Vox Lucens

One of the primary advantages–no pun intended–of being done with the Republican side of the South Carolina vote is that half of the political ads are now no longer on the air. I am heartily sick of looking at ancient pictures of X Candidate with Ronald Reagan–especially when such a picture is the only proof that X Candidate is actually the conservative he claims to be.

But the primary problem with the Democratic primary being next Saturday is that the worst ads are still on air. I mean, unless you’re a hippie, Obama’s ads aren’t for you. And unless you’re a diehard fan of candidates who read their speeches, Hillary’s ads just aren’t going to resonate.

But Edwards’ ads are the worst. First, they have no video–and with just still pictures, I could do a better job with PowerPoint. And as far as the message, I could write a better ad in my sleep. I mean, really–”He will be our president. Not theirs.”

What?

And his other slogan–”A winner every time.” I guess they mean except for his last presidential campaign. Oh, and his last vice presidential campaign. Oh, and every state so far this campaign season.

The primary can’t come fast enough to get this hilarity off the air.

This week I finished up a fascinating book on international human rights, which I read for my Senior Seminar Paper. It discussed a number of world situations–hopefully I’ll blog more about those later, in book review fashion–and really focused in the last chapters on the potential tensions between promoting human rights and promoting democracy.

I found a news story today that made me think that the author missed an important detail, though. Those of you that follow international news know that East Timor, a hotspot of rights violations for decades, held elections recently. Here are the results, as posited by asianews.it:

With 90% of votes counted, the outgoing premier has won 753% of votes cast…

And THAT is the problem with international elections.