Buddy — I might support Sarkozy in the runoff if I were a Frenchman. Unlike the American right, he has no plans to phase-out the nation’s social insurance system. Rather, he wants to ensure the level of economic growth necessary to enable the nation to SUPPORT the current system as much as possible.

Lula, whom you referenced, is also one of my political heroes of the present era. Your basic smart pragmatic populist.

I have no solutions for the vapidity of commercial television news. More money for PBS would of course be a good idea. Anything with the remote possibility of making Mike Judge’s Oscar-deserving Idiocracy less prophetic than it is should be cheered, and funded with your tax money. God I miss Dick Nixon, a Republican who knew how to fund big government.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/