The World Votes Kerry (apart from Poland, that is)

how was the canada bit were of like mind???

does this mean 47% heart Nader or are they of the 'why am i being asked to choose a President, this is not the USA' ilk?

the global disappointment if/when Bush wins may be akin to the last election in Iraq in which Saddam won by a landslide (he was the only person you could vote for tho).

While I'm here there's also this article in the International Herald Tribune regarding the political slant of those serving in Iraq:

An Annenberg election survey in early October of active-duty soldiers and their families found a clear preference for the president, with 69 percent placing greater trust in Bush as commander in chief and only 24 percent favoring Kerry. Of those surveyed, 43 percent identified themselves as Republican, 27 percent as independent and only 19 percent as Democratic.

I'm not sure how much weight that would carry, but it's the kind of thing I'd be mentioning frequently if I was the current president.

Was this before or after Kerry went on his antiCanadian tirade a few weeks ago? I'd still rather deal with him at this point though.

There are other factors that lead me to doubt a 69-24 pro-Bush split is true:
1. Troops well into their second or third straight combat tour are unlikely to favor the Commander in Chief responsible for keeping them there.
2. Combat troops are likely to be more aware than the general public of command incompetence in the prosecution of the war effort. I know from experience that when I was in the Marines in the aftermath of Reagan's excursions into Lebanon, Grenada and Central America that there was general LOATHING at the troop level for that administration's policies -- and this was when Reagan was massively popular with the general public.
3. Minorities represent a far greater percentage of military personnel than the overall population. I doubt there's a huge groundswell of Republican support among blacks and latinos forced by economic factors into enlistment, then suddenly finding themselves called up to occupy Iraq.

How much you wanna bet that Annenberg poll was conducted primarily among officers and their families?

Potential substitutes for weaker:
cooperative
rational
less arrogant

please, continue.

Are you suggesting that Mary-Kate Olsen's policies aren't hawkish enough?

Actually, my poorly-defined point is that it's no great revealation that nationalism only plays well at home. If you polled Pakistanis on who they favor for Indian PM, my guess is the "weaker" candidate would win handily.

It was his love of Ontario garbage. He jumped into the Michigan trash importation issue, which involves more then just Ontario. And then went off from there.

I'm not sure this is true, or at least not always true. Thatcher was more popular abroad than at home. Except in Argentina, maybe. I guess it depends whether your country is seen as a threat or not.

2. No, I know. That was my attempt at accounting for the difference.

Russia, when I visited it earlier this year, struck me as one of the most right wing-capitalist places I've ever been. Casinos, crime and advertising everywhere. Terrible air quality. Everyone out to make a quick buck. Cigarette promotions and competition.

Russia shares with Bush's America a decline in life expectancy and living standards for the poor. It shares with Britain a combination of high prices (Moscow is now the third most expensive city in the world to live in, without offering any of the actual quality of life or amenities that might suggest) and poor quality.

the world poll favoring Kerry is no great shocker. The world, as a whole, would probably favor a weaker America.

But it's precisely Bush who will deliver a weaker America. If I were really anti-American I would certainly want Bush to win so that we could get on with the 21st century belonging to the Chinese. I'm not yet at that stage, though.

In The Election and America's Future in the New York Review of Books Alan Ryan says:

'The claim that reelecting President Bush will make the world safer—any part of the world, including the United States—would be laughable if the Iraqi civilian death toll was not 15,000 and rising, if peace for Israelis and Palestinians was not further away than ever, and if international cooperation on everything from global warming to fighting AIDS had not been deeply damaged by the last four years of a know-nothing presidency. If it is a joke, it is in the worst possible taste.

'From almost anywhere outside the United States, it is impossible to understand how Mr. Bush has even a remote chance of reelection. In most of Europe, two thirds of the population has never weakened in its opposition to the war in Iraq—not out of affection for Saddam Hussein, but out of a well-founded understanding that Iraq was irrelevant to the war on terrorism until President Bush turned the country into a terrorist's playground.

'Even in Britain, it was only in the immediate aftermath of the invasion that a majority was in favor of war; support is now 40 percent. Seventy percent want a date set for the withdrawal of British troops; and 80 percent think the United States has no idea how to bring peace and stability to Iraq. These 80 percent of Britons share the global view that President Bush is a threat to world security. Unsurprisingly, so do Americans' neighbors—Canadians and Mexicans.'

there is a lot of reaction in russia, a lot of gangster capitalism. but a lot of russians resent precisely that.