American Views Abroad

 
There is a 40 minute foreign affairs journal on German TV on Sunday evenings on the first channel, ARD, called Weltspiegel. Yesterday it reported on an international team arriving in the US to watch-over how voting will be conducted in various states. It highlighted Georgia which has switched to touch screen machines that leave no paper trail and how there is little confidence in these machines among voters and all the problems and miscounts that can occur. Florida was next in the report and the drive there to get blacks registered. It mentioned how almost no one in the Cuban community, which usually votes Republican, has problems registering but it interviewed a black man whose name is on a list of former felons who are denied the right to vote. However, the charge he was sentenced for was over 20 years ago and he was given back his full citizenship rights years ago as well. The second spot on the US reported on the former guards and workers at Guantanamo who are now talking out about the harsh treatment the prisoners there have to endure. The third spot showed Bush 'wired up' and was a farce on how someone, in this case a young German, was doing his talking for him. This morning a Hamburg newspaper reports on how Bush misspoke at a rally in Florida and called for a military draft. He then corrected himself and claimed he meant the opposite --- a voluntary army. The same article then mentions The New York Times editorial supporting Kerry for President. No one expected the NYT to support Bush but it is stunning how critical and harsh it is in it's review of Bush's first term. The stinging, rousing editorial appeared in today's Herald Tribune and deserves to be read in full. An Alternative and More: John Kerry for President can be read at www.iht.com. Here the sentences the Hamburg paper highlighted:

'We look back on the past four years with hearts nearly breaking, both for the lives unnecessarily lost and for the opportunities so casually wasted. Time and again, history invited George W. Bush to play a heroic role, and time and again he chose the wrong course.'

Fred is back from his vacation in Poland and will soon be blogging again on his attempts to register and vote in Ohio. He sent me an interesting link www.howbushoperates.info. It is worth taking a look at.

- posted by Gloria @ 11:35 AM