|
|
|
|
|
| |
Saturday, April 20, 2002
First Round of the French Election:
Tomorrow, April 21, is the day of the first round of voting in the French election for the Presidency. Although it will most likely turn out the way people expect it to, with Jacques Chirac and Lionel Jospin as the winners, there is a chance that some of the fringe candidates could pull ahead. The Trotskyist Arlette Laguiller is now running at around 8-10% of the vote, which isn’t threatening to the Socialist Jospin, but it does show the dissatisfaction with his party. The most likely upset will come from the right, where bigoted and fearful Jean-Marie Le Pen is coming in third with 13-14% of the vote, or left-wing nationalist-republican Jean-Pierre Chevènement running around 8%. This looks bad for Chirac, who could easily be toppled tomorrow, but good for whoever on the right wins the first round. If Chirac or Chevènement win the primary, they would be a few percentage points higher than Jospin would be.
I am personally routing for Alain Madelin, who is the only internationalist, liberal-capitalist in the race. In a recent article on him, The Economist said:
“Mr Madelin calls for “a new France”. He vows to free the schools from the rigid hand of the state; to reform the judicial system with more police and kinder prisons; to simplify taxes and cut income tax to a maximum of 33%; to devolve power not just to troubled Corsica but to all France's regions; to let French workers retire at the age they want, with a better choice of pension; and to let workers shelter part of their taxable income, as in America, with donations to charity. “The new France is for me a France that asks a little less of the state and puts a little more trust in the French.”
Madeiln is a former finance minister who tried to open up free trade negotiations and privatize a lot of state owned industry, both of which are very unpopular in France right now. Most of the country is stuck in outdated Gaullist rhetoric about being separate from the world and having the state control much of the country’s industry. Too bad the French people don’t realize how much globalization has benefited them in the last decade, since they had the highest GDP growth of any of the big European countries last year, and they are one of the continent’s largest exporters. He is only expected to get 3-4% of the vote tomorrow, but I can always hope.
6:43 PM
Thursday, April 18, 2002
Now here is an origional good idea that is worth following. I don't know if it has any chance of succeeding, but it's an interesting concept that goes well with the discussion of future Democratic candidates.
http://www.conservativereform.org/bullmoose/
1:00 PM
Wednesday, April 17, 2002
A Challenger to Bush?
After watching an episode of the Simpsons where Homer is wearing a “Haig in ‘88” t-shirt, I went to find out what is happening to the General these days. I listened to his show on Delta Airline’s “sky-radio” and he looked healthy enough for another run. So let me be the first to say Haig in ’04! Haig in ’04!
http://www.infoplease.com/cgi-bin/birthday?month=Nov&day=27
http://www.wbrtv.com/hosts/haig_2.html
http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/secretaries/ahaig.htm
http://www.pbs.org/redfiles/prop/deep/interv/p_int_alexander_haig.htm
10:01 PM
A subscriber to “The Sparta cist” writes:
“Look dude, about the dem's inability to stay moderate--the problem isn't that they're not centrist enough, it’s that they don't have any balls (I’ll explain, gimmie a second). Also, try to keep in mind that the Republican Party in America is increasingly far-right wing. This is the party that said that tom daschle was in league with saddam because he opposed drilling in ANWR, for instance, and as a result any attempt by the dems to contradict the rightist rhetoric is going to appear by contrast to look very left wing. Fortunately, the dems don't have the balls to get up and say "thesis bullshit" every time the GOP does something unbelievable. Example: a GOP-controlled congress spent 8 years trying to find out whether Clinton got burned in a loaned deal (and then whether he got head), a series of investigations that began pretty much as soon as Clinton got elected. And then the GOP would trot out the story whenever they needed to try to score some points, like when the pres tried to launch some major bill etc (they still do--Robert Ray's last report came out when he began his congressionalcampaighn). The point isn't that bill Clinton was a fantastic gentleman (I thought he sucked balls, personally). But think about this-- there is a lot of evidence the ENRON made a lot of people in the Bush admin very rich through very sketchy ways (like the sec of the army's shares which got sold like two months ago). And then of course there were those energy meetings with the veer that
Are getting covered up. And yet the dems can't get off their collective asses and make some noise to the effect that, for the first time in 8 years, the pres might have done something seriously criminal (maybe not on the level of Iran-contra, but not every president gets to organize when American hostages get released, for instance). The "war on terrorism" kept the dems from making too much noise, for fear they be labeled as opponents to the war.... a tactic the GOP seems to be trying to use for the rest of bush's term-- notice the timing of the announcements about Iraq. Its not that the dems are too left-wing, they just let themselves get tooled and as a result are only able to oppose the GOP in very centrist terms. They’re just too afraid to do anything but play nice and centrist.”
