Well, what can we expect from a society that considers Baby Quiche and Baby carrots to be delicacys?
I always say that we have precisely the candidates and government we deserve, no better and no worse. It is simply unfair for people to get upset with politicians for promising the moon and then breaking their promises, because nobody, BUT NOBODY votes for someone who really tells the truth. When you get right down to it, there is really only one campaign promise. All campaign promises are simply variations of the one campaign promise. The one campaign promise is “I will give you what you want and it won’t cost you anything.” This is the only campaign promise because if a politician promises anything else, he or she cannot possibly get elected. Most people don’t really want to be told painful truths, they want to be told what they want to hear, and what they want to hear is that they can get whatever it is that they want without pain. Now, of course, this is totally unrealistic. The world doesn’t work that way. If you want the pleasure of the new pair of custom Dehners, you have to endure the pain of forking over the bucks to get them. But so long as most people insist on only voting for politicians who make impossible promises, they have no right to be upset when the promises aren’t kept. And this is the last thing I will say on this BB that isn’t DIRECTLY related to horses! I just kind of felt left out when I saw that every other person on this BB apparently has weighed in with their views. Oh well, think of the good part that we all can agree on: in just five more days we won’t have to endure any more political advertisements on television!
Just to lighten things up a bit, here’s a funny for y’all:
Jim Lehrer: Welcome to the second presidential debate between Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W. Bush. The candidates have agreed on these rules: I will ask a question. The candidate will ignore the question and deliver rehearsed remarks designed to appeal to the undecided women voters. The opponent will then have one minute to respond by trying to frighten senior citizens into voting for him. when a speaker’s time has expired, I will whimper softly while he continues to spew incomprehensible statistics for three more minutes.
Let’s start with the vice president. Mr. Gore, can you give us the name of a downtrodden citizen and then tell us his or her story in a way that strains the bounds of common sense?
Gore: As I was saying to Tipper last night after we tenderly made love the way we have so often during the 30 years of our rock-solid marriage, the downtrodden have a clear choice in this election. My opponent wants to cut taxes for the richest 1 percent of Americans. I, on the other hand, want to put the richest 1 percent in an iron clad lockbox so they can’t hurt old people like Roberta Frampinhamper, who is here tonight. Mrs. Frampinhamper has been selling her internal organs, one by one, to pay for gas so that she can travel to these debates and personify problems for me. Also, her poodle has arthritis.
Lehrer: Gov. Bush, your rebuttal.
Bush: Governors are on the front lines every day, hugging people, crying with them, relieving suffereing anywhere a photo opportunity exists. I want to empower those crying people to make their own decisions, unlike my opponent, whose mother is not Barbara Bush.
Lehrer: Let’s turn to foreign affairs. Gov. Bush, if Slobodan Milosevic were to launch a bid to return to power in Yugoslavia, would you be able to pronounce his name?
Bush: The current administration had eight years to deal with that guy and didn’t get it done. If I’m elected, the first thing I would do about that guy is have Dick Cheney confer with our allies. And the Dick would present me several options for dealing with that guy. And the Dick would tell me which one to choose. You know, as governor of Texas, I have to make tough foreign policy decisions every day about how we are goig to deal with New Mexico.
Lehrer: Mr. Gore, your rebuttal.
Gore: Foreign policy is something I’ve always been keenly interested in. I served my country in Vietnam. I had an uncle who was a victim of poison gas in World War I. I myself lost a leg in the Franco-Prussion War. And when that war was over, I came home and tenderly made love to Tipper in a way that any undecided woman voter would find romantic. If I’m entrusted with the office of president, I pledge to deal knowledgeably with any threat, foreign or comestic, by putting it in an iron clad lockbox. BEcause the American people deserve a president who can comfort them with simple metaphors.
Lehrer: Vice President Gore, how would you reform the Social Security system?
Gore: It’s a vital issue, Jim. That’s why Joe Liberman and I have proposed changing the laws of mathematics to allow us to give $50,000 to every senior citizen without having it cost the federal treasury a single penny until the year 2250. In addition, my budget commites 60 trillion over the next 10 years to guarentee that all senior citizens canhave drugs delivered free to their homes every Monday by a federal employee who will also help them with the child-proof cap.
Lehrer: Gov. Bush?
Bush: That’s fuzzy math. I know, because as governor of Texas, I have to do math every day. I have to add up the numbers and decide whether I’m going to fill potholes out on Rt. 36 east of Ailene or commit funds to reroof the sheep barn at the Texas state fairgrounds.
Lehrer: It’s time for closing statements.
