In the words of John Crichton, a character from the Sci-Fi Channel’s hit show ‘Farscape,’…
‘We’re so screwed.’
I can’t help but laugh at the political landscape of my own country. Just the other day Democratic (liberal) candidate Howard Dean lost a minor local race in Iowa, and then got on stage and started a screaming rant. I’m not making this up! He proceeded to let our a screeching yell at the crowd! He LOST it! And he wants to be president… wait a minute… a LOT of people want him to be president!
On the other hand, GWB, a republican (conservative,) and our current president has promptly taken away one freedom after another under the guise of ‘homeland security.’ That sounds SO much like a term that might have been used by a certain european power in the early 1900s. Then, during his ‘State of the Union’ speech (read: first political speech of the year for him) he basically says everything’s fine. We haven’t been attacked by any crazy arabs in a WHILE! And hey, the Dow Jones (major stock indicator) is way up! So everything’s fine! Never mind that he raises the national debt every time he opens his mouth!
Then there’s Wesley Clark, conquerer of Kosovo. He actually ridiculed fellow presidential candidate ‘John Kerry’ because Kerry only attained the rank of Lieutenent, whereas Clark was a General! What a child!
Al Gore, perennial presidential hopeful, was caught giving a speech on ‘global warming’ on the coldest day in 35 years! It was -45f outside!!
Dick (inappropriately named) Gephardt, another hopeful, entered the race to promote lesbianism… LOL! Think about that!
I heard of another guy running, John Edwards… I thought he had a show called ‘crossing over’ where he convinced people he was talking to their dead relatives… maybe I have the wrong guy.
I guess I just won’t vote this time. I’m screwed no matter what! Is it this bad in other countries?
That depends on your perspective, I think. Compared to European politics, all American politicians have the exact same views, a very narrow spectrum. The Europeans have a much broader range, and you can never really predict where the country’s going to be politically in 20 years. Whether or not that’s a bad thing, I guess it would have to be your point of view.
John Edwards is not the same guy who plays a psychic on TV. Edwards is the most “normal” of all the contenders for the democratic nomination. Kerry is second most normal, and he’s pulled his fair share of weird stunts, like posing in an electric-blue surfing body-suit and cussing up a storm in interviews to make younger voters think he’s less stodgy. He’s also claimed that the best motion picture for 2003 was the movie “Old School.”
Clark’s a funny guy too, he went before Congress in 2002 and made the case for war, and then switched his position on the war three times last September. He claims to be an anti-war candidate, but he tried to start World War III in Kosovo when he ordered the British to attack the Russians because the Russians had occupied an airport that Clark wanted his own forces to have. Fortunately the British officer in command told Clark where to get off, and Bill Clinton fired Clark for the lunacy.
All I know is that if any body besides bush whens the race I’m ganna do a back flip. well try to, i’ll probably break my neck but it well be well worth it. How ever we all know in the back of our minds that bush is ganna win. God save us all.
Think about this… if you were to go around telling everyone that our country is controlled by these two massive, self-serving organizations, that they control every aspect of our government, people would think that you were some wacko conspiracy nut.
BUT, that’s exactly what is happening, and the two organizations are the Democrats and the Republicans… when was the last time our country wasn’t under the control of one of them?
And I personnaly believe that stage most of these squables between the two parties, to polarize the voters so that they will vote for either a Democrat or Republican… otherwise they might go with one of the “independent” parties.
Do you know the simpsons epsiode in which the two aliens try to become president?
Well, I can´t say that here in europe it´s much better.
Here we have socialistic-democrats (SPD) and christ-democrats (CDU).
CDU is a bit more conservative, but all in all it doesn´t really seem to matter that much who you vote for.
