Watch the US Presidential Elections 2008 in the Middle East (FULL NEWS CHANNELS TV GUIDE)

I wont be exaggerating at all if I say that the whole world will be watching carefully on the 4th of November 2008, wishing their favorite candidate win. The latest international polls have favored Barack Obama, and the USA polls gives him around a 12 to 13 points lead. But the race is not over, many factors play part here, McCain was down before and ended up winning the republican party nomination, then there is the Bradley Effect.

The Bradley Effect is where a white voter would say in polls he would vote to the African-American candidate but when voting in the voting booth he will end up voting for the other WHITE candidate, so basically racists being shy of their racism and lying to the pollsters. This happened in 1982 while electing California’s governor,  Tom Bradley lost the elections although he was ahead in some polls. I do not believe that the Bradley effect happened or will happen to Obama, we already saw in the primaries how he hold close to the polls even in some places thought to be heavily racist, areas that has a very bad reputation with race discrimination.

So where will those who live in the Middle East watch the elections? Well, there is the free-to-air channels and the Subscription (PAY TV) channels.

Lets start with the PAY TV Channels:
ORBIT: The best network to watch all the action, all year long ORBIT is actually the best place to watch the American politics on their channel “ORBIT NEWS”, shows from MSNBC, NBC, ABC, PBS and BBC. In the last week of the elections since the 27 of October 2008 Orbit launched another news channel “ORBIT NEWS 2″. “ORBIT NEWS 3″ will be launched on the election day.

It has been announced that “ORBIT NEWS 1″ will feature:

• Brian Williams from NBC Nightly News
• Charles Gibson from ABC’s World News
• Jim Lehrer from News Hour on PBS
• Tom Brokaw from NBC’s Meet the Press

While “ORBIT NEWS 2″ will feature famous political commentators from MSNBC:

• Keith Olbermann (Countdown)
• Rachel Maddow (The Rachel Maddow Show)
• Chris Mathews (Hardball)
• David Gregory (Race to the White House)

ORBIT NEWS 3 will starts on the Elections day and it will air a live feed from ABC channel. It will precisely launch at 1:00 AM KSA time.

ART [Firstnet - Pehla]: Not a great choice, as ART only has FOX NEWS and SKY NEWS. FOX NEWS has the worst reputation as the most biased name in news, although ironically their slogan is “Fair & Balanced”. SKY NEWS is not bad but I doubt their coverage would be as good as CNN and MSNBC.

Showtime Arabia: Showtime is by far the worst choice, as they only provide only SKY NEWS, I am not sure though if Bloomberg & CNBC would show any coverage of the elections, if they do then you might follow it on those to FINANCIAL channels.

FREE-TO-AIR Channels:
CNN: The best source in my opinion, great panel of analysts and they have the resources to produce an astonishing full day coverage of the elections. Were very good in covering the primaries.

MBC4: If they do stick with the CBS schedule they will be one of the best channels to watch too, CBS coverage will be interesting to watch, that is if MBC4 cancels their regular schedule and stick with CBS as they have the rights to CBS News.

Aljazeera English: Really Really unbiased, am not being sarcastic this is for real, they are unbiased so much that I get bored watching it, they even cover the other candidates such as Ralph Nader and Bob Barr !! While the American mainstream media shoved them aside.

Other choices in English language: BBC World News, EuroNews, France 24, DW-TV, Russia Today, Press TV, NDTV Arabia

Other choices in Arabic language: Aljazeera Arabic, Al Arabiya, BBC Arabic, Future News, Al Aan TV, Al Ekhbariya, France 24, Rusiya Al-Yaum (Russia Today), Al Hiwar TV, Alhurra (The Free One), Nile News, NBN, ANN, CNBC Arabia (NOT SURE)

WATCH ONLINE:
It is expected that either all or some of the following channels will be streaming their election day coverage for free online: CNN, MSNBC, FOX NEWS, ABC, and CBS.

You can also watch The following channels in a very good quality via Livestation: Aljazeera English, BBC World News, BBC Arabic, Bloomberg, C-Span, DW-TV, EuroNews, France 24, ITN, Russia Today (English), Rusiya Al-Yaum (Russia Today), BBC World Service (Radio), DW-Radio.

Livestation also includes many user added channels, you can simply either search by name or check the channel list available.

Bottom Line: 
We in the Middle East can’t vote, and the majority do not believe that the election is clean, seriously we all are set in thinking the US Elections is rigged, just like 2000. We do not believe that it is fair, especially that there is no equal coverage to other parties other than Democratic party and the Republican part. Most of us do not give a crap and most of us think it is just BS. But I am sure that most of people in the middle east, Arabs, Asians, Europeans, South American, Muslim and Christians will watch.

Some have watched the American elections since last year as if they are watching a reality TV show, a bit longer than American Idol I guess, and some watched it seriously following each and every article written about it. Some believe that it effects all of the world and some believe it will only affect Americans. I believe the whole world have hated the past 8 years, they hated Bush’s foreign policy and domestic policy, in the end all will watch and will wait to know who is the next president for USA hoping change come to Washington and we start seeing some difference in the way things work. Some might laugh and call it naivete, and some will call it hope.

