I agree with the many posts that suggest that these patently partisan utterances from our political class are not only a waste of our time, but are hardly news. However, let us not give the electorate a pass here. How has every election since independence been decided?

Based on mature, measured recommendations for programs that anyone (and I mean any informed voter) could possibly believe actually had any chance of enactment and/or of producing a salubrious result? Clearly NOT!!!

What did the PLP use to secure its most recent election victory (besides the pure luck of having a breakaway FNM faction to divide the vote)? Billboards blaming the serving government for the crime epidemic that the PLP has done precisely nothing about. A plague that the serving PM now wishes to "de-politicize". A phony suggestion that somehow the gaming shops could balance our budget without any economic pain to be suffered by anyone. Really?

Tal takes the FNM to task for not addressing the myriad issues the country faces, including the structural budget deficit problem which has been our lot, since independence, and that is fair criticism. But what party (certainly even Tal cannot credit the serving PLP government) can address serious issues in this country, with serious (read "hard and likely unpopular" decisions) and expect to be re-elected.

We are getting just the kind of huffing, puffing, do nothing, nincompoop government our electorate deserves. We vote on emotion, and we reap drivel designed to offend no one, which will produce no remedy. We get just what we deserve.

As in Rome, when all else fails, hold some games.

Next we can show video of Idi Amin eating his opponents hearts on our government run television station. What a sad state.

Sadly Kalypso is right. Most people on earth, or at least the governments under which most people on earth are forced to live, are anti pluralistic, anti democratic and anti USA. You can include just for starters, China, Russia, North Korea, the entirety of the Islamic world, Venezuela and the rest of leftist South America, and now almost all of continental Africa where despots continue to rule. Is that something you really wish to celebrate Kalypso?

Anyone who doubts that Comrade Fred is anything but a trumped up, lemo riding, phony, communist wanabe, who dreams to live like the Castros, while engaging in the self delusion that he is the defender of the oppressed, must be illiterate. Fred exposes his true self with regularity on these pages.

No wait. The A.G. might take a long trip, say overnight, out of the country and some other cabinet member, say Minister of Little or Nothing, could file a nolle prosequi on behalf of the government on the grounds of national security. Afterwards the government could repeatedly promise to disclose the facts supporting this circumvention of the criminal justice system, and then after a few weeks simply deny any such promise was ever made. Oh, wait a minute. The miscreant here is from the other political party. Excuse me. Nothing to see here. Move on.

"He is satisfied." A new standard in low expectations.

There must be some sort of technical logjam associated with documents awaiting "tabling" in our Parliament. Nearly daily, one or another of the currently serving Cabinet Ministers, including notably our Prime Minister, trumpets the intent to "table" exculpatory documentation, and somehow nothing ever quite gets there.

I would love to see some video of union members on "high alert". I am sure it would be perfect fodder for any number of U.S. comedy TV shows.

...and why not follow this ludicrous reasoning to it's logical conclusion. A union man works for $15 per hour, eight hours a day, for five days a week. That results in compensation of $600 per week.

The law states a week's vacation with pay. That is 7 days times 24 hours or 168 hours at $15 per hour, resulting in vacation pay of $2,520 per week. Isn't that where this ridiculous logic takes you?

And what is shocking about union demands being totally ridiculous?