Riven by ethnic, religious, regional and tribal rivalries

For the surprising number of non-Californians who looked at my recommendations on our propositions, I’ve added the results to the link, which I’ll keep in the upper right for a week or so.


If no one minds, last night’s post will be my last misguided attempt to find a silver lining.


Man, if you thought Shrub was insufferably smug before....

The pre-election polls were all wrong, the exit polls were all wrong, and there’s no reason to think the post-election polls will be any better, which creates certain problems in figuring out why what happened happened. For example, did Rove’s strategy of putting anti-gay marriage initiatives (some of them redundant in effect, in states which already banned gay marriage, and thus put on the ballot purely for partisan political reasons) succeed in bringing significant numbers of gay-hating evangelicals to the polls who would otherwise not have bothered? We won’t know. Much of what you hear will be pure speculation; take it all with a grain of salt or just ignore it.

The BBC says that the president “will try to use his new mandate to unite a country still riven by ethnic, religious, regional and tribal rivalries.” OK, they said it about Karzai, whose election “victory” was also announced today. Obviously Bush won’t do a damn thing about America being riven by ethnic, religious, regional and tribal rivalries, except stoke them further. It’s actually too bad Ohio and Florida weren’t closer, because the Republican party ran such an openly racist voter-suppression campaign in both states that it needs to be talked about (like the gay-bashing tactic), and won’t be. Florida Republicans even showed up at polling stations to challenge people on the discredited felon purge list, which the state couldn’t use when it was discovered that it included no Hispanics, although I’m not sure how widespread this was.

The lack of closeness also means there won’t be the focus there should be on electronic voting machines, which means the prospect of a stolen or buggered election is that much more likely.

Arizona passed an initiative requiring public officials to turn in illegal immigrants who try to use public services, including the police and fire departments.

Another COW country defects: Hungary just announced it will pull its troops out of Iraq in March.

Good Doug Ireland analysis of Kerry’s crap candidacy.

“Kerry ran a tactical campaign, devoid of vision or explicable alternatives”

“History will record that John Kerry lost the election on the day he voted the Constitution-shredding blank check for Bush’s war on Iraq. He was hobbled throughout the campaign by this vote, which shackled him to a me-too posture that included endlessly repeated pledges to “stay the course” in Iraq and “win” the occupation. Kerry could not, therefore, develop and present a full-blown critique of Bush on Iraq, nor offer a genuine alternative to him on it. The non-existent Kerry “plan” (based on the hubris that he could con foreign allies into sending their troops to bleed and die for the U.S. crimes at Abu Ghraib) wasn’t bought by the voters. Bush won by making the link between Iraq and the war on terrorism--the Big Lie which Kerry could not effectively counter, because he’d bought into it at the beginning.”