ColinK, I think you'd have to agree that the US elections have far-reaching consequences - well beyond the borders of the US. To suggest with some smug satisfcation that it amuses you that other people pay attention is somewhat insulting. In the end the election doesn't just affect Americans.

I don't think anyone in Europe really thinks the majority of Americans are "stupid and unsophisticated". Basically this week has been a huge letdown and the next few weeks or so are going to be an anti-climax.

Hopefully some kind of harmony between European gorvernments and the Bush administration will happen sooner rather than later otherwise we're all in trouble. I don't mean the sort of harmony created by my own glorious leader though. We will have our chance to kick him out in spring!

Whilst your election may have been one of the most divisive in history at least we can celebrate that it brought a record turnout which can only be a good thing.

First of all I want to say thank you to Puna for her input, I thought that I would never get her to talk to me. It is good to know that you do read my posts past the words Desert Dweller.

Second if anyone should feel insulted it is the family, friends and fans of three of America's great philosophers, as well as being great memebers of the performing arts. After all to have compared three great Americans to the geopolitical second string is totally unacceptable. I here by appologize to the family, friends and fans of the late Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curley Howard. I can assure you all that I will not desicrate the memory of those fine gentlemen again.

I want to thank you Puna for having pointed out the error of my ways, and I can assure you one and all that I will not allow my manners to slip like that again.

I give up! :p

Dommo, you are correct since time immemorial there has always been a dominant nation. If you look through the annals of history, many of the European nations had a dominance hierarchy, and those of us in the Americas had to look up to Whitehall, Madrid, Paris,etc., at one time or another for international leadership.

There's an interesting Americanism: What comes around goes around. And that may be at the root of the antagonism against the U.S., that by world standards we are a relatively young nation. They question our readiness to be the dominant nation. Yet, we have the longest, or one of the longest running representative democracies in the world. We are a nation of many diverse peoples from all over the world, representing many languages and cultures. In many ways we are at the forefront of what is now occurring in Europe with the population shifts that are nascent in many countries like Spain, for example.

I am not so sure if I would agree with your statement about this being the most divisive election in history of this country. Looking back at the Civil War era, I would say that that was a more divisive era.

I would say that there certainly is a divisiness and it is within the Democratic party. For example, this election is fascinating because the moderates by far voted with the Republican party. This is borne out by the changes in the voting districts from the 2000 election to the 2004 election, see my link above to the voting district map.

I live in the South and in my county all the local politicians are Democrats, if you are not a Democrat you don't vote in local elections. Yet these very same people crossed party lines and voted for the Republicans.

???

Booklady, I said "one of the most" not "the most" but to be honest I was really thinking of the modern era!

In the end I was just trying to come from a moderate point of view in terms of people insulting each other's beliefs. I don't really want to end up in a full-on discussion about US / European foreign policy etc. It is Guy Fawkes Night after all! I'm off to enjoy the family event of burning human effigies

Dommo,

Just out of curiosity, if indeed Tony Blair is voted out of office this spring, who do you think will take his place? The Tories or someone to the far left of Neil Kinnock? And do you think he/she will side with Bush or against him?
BTW how was Guy Fawkes night?

Cogito cogito ergo sum cogito

Dommo: You are right to get frusterated with us Americans over some of the remarks that are made on this and other web cites around. Over all we Americans are peace loveing and rather easy to get along with crowd of people. When a crisis strikes any where in the world you can rest assured that one of the first to offer help will be the US. A couple of years after the Iranians captured our Embassy there was a disasterous earthquake in Northern Iran. You guessed it none other than Ronald W. Regan himself orderd tons of food and medical supplies to be delivered. When your own Falkland Islands were attacked in the early 1980s, you saw who Margeret Thatcher turned to. When the Island of Grenada was attacked by Cuba in 1983, their leader who did not even own a pair of shoes, she went to Washington to talk to Regan himself. I might add that Spain had just joined NATO when the Falklands incident occured and refused to help, saying that they had a common language with Argentina and did not want to get involved. Thus shirking their NATO commtiment.

We take the insults and try to hurl them back in good humor and try whenever possible to offer our hand in friendship. On my part they are always meant to be in humor, although they do not always convey that way in the written word.

