Category: Politics

Well I’m starting my marathon election watch this evening, despite the fact that nothing’s likely to happen until around 8.00am tomorrow morning at the earliest. But I’m not alone. The Guardian’s Newsblog is up all night. In the meantime, there are already reports of broken voting machines (via Boing Boing).

The most credible analysis of Bush’s “bulge” appears today in Salon. Up until now I’d thought that people were properly making a fuss about nothing. Now I’m with Gary Trudeau and this week’s Doonesbury on this one. He did have some kind wire down his back. And this week, The Economist has grudgingly backed Kerry.

Because sometimes you get the feeling that Florida is making a real fist of it. Now 58,000 postal votes have “gone missing”.

BBC Four had an excellent debate with first class speakers on Sunday night. Even Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly wasn’t as obnoxious as usual. Then there was last night’s Newsnight featuring a Greg Palast report on dodgy goings on in Florida. Is it just me, or does the US really need consistent rules and regulations across…

What a wonderful word psephology is! It’s defined as “the study of elections and voting, and their statistical analysis in the prediction of results.” Thanks to The Guardian’s Newsblog (the comments are hilarious – as a result, I suspect, of Operation Clark County) I today discovered MysteryPollster, a wonderful website put together by Democratic pollster…

It’s the Labour Party conference in sunny Brighton, and this morning Gordon Brown was really doing the rounds. At 7.34am he was live on GMTV. At 7.45am he was live on Five Live. At 7.52am he was live on BBC Breakfast News And although I didn’t hear it, he was, of course, the 8.10am interviewee…

The fox hunting lobby have been up to their tricks, invading the Commons while the bill to ban hunting was being debated. I suspect that Tony Blair is using this to appease a country who don’t see him in a great light just now. Look at his new found environmental slant with a speech yesterday.…

A great piece by Carl Hiaasen in the Miami Herald about the failure to extend the ban on assault weapons in the US. It’s not like they could be used by terrorists or anything is it?

Billionairesforbush.com!

Check out this animation from the States! (Link from Infinite Ideas Machine)

The report of the Home Office Select Committee is published today (PDF), and they report that plans are “badly thought out”. I need to spend a bit of time reading the report this weekend and then see what needs to be done next.

I note that the Democratic Convention is being covered live on BBC Parliament through the night, with the unspun CSPAN coverage. I fell asleep before Clinton came on however!