The Push to Hang Bush
A Google search for "hang Bush" turns up 17,200 pages, leagues ahead of "hang Clinton" (either Hillary or Bill, or possibly both) with a mere 1,050 pages.

That these calls are for "George W. Bush", is specifically mentioned in 272 pages (versus 90 for "Dubya", whereas the demand to hang George H.W. Bush is, apparently, if surprisingly, nil.

Meantime, 436 demand "hang Cheney", whereas there is only a modest demand of 17 for the double rope trick featuring both "Bush and Cheney".

Tony Blair needs to watch his step, with 565 hanging calls, well ahead of Ariel Sharon at 197 and the seemingly quite well liked President Ahmadinejad of Iran for whom hanging has so far been demanded by only 155.

As for our own decider, Stevie "Thumbs" Harper, the call for hanging is a mere 61, mostly of them ironic, which just goes to show what a fine leader we have: compared to Bush, Cheney, Blair, the moribund Sharon and the Bush-taunting Ahmadinejad, anyhow.

Update, January 2, 2007
Forty-eight hours ago, we reported that a Google search for "hang Bush" produced 17,200 results. Today, that number has grown to 20,200. Maybe Dubya should be thinking about some place to hide. A rat hole like Saddam's might allow him precious extra months to live.

Update, January 4, 2007
On December 31, a Google search for "hang Bush" (you need the quotes for an exact phrase match), produced 17,200 hits. Two days later the same search produced 20,200 hits. Today, it produced 28,500 hits. This is exponential growth. Here's a typical post, which suggests that Bush needs to be thinking bolt holes and the Ken Lay disappearance trick. Congress needs to be thinking impeachment.

Update, January 6: The Push to Hang Bush
January 6: If you Googled the phrase "hang Bush" on December 31, you'd have got 17,200 hits. By January 2 the number was 20,200. Two days ago it reached 28,500. Today it passed 40,000. Seems there are a lot of angry people who share George Bush's belief in the merits of capital punishment.

Update, January 7, 2007: Throttling the push to hang Bush: Google doing some evil?
Over the last eight days we recorded an exponential increase in pages returned by Google for the search phrase "hang Bush" (the quotes are required for an exact-phrase match). The number of pages returned rose from from 17,200 on December 31, 2006, to 20,200 on January 2, 28,500 on January 4 and 40,500 on January 6.

Then, just as the bandwagon seemed unstoppable, and it appeared that Bush would be headed for the gallows by the end of next week, not only did the surge abate, but the flood receded: by nigthfall yesterday the number of "hang Bush" pages returned by Google had fallen to 39,500. This morning, January 7, the count has fallen again to 38,900.

Interesting dynamics.

Which prompted us to take a look at some other search engine results. Yahoo this AM gave a count of 5,020. Microsoft listed a mere 2,172.

Alta Vista gave 28,200, a number closest to Google's, but as AltaVista's advanced search reveals, the dynamics are totally different to Google's.

Alta Vista's reports 2,240 "hang Bush" pages until December 31, 2006 (versus 17,200 reported by Google on that date). But from December 31 until January 7, 2007 Alta Vista reports 22,700 pages, a more than nine-fold increase, versus a mere two-fold increase over the same period according to Google.

So has everyone suddenly forgiven George Bush?

To the extent that the truth can be discerned or the future foretold by examining the entrails of a search engine, we will keep you informed.

Update, January 13: Hang Bush Numbers Still Shrinking
On December 31, 2006, a Google search for "hang Bush" turned up 17,200 pages. That number grew to 20,200 by January 2, 2007, 28,500 by January 4 and over 40,000 by January 6, an exponential increase. Then the accelerating increase abruptly turned into a decline: 39,500 by the evening of the 6th, 38,900 the following day. Today, January 13, off by another 1600 to 37,300.

Folks must have liked Bush's plan for escalating the war.

Even more remarkable is the reversal that has occurred over at Alta Vista. There, a search for "hang Bush" for the years 1980-2006 gave 17,200 hits on January 7. Today, that's down to a mere 1,510. For the period December 31, 2006 until January 7, 2007, Alta Vista recorded 22,700 pages on January 7, but a mere 2,820 today.

Meantime, rather confusing the issue, Yahoo's number is up from 5,020 on January 7 to 8,400 today, while Microsoft search has risen from a puny 2,172 hits to a still puny 2,583.

From all of which you can draw three conclusions. First, a lot of people have said publicly that they would like like to see Bush hanged, which I suppose, Congress might do, were they ever to exercise the people's will and impeach the President.

Second, when you do a Web search, don't think you're seeing every page on the web that contains your search term, or even a small fraction of all the pages that contain your search term. Third, if you do the same search with the same search engine on different occasions, don't expect to see anything like the same result.

Third, when you do a Web search, don't think you're seeing every page on the web that contains your search term, or even a small fraction of all the pages that contain your search term. Third, if you do the same search with the same search engine on different occasions, don't expect to see anything like the same result.

One day, perhaps, someone will offer a genuinely comprehensive, uncensored search engine with an easy to use advanced search capability. But don't bet on it. People who run search engines aren't interested in providing you with access to information. They are interested in selling (a) eyeballs (yours) to advertisers, and (b) information about your Web activity to the likes of the CIA and the National Security Agency.
Canadian Spectator

The Canadian Spectator is optimized for viewing with Firefox Version 1.02.

Please address correspondence to .