Bush might as well be on Mars as far as global security is concerned
He plans to send men back to the moon by 2015 as a kind of a halting site on their way to Mars in a multi-billion dollar project.
By that time, the Americans will still be trying to figure out what to do with Iraq, or even why they're there in the first place.
Dubya's stargazing is inherited from his father who, when he was shuffling around the Oval Office in 1989, also proposed sending men to Mars.
That grandiose plan was shot down because the cost was reckoned at anything up to $500 billion.
The son has no such worries about the dollars, however.
While the initial financing will be somewhere in the region of $12 billion, and rising steeply, if his plan takes off it will be his successors in the White House who will be landed with the final bill.
The citizens of Mars have done nothing whatsoever to deserve Dubya's attention. The planet has not, so far, been included in his axis of evil and nor does it harbour Osama bin Laden, nor any of the lads in the al-Qaida cumann. Nor does it hide weapons of mass destruction, or at least the Pentagon is unaware if it does.
The lack of any, or all, of those excuses never before stopped the Americans from going wherever they felt like going, and so the unfortunate, innocent Martians are about to get some unwanted attention from which they will not be protected even by a distance of light years.
Possibly there's oil on Mars, and that's something which the former governor of Texas would have no trouble in believing.
Dubya hopes that Mars will be another star on the spangled banner sometime after 2015, but the Russians plan to be there to greet the Yanks well before that.
According to Leonid Gorshkov, a designer at the Russian space corporation Energiya, technically "the first flight by Earthlings" to Mars could take place as early as 2014. Don't you just love that word "Earthlings" it's like a throwback to Dan Dare, pilot of the future, who we all thought was merely raving, all those decades ago.
Apart from beating the Yanks in arriving there within a decade, the Russians maintain they can do so at a cost of $15 billion, about 10 times less than the Americans will spend to get there after their old enemy is well dug in.
In the meantime, you would imagine that the Americans would get their act together insofar as security is concerned back home on Mother Earth.
Because of their paranoia over terrorist attacks they expect the rest of the world to kowtow to White House standards of safety while being rather lax on the issue at home.
Over the Christmas period, passengers on British Airways and other airlines had to put up with intolerable delays and cancellations because of suspicious names on passenger lists.
In one case, the name of a ten-year-old boy was thought to be that of a terrorist.
The Yanks have a security complex about potential threats to their country, but they are not quite so extreme about who, or what, leaves the Land of the Free, apparently.
While you and I could be in trouble for not declaring a safety razor or nail scissors in our bag, the security at Dulles airport left a man onto a flight to London with live ammunition.
It was not until the Sudanese-born man landed at Heathrow that his potentially life-threatening luggage was detected through what was described as a routine check when he went to transfer to a flight to Dubai.
It's extraordinary that he slipped through a similar check at Dulles airport, especially when one considers that the route between London and Washington is officially designated a potential target for terrorists.
Tight security is vital for all of us, but it ill-behoves the US to be lecturing the rest of the world, and insisting on extraordinary measures involving a diminution of civil rights, when they fail to meet their own demands.
DEMANDS of a different kind have led to a rather unexpected turn of events in New York with possible implications for pubs, restaurants and smokers here at home.
Despite the fact that much has been made here about the smoking ban's lack of any adverse impact on New York pubs and restaurants, the reality is otherwise.
A court there has backed the case made by a small family bar in Cicero, New York, whose owner was able to prove that his business has fallen by 40% since the smoking ban was introduced.
That, plus the fact that his bar had a suitable separate smoking lounge, won David A Damon a waiver from the ban.
Something which is very appropriate here is that, with the onset of winter, his customers stopped going outside the door for a smoke.
Consequently, he lost their custom, and that of their non-smoking pals, and because receipts were down by $1,000 a week he had to let his only employee go.
There's a familiar ring to this because it's just what many opponents of the ban here have been saying.
What it goes to prove is exactly what people have been saying here... that the ban will result in a loss of business and jobs.
The way Minister for Health Micheál Martin has gone about it is completely daft.
Nobody can deny that smoking restrictions are necessary, but the minister could have achieved that without having to resort to the draconian measures he's bringing in whenever the ban is introduced. I hope that the proposed ban on alcohol advertising, where and when it impacts on children, will be more considered than the ban on smoking.
The minister is absolutely right in trying to mitigate the influence alcohol advertising has on young people, but he's up against another powerful lobby in the drinks industry.
The minister plans to ban such advertising from sites near schools and playgrounds, as well as restricting it on radio and television.
Already the advertising and drinks industries have opposed the move because there are huge bobs involved.
But there are far more important issues to be considered, and none is more important than the health of our young people who, in many instances, begin drinking as young as 11.
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