EXTEND RETIREMENT AGE AT 60 TO ALL WORKERS

Both The Financial Times and The New York Times have come out in the last few days supporting Nicolas Sarkozy's rash plan to require French workers to work until 62 before they can collect their government retirement payments. This is editorial hubris.

No one should be forced to go to work after age 60. The body slows down and is unable to do the manual and mental work as if it were 30. It was a mistake for the U.S. Congress to require that American workers stay on the job until age 67. French workers are right to protest Sarkozy's un-thought-out and rash plans to apply the same harsh work requirements upon French society.

SON OF SARKOZY NOMINATED FOR TOP JOB IN FRANCE BUSINESS DISTRICT

Nicolas Sarkozy's 23-year old son, Jean Sarkozy, is being nominated to head Epad, an organization which supervises France's top business district, La Defence. This is an outrageous and insulting use of crass political influence to obtain a lucrative job for the son of the president of France.

Reports the BBC:

"Amid calls of nepotism, more than 40,000 people signed an online petition calling for Mr Sarkozy Jnr to pull-out."

If Jean Sarkozy did not have the Sarkozy name, would he even be considered for an internship at Epad? As it is, the Epad job will reward beyond the expectations of most 23-year olds.

BUSH TRIES TO DEFLECT FINANCIAL BLAME, REFUSES TO HELP OUT SMALL HOMEOWNER

Did you catch President Bush's self-serving speech yesterday to the conservative Manhattan Institute at the Federal Building on Broad and Wall? Dan Eggen reports the speech for today's The Washington Post:

"The president's remarks clearly sought to influence a debate that appears headed in a direction Bush and his aides do not favor, just two months before he leaves office. Many of the world's most influential world leaders, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, have advocated bold reforms including, to use a Sarkozy example, restrictions on executive pay.

"The speech came as the Bush administration still struggles to implement the faltering federal bailout package, while fending off calls from President-elect Barack Obama and other Democrats for additional stimulus measures. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. acknowledged Wednesday that the administration had abandoned its initial plan to buy distressed mortgage securities, focusing instead on offering aid to banks and other lenders to shore up credit markets."

Bush claims that the current financial melt-down stems not from the lax regulatory policy of his administration but has been building for decades, thus trying to cast the blame on Clinton and former administrations, including that of his father. Bush is so transparent. He wants so much to deflect blame and cast himself as the great leader capable of no wrong.

Bush claims that American capitalism can solve its own problems, thereby cutting off Sarkozy and Merkel's proposals for stricter financial markets regulation. What he is saying is that he refuses to help those homeowners who are now or in the immediate future risking foreclosure of their homes and mortgages. But he conveniently omits the 700 billion plus bail-out of the large Wall Street banks. So here is Bush's policy - help the banks and insurance companies who cannot meet their obligations but damn the poor sucker who cannot pay his or her mortgage.

Reports Eggen:

"Bush also argued that "the crisis was not a failure of the free market system" and that leaders should "not try to reinvent that system." Rather, he said, global leaders need to "fix the problems we face, make the reforms we need, and move forward with the free-market principles that have delivered prosperity and hope to people around the world."

""If you seek economic growth, if you seek opportunity, if you seek social justice and human dignity, the free market system is the way to go," Bush said to another burst of applause. "And it would be a terrible mistake to allow a few months of crisis to undermine 60 years of success."

"But Grant Aldonas, a former senior trade official in the Bush administration now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the tenor of the speech suggests Bush "does not understand his moment." He also said the administration has lost authority to argue against government intervention in the markets.

""The disabling of capitalism has already begun and he's the one who started it," Aldonas said. "It rings hollow for an awful lot of people, not only in the marketplace but for world leaders abroad. . . . They are the ones who are going to have the leverage at the table.""

BOGUS PHONE CALL TO SARAH PALIN VIOLATES HER RIGHT TO PRIVACY

Political Wire alerted me to the telephone call made by those radio guys from Montreal to Sarah Palin where they pretended to be Nicolas Sarkozy.

