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5 Comments

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  souryeki at 08:12 AM JST - 2nd August

  So the main focus of Aso is North Korea`s "threat".

  "The party that protects Japan and its people is the LDP", I have to disagree, it`s the US army that protects Japan here.

  This really looks like what the administration of Bush focused on to get popular support, but Aso should be aware of several things: 1. There hasnt been deadly attack/ direct agression from North Korea on Japans territory (except for the...abductions of a few people back in 1977 ?) 2. The main concern of Japan should not be North Korea that needles Japan with some fireworks sometimes but more internal situation of Japan. 3. As for protecting Japan from North Korea, having earned the support of China to set an embargo on caviar and foie gras against North Korea... Is the man serious in believing that this is a major victory ? 4. Aso should remember that playing too much with the fear of people may result in the opposite outcome. For instance in the US, after 8 years of "fear Islam" campaign, the new president of the US is a black person of muslim confession. Fear works heh ?

  On the content, the focus is different but as for the way to achieve it, nobody has a clue of how to. Except that Aso has had more than a year to show the public how clumsy and incompetent he is, that may be DPJ`s best advantage in the campain.

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  sf2k at 08:28 AM JST - 2nd August

  If I play tennis with Andre Agassi all he has to do is keep the ball in play and watch me miss hit and commit double faults what have you. Agassi need not do anything at all, or play hard, or try to beat me, I will commit all the errors necessary to beat myself.

  All Hatoyama has to do is let Aso speak. The precentage of error from those lips are enough to secure victory, and as long as Hatoyama is steady and just plays nice and answers all the questions thoughtfully he cannot lose.

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  herefornow at 10:46 AM JST - 2nd August

  If Aso and the LDP manage to squeak out a win using these kinds of tactics, then any hope I may have had for the future of Japan will pretty much evaporate. Japan needs change much more than the U.S. did, despite how bad Bush was. He only set back the U.S. for eight years. The LDP has run amuck pretty much uninterrupted for over 50. By the way, there's a pretty balanced article in today's Daily Yomiuri about reactions to the two manifestos. About the only folks who really support the LDP's are the bureaucrats who basically drafted it.

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  Statistician at 03:34 PM JST - 2nd August

  DPJ's proposal to scrap highway tolls would make life so much easier in Japan.

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  sf2k at 12:59 PM JST - 3rd August

  why scrap them at all though? Isn't Japan in massive debt? Not everything has to be for spending.

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