FROM THE BARREL OF MY PEN
By Gonzalo “Jun” Policarpio


AMERICA NEEDS A CHRISTIAN LEADER


Honesty, pure and simple, in conveying his thoughts to the American people is the thing that lifts former Arkansas governor and Baptist pastor Mike Huckabee to the first from the last among Republican presidential hopefuls. It clearly tell us that he does what he preaches unlike the widely perceived political “hypocrites” among his rivals for the presidency of the United States.


Huckabee stunned the so-called political pundits dominating television and radio when he mentioned Christmas as a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ in his recent television advertisement. These fanatics of what is termed “political correctness” generally equates mere mention of Jesus or Chirist as anti-Semitic or a violation of the principle of church and state. Their irrational propensity to abhor anything Christian made them see things in their television screen such as a floating cross behind the picture of Huckabee taken against a backdrop of a bookcase and a window pane.


It's time for a Christian leader to lead America in this present terrified world. Mike Huckabee is just telling the truth about the current Bush administration's “bunker mentality” in conducting American foreign policies. Though our brave American soldiers fulfilled their duties in fighting and dying for America against any threat to our security, I believe that another war would not be according to God's will that could cost the loss of millions of lives of Americans and non-Americans.


As the world celebrates Christmas on December 25th, let the message of “Peace on Earth” through the birth of Christ reverberate in the war-torn countries as well as in the war-torn minds of some of our political leaders. Let the incoming new year of 2008 offer a new American leader who possesses true compassion to his fellowmen, most importantly the oppressed peoples of the world.




HOW THE AMERICAN AMBASSADOR THINKS OF GMA


As long as there are food crumbs falling from the tables of the rich and powerful, as long as there are garbage coming from business establishments, as long as there are similarly corrupt and illegal ways to earn a living available to those who can do it, and as long as Gloria Macapagal Arroyo controls the people's money that she uses to buy the loyalty of military, police, local, and congressional leaders, she will remain de facto president of the Philippines forever if she wishes it. The only thing that could stop her hegemony given such abounding powers is sickness.


So this Christmas season, let's wish President Arroyo a longer and healthy life and let her remain the leader of the Filipino people for I am beginning to think the people deserves her kind of leadership. Don't you believe this is how the U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines think, too?


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