American Presidential Election

This year I have decided to pay attention to the US presidential election and the lengthy run-up which has already started a long time ago. BBC and Sky News are showing it a lot so I guess they decided for me but anyway …

I have been watching the coverage from the Iowa caucuses. What is a caucus you say? That’s what I thought but wikipedia soon explained. Apparently they are public ballots held by both the Democratic and Republican parties (Nobody else does this I think, but as Kang and Kodos said, it is a two-party system in the states).

Both parties do their caucases differently. The Republicans have a simple system where everyone attending writes down their preference for Republican presidential candidate on a piece of paper and these are then counted. Fair enough. The Democrats do it differently, where candidates with <15% of the vote are eliminated and people who voted for them choose someone else. This is like the system used in Irish general elections where one can vote with as many preferences as one likes. When your first choice is elected/eliminated, then your vote gets transferred to your 2nd choice if you indicated one.

The upshot of it all is that Barack Obama (a member of the US senate with the support of Oprah!) won the Democratic caucus and Mike Huckabee (an evangelical preacher with the support of Chuck Norris – I kid you not!) won the Republican caucus.

But a few things I have noticed are noteworthy I think. Firstly, I was very surprised with the big deal that is made of all this. Americans are really into their elections! This is great, and anything that makes more people vote is brilliant. What I don’t understand is why the voter turnout in the states is typically notoriously very low? Then again, all the reports from these polls in Iowa suggest turnout their at least had doubled this time around. Cool. Secondly, it seems that voters have to register their party allegiance officially! Yes you can be a registered Democrat or Republican. Surely this is quite odd? Isn’t that invasive/illegal? It seems like a weird practice to me. Can anyone explain this to me? I can’t imagine anyone in Ireland being asked to register their allegiance to Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour, …; or people in the UK being asked to register whether they were Labour, Tory, Lib Dem, ….

Evan

Trains, Fares and Super-bugs

If there is one thing I have done in my time in the UK, it is take the train! Many many times in fact. I am mad today with the ticket price increases which are much higher than inflation and as high as 11% increases (on Canterbury-London) have been implemented. The government says it wants customers bare more of the cost of rail upgrades and take the burden off the tax payer. WHY?!! I pay plenty of tax and I would be happy to think that some of that is going towards maintaining infrastructure like railways. Where exactly are the government planning to put this spare tax money which is not going into rail investments? Does anybody know? If anyone can point me towards an explanatroy website I would be glad of it.
In other news I am pretty maddened by David Cameron’s proposal for funding cuts for the NHS when a patient catches one of the so-called “super-bugs” in hospital. Great idea David! That’s exactly what the NHS need to treat people need when they get sicker – less money! Boo-urns.

Americans Not Allowed to Visit Cuba!!

I was just watching a video on youtube – a recent episode of Jay Leno featuring Michael Moore who was promoting his latest movie Sicko. He said that americans were not allowed to go to Cuba by law!! Is this really true?? From some google searching I have seen websites saying that you can be heavily fined for going to Cuba!! Does anyone know if this is really true? Can anyone tell/show me if/how this is actually punished? If I was American this would really make me mad – after all many americans do claim that their country is “free.”
The “US Embargo on Cuba” is a long-standing policy whereby the US does not trade with Cuba because the US wants “to bring democracy to Cuba” (hmmm …) as Communism is abhored by the US*. The fact that the structure of Cuba’s government is none of the USA’s business appears to mean nothing. The US even passed a Cuban Democracy Act!
The embargo all stems from the failed US invasion of Cuba in 1959 known as the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Relations between the coutries soured and have remained so for almost half a century now.
This seems very silly to me. Indeed the UN has (almost) unanimously criticised this policy and the General Assembly has voted by huge margins in favour of lifting the embargo in recent times: 173 votes to 3 in 2002; 179 votes to 4 in 2004 and similarly in 2006. The only nations voting in favour of the embargo were the US, their ally Israel and the tiny isand nations of Pilau and the Marshall Islands (combined populations of < 90,000 people and only very recently independent nations from the US – Pilau in 1994 and Marshall Islands in 1986).

Apolgies to everyone reading this – I am feeling in a ranting kind of mood today!

* except when loans are needed from China!

Apathy

A friend of mine recently reminded me of something which one should remember:

Apathy and withdrawing in disgust are not the same thing.

