3/November/2004

US Election

Seems Bush is going to be around for 4 more years, which seems to be a bad
thing (not that with Kerry it was going to be much better). But instead
of desperating, I’ve came up with some ideas on how to manage these 4
years to come.

  • If your country has no petrol, there’s nothing to fear about. If your country
    does have petrol, move to another one before it is too late. There is plenty
    of space in the US, so you can move there.
  • While the Bush administration vs terrorists war continue, we can have terrorist threat applets,
    even localized
    for Australia
    , which is a feature other desktops don’t even dream of having!
  • If you’ve got weapons of mass destruction, hide them, destroy them, sell them, that is,
    get rid of them as soon as possible….unless you are in the US. In
    that case, inspections are not needed.
  • For Americans who will suffer from seeing Bush in the White House, just think about all
    the years we had to stand Aznar here in Spain, or Mrs Thatcher in the UK, or Fidel
    Castro in Cuba, or, even worst, Tom Jones remasterings all these last years, so, again,
    don’t desperate, 4 years is a short time.

Also, as part of the US election night here on TV, I learnt a lot of things about the
US electoral system that, at least, surprised me. For instance, minorities, such as
native Americans (Indians), will never get any representation whatsoever in the congress,
since you have to win the elections in a whole state for this to happen. While the Spanish
electoral system is also a bit unfair in some points, at least it allows minorities (like
regionalist parties) to have some representation in the congress in Madrid. I wonder who’s
going to defend the rights of those minorities if nobody represents them. The same happens
for parties other than the 2 big ones. In 2000, for instance, Nader had almost 3 million
votes
, but since he didn’t win in any state, those 3 million Americans were
not represented in the congress at all.

But really, while the US politics and polititians suck (as they do in every place of the
world), I myself like very much the US and the US people I’ve met so far, so, even
though there is some anti-americanism feeling over here in Europe, it is not as
strong as some Americans might think. People continue to wear jeans, to eat at McDonald’s, to say lots of words in
English, to watch American films (80% of films in Spain are from the US), to celebrate
Halloween, etc, etc. There is a lot of anti-Bush feeling, that’s it, which is normal
I guess, since it’s difficult to like someone who has started 2 wars in 4 years. Let’s
hope the average of wars per year gets lower in the next 4 years.

I only regret that our lifes (those of US people and those of the
rest of the world) are always in the hands of a small group of people that declare themselves
as the leaders for a whole country. How sad, if only they were as nice as our GNOME leaders!

Basketball

I know everyone is busy with the elections, and maybe nobody cares, but November has seen
the start of 2 great basketball competitions. First, yesterday, the NBA (with no TV coverage here yet, sadly).
Today, the Euroleague,
the European NBA, which has this year the great Estudiantes, after a
successful
2nd place
last year in the ACB
(Spanish basketball league). The Euroleague, at least, has TV coverage here.