Goh, wat is het druk

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In de Tweede-Kamercommissie voor Nederlands-Antilliaanse en Arubaanse Zaken (een hele mond vol) is hilariteit ontstaan doordat de nieuwe minister voor Bestuurlijke Vernieuwing en Koninkrijksrelaties (ook een hele mond vol) Alexander Pechtold geen idee schijnt te hebben waar de Antillen ongeveer liggen.

Dat is niet zo fraai van meneer Pechtold. Wageningen, ligt dat eigenlijk op de Veluwe? Op Radio Hoyer hoorde ik vanmorgen enkele commentaren van bekende politici over dit gebrek aan kennis bij de nieuwbakken minister. Daar schrok ik nog meer van. Jozias van Aartsen zei globaal het volgende:

“Ik kan mij dat niet voorstellen, maar ook als het waar is ben ik ervan overtuigd dat de heer Pechtold zich de Antilliaanse materie snel eigen zal maken. En dat moet ook wel, want in de herfst zijn daar verkiezingen.”

In de herfst zijn daar verkiezingen? Volgende week vrijdag vindt hier een Referendum plaats! Ongeacht de uitslag dient zo snel mogelijk hierna overleg met Nederland opgestart te worden over de gewenste nieuwe staatkundige verhoudingen binnen het Koninkrijk. Met daarin een cruciale rol voor Alexander Pechtold.

Het antwoord van Jozias van Aartsen maakt heel wat meer duidelijk dan de netjes geformuleerde maar weinig zeggende antwoorden die ik op mijn brieven aan diverse kamer- en bewindslieden heb gekregen. Ik hoop dat de Referendum Commissie te Curacao vanmorgen ook naar Radio Hoyer heeft geluisterd.

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It’s not uncommon to hear or read pundits referring to President George W. Bush as a “popular” leader or even a “very popular” one. Even some of his critics in the press refer to him this way. Perhaps they need to check the latest polls.

President Bush’s approval rating has plunged to the lowest level of any president since World War II at this point in his second term, the Gallup Organization reported today.

All other presidents who served a second term had approval ratings well above 50% in the March following their election, Gallup reported.

Presidents Truman and Johnson had finished out the terms of their predecessors, and then won election on their own for a second term.

Bush’s current rating is 45%. The next lowest was Reagan with 56% in March 1985.

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President Bush on Tuesday said the Social Security trust fund doesn’t exist, and that the Treasury bonds held by the program are “just IOUs” that will put an added fiscal burden on future generations unless the entitlement program is overhauled.

“There is no trust fund, just IOUs that I saw firsthand that future generations will pay — will pay for either in higher taxes, or reduced benefits, or cuts to other critical government programs,” Bush said in a speech at West Virginia University at Parkersburg.

The remarks, which followed a visit to the federal facility in West Virginia that physically houses copies of the special-interest Treasury bonds held on behalf of the Social Security system, drew immediate denunciations from Democrats.

They charged that Bush was dangerously close to implying that the federal government won’t stand behind trillions of dollars in debt held by creditors around the globe.

In a letter to Bush, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said the president’s recent statements about the trust fund “could raise needless doubts among American and foreign investors about the United States’ willingness to meet its fiscal obligations. This has potentially broad ranging and damaging implications for our economy.”

But the markets didn’t budge. The world obviously knows that Bush has resorted to fantasy regarding his Social Security push. By now, Bush could say that Martians have landed and everyone would say “That’s that idiot just talking out of his ass again”.

But what could happen is impeachment of Bush. Read the Constitution, Fourteenth Amendment, first part of section 4

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.

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Conservatives are attaching themselves like barnacles to the legacy of Pope John Paul II, portraying him as an ideological soulmate of President Bush. Of course, they haven’t always felt that way � especially when the Pope was opposing the President’s policies. Here’s Sean Hannity, from January 2003:

COLMES: �And before you respond, let me just put up what the pope says.

“No to war,” says Pope John Paul II. “during his annual address to scores of diplomatic emissaries to the Vatican� ‘War is not always inevitable,’ he said. ‘It is always a defeat for humanity.’”

Are these a bunch of wild-eyed liberal loonies?

HANNITY: Yes.

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Those who say eclipses herald history-shaping events will find support for their superstition when, on Friday, the Sun will be briefly plunged into darkness on the day of Pope John Paul II’s funeral.

Astronomers, though, say the eclipse, while of a rare and intriguing type, was calculated long ago and is simply part of a ballet in celestial physics between the Sun, Earth and Moon.

It will be visible on Friday along an arc ranging from the southwestern Pacific to South America, at a time it will already be night in Rome.