“Just kinda had to get that off my chest. Now I gotta finish my paper”
This gentleman is right in his Whiggish skepticism of the administration, but needs to realize that the Dems need to stay to the right in economics, not social issues. They should actually move to the left on many social causes (except guns, which will cause many people to leave the party; like me see this week’s Economist.)
9:47 PM
The McCain Deal
All of this stuff in The New Republic and The Washington Monthly about John McCain running for the Presidency as a Democrat id bogus and won’t go anywhere. Having McCain run for President, as anything would be great. He is my personal favorite politician and I would vote for him under any party banner. I wish this would work out, but it never can.
The Democrats are hurting badly right now and they need to front someone popular to beat Bush, but McCain isn’t the answer. First off, the Democratic base would never vote for a Republican. They won’t even support Joe Lieberman, who is their best chance at keeping the center and winning in ’04. McCain has definitely moved more in the direction of the Democrats over the past two years, but even if he switched, he would be on the far right of the party and could not pull off the votes to win the primaries.
Secondly, one of the reasons McCain is so appealing is that he is a progressive in the Republican establishment. He represents the spirit Lafollette or Eisenhower, and switching would make the fronter of “the Straight Talk Express” seem like one of the crooked Washington politicians he is running against.
Finally, McCain’s issues have been passed. As Dick Morris always points out, a politician needs strong issues to run on. Bush signed CFR, spent more money on national service, and got increased spending for the military. The Economist recently did an article on the extent, which Bush has moved toward McCain.
McCain is a great Senator and has done a wonderful job forcing the Republicans to reform, but his time has simply passed for the Presidency. Hopefully he has inspired some young Republicans to take his place.
4:52 PM
Monday, April 15, 2002
Finally someone is infoming people about the true intentions of the Bush Administration! The Palestinian deal is just a way to distract the Arabs and prepare for the invasion of Iraq.
http://www.andrewsullivan.com/main_article.php?artnum=20020414
10:46 PM
Condemned to the Minority
As usual, the Democrats are going to blow their chances of winning the Presidency by going too far to the left and proposing far-fetched policies that people don�ft want. In the recent rally down in Florida, the audience and the delegates showed preference to the candidates the proposed the biggest spending plans and used the most demagogic rhetoric to stir up the very base of the party that condemns them to minority status year after year. The crowd ignored the best candidate of the lot, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. As TNR�fs Noah Sheiber put it:
"And then there's Joe Lieberman, who offered the most coherent policy vision of the weekend while simultaneously turning the room silent. Lieberman's problem was threefold. First, in staking out the territory furthest to the right--particularly on Iraq and "values"--he invariably found himself supporting the administration far too often for the delegates' taste. Second, Lieberman's thoughts on foreign policy and America's role in the world are clearly the most complex of the group. Somewhat ill-advisedly, he decided to share them at length. And third, even if Lieberman had elected to stick with applause-winning aphorisms like the other candidates, it would only have gotten him so far. One look at his flaccid, soccer-mom arm-thrust would have told the Florida Democrats all they needed to know: This man lacks the virility to be president."
It�fs unfortunate that the Democrats made so much progress in the last eight years, and now they are blowing their chance by pushing the moderates over to the Republican Party.
