This Is Really Great News


New England NumbersUSA has the opportunity to protest both of America's worst legislators on the immigration issue during the first week of July. Bush on July 1st and Kennedy on July 4th and both will be within an hour from Boston. We would like to get as much help as we can get from the state organizations and the New England Minutemen.



THE RUSSIANS - HISTORY - ARE COMING TO MAINE

President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet on July 1 at the Bush compound in Kennebunkport. In diplomatic terms, relations between the two countries -- once both superpowers, and now down to one superpower and one former -- are "strained." That's a euphemism for not getting along so well. So a face-to-face chat over lobster rolls and strawberry shortcake on lovely Walker's Point is probably a good idea.


From a strictly provincial point of view, it's also great for Maine and New England. The word "historic" is too loosely used these days, but this meeting may well turn out to make history, given the state of the world and the differences between the two nations.


President Bush needs a success -- and so does Putin, who always has trouble at home. A new commitment to cooperation on the world stage would be welcomed by the world and do the respective presidents standings in the polls and the history books some good.


Northern New England has been the site of at least two major diplomatic events in the past century: the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 in New Hampshires' White Mountains, where an agreement was reached by all 45 Allied nation on worldwide monetary order; and the 1905 meetings in Portsmouth, N.H. that ended the Russo-Japanese war.


Will there be a Treaty of Kennebunkport? Probably not. But the meeting puts our state on the world stage while two of the world's most powerful men have a chance to make the world a better place.


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