[wordup] The man behind electoral-vote.com

[Adam Shand]

This site is what I've been using to track the current state of the 
election and has been a significant motivator for me to vote (despite 
the hassles of being overseas) and a wonderful way to just keep up with 
the state of play.

Adam.

> Via: Michael Rasmussen <mikeraz at ...>
>
> Holy Cow! I know that nerd!  Well, not personally, but Andrew 
> Tannenbaum was the first computer scientist that I recall knowing the 
> name of.
>
> Among other things he is famous for telling Linus Torvalds that his 
> basic design for the Linux kernel was wrong.
>
> He's also famous for creating Minix and teaching scads of people who 
> have made computers what they are today.

From: http://www.electoral-vote.com/info/votemaster-faq.html

Why Did You Do This?

In a nutshell, because living abroad I know first hand what the world 
thinks of America and it is not a pretty picture at the moment. I want 
people to think of America as the land of freedom and democracy, not 
the land of arrogance and blind revenge. I want to be proud of America 
again. The U.S. media do a spectacularly bad job of informing Americans 
about what is going on in rest of the world. After Sept. 11, the U.S. 
could do no wrong. The entire world was on America's side. The invasion 
of Afghanistan was seen as completely justified. After all, the 
Al-Qaida leadership had to be decapitated. No one questioned that.

But Iraq was a completely different matter. Bush, Cheney, and Powell 
said they had conclusive proof that Saddam had WMD and could attack at 
any instant. The rest of the world wanted to see the proof. No proof 
was forthcoming. The answer was "trust us." We now know there were no 
WMD. There weren't even factories or labs to produce them. Saddam was 
an evil dictator with evil fantasies but he was no threat to America. 
Yet former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said that the planning to 
invade Iraq began the day Bush was inaugurated. The administration 
simply misused the horror of Sept. 11 as a convenient excuse for doing 
something that was already in the works.

Let me tell you a short story. When I was in elementary school, the 
school was plagued by a bully. He was the biggest, strongest kid around 
and would beat up anyone he didn't like. We were all exceedingly polite 
to his face, but hated his guts behind his back. One day he was chasing 
some poor kid and he tripped and skidded a considerable distance, 
scraping his face on the rough asphalt of the playground. He was 
bleeding and in pain, screaming for help. But nobody came to help him. 
We all just walked away. George Bush is the world's playground bully. 
The world sees him--and by inference, America--as arrogant, 
self-centered, and mean. I spoke to Americans from dozens of countries 
at the DA caucus. Everyone told the same story--the world hates 
America. When talking to foreigners, I can tell them about the Bill of 
Rights or freedom or World War II, or whatever I want, but all they see 
is this big, stupid, arrogant, playground bully and a stolen election 
in Florida last time. I think America deserves better. I want America 
to be respected in the world again, and John Kerry can restore the 
respect America deserves.

Don't believe me that the world hates us? The Guardian, one of 
Britain's most respected newspapers, ran a column by Charlie Brooker 
last week ending with this paragaph: "On November 2, the entire 
civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law 
dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God 
once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, 
arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed ..." Then it gets so bad that I 
refuse to quote it. Maybe Brooker is a nut and maybe it was a joke, but 
the fact that a serious newspaper would publish this piece shows how 
deep the hatred of George Bush runs. And this comes from our closest 
ally. Imagine what people in Spain or Indonesia or the Arab world 
think.

Now you might be thinking: Who the hell cares if America is the world's 
pariah, along with, say, North Korea and Zimbabwe? Well, I care, for 
one, and I think most Americans want to be respected for being a 
democracy rather than simply being feared because we have more nuclear 
weapons than anybody else. You can't make the world love you by running 
commercials full of snarling wolves on worldwide TV.

But there are some practical matters to consider as well. If you look 
at British and Canadian publications, such as The BBC,  The Guardian, 
The Economist, and The Globe and Mail, you get a picture not colored by 
partisan electoral considerations. You sometimes wonder if they are 
reporting the same war as the U.S. media. The situation in Iraq has 
deteriorated very badly. Over 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the 
war, mostly women and children. Well over 1000 American soldiers--many 
of them just kids who signed up for the National Guard and never 
expected to go to war--have been killed there and thousands more have 
been maimed for life. Americans are being killed daily in increasing 
numbers and unless there is a radical change, this will go on for 
years. Reenlistment rates are way down and manpower needs are way up. 
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."

If other countries won't help out, Bush is going to be faced with an 
unpleasant choice: accept another Vietnam-type quagmire lasting for 
years or reinstitute the draft. There is no way we can win in Iraq with 
current troop levels. Something has to change. More of the same won't 
work. And it is an open secret that after the election, Bush is going 
to ask Congress for another $70 billion down payment on Iraq. Who is 
going to pay for it? We are.

In addition, the U.S. needs the help of other countries to gather 
intelligence about terrorists, cut off their funding, and track them 
down. Trouble is, when the playground bully comes asking for help, 
everyone just walks away. A new president who shows respect for the 
world instead of arrogance will get a lot more help. And we need help, 
believe me.