Archive for the ‘World current affairs’ Category
The American presidential election (68)
September 27th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
The first of the four debates between the US presidential and vice-presidential candidates was held at 2 am British time, so we recorded it from CNN and watched it over breakfast this morning. Here in the UK, we have nothing like these gladiatorial televised contests but, if we did, the moderator would have been sharper […]
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The American presidential election (67)
September 25th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
“The West Wing” was my all-time favourite television programme and the election battle between a minority Democratic candidate Matt Santos and a maverick Republican candidate Arnie Vinick beautifully anticipated the real-life contest between Barack Obama and John McCain. Jeb Bartlet was the best President the US never had and hopefully Barack Obama will be one […]
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The American presidential election (66)
September 24th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
I’ve always said that, if the world could vote in the US Presidential election, it would choose Barack Obama. Now “The Economist” magazine is running a world-wide on-line poll. Votes are cast on a country-wide level. Each country is assigned a number of votes according to the size of its population ( “electoral-college votes” on […]
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Why are the markets in a such a mess? (2)
September 20th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
At the end of the most tumultuous week on capital markets since the Wall Street Crash of 1929, there is a sense of utter bewilderment – and powerless – from ordinary citizens. Is it possible to give a short and layperson’s explanation of why all this has happened? It all started about a decade ago […]
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The American presidential election (65)
September 18th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
An American friend of mine is a full-time worker in the Barack Obama election campaign. He’s just drawn my attention to this video from the campaign manager David Plouffe which shows why Obama’s position is stronger than the overall polls are suggesting:
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Why are the markets in a such a mess? (1)
September 16th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
“The collapse of Lehman Brothers, the swallowing up of Merrill Lynch, the threat to the world’s biggest insurance company, AIG, and the nationalisation of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, together with Northern Rock, herald the end of the free-wheeling deregulatory era of finance capitalism that lasted from the early 1980s to 200.” Quote from a […]
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The American presidential election (64)
September 10th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
In an earlier posting I commented that:” if the world citizenry was voting in this election, Obama would win by a landslide”. My judgement was confirmed by the news today that a BBC World Service poll found that Obama was favoured by a four-to-one margin across the 22,500 people polled in 22 countries. I agree […]
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Now Canada has an election too
September 7th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
As if the election campaign in the United States was not enough excitement for North Americans, we now have the news – expected for several weeks – that we are going to be into an election campaign in Canada as well. It’s “official” as of today and the date is 14 October. Prime Minister Stephen […]
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Some differences between American and British politics
September 7th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
As someone who is intensely interested in politics generally, and British and American politics most especially, I’m fascinated by some of the differences between the political scenes on the two sides of the Atlantic. Inevitably, I’m oversimplifying somewhat, but the following differences strike me as instructive: In the USA, blue signifies the Democratic Party, the […]
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The American presidential election (63)
September 6th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
A friend has drawn my attention to this way of comparing the content of the Convention speeches by Barack Obama and John McCain – a visual representation of the frequency with which key words were used by the respective speakers. Check out ‘economy’.
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