Business wises up

Back a few years, after 9/11, we went on a business trip to Japan. It was a strange time. If even your deoderant hand an anti-Bush scent, you'd be pummeled by the true believers. Our fellow travelers, American businessmen, all had their sniffers out. "Don't you go there!" one screamed at me when I tried arguing that universal healthcare by simply existing would cut down on lawsuits.

But that was then, and now is now. The Wall Street Journal this morning ran an article entitled "Affluent Voters Switch Brands". I think the most telling line quoted the editor of the Denver Business Journal: "Colorodo already has low taxes and has always. And we began in the 1990's to start feeling the things like higher education and transportation, which coincidentally became more important as economic-development issues for the business community." The Bush administration non-support of infrastructure maintenance perhaps has perhaps slapped a few business leaders across the face.

Pundits on the television of the Republican persuasion are practically begging on their knees for government help in border control, tracking product from China, and so forth. However, the Bush administration has been busy forcing the government down the bath tub drain, as Grover Norquist advocated.

For the past eight years, the hard work of the Republican strategists like Karl Rove has cobbled together a strange coalition of fanatical right wing religious types, I'm talking Jewish as well as Christian, and ginormous corporations. In fact the article begins with a $39,000 a year hispanic Union member lamenting Guiliani as a candidate because of his abortion stance. But between the extremely rich and the extremely hoodwinked, there are millions of fairly practical Americans.

The proof is in the numbers. Currently, 51 per cent of people making $100,000 or more support the Democrats. In 2004, that percentage was 41.

What's best is that for the past six years, I've been labeled a pinko liberal because I thought Bush and his minions were a bunch of jerks. Now I'm back in the middle.

I am, however, very thankful for the Bush people in that they've defined the political extreme. Now maybe everybody can get off of their keisters and actually start doing something.