The Votemaster Is...Andrew Tanenbaum

A reader writes: " www.electoral-vote.com, a site of daily updated maps of the US electoral college based on a number of polls is probably a site that the policially inclined check daily. Well, it has been revealed that the person behind the site, AKA the votemaster, is none other than Andrew Tanenbaum, noted author of numerous CS books." He's also known for a little discussion with someone named Linus Torvalds.

Comments

Worldwide results

[ControlFreal]

From the other side of the ponds, the story is quite different. About 113,000 people cast their vote here. In this worldwide shadow election: Kerry wins (77.1%), and Bush comes second at 9.1%. Surprisingly, support for Bush is largest in the Middle East (many votes from Israel?). Some hilarious (frightening...) responses by US citizens to this shadow-election can be found here.

Another initiative (about 20,000 people) is here. Results will be published later today.

It's logical that the results are different than those in the US. However, one wonders how much of a hint some (some) US citizens (especially those posting very harsh comments in response to these shadow-elections) need to realize that it's not just the US that matters in this world.

Mod me flamebait, if you wish. But before you do, consider: it's not me delivering the criticism, it's 113,000 people (on behalf of a much larger group). I'm just the messenger boy here...

Re:Worldwide results

[nelsonal]

One thing I don't think many Europeans realize is that the first reaction many Americans will have in response to exposure to a European (or any foreign country's) opinion on something they view as an American choice will be to do the opposite.

Re:Worldwide results

[Daengbo]

And the votemaster is showing that Bush will win the popular vote in five polls, while Kerry wins in only three polls, yet Kerry is expected to win the electorate by 67 votes, or over 10%. The popular vote is NOT the electoral vote, and counts for sh*t.
Change the laws if you don't agree, but getting OK, KS, and MO to move all the campaigning to NY and CA might be a little difficult...

Re:Worldwide results

[forgotten_my_nick]

Thats the saddest thing about it. You have a president who is one of the most powerful of the free world, and the free world hates him. You can either examine the reasons why or say "Screw the rest of the world".

A good example why.. The US$ is in the toilet at the moment. I have invested in US companies, but because of the US$ it is no longer profitable to do so. I am in two minds of removing my investments to another market or not. Really depends on this election.

Re:Worldwide results

[Glamdrlng]

One thing I don't think many Europeans realize is that the first reaction many Americans will have in response to exposure to a European (or any foreign country's) opinion on something they view as an American choice will be to do the opposite.

What I love about people who react like this is that they're still sheep. They're still basing their opinions on the thoughts and words of others, rather than thinking critically and coming up with their own decision.

Re:Worldwide results

[wizbit]

I think that the rest of the world's hatred for him only proves their loopiness.

I disagree. If you'd read Tanenbaum's assessment of European attitudes of Bush (and his remarkably refreshing attitude towards American leadership in the world) you'd find that, while people may loathe Bush, they are not "loopy," they simply see American power as resting in the hands of an international bully.

I for one will be voting for Kerry not because we are unpopular, but because I desire to see America lead the world again, which we cannot do under the current administration.

Re:Worldwide results

[Kanon]

Then they get another 4 years of God in charge at the Whitehouse.

As a Brit I'm sure I'll manage to get through it :) but its you American folk who are going to have to bend over and take it hardest.

Re:Worldwide results

[wobblie]

To sum up:

"Ich bin ein Berliner!" JFK 1963
"I'm a Napoleon!" GWB, USS Lincoln, 2003

Both Berliners and Napoleons are tasty, delicate pastries.

Re:Worldwide results

[Leftist Troll]

But why is the rest of the world against [the Iraq war]?
Because to them, this war is basically the United States saying, "we have the right to invade anyone anytime for any reason, and there's nothing anyone can do about it". For some reason other countries don't take that well ;)
This administration is thumbing its nose at the principals behind post-WWII international law (even UN secretary general Kofi Annon, usualy quite subserviant to the US, has called the war "illegal").

Specifically the ones who do the inevitably dirty work of wars, exporting security to the rest of the world.
What an Orwellian phrasing. "Exporting security"... that's quite a lot of security we've exported to Vietnam, Nicaragua, and Iraq. Look at what great shape those countries are in now.

I hope that the Europeans discover independent thought one of these days and stop letting themselves be culturally dominated by American media and American corporations.
Amen. Lets hope Americans do the same and stop letting ourselves be dominated by corporations and their media outlets.

Re:Worldwide results

[AnonymousKev]

> ...those ever reliable Internet polls!

Absolutely! Most of the Kerry votes came from confused Cowboy Neal supporters.

Re:Worldwide results

[marsu_k]

Another site (with over 450,000 votes so far) can be found here. Currently only Niger and Pitcaim are in favour of Bush. No, I did not forget Poland ;-)

Re:Worldwide results

[Atzanteol]

Thats the saddest thing about it. You have a president who is one of the most powerful of the free world, and the free world hates him.

Tough. It's our vote, not yours. I'm getting really sick of these arrogant Europeans thinking their oppinion in our election even matters. We (by and large) hate the French president, do they care? Are they changing their votes because of it?

Re:Worldwide results

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you make it sound like Bush single handidly f'ed up America. For some reason the rest of the world seems to believe this too. I suppose everyone needs to demonize some person or thing in order to justify what is wrong with their situation. But as much as I hate Bush, it's not all his fault.

You think he runs this country? Think again. This country is run by two parties - nothing else. They both have their own agendas to some degree, but they are essentially the same and whoring themselves out to the highest bidder. If you want my opinion, you better move your investmens if either a Democrat or Republican wins. America is screwed no matter what the outcome is - and that's because of the people as much as the politicians.

Re:Worldwide results

[Troed]

Check the trade balance. It's the US that needs to trade with the rest of the world to survive - not the other way around.

Re:Worldwide results

[Experiment 626]

So what? If you took a Slashdot poll of who the next CEO of Microsoft should be, you might find widespread support for some guy who would give away all their IP and then disband the company. If you took a poll of the shareholders, they would have a different opinion. Why would anyone need to poll 113,000 people to realize that third parties have different agendas than the people doing the voting?

Even if foreigners are well-informed about the platforms of the candidates in a different country, why would they care about things like domestic issues or tax policy? Such people would have no interest in picking the candidate who would act in the best interest of Americans, but rather who would do things that were best for people in the poll-respondant's part of the world, regardless of whether the policies were good or bad for the candidate's own constituency. People in India want might more outsourcing, people in Japan might want America to run a bigger trade deficit with them, others might want to take America down a notch or two economically, politically, militarily, and so on.

Consider this interpretation of your data: people who actually have to live under the administration they are voting for are many times more likely to support Bush than are poll respondants who are foist a candidate upon someone else's country from afar.

Re:Worldwide results

[Daengbo]

And the argument can be made that without an Electoral College that every vote would matter in every state.
Any argument can be made, but, since the electoral system was created specifically for the purpose of not marginalizing the smaller states, I don't think that this one would hold water.

Ohio is a fairly heavily populated state.
With 11,435,798 people, or less than 4% of the populace, I don't think you could call it heavily populated when compard to CA, TX, or NY, though it does rank 7th. (And that comes as a shock to me) It would only give 10% of the combined votes of the six states above it (I rounded to the hundred thousands for that stat).

Re:Worldwide results

[haus]

I wish to respectfully disagree. While a lot of effort would be placed in the large population centers such as New York and Los Angles. Due to the rich density of voters this would be the ripe target grounds for the alternate party candidates who would not have the budget to make a truly nationwide campaign.

While in most years these groups may not pull that high of a percentage, it is not unheard of for them to make a difference. For example Ross Perot managed to achieve 19 percent of the popular vote. The fear of this possibility will force any major candidate to run a nationwide candidacy to avoid being victim to potential localized swings that could be achieved in given areas.

The idea that nearly one in five voters can select a candidate and still not have a singe electoral vote to represent their wishes. This is a clear example that this systems fails to represent the people and needs to be revised.

Re:Worldwide results

[Mr. Slippery]

I'm getting really sick of these arrogant Europeans thinking their oppinion in our election even matters.

And it's people like you who were asking "why do they hate us" after 9/11...

Anyway, if we keep this national attitude up, in a few more years the rest of the world certainly won't give a damn about the U.S. elections. Because they won't give a damn about the U.S. - we won't matter in world affairs anymore. The "American Century" is over, and we can either be a player, maybe even "first among equals", in the new century, or we can be a second-rate laughing stock as nations that value cooperation and intelligent behavior lead the way.

Re:Worldwide results

[Progman3K]

>Tough. It's our vote, not yours. I'm getting really sick of these arrogant Europeans thinking their oppinion in our election even matters.

It would be correct to tell the rest of the world to piss off and mind their own business because the U.S. presidential elections are U.S. business if the U.S. stopped meddling in foreign governments.

Whatever the outcome of this election, it WILL have repercussions on the rest of the world.

THAT'S why the rest of the world feels they must state their opinion, obviously.

Re:Worldwide results

[C.Batt]

Your government misrepresented its reasons for going to war. In fact, the correct expression is, "it LIED".

Saddam Hussein has/had no proven connections to Al Quaeda. No secret relationships with Osama Bin Laden. No Weapons of Mass destruction. No ability to threaten America or American citizens (except those who wandered into Iraq) directly.

Was he a "bad man"? Oh, probably. But so is Kim Jong Il.

The reason why there is so much anti-american sentiment is that America (through its governmental representation) is so anti-global-community. So blatantly false in its motivations. And has proven to be very untrustworthy.

The war was NEVER about terror, Weapons of Mass Destruction, regime change, or making the world a safer place. It was always about securing oil resources and securing a military foothold in the middle-east.

The rest of the world knew this immediately (except for the UK government). We didn't swallow anything hook-line-and-sinker. We called a spade a spade, and are frankly quite disgusted by the lack of respect that America has demonstrated to the international community.

At the very least, if the American government would've said, "uh, we're going into Iraq because the instability of the area threatens our Oil supply." At least they would've been honest.

Are Americans evil? Hardly. My wife is American. I visit my inlaws regularly and they are fantastic folks. So are all of the people I've met on a face-to-face basis. However, the American government is NOT a good representation of its people. All that the rest of the world is saying with these fake votes and inconsequential opinion polls is that we'd like your government to give you the international representation that the good people of America deserve.

Re:Worldwide results

[Anonymous Coward]

Tough. It's our vote, not yours. I'm getting really sick of these arrogant Europeans thinking their oppinion in our election even matters. We (by and large) hate the French president, do they care? Are they changing their votes because of it?

You're right, it is your vote, and it's perfectly justifiable for Americans to consider their election a purely internal matter for Americans to deal with.

Oddly enough though, whenever another country has elected a leader that Americans happened to dislike, you always went in and removed them. It didn't matter if it required an invasion (too many to list), a kidnapping (Panama), an assassination (Cuba), or a fake coup (Guatemala), you supported it.

And to think all we're doing to express our dislike of your leaders is letting you know about it. Oh the horror! But you're getting pissed that we would dare interfere in your election by *talking about it*? What a fucking hypocrite.

Re:Worldwide results

[Mr. Slippery]

But why is the rest of the world against it?

Because it was a crime. A violation of international law and of the basic premise of national sovreignty. At best, international vigilantism; at worst the outright mugging of a nation to control its oil reserves.

Oh, and those 100,000 dead innocents might have something to do with it.

Yes, Saddam bad. That doesn't mean killing a bunch of people and letting a whole nation descend into chaos (from which it may well emerge into a fundamentalist theocracy) to put him in jail is a smart or moral course of action.

If my neighbor was beating his wife, I'd want to stop him, but it would not be good to burn down his house and kill his whole family to do so.

Re:Worldwide results

[calbanese]

You think he runs this country? Think again. This country is run by two parties - nothing else.

Well, this time that isn't really the case. There is a lot of power up for grabs this time (moreso than usual).

The next president willwill be nominating up to 3 conservative Supreme Court justices in the next term. Assuming the senate stays republican, a democratic president would have to nominate justices who are fairly moderate to get by a republican senate. If its republican senate and a republican president, you can add three more conservative justices to the Court now.

Plus the current issues that are being debated - Patriot Act, Gitmo rights, DMCA etc., are/will be handled by Ashcroft's (or his replacement's) minions. There was a story in the Times today about the DOJ ignoring the SC's Hamdi decision in its arguments to the Federal District Court on remand. There is some heavy stuff being debated and right now the government is being represented by ultraconservative Christians. If these cases come before an conservative court, the government will have a much easier time persuading them.

At least if there is a split, there will be something to limit and fragment power so that some moderate voices will be heard too.

Disclaimer: I am a registered Independent who would have voted for Badnarik if I didn't live in a battleground state.

Re:Worldwide results

[TheGreek]

Because they'd rather talk than kill?
Because they'd rather try diplomatic methods before testing out our new weapon systems?

George W. wanted to finish what his dad started 10 years earlier. Dick Cheney wanted to make some serious $$$ for his company.

