billso.com

USA: The headline on this Houston Chronicle article is “Convention will portray Bush as warrior, centrist”. “Warmonger”, “liar”, “idiot” and “fascist” are more suitable terms, especially for the several hundered thousand demonstrators who will be marching in the streets of Manhattan this week.

USA: The New York Times has proposed abolishing the Electoral College. In the Electoral College, every vote is not equal. Small states like it that way, so I doubt that small state legislatures will vote for the consitutional amendment required to make this change. Presidential candidates would pay more attention to the needs of the larger states like New York and California, at the expense of smaller states like Hawaii and Nevada. Swing states would be a thing of the past. As the Times points out, Yucca Flats is getting more attention than NYC security in this campaign.

Abolishing the Electoral College could encourage more voters to participate in presidential elections, if voters know that their vote directly counts towards the total results, and that votes will be accurately tabulated. I lived in Texas in 2000, so my vote against W was for naught.

USA: The Republican National Convention is going to be a political disaster of epic proportions for W. The Republicans and NYPD will be stupid enough to actually move against the protesters, and I have no doubt that the whole world will be watching. The convention hasn’t even started, and already there are massive protests in New York City. The Republicans are outnumbered by over 100,000 marchers. March organizers claimed they had 400,000 people on the streets today. This Boing Boing article lists various alternative sources for RNC coverage, including blogs, camblogs, and others.