A little while ago, either some way back here, or at someone else's place, I assumed my role as infallible political pundit and cautioned not to rule out Rudy Giuliani because he was waiting for the Florida primary and then Super Tuesday to show his hand. Rudy has foiled me by having a totally crap primary season and then quitting. It's a good job I'm not a political journalist.
On a more serious note, from this considerable distance it seems to me that this is the most ill-tempered Presidential race (and I'm treating the primaries as part of the Presidential election, the Monkey King being unable to run again) in some considerable time. And that's within the two parties. God only knows what's going to happen when they've chosen their candidates and the two of them go toe-to-toe.
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 realthog |
| 2008-01-31 02:12 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
| sunset |
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"Rudy has foiled me by having a totally crap primary season and then quitting. It's a good job I'm not a political journalist."
You were in company with all the highly paid US political media pundits until just three or four weeks ago.
Mind you, these are the same people who think the US anti-Iraq war movement is just a few fringe extremist crazies who make a lot of noise, that no one here cares about global warming, that Americans detest the idea of a national health service as "socialized medicine", etc., etc., etc., all this while every opinion poll available has been saying exactly -- and dramatically -- the opposite for a very long time now.
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| hutch0 |
| 2008-01-31 22:20 (UTC) |
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Giuliani's strategy baffled me. He seems to have ignored the earlier primaries, hoping to surf into Florida on the popularity polls he got last year...and then did sod-all. Ah well. The field's thinning out now; soon I'll only have a fifty percent chance of getting a prediction wrong...
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| realthog |
| 2008-01-31 22:29 (UTC) |
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"hoping to surf into Florida on the popularity polls he got last year...and then did sod-all"
Ah, he did a lot of hard work and spent a lot of money in Florida. It just got him nowhere.
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| hutch0 |
| 2008-01-31 22:39 (UTC) |
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No, no, I didn't mean that. I meant he got nowhere in the polling in Florida. I knew he was aiming to put on a big show there, which is why I made that foolish prediction a little while ago. And I expected him to do well - not win, maybe, but pick up some nice momentum going on to Super Tuesday. God, all that money, just...gone.
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| realthog |
| 2008-01-31 22:44 (UTC) |
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"God, all that money, just...gone."
The night before last, I decided it was about time I gave the Edwards campaign a bit more money. I got as far as the donor page when I realized my wallet, containing the relevant credit card, was upstairs. Not wanting to risk waking Pam, who'd gone to bed already, I made a note to finish the operation in the morning.
Saved myself twenty-five bucks, I did.
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| hutch0 |
| 2008-01-31 23:49 (UTC) |
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I mean no offence to the American political system, but I look at all that money and I can't help thinking, `bugger me, you could build a hospital for that.'
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| realthog |
| 2008-01-31 23:59 (UTC) |
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You could build a lot more than *one* hospital. It's absolutely ludicrous -- you're right.
I read a smug comment today in one of the American media saying how all the ups and downs of the primary season just went to show how we have the most open free-for-all democracy in the whole wide world.
Yeah. Right. Name me one candidate who isn't independently wealthy beyond your or my wildest dreams.
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| hutch0 |
| 2008-02-01 00:20 (UTC) |
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Oh yes. Government for the people, by the people, huh? What we do is elect the millionaire who best represents our interests. To my mind, that's not a million miles from being an elected monarchy.
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calm