I have been trying to visit each of the web sites and catch televised debates and interviews of each of the Democratic Party candidates to see where they stand on the issues. It’s a long, involved process coming up with someone whom you can endorse, whom you think should be president. Reaching a decision often works by a process of elimination.

Indeed there is one candidate who can and ought to be ruled out immediately.

And that is the candidate who “shares values” with an anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, murdering bigot called Ariel Sharon.

That candidate is Joe Lieberman.

Joe Lieberman, the senator from Connecticut, and the man who was Al Gore’s running mate in the 2000 presidential elections, is a man who has declared he defends what Israel does because he says that the United States and Israel have “shared values”.

Sorry, Joe, but a man who professes he “shares values” with a man who takes pleasure in forcing innocent people out of their homes (sometimes summarily executing them), bulldozing down those homes, confiscating the land upon which these homes stood, and then giving that land to Jewish terrorists and extremists who similarly want to kill and to ethnically cleanse the land free of Arabs, is no man with whom I share values, and certainly no man fit for the office of president of the United States.

Of course, if you are misanthropic Arab- and Muslim-hating bigot and all-around son of a bitch, you may find this news about Joe Lieberman to be rather heart-warming, and you might consider supporting his candidacy. True, you can find just about every leading member of the Republican Party and candidate for high office to be even more appealing to you because they are fervent in their support of an international criminal the likes of Israel’s prime minister Sharon. And what’s more, you are agreeable with those conservative Republicans on issues such as polluting the environment and creating a society of a few haves and many have-nots in servitude to the few haves. In contrast, and to Joe Lieberman’s credit, he is a classic liberal on many domestic issues, which these days means that budget deficits are bad for the nation and that people who buy something on credit should damn well pay for it themselves rather than leaving the bill to be paid by their unborn descendants.

But Joe Lieberman and I part company when he declares to me that he shares values with a man like Ariel Sharon. It’s true that Joe is an Orthodox Jew, and there are few promiment Jews in America that have even dared to criticize the policy of Israel in subjugating and terrorizing the Palestinian Arabs with respect to forcing them off their land and adding insult to injury by giving it to Arab-hating Jewish bigots. But I do not expect Joe to be a Jew of divided loyalties where the one loyalty to Israel is blind acceptance of its policies, no matter how criminal they be.

Mind you, I support the existence, hopes, and aspirations of any nation that guarantees rights and liberties to their citizens, no matter what their ethnic origin. Israel is probably one of those countries, although they are beset by demands of Jewish fundamentalists to force Jewish beliefs and to establish a Jewish theocracy in Israel as much as Christian fundamentalists make demands in the United States to force Christianity down the throats of all Americans.

Joe Lieberman needs to realize that condemnation of that pig Ariel Sharon is not condemnation of the idea of Israel, any more than condemnation of that pig George W. Bush is not condemnation of the (idea of the) United States.

And speaking of George W. Bush, Ariel Sharon is not the only person with whom Joe Lieberman appears to “share values.” Among all candidates for the Democratic Party, Lieberman is the one who has the most in common with George W. Bush. Lieberman is rather proud of the fact that he is the most conservative of the list of Democratic candidates for president. He tries to sell this package as one in which he describes himself as “centered,” standing in the middle between extremes.

But selling is not the same thing as selling-out. What you, the voter, need to get away from are the standard pat labels of “liberal,” “conservative,” “left-wing,” “right-wing,” “centrist,” and “moderate.” What counts are where the candidates stand on the issues, and some issues may be definitive for you, the voter. Don’t get caught up in letting candidates convince you that they belong to some category that automatically distinguishes them as saint from demon. After all, who would not want to distinguish themselves as saint from demon and use that device if winning elections were as easy as saying what you are rather than in what you believe and do not believe? Find out instead where the candidate stands on the issues.

For me, the issue of whether you stand with or against a bastard like Ariel Sharon is pretty definitive. I’d rather not “share values” with a bigot and a man who many reasonably think should be tried for criminal complicity in the massacre of innocent Arabs.

Moreover, Lieberman’s vote to support Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq, probably not unrelated to his loyalty to Israel and its agenda, also makes him unfit to be president, as much as it makes Bush not only unfit to be president but also a man who should likely be put on trial before an international tribunal. Lieberman continually gets high praise from members of the political opposition, the Republican Party. If I were Joe Lieberman, and I found more Republicans and staunch conservatives saying nice things about me and the near unanimity of my own political party saying awful things about me, I would probably say it’s time for a self re-assessment.

Real leadership demands that Joe Lieberman sometimes risk taking an unpopular stand, and calling a spade a spade. I don’t see that real leadership in Lieberman. He may be a capable senator who adequately represents his state. He certainly shows no capability to be president.