Posts Tagged ‘American Politics’

“There are no cats in America, and the street are paved with cheese”. Thanks to the artistic genius of Steven Speilberg, the song containing these words filled the mousehole of the Mousekewitz family in Russia late in the 19th century. Though persecuted and with few freedoms, the family had hope, and they dreamed of a…

This is D-Day. If everything goes as planned, the Senate will vote tonight on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. The vote comes none too soon. Both Clarence Thomas (win or lose tonight) and Anita Hill are losers. Their reputations are sullied. Their veracity in doubt. One of them lied, under…

Albuquerque- Across the U.S. are more than 500 federal laboratories operated by 14 different federal agencies. Many of the best known labs are weapons labs — such as New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the atomic bomb was invented, as depicted in the movie Fat Man and Little Boy. But in the post-cold war era,…

Remember the “Misery Index”? The Misery Index is a good example of how the economy influences politicians. The Misery Index was used first by President Reagan in presidential election campaigns. It is equal to the sum of inflation and unemployment rates. Applied to presidential elections of the 1950’s, the index was under 6 and under…

The state of the union was an especially noteworty event this year. First, George Bush became the sixth president in this century to stand before the Congress as commander-in-chief of a nation at war. Second, the demonstration of unity and support for American forces in the Persian Gulf was overwhelming. It was also a welcome…

Fickle polls. A panicky Congress. Here we go again. Polls released this week show approval of President Bush’s conduct in the Mideast crisis dropping more than 30 points – from 82% to 51% approval rating since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. As every pollster knows, public opinion is most likely to change dramatically on issues…

The vitality of the pro-democracy movements in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union is causing military and civilian intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic to overhaul their estimates of the Soviet threat. Many think diminished threats to American national security should be reflected in the nation’s spending priorities. Estimates of the size of…