After the election

I have mentioned before that I am not to happy with the choices that the US has for President. I don't like Kerry for his ideas and his demagoguery and on the other side I think that Bush has not done a good job, and even though that I can not say that we shouldn't get rid of dictators abroad, I believe the role of the US as world police is wrong. Also Bush has not accomplished his promises and the spending has gone crazy in this administration. My friend Brad Lips in his blog Lips Brothers quotes the following from a NRO article that he just published:

The challenge for conservatives remains the same whether Bush wins or loses. Victory followed by complacency could be just as damaging as outright defeat. Conservatives ought to recommit themselves to a shared vision, and for that we should look to Ronald Reagan.

Although I am not a conservative, I couldn't agree more with the quote. Regardless if Bush wins or looses, if you are a Libertarian or Conservative we have to take a stronger position against big government, and in favor of more freedom.

Electoral College

In anticipation to the upcoming election I am trying to understand the electoral college and how it works. While I am reading about it on different sources I will be posting below the links to places that offer an explanation. I will add more links as I read them and eventually I will grade them in order of quality of explanation, so you would be able to go directly to the most clear one. This since I have heard so many different explanations about this institution on the previous days, none to my satisfaction.


Links:

Wikipedia

CNN

Daylight Saving Time

This coming sunday in the US we turn our clocks back one hour, so we will be able to sleep one hour later. Since I am a recent arrival to this country I found this webpage that explains the rationale behind this curious practice not observed near the equator.

McElroy and DV

I came across her website long time ago, but I have not checked it back in a long time among other things because I only go through websites that have Rss or Atom feeds. This time it caught my attention her parallel blog on domestic violence (DV) and her own experiences with the issue some 20 years ago. As always her positions are not the traditional feminist positions, and are more geared toward individualistic feminism. She cites also George Rolph expert on DV against males and the gender bias that currently exists on the issue towards taking only into account the violence against women and not against men. McElroy tries to draw paralalells to her own experiences and how she thinks Rolph's insights are non-gender specific.

Head of the OAS resigns

Yesterday at 5 Miguel Angel Rodriguez Secretary general of the OAS resigned. What a pitty, the press says that he recived a personal loan from a Minister that received the bribe:

"The evidence seems damning enough: Rodriguez's close friend and former housing minister, Jose Antonio Lobo, now under house arrest while cooperating with authorities, told prosecutors last week that then-president Rodriguez demanded a cut of the lucrative deal. Rodriguez claims the money was not a bribe but a personal loan, a loan that ended up in a Washington bank account held by his wife. There is no paper trail, according to Rodriguez, because it was a deal done con el pelo del bigote -- from the hair of his moustache -- a Costa Rican idiom for word of honor. "

Check the story by Marcela Sanchez of the Washington Post (registration required). Lets hope this is all a coverup of the guy in prison and Miguel Angel is innocent. I don't know him personally, but I have spoken with him a couple of times over the phone to invite him to conferences and he has always struck me as a very accesible and humble person. I have known from other people that he is a very honest and principled man. His resignation could only mean that he is a very principled man that gave out his post to defend his dignity.