Post election comments from here & there

Last night as I talked to my friend A. on the phone, her kids (aged 4-10) were trying to get her attention because they wanted her 'to vote'. They had made up ballots and before she was allowed to choose her mayor they told her she 'had to listen to the arguments'.

My friend A., a home schooling caring mother told her children to "go away!" as she proceeded to tell me that they got all this from yesterday's event. As the whole family drove to vote, they had discussed certain issues and explained the procedure to their kids. In particular the issue "should selling wine in grocery stores be prohibited or not?" had been discussed (this was one of the extra questions on the MA ballots).

When I asked my friend A. "so, who did you vote for? Did you win?" she told me that she had not won. Massachusetts's two U.S. senators (since 1985) are Edward Kennedy (Democrat) and John Kerry (Democrat), and they are not threatened by my friend A.’s disapproval; it’s a Democratic state indeed. As she proceeded to point out, these elected officials are in fact supposed to be representing the people of the state of Massachusetts – us - however, quoting her husband Affleck-T. she concluded "but I don't think they're doing a very good job representing me."

My friend Untravel has also made a few interesting post election comments. He is of an entirely different political opinion than my friend A. It might be his Swedish heritage influencing him. The Swedish liberal press, of course, is musing: "President Bush has been slapped in the face and his next two years in office are going to be a painful struggle." This schadenfreude despite the rise in popularity the American president has had in Sweden since he participated in the inauguration of the new Swedish Embassy in Washington DC. “House of Sweden” last week.

The Belgian press appears to be more interested in the sacrifice of Rumsfeld but here it seems that political affairs tend to evolve around persons, not parties or ideas.

By Lovain