And the widespread corruption in the UN Oil-For-Food program that directly benefitted French, German, and Russian companies had absolutely nothing to do with their opposition to the war.

Re:Worldwide results

[swillden]

I'm getting really sick of these arrogant Europeans thinking their oppinion in our election even matters.

Let's make this simple:

Their opinions of our nation affect our individual lives. Sometimes the effects aren't obvious, but the effects are there. Therefore, we have a reason to care about what they think of us.

Their opinions of our nation are largely determined by our nation's actions in the area of foreign relations. Foreign relations is handled by the State Department under the direction of the President. Ergo, their opinion of us is principally affected by our President. Therefore, we have a reason to care about what they think of our President.

Their opinion matters. It's not decisive by any means, but to the extent that our interests and theirs coincide, we should at least give consideration to what they have to say.

Beyond that, sometimes it's good to get a point of view that is at a remove from the problem. Marriage counselors aren't necessarily all that smart, but they are fairly effective because they're outside of the problem. Sometimes I think the US citizens and the US government could use some intervention to help us work out our differences :-)

Re:Worldwide results

[damiam]

Paragraph breaks are your friends.

Re:Worldwide results

[stm2]

Since I am from a 3rd wordl country I could explain why most people here hates Bush. A lot of people thinks that if Bush invaded Irak for the oil, tomorrow he will invade another country for another resource. Lot of people in Brazil think the US is after the amazonas (the biggest rainforest), people from Argentina think they could invade them for the freshwater (in Patagonia region). I don't think this way, but I know lot of people who believe this kind of things.
As a biotech studen I am anti-Bush because his position against funding research on stem cell genetics.

Re:Worldwide results

[forgotten_my_nick]

"benefitted French, German, and Russian companies"

I think you left out "America" as well. If you go check your facts, the US made more money from that deal and even increased its output just shortly before the war because it knew it wouldn't have the pay the debts.

Re:Worldwide results

[Alsee]

Why exactly do "[The US citizens] (by and large) hate the French president"?

It's just the fanatical Bush supporters, the ones who live in an entirely different reality filled with entirely different "facts". They generally beleive that we did find WMD's in Iiiiqar, or that there was an active WMD program, that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attack or otherwise supported Al Quaeda, who think we still have the vitally needed international support for hunting down terrorists across the globe.

And based on that view of reality, obviously the French are aiding the terrorists. They are all obviously currupted by the Oil for Food program. And most of all they simply want to see a weak America so they can puff-up their own relative importance and strength.

But as I said, that's the Bush supporters. The rest of us may have chucked at the "Freedom Fries" stuff, and laughed at the French-surrendering jokes, but we in no way hate the French or your President.

I'd say 20% of the problem is our administration intentionally deceiving the public, 20% of the problem is idiot people beleiving the administration's baloney, but the majority of the problem is that our media has rolled over for the Whitehouse. Immediately after 9/11 attack we all naturally came together in unity and support. After the attack any critisism of the country or of the president was simply UnAmerican and Not Done. While the effect has faded, it is not gone. The press has been reluctant to carry news that was critical of the US or of the President. When they do critique the administration and their statements and their 'evidence', the media tends to softpeddle that critique.

Half of the country is outraged at the lies the administration has foisted on us and on the world, and the other half still beleives those lies. It is human nature that people do not like to find out that they are wrong - that they have been fooled. Bush supporters are emotionally invested in not accepting evidence that they have been fooled, and that they have been supporting a war that most of them would have opposed had they known there were in fact no WMD's and no WMD programs.

The people on each side have a very different view of reality. This election is increadibly polarized. A one or two percent shift in voting will throw the electorial college vote massively one way or the other. There seems to be good reason to believe that that major shift will be in Kerry's direction. And hopfully after a Kerry election the public will become more accurately informed.

-

Re:Worldwide results

[geg81]

First of all every government security agency in the world believed that Saddam had WMDs.

Foreign government security services didn't say much about it at all, as far as I know. But US government experts, including weapons inspectors, said that there was no way there were WMD there anymore, or even to create them.

Just look at the financial relations that exist between the US and everyone else.

Yes: a result of the dollar having become the international standard of exchange after WWII. The question is: will the US let the Euro take over that role?

If we were so anti-global we would create tarrifs on imports that duplicate the tarrifs our good face when exported to other countries. Almost every country in the world has much more severe barriers to foreign competition and foreign ownership or acquisition of companies than the US.

The US has low trade barriers in some areas (e.g., high tech) and high trade barriers others (e.g., agriculture). Those policies don't represent a general commitment to free trade, but the political influence of selected US constituencies. Some of those policies, like US (and EU) agricultural policies, can only be described as evil.

The US government sends more aid to other countries than any other country in the world. They probably (unsubstantiated) send more aid to other countries than the entire EU combined.

The US is one of the stingiest nations when it comes to foreign aid. And even those official figures are overestimates because what the US counts as "foreign aid" is often thinly disguised political or military aid, or tied to the purchase of US goods and services. So, in effect, that "foreign aid" is US corporate subsidies, which is not only bad foreign aid policy, but also in violation of fair trade principles.

Re:Worldwide results

[ideonode]

As a frenchman who did not vote for Chirac (the French president)

Way off topic, but did you vote for Le Pen, then?

Re:Worldwide results

[Alsee]

I'm getting really sick of these arrogant Europeans thinking their oppinion in our election even matters.

You are shortsighted and and dooming our efforts to defend ourselfs against terrorist attack if you think overwhelming world oppinion is irrelevant.

The world - our staunchest allies - they all beleive that the US has been lying and that *WE* have become the rouge nation. I'd say the evidence is that they are right, but even if they are wrong, the fact is that they do beleive it. The fact is that they no longer trust us. The fact is that they no longer support our efforts to track and catch or kill terrorists.

How the hell are we supposted to find and catch or kill terrorists across the globe - even in nations that have been our staunchest allies - when we no longer have their public support and police support and intelligence support and their military support?

Bush has been increadibly damaging to our international relations. Bush has destroyed our capacity to find and catch and kill terrorist cells outside the country and planning attacks on us.

We are talking about Australia, and England, and Mexico, and Canada. And yes, France and Germany as well.

Bush is famous for saying "you're with us or you're against us". Well he got his wish, now the entire world is against us. How the hell are we supposed to keep out terrorists when even Canada and Mexico are against us?

-

Re:Worldwide results

[ugmoe]

I've always wondered why the Jews didn't figure out prior to WWII why the Germans hated them?

Or why didn't the Chinese try to understand the Japanese hatred of them during the same time period?

All that bloodshed that could have been spared if only the Jews and the Chinese had tried to be more understanding.

Re:Worldwide results

[PMuse]

...whenever another country has elected a leader that Americans happened to dislike, you always went in and removed them.

Oddly enough, Jacques Chirac is still in office. ;)

Re:Worldwide results

[Tadghe]

Unfortunately America has a huge born again fundamentalist Christian block, something you probably dont have anything quite like in Europe. It has acquired huge power in and through the new Republican Party. They vote with their hearts and not their intellects

A few points my uninformed friend....

1. Actually, take a look at the polls (google for yourself), less than 35% of the US population belongs to a Evangelical organization, only a percentage of that will be fundamentalist (looked, but could not find solid stats on Fundamentlists, sorry). (see http://www.christianitytoday.com/money/articles/ke ystatistics.html and more info at http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_prac2.htm ).

2. They do not vote their hearts. They vote what they believe is their faith. While you (and I) may disagree with that *choice*, they are free to have whatever faith (or lack thereof) they choose. Understand that voting with your heart is not the same as voting your faith.
"They are very easily manipulated, reference how Jim and Tammy Fay Baker played them like a fiddle and how Bush/Cheney/Rove play them now"
3. Somehow I think throwing up a strawman of a 80's era televangelist and claiming that these poor misguided souls can't tell the difference between a "forgive me for I have sinned" televangelist and an election is not only a bit , IMHO, crude, but highly untrue, unless of course you can provide us with data that shows that former contributors to the Bakkers are now hard-core Republicans. I'm pretty sure you'll find that's not true, since most televangelists prey on the elderly, which have historically been much more democratic leaning.
Today's American Christians appear mostly intolerant of the poor, those who aren't Christian and those out of the main stream, and instead appear to favor wealth and people that are like them in defiance of the real teachings of their religion.
4. Really? not from what I've seen. Christians are bound by faith to serve (see http://www.svdpusa.org/ or http://www.opusdei.org/ as an example or two). I'm curious what you mean by "out of the main stream" ...

5. One last 'itty bitty point, while I know it's considered "cool" and "correct" to claim that American Christians are somehow all Pro-War, and Pro-Bush, the polls don't support this.
Take a look at http://pewforum.org/docs/index.php?DocID=20 for a pretty good article on it.
Another good article here http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/112/12.0. html

Re:Worldwide results

[Mr. Slippery]

What countries are those, exactly?

Mostly I have in mind the ones forming the European Union. It's a very interesting form of post-nationalist cooperation taking shape over there. (Of course, considering that we're still dealing with the problems many of these nations left the world after their colonial conflicts climaxed in WWI, a certain dose of salt is still in order.)

Whatever you have to say about our human rights record, you MUST admit that we're better than Libya, for crying out loud.

Certainly. But that debacle is the price we (not just the U.S. but the industrialized West in general) pay for putting our attention on the Middle East (oil! oil!) and ignoring the multiple catastrophe of Africa. (The votes of African nations that put Libya into that position are believed to be a quid pro quo for Libyan financing of the African Union.)

Evidence: they pass all kinds of resolutions about how Israel needs to be nice, but ignore the atrocities committed by the palestinians.

Considering that Israel owes its existance to a U.N. declaration but doesn't feel bound to other declarations, that is Israel killing more people than Palestinian terrorists/resistance fighters/choose your term by a factor of about 2.5, and that Israel is a nation with an effective government that can take action while the Palestinian Authority has no de facto authority to stop terrorists/resistance fighters, that's not unreasonable.

What could the U.N. do, sanction the Palestinian Authority? If you don't have a nation, you probably don't feel too bound by the opinions of the United Nations.

Re:Worldwide results

[kwandar]

Speaking as a Canadian .... very well said. TO be clear though, we do have a lot of respect and are protective of our friends in the US, as they generally are of us.

We whole heartedly support the fight against terrorism

We just get upset when our VERY large friend to the south doesn't think strategically, becomes unreasonably impatient, works outside their network of friends, alienates most of them, and then opens up an unnecessary second front to fight an unnecessary (Iraq was well contained) war, instead of the War Against Terrorism.

In short, Bush has made the US has looked like a lurching, violent, idiot on the world stage

And unfortunately, a site that won't load today

[jlrowe]

Even before the 'slashdot effect', the site has been unavaiable. All morning.

Re:And unfortunately, a site that won't load today

[j0shwalk3r]

I have been a longtime reader of his site. He has mirrors up on electoral-vote2.com on up. I think 5 was the highest I last heard, but I'm sure he'll be putting up more after gettting a good slashdotting. And he thought the people trying to DoS him was bad...

Re:And unfortunately, a site that won't load today

[dejamatt]

He seemed to be expecting an attack the other day, and mirrored it at:

http://www.electoral-vote4.com/

http://www.electoral-vote3.com/

Re:And unfortunately, a site that won't load today

[SkjeggApe]

Try: www.electoral-vote3.com
OR
www.electoral-vote4.com
OR
www.electoral-vote5.com

Re:And unfortunately, a site that won't load today

[djdead]

Actually it's up through www.electoral-vote9.com/

Re:And unfortunately, a site that won't load today

[rrhal]

Ha! Mr Tanebaum - Your micro kernals will not save you now! We have unleashed the slashdot effect.

Mwa Haa Haa Ha Ha Ha .....

Serious questions

[daveschroeder]

As I imagine the replies to this post will mostly be drooling fawning over Andrew Tanenbaum, much like the Jon Stewart/Crossfire article, I'd like to actually ask some meaningful questions. (And please note that I have great respect for Tanenbaum, but don't understand a couple of his central points, described below.)

Why does running a statistical analysis website that gathers information on polls and aggregates them into something quasi-meaningful "support" the Democratic candidate?

Yes, yes, I'm well aware that while incognito he had said on numerous occasions that he was a Kerry supporter, and a Democrat. But he himself says:

Why Did You Do This?

In a nutshell, because I want to be proud of America again.

Meaning that Kerry can somehow make him proud again. Ok, fine, but what does running electoral-vote.com have to do with that? The question "Why Did You Do This?" implies that he is "do"ing something to influence people to vote in a particular way, which I simply don't see that website doing. In fact, other than the admittedly editorial sections of the site, I have found the site to be remarkedly unbiased.

He then goes on, at length, describing/proving that the world "hates" Bush/the administration/etc. This comes as absolutely no surprise to me. However - and FORGET about "Bush" for a second - how does "hating" someone have any logical correlation with whether their positions or courses of action are appropriate or inappropriate? That would seem antithetical to the viewpoints of most progressive persons. That's a serious question, but I doubt I'll get any serious answers. And this is an important question, because the fact that so many abroad "hate" Bush, and somehow getting more Americans to understand that, is central to Tanenbaum's multitude of statements on the topic. Why does "hating" someone mean what they're doing is wrong? (I will concede that a leader of a nation being hated probably makes it vastly more difficult to do diplomatic work, but that is somewhat tangential to my core question.)

