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Volume 14, Number
20 |
Also in this
section: Let’s also keep some dissenting voices Obama and the Democrats, clearly and emphatically Do Barack Obama and the Democratic Party have all the solutions? Of course not. However, they ARE the only solution to the continuation of many of the failed policies we have seen in eight years of disastrous Republican rule. If there is any hope that bipartisan failures that go back even farther can be rectified, that, too, lies in a massive Democratic victory that changes the paradigm of American politics. To curb the political power of sleazy financial hustlers, to balance the budget, to rebuild American industrial might, to end the war in Iraq, to rebuild the overstretched US Armed Forces, to restore respect for human rights both in the USA and around the world --- of the two parties with a chance to form the next US government, only the Democrats, led by Barack Obama, have the will to do these things. Reasonable Americans everywhere can and do disagree on the best routes to peace and prosperity. We have those divisions in the American community here in Panama, and they will persist. However, it’s those Americans living abroad who best know about the decline of US stature in the rest of the world and the urgent need to restore the United States to an honored and respected position in the international community. Americans living abroad --- and their neighbors --- need to see a government in Washington with fresh faces, fresh ideas and fresh approaches, and those just aren’t forthcoming from the Republicans. At least we can have hope that new ideas will be considered by the Democrats, which we can't say about the Republicans. With Republicans in charge we have also seen a decline in consular and embassy services to Americans living abroad, and there, too, only the Democrats give us a fighting chance to improve things. Because the United States is in dire straits in many ways, Americans need a government that won’t be paralyzed by Senate filibusters and the sorts of corporate obstruction campaigns that blocked health care reform in the Clinton administration. Americans need not only a Democratic victory, but a Democratic landslide that brings in a Congress that can’t be obstructed by its minority party. But isn’t there a danger in an irresistible one-party government? Of course there is, and to avoid that let us hope that the conservatives who do get elected this fall are men and women of principle and talent, that the Democrats have enough free thinkers in their midst to restrain mindless or arrogant behavior, and that the best ideas coming out of the third parties and non-political spheres find receptive ears among a new set of leaders who are determined to move a great power out of a deep hole and into a new era of peace and prosperity.
The first lady should have to come in for questioning With all due respect, and with the calculation of what’s due taking into account her preliminary statements that members of the SPI presidential guard are going to lose their jobs and that her friend and employee Mingthoy Giro is innocent, First Lady Vivian Fernández de Torrijos ought to be called in for questioning by prosecutors over the theft of the Juegos del Antaño sculptures. Those 35 tons of bronze artwork were, after all, in the possession of the First Lady’s Office when they disappeared. Maybe the first lady knows what happened, maybe she doesn’t. Maybe what she doesn’t know indicates a neglect of her public duty to conserve the valuables in her office’s charge, and maybe it doesn’t. Just because she has pre-judged Mingthoy Giro and the SPI doesn’t mean that the first lady ought to be pre-judged. She has a right to be presumed innocent just like anybody else. But a major crime has happened in her office and if the authorities don’t even ask her about it people will naturally presume other things.
Bear in mind…
I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left. Margaret Thatcher
It's a disagreeable thing to be whipped. William T. Sherman
Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals, or the laxity of morals, of various political personalities. Its cause is altogether a material one. Emma Goldman
Also in this
section:
Make
the Executive Hotel your headquarters in Panama City --- http://ww.executivehotel-panama.com
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©
2008 by Eric Jackson email: editor@thepanamanews.com or phone: (507) 6-632-6343 Mailing
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