Gore: I’m my own man. I may not be the most exciting politician, but I will fight for the working families of America, in addition to turning the White House into a lusty pit of marital love for Tipper and me.
Bush: It’s time to put aside the partisanship of the past by electing no one but Republicans.
Lehrer: Good night.
Inverness - ROTFLMAO, if only I wasn’t so saddened by the truth of this matter.
Jumphigh - I am sure you must not have been referring to me or any of my friends, because everyone I know has a well thought out reasoned approach to why they vote the way they do (ind, dem or rep), and of course, would not waste our vote on any one issue. If any one single issue happens to be part of a platform that we wholeheartedly believe in, that would perhaps be something different, and something you might respect, even if it differed with your own view, eh?
[This message has been edited by DMK (edited 10-20-2000).]
Yes, I do keep an inventory of articles I’ve enjoyed reading . . .
Stretches And Sighs
Gore’s fibs may be small compared with Bush’s, but they drive us crazy
By Margaret Carlson
October 9, 2000
Web posted at: 11:35 a.m. EDT (1535 GMT)
A few things led me to mistakenly conclude that Gore had won Tuesday night’s smackdown. It was clear that Bush didn’t fully understand the peril of making Russia our broker in Serbia, especially since Russia remained so sympathetic toward the defeated Milosevic. The RU 486 question tied him in knots. He didn’t want to remind such a large audience that his official position on abortion is to recriminalize it if he can change enough hearts. So he fudged his earlier statement that he would seek to overturn approval of the drug, saying a President is powerless to do so against the Food and Drug Administration. He got lost in a hypothetical financial crisis and said he would hug his way out of a domestic one. On his signature tax cut, he kept criticizing “the man’s” (that would be Gore’s) “fuzzy math.” But when he couldn’t rebut the Gore argument that nearly one-half of his tax cut would end up enriching the top 1% of Americans, it was Bush who was fuzziest of all.
So where did I go wrong? My biggest mistake was grossly underestimating the weight that would be given to any Gore exaggeration. Going in, he had been warned by the press that he had used up his lifetime allowance of melodrama with his sister’s deathbed story, with his claim to being the model for Love Story (he was in part, the author confirmed, but Tipper wasn’t) and with his boast that he took “the initiative in creating the Internet” (although even Newt Gingrich says Gore did so in the Congress). Gore is assumed to be exaggerating even when he’s not. We’re hypersensitive to the flaw, having just finished seven years with his boss, who really knew how to ice the cake.
Gore served up several juicy targets–that standing-room-only classroom in Florida, Winifred Skinner’s picking up cans to buy medicine, his being in Texas during the floods with James Lee Witt. Bush’s truth squad quickly put the word out that Gore had not gone with Witt but with FEMA’s regional director (although he had gone on 17 other Witt trips to disaster areas). In fact, Kaylie Ellis isn’t still standing at Sarasota High School, but her lab built for 24 is squeezing in 36, and other students are still deskless. Kids at that other school Gore mentioned are eating lunch at 10 a.m., not 9:30. And when a well-off son appeared to cast doubt on Winnie’s need to recycle aluminum, she reiterated her desire not to take charity from anyone.
In my warped view, Gore fell within the margin of political error by scoring 95% for anecdotal accuracy, although I don’t want to suggest for a second that his overall affect, especially the sighing, didn’t make me want to shake him. He looked like Sylvester Stallone, absent the Uzi, as made up by Madame Tussaud. The format brought out the worst in him. Put him in front of a podium and out of his Dockers, and he reverts to his smartest-guy-in-the-class mode, impressing the teacher with factoids for extra credit, like Serbia plus Montenegro equals Yugoslavia. His excess verbiage actually detracts from the more important point that he would be better handling the crisis in Serbia.
For Gore, there’s zero tolerance for anything but the literal truth. Reagan, the President who told the tallest of tales, won his debate by employing the famous line “There you go again” against Jimmy Carter, who told the fewest tales. Reagan claimed he took pictures of Nazi death camps and was happy like other vets after the war to be able to finally “rest up, make love to my wife…,” though he never left the country. Biographers say he got away with it because he was so emotionally accessible. But he was that way only with Nancy (or Mommy Poo Pants, as he calls her in a just published collection of his love letters), not with anyone else, even his children. He was a better actor.
Bush is also seen as more emotionally open, ingenuously self-deprecating, so his larger distortions–about skewing his tax cuts, raising less money than Gore for his campaign, giving more seniors drug coverage–do not annoy people as much. Embellishment takes a certain amount of calculation, and most of Bush’s RAM is used up trying to remember who’s covered and who isn’t under his own Medicare prescription plan. Bush, who boasts of his preference for one-page memos over books, obviously wanted the bell to ring badly on Tuesday night. He affably admitted he needs help, naming everyone but the Texas Rangers bat boy on the list of experts he would call on in a crisis.
