The days of picking a party’s presidential candidate in a smoke-filled back room are over Investment Services. Now, the party bosses go straight to the television cameras to try to publicly muscle candidates out of the race.
Another unabashed attempt to shove Sen. Hillary Clinton out of the race for the White House emerged this past weekend as a few more prominent Democrats called for her exit. Clinton, who has proved herself to be remarkably resilient in this campaign, dutifully brushed off the shameful strong-arm tactics, saying people have a right to vote.
We think Clinton should stay in the race for now and allow the remaining states to have a voice in this important contest. She also owes it to voters in Florida and Michigan, two large states where Democratic voters have been completely disenfranchised. …
Democrats who want Hillary out of the race will contend she’s hurting the party. But by trying to force her out, they, too, run the risk of furthering any divide in their ranks.
Watertown (N.Y.) Daily Times, on Medicare and Social Security [March 29.]:
The annual report by the government’s Medicare and Social Security trustees could be too easily brushed aside as nothing new since the predicted dates for the insolvency of the country’s two largest entitlement programs are the same as last year. Investment Services In fact, they really have not changed in the last five years.
But that means five years have elapsed without Washington confronting the financial challenges facing the programs that serve 50 million people, a number that will grow significantly as the nation’s 76 million baby boomers begin to receive Social Security retirement benefits this year. …
Although time grows short, Congress and the White House cannot agree on changes to strengthen the programs. Congress has rejected President Bush’s attempts to allow workers to divert Social Security contributions into private investment accounts, which Democrats say will jeopardize future retirement benefits. They have also said no to benefit changes that might lower costs, preferring internal program modifications to reduce expenses.
The longer the government puts off reforms, the more difficult it will be to make changes.
… We need to hear more from our presidential candidates on what they intend to do.
Los Angeles Times, on the Summer Games and China [March 29]:
Despite its best efforts, Beijing may be losing the battle to script the Summer Games. The real revelation in recent footage of protests over the Beijing Olympics was not the image of a Reporters Without Borders demonstrator being dragged away by security guards dressed like stewards on the Hindenburg. It was that during his protest, at the Athens torch-lighting ceremony, the sole camera feed cut first to a long shot making it difficult to see what was happening, then cut away entirely — Investment Services to stock footage. Later, coverage returned to the main event: a boom-camera shot of a stately ceremony featuring women in faux-classical gowns.
This is the kind of emergency editing that viewers of Syrian or Burmese TV are accustomed to seeing when the news takes a direction unfavorable to local dictators. It says something about the so-called spirit of the Olympics that the first inclination of the people covering the event was to try to suppress unwanted information. …
At times like these, it’s customary to repeat bromides about how the grandeur of amateur competition should transcend parochial interests. And it’s true that legitimate concerns about human rights, democracy and the behavior of authoritarian thugs can lead to knee-jerk politicization of the event — such as recent strident calls for Bush to shun the Games.
But this is shaping up to be the most exciting political Olympics since the end of the Cold War. … Strife, ferment and the painful progress toward liberal modernity by a freedom-challenged great power may not be what the International Olympic Committee prefers to show us, Investment Services but it’s a lot more interesting than another round of sports utopianism and pretty production values.
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