The rest of this post amounts to what are essentially footnotes on this topic, but I believe are critical to the discussion of the belief that Kerry can somehow to a better job.

So let's address these things. The world "hates" Bush, and Kerry can somehow not only fight terrorism more effectively, but will also bring respect back to the US.

Sen McCain said it best yesterday on Face the Nation:

"I also believe that President Bush has a vision and a view that the war on terror is not going to be over until we have some democracy in the Middle East, and I don't think he means by imposing that at the point of a bayonet. But I do believe that he's correct that the issue of radical Islamic extremism is not going away until those countries have some kind of freedom and democracy, and I think that's his long-term goal."

Now, before you start spitting and sputtering about why the US is in "Iraq", then, well, reread that last statement. I'm not going to beat around the bush, as it were, any more: the US is in "Iraq" because it was an easy target in the region, period. Not because Saddam tried to kill Bush's "daddy", not because Bush is an angry dry drunk, and not because Cheney has a secret plan to line his pockets and that of Halliburton. This isn't a black-and-white zero-sum game where there is only one reason the US is in Iraq. There are myriad reasons. But the prime one is that it is part of a comprehensive, omnibus strategy to bring free or quasi-free governments to the region, in the hopes that more of the same will be encouraged, even as organizations like al-Qaeda redouble their recruiting efforts. This strategy will make things worse in the meantime. Possibly a lot worse. People will hate us. Including some people who will ultimately be protected by our actions (i.e., Europe).

Panislamic radicalism will not go away on its own

Re:Serious questions

[forgotten_my_nick]

Nice long post. I can sum it up easy. While he is clearly a Kerry supporter, the polls are non-biased and based on existing polls.

If you followed the site for some time you would see that. There is even a movie on the site to show you how much the polls have been swinging back and forwards.

If anything his site shows how pointless polls are, or that the undeceided voter is completly clueless and changes their mind every 5 minutes.

The only poll that really matters is tomorrows.

On another note "600,000 Iraqis". Can you quote a source for that? The only figure I can find is for displaced and not killed under sanctions. Also you should note that Saddam was grossly inflating the deaths (especially children deaths) in order to try and stop sanctions.

Re:Serious questions

[Minwee]

It was also posted two minutes after the story was released and contained over 2000 words.

The author not only read the headline but then proceded to type at 80 words per minute about topics which bear at best tangental relation to the topic at hand, which is that Andrew Tannenbaum has chosen to become involved in the electoral process by creating a site which monitors poll results.

I'm sure we'll be just as impressed when the same post shows up in response to the articles about Jon Stewart getting a manicure and the X-Box case mod that looks like a pumpkin.

Re:Serious questions

[Otter]

On the whole, I think Tanenbaum's piece was extremely well written and captures half of what I think is the best pro-Kerry case (or anti-Bush case, anyway) that can be made. (The other half being the deficit.) One thing struck me, though, and reminds me why I'm still leery of Kerry.

With a President Kerry, there is hope that other countries might contribute serious numbers of troops to help stabilize Iraq. With a second Bush administration they will just say: "You broke it, you fix it."

Hope? If Kerry wins it tomorrow, he'd better have those unnamed countries who supposedly have divisions of combat-ready troops they're eager to throw into the Iraq meat grinder. In two days, he's going to be on the hook to actually do all the stuff he's been promising.

Re:Serious questions

[Anonymous Coward]

I simply don't have time to respond to all of this...but a couple thoughts:

However - and FORGET about "Bush" for a second - how does "hating" someone have any logical correlation with whether their positions or courses of action are appropriate or inappropriate? That would seem antithetical to the viewpoints of most progressive persons.

Perhaps people hate what Bush (or anyone) has done...with the situation in Iraq, with civil liberties at home, etc. When he says people "hate" Bush, I don't know that he's saying that they hate him personally, just, they hate what he has done. I would say that that directly follows whether his positions are appropriate.

the US is in "Iraq" because it was an easy target in the region, period. Not because Saddam tried to kill Bush's "daddy", not because Bush is an angry dry drunk, and not because Cheney has a secret plan to line his pockets and that of Halliburton. This isn't a black-and-white zero-sum game where there is only one reason the US is in Iraq. There are myriad reasons.

If this is true (and I'm doubtful), then he should have said that -- to Congress, to the American people, to the world. But no, we were there for WMDs which didn't exist. That was the "reason". If history had nothing to do with it, wouldn't Iran have been a better (more threatening) target?

Re:Serious questions

[benhocking]

how does "hating" someone have any logical correlation with whether their positions or courses of action are appropriate or inappropriate

I would guess that for many people the causal connection is backwards from what it appears you are suggesting. I.e., people "hate" Bush because they think that he his positions or courses of action are inappropriate. I personally don't hate him, but his positions and courses of action are why I'm voting against him. (Yes, I'm one of those many people who are voting against Bush more so than voting for Kerry. I've never been particularly partisan, but have always thought that respect for the environment was very important.)

the US is in "Iraq" because it was an easy target in the region, period [and to bring freedom, democracy] ... This isn't a black-and-white zero-sum game where there is only one reason the US is in Iraq.

I do believe that the reasons you've listed are primary reasons we attacked Iraq. I'm still undecided as to whether the reasons were sufficient. Saddam was an evil person, and only time will tell whether we've helped to secure freedom and democracy for Iraq or whether we've prepared the way for a worse dictator. (The US has a bad track record with this - think Khomeni, etc.) Nevertheless, I do think that there has been significant profiteering going on, (e.g., Haliburton), and that is very disturbing.

An interesting thought experiment is to imagine what would have happened had we invaded Germany and removed Hitler instead of ceding the Sudetenland to him. People probably would have said we were overstating the threat, etc. Was Saddam as big a threat as Hitler? (Remember, Hitler had no WMD's either,) Maybe not. But if we had removed Hitler when he invaded the Sudetenland, Hitler wouldn't have been as big a threat.

However, even if you believe we should have attacked Iraq, it is hard to believe that Bush followed a well thought out plan. I think a good diplomat could have bargained with France, Germany, and Russia and gotten them on board. I know that seems impossible now, but that's only because Bush has so alienated them that it's difficult for even them to imagine ever helping us.

Of course, my number one reason for voting against Bush is because of the number of policies he has enacted that have rolled back the environmental policies enacted under Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., and Clinton.

Re:Serious questions

[Diabolical]

You have to ask yourself a very serious question: Is it the responsibility of the USA to bring democracy to the middle east?

The rest of the world sees differently. It is not our responsibility to tell another nation whether their way of life is correct or not. Hell, the US has big problems of their own without fighting wars in other countries.

It is this mentality that has brought the problems to the US in the first place, their constant meddling into the affairs of foreign countries. Hell, Saddam Hussain, Osama bin Laden and their cohorts are PRODUCTS of this meddling.

The rest of the world is looking very cautiously at the actions of the worlds most powerfull country. Just like children look cautiously to the school bully. Because that's how the USA is percieved right now. A bully running around pushing other people out of it's way to get what it wants..

Re:Serious questions

[bitingduck]

The only poll that really matters is tomorrows.

Absolutely.

I live in a non-swing state, so I've been volunteering for some get-out-the-vote-in-swing-states phone banking over the past couple days, and I no longer believe the polls. People in swing states are getting so many phone calls that many of them no longer answer the phone, they put messages on their machine saying if it's a political call please go away, they hang up right away, etc. They are extremely popular right now, and most of them seem to wish it would all go away.

On the few occasions that you do get a a live person, pretty frequently they say "this is my fifth call today, and someone just left the front door, would you please take us off your list". I apologize, and thank them, but because many of the groups aren't allowed to coordinate (or don't when they could), getting off one group's list doesn't help much.

The pollsters are calling all the same people, and probably having just as hard a time. They have to make a lot of corrections for systematic error, and I would suspect that the popularity of the swing state voters makes their correction factors less useful than in a more typical year.

Every once in a while you get someone who didn't know where to go to vote, or who needs help getting to the poll (which we help with). They make it worthwhile.

Re:Serious questions

[Glock27]

If anything his site shows how pointless polls are, or that the undeceided voter is completly clueless and changes their mind every 5 minutes.

I don't think polls are "pointless", but many people are very clueless about statistics (including, apparently, almost everyone in the media).

The talking heads on the news regularly talk about how a poll has "swung" one way or the other. For instance, this morning a poll came out that showed Bush up by 2% in the popular vote, 48% to 46%. The day before they were tied, I believe at 46% to 46%. Everyone involved talked about this as a real effect even though the margin of error (MoE) in the poll was 3%! Statistical variation completely explains those two results, it is quite possible that voter sentiment didn't change a bit!

Even beyond that, again by the nature of statistics polls are not as reliable as they are portrayed. The above mentioned MoE is only good for a 95% confidence level. In other words, there is a 5% chance that the reported numbers lay outside the MoE! So, it is best to view poll numbers with a very large grain of salt...

Re:Serious questions

[caudron]

how does "hating" someone have any logical correlation with whether their positions or courses of action are appropriate or inappropriate?

I could not agree more. Saying you hate someone tells me something about you, not about the person you hate. People have somehow forgotten that.

In this election, the word hate is being bandied about on both sides way too much. It's a dangerous word for what it implies about the American people.

the US is in "Iraq" because it was an easy target in the region, period. [...] it is part of a comprehensive, omnibus strategy to bring free or quasi-free governments to the region, in the hopes that more of the same will be encouraged, even as organizations like al-Qaeda redouble their recruiting efforts.

Again, I could not agree more. However, it's worth pointing out that this is not the reason given to us. If it were, and if the American people still stood behind the reasoning, then there would be a lot fewer protests. The ends do not ever justify the means. This administration forgot that when they lied to get us behind them on this plan as you've described it above. I voted for Bush in 2000. I will not vote for him in 2004 because he does not represent my views on how the American system of government works.

I was raised to believe in an America that was literally for the people and by the people. I was raised to believe, however foolishly, that if we give people the power to govern themselves and set their own direction, they will progress as a community. When you take away that power (by taking away our ability to make informed decisions) you circumvent the people's will in favor of the will of the ruling class. I don't need a governmental father-figure. I need a government that facilitates my part in the "American experiment".

I still believe in our forefather's experiment, even with all its failings and problems. We've made progress, and I expect we will continue to do so, but not so long as our leaders feel the need to patronize us with lies to facilitate their own goals and plans. They work for us. Let us never forgot that.

Re:Serious questions

[toddt]

Moderate, or reply? Moderate, or reply?

Reply it is.

Your comment makes some excellent points about foreign policy. Unfortunately, they're points that I feel you understand better than our president does.

Yes, it's key to stop Panislamic terrorism. It's critical to our safety, to peace around the world, to a solution to the mid-East crisis. All that.However, our methods have, to put it mildly, sucked a whole lotta ass. We did a really, really fantastic job of just bombing the shit out of Iraq. We shocked 'em. We awed 'em. And then we alienated 'em.

Instead of enlisting aid to actually secure the peace (rebuilding infrastructure, training Iraqi civil forces, promoting education), we chose to go it alone. Why? Because we'd be better at finding the WMDs without interference.

But at the point that we'd won the war, the WMDs didn't matter! They made a reasonable excuse for invading, but after the war, they were pointless.We'd already invaded, we were now stuck there, WMDs or no WMDs. They really only mattered for political points. At that point, to really do good in Iraq, we needed to make it perfectly clear that we were *not* there as conquerors, that we were *not* there to stay, and that we were *not* there to subdue Islam. We needed to make rebuilding Iraq a collaborative, global effort. We needed help. And Bush did NOTHING to seek it out. That's why it's our boys who are being killed, and it's a big part of why terrorist recuiting efforts are so incredibly successful in Iraq today. (Yes, I'm forgetting Poland. I know.)

And that's why Iraq is a debacle. That's a big part of why the rest of the world has come to really hate us. That's why I think voting for Bush is a mistake. Does Kerry have the solutions? Probably not. Certainly not all of them. But he's someone that the rest of the world doesn't actively despise, and that opens a lot of doors. We need help in Iraq if we're going to instill a workable democracy. Bush can't get it. Perhaps Kerry can.

And all that's to say nothing of Bush's really miserable record on the environment and science. Stifling stem cell research? Ignoring global warming? Overruling EPA guidelines on arsenic and air quality? Come on, now...

Todd

Re:Serious questions

[Dr. Manhattan]

the US is in "Iraq" because it was an easy target in the region, period

Easier than Afghanistan? If we'd stayed in Afghanistan, we'd have the same problem with insurgents moving in from other countries, but the native populace was actually sick of radical Islamic rule. Add in the fact that the infrastructure was already in a shambles (any improvement we could make would be dramatically better than the existing situation) and the reason it was in a shambles was because the Soviets had bombed the heck out of them... and the U.S. was the country that helped them. Not to mention the worldwide support for the invasion of Afghanistan.

