The world chimes in on the US election
Great Britain: “The beauty of American politics is that it can throw up the inconceivable as nowhere else. Obama’s presence long ago meant the campaign would be unusual. That its climax has coincided with a financial crisis that is shaking US capitalism to its core, reducing the candidates on occasion to mere bit players, has only made it more so…”
Canada: “In 1860, Americans who opposed slavery banded together to elect a backwoods lawyer who vowed to stand up to the secessionists. In 1932, they chose an aristocratic New York governor who could walk only with braces to lead them out of the Depression. And in 1980, they asked a perpetually optimistic former B-movie actor to reverse a decade of failure, defeat and decline. Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan all seemed like improbable choices to critics at the time. Yet they are among the greatest of the presidents…”
Germany: “In his two terms in the White House, US President George W. Bush has presided over a precipitous fall in America’s reputation around the world. History is likely to judge him a failure. Now, his successor will have to dig the US out of a deep hole…”
Lebanon: The problems facing the next US president at home and abroad “are so serious, and the room for maneuver so constrained, that you have to wonder why anyone would want the job. The risks of failure will be huge; the opportunities for breakthroughs will be limited…”
Israel: “Many of those who come to Obama rallies wearing “Hope” pins talk about it quite openly - the fear that this potentially history-making presidency will turn out to be just another political windmill grinding out empty slogans. To be fair, neither candidate has promised magic solutions. But lots of Americans would surely be glad to be given some, if only it were possible…”
Russia: “Obama and Medvedev have the potential to start a truly modern phase in the US-Russian relationship, finally leaving the Cold War behind…”
India: “What may prove to be as important as specific policy measures is the overall approach espoused by both men. With a resurgent Russia, belligerent Iran and global financial meltdown, a deliberate, multilateral approach is essential. It explains the enthusiasm worldwide for an Obama presidency…”
China: “Barack Obama chose winning over his word. The Democrat once made a conditional agreement to accept taxpayer money from the public financing system, and accompanying spending limits, if his Republican opponent did, too. No more…”
For writers, a profound transition from Bush’s narrative to Obama’s
“Although a few old lions like Vidal and Vonnegut and Mailer had their (very valiant) say, generally artists were treated by the Bush administration like… Sub-jester treatment, I guess you could say. This was stupid and costly, because any novelist could have imagined the invasion of Iraq and the aftermath better than Bush et al did…”“We’re missing argument. We’re missing debate. We’re missing colloquy. We’re missing all sorts of things. Instead, we’re accepting.”
– Studs Terkel, 1912-2008“I really feel for people who want to maintain a traditional way of life. You can’t just be a sheepherder any more.”
– Tony Hillerman, 1925-2008What the 17th century can teach us about the financial crisis
“They weren’t interested in promoting trade, exporting or making things, only this attitude to take stuff. They used the whole globe as their arena. They had the realization that they could make extraordinary profits because they could keep out of the reach of (the authority of) states. They could avoid all the regulations -– and there were extensive regulations -– and head off to the other side of the world and potentially make a fortune.” Wall Street traders and 17th-century pirates had much in common…Oy, that’s pretty dumb, innit
One in five British high school students thinks the sun revolves around the earth…Leather without the animal
A biology school in Australia is growing “Victimless Leather” in a lab — living tissue that was never a living animal’s skin…Go away, you’re a burden to our socialized health care
Physician Bernhard Moeller answered Australia’s pleas for doctors from abroad. Now, the country that asked him to help out its health care system is telling him he can’t stay because his son has Down syndrome…Our bad
Some 2,400 people were accused of witchcraft and killed in Great Britain, until witch-killing was banned in the 18th century. Now, campaigners are looking to pardon Britain’s witches…Publish on the web or perish
Thanks to the internet, the scientific community is suffering from a case of too much information…The resource credit crisis
Every year, we use $4 trillion to $4.5 trillion more of the Earth’s resources than we can replenish. It’s a bigger debt crunch than the financial one, and it means we’ll need a second planet by 2030…China feels the pain
Shengguan, China, is probably the largest city you’ve never heard of. With 14 million people building things for consumers around the world, it is a major weathervane of the global economy. Nine thousand of its forty-five thousand factories are about to collapse… And the country’s billionaires are suffering too…Justice, Dubya-style
Seventeen Chinese citizens in Guantanamo Bay, against whom no charges will be filed and who have been told by a judge that they should be free, will likely spend the rest of their lives in jail…Forget that
As if our control-obsessed 21st-century governments didn’t have enough tools of oppression already, we now learn that scientists have developed a Men In Black-style amnesia beam…Pretty politicians win
Researchers at Northwestern have released a study that leads to one conclusion: Sarah Palin’s $150,000 wardrobe was money well spent…What’s missing from this rhetoric?
The two dumbasses arrested earlier this week over their plans to kill eighty-eight black people and Barack Obama can be called “skinheads,” “neo-Nazis,” and “white supremacists.” Just don’t call them terrorists…Message in a protein
For any extra-terrestrial civilization with a developed bio-engineering field, one smart way to send us a message would be to leave it in our DNA…Insulin nation
The incidence of diabetes has nearly doubled in the US in the past decade…Any kiddie in school can love like a fool…
Science has proven what folk wisdom has known for centuries: There’s a thin line between love and hate. But, unlike when we love, when we hate, we’re thinking…The betrayal of conservative principles
“The Republican Party has exiled its Goldwater-Reagan wing and given up all pretense of any allegiance to limited government … A humiliated, decimated GOP that rejuvenates and rebuilds around the principles of limited government, free markets, and rugged individualism is really the only chance for voters to possibly get a real choice in federal elections down the road.” A libertarian viewpoint on why the Republicans must lose…Mona Lisa smile
A computer program designed to read facial expression has the verdict on Mona Lisa’s smile: Eighty-three percent happy and nine percent disgusted…Dismantling American thought
Post-modernist deconstructionism has entered the subconscious of thinkers on all sides of the political spectrum. “Just as the old media were left cold as their once difficult and rarefied functions were ceded to any slob in his pajamas, so the bards of meta-analysis are struggling to survive in a world of front-porch semioticians…”The convergence of reality and satire
Sarah Schulman’s new novel, Mere Future, is proof that satire is always five minutes in the future. In Schulman’s New York, there is only one corporation, and everyone works in marketing…Guess who said it now
When Karl Rove admits that small-town Americans cling to guns and religion, you know things have changed…And finally: “As election day nears, millions of the nation’s poorest voters have reportedly yet to settle on the most profound and enduring way to completely fuck themselves over when they head to the polls this year…”
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