An 30ú Dáil

Bunaíodh an 30ú Dáil an t-seachtain seo chaite. Chonaiceamar caidreamh nua idir Fianna Fáil, an Páirtí Glas, an Páirtí Daonlathach agus cúpla daoine neamhspleách eile. Bhuaigh FF an cuid is mó de na suíocháin le 78 as 166. Leis an comhaontú seo fuair siad i bfhad níos mó de na 6 suíocháin is gá le haighadh tromlach a fháil.
Ar dtús bhi sceitimíní orm faoin Páirtí Glas ach anois níl mé lán le misneach. Ceapaim gur chaill siad ar a saincheisteanna tábhactacht – an usáid mhíleata aerfort na sionna, an forbairt den mótarbhealach M3 agus go háirithe an saincheist tabhartais ó daoine gnó. An bfhuil sibh truaillithe cheana féin? B’fhéidir go bfhuil mé ró amhrasach – feicfidh muid …

[The 30th Dáil was elected this past week. We now see a new relationship between Fianna Fáil, the Green Party, the Progressive Democrats and a few independent candidates. FF won the most seats with 78 out of the 166. With this agreement they have much more than the extra 6 seats necessary to have a majority. At first o was excited about the Green Party but now I am not so full of confidence. I think that they have lost on their important issues - the military use of Shannon Airpott, the the M3 motorway through Tara and especially the issue of corporate donations. Are they corrupted already? Maybe I am too skeptical - we will see ...]

Most Peaceful Nations

The Economist it seems has compiled a list of the most peaceful nations on Earth – based on many factors. They rank 121 countries based on many factors. Not surprisingly Norway tops the list, followed closely behind in 4th place by Ireland. Not too bad for my home country! The list does seem to correlate well with wealth as the top 25 or so nations are all what one would call wealthy (EU nations, Japan, NZ, Australia, etc.) The top 25 is:

1 Norway
2 New Zealand
3 Denmark
4 Ireland
5 Japan
6 Finland
7 Sweden
8 Canada
9 Portugal
10 Austria
11 Belgium
12 Germany
13 Czech Republic
14 Switzerland
15 Slovenia
16 Chile
17 Slovakia
18 Hungary
19 Bhutan
20 Netherlands
21 Spain
22 Oman
23 Hong Kong
24 Uruguay
25 Australia

This is good information – where are cool places to visit where i will be completely safe and unlikely to be mugged/shot/killed? Well there’s 25 nations for you!

Not surprisingly the least peaceful nation in the world is Iraq (oh what a shock!) which is in 121st place. In 120th place is Sudan. The bottom 10 are:

112 Angola
113 Ivory Coast
114 Lebanon
115 Pakistan
116 Colombia
117 Nigeria.
118 Russia
119 Israel
120 Sudan
121 Iraq

Also the US has just manged to sneak into the top 100 safest countries – it finished in 92nd.
[Also in related news i imagine that Lebanon is on the way up this list - what with Colonel Gadafe making many a deal with Tony Blair in recent times (yes there's oil in Lebanon). According to my newspaper they are also said to be on first name terms! Well there you go!]

This is also good information – where do i go if i want to get mugged/shot/kidnapped/etc. – well now you know …

French Presidential Elections

The final round of the french elections is today. The final tussle is between Socialist Segolene Royal and conservative Nicolas Sarkozy.
Sarkozy is apparently the favourite but it is unclear how good for the country he would actually be. He seems to be playing on the tough on immigration, hard on crime stance. He has said he would clean the suburbs of the “racaille” therein.
Hmmmm. There have been many protests and some fighting in cities in France as you probably know but maybe people should ask why this is so (instead of calling them “voyous”)? Many of the people protesting feel excluded and maybe reforms are required and not harder laws. Again this is only my own ranting opinion.
Royal is playing on such social reforms to bring the government closer to the people (and also the standard policies of creating more jobs), some nice policies such as better paternal leave but also some controversial opinions regarding the independence of Quebec and Corsica.
This election could go either way though with the voters who voted for candidates eliminated in the previous round of voting all being there to be won over.

Evan

* “racaille” translates to something like “riff-raff” but more offensive.
* “vouyous” translates to “thugs”

Scottish Independence?

So the results of the Scottish National Assembly are in. The Scottish National Party has won the most seats, one seat ahead of Labour. This is very interesting indeed as the SNP has as it’s aim to gain independence from the United Kingdom. They seek to repeal the Acts of Union from 1707. They wish to see an independent Scotland within the EU and would hope to join the single currency system.
They have pledged that if in power they would put the question of independence to the Scottish people in a referencdum. Now the SNP do have a plurality but not a majority, i.e they have the most seats BUT do not have more than 50% so cannot form a government by themselves. They have stated that the independence referendum would have to be agreed upon by whichever party forms a coallition with the SNP.
I find this very intrigueing! I did not know that Scottish indepence sentiment was so strong – and it must be as the SNP have received ~1/3 of all votes from this platform. So it would seem that many would welcome this referendum and seem to support the idea of an independent Scotland. I suspect that the SNP will not be forming a government with the Lib Dems as Menzies Campbell has already stated “Absolutely not … We are against independence, that’s our position and it ain’t going to change.” Hmmm, you gotta give the people what they want and with the Lib Dems only taking ~1/2 the amount of seats the SNP did maybe Mr. Campbell should be more open. Anyways i will end this rant but this is an interesting topic which i will keeping an eye on (that means expect more ranting!).

Evan