The insurgents would have had a lot less native support, and we'd have had a lot more international support. If we'd ponied up the kind of dough there that we are currently hemorrhaging in Iraq, the place would be well on its way to a stable democracy.

Instead, we opened up a two-front war, in far less favorable conditions. The Bush administration vastly underestimated the amount and kind of resistance they'd face. Either that, or they flatout lied to rally support for it. Now that we're there, we have to finish the job, but it would be vastly easier with some international support for the operation, and that ain't gonna happen while Bush is in charge.

Re:Serious questions

[mikeee]

think a good diplomat could have bargained with France, Germany, and Russia and gotten them on board. I know that seems impossible now, but that's only because Bush has so alienated them that it's difficult for even them to imagine ever helping us.

Oh, please. They were sitting on billions in defense and oil contracts ready to go when they finally got the UN sanctions lifted; and none of them have the logistics to put a really significant force (>10k men) on the ground in Iraq anyway.

They won't support firm action against blatent genocide in Sudan, and you think they would have backed Kerry in Iraq? Madness.

Re:Serious questions

[ThePlague]

The point is that even if Kerry wins the election tomorrow (a very big if), he will have no official capacity to do anything regarding Iraq or any other presidential issue until January. At best, he might be able to do some informal chatting with various world leaders, but assuming he wins uncontested tomorrow, the transition work begins and will eat up his time until inauguration at least.

Re:Serious questions

[PMuse]

...the US is in "Iraq" because it was an easy target in the region, period. ...The US never went to Iraq for WMD (though we were justified in doing so for that reason alone, and probably expected to find quite a bit). Yes, in a way, it went for "oil".

Interesting. Now, consider that the Bush administration used the supposed presence of WMD as its primary justification of the invasion of Iraq to the nation and the world. Unless you dispute that (and it's pretty tough to dispute after reading the transcripts of President Bush's speeches between Jan 2003 and May 2003), then we come to an interesting conclusion. Apparently, you are less concerned about what a candidate/president _says_ his reasons are for doing a thing than you are concerned about what those reasons actually are. If you are correct that the U.S. invaded Iraq because it was a target of opportunity that would provide a platform for countering panislamic fundamentalism, then the WMD justification must have been both a smokescreen and a false statement.

I call this conclusion "interesting" because many who support Bush (perhaps not including you) spend much of their time spouting about "character" and "lies". It's refreshing to see a true pragmatist abandon that tired moral rhetoric and attempt to justify support of Bush's policies and actions based on facts, self-interest, and logic. I happen to disagree with your eventual conclusion (that Bush's methods are sound), but I admire the process by which you reach it.

Re:Serious questions

[delcielo]

In February of 2001, just one month after his inauguration, the Bush cabinet was already talking about regime change in Iraq. This was 7 months before 9/11. He had designs on Iraq before he was elected. He may very well have held the philosophy you described; but I'm not entirely convinced of that. I will admit that it's plausible; but it's a conclusion drawn without evidence (memos, minutes of meetings, etc.)

It would also be misguided to think that the Arab peoples will unite under Jeffersonian democracies. It ignores their history, their writings, and their speeches to believe that they will. Any democracy in that region will break down or become a shadow of itself. Pakistan is a good example. It remains a democracy as long as that democracy behaves like a dictatorship. On the other hand, the Jordanian Monarchy is perhaps the most stable and moderate government in the region.

Back on the subject of our pretext for invasion, whatever the reason Bush invaded Iraq, he felt it was one we wouldn't swallow, and so lied to us to get his support. That should carry the gravest of consequences. It is far beyond his rights as President to lie to us because he knows what's best even if we don't. If he is kicked out of office (and that appears to be big "if" right now) he will be getting off easy. Because to do such a thing as he has done, to ignore our wishes, or to divert around them by lying to us so that our wishes are those of uninformed or misinformed people, so that he can run the country as he alone sees fit, is to make a mockery of democracy. To pay lip service to democracy in the U.S. (I know we're a democratic republic, not a true democracy; but the point is still valid) while behind the backs of the American public (or in front of them after they've been manipulated) executing your own policies is to defy our constitution and everything it stands for.

So, if your point about Bush's real designs with Iraq are true, I hardly think it supports his re-election.

The way to defeat Islamic radicalism is to make it radical. You need to get Islam to heal itself. Islam is killing itself with this radicalism, and you need the moderates to see it and take action. Until then, every defeat is proof of the need for jihad. Every victory is proof of Allah's grace and support. I don't know if we can accomplish that ourselves. I do know that we can't accomplish it with boondoggles like Iraq. Certainly, we kill those who attack us. That's justice...

But be careful in how you evaluate your own actions. The phrase "Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining." comes to mind. If you kill my rapist brother I may see the justice in it; but don't expect me to thank you for improving the family's overall worthiness. Don't expect me to welcome you. And if you kill my Uncle who gave him a place to sleep, and threaten to kill my father for proclaiming his love for his dead son, you can expect me to come after you.

We need to be a friend to the moderates. Currently, we're not.

Re:Serious questions

[Jeremi]

If Kerry wins it tomorrow, he'd better have those unnamed countries who supposedly have divisions of combat-ready troops they're eager to throw into the Iraq meat grinder. In two days, he's going to be on the hook to actually do all the stuff he's been promising

Actually, Kerry wouldn't take office until January, so he'd have at least a couple of months to come through with all that stuff.

Re:Serious questions

[ericspinder]

You show the basic difference between Kerry supporters and Bush supporters quite clearly. Bush supporters generally belive that this war in Iraq is the war against Terror, and the only major issue in this campaign. His two minor isssues are recriminizing abortions, and putting down those damn uptity homos who think that they have the 'special right' to fall in love. No child left behind was underfunded, he hasn't gotten tort reform though a republican controled congress, perscription drug prices have continued to soar (can't import drugs from those damn dirty Canadians), the American economy has been 'leaking' jobs, oil prices have hit a record high (go figure two 'oil men' in the Whitehouse), support for outsourceing in both advice and tax breaks, in four years Bush hasn't seen a spending bill that he didn't like (not one veto), ran a record surplus into a record defict. All in all his 'minor' campain promises are just retread 'ideas' from 2000, that he never tried to act on in his four long years.

I think that you have 'said it best':

I literally cannot believe how black-and-white supposedly "open-minded" "progressive" people view this. They point fingers at others' ignorance, while being simultaneously the smartest, most well-read, "informed" ignorant people around.

This election is not (or rather should not) be 'about' the war in Iraq. Niether canidate would do anything signifcantly different about the current situations in Iraq, or Afganistan. The war with Al Queada (primarilly in Afganistan) will continue in about the same manor. If you really believe Bush's FUD that Kerry wouldn't 'stand up for America', then I've got a bridge to sell you. Kerry brings in hope that we could 'off load'. some responsiablity for Iraq to parts of NATO, but even that chance is slim. The only place where change would make a difference is if we had to press a fight against Iran, or North Korea, Kerry would have some 'fresh creditability' (note: that 'some' might be marginal). The real difference between these two canidates is domestic policy, including those other items, as well as stem cell research, hydrogren research and production, a more unified (but still private) health care system.

As far as McCain goes, I feel betrade by the 'strait talk express', here is a man who has made numerous public complaints against the Bush administration for the last 4 years, yet, he's more than willing to 'tow the party line'. Perhaps he still has hope for the 2008 election and is pandering to the republican fateful, but it doesn't play well to those of us who used to admire him.

Re:Serious questions

[Glock27]

I think a good diplomat could have bargained with France, Germany, and Russia and gotten them on board.

I don't see how, as they all face tremendous embarassment over "Oil for Food" and other involvement with the Hussein government.

Re:Serious questions

[Julian352]

So that is why they gave them all up when asked? Because they were interested in having hte money when sanctions are lifted? There is little logic to that assertion if the countries that were owed money were so willing to give Iraq a second chance after US decimated their infrastracture.

Another intersting thing to note is that Bush's administration, specifically Defence Dept., alienated the rest of possible allies by telling them that there are no contracts to be given to anyone who didn't help out in the first place. If the country's companies are unable to gain any benefit from the occupation, there's much less interest by the country to support the occupation. If you have a lot of your own citizens working in the threatened area, you want to provide the proper troop support to protect their safety.

Re:Serious questions

[An Onerous Coward]

It doesn't matter what good news comes out in America the Democrats and Kerry have to spin it into bad news.

And that would be cheap, political partisanship if it weren't so damned easy.

The news from Iraq isn't great. It's understandable that we keep hearing of the new attacks, new deaths of U.S. and Iraqi troops, and new civilian casualties while less attention is paid to progress in the country. But when the President of Iraq comes to the U.S. to report on the progress of his country, and gives them a speech basically written by White House operatives, you have to wonder if there is any progress being made at all.

Bush has refused to admit to any major blunders in his planning of the war, his execution of the war, his plans for winning the peace, or the way he sold the war to Americans. The first time I've heard him ask to wait for further analysis before drawing a conclusion was when Democrats started blaming him for the missing explosives.

"Where is Saddam?" was never as important a question as you make it out to be. It was pretty clear before his capture that he was no longer running the show. From a tactical standpoint, the capture of Hussein changed little. At best it served as a psychological blow to the enemy.

Plus, the question doesn't speak to our reasons for invading the way "Where are the WMD?" does. Hell, we already knew that Iraq was chock full of Hussein and family. But the WMDs were the proof that we were in imminent danger, and our justification for going in and removing Hussein ourselves, rather than building a decent coalition.

Nor is it the only question worth asking. Others include:

"Where was Hussein's nuclear program?"
"Why weren't we welcomed as liberators like your administration repeatedly promised?"
"Why didn't we send in enough troops to make sure that we could secure critical sites like the one from which the explosives disappeared?"
"Knowing now that there was no connection between Iraq and 9-11, that there were no WMDs, that our invasion would spawn a tenacious and destabilizing resistance movement, that over a thousand of our servicemen and women would die, that our actions would alienate our allies, energize our enemies, and make it harder to gain the sort of international cooperation we need to defend ourselves against terrorism, why do you continue to say that you would have made the same decisions?"

Re:Serious questions

[Schnapple]

An interesting thought experiment is to imagine what would have happened had we invaded Germany and removed Hitler instead of ceding the Sudetenland to him. People probably would have said we were overstating the threat, etc. Was Saddam as big a threat as Hitler? (Remember, Hitler had no WMD's either,) Maybe not. But if we had removed Hitler when he invaded the Sudetenland, Hitler wouldn't have been as big a threat.

Which is probably why we didn't remove Hitler - not enough support for it. We didn't enter WWII since, without a Pearl Harbor-caliber incident, we wouldn't have had any support for it. Clinton tried to take out Osama Bin Laden but failed and didn't persue it further since he knew he would have no support (the initial strike on OBL came as he was being impeached - many, including myself, saw it as a diversion tactic)

And perhaps Bush did The Right Thing. Perhaps he knows the things which we as Americans can never know, and perhaps 9/11 part II will be avoided simply because he took Saddam out of power. But had Clinton taken out OBL and 9/11 had never occured, we would still not have supported him or his efforts. And taking out Hitler would have never had popular support since we would have never knew he was one of history's greatest monsters.

Look at how things work - reactionary is more popular than precautionary. In hindsight it would have been better to search those terrorists and taken away box cutters. But when we search an old lady and take away her fingernail file, it's cruel and unusal. We want our lives to be safe but not inconvenienced. We want terrorists taken out, but only when we know which ones.

But if Bush knows something we don't and can never tell us, then he did what he did (invade Iraq) full well knowing it may cost him the re-election. Lincoln did what he knew to be right even though he knew it would cost him half the country. Today's politicians won't do the right thing if it costs them a district. Perhaps Bush did the right thing and is perfectly ready to accept defeat.

Re:Serious questions

[Kwil]

And many fanatical muslims argue that it is their responsibility to make the American people islamic, as by doing this they save your immortal soul. What comparison is that to the 80 years or so here on earth?

Who's to say you're more right than they are?

Re:Serious questions

[pommiekiwifruit]

...life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (quote from some slaveowners)

And we'll kill/imprison/make unhappy anyone who disagrees with us! 100,000 dead and counting...

If you force your people to pray to one god and the women to wear masks around all over the place, you are wrong. Period.

That is probably more likely to happen in Iraq now than before. I would guess christians in iraq are more nervous now. I don't know whether even a good plan would have improved the fundamentals of that though. Germans voted for Hitler. Many Americans voted for Bush. A significant number of europeans would vote for parties that would reduce democracy. Iranians voted for the revolutionaries IIRC. Iraqis could do the same.

Re:Serious questions

[radtea]

An interesting thought experiment is to imagine what would have happened had we invaded Germany and removed Hitler instead of ceding the Sudetenland to him. People probably would have said we were overstating the threat, etc. Was Saddam as big a threat as Hitler? (Remember, Hitler had no WMD's either,) Maybe not. But if we had removed Hitler when he invaded the Sudetenland, Hitler wouldn't have been as big a threat.

