Seriously, Joe Lieberman looks butt-faced ugly. It seems Americans like to have their presidents to be good looking. If you ever see the line up photo of a G7 or G8 conference, the American president is the best looking of the bunch. America always tries to be the best at everything.
Nixon was the exception to the rule, and look what happened to him.
Are you referring to ALL presidents?
Cause I doubt Lincoln would’ve won any beauty contests.
And what of Ford?
You think Carter was handsome?
If you mean Americans in the post-TV era, there might be some truth to that. But it’s not a unanimous thing. Most found JFK handsome, Bill Clinton too I guess… but then there’s Nixon, Ford, Reagan and the Bushes…
There are certainly those who dismiss his policy positions as Bush-without-the-fuckups, but I do think most decisions are made more viscerally. IMHO Lieberman isn’t getting out of single digits because he comes across as a whiny, sanctimonious little prick with a sense of entitlement to the nomination from his being the rightful VP.
It hasn’t helped a bit that virtually all of his favorable mentions have been mostly from the GOP right, not his own party - he represents policies that have to be defeated, not ratified. He’s also the next one to drop out after NH, where he’ll be #3 of 3 among New England candidates and will be too short of money or prospects to keep going.
You know, it’s funny that people ask me that (traveling abroad) all the time. Unlike Democrats who think they understand the Europeans, I actually make an effort to do so. I’m an imperialistic, capitalistic, war-mongering, Jewish conspiracy dupe.
By the way, yes, I’ve traveled overseas a lot. Mostly the Caribbean, but Europe as well. I worked there for two Summers and traveled a lot. I read a lot of European news. Actually, were they not losing their minds, I would be the most hardcore Europhile you’ve ever met.
I like Formula 1, manual transmissions, old buildings, medieval history, Roman history, and speaking my rusty, shitty French. Although, I’m learning Spanish as fast as I can.
Yes, I do count the huge Muslim population in France as “Europeans”.
Actually, Bush “loving” big corporations could mean just about anything. That’s what I was responding to. Personally, I “love” big corporations that turn a profit, provide jobs, don’t rape the environment more than they have to, clean up the mess, and make me lots of neat products that I could never have owned one hundred years ago even if I was Emperor of the World.
As much as globalization sucks for us, China is loving it. Hey, Bush must be a Communist! He’s already a fascist war-mongering raper of all things good and pure.
“Wealth distribution.”
Funny you mention that. A recent study showed that the average American “poor” person is overweight, has cable television, a car, and a “large” place to live. I’m not going to get into the other issue they raised in the spirit of less international mud-slinging.
One nutty leftist actually said, “How can you measure poverty in material things?” That’s almost an exact quote.
I need to find that article.
I find that hard to believe.
Perhaps the study defines “poor” differently.
The homeless who it was feared would die in the recent New England storms come to mind, as well as sharecroppers in the Mississippi Delta.
If you don’t read the whole article, or base your conclusions on the title, you might draw the wrong conclusions. It’s fairly balanced.
Whatever you say about our government, corporations, or interest groups – they intend to give us “cable television” factorial.
The cooperative decision-making will not impede the actual growth of the infrastructructure at the state or the private level for the most part. That, of course, goes on all the time. So, in our system, the pie-in-the-sky nature of what we are all shooting for is mostly a question of details.
In other nations they are pushing hard for more government control, UN control over, or censor the internet.
Nobody really wants anyone to be poor in the USA. Not at the political level or economic level anyway.
“Rising tide…boats.” “Safety net.” “Free trade.” “Global economy.” “No child left behind. Compassionate conservative.” Charitible tax deduction. Hard numbers on entitlement spending. Absolute numbers on foreign aid since, say, 1939. Not the tricked-up numbers that punish us for having a large economy.
Whatever. Sometimes the officers of major corporations do, but nobody with brains would, forget that spreading the wealth around is essential for a healthy world economy.
The only way for large corporations to continue to profit, or for start ups to break in, is to compete. Usually this benefits us. Price competition is one of the most essential concepts in economics.
Obviously, government intervention – especially catching outright corporate con artists – is essential to any capitalist system. Private and many public monopolies, I’d argue, are bad. To prevent monopolies of any kind you must deal with government. At the very minimum, even in a free-for-all capitalist system, you need a court system. That’s government. MOST important of all is for the people, and the government itself, to police the government. That’s was “liberal” philosophy. What that word means in a modern context, I have no idea.
The problems with government, I can’t list in one lifetime. It’s a subject that philosophers have considered for centuries.
This includes, but is not limited to, “large corporations”.
Do you see the Republicans or Democrats taking on AARP over a “senior” drug benefit? Hell no, it’s a question of how much and just how. Poor young people, though covered by other programs for some medical needs, don’t vote. Does anyone really take on the teacher’s unions? No. The federal education budget, though dwarfed by already enormous state spending, is growing. Not enough according to some people. That’s big government, not large corporate control.
Keep in mind that the “teachers” union consists of a growing, though already enormous, bureaucracy – some of the members, though less by percentage over time, actually teach.