At first I thought the bogus telephone call to Sarah Palin to be quite funny. But upon some reflection, I think it was mean and even an invasion of Palin's right to privacy in her telephone conversations.


I support Barack Obama 100% and don't think Palin is at all ready to be VP. But the phone call was wrong and I feel bad for Sarah Palin.

BUSH DOMINATES EUROPEAN "LEADERS" - THEY PARROT BUSH'S ANTI-IRANIAN THREATS

It amazes me to think that the lame duck George Bush has obtained the support of the major European leaders in his bullying of Iran over its nuclear development. Merkel, Sarkozy and now Brown. These "leaders" turn out to be abject followers, and George Bush turns out to be their dominator. Talk about Tony Blair being Bush's poodle. The present leaders especially Gordon Brown are but Bush's toads.

The BBC reports:

"Mr Brown said Britain would urge Europe to impose "further sanctions" on Iran and Europe would take action to freeze the overseas assets of the country's biggest bank and impose new sanctions on oil and gas.

"President Bush thanked Mr Brown for his "strong statement" and added: "The Iranians must understand that when we come together and speak with one voice we are serious.""

We have seen all this bluster and threatening talk before from Bush preceding the invasion and war in Iraq. Let's hope time prevents the bully Bush and his suck-ups from doing even worse as to Iran.

DON'T UNDERESTIMATE GEORGE BUSH AND HARM HE CAN DO IN HIS SEVEN MONTHS TO GO

George Bush at his news conference with French president Nicolas Sarkozy made it a point to warn Iran that "all options are on the table," code for mounting a military attack.

This is the quintessential George Bush - always threatening, hectoring, dictating. What a bully this guy is. Here we see Bush's foreign policy. No, not diplomacy or negotiations but threats and warnings. Who says that Bush will not fire missiles at Iran and its people before he leaves office? I am not so sure.

Incidentally, Bush tells the Iranian people that their leaders are causing all sorts of problems because they want to develop nuclear power. Yet if Bush does attack Teheran, guess who will be the victims? None other than the Iranian people that Bush is trying to set against the Iranian leaders.

Must the United States and its people suffer this bullying bluster and threat-making for another long seven months? This guy Bush is a serious threat to world peace and world order. He can do a lot of damage in the time he has left.

JIMMY CARTER CRITICIZES EUROPEAN LEADERS FOR NOT DENOUNCING ISRAEL'S UNJUST TREATMENT OF PALESTINIANS

The Guardian has an article by Jonathan Steele and Jonathan Freedland about former president Jimmy Carter criticizing a "supine" Europe for failing to protest the Israeli blockade of Palestinians in Gaza.

Write Steele and Freedland:

"Britain and other European governments should break from the US over the international embargo on Gaza, former US president Jimmy Carter told the Guardian yesterday. Carter, visiting the Welsh border town of Hay for the Guardian literary festival, described the EU's position on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as "supine" and its failure to criticise the Israeli blockade of Gaza as "embarrassing"."

Carter is the only American out there who is not afraid to go up against the powerful Israeli lobby and denounce Israel's unjust and criminal collective punishment of the Palestinians.

Steele and Freedland report more on Carter's speech:

"The blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza, imposed by the US, EU, UN and Russia - the so-called Quartet - after the organisation's election victory in 2006, was "one of the greatest human rights crimes on Earth," since it meant the "imprisonment of 1.6 million people, 1 million of whom are refugees". "Most families in Gaza are eating only one meal per day. To see Europeans going along with this is embarrassing," Carter said."

Carter brings up a subject upon which European leaders such as Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown have been strangely silent. And how about the silence of former prime minister Tony Blair? He has a job of trying to bring peace to Palestine, yet he has remained incommunicado. Why hasn't he spoken up as Carter? Europe's leaders are a milquetoast bunch. They loudly protest against Iran's development of nuclear power but they are mute when it comes to Israel's enforcement of collective punishment.