But Germany under Hitler was clearly arming for war. Iraq under Saddam was clearly not.

So perhaps a better question would be: suppose Hitler had not invaded the Sudentenland, or Poland , and England and her allied colonies (not America, who did not enter the war until over two years later even after those invasions took place) had invaded Germany on the pretext that we thought they might someday re-arm and invade Czechoslovakia, Austria, and quite a few other places?

Suppose Chamberlain had lied, and claimed Germany was building new weapons in secret laboratories, and had used that as a pretext for an invasion?

Would you think that that was wrong? Perhaps even evil? I would.

--Tom

Re:Serious questions

[jfengel]

Peace cannot be imposed from without, but there are many ways in which the US (or another nation) could help. For example, it can propose a compromise, and then provide disinterested security during the transition to that compromise.

Also, since the US holds power over Israel (in the form of foreign aid), it has the ability to convince the Israelis to accept a compromise which is more tilted towards the Palestinians. Since the Palestinians have little power, any compromise Israel offers is likely to be less than fair to them. Or more to the point, they have so little power that there's no difference to them between accepting the compromise the Israelis would offer and continuing the intifada. The Israeli wall is a perfect example of that: it's a two-state solution as designed by the Israelis, and because the Israelis have the power they draw the line outside (sometimes well outside) the 1967 borders that many people agree is fair (if somewhat arbitrary to my mind).

Israel's unilateral compromise may eventually evolve into a peace; the Palestinians will have their de facto state and choose to leave peaceably in it. But if the US had forced Israel to draw the border less aggressively, that would have been more likely. The present border is the compromise Sharon draws between the conservatives and the liberals, and therefore offers the Palestinians rather less than most of the world believes they are entitled to.

Ultimately it will rest with the Israelis to say, "We now have enough land and we need not take more" and the Palestinians to say, "We're tired of war; let's try living with the compromise we've got." And then for the Israelis to say, "They seem peaceable enough, let's stop killing their radicals, which usually kills a few bystanders". And then the Palestinians to say, "This is pretty good; if any more terrorists try to jeopardize what we have we risk losing everything and we will stop them ourselves rather than making the Israelis do it."

But it starts somewhere, and I'd love to see the US or the EU or the UN find an effective way to jump start it. I have some hope that Israel's unilateral solution will go into effect (possible) and will lead to the cascade I describe (doubtful; both sides have parties who want it to fail). But it may be the best they can impose without help from a more agressive power, which doesn't need to provide genocide, only police and diplomatic pressure.

Minix

[Draoi]

I wrote MINIX, the precursor to Linux, for example ...

Interesting that Andy now refers to MINIX in terms of Linux, no? Considering that Linux is obsolete and all that ... ;-)

Re:Minix

[bcs_metacon.ca]

Give the man a break. From a purely academic design standpoint, Linux *is* obsolete... and hey, AST is definitely an academic. But that doesn't mean he has to be ignorant to its commercial success. Proving once again that just 'cos something isn't beautiful, if it gets the job done, people will use it. :-)

Re:Minix

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Linux is obsolete in the same way the the internal combustion engine is obsolete. Yes, it horribly inefficient, has too many parts, and is a pain to design an exploit properly.

But for whatever reason, ICEs move most people to work in the morning. It just happens to work REALLY REALLY well for the particular size vehicle people drive. Besides, improvements in computer control technology have largely rounded off the rough points of ICE.

To a mechanical engineer, we all should be driving around in cars powered by turbines, or Wenkel rotary engines.

Re:Minix

[Draoi]

My point exactly. Andy has been in Linux flamewars since the beginning (probably even the first one!). Remember, also, that Kenneth Brown of AdTI wanted to claim that Linus 'stole' Linux from Andy's MINIX and how Andy refuted that at the time. Hence the careful choice of words ...

Amazing

[fname]

I just read the votemaster description, and came over to Slashdot to submit the story. Funny. Despite being a small, self-run website, this is one I don't think Slashdot can even begin to take down (650,000 hits/day), although it's been the subject of DDoS attacks in the past. Being the computer wizard & all-around smart guy that Mr. Minix is, he's prepared for this by setting up backup site (just increment the number if it's down).

Mostly, I can wait to see how Linus is inspired by this project, writes his own version and then invites the global electoral community to help him make it even better. Take that! (j/k)

If anything, that crap is counterproductive

[HBI]

Most of the electoral votes are in the heartland of the US. If you told an average person on the streets that Europeans want to see Kerry elected, the instinctive response is to vote for Bush. If you don't think Karl Rove is using this to the Republicans' advantage, you're on crack.

We'll see the result tomorrow. I expect something decisive. No two elections are the same.

Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive

[TopShelf]

Heartland? Like California, Texas, Florida and New York???

Quibble aside, the gist of your comment is correct. Americans have an instinctive tendency to go our own way, right or wrong. And most of the "up-for-grabs" electoral votes are in the midwest, like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio.

Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive

[wizbit]

I think he meant the majority of Bush's support comes from the Midwest, where states like Arkansas and Missouri and Iowa, while contested heavily, will need to be carried by either candidate if they hope to win decisively. Bush's support in the deep south and western US (save the west coast) is not usually contested as these represent the Republican base.

Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive

[b1t r0t]

Texas? WTF? In 2000, Gore won in only one county there. Brazos county, home of Texas A&M University, and a damn disproportionate conglomeration of college students.

Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive

[jtosburn]

Most of the electoral votes are in the heartland of the US

This is bogus. Most electoral votes are on the coasts, along with most of the population. The only states with more than twenty electoral votes that has no coastline are Illinois and Ohio (I'm counting Pennsylvania as having coast, here, since it's so freakin' close).

I won't say that the heartland doesn't have a lot of clout; many of the pivotal battleground states are there.

Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive

[HBI]

If you walk from Virginia on the East Coast and take a loop around to Texas, west to Arizona and Nevada, north to Utah and Idaho, east to Minnesota, south to Ohio, and then back to Virginia again, you encapsulate the 'heartland' where, though there are regional differences (Illinois stands out like a sore thumb here), the general ethic is pretty much the same. Also, most of the electorals are there.

Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive

[HBI]

Don't take the Florida result in 2000 too much to heart. A lot of elections have post-election litigation associated with vote anomalies or recounts. It usually gets tossed out eventually because of no material effect on the result. It took 204 years and what, 51 elections for a situation like 2000 to present itself. It is not likely to happen again anytime soon.

Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive

[Don Negro]

Which makes it really strange, since A&M is the most conservative public university in the country. It's also where W's dad has his presidential library.

Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive

[master control progr]

The idea of an American "heartland" is a crock of shit. People in Iowa and Nebraska don't have a monopoly on being "real" Americans any more than people in California do.

Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive

[SlashDread]

I, as a European, want to firmly say:

4 more years! We love Bush! All Europeans think Kerry is a lame-Americain! Boo Kerry!

Really!

"/Dread"

Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive

[Clover_Kicker]

I just conducted an extensive poll here in Canada. 100% of Canadians surveyed believe Pee Wee Herman would not be a good president of the United States.

You know what you must do! YOUR PATRIOTIC DUTY IS CLEAR!

Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive

[KontinMonet]

Michael Moore is already doing it. He has 1200 cameras in Ohio and Florida. Wonder what he'll call the movie?

Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive

[Skjellifetti]

Texas? WTF? In 2000, Gore won in only one county there. Brazos county, home of Texas A&M University, and a damn disproportionate conglomeration of college students.

Not true. Gore won several TX counties near the Mexican border.

Also, a better site than Tanenbaum's for predicting the winner is here. Sam Wang of Princeton University uses a statistical method for averaging all recent polls rather than rely on just the latest for his predictions.

Personally I'm predicting a blowout for Kerry. This is based for starters on Wang's data. 2nd, last night on MSNBC's Hardball, Chris Matthews said that the exit polls from early voting in Iowa had Kerry 11 points up. 30% of Iowa has already voted. There has also been a huge early turnout in Democratic areas in FL, NV, GA, and NC. 3rd, a recent Zogby poll of 18-29 year-olds with cell phones gave Kerry 55%, Bush 40%. Every other poll I've seen is based exclusively on land lines, so if the 18-29 year-olds vote this year (and granted, they usually do not), the polls could be way off. Finally, Karl Rove's strategy is based on getting some 4 million more Evangelical Christians to the polls than went in 2000. Problem is that the size of this group may be a myth. A devout Christian friend of mine invited me to a party Friday night with some of his church buddies. Not a group I normally hang out with, but I like being exposed to new ideas. Turns out this small sample favored Kerry over Bush by 50-40. A few were still very undecided (yes, even today there are still undecided voters in Ohio!). All of this leads me to believe that Kerry will clobber Bush.

Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive

[Curunir_wolf]

Even US journalists seem to have a hard time distilling European political races in many cases.

Unfortunately, that really says more about US journalists than European politics. They do just as poor a job covering US elections, too, since all they seem to be able to do is repeat each party's talking points and discuss the latest poll results.

I still don't think your point is really valid, though. Regardless of what country you are talking about, I think any voter would either regard the opnion of some other country as either irrelevant, or as added justification for their own chosen cadidate.

Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive

[AuMatar]

No, this is the second problem vote in US history. The first was 1876. In that election, not only were votes disputed, but several states including Louisiana and Florida sent in 2 separate sets of electoral votes. It was eventually declared a tie and decided in the House. That led to a comprimise where the republican Rutherford B Hayes became the most ineffectual president in US history, and as a trade reconstruction ended in the south.

Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive

[nico60513]

As I resident of Illinois, I disagree. I'm not discounting that a large portion of the counties in Illinois are Republican. But I do think that the Illinois Republican Party and Illinois Republicans as a whole are more moderate than those in most of the other "heartland" states (Indiana, for example). This could be just an outgrowth of needing crossover Democratic support to win state-wide office.

While there are numerous reasons for Alan Keyes lack of success at energizing the electorate, I think one of them is that he's just too conservative for a lot of Illinois Republicans.

Thank you Anerew.

[macrealist]

If you haven't visited the Current Electoral Vote Predictor site, give it a try. The site is very interesting and his daily updates of the polls in each state is very interesting. The comments in his "News from the Votemaster" might infuriate the conservative third, but are usually insightful, and not pretended to be balanced.

Dammit!!

[forgotten_my_nick]

I was about to check the site when it died and I thought to myself "I bet someone has gone and posted this on /."... sure enough -_-

/.ed already

[jusdisgi]

...maybe he shouldn't be running his webserver on Minix.

Because the polls generally favor Democrats

[HBI]

The effect is real. It varies by election and by area. In some places (the Northeast) the effect can be as large as 6% of people who will apparently lie to you on the phone and say they are undecided or voting for the Democrat. In the Midwest it's less pronounced and the effect barely exists in the South, though i've never been very close to a poll done there.

It has something to do with either the Republicans not wanting to answer the phone or alternatively not wanting to be judged by the pollster, i'm sure.

Zogby talks a little about this in one of the FAQs on his website.

Re:Because the polls generally favor Democrats

[Peyna]

Funny, because those who respond "undecided" vote 2:1 democrat over republican.

Your speculation is pretty much unfounded. In 2000, Gore was several points behind in polls the day before the election, and he ended up winning the popular vote. That tells me that polls favor republicans.

Re:Because the polls generally favor Democrats

[HBI]

For the 2000 explanation, look at the LV calculation. The devil was in those details.

Polls are interesting, you should learn more about the decisions and the math that is done after the phone calls are made.

Re:Had to be non-US

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA, genius. He is a US citizen.

A fantiastic site but its usefulness is ending

[KE1LR]

This site has been a fascinating read all summer long and Andrew has done an amazing job. As he predicted, I was surprised that such a highly respected and well-known CS person was behind it, I was expecting a team of grad students and/or an egghead professor of statistics or political science from the Midwest. :-)

It was very enlightening to follow along as things went back and forth (with a sprinkling of DoS attacks on the site) and the Votemaster's analysis was always a good read. Kudos to him for a job well done.

Now, for all of the US citizens out there, go vote.

Re:Had to be non-US

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a US citizen living abroad:

"My name is Andrew Tanenbaum. I am one of the 7 million U.S. citizens living abroad. I am a professor of computer science at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Most of you have never heard of me but in an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny corner of the universe I have done enough stuff that Google has somehow managed to dig up 10,000 pages referring to me."

Turnabout is hardly fair play.

[forgotten_my_nick]

If you were to set up the same vote for say England you would be luckly to find many people in the US to know who is actually running against Mr Blair.

Re:Turnabout is hardly fair play.

[SiliconJesus]

If you were to set up the same vote for say England you would be luckly to find many people in the US to know who is actually running against Mr Blair.

If you had the same question in the United States, you'd be shocked to find that most Americans think he's the King.

Re:Turnabout is hardly fair play.

