In Other Words

Some presidential race updates

Sorry to have to bring this subject up again, but lets talk about the American elections. Or rather, I talk in a monotone and you fall asleep at your desks, in far away places, as I waste precious minutes of your break you should have used to go to the bathroom, (or you stop reading and actually go to the bathroom).

Been reading up a bit on the election again, in the hope of finding some valuable nugget of information that will put my heart at ease and tell me ‘phew, the destroyer of worlds is gone’. Didn’t find it yet, though truth be told the news does seem to be relatively positive.

Just list out what the news is talking about in recent days, so that you have an idea what I’m talking about. Turns out that the economy might turn out to be a more important question in the upcoming elections then expect. This is easy to explain, the economy isn’t doing quite as well as expected. Approximately 250k new jobs were expected and only approximately 50k were created. That’s a shortfall of 200 thousand that has torn interests away from the war on terrorism and focused them very specifically back on the economy.

An economy that is doing badly, even while the rest of the world seems to be on a stronger road to recovery (except for Europe, Europe is doing shit at 1% growth). Here in Singapore we’re experiencing a projected 9% economic growth, according to the morning paper. That while Singapore’s main export market, the US, is floundering.

Then there is that entire thing about the Palme affair nippin’ at Bush’s heels. For those unaware of that, a man critical of the WMD claim made by Bush before the war in Iraq had his wife’s CIA status revealed by people in the White House. He saw this as retaliation for his anti administration stance and several judges agreed and said that if this was proven true somebody would have to go to jail for ten years.

So an investigation was started and now one journalist is threatened with jail time and another has agreed to admit who told him about the Palme’s wife being a CIA agent. So we’ll probably soon know who spilled the beans. Who ever that be, its going to look bad for Bush as the gossip mongers were a part of his administration.

Then there is that bit about the terror alert being announced in a number of cities just after the democratic convention, based on newly obtained data that was all close to three years old (I talked about that before). A lot of people are suggesting (or loudly claiming) that the only reason the administration did that was to draw attention away from the democratic convention (something I’m inclined to agree with). This seems to have backfired drastically. Not surprising, really, seeing as more and more people no longer trust Bush’s honesty and would expect him to fudge around with anything to gain in the polls.

So there is hope, though one commentator said it well, when he said that Bush still has a lot of cards up his sleeve, we just have to hope somebody catches him when he starts using them. After all, cheating will get him into even more hot water.

Oh yeah, after the debacle in the 2000 elections the US state department has approached a foreign body to monitor the US elections. That would be the first time in US history. I guess they've realised that even in America people are willing to undermine democracy, in order to win (the shock, the horror).

Interesting fact: The Dutch are, on average, the tallest people in the world (at about 183cm, thats about 10cm taller then the British).

posted by Symbol @ 11.8.04