Wacky World of Mirrors
The Brand-D politicians are fond of saying that Bush "puts ideology over science" in such matters as abortion, stem cells and the fraud of global warming.

Despite his peculiar and inscrutable intentions, and despite his extremely luke-warm position on Kyoto, Bush stands - accidentally or not - on the side of science, as any genuine scientist understands. "Life begins at conception" is a purely logical and scientific statement. There is absolutely no other choice. Drawing the line anywhere else must be a moralistic or religious statement. On the climate the data shows, and has shown for half a million years, that CO2 is not the cause of heat, but a by-product of increased evaporation when the earth gets warmer.

But oddly enough, Bush has put ideology over the science of economics on the subject of immigration. Just now his main economic advisor, Charles Lazear (sp?) on C-Span, stated baldly that illegal immigration RAISES the wages of non-immigrants competing for the same jobs. No, I didn't mistype, and he didn't misspeak. He is actually claiming that immigration RAISES the wages of other Americans competing for the same jobs.

I'm sure there's a way to rig the computer models to get this result. I've done some simulation modeling myself, and I know how to tweak parameters. Perhaps these economists are using the same idea as Core Inflation: Measure inflation by excluding all the prices that go up, so that you can have a number that doesn't go up.

Whatever they're doing, it simply does not comply with any of the known facts. This is the same kind of quackery that the Algore side performs in the realm of climate: ignore all facts, make predictions on carefully chosen theories and models.
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