KILL ALL AMERICANS

F had the smartest call tonight:

"We used to say 'we don't hate americans, we just hate their government'. We don't need to say this disclaimer aymore."

too close to call

I find it funny that MSNBC (and others) have called Ohio, perhaps fairlier than most TCTCs, but since CNN didn't call it (but called Nevada), and thus hasn't called the election, MSNBC were forced not to call Nevada, so as not to have to call the election while CNN is not calling the election, and appear to be jumping the gun. Even Fox didn't call it yet!

Anyway, I haven't seen anyone else on the left talking about this, but whether Kerry wins the EC or not, Bush won the popular vote by a decisive margin, with over 50% of the vote. In most real democracies, that would be called a legitimate victory. Even if the EC is tied with Bush in Ohio but Kerry everywhere else, the popular vote will legitimize Congress's vote-breaking in favour of Bush.

Of course we don't know and will never know how much fraud was committed using diebold machines. I think that to me is the most enraging point of this election. A simple paper ballot with a checkbox close to each candidate's name, and about 5 hours of counting by representatives of each part at each poll station: that's all it takes to run an election! And yet the richest country on the planet, the longest running uninterrupted democracy can't grasp this simple idea. I actually refuse to believe that this is plain ignorance; I think this is a willful attempt at making either fraud possible in the case of touchscreen, receipt-less voting, and/or turning people off voting, in the case of punching-machine and other confusing ballot procedures. But I really am angry at the receipt-less electronic machines more than anything else. While Jeb was the family's heir-apparent, he surely didn't ressent it when rigging Florida...

F blames it on fear of terrorism, which in turn she blames on deep-seated racist fears. I think she forgot homophobia as well, as pointed out by slanderous. Bonehead'04 wins the vote.

Tucker Carlson (!!) talked about how big defeats in the 60s forced the Republicans into writing about what went wrong for them, and eventually led to new ideas about what the Republican should be about, and their recapturing most of the presidency since then. (Looking at the NYtimes' past election data, it's quite stunning to see that recent Democratic presidents won small victories, but most Republican presidents in recent memory just slaughtered the Democrats.) Also reading recently about how the Democrats used to have a lock on the south due to their legacy as "the slavery party", whatever that means. I think that Democrats will have to start competing for the creationist church vote if they want to have another chance. How did Clinton do that?!

Oh yeah. It's not that Clinton did that. It's just that he was actually an interesting candidate. But Kerry's blandness doesn't excuse any single vote for Bush this time... No matter what the EC comes out to, this is a clear victory for Bush, and if Kerry wins, he will be the illigetimate president this time. While it would be restorative justice, it wouldn't really be fair in my book.