Politics: March 2004 Archives

They Can Already Taste blood and They are Ready to Kill... Our America
Becky Burgwin --- http://www.opednews.com/burgwin031404_taste.htm

"Who are they? Well, here’s the short list. John Ashcroft, Tom Delay, Dick Cheney, Rick Santorum, Antonin Scalia, George W. Bush, Pat Robertson, Don Rumsfeld and they taste blood. Why? Because they are just inches away from accomplishing their objective…the take over of our country by their radical, extremist, right wing, Christian agenda. What will they do when they have accomplished that? Take over the world. Think I’m kidding?"

[ I meant to post this one a few weeks ago. What suprised me most about this article was the bit about how until the late 1960's mixed race marriages were illegal in some states of the USA. The economist article makes several valid (and in my opinion strong) arguments in favour of marriage for all ]

SO AT last it is official: George Bush is in favour of unequal rights, big-government intrusiveness and federal power rather than devolution to the states. That is the implication of his announcement this week that he will support efforts to pass a constitutional amendment in America banning gay marriage. Some have sought to explain this action away simply as cynical politics, an effort to motivate his core conservative supporters to turn out to vote for him in November or to put his likely “Massachusetts liberal” opponent, John Kerry, in an awkward spot. Yet to call for a constitutional amendment is such a difficult, drastic and draconian move that cynicism is too weak an explanation. No, it must be worse than that: Mr Bush must actually believe in what he is doing.

[The term "gilded age" was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley
Warner in their 1870s book of the same name. It is a satire on the crass materialism of the industrial magnates and political malfeasance of the age. See pbs.org for more info] - Incidently, the book is available from amazon.com

Yoshi Tsurumi, Professor of International Business at Barauch College, City University of New York has recently written a piece about President George Bush and the Guilded Age. There is more to George Bush than just being a "wartime" president.

Something really strange has happened to the U.S. under the Bush Administration. With her ever bulging budget deficits and foreign debts, America's skewed income distribution is rapidly making the U.S. resemble Argentina or Mexico. The "Jobless Recovery" is not a political mirage, but a serious problem. America's GDP is increasing at an annual rate of about 4.0% this year. But, only those Wall Street "money gamers" and self-dealing "management aristocrats" of Corporate America are dizzy with their huge bonuses, padded salaries, and self-dealt stock options. The remaining hard working Americans cannot eat "GDP." The U.S. has widening income gap between a few "haves" and many "have-nots."