park Avenue's legions of high-priced plastic surgeons and dermatologists would go out of business within a year. Wealthy europeans and South Amerians prefer to have their many, many cosmetic procedures done in New York, where the top tier of the world's most famous plastic surgeons reside.)

Anyway, that's my tinhat theory for the day. Bedbugs as a means of "unconventional warfare, " i.e., economic terrorism.

OK, I'm going to take my meds now.

Because racism is still more powerful than Jesusism in the South.

It just is.

I had to stop reading when Paglia claimed that the Foley scandal was an overblown two day affair and it was all "Foley, Foley, Foley" on the news.

First - stop watching so goddamned much cable news and do something constructive with your time, like making lanyards. Second - it's not just "Foley, Foley, Foley." It is also Hastert. It is quite a few higher ups. It is the Catholic Church sex scandals all over again; the manipulative priests seeking sexual favors from parishoners kids are now Congressmen and the Church hierarchy which keeps it under wraps while having extensive knowledge of it is the Senate.

But Paglia, true to her predictably contrarian self, doesn't want to see that. She wants to blame "the liberal media" for inquiring about the shenanigans and coverups on Capitol Hill.

Yup. It's that damned liberal media again. OK, Camille.

Whatever.....

In my previous letter, I forgot to mention that I am an extremely conservative Republican. I just happen to have views that are somehow misconstrued as "liberal." I am especially repulsed by the manipulative use of a gay issue for political purposes by my own party when they go into states prior to elections and court the homophobic vote by using gay marriage as a bugaboo. And when my party brings up the case of the late congressman Gerry Studds who had an affair with a page, I cringe that my party neglects to mention that our own Dan Crane did the exact same thing as Studds (sigh).

Oh my party, my party... it lets me down so consistently and bungles so dramatically and repeatedly. What is a conservative Republican like me to do?

I want the federal government to formulate guidelines wherein Republican politicians are mandated to sit through lectures about not having sex outside of their marriages, not writing puerile sex trash (Lynne Cheney, I'm looking at YOU!), no one-handed typing of salacious emails to underage pages and no strangling their mistresses half to death.

Oh, and no "party of moral values" claim may be made by anyone who has done any of the above listed things or who has divorced and remarried.

Hey Kerry -- here's a retort for you:

"George W Bush, you have no right to tell me anything with regard to our troops. I volunteered to join the active military. You used your family connections to jump ahead of others for a cushy stateside stint in the National Guard flying outdated airplanes. While I went to Vietnam and saw combat as an active duty serviceman, you didn't show up for a mandatory military physical exam and you skipped out on fulfilling the full term of your National Guard service. Those are the facts. That you even dare speak to me about our military in the way you have shows what a crybaby you are, always hiding behind your daddy's power, always hiding behind your daddy's friends because they protect you from the whupping you deserve. Well I'm giving you that whupping now, and it's long overdue. You're a coward and your attempts to paint me and John Murtha and other war veterans as beneath you makes you a lowly, contemptible cynic. You use our military men and women for photo ops and you send them off to war under cover of lies and without the proper equipment, and then you and your fellow Republicans cut veterans benefits. You're a liar, a cheater, a shirker, a cynic, a coward and a jerk. That is all."