February 03, 2005

Exporting Democracy

Many people have weighed in with opinions on the inauguration. I found Judy Bachrach's particularly satisfying. Robert Kuttner of the Boston Globe presents a less amusing, more thought provoking idea.
"Bush found billions for Iraq's election, but has underfunded the 2002 Help America Vote Act, a law intended to give states and localities financial help to develop more reliable balloting systems."
If you don't like that one. try this:
"The Bush administration made sure Iraq got an Independent Electoral Commission to keep the process honest. No such luck in the United States."
This one's a killer:
"It is ironic that one of America's biggest worries is that the elected rulers of Iraq will want to turn it into an Islamist Shi'ite theocracy. Press reports refer hopefully to Allawi as a ''secular Shi'ite."
By that criterion, how should we describe George W. Bush? A secular Christian? I don't think so. He is more determined to remove the separation of church and state and turn America into a theocracy than any chief executive in our history."

Am I the only one who noticed that Iraqis also have a quota for female representatives? I guess since we already have equal rights there's no need for quotas. I know I've seen that argument used against affirmative action.

Since Bush seems to think he has all the money in the world (literally) we can expect to see more of this cavalier attitude toward spending. The money intended to run the country will continue to be poured into the pockets of Darth Cheney's cronies. I'm sure the economy will be as good as new once the trickle-down effect kicks in.

In closing, I offer this recent quote from Fidel Castro:
Castro told his audience he watched Bush's inauguration speech last month and saw the face of a deranged person. Then he quipped "if only it were just the face,"

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