9:45 PM
Here's a well put reason, by Martin Peretz in the April, 15th issue of The New Republic, why America should not deal with Arafat and see why the Palestinians are wrong in this fight.
"Yasir Arafat, of course, has never been finicky about terrorism, and his long history on that score mocks America's calls for him to renounce the only craft he has ever truly known. Arafat's debut on the world stage coincides with the beginning of the Palestinian revolution, which, it is urgent to recall, commenced at least three years before the Six Day War. This means that Arafat started the Palestine Liberation Organization before one Israeli ever stepped foot into the West Bank or Gaza Strip--or, for that matter, prayed at the Western Wall in Jerusalem or walked in the city's ancient Jewish Quarter. There were no "occupied territories" back then, and there weren't really any disputed territories either--except in the heads of the Palestinians. What Arafat wanted then (and what I believe he still wants now) was to liberate not Hebron or Nablus or Gaza (which in 1967 were in Arab hands) but Haifa and Tel Aviv, the plains of Sharon, and the Negev desert. Or, as military historian Victor Davis Hanson put it in The Wall Street Journal this week, "the current Arab-Israeli war--at least the fourth fought since 1948--is fought over the West Bank: but that is only because ... the Arab world lost the first three wars to destroy Israel proper."
"From the beginning, Arafat's tactics of terror were audacious: blowing up airplanes in midair; taking children hostage in schoolhouses; skyjackings; hijacking of buses; shootouts and bombings in crowded airports, theaters, terminals, markets, beaches, restaurants, wedding halls. His most daring moment was during the 1972 Munich Olympics, in which eleven Israeli athletes lost their lives. (It was also the first moment when Peter Jennings showed himself to be oh, so understanding of Palestinian terror.) But this terrorism occurred only sporadically. It wasn't until the Oslo agreements and the handshake on the White House lawn that Arafat's terrorism became a routine feature of life in Israel. Israel obliged itself in 1993 to provide the Palestinian Authority weapons (augmented, of course, by the armaments the Palestinians smuggled and illegally manufactured themselves). And those weapons became the instruments of Jewish death. The closer the Israelis came to meeting Palestinian demands, the more intense the terror became. Suicide bombing, in fact, didn't become the Palestinians' chosen mode of day in, day out terror until the year 2000, when Israel offered Arafat more than the old butcher probably ever expected.
"Even my friend Tom Friedman, generally much too credulous about Arafat's intentions, recently wrote that the Palestinian president and his compatriots "have not chosen suicide bombing out of `desperation.'" The Palestinians, he says, were offered "a peace plan that could have ended their `desperate' occupation, and Yasir Arafat walked away." He goes on to say that the Palestinians "want to win their independence in blood and fire," and that is because "all they can agree on is what they want to destroy not what they want to build.... Let's be very clear: Palestinians have adopted suicide bombing as a strategic choice.... This threatens all civilization because if suicide bombing is allowed to work in Israel, then, like hijacking and airplane bombing, it will be copied and will eventually lead to a bomber strapped with a nuclear device threatening entire nations."
9:35 PM
Sunday, April 14, 2002
Check out George Will’s column today in a paper or on the Internet. It is great and unpartisan. The more I read Will, the more I respect him. Whereas many columnists on the left and right are very partisan and unwilling to say anything bad about the politicians that generally have the same ideology as themselves, George Will has been very hard on the administration and the Republicans in the house. In this particular article, he chides the President’s protectionist trade policy and shows explains how this move to help American business will, in the end, hurt it terribly.
This article is 100% correct and hopefully encourages the administration to rethink any new protectionist policies they plan on enacting. Supporting two failing industries, steel and textiles will hurt the economy in the long run by allowing mills in other countries to modernize and become more efficient, while American mills become more out of date every year. Will focuses on the impact of retaliatory trade barriers from Canada and Europe that has already caused the loss of thousands of American jobs (more than are currently employed in steel.) Hopefully the president abides by his campaign promise and liberalizes markets instead of destroying them.
12:47 PM
|
|
| |
|
|
|
