I too am sick of Senator Joe's grandstanding as a man of 'principle' and 'wisdom', but the other posters are complete right in saying the BIG problem with him is in his consistant political failures and amazing tone-deafness to where not only people in the party are, but where people in the country are.

All those ridiculous things he has done, the terrible VP debate where it seemed he wanted to make out with Cheney, the rolling over on illegal ballots, the ridiculous call for censorship of "HOLLYWOOD", the inexplicable two years he spent running for President in 2004 with no sign of any type of consituancy that was actively for him, all of those decisions and actions have lead him to total, embarrasing defeats. Now a clear majority of the country has come to the conclusions: (1) we are fighting a pointless war in the name of a people who want us to leave, (2) our leaders are lacking basic competency to complete their jobs, (3) nothing happening in Iraq is actually making us safer from international terrorism and might in fact be making it worse, (4) the entire justification for the war was a lie, and most importantly, (5) Bush knowingly decived the nation to get his war. And now, NOW, Lieberman comes out to say the first three things aren't true and the last two aren't important.

And then he wonders why grassroot Dems, the people who have been called enemies, nuts, and unconsiderate of our national security by the President of the United States, just don't support him.

Look at the letters here, Kobe might lead the league in scoring, but (gasp!) he leads the league in attempts. That selfish jerk! Sure he scored 81 POINTS, but only two assists!! Kobe's unbelievable night was not just him being a selfish renegade, it was him WINNING THE GAME because no one else on the team seems capable of doing it. They won't win a championship this year, but hopefully if the Lakers can add person (who is not Odom) they can make a run. Even if he does win a championship without Shaq though, there will the people who will stand around how he cheated his way there, and that Jordan walked on water and was loved by children everywhere....

seriously, every time someone says they are a vegetarian/vegan, strangers just feel free to mock or lecture them how its wrong or stupid or unthought out or whatever. and i'm not talking about here, i mean everywhere, all the time. the best part is that this supposedly logical arguments against vegetarianism are RIDICULOUS.

the letters below are a good example of them. my favorite is the 'animals eat each other, and we're animals' line. wow, never thought about that, profound. except, you know what else animals do? have sex with siblings! should we be doing that too, i mean, we're animals right? we are animals, but we are human beings. we have morals, ethics, and, as one letter writer pompously suggested vegetarians use, empathy. we make decisions based on what we consider is right and wrong, not solely on survival.

i know that this sounds crazy, but we can CHOOSE not to kill other animals, and whole cultures have and do. are these cultures, who have existed for thousands of years, 'unnatural'? are they all crazy from the lack of protein? maybe they don't start wars of aggression, but they seem to be doing okay.

getting back to my question though, i think the near universal revulsion of someone saying they think meat is murder is its profoundly threatening to people who eat meat. being told you maybe complicit in a system that kills living beings in the most horrific ways possible and you can help end it by just giving up something you like (and that is what it is, you don't need it, you like it, ALOT) is hard. and the usual, 'logical' response is to attack those telling you. maybe all the vegetarians and vegans you know are 'unhappy' (which is like saying liberals are usually losers), but they aren't perpetuating pain and suffering every day. and no dazzling argument you think are making is going to change that.

oh, and if you eat fish or lobsters or only free range chicken, YOU ARE NOT A VEGETARIAN! YOU ARE EMBARRASSING YOURSELF, SO STOP SAYING IT!