I don’t think it’s any better here (in Belgium that is). Mostly that has to do with the infamous Linguistic Frontier between the Dutch and the French speaking part of the population. There’s also an minor region of German speaking people. Because of this separation into three communities, there are numerous councils and governments. But there are also three regions (Flemish region, Walloon region and Brussels-Capital region). These too have several councils. So in the Chamber of Deputies, the Senate and the Parliament there’s a multilingual bunch of people, each representing different councils and governments. It’s just a mess
Nowadays, VLD (liberal) and SP.a-SPIRIT (socialists) are the parties in power, together with the Walloon parties MR and PS. Other parties which play a certain role are: CD&V (christian-democrats), Vlaams Blok (extreme right), Groen! (the green guys), NV-A (Flemish nationalist party), PSC, PRL, …
Still, I prefer this system instead of the American one…
Here in England I think the situation is a little better. It’ true that lots of people complain that Tony Blair just mindlessly follows George Bush, but hey, at least he’s not the one doing the leading. If you see what I mean. We have two main political parties - the Labour Party, and The Conservatives. Up until recently Labour have called themselves socialists, but that’s still almost what they are. And the conservatives are basically similar, except more right-wing (is that right? I always getleft and right confused when it comes to politics). If you’re interested, labour are in power at the moment, and I probably plan to vote for them when I grow up.
And of course, we hae the Monster Ravig Loony Party - omrlp.com/.
I don’t know much about politics, so if anyone would like to correct me, please do.
You are right, er, I mean correct. The Conservative party in England is to the right of the Labour, like how the Republicans are to the right of the Democrats. It’s ironic of course, since it is the Democrats attacking Bush on the Iraq issues, while the Conservatives attack Blair.
I like the Parliament system in Britain a bit better than the way America runs the House of Representatives. The Parliament seems more interesting, maybe that’s why its members actually show up. If you ever see the House on one of the cable channels, you’ll see one guy giving a speech and practically no one else in the room. By contrast in the Parliament you get to see Howard and Blair squaring off…much more entertaining.
I also think the US should adopt a Britain-like method of selecting a president - he/she should be chosen by the senate, serve ONE six year term, no re-election. That way he won’t spend his whole term trying to get re-elected.
hmm about our situation in Finland even i think that no-one’s intrested
we have “multiparty-system”… like for example in last parliament elections there were 19 different political parties.
biggest ones:
Center Party (somewhere in the midle) 24.7%
Social Democratic Party (“left-wing”) 24.5%
National Coalition Party (“right-wing”) 18.6%
Left Alliance (ex-commies) 9.9%
Greens 8.0%
Christian Democrats 5.3%
Swedish People’s Party 4.6%
Basic Finns 1.6%
…
in goverment there is now centre party, social democrats and swedish speaking party…
president elected by popular vote for a six-year term, parliament by 5 year term…
hehe there was actually couple parties also in last elections that could almost be called national socialists, but they only got like ~0.1% of votes like “blue-white party” (our flag’s colors are blue cross on white background) well that is one of those tiny tiny weird veryright parties, but i’m not sure maybe calling them national socialists is litle too much…
well also we had communist party that got 0.8% of votes…
also there was many other silly tiny parties
People make too much of a big deal of that, the whole Skull and Bones thing. I’m not a Kerry supporter, but people need to find actual arguments against their opponents! The Skull and Bones Society’s conspiracy theorists are far more cultlike than the club itself.
Sure, Bush and Kerry were both members of a certain secret society. But were they best friends? No. Were they blood brothers? Not that I know of . Were they involved in any conspiracies together? Probably not, because the most reliable sources indicate that Skull and Bones is really more of a social group, despite its morbid themes and several ex-members who went on to become prominent in American politics. There’s no evidence that the group has been involved in any conspiracies.
In short: Not a big deal. Don’t attack Kerry because of a distant connection to Bush from many, many years ago. Instead, discredit him with actual facts, such as his early support for the Iraq war and his yea vote on the USA-PATRIOT Act.
…and his claims that he’s never even heard of botox despite the fact that his wife is a big botox supporter. And speaking of his wife, don’t forget the marry-for-money-divorce-rinse-repeat schtick.
And don’t forget the lame motorcyle riding, or the wind surfing, or that he said “Old School” should get the Academy Award for best motion picture, or deliberately cussing in an interview to sound cool, or throwing his military medals back in protest of the Vietnam war, or the admission that it wasn’t really his medals that he threw, or his zombie-speech…
There are plenty of reasons to personally dislike John Kerry.
. I know now what I DON’T want to be 
.
like “blue-white party” (our flag’s colors are blue cross on white background) well that is one of those tiny tiny weird veryright parties, but i’m not sure maybe calling them national socialists is litle too much… 