In the end, Gore’s fibs, which have to do with his life, should matter less to voters than Bush’s fibs, which have to do with our lives. At the end of the debate, Gore was showered with affection from his kids and Tipper, which can’t be conjured up for the cameras. His utter inability to extend that emotion outward leads him to make up stories, which he then tells in slow motion, to seem more real. In the process, he ends up seeming less so. It’s not sincerity he lacks, it’s the insincerity to fake sincerity in a league with Reagan. It leaves him speaking so remotely that we can’t feel a word he’s saying.
<BLOCKQUOTE class=“ip-ubbcode-quote”><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Bertie:
Rockstar, you’ve got my vote<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Mine too!
Sometimes I wonder who are the “dumb” ones - the people running for election, or the people who let themselves get sucked into the cheap propaganda rather than do real research (not that getting to the bottom of these issues is by any means easy, but if you want “easy” may I suggest a totalitarian state, not a democracy 
)
trust me snowbird, soccer moms are into politics…when it involves their little darling soccer brats. But, I have a ratio, it takes 10 soccer moms complaining to equal 1 GREY PANTHER fussing which equals about 100 regular childless taxpayers concerned that they are getting the short end of the stick.
Holland, how do you KNOW that? HOW? Even if you met the man, how can you REALLY know him? The same applies to Gore. We all only “know” these individuals through the mass media. Do you really think that reporters and other media figures “know” what they are saying about the “character” of any individual? How DO you get to “know” a person’s character? HOW?
I am soooo sick of the character issue. I hate to be insulting, but I really have a low opinion of those who sprout it because, I’m sorry, but it smacks of sheer ignorance. A man serves eight, twelve, howevermany years in a public office, makes the mistakes any individual is capable of making, and gets labeled negatively. How in heaven could he have managed all these years working with all those important people if he is such an ogre?
On the other hand, a man does next to nothing most of his life, so he isn’t in the media’s eye and as well he refuses to cough up much information about himself, and as a result, through sheer lack of information about him, he gets labelled as being of “good character”? If Bush had served in a higher public office for a more significant number of years, do you really think he would be spotless? How many politicians ARE? Geezum, how many PEOPLE are?
Get real. You people don’t know SQUAT about either man’s “character.” All you know is what you have heard.
[BTW, magnolia, THANK YOU for reminding that Christian soul–who, as usual for that type, had no response to your quite logical and reasonable post–that God doesn’t play favorites.]
Jumpcrew,
As the person who started this thread, you ask which candidate is better for the horse industry?
In essence, you are asking which candidate is better for ME in the horse industry?
When it comes right down to the nitty gritty and you are alone in that booth with just your ballot, ask yourself, “Am I better off today than I was 8 years ago - getting my stable board paid without scrimping, going to a show when I see one that looks good, buying new boots even though the old ones would do?” Hmmmmmmm.
IF IT AIN’T BROKE DON’T FIX IT 111
Vote GORE for MORE.
Bush.
Hmmmm, so someone brought up kids, huh? Is this where I get the opportunity to say how tired I am of taking care of other folks’ kids?
My property taxes go to provide metal detectors in our city’s public schools… more of my money goes to educate the children (born in the USA) of illegals.
No need to get all exercised… just saw a chance to pop this in! Don’t think I would mind so much if it was other people’s horses. LOL
<BLOCKQUOTE class=“ip-ubbcode-quote”><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>But who takes care of the ones who just aren’t that intelligent? And not just in the
abortion issue, but all of those other issues that Republicans want the people to just sink
or swim through? Who takes care of them? Who helps the inner-city grandma invest her
social security funds? Some rip off artist or social aide paid minimum wages? Who cares
about people stuck in that cycle of poverty? The way some Republicans talk, you’d think
all those people will just die out in time or something. They won’t, of course–they’ll just
get poorer while the rich get richer.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Who takes care of them? That Wynn is the whole point, how dumb is so dumb they don’t know how they get pregnant? So I agree if they are mentally retarded they need to be taken care of, but at what point do we say you are responsible. At what point do we say we’re not going to cover for you anymore. Every good parent knows that time comes with every child.“It’s simple live by my rules if you want me to support you.”
Yes, the babies are not responsible. The babies need to be cared for, no question but does that mean we give a free trip to some girl not smart enough to ever say NO! If she is that dumb there are programs for her, there are live-in adult homes where she can be supervised.
