It's at moments like these I recall The A-hole song (profanity warning)

The spoken section has the closet thing to relevance, here:
'Screaming, now, the ultimate ugly American)
You know what I'm going do? I'm gonna get myself a 1967 Cadillac Eldorado convertable - hot pink with whaleskin hubcaps and all-leather interior and big brown baby seal eyes for the headlights. I'm gonna drive around in that baby at 115mph, getting one mile per gallon, sucking down Quarter Pounder cheeseburgers from McDonald's in the old-fashioned nonbiodegradable containers. When I'm done suckin' down those greaseball burgers, I'm gonna toss the Styrofoam container right out the side and there ain't a goddamned thing anybody can do about it. You know why? Because we got the bombs, that's why. Two words nuclear f-n weapons, okay? Russia, Czechslovakia, Romania - they can have all the democracy they want, have a big democracy cakewalk walk through the middle of Tianamen Square and it won't make a lick of difference because we've got the bombs, okay?!'

Ayuh. Sometimes I have to wonder if it's US national policy...

Like, Bush is even being good about this, apperently, he's promised to fix things, but he can't do that because the senate voted against the reopen.

Bush lied. He promises a lot of stuff; but unless you see him busily lobbying and threatening Congress afterwards to try to get it done, then it was just another promise to string along a few suckers.

No, he never said boo to Congress about Canadian beef; at least, not about letting it in.

trueish, it depens how you take it, he could have been sincire, who knows.

Politicians are always saying stuff they don't mean just for the publicity and the popularity points. If they really want something, they just threaten to fire somebody. ;P

Apparently, they're going to try.

chances of it working?

That kind of depends on whether Canada is willing to use force (trade war) on their behalf. If not, then they've got no chance at all; no matter what the arbitrator says. If so, then I'd guess their chances are fair to good.

Part of canada will say yes, teh rest will say no, we'll be peaceful about this.

Canada can't win a trade war with the States. Fully a third of our GDP comes from exports to the US. A trade war would cripple our economy, and don't think that Bush isn't aware of that.

Ah, but you don't have to cripple the US economy; just put Republican congressmen at risk of losing their jobs, and they'll fold. After all, the EU didn't beat us with all-out trade wars; they just targetted the industries and districts that have Republican representitives and senators in their pockets.

Now, I can't swear that this would work if there was something important at stake; but since it's just corruption and politics, it's really easy to make it a losing game for them to play.

Montana is generally in favor of the ban. I think the mad cow thing is just the public excuse, not the real reason. There are many ranchers here who view Canadian imports as directly competing with them. They get downright militant about it. The ban shortens supplies and tends to drive up prices. This is actually good for the local economy in the short run. Consequently, the state government favors the ban to curry favor with the voters. However, as a predominantly red state, I will forgive you if you assume we don’t really know where our overall best interests lie.