Blackfive reports on U.S. citizenship granted to Laotian Hmong refugees:

The reward for helping the Americans during the Vietnam War took 29 years to materialize, but for the 15,000 Laotian Hmong in this sun-baked refugee camp, it was a payout beyond their wildest dreams: U.S. citizenship.

“I can’t believe we’ll be Americans,” said Sui Yang, 60, who fought with CIA-backed Hmong guerrillas against the communist Pathet Lao in the mountains of Laos. “We heard rumors for years this was going to happen, but they were always only rumors. Most of us gave up hoping. I thought we were going nowhere.”

I’ve got three words that express my sentiment for earnest immigrants, particularly those who helped the United States in the past, who would come to this country with hope of a better life and the will to make it so:

Bring ’em on.

From today’s StLToday.com:

Advertising is ubiquitous nowadays, with marketers using product placements on television shows, linking words in magazine articles with ads and, as an ad firm working for Toyota recently did, temporarily tattooing pitches on people’s foreheads.

“It’s a littering of the mental landscape,” MacFarlane said. “We live in a culture that pushes the fear of not succeeding, getting sick, of being alone. … Advertisers sidle up to us and say: ‘Hi, we love you. We understand. But isn’t there something wrong with your life?'”

Words from Paul MacFarlane, left-wing hippie advertising mogul.

Something of this smacks of poserism. The dude spouts antimaterialism, but is a successful advertising guy with an office in Downtown St. Louis and who lives in West County. Spare me the bobo.

Perhaps the title tag of the StLToday page says it all: Help

Lileks on that coastal elite, nanny-statist Andrew Sullivan in today’s Bleat:

Okay.
As you may know, Andrew Sullivan has famously proposed hiking gas prices by a dollar to reduce the deficit and pay for the Iraq campaign. Don’t get me wrong – I have a great deal of respect for Andrew.

But.

Here I disagree. Low gas prices are bad for the economy and bad for drivers, he says – the sort of statement that makes you read everything that follows with wry detached amusement, the same way you’d regard an article on canine training that began “dogs respond remarkably well to feng shui.” You read on because it can only get better.

He refers to gas as “woefully undertaxed.” If one uses the phrase “woefully undertaxed” one may be correct, but one should not be surprised when one’s conservative bona fides are called into question. You could make the argument that cable TV is woefully undertaxed. Peanut butter is woefully undertaxed. Once
you’ve identified a good that can be cured by additional taxation, well, everything is woefully undertaxed. There aren’t any pro-war movies being made! We could fund them with a movie tax! Popcornn is woefully undertaxed! He says:

The truly needy tend to consume less gas than their middle-class compatriots. Others say it penalizes those in remote and rural areas. So what?

Some conservatives say it’s antithetical to the American Dream. Hooey.

Lileks must have made it further into the piece than I did to discover Sullivan’s contention that it’s okay to disproprotionatlely tax the people in the heartland (that is, everyone between the Rockies and the Appalachians) because we don’t matter.

Bollucks on Sullivan, again.

Andrew Sullivan has actually gone mad:

TAX GAS MORE: All of your opposition merely convinced me I was right. Here’s my Time column on why raising gas taxes would be a very good thing. Here’s Ramesh Ponnuru’s critique. Make your own mind up.

Make your mind up, but the more you oppose me, the more I convince myself I am right? I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed? Yeek.

Here’s his argument for greater taxation to improve your behavior, citizen:

The worst knock against a gas tax is that it is, well, a tax. Who likes that? But with soaring deficits and a war to pay for, taxes are not an option — they’re a necessity. The only relevant question is, Which taxes? The case for a gas tax is a straightforward one. Gas prices are strikingly lower in America than anywhere else in the world; such taxes are relatively easy to collect; since an overwhelming majority of Americans drive, few avoid the tax; and by adding a cost to the wanton consumption of gasoline, you actually encourage conservation, accelerate fuel efficiency, reduce pollution, cut traffic and help wean Americans off the oil that requires the U.S. to be so intimately involved in that wonderful cesspool of rival hatreds, the Middle East. So what’s not to like?

As a source of tax money, recognize that money will be spent on programs with an ongoing basis, and that if the government successfully modifies the behavior of its foolish, short-sighted, and lesser mortal citizens, the government will need to make that amount of money up elsewhere. Which means deficits or other tax increases down the road.

Pretty soon, we’re going to have to stop calling Sullivan a “conservative,” aren’t we?

Reason’s Hit and Run links to an official proclamation that warns hapless American citizens (a redundancy in the mind of Those Who Are Noble Enough to Rule) about Canadian pot:

“Canada is exporting to us the crack of marijuana and it is a dangerous problem,” Walters told reporters in Miami, where he kicked off a campaign to cut marijuana use by Hispanic youths.

Let’s examine that metaphor. Canada (Canada!) is exporting to us the most addictive drug of drug. Crikey, it’s the cornflower blue of all blues! The Super Bowl of football games!

I think somewhere Walters has opened a rift in the Space-Metaphor continuum. Sure, it’s small now, but it’s growing, and someday soon discourse will be sucked into incomprehensibility.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.