What causes that cycle of poverty? What is the motivation to get out of that cycle? The answers to those questions would determine the programs. Lot’s of really successful people came from poverty, for them it was a motivation for “never again”. I’m one of those, I was a depression baby, we lived in a one room attic space without a kitchen. My husband is one of those, his parents were poor, his Dad was unemployed a lot, he never had his own bedroom until he was 28 years old. He slept on a cot in the hallway.
Right now I think that those caught in the poverty cycle are there because they are not motivated to get out. I worked for 53 cents an hour to keep my family from falling in the trap.
So you tell me PWynn what would motivate them to work 20 hours a day, just to pay the rent and buy food. Behind almost every millionaire there is a Mom and Dad or grandparents who dragged that family out of poverty.
As to them being scammed, well that’s a risk! We all face that risk every day. Every one of the elderly are taken advantage of in a hundred different ways.
Deal with the problem that is the cause…the scam artists. As long as there is an endless flow of cash, as long as there is an assumption of stupidity you will never find the cure or the solution. Certainly, just like the rules we proposed they are open to negotiation by definition of terms.
There is a difference as Republicans we believe there is a way to get these people confident and successful enough to get out of poverty. We have confidence in them. As Democrats you assume their stupidity and lack of sophistication so they can’t be helped to be made independent.
I think our philosophy is kinder because it will engender self esteem. We will lose the opportunity to brag about how kind we are because the poverty cycle will be broken.
What motivates you? That might be what it takes to motivate them. We can deal with effects forever if we don’t deal with the causes.
Hey from a fellow Pittsburgher (transplanted to Philthadelphia)! How yunz doin’ 'n’at? I remember hearing this fabulous song done by one of those folksy granola guys many years ago - are you sure of the authorship credit? I’m curious to know who wrote it : the Austin dudes, or are they doing a cover?
Hobson really get off the satire, you’re very good at it. You spend columns trying to prove Bush is a nobody and then wonder why he can speak for nobodies!
Pwynn, you never heard an admission of a mistake ever from Clinton/Gore they suffer from the the narcistic conviction they are superior, that doesn’t make it so!
That my friend is called honesty, Bush was a crack pilot ever hear him brag? The Bush family is not pure white, ever see then use that to win the hispanic vote? That my friend is called integrity, that’s how we know.
By the way, Larry King “live” has guess who? Ross Perot and he puts it plain, when there’s only two horses in the race you pick the one to win you can trust. He’s picking George Bush! and he’s from Texas. Simple, to Perot Gore is just a plain liar, and Presidents don’t lie!
Just because some kid drank too much beer 24 years ago and he admits it, ain’t no reason to count him out. He asks his 19% who voted for him to vote for BUSH! Bush didn’t say he thought it was tea! He didn’t say he threw it in the flower pot! He said yep! I did make a mistake when I was a young. He didn’t say he didn’t inhale! It didn’t say it wasn’t sex! He didn’t say he know it was a fund raiser! To me that’s honesty.
He says “Gore” was a reporter in Viet Nam for 5 months with a body guard, far behind the lines, and he got out instead of filling out the full term because he was supposed to go to divinity school and be a minister of the church, where he flunked out.
Cut me a break, who do you believe? The Governor 24 years ago was arrested for DWI, he admitted it paid the fine and regrets it! And 5 days before the election we get this great revelation. He’s been sober for 14 years.
I have yet to hear Gore admit a mistake, but then when you’re perfect it’s not a mistake. Dirty pool! Boy these guys are really from the bottom of the pile. So what is “is”?
[This message has been edited by Snowbird (edited 11-02-2000).]
I swore I was not going to respond to this thread. But if what Gryphon posted is true, I am appalled. With Dubya’s rap sheet, I could not have gotten my job with the government agency I work for.
Based on the bleak prospects of Gore or Bush, I’m thinking a “benevolent dictator” doesn’t sound so bad. Just rule and let me ride my horse…
My husband and I were going to vote for Nader as protest votes until I heard Nader say today that he wants universal healthcare, a “Medicare HMO” for everyone, a single-payer system. Oh, please! I’m already stuck in HMO hell. I am a product of that system. (Can you say “malpractice attorneys”?). Sure, let’s spread that around! So I guess I’ll vote for Gore. He doesn’t smirk like Bush, he gave his wife a big, sloppy kiss on TV, and Gore was funnier than Bush on David Letterman.
<BLOCKQUOTE class=“ip-ubbcode-quote”><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by spfarm:
Answer…someone else’s kids.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Well, it may be someone else’s kids, but only if they work in the private healthcare/caregiver/etc areas of service… and they will be damn well paid to do so!