[phaze3000]

That's hardly fair.. there aren't many people in Britain who know who Michael Howard is.

Re:Turnabout is hardly fair play.

[Mr. Ghost]

This is not really that suprising. Most people think the US is not interested in the rest of the world and in a way they are right.

But try looking at it like this for a seconds:

Since the end of WWII until the end of the Cold War most of the world paid very close attention to the US and USSR because they were the two countries that could destroy most of the life on this planet. During that time most Americans could name who the leader of the Soviet Union was and it was important for them to know this as he had the ability to destroy us.

The US also encompasses a much larger land area than any European country. Most Europeans think about other countries because the countries are smaller and they are as likely to travel from say Germany to France as an American is likely to travel from Georgia to Louisiana. When Americans in say Virginia here news about say California (3 time zones away) this is equivalent to someone in Portugal hearing news about something in Greece (2 or 3 timezones away?).

These couple of things are something to consider before you start saying that Americans don't pay attention to the rest of the world. The US from east to west encompasses many disparate regions and subcultures easily as varying as any two European countries. Consider that someone from San Francisco California and Mobile Alabama barely speak the same language let alone have anywhere near the same value system.

-- Just some food for thought.

High turnout

[suso]

I just voted this morning and there has apperently been high early voter turnout for the past few weeks. I'm almost more curious to see how high of a voter turnout there will be. If it hits 81.8% or higher, it will be the highest since 1860.

Re:High turnout

[johnnyb]

Of course, some counties in the last election turned out more than 100%.

Similar project

[wytcld]

There are several similar sites using slightly different formulas. Another good one is here.

Re:Had to be non-US

[cloak]

He's a US Citizen, just not living in the United States.

Re:Sigh, how about a less biased site?

[Dasein]

Total Crap. Polls are conducted over a period of time. The votemast firgure out the middle date and picks the poll that has the latest middle data. In the case of a tie, he chooses the poll with the shortest duration.

It doesn't matter if the latest poll is a Strategic Vision poll (thought to be republican-leaning) or a Zogby (who some think is democrat-leaning)

If you've been really watching the site, you'd notice that there have been wild swings from Kerry to Bush in the past.

Now, I think that this is just a crackpot attempt to discredit what has been a really good site (even if I did wish that he'd throw out Strategic Vission).

Hey Linus - you won!

[rfinnvik]

http://www.electoral-vote.com was running Apache on Linux when last queried at 1-Nov-2004 15:33:26 GMT :)

He is still a US citizen

[bitingduck]

Except he's a US citizen living abroad, which is not the same as not a US citizen.

A friend of mine recently moved to Canada for work and told me that lots of US expats she knows there are voting for the first time in years (often for the first time since they left). If you're living abroad you vote in the last state where you were a resident and you only get to vote for president (maybe senate, too, but I think just prez). Many of those people last lived, and are very likely to vote for Kerry (in Canada, the far right is mostly to the left of the US Dems).

It's going to be an interesting election night...

(sarcasm appreciated except for the nit)

Re:He is still a US citizen

[HeghmoH]

I'm an expat in France and I just voted absentee for the first time in this election. (It's the first time because I was in the US for the last one.) I got what appeared to be exactly the same ballot as everybody else gets, which had the election for president, house and senate seats, state legislature seats, various positions for the city, and even a referendum. It's possible they won't count the others, but none of the material they sent indicated this, so I doubt it. This is in Wisconsin, and other states may be different.

Actually, it's my post

[daveschroeder]

...and is all original. The only reason I was so quick is because as soon as I found out that Tanenbaum was the votemaster, I started preparing this post. It took about a half hour to compile.

And yes, I did the same thing for Jon Stewart. It too went to +5, but then was modded down to -1 in about a half hour.

Intellectually honest?

[slykens]

I've followed this guy's site for the last few months and I think he has recently developed a problem with his intellectual honesty.

He is an unabashed Kerry supporter, not in and of itself a bad thing, but he is discarding poll results favorable to the President in order to show a Kerry victory. For example he claims to have averaged recent polls in Florida but a Quinnipiac poll from 10/27 thru 10/31 shows an EIGHT point Bush lead. How he ends up with a 2 point Kerry advantage with that in the average I don't know.

Today is his worst showing yet, in my opinion, and he may be indirectly helping the President. If Kerry supporters believe their man is going to win and win big then voters who are not as committed may not show up to vote.

Remember Karl Rove asking where the FOUR MILLION evangelicals were in 2000? If people think their man will win regardless of their vote then fewer people will make the effort to vote and strange things can happen.

Re:Intellectually honest?

[crazyfreakid]

Slykens, he ALWAYS uses the poll with the most recent median date. He's currently using a Zogby poll with a median date of 10/31 in Florida, making it more recent than the Quinnipiac poll. He has explained this many times over the past few weeks: He only averages polls that have the same median date and polling length.

Re:Intellectually honest?

[handorf]

For a 1 day poll, that day would be the median.

Polling has reached a frantic pace over the past few weeks... if you think there are no polls running because it's Sunday I'm afraid you're mistaken. There are some pollsters he won't use, but he's very forthcoming about which ones he's written off and why (usually "Push" polling... e.g. "Are you going to vote for Kerry even though he will kill your children and eat them?")

He has changed his methodology several times over the past few months but is always consistent, even for most of October when the map showed Bush winning by 80+ electoral votes.

Re:Intellectually honest?

[Sara Chan]

for most of October ... the map showed Bush winning by 80+ electoral votes

This is wholly untrue. During October, some days Bush was ahead a little, some days a lot, and some days Kerry was ahead. For daily maps going back to May, see http://electoral-vote.caida.org.

Re:Thank you

[SiliconJesus]

Still, Tanenbaum doesn't really make reference to that on his site; he acts as if the mere act of running electoral-vote.com somehow helps the Democratic candidate. That's the part I don't understand.

FUD does not have to come from the hollowed halls of Microsoft in order to be FUD. Liberals do it as well as Conservatives, both of which leave a sour taste on the palettes of the American people. People are getting disenchanted with the whole system. Everyone feels cheated and feels that they cannot trust the other side.

I reperesent a third alternative, one who is disenchanted with both parties enough, that I'm actually doing something about it (in my own ways). Refuting the logic of polls like this and questioning the spreaders of disinformation is the start. Voting your conscience tomorrow is the answer.

Electoral College is Obsolete

[jaylee7877]

I was in the U.S. for a couple of weeks, so I haven't commented much on ELECTORAL COLLEGE (not that I would have said much had I been around), but for what it is worth, I have a couple of comments now.

As a result of my occupation, I think I know a bit about where politics are going in the next decade or so. Two aspects stand out:

1. MICROPOLITICS VS MONOLITHIC ELECTORAL SYSTEM

Most states are Monolithic Electoral Systems. Votes are tallied in each state and the winner of each state recieves all of the electoral votes for that state. Even if 49.9% of voters are for candidate #2, the 50.1% for candidate #1 means he gets all of the state's electoral votes.

While I could go into a long story here about the relative merits of the two designs, suffice it to say that among the people who actually are in politics, the debate is essentially over. Micropolitics have won.

The only real argument for monolithic electoral systems was performance, and there is now enough evidence showing that micropolitics systems can be just as fast as monolithic electoral systems systems (e.g., Florida 2000 never would have happened if we would have just counted up every American's vote and the candidate with the greatest percent over 40% would win) that it is now all over but the shoutin'.

2. Portability

The Micropolitical Voting system was made to be portable to other future democracies such as Iraq, Afghanistan and has proven that it is scalable to nation states as large as China and India, the Monolithic electoral system would involve much more work in creating districts, states, commonwealths, etc. to the point that it is really not worth porting and would need to be started from scratch.

Don't get me wrong, I am not unhappy with the Electoral System. It will get all the people who want to turn Micropolitics into a true democracy off my back. But in all honesty, I would suggest that people who want a **MODERN** "free" nation look around for a micropolitical-based, portable political system.

Re:Electoral College is Obsolete

[johndeeregator]

The electoral college is not obselete. If we got rid of it, the presidential election campaigns would focus on the top five or ten population centers/media markets in the country, and effectively disenfranchise the rest of it. There is a reason why our forefathers gave disproportionate numbers of votes to smaller states--because they realized the danger of letting one particular geographical area or population center have control of the system.

You need to remember that this country is (or at least, is supposed to be) a federation of states, and the president is supposed to be the representative of the states, not necessarily the people in them. People do not cast ballots for presidents -- states do. The states can decide the procedures in which they determine how to cast their ballots in any way they deem appropriate.

If this does not make sense to you, think about the UN. You, as a person who lives in a country represented in the UN, do not get to vote for UN resolutions. Rather, your country's representative does.

As for our congressional election system, I think that although the Senate should remain in tact, it would probably benefit the country to change the House to a more European-style parliament so that people outside the Republican-Democrat duopoly could actually have a voice.

Re:Electoral College is Obsolete

[octothorpe]

The electoral college is not obselete. If we got rid of it, the presidential election campaigns would focus on the top five or ten population centers/media markets in the country, and effectively disenfranchise the rest of it.

They would not be disenfranchised, their vote would count the same as everyone elses. Right now, I'm partially disenfranched since I live in a big state and my vote for president counts far less then someone's vote in Utah or Montana. I have nothing against people who want to live out in the wilds although it's not my preference. But why should they get such a bigger vote than I do? We're all effected by the same things: health care, SS, the war, terrorism, etc, we should all have the same say. This is not the UN. Maybe it was in 1789 but we're all the same country now and all our votes should count the same.

Re:Electoral College is Obsolete

[johndeeregator]

Idea: Read the Constitution.

You do not get to vote for president. None of us do. Your state does. You vote for your state's electors, since that is the election system your state has set up. It is the state's choice to cast all of its votes for the state's popular vote winner (although one state currently has a ballot measure which would split up the electoral votes in some situations). We have a federalist system. If you do not and cannot understand the governmental system we use in this country and why we use it, then it's probably best that your vote "doesn't count."

Re:Electoral College is Obsolete

[losretardadovaquero]

Just out of curiosity, (as the number of electoral votes per state is a function of the number of senators + the number of representatives), do you feel under-represented in Congress year-round, or is it only during elections?

I've never heard an anti-electoral college discussion address this and I'm interested in hearing a response, especially as we are a representative democracy.


Thanks, Jason.

Re:Electoral College is Obsolete

[mitchkeller]

The Electoral College is not obsolete. The winner-take-all system of awarding electors is horribly dated and should be done away with in every state. (I personally prefer assigning by congressional district with the two electors corresponding to the senators being awarded to the winner of the state-wide popular vote.) People all over the world need to remember that the United States was formed as a loose federation of states. Prior to the adoption of the Constitution, these states even had their own currencies! Even under the Constitution, we have a federal system of government. The federal government has few powers, some are reserved to the states, and the rest to the people. Despite what some people might lead you to believe now days, states have rights to determine certain things without the federal government being involved. I doubt that the founders ever envisioned a federal government as powerful as the one we have today, particularly as large as the country is. For example, it took a constitutional amendment in order for the federal government to levy an income tax against every citizen without regard to the decennial census. The states choose their electors, who in turn choose the president. Plain and simple. The constitution guarantees a minimum amount of representation for every state, regardless of population, so perhaps an electoral vote from North Dakota and Wyoming might represent fewer citizens than an electoral vote from California, but such is the nature of our republic. Those of us who vote in the small states do not get a bigger vote than you do, we get one vote in our state just like everyone else. By your argument, Congress is horribly broken as well and California, New York, and Texas should just decide the laws for every state in the country. That wouldn't work, plain and simple.

Finally, if you have a problem with the current electoral system, rather than griping about the Electoral College, a system that you won't be able to get rid of because of the following list of states: North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, Delaware, New Hampshire, Maine, Idaho, Hawaii, and Rhode Island. All of those states have three or four electoral votes, and thus would not give up their citizens' right to be involved in choosing the president by getting rid of the Electoral College. (Because that's what would happen. No one would care about how people vote in those states, because they just don't have enough people to matter in the popular vote.) There are twelve states in that list (and probably several five-vote states could be added to it). Twelve states is all it takes to block a constitutional amendment. If you've got a problem with the Electoral College, start pushing for something you can change: the demise of the winner-take-all system of distributing electoral votes.

Re:Electoral College is Obsolete

[poot_rootbeer]

If we got rid of it, the presidential election campaigns would focus on the top five or ten population centers/media markets in the country

Which would be so much different than the current system, where the campaigns focus on the top five or ten states in terms of available electoral votes -- which are based on population.

Nobody will ever campaign heavily for the votes of people in North Dakota, even though with the weighting of the Electoral College a single person's vote in that state carries roughly three times the weight of that of a voter in California. Either with the EC or with direct election, it will still be more cost-effective to appeal to the voters in the large cities of California.

Ob AST

[GillBates0]

Never underestimate the voting power of a country full of hax0rred Diebold voting machines hurtling down the highway of democracy.

- Andrew S. Tanenbaum, 2004.

