Pond View
Brit longs for representation in taxing Yank election. Simon Heffer at UK Telegraph :
Many Britons will feel it would be rather nice to have a vote, too. Well, maybe not a whole vote: I would settle for one worth 50 per cent of those cast by American citizens.
After all, since we are a strategic colony of the US, it would be nice to have even a marginal say in how the empire chooses to dispose our goodwill and our blood and treasure. Such considerations were explicit in the founding of the US, and what’s sauce for the goose…
For many around the world, especially among that tragic tribe for whom politics is a recreation, what will play out between now and November 4 will be simply entertainment.
Tell me about it. A lot of people in this corner of the evil empire we call “the United States” also wish we had a vote that made any difference. Welcome to the reality of winner-take-all presidential politics, where in a small, consistently blue state that is largely irrelevant in primary or the general,* your vote counts for zip and will not influence the shading of the map one iota. The votes that matter, in the end, are primary votes in a few early voting boutique elections and heavily populated deciding states, and at the other end of the equation, in a handful of states like Florida and Ohio that could go either way and tip the balance. The rest of us might as well be engaged in a high school civics project.
Moving on, Heffer disparages the ill-informed American voter, but shows himself to be fully qualified to exercise his civic responsibility as any disengaged American mall-dweller but for the matter of citizenship, as he thinks the candidates are all singing the same tune on foreign policy and seems to think presidents blindly do what the State Department says. Clearly hasn’t been paying attention during the last seven years he makes reference to.
Via Blair, who notes the echoing refrain of 2004’s Operation Clark County.
No Pasaran notes that the Belgians, who can barely manage to hold their own country together, would also like a vote in ours.
Prior important commentary re Euro-American relations:
* marginally slightly less so in this year’s primary, when the traditional Massachusetts March primary has been moved up to the now super-massive Giga Tuesday, so we can be just almost entirely instead of utterly irrelevant, and may influence some second-tier condidates to bail. Blueness notwithstanding, noteworthy that Massachusetts voted heavily for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984. Do not expect blue-to-red shift this year, however, when voters have been quoted saying things like, “I’m voting for McCain … or Obama!” and “I like Mitt Romney … and Obama!”
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:04 am Comments (7) on Tuesday, January 8, 2008
7 Responses to “Pond View”
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January 8th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Naturally, all these Euros who want to be able to vote for the American president haven’t stopped to think that by doing so, they would have to share in the blame for whatever that president would do. No more bashing America for “acting in its own interests without regard for the rest of the world”. No more clever name-calling like “the cowboy president”.
Also, I’m pretty sure we 300 million residents of the United States would insist on all those voters having to pay an equal share of our taxes (and if that’s on top of their own incentive-killing socialist funding, tough cookies).
January 8th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
[...] said that, other Europeans already express their concern and European newspapers such as the Spiegel warn Europeans not to get their hopes [...]
January 8th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
They want to vote? Easily done.
Tell them to first fly to Mexico, then cross the border secretly. Go to one of several states that aren’t too picky about driver’s license, photo ID and such. When they go through the drive through, the clerk will say, “would you like fries and a voter registration with that?” Say “Si” and there they go. It is easy. Uncounted hordes have already done it. Then, on election day, they can vote in several friendly precincts of their choice.
January 8th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
You’ll settle for one worth 0% of mine, Chauncey, and like it.
January 8th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I thought a lot of Heffer’s observations were spot on and that he writes with a heavy dose of irony.
And makes some not so bad observations…such as…
Yet in foreign affairs, and precisely because it is such a sensitive matter in America, the potential presidents are all sounding alarmingly similar.
Compare and contrast their reactions last week to the Bhutto assassination…
In calling Britain “…a strategic colony of the US” you could suppose there is some anger and resentment there, the “poodle” idea.
January 8th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
I had a regular fisking all written about the Euro’s aspirations re our elections. But what’s the use. They can’t vote for their own “representatives,” that bunch of petty tyrants who run the bureaucracy of the EU. The countries of Europe have already given up their own soverienty, so I don’t doubt that they’d like to go after ours as well.
January 11th, 2008 at 4:35 am
Poor little foreign devils. You’ve got to feel sorry for them. Look at how cute they are when they get rilled up and think they should matter.
We would go ahead and conquer them properly but for a reason or few.
1. Too much argument and endless committee meetings would result from the need to redesign the star field on our map when adding new states to the roster.
2. Too much effort would be needed to teach the silly foreign devils proper human type language and behavior.
3. We already have plenty commies, neo-commies, nazis, neo-nazis, multi generational welfare bums, losers, weirdos, idjits and various other forms of numbnuttery. We don’t need to add huge helpings and heaping dollops of more of every sort of dysfunctional moron to our population. Thanks but no thanks.
4. All joking aside and an actual attempt at a bit of serious….
We just don’t do that conquery sort of thing and aren’t at all interested in expanding our national borders. No matter what the idjit propagandists say, that’s just how it is. So, maybe all y’all should spend more time and effort at fixing your own broken systems and leave ours alone.