If we come across as surley and nasty it, most of the time, is not meant that way. Our own leader, Jr. said on Thursday in his first post election press conf. that he is planning a trip to Europe to try and rebuild the EuroAmerican relationship. He knows most of Europe does not like him, and that he has made many people mad. The important thing is he wants to try and get along. Both him and his constituants are willing to make the first move toward improving that relationship. You don't see Chirac offering to coming here.

These are some of the reasons that web cites like this are such a great thing. It allows for a free exchange of ideas for the average citizens of both countries back and forth at such a small expence. If some words are exchanged that seem offensive they can be erased. They are not bullets or bombs.

Good luck God Bless. Looking forward to more exchanges with you.

PS. My guess is most Spaniards do not know who Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curly Howard were.

Desert Dweller,

Certainly you're not suggesting that there might be people on this earth who are so uncultured as not to know who the Three Stooges are? No wonder we're misunderstood.

Gazpacho:

No, we LOVE it. That's why we want it, FROM the USA.

Maybe. Well, "hate" is a strong word. many hate him, how many I couldn't tell. I do.

But no doubt a high percentage, close to 80% hate or condemn what he has done in Irak, that I am positive, and several days ago I supplied data of a survey on this matter and others alike.

Concretely, the question:

"Which is your opinion on George Bush", the percentages were:

Very good 1.4%
Rather good 11,3%
Rather bad 30%
Very bad 46.8%

No answer/Don't know 10.6%

Which sums 76.8% out of a 89.4% of total answered, which means over an 80% out of 100%.

"War in Irak was justified?"

Yes 13%
No 79.5%
No answer/Don't know 7.5%

Again, 79,5%/92,5% (total of answers) is very much over 80%.
ABout 85% or more.

Even PP voters consider the war unjustified (56.5% of 89,1% total answers) majoritarily, and dislike or condemn Junior (56,1% out of a total of 85,2% of answers).

Desert Dweller:

Zapatero tried to congratulate Junior out of pure courtesy, and he did't answer the phone. Logical, after all, but before blaming others, why don't you look first at your own behaviour?

I myself offered my hand in friendship to you, but you pushed my hand away

I would hate you to feel offended. Believe me I wish you no bad. But I have had very hot debates where progressively people was escalating with sarcasm, ending in insults. But you didn't need to escalate, you promptly begun to scorn at me, so I don't think we'd be comfortable with each other.

Errrrr... Cuba invaded WHAT? Can't believe it. All the world was crazy about a gratuite USA invasion of one of the countries of his "backyard", just because they didn't like their government or something.

AND, the Falklands were invaded April 2nd 1982. Spain joined the NATO ( politically, militarly was due to be years later) Oct 29th 1981.

That it was for a common language that we didn't help is only your guess, and it's wrong. We weren't implied:

First because the parliament, or in this case, the people through direct votation (referendum) had to pass the law too, and there was no referendum by then because the answer would had been a huge NO, as any inform on our history will tell you.

Secondly becasuse, because of this, they arranged a parliament procedure to avoid popular vote, and pass the law, but this happened in 1985.

That's why we didn't take part. We weren't fully members until that agreement had been passed by legislative.

besides of the practical reasons like we weren't integrated in the NATO hierarchy yet, and couldn't work coordinately because we lacked practice in multilateral combined fleets, and so on, but this is "peccata minutta" compared to the two previous reasons.
In fact, the argentinians were claiming we should attack Gibraltar, another leftover of Brtish colonialism, and divide the NATO effort, and some people in here was for it, but fortunately we didn, because that piece of sh*t of rock isn't worth a singel life.

By the way, the USA respected their NATO alliance, and dishonoured their south american alliance with Argentina. How about that? Shouldn't you have been neutral?

Gazapacho: I would be surprised if Ignacio did in fact know who the great philosophical trio of Mr. Howard, Mr.Fine and Mr. Howard were. I think they would have fallen prey to the censorship the late Generalisimo. Ignacio's latest post is he wants Spain to be independant from the US. We have only one military base left in Spain. Very little trade relations, Zapatero has turned a cold ear to diplomatic relations. The only thing left would be for Ignacion not participate on this board. That does not seem likley,as he enjoys telling us all how unsophisticated we are because we used the voting booth to rain on Europe.