Tag: elections

Obama Is So Winning the Elections

~ Clarissa ~ 35 Comments

This seems like an Obama-themed day on the blog for some reason.

In my Advanced Spanish class, we did an activity today where I hand out photos of famous people, and students have to use new vocabulary to describe them. One of the people in the photos was the President. I’ve done this activity before, and there is usually a great variety of opinions among the students.

This time, however, things were different. Among the 24 students in this class, there was only one who had anything bad to say about the President. She was as surprised as I was to see that nobody shared her negative opinion of Obama.

I don’t like to see a student ganged up on by the majority, so I offered myself up as this student’s conversation partner, and we created anti-Obama descriptions together. I pride myself on managing to keep my politics out of language courses that I teach. Students need to be able to express themselves freely in a foreign language to master it without fearing that the professor will dislike them for their opinions.

In any case, if in this very conservative Bible Belt area all students but one have only good things to say of Obama, I think this means he is winning the elections.

How Many People Voted in the Russian Elections Yesterday?

~ Clarissa ~ 5 Comments

Can anybody guess which percentage of the population participated in the elections to the Russian Parliament (the Duma) in Rostov area?

A little over 146%! (The link is in Russian, but you can still see the numbers and add them up for yourself.) This is true civic consciousness for you. Here we barely get 60% of the population to vote while in Russia more voters come to the polls than actually live in the area.

This is either a case ofDead Souls immortalized by the great Russian writer Gogol, or the ruling party of Russia has become even more shameless than it used to be.

A Political Riddle

~ Clarissa ~ 13 Comments

Since people seem to have liked the last riddle I posted, here is a new one. It’s based on completely real events surrounding the approaching elections in Russia.

Independent observers and progressive bloggers in Russia are exhorting the voters to bring their own pens to the voting booths. “Please, don’t use the pens that will be provided to you for marking the ballots at the voting polls!” they keep reminding the voters. “During the previous elections, many people forgot to bring their own pens and used the ones that were given to them at the polling stations, and we all know what happened.”

Why do you think it’s so important for Russia’s voters to bring their own pens?