Not everyone will be on the public dole. Isn’t that a novel concept?
Couple of things, Snowbird…
I learned while working for a rape crisis center that “just saying no” and clamping your legs together is a meaningless concept for young women who have spent years with daddy forcing them into sex every night. Don’t think it happens? It happens to millions of girls and women all the time. The FBI, with the most conservative figures, estimates that one out of every 7 women has been sexually abused as a kid, most (85-90%) by loved ones or family members or people close to the family. That can really mess a person up.
It’s great that your family had the opportunities to rise out of poverty. Do you think your experience might have been different if you were born African American, and were turned away from jobs even when they were available? If you had little access to a decent education, let alone a college education? Motivation and determination are nearly useless when you’re a second-class citizen in your own country, and the folks with power do their best to keep you from getting any. The republicans in Congress tried to block the original Civil Rights Act, because the idea of African Americans having free access to employment was not acceptable to them. They’re the ones who added the section barring discrimination based on sex-- they thought they could ruin civil rights legislation by adding a clause they believed was totally ridiculous: prohibiting descrimination based on gender. Republicans, are you guys OK with this?
For the gun-rights supporters, I have a serious question: how do you define the term “law-abiding” person? Most pro-gun arguments say that any law-abiding, mentally sound person should have free access to firearms. What does this mean? If I murdered someone, but was never caught, I am technically law-abiding in the eyes of the background checkers. Should I have a gun? What if I’ve never done anything wrong before, but plan to shoot my boyfriend because he annoys me? Should I have a gun? The law says this is just fine. After all, every dangerous criminal is a law-abiding person right up until they’ve committed their first crime. What if I’m a sociopath who’s really good at disguising my disorder, and who’s never been in the treatment system. Would you sell me a gun? It seems like no matter how you cut it, liberal gun-ownership laws will invariably result in the wrong people having guns. I’m remembering a report I read from the state of Utah a couple of years ago - they sort of cross-referenced their murder statistics with their registered weapons statistics and discovered that about half the murders in the state were committed by people who owned legally registered guns. How do you sort this out?
“less fortunate” (translation: lazy)
Now that makes me soooooooo %$#@!^ mad. Just because you are poor, does not make you lazy. Many people are working poor with no benefits. There are more of them then there are of you. Many people just aren’t smart enough to cut it in college (well, maybe now everyone is, since we water it down so much!). The gentleman I lived upstairs from was not lazy. He was a victim of circumstance. He worked 40+ hours a week, at a junky job. He wanted a better paying job, and found one. Then found the bus didn’t go that far. He was an optimist and not looking for a handout, but boy, a nice program to help him finance a car would have been nice.
I think republicans think that if you have a job, you automatically have 2 cars and a house in the suburbs. Sadly, there are poor that are poor because they don’t want to work, but there are probably 5x as many working poor. And that is very sad, that you might give 40 hours a week of your life to a person that doesn’t pay you enough to survive.
<BLOCKQUOTE class=“ip-ubbcode-quote”><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Inverness:
[B]Let me start by saying that I don’t care that Dubya was arrested at age 30 for drunk driving. God knows there’ve been occasions where I could’ve been in the same boat. I actually do admire the man for being able to give up the sauce. It doesn’t mean I think he’d be an effective President, but I do give him credit for kicking an insidious vice.
I’m puzzled. How has Dubya managed to give the impression that he is somehow unconnected to the elite? He hails from one of the most powerful political dynasties in the country. [/B]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Here here, Inverness - I was very upset to hear the report about the arrest this morning. As if it matters! I mean as long as the guy is not a raging drunk today, I could really give a rat’s behind about what happened to him 30 years ago. If you are going to vote for Gore, please do so for some other reason than Dubya was driving drunk when he was 30…
As for this amazing “un-connection” to the elite, I share your bewilderment. I had a very intelligent person tell me that Bush was an “inarticulate, unpolished West Texas Oilman.”
???
OK, “inarticulate” I can buy, (although I question how one can be educated in one of the finest learning institutions in the world, and escape without at least the normal degree of articulate speech!). But, please, the Houston (that is “East” Texas, btw) son of a PRESIDENT, who attended all the finest schools in the Northeast, being presented (by the media, I might add) as an unpolished west Texas Oilman? I previously thought we needed Reagan to pull off an acting job that big…
Oh yes, and I once hacked the top horse in this country, so I guess I must be the top rider too…
[This message has been edited by DMK (edited 11-03-2000).]
