The state that turned the 2000 presidential election into turmoil with confusing butterfly ballots and hanging chads is conducting elections differently this time around, embarrassed into overhauling everything from its machinery to its recount rules.

is it just me, or is all that stuff about the hanging chads and butterfly ballots a scapegoat for the fucked up shit that happened during that election?

Underdog, you’re the centrist here, claiming all media is biased in their own way, and there is no conspiracy, etc. How do you explain that no major news outlet talks about all the questionable stuff both camps where doing in florida 2000, and the only thing they care to talk about is hanging chads and butterflies?

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I find the mix of reactions to Arafat’s health to be interesting. While they are all with good intention, there is definitely a contrast:

Israel - not very warm and fuzzy, but not negative either:

Raanan Gissin, spokesman for Ariel Sharon, insisted on Friday that Israel “had authorized Yasser Arafat to leave for medical care and to return”

Egypt - trying to keep both arabs and israel happy:

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak thanked Mr Sharon on Thursday “for the humane gesture” of allowing Mr Arafat to travel to Paris, the Israeli presidency said in a statement.

France -

French President Jacques Chirac said his decision to welcome Mr Arafat was down to France’s tradition as a “land of refuge”.

He made clear his support for Mr Arafat in a letter written “to express my deepest sympathy and warmest wishes for your recovery”.

He went on: “France, as you know, backs the aspiration you embody for the creation of a viable, prosperous and peaceful Palestinian state alongside a state of Israel assured of its security.”

USA - Have you noticed how cold the US has been towards world leaders lately? I mean it just sounds so formal to me, thats all.

Washington has said it hopes Mr Arafat will receive the necessary medical attention.

US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: “This is not a political matter for us. This is a matter of seeing that an ill person gets the medical care they need for health.”

UK - you can see a difference between UK and USA, they even call him ‘President’

He said: “We are very concerned. We have sent our very good wishes to President Arafat for a speedy recovery.”

Russia - Russia goes so far as to call him the leader of a nation

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he hoped Mr Arafat would “retain his position as leader of the nation”, saying Russia held his authority in great respect.

Why wait 20 years to adopt and anti US stance when you can start now? History has shown that our choosen leaders for regions we manipulate will tend to turn on us. Looks like Allawi is playing that card sooner than most. A true pinocchio indeed.

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forget president, i want to be a saint:

The pope has now beatified some 1,340 people, more than all his predecessors combined, Reuters news agency says.

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The comment Kerry made about “I will hunt down and kill the terrorists, whereever they hide” or something to that effect was kind of lame. There are bad people in the world that do bad things, some of them do bad things for political reasons. George Bush has declared a holy war on these people, but its too abstract, its not a concrete group (not to mention it seems arbitrary which evil doers are terrorists and which are not). I think people will do bad things for a very long time into the future, and its an overstatement to say we are going to wipe them out.

It shows a lot of weakness that John Kerry has choosen to measure himself in Bush’s world model, rather than define his own. Bad things happened before sept 11, and nobody had this mind set of wiping out the terrorists. its a bush creation. It saddens me that the only challenge to bush is not strong enough to create his own vision.