I watched Jesse Ventura's show again tonight. It was really good. Jesse started the show with a discussion about the California recall and what Arnold has to do now regarding the deficit. Jesse said Arnold planned to ask the Fed. Government for assistance in solving the budget crisis and he seemed to think that if the government did bail out California that it could be seen by some as a way the current administration could potentially secure the California electoral votes in the next Presidential election. I think if the Democrats had any backbone, they would pounce on this from the outset and not let it get that far. Jesse also debated the Congressman from New York, a democrat, about his call to reinstitute the draft. Jesse is against it because back when he enlisted in the navy in the late 1960's, his view was that he would have rather served beside people who wanted to be there. And he pointed out that draftees may have served for a year or more in Vietnam and still weren't allowed by law to vote or drink when they returned (voting and drinking age in America until 1972 was 21 but you could be drafted at 18, drinking age is still 21) and Jesse didn't think that was right. I can understand the underlying feeling of the Congressman about the draft in this case - that if the decision of going to war would have such a widespread effect on the population that a draft would have, then the elected representatives may take more time to consider the decisions they would make regarding war. They wouldn't be so cavalier about it. But I don't think it would have helped with Iraq since the current administration seemed committed to this from the beginning and apparently went so far as to dust off years old intelligence to try to make the case for war. Jesse also had a discussion about illegal immigrants receiving welfare benefits. There were two guests from Arizona on the show, a woman who is opposed to illegal immigrants receiving welfare benefits and a woman who is for it. The woman who is for it said that it was owed to the illegal immigrants because they pay taxes. Well, if they are getting welfare, then their income, or lack of income, does not support that argument. They can't be paying enough in income taxes to convince anyone that they have contributed for their portion of the welfare. The whole point to welfare is that someone doesn't have enough income to make it without assistance. The guest seemed to think that these illegal immigrants paying sales tax was justification, but sales tax may be earmarked for other parts of the budget which don't fund welfare programs. I think in WV, sales tax started out as a way to fund a university medical school program or something like that. Also, there was mention that the welfare department in Arizona actually asks on the application for services what the immigrant's status is and says that the department won't report it to INS. The woman for the immigrants receiving welfare defended this by saying that state employees are not INS agents. Well, I know there can be added programming to their system that can do an automatic interface to the INS reporting the status of these immigrants and no additional duties would be given to the state employees working for the welfare department, since they are already asking for this documentation on the application. We have automatic interfaces with other department programs at my job. Bottom line is that illegal is illegal. It's about time people stop sending out the mixed message that it's ok for some but not all. The current administration in Washington wants to hold hundreds or thousands of detainees for years down at Camp X-ray without due process, but yet, 10,000 illegal immigrants a day slip into Arizona (according to the guest on the show who is in opposed to illegal immigrants receiving welfare) and any one of them could be a potential terrorist and nothing is done. And Jesse's hero of the week was a police detective from Canada who sent an email to Microsoft asking them to create a program to help stop internet child pornography and now Microsoft is working on a program free of charge. The dork of the week was the guy in New York who was keeping the tiger and alligator in his apartment and the other residents in that apartment building who 'apparently' didn't know about it. I think Jesse's doing a great job with the show. His communication style is exceptional! He was great as a pro wrestling comentator and now he's taking that 'no holds barred' approach to his show and really separating himself from all the other shows on the news networks. Much better than that annoying Chris Matthews. Click here to be sent to the MSNBC website for Jesse's show. Read his bio, sign up for his newsletter, send him an email.