Like I live in Canada and love our US neigbour but I have been so sick of hearing:
Gore annouces new running mate.
Gore confirms new vice-president.
Gore re-confirms Liberman will accept.
Ect,etc
Like who cares.
Alright already we know already!
Day after day after day is it slow news or what?
It appears to me that the press down there and up hear keep us imformed too much about upcoming elections and thus really actually influence the outcome since all people hear is Liberman, Liberman and when they goto the booth they only click the names they hear?
Could there be any truth to this?
Make the announcements for a couple days let us know then move onto something else…
Does anyone else see it this way?
Even after the obvious Democratic nominee, Gore, announces his running mate, Lieberman, they still have a convention to do… what? Keep the balloon & confetti business going? Keep triagular sign-makers busy? Discuss the party platform that hasn’t changed since Truman integrated the armed forces?
And the @!#?@! Big 3 networks will cover it for at least an hour every night.
Every election year after 1968 has been a bore. Not that I want any assassinations to spice things up. But maybe a couple riots couldn’t hurt. Plus, I might be able to pick up a new TV. :D:D
This probably belongs in a different forum, but what the heck…
IMHO, the whole process has become a joke. The two Presidential Candidates were pretty much set six months before the elections. The conventions have become useless (don’t pick on the Democrats, the Republicans did the same thing, naming the VP candidate before the convention). The whole thing is just too damn long. The news media try to make news out of things like a 1% change in the polls, or “Gore sneezes” or “Bush has tacos for lunch.” Feh.
The biggest risk is that the majority of the voters are so bored that they don’t bother to vote.
Other democracies can do the election bit in a few months, I don’t understand why the U.S. process starts over a year ahead of the election, costing many millions more dollars than a fixed three or four month time frame.
I think in this case, the Democrats were a little worried because the GOP convention seemed to go very well, and was extremely positive (whether you agree with their platforms or not; they made headlines, took the attention off the Dems and got in the spotlight with mostly positive press).
In order to gain some ground back, seems to me, Gore wanted to make waves as quickly as possible. The big news at the GOP was the veep candidate, so Gore tried to play a money card by doing the same thing prior to their convention. While I think Joe Lieberman is a fine choice for vice president, I think the choice was made merely to gain publicity and show how “progressive” the left is by nominating the VERY FIRST EVER, REAL LIVE JEWISH CANDIDATE ON A NATIONAL TICKET! WOO HOO!!
Or maybe I’m just being cynical. :rolleyes:
The pandering, sanctimonious prick! Brown-nosing for the Hispanic vote, is he? You KNOW the man REALLY had a hankering for bologna on Wonder Bread with mayo. Or maybe a nice Welsh Rabbit and three martinis at one of the tables down at Mory’s. Christ, the phony bastard makes me puke!
So. Did he have the chicken al pastor or the pork in red sauce or the chile verde?
– Uke, Food-Obsessed Left-Wing News Junkie
Y’know, this thread has wandered directly into the poor quality of the U.S. presidential selection process (NTTAWWT), but the OP actually highlighted a different problem with 20/21 Century life in North America. Radio stations spend so little energy actually collecting and reporting news, that they have reduced themselves to repeating sound bites off the wires each half hour.
This degenerates into the following drivel:
7:00 a.m. - Secretary Albright plans to fly to Mexico City to meet with the newly elected president of Mexico later today to discuss border issues.
8:00 a.m. - Secretary Albright has left her office to fly to Mexico City to meet with the newly elected president of Mexico later today to discuss border issues.
9:00 a.m. - Secretary Albright has boarded the plane to fly to Mexico City to meet with the newly elected president of Mexico later today to discuss border issues.
10:00 a.m. - Secretary Albright has ben served her peanuts aboard her flight to Mexico City to meet with the newly elected president of Mexico later today to discuss border issues.
ad nauseam
Rather than take the time (and spend the money) to develop an actual newscast, each station tries to claim that it is always “on top of the news” with late-breaking information, while serving up the same tired “updates” endlessly throughout the day.
(This is a separate issue from that of whether a station could justify spending the money on a real news program–and probably alienate their listening audience. The issue, here, is not that they do news on the cheap, but that, having chosen “news lite” they bombard us with monotonous repetition of the same story all day long.)
As to it being a U.S. problem, I certainly do not hear anything different from the Canadian stations out of Windsor (which could be corrupted by its proximity to Detroit) or Leamington, London, or a half dozen other Canadian towns.
Here’s my take…
Dear Media. (yeah, you too)
I'm happy Gore finally picked someone. He picked Joe Lieberman. Yay. Whoop-ee. We get the idea that he's the first jewish VP canadate. Whee. Now, can we get on with real news?
Up Yours,
Saint Zero
PS: I still get the shakes and start yelling when I hear anything related to that damn cuban kid come on television. At this rate, I’ll have to get therapy.
Don’t despair, guys. Somewhere out there, this very second, there’s a Kennedy getting ready to meet his or her maker, and the media will drop Lieberman like a hot potato.
And then get ready for another two-week tribute to the JFK/RFK mystique that newspaper editors just can’t seem to get over.
> the VERY FIRST EVER, REAL LIVE JEWISH CANDIDATE ON A NATIONAL TICKET
Not true. Nancy Lord, 1992 Libertarian vice-presidential nominee, is Jewish & was on every state’s ballot.
This just in: Sen. Lieberman is still Jewish. (In case you hadn’t heard.)
Does anyone else think Sen. Lieberman sounds like the Dad from ALF?
Egads, that is too true. 
Definitely, but heck if I know where. I guess at this point it best resembles a generalized rant against the press’ making “news” out of perfectly ordinary events, so I’ll send it to the Pit to see what the professional ranters can do with it.
cmkeller said:
So, I turned on the radio on the way home from work, and what do I hear?
Charles Kennedy, son of Robert F. Kennedy, had a serious accident when he was thrown from his horse. Reports on his medical condition pending.
I swear, I’m gonna convert to Judaism, 'cause they get the best premonitions.
The only reason I would convert to Judaism would be to get Shayna’s interest, then I would only need to be a year older…