Re:Had to be non-US

[Nick Barnes]

Tanenbaum is a US citizen. Read the article.

voter turnout

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing worse than an un-opposed superpower is a superpower run by someone elected by some small fraction of a country's population.

Get out and vote for God's sake or shut up with all your "America is the beacon of democracy" bullshit and "leader of the free world" garbage. You think you're country is so great? Then vote God damn it!

Two things, no, just one.

[RealProgrammer]

Professor Tanenbaum has a lot of cred with me for his MINIX work. His OSDI book was the first real taste I had inside Unix, and I've been hooked ever since. Over the years he's also shown quite a bit of ivorytoweritis, which shows that we are all prisoners of the mental environment we construct for ourselves. For instance, from TFWS:

The U.S. media do a spectacularly bad job of informing Americans about what is going on in rest of the world.

But he apparently misses the obvious converse, that the world media do a spectacularly bad job of informing the rest of the world what's going on in the U.S.

The U.S. Presidential race this year comes down to who wins Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. He thinks Kerry will win.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but he's been wrong before.

It looks like Kerry is gonna win

[n6kuy]

So all you Democrats need not bother voting tomorrow...

WHY must "the famous thread" always be brought up?

[hkb]

Why is it that everytime Andrew Tanenbaum is mentioned on Slashdot, the "infamous thread" must be brought up, and not much else? This man IS UNIX history.

Tanenbaum was around looong before Linus/Linux. Before Linux even began, before Soft Landing Linux, those of us who wanted UNIX on our home computers used/loved Minix.

Minix was the technology that sparked a lifetime love of UNIX for many a users, not just the younger Linux.

Occasionally, I'll reflect on the beautiful blue console of my Amiga, on which I ran Minix off of 3 (as I recall) floppies.

So please, let's not dismiss Andrew Tanenbaum's role in computer history. Remember that his shoulders are the giant's that Linus has been standing on.

I can't wait to see what the people standing on Linus's shoulders come up with...

No wonder it is so slow this morning!

[Jagasian]

I check www.electoral-vote.com every morning, and I was wondering why it was so slow this morning. SLASHDOT! Andrew Tanenbaum is a person that gives to society. Yes the world would be a better place if it had more Andrew Tanenbaums.

Re:No wonder it is so slow this morning!

[AlXtreme]

And I was wondering why my connection at the faculty was slow as hell. Yup, Andy is /.'ed again. So long the leaching @ 100Mbit/s. Come on Andy, give us kids a break!

The world might be a better place with more Andy's, but please, let them go to a different university! We need our bandwidth!

Re:Amazing...

[Shakrai]

This site is worthless and obviously partisan

Because Zogby is so biased towards the left that even Fox News uses him. I'd provide a direct link but it's a stupid Javascript link -- go to the main page and click on the "Fox Swing States".

Zogby has publicly said that he expects Kerry to win

And he's basing that on the record number of new voters (that will likely break for Kerry) and the historical fact that most undecided voters break for the challenger. I suspect that Kerry will win for exactly the same reason. If he doesn't then I guess we'll both have egg on our face.

Meta analysis site

[Jeremy Erwin]

There's a rival site that attempts to use "meta analysis" techniques to crack that stubborn +/-3% margin of error. I'm not all that well versed in statistics, so I can't comment with any degree of reliability, but it might be worth a look.

Predicted median with undecideds: Kerry 280 EV, Bush 258 EV
Median outcome, decided voters only: Kerry 252 EV, Bush 286 EV

The author of the site, Sam Wang, has published some of his methodology in the form of a matlab/octave script.

Polling

[Jacco de Leeuw]

AST: I understand polling well.

Ha, but how about interrupts!? :-)

Traffic spike

[spike2131]

Not to be a link whore, but I run an election related site - The Electoral College Vote Calculator - and I can report that traffic is going through the roof today. As of 11 am EST, its already on pace to quadruple yesterday's traffic - and yesterday was a record (5000 unique visitors - as an armchair webmaster, thats quite a lot for me).

All this for a dinky little site that never made it past the second page of the google search results. I can imagine what the servers at some of the more widely publicised sites are going through.

Is AST a Linux convert?

[Greg Larkin]

Here's some interesting information from a previous Votemaster comment:

The attackers have tried repeatedly to break in, but the server is a rock-solid Linux system which has stood up to everything they threw at it and hasn't crashed since I got it in May.

The full Google cache of the page is here

Re:Who matters?The rest of you arent worth a hill

[ControlFreal]

The rest of you arent worth a hill of beans..

(Feeding the troll, oh well...)

You do realize that the anti-US position of the rest of the world is caused by these kinds of postures, don't you?

Rare Reversal

[Dark Coder]

This Brazos county is one of the rare reversal of which the college community is predominately Republican and the nearby residential areas are Democratic.

Enjoy!

Karma-whoring

[Wordsmith]

The site is slashdotted, so I'll giev you the text here:

"Nader is going to win. In a landslide. A really big landslide. Really."

Yeah, I was surprised too.

2000 Redux?

[cyranoVR]

If Bush loses the Electoral Vote and wins the Popular vote - as many are projecting because of the expected record turnout in states already "locked" (Texas, Georgia, etc.) - will Republicans still laud the Distinct Wisdom of our Founding Fathers as they did back in 2000? Or will they be calling for the abolition of a Wretched Anachronism that ignores The Will of the People?

I wonder...

electionprojection.com

[Glock27]

This site was around before electoral-vote.com, and in fact may have inspired it.

Note that it predicts quite a different outcome. Also note that (like Tanenbaum) the owner is partisan - however he also seems to have a sane methodology.

Just FYI... :-)

mirrors (yes I know you're being funny)

[HiroProtagonist]

Mirrors:
www.electoral-vote2.com
What's funny
www.electoral-vote3.com
Is that
www.electoral-vote4.com
This comment can't be posted
www.electoral-vote5.com
because of all the repetition
www.electoral-vote6.com
In the comment
www.electoral-vote7.com
Due to listing all the mirrors
www.electoral-vote8.com
Forgive me if I think this
www.electoral-vote9.com
Is really stupid

France may not affect America

[ashitaka]

But American actions affect France, Canada, the U.K., Iraq, Iran, China, North Korea, India, everywhere for that matter.

The worlwide poll results reflect to a minimum extent the feelings generated by the current administration's actions.

Using LGPL script, but removed copyright notice.

[SpaceTaxi]

One of the things I liked about the site was the Dynamic HTML summary that pops up when you place your cursor over the state. It turns out he uses a script written by Walter Zorn, but removes the notice information and doesn't give him credit for it.

Disappointing, considering his line of work.

Hopefully, the lawsuits will happen

[zogger]

I actually hope there are thousands of lawsuits. Besides helping to expose both the D and R partys shenanigans, I want to have them bust up diebold and those other election fraud companies forever, and get rid of the notion of pre hacked black box voting elections, and shakeup the population to stop being such utter sheep when it comes to something as important as this. If it takes a thousand lawsuits, better that than the alternative, which would be a full dictatorship shortly once these machines are entrenched all over and legitimised by an "accepted vote tally" and they know they can get away with it. 2002 was a test, and they "got away with it". If they do the same in 2004, that's it, it's over.

This is my opinion of course, but I think it has a lot of merit based on what we know so far.

My opinion of him has radically changed

[Billly Gates]

I first had issue with anyone who called a multithreaded filesystem "a hack" and his mean spirited flame war with Linus looked uncool.

Sure, you can disagree with many issues but there needs to be an open mind in the scientific and academic community. Flaming others is a sign of weakness and insecurity. Especially when he told Linus "You would not get good grades in my course..." kind of proves that.

He tried to explain himself later on slashdot saying he merely disagreed with him but I was not too sure.

www.electoral-vote.com is an awesome site that I find truly non biased. I go there every day being a political junky. For those who say he is liberal all I have to say is look at his past entries? When Bush was ahead after the RNC liberals accused him of being a Bush sheep.

What kills me is he using Linux and not Darwin, AIX, or MacOSX which are "not obsolete". :-)

I think Linus has the ultimate say now in the flamewar contest.

Re:My opinion of him has radically changed

[Guy Harris]

What kills me is he using Linux and not Darwin, AIX, or MacOSX which are "not obsolete".

I was unaware that AIX was considered microkernel-based. As for Darwin, whilst there is Mach in it, file systems, network protocols, and drivers for many devices (disk controllers, network adapters) don't operate as Mach servers, they're in the kernel (except for file systems such as webdavfs that hand a lot of work to a user-mode daemon, but it's a bit of an exception).

Not the whole truth (planet-web research)

[gateley]

Anyone else notice every time you hit the electoral-vote.com you get a bunch of outgoing traffic on tcp port 8088? He's also using the site (actually, I think it's a grad student) for research into planet-lab style distributed computing stuff. (see www.planet-lab.org) j

Brainwashed into a preprogrammed reaction

[Cryofan]

The reason many Americans would react that way (vote Bush when they hear Europeans vote Kerry) is that the Rightwing propaganda machine has been brainwashing them by demonizing Europe. This propaganda offensive seemed to begin not too long after the news of the strong European social safety net began to leak out of Europe and into the conciousness of many Americans. The old "threat of a good example" strategy of the American propaganda machine. I guess the logic is that if Americans see that Leftist Europe can make the welfare state work, that eventually Americans will get the idea that they can make it work for themselves, too. And that would be bad for corporate/business profits. Same principle more or less applied to every American invasion of or manipulation of all those leftist Asian or Latin American countries. Oh, Guatemala/vietnam/Chile/cuba is going leftist? Well, we will just invade them/back a coup/embargo them....
A threat of a good example might give similar ideas to other countries...So they demonize/propagandize Americans via the mass media, the better to manufacture consent for invasion or a coup.

So the lesson for Europe is, I suppose, you best watch you asses, the Rich people in America and the multinationals don't like your opulent welfare states that keep the citizens from being at the mercy of the upper class/the corporations. So watch out for an invasion/a coup/a trade embargo in a few years, once Rush Limbaugh/The NY Times et al have worked Americans into a hate frenzy at the very mention of the word "Europe".

Re:Brainwashed into a preprogrammed reaction

[tezza]

Europe is not always it's own best advocate there.

If you look at the perception of Europe in Israel, say, you'll find that the Israeli's consider Europe to be Arabist. This is their term. It is born out of the was European members vote against Isreal in the UN.

What would be a more meaningful measure that American voters would be more inclined to listen to is the opinion of their Coalition partners who took part in this survey. Britain and Australia, say. You'll find similar results there, but from people who entirely back America as a nation. So the net result from the public from your Coalition Partners is :

"Love you guys and fight side by side, but Geez, could you pick a better figurehead?"

Of course this is my reading of the poll,not my opinion on the war or the worthiness of GW Bush.

I think everyone in the whole world stands to learn a lot by seeing how Americans dictate their own President and working in response. No point bitching and moaning. Americans are going to elect whomever they deem fit, and the sooner we can work with both outcomes, the better. That is my opinion.

Re:Brainwashed into a preprogrammed reaction

[killjoe]

"If you look at the perception of Europe in Israel, say, you'll find that the Israeli's consider Europe to be Arabist."

To be fair US is the only ally Israel has. They regard everybody else as being arabists, not just europe but russia, africa and the far east too.

The only two countries that see the palestenian occupation as just and moral are Israel and the US. Everybody else sees it as immoral and unjust.

Where can I find the underlying poll data online?

[WhiteWolf666]

I always thought that gallup was one of the most reliable sources of poll data, but I guess I'm wrong.

On electoral-vote.com, Penn is Kerry, 50-46.

On gallup.com, Penn is Bush, 50-46.

On electoral-vote.com, Wisconsin is Kerry, 51-44.

On gallup.com, Wisconsin is Bush, 51-44.

I'm confused, I thought electoral-vote.com used the gallup data where appropriate, but that seems to not be the case. Where can I find the other source data (not the graphs on electoral-vote.com, but rather, the actual site/sites where the data is coming from).

Re:Recent changes

[squiggleslash]

Because the facts on the website have no bias. His calculations are methodical, consistant, and based upon a set mathematical formula he's documented.

And, BTW, would you rather they linked to a site whose author claims no bias or hides it?

Re:Thank you

[Rits]

You can check all the data behind the graphs, I would think if he did something sneaky it would have been routed out by now. Many other sites are not using *all* available polls, which means they are not swinging as wildly and also not as up-to-date as Tanenbaum's. As he explains in the FAQ now, his graphs have not been significantly different from the pro-bush electionprojection.com site.

Also, read this:
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaySto ry.cfm? story_id=3329802

This from a magazine that endorsed Dole and Bush on previous US elections...

"It's our vote, not yours"

[llywrch]

Reading this retort, I was immediately reminded of Tannenbaum's comment about the bully in his school. If you really _don't_ care what the rest of the world thinks of the U.S., then don't be surprised when they aren't willing to help us the next time a terrorist attack strikes us.

Considering just how crappy our economic health is at the moment, an international boycott would only make things in the U.S. worse, irregardless of the size of our economy. And I wouldn't be surprised if that came to pass.