Who controls the large texbook corporations? The various school boards. There are some great books on that, and the revision of history along the way.
McDonalds, Microsoft, GM, GE – sure, some of them make bombs and other scary things – are controlled largely by consumer wants and needs viewed collectively. I’m a firm believer in the personal or organized non-violent boycott. I’m boycotting Mecca Cola and habenero peppers.
The article mentions the right to local phone service for poor people. Many people are unaware that such a thing exists in the USA. The radical version of capitalism some conservatives, even in official postions, sell overseas isn’t what we have.
You’ll be sorry you asked now. *Government PDF Warning: long, boring, technical.*It’s somewhat dated, 1998. I don’t think the cable TV industry has suffered substantially since then. Go to page five for an elasticity analysis. Cable TV has been a staple for quite a while. More than food apparently. Moreover, the economic correlations are not as you might think.
The poverty line is fairly high. The objective is not to find the poorest person you can find and generalize, but to look at the “average” poor person in the US. If you’ve observed the criminal justice system you’ve seen someone who starved a child while spending thousands of dollars on a controlled substance. That’s not really a “poverty” problem.
carnivorousplant, eh?
I really like nepenthes, sarracenia, sundews, and VFTs. I grow some butterworts inside.
I plan to vote for him tomorrow. Of course, I’m a Republican and this is part of an plot to push Kerry’s numbers down, but… 
If he by some twist of fate made it to the general election, I’d seriously consider voting for him over Bush. He’s a republican, he’s just in denial.
Way to exploit your state’s unusual laws. I guess it at least proves some Republicans really are afraid of Kerry.
I have voted in the Republican primary against our fat arsed nepotistic gift-receiving Governor. I always thought it had something to do with the Republicans not being able to have a list of Democrats to round up under martial law. 
What’s with Lieberman saying he was in a “three-way tie” for third tonight? With 97% of the votes in, it’s
Wesley Clark 26,554 12.4%
John Edwards 25,849 12.1%
Joseph Lieberman 18,392 8.6%
He’s behind by 3.5% and 7500 votes. That’s not third, it’s fifth. Although on CNN, Bill Schneider says Lieberman came in third… among New Hampshire’s Jewish voters.
I know, I know, he’s trying. Anyway, people are apparently already calling for him to quit; he says he’s in until at least next week. (I tried not to laugh as CNN said he was running very strong in Delaware.) As a more serious analysis: it seems that skipping Iowa hurt Clark and Lieberman, especially Clark because he was an early favorite.
Why wouldn’t he be? Any reasonable examination of the man’s positions shows that’s he’s in the mainstream of the Democratic party on many issues. If you look at the grading of his legislative record by various special interest groups, Planned Parenthood and League of Conservation Voters gave him 100%. The NAACP and The Children’s Defense Fund both gave him a 91%. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence scored him at 90%. Meanwhile, the NRA gave him a “F”, the National Right to Life Committee gave him a 0%, the Business-Industry Political Action Committee (a “welfare reform” advocacy group) gave him a 0%, and a “taxpayers rights” group, Americans for Tax Reform, gave him a 5%. I browsed his positions on healthcare, education and Social Security, and he seemed firmly in the Democratic mainstream on those too. I would say that he’s not a hardcore union supporter (even though the AFL-CIO has graded him with a lifetime score of 82%, and scored his voting in 2002 at 92%) in that he is a supporter of Free Trade, but that is true of Clinton and a lot of recent Democrats as well. So, all that makes him a Republican or the equivalent of President Bush?
He gets painted as being practically a Republican because most of his opponents in the Democratic primary hold similar views as above, while Lieberman’s differences, and the things he’s gotten in the national news about, are his more rightish views: e.g. the importance of religion, his support for the war, and his crusade against “media violence”. None of which seem to be very popular with Democratic supporters on the Internet. But referring to him as a Republican is hyperbole at best. He’s pro-choice, firmly in the Democratic party on fiscal and social-welfare issues, and has a few cultural issues (plus however you’d classify Iraq) where he’s to the right of the Democratic mainstream. And those few issues are essentionally all that gets covered. So, hey, he should just go and join the Republicans, I’m sure they’d love having someone who would probably vote against their issues around 80% or so of the time.
A moderate Republican, certainly not like GW. There isn’t a lot of difference between them and moderate Democrats.
I think that Democrats think he can’t be elected and I think that’s right. As long as GW keeps insisting that “we are in a war” and it is accepted by the people, they will need a good reason not to reelect GW and Lieberman doesn’t supply any good reason. Incumbents get a lot of automatic support in troubled times even though their actions might have been a big factor in originating the trouble.
Moderaties don’t generate a lot of heat which is needed to convince undecideds that they should throw GW out and go through the learning curve with a new administration at such a critical time.
[Johnny Rotten]
" 'e looks loyke a turtle"
[/Johnny Rotten]
Seriously, I think his Yoda-ness has a lot to do with it.
Yoda? Surely you mean Senator Palpatine?
