Joi Ito found a good article on the International Herald Tribune about what international observers are saying about our election process. Joi’s comment on the last two paragraphs is good. I’m one of those Americans who travels internationally. I don’t do it because I have affiliation to another country (unless we finally get the New York succession movement going), but because I have friends and family overseas, I like to travel and because of work and research. When you leave the farm you realize how small the world is. I know it’s trite, but it’s true. The sad thing is that the debate about our place in the world mimics the debates we had in this country about the development of urban centers; it’s about contact with the “other.” The problem with Empire is that it is all about the “other.” Can’t eat your cake and have it too, and I don’t think the Republicans have understood that yet. I’m waiting for the rebirth of a conservative movement in this country. Isolationist and xenophobic makes much more sense than expansionist and xenophobic.
Related Posts
2 for the show
Two articles worth reading: Haroon Siddiqui has a fair and well-balanced article in the Ideas section of the Sunday, 20 August Toronto Star entitled The Muslim Malaise George Soros’ article in the Wall Street Journal entitled A Self-Defeating War is also worthwhile and is published at the TPM Cafe. Here are some excerpts: “The war on terror is a false metaphor that has led to counterproductive and self-defeating policies…Unfortunately, the “war on terror” metaphor was uncritically accepted by the American public as the obvious response to 9/11. It is now widely admitted that the invasion of Iraq was a blunder.…
Quotes
Dick Cheney on Kerry and al-Qaeda: (Apparently they can be that crass.) “It’s absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we’ll get hit again and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States” Al-Qaeda on Bush: A statement from al-Qaeda following the Madrid bombings clarified this intent [to organize Muslims worldwide]. It said the organization hoped George Bush would win reelection, “because he acts with force rather than wisdom or shrewdness,…
The Axis of Evil Speaks to the Great Shaitan
The Boston Globe is running an editorial about the recent Khatami visit to Boston. They were there when he met with members of the MIT Faculty members. Some choice quotations: As the people around his table at the MIT Faculty Club laughed, Khatami added: “And Bush and Ahmadinejad are cut from the same cloth. …… Demonstrating his reputed interest in the Western Enlightenment, Khatami at one point cited the British philosopher John Locke, observing that Locke’s reason for separating religion from the state was to protect religion. He invoked Locke to make the point that many Iranians who favor more…
2 thoughts on “International Observers”
Comments are closed.
There’s also a good post about international observers here.
It’s an interesting article, though most of the criticism seems a reflection on the decentralization that is, at least in theory, essential in the system. As far as the Constitution is concerned, the manner in which each state chooses its electors is utterly at the discretion of the state legislature. I don’t think that, in theory, a given state has to hold presidential elections at all. You can argue that this makes no sense anymore — but it’s not an accident, it’s the way the country was written.
But then, individual states should still get their acts together.