Geoff

How to go your own way

[Gorimek]

If you always do the opposite of what those you dislike do, you're not really going your own way. You are just slavishly following others. That you're going in the opposite direction from them doesn't change the fact that you are a slave to their decisions. You're an "anti sheep" if you will.

A true free thinking rebel has no problem doing exactly what the huge masses of idiots do, if he happens to enjoy it.

Offtopic but...

[Merk]

Am I the one who can't wait for the George W. Bush presidential library? What a laugh that place is going to be.

Re:Offtopic but...

[Gid1]

Presumably it'll be climate-controlled to prevent the wax crayon melting.

Who's the real spin doctor?

[X]

Excellent selective use of information! You are ready to be a spin doctor!

The links you are pointing to are ones which use a slightly different algorithm that averaged polls over a multi-day period. When the site switched to using that algorithm, he got a lot of complaints from people, and so he switched back. This happened long before today, and if you look through the site history, Bush has been leading more than Kerry with the original algorithm. These choices of algorithms were made well in advance of today's result.

If you go back and look at the Oct. 29 versions of the site, you'll find Kerry losing using the original algorithm and Kerry winning with the averaging algorithm. The original algorithm was what was on the front page. So I guess a couple of days ago he was manipulating things for Bush then? ;-)

Re:Converse is not true

[StrawberryFrog]

We're well informed that about half of you voted for Bush last time, and about half of you plan to do it again. Why just don't know why.

I've read the constitution, thank you

[octothorpe]

You do not get to vote for president.

I think that was what I was saying! We don't get to vote for the president and I think that is why we need to change the constitution to allow us to do just that. The un-ammended constitution has many bad ideas that have been fixed by ammendments over the years. As written there, we couldn't even vote for US Senators, they were appointed by the state legistlators. That was a bad idea that was fixed by an ammendment. The constitution is a wonderful document but it's far from flawless. Don't forget that the Bill of Rights was added almost immediately after the constitution was ratified due the fact that the constition did nothing to protect individual rights. If the founding fathers thought that the constitution was to be written in stone, they would not have ammended it themselves within a year.

Note that I'm not for ammending it for any new popular idea; the difficult ratification system that they put in does a good job of keeping most dumb ideas (I know prohibition was pretty darn dumb) but I think that this is one thing that needs to change. Whatever you think about the activities in Florida in 2000, it's just wrong that one candidate can win the popular vote but lose the electoral. And don't think that I'm just saying this because I support the Democrats; Bill Clinton did not get the majority of votes in either 1992 or 1996. It's a posibility that most voters did not want Bill in there but he won anyway. No matter who wins on Tuesday, I the system is broken and needs to be fixed.

Re:I've read the constitution, thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

I realize this is very late, and AC and all, but I've gotten so sick of the "get rid of the electoral college" mantra that I wanted to reply, even if only one person reads this.

The Electoral College is not broken. The process that states use to pick their electors is broken. A lot more would get accomplished if people would realize:

1. Your STATE gets to vote for president.

2. Your STATE gets 2 votes plus a number determined by the population of your state. This number is the sum of your 2 senators plus the number of representatives.

3. The laws of YOUR STATE dictate how those votes are cast.

4. If you don't like the "winner-take-all" allocation of electoral votes, campaign to make YOUR STATE change the law. For example, my state, Nebraska, allocates one per each congressional district, with the 2 senate-seat votes going to the popular winner for the whole state.

Imagine how the last presidential election would have turned out if Florida allocated its electoral votes by congressional district. Imagine an election where California, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Florida and New York all did that?

The Electoral College isn't broken, the states are.

Re:I disagree

[geg81]

European governments would have to convince their besotted (with social programs) populace that spending more than 2% of their GDP on defense is required.

Required by what? To have a military that is as bloated and useless as the US military?

Most of your nations

You're making unwarranted assumptions.

still operate under a US-provided nuclear umbrella.

I gather most Europeans would prefer not to, if they ever did.

"Asserting leadership" is impossible without military might.

What is the US going to do with its military might? Bomb Europe? Bomb China? The instant that happened, the US economy would be in complete ruins and the US would be an international outcast. Those hundreds of billions of dollars spent on Iraq and Afghanistan haven't even been able to bring those nations under control. Military might is an outdated concept: what little the US has, it can't seriously exercise.

I don't consider Europe a threat, and neither does this administration

This whole notion of "threat" is so cold war. If you want to talk about "threats", Europe is an economic threat to the US, along with China and India. And if the US wants to counter that "threat", it can only do by becoming more open, more tolerant, and more competitive, not through more military power and intervention.

hmmm...

[temojen]

Remember what happened the year after the 1860 election.

Re:Thank you

[SecretMethod70]

In approximately 32 states, voting for a third party does not favor any one major party candidate over the other, because the winner of those 32 states is, for all intents and purposes, known in advance. I live in one of those states: Illinois. And I will be voting Badnarik without a single worry that it will change the outcome of the election.

Here's a short list:

[Futurepower(R)]

"... an invasion (too many to list), a kidnapping (Panama), an assassination (Cuba), or a fake coup (Guatemala), you supported it."

You are exactly right, but very, very few Americans understand this.

Anyhow, here is a short list: The U.S. government has bombed 24 countries since the Second World War.

--
Bush's education improvements were partly fraud

Re:Where can I find the underlying poll data onlin

[Wraithlyn]

I noticed that Gallup often seemed to be WAY different than other polls (ie back in mid Sept, right after the RNC bounce faded, I recall them putting Bush ahead by 12 points when every other major poll had them in a statistical tie), so I looked into their methodology...

They poll based on the previous election's turnout. That is, they start from the assumption that Republican/Democrat turnout (as percentages) in 2004 will be identical to 2000. Since registered Republicans apparently had a higher turnout than registered Democrats in 2000 (40% to 33%), they include proportionately higher numbers of Republicans in their polling sample. That's how they determine their mix of "likely voters". Here's an (admittedly partisan) article on it: http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/002806.html

As for what polls electoral-vote.com uses, he always uses polls with the most recent median date.

BIg Media is NOT Liberal on Important Issues

[Cryofan]

you wrote:
What's fascinating is the sheer control of the media by people who lean to the left, or even further to the left. The biggest spreaders of FUD are you ABC's, CBS's, NBC's, and CNN's. All of them are liberal outlets. The closest one to the right is Fox News, which is still a liberal station.


NONE of those media giants are liberal. And unlike you, I will present actual reasoning, evidence etc to backup my claim. Here goes:

Big Media is liberal on minor, token issues: affirmative action, abortion, gay rights. These are the offically approved liberal issues. But when it comes to the really important issues, the economic issues, Big Media is solidly conservative. For example, recently, we have had a lot of discussion on network and cable tv political news shows about the "Problem with Social Security." And there has been some discussion of "solutions" to this problem. Of all the many times possible solutions have been mentioned on tv news shows, there are only two possible solutions ever listed: raise the age of retirement, and reduce benefits. Gee, what about all the other possible solutions? What about raising the ceiling on the payroll tax? Currently, the payroll tax stops at about $87K, and income above that is not taxed at all for SS purposes. ALso, why not just create a special tax on high incomes and use that to fund SS? For example add a 1% tax on all earned and unearned income above $250K. That would take care of all SS problems, just like that!

But you never hear anything about that on tv because that is a LEFTist solution, and leftists are hardly ever seen on tv. All centrists and rightwingers. Go look at all the broadcast networks and look at each political news show. List all the neutral regular guests and all the rightwing and leftwing regular guests and hosts. Can't think of many leftists, can you? Well, maybe you never paid much attention to that kind of stuff? Maybe you just repeat what you hear on Rush Limbaugh, or what you read in the wall st journal?

Well, there is really only ONE true leftist regularly given a voice on broadcast TV: Bill Moyers, and he is being driven out this year. You might make a case for Eleanor Clift and Lawrence O'Donell on McLaughlin and and Juan Williams on Fox News Sunday, althoug they are really more classic democrats, which is not the same as true liberal/progressive leftist. Also, that lady who is on the PBS show run by the Wall St Journal editorial board.

Now, do you want to run down all the rightwingers on broadcast tv? And then we can get started on cable tv. And that is far worse.

You see, you really don't know much about the situation at all, do you? You just repeat talking points drilled into you by talk radio, WSJ, and other mainstream media outlets.

Anyone think of any other lefists regularly on broadcast TV?

Is the US really helping Israel anyway?

[einhverfr]

The only two countries that see the palestenian occupation as just and moral are Israel and the US. Everybody else sees it as immoral and unjust.

I am not even sure that the Bush administrations (either this one or the previous one) saw it as moral or just. Indeed *both* W and his father went as far as withholding foreign aid from Israel and if you look closely at the politics with regard to the foreign aid that was delivered, it is far more slanted against Israel than others might thing (more emphasis on loan guarantees and less on grants, etc).

The problem is that Americans as a whole are far more pro-Israel than they should be, and this ties the administration's hands. Now, it should also be noted that Clinton was far more pro-Israel than either Bush.

But there are funny things here-- this support creates a situation where problems which need to be peacefully resolved don't get resolved. And it means that other countries (Lebannon, f. ex.) will exploit US foreign policy to, say, push the line regarding water rights, etc. So this support doesn't really do Israel any good in the long run.

Israel has peace treaties with two of its neighbors (Jordan and Egypt). Its occupation of the Golan continues to make such treaties impossible with Syria and Lebannon. Netenyahu understood this which was why he had secret meetings with the Assad to discuss this situation. Such meetings eventually went nowhere, primarily because of the way in which Clinton and Barak handled this.

---Hope---

There are a couple of things to be hopeful here. THe first is that the Israeli High Court of Justice has been relatively progressive on addressing issues of the legal rights of Israel's Arab citizens (about 20% of their population) and has even come close to endorsing the ICC. It is likely that practices such as inhuman conditions in prisons and torture will be stopped as the High Court of Justice continues to hear these cases. The only thing missing for the Israeli population to really have liberty is some abolishment of administrative detention and some right similar to that granted by a Habeas petition here in the US. There is a growing movement to ensure that these rights become recognized as a part of law.

Also, despite a lot oft he resistance to it, I think that Sharon's Gaza withdrawal plan has the potential to be the first step towards the renewal of a peace process. Sure, Sharon wants to use this to fortify his position with the West Bank settlements, but even this simplifies the solution and makes things easier to eventually resolve. I am not saying Sharon could do it or even that he wants to (Sharon probably lacks credibility as a negotiating partner with both the Israelis and the Palestinians, so negotiating with him would be like negotiating with someone randomly selected from the street corner).

Israel will only have security when the issues of Gaza, Golan, and the West Bank are settled, when rule of law rather than force of arms prevails in the Palestinian lands, and when peace treaties are signed and recognized with all of Israel's neighbors. These will not happen overnight. But it will happen probably within my lifetime. Whether Israel is at that time a Jewish or a secular state will be their choosing. But it will lose some of its association with a single religion because either its Arab citizens (who have larger families and less education) will continue to have more children, or they will be given a fair education and set of economic opportunities and be better integrated into Israeli society.

Israel being against all Arabs is sort of like the US being against all people of African decent. Oh wait....

Not that I expect it to continue indefinitely.

G.W. Bush Library Contents

[ashitaka]

5000 copies of "My Pet Goat".

(I know, it's actually a story called The Pet Goat in a reading textbook).

Somehow fitting nonetheless.

Re:The million-dollar question

[killjoe]

RE costs:

I don't think cost is a factor. If it was they would have stopped by now.

RE Arab population and Israel as a Democracy.

Isreal needs to make up it's mind. Is it a jewish state or is it a democracy. You can no more have a jewish democracy then you can have a christian democracy, a white democracy or a muslim democracy. You either have full sufferage or you don't have democracy. Israel is not a democracy, it's the fullfillment of zion. I frequently describe it as a theo-democracy. It a theocracy that is governed by pseudo democratic process.

RE Borders:.

THere are UN resolutions that draw the Israeli border.

RE Fence:.

I agree with you to an extent. I agree that whoever is left on the israeli side of the fence gets to become a full fledged israeli citizen. The only thing you have to be careful of is that the fence is not constructed so as to take all of the available water, arable land, etc.

RE Geneva convention:

It's toothless. For all practical purposes israel is the most powerful nation on the planet. If anybody attacks israel the US will turn them into a parking lot. If the UN attempts to pass a resolution to force israel to do something the US will veto it. If Israel bombs another country and the country attempts to retaliate the US will destroy that country.

Israel is not bound by any laws of man or god. It can do whatever it wants, whenever it wants to whoever it wants. They could carpet bomb syria tommorow and kill everybody in there and nobody can do anything about it.

The only thing that is holding back israel from massive ethnic cleansing in the occupied terratories is their own internal morality. Right now the people calling for genocide are a minority. Who knows what will happen in the future. I suspect if the soul of the israeli nation continues in it's current path that minority will become a majority and a final solution will be proposed in the knesset by the likes of netanyahu and sharon.