3 comments October 30th, 2008

Tina Fey As Sarah Palin On Saturday Night Live [NBC] (VIDEO)

In my opinion Tina Fey amazingly played the role of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the accent, the voice and the style. I can bet that during the first few words no one could differentiate between them. Amy Poehler as usual played Hillary Clinton. The sketch was really funny, something I do not usually say about  SNL sketches. This was the opening sketch of the premiere of SNL’s new season.

1 comment September 15th, 2008

Barack Obama to Announce Evan Bayh as Vice President Choice on Wednesday 6th of August 2008 ?!

Well this is not a sure thing, but many many journalists and media sources are either directly or indirectly hinting that Obama might announce his choice for Vice President before the Olympics, the reason for choosing this time is that the media will be focused on the Olympics and the only other time to do that is on the convention. So to take the attention of the media a number of journalists are predicting that it would be on Wednesday, some even predict who it will be, and the name I am reading and hearing a lot these past few days is Evan Bayh the Indiana Senator.

Although I have been following the news carefully on TV, Newspapers and Online Political Blogs, nothing was as accurate and as straightforward as the article I read on the Huffington Post on the 4th of August where Bil Browning states why he predicts that Obama will be announcing his VP on Wednesday and why it will be Bayh. I think the most powerful reason he states is when he wrote:

“I just got an invite from the Obama campaign to attend an appearance on Wednesday that isn’t on Obama’s official calendar. Why not? The campaign said, “I can’t tell you what the event is about, but we want to make sure you have a ticket so you can cover it for the Bilerico Project. We want Bilerico Project to be there for this one.”"

I think Evan Bayh is a good choice for many reasons, and a bad choice for many many reasons too. One of the most obvious reasons why he might be a good choice is ofcourse the chance in turning Indiana blue in November, another reason could be that he was a Clinton supporter, but I think one of many reasons why he is a bad choice is the fact that he was PRO-WAR, and he is a Conservative who was an honorary co-chair of the neocon pro-war Committee For the Liberation of Iraq, with McCain !?!?! Many might debate how Conservative bayh is, but in the end of the day he is a conservative who was with McCain in the Iraq Liberation Committee, what can be said more than that?

So although the scenario depicted by the media is PERFECT and MAKES SENSE, the CHOICE is sort of BAD. Just saying… lets wait and see.

Add comment August 6th, 2008

Breaking: Phil Gramm Leaves Mccain Campaign

The star of “Nation of Whiners” Phil Gramm who is a former U.S Senator and Lawmaker  from Texas who is also a past presidential candidate have stepped down from his role as a co-chairman for Mccain’s Campaign. This is after his controversial comments on the economy and calling USA a “Nation of Whiners”.

Here is the clip of Phil Gramm’s “Nation of Whiners”:

Here is how the story broke on Countdown, actually it was 2 minutes before the start of Countdown on AP:

Add comment July 19th, 2008

Countdown with Keith Olbermann Special Comment: Obama’s FISA opportunity

Olbermann: Sen. Barack Obama is going to suffer political attacks no matter how he votes on the FISA bill but he can still stand on principle and score a political win by promising to take advantage of a loophole in the bill.

Read the FULL transcript here.

Add comment July 1st, 2008

Barack Obama Launches website to FIGHT the SMEARS from the Right Wing

I do not know why is this site launching now, it should have been launched since January this year, but it seems they wanted it to be focused on smears coming from the republicans.

Obama and his wife have been heavily attacked from all sides, and most attacks are backed with lies lies lies. I am not saying that Barack Obama is perfect, nobody is perfect but at least when you want to attack your opponent try to back it with some facts.

Add comment June 14th, 2008

Countdown with Keith Olbermann: Primary Elections in Review Video (AMAZING)

I was trying to find a video that would summarize the primaries, showing the highlights of what happened during the five months. Yesterday I was watching COUNTDOWN and was amazed on how they made a video of just what I was thinking. The way they combined events was clever and funny in sometimes. Watch……

Add comment June 11th, 2008

How did the Family of Barack Obama and Many Kenyans Celebrate his Latest Victory? (Video)

The first thing Barack Obama talked about after his latest victory, clinching the nomination, was his grandmother, he wished that she was with him. So how did his family celebrate? actually many Kenyans celebrated.

Add comment June 10th, 2008

John Mccain… Electable? (The Best Anti-Mccain Video)

Many videos out there on Youtube and other video hosting websites that attacks and exposes John Mccain, videos that shows how uneducated he is in economics and videos that show how he lied again and again about Iraq and how he wants to attack Iran. This video you are about to watch is really good, it shocked me by the end, it was created by a Ron Paul supporter back in February 2008.

1 comment June 9th, 2008

Barack Obama speaks to his Headquarters Staff and Volunteers

Yesterday Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, spoke with his campaign staff and volunteers in the campaign’s headquarters in Chicago. He had couple of funny moments, but he was mostly encouraging them to keep up the good work and that they are doing something very important. Only five months to the November election day and he wanted to inspire them to go on.

Add comment June 9th, 2008