Bush voters ignorant?
Some people get upset when you hint that people who voted for Bush aren't smart. That's not necessarily the case. If someone has all the facts and they think Bush is the man for the job, that's fine. But first, you should know the facts.

This is from Bob Herbert of the New York Times.

"The so-called values issue, at least as it's being popularly tossed around, is overrated. Last week's election was extremely close and a modest shift in any number of factors might have changed the outcome. If the weather had been better in Ohio. ...If the wait to get into the voting booth hadn't been so ungodly long in certain Democratic precincts. ... Or maybe if those younger voters had actually voted. ...

I think a case could be made that ignorance played at least as big a role in the election's outcome as values. A recent survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that nearly 70 percent of President Bush's supporters believe the U.S. has come up with "clear evidence" that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda. A third of the president's supporters believe weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. And more than a third believe that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion.

This is scary. How do you make a rational political pitch to people who have put that part of their brain on hold? No wonder Bush won.

The survey, and an accompanying report, showed that there's a fair amount of cluelessness in the ranks of the values crowd. The report said, "It is clear that supporters of the president are more likely to have misperceptions than those who oppose him."

I haven't heard any of the postelection commentators talk about ignorance and its effect on the outcome. It's all values, all the time. Traumatized Democrats are wringing their hands and trying to figure out how to appeal to voters who have arrogantly claimed the moral high ground and can't stop babbling about their self-proclaimed superiority. Potential candidates are boning up on new prayers and purchasing time-shares in front-row-center pews."

Bush voters ignorant?
Some people get upset when you hint that people who voted for Bush aren't smart. That's not necessarily the case. If someone has all the facts and they think Bush is the man for the job, that's fine. But first, you should know the facts.

This is from Bob Herbert of the New York Times.

"The so-called values issue, at least as it's being popularly tossed around, is overrated. Last week's election was extremely close and a modest shift in any number of factors might have changed the outcome. If the weather had been better in Ohio. ...If the wait to get into the voting booth hadn't been so ungodly long in certain Democratic precincts. ... Or maybe if those younger voters had actually voted. ...

I think a case could be made that ignorance played at least as big a role in the election's outcome as values. A recent survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that nearly 70 percent of President Bush's supporters believe the U.S. has come up with "clear evidence" that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda. A third of the president's supporters believe weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. And more than a third believe that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion.

This is scary. How do you make a rational political pitch to people who have put that part of their brain on hold? No wonder Bush won.

The survey, and an accompanying report, showed that there's a fair amount of cluelessness in the ranks of the values crowd. The report said, "It is clear that supporters of the president are more likely to have misperceptions than those who oppose him."

I haven't heard any of the postelection commentators talk about ignorance and its effect on the outcome. It's all values, all the time. Traumatized Democrats are wringing their hands and trying to figure out how to appeal to voters who have arrogantly claimed the moral high ground and can't stop babbling about their self-proclaimed superiority. Potential candidates are boning up on new prayers and purchasing time-shares in front-row-center pews."

Roundup
I thought they hated gays?

Word is that Ken Mehlman, Bush's campaign manager, may be in line to take over the RNC from Ed Gillespie. Since Mehlman was in charge of the President's reelection, he has to bear some of the responsibility for the most homophobic presidential campaign in history. And by the way, most of the state referenda that were on the ballot weren't about gay marriage. They were simply about gay couples having the same rights as eveyone else in regards to visitation of a sick loved one or leaving property to one's partner. Damn, sure glad those got shot down.

The rumor is that Mehlman, who executed this gay-hating strategy that succeeded in boosting turnout, is himself gay. He actually refuses to answer the question. Now, how many straight guys do you know who won't say what their sexuality is? I've seen Mehlman on a number of TV shows. No wonder he looks so miserable. Most self-haters do.


Torturers 'R Us

Yes, Ashcroft is hideous and I'm glad he's gone. But Alberto Gonzalez, the author of the memo that said it's OK for the US government to detain anyone it chooses without notification or access to a lawyer? The author of the US policy that the Geneva Conventions don't apply to our country? This is our new Attorney General? Please, can we inject some sanity soon into our national government?


Tanks in the street of LA

It was awesome to see a pair of tanks in the street of LA during a small protest against the Bush Administration. Holy Tianaman Square! The military actually said later that the tanks were lost, happened upon the demonstration, and asked for directions. I am not lying. That is what they said.


Peter Jennings is an ass

A couple nights ago, Peter Jennings concluded his nightly newscast with a smirky condescending report about the crazies who were claiming the election might be rigged. His tone was unbelievable. I'm sorry, but the election machines are owned by a hardcore Bush supporter who once vowed to deliver Ohio for the President. Just imagine if George Soros owned the electronic voting machines with no paper trail. And then imagine if the exit polls in Florida showed Bush winning but the votes in the untraceable electronic machines showed the opposite. Of course, Jennings made all the people questioning the election into conspiracy nuts.

Then I remembered the way he went after Wes Clark, demanding that Clark renounce Michael Moore when he said the President had been AWOL. Jennings relished acting like a hard ass when he was carrying the President's water. The other night he was just acting like an ass.

There may be no lazier collective group than the national media, especially rich white dudes like Jennings. There's just no other way to look at it.

Keith Olberman is still the only national broadcast journalist covering the voting irregularities. Big thumbs up to "Countdown" for doing what journalists are supposed to do.

Church people
On my local cable access channel, there are probably about 10 different preachers that host their own shows. The shows' styles range from a taping of an actual service to the preacher alone in a cable studio talking to the camera. Conversely, there is one show hosted by a group of atheists.

Here's my point: Non-believers don't, for the most part, get offended if someone is a believer. They figure, hey, to each their own. The opposite isn't true. Believers are usually bothered by someone who is a non-believer.

Translate that to the election: most non-believing voters wouldn't withold their vote for Bush simply because of his overtly religious rhetoric. The flip side isn't true: most believers think of Kerry as less religious than Bush and aren't afraid to base their vote that way.

Also, spare me the "morals" BS in regards to the election. Just suppose 70,000 votes had gone the other way in Ohio. Would that mean voters had given the thumbs-up to the heathen agenda? The media, especially the big corporate media, loves following a spoon fed storyline. In this case, it's the Rove spin that the administration that has killed 100,000 innocents in Iraq and 1,200 American soldiers in pursuit of a wrongheaded agenda is moral. Yes, this the same "moral" administration that won largely because it was able to turn out voters against gays and executed a voter suppression effort against poor and minority voters.

Excuse me if I don't get too excited about their morals.

The numbers don't add up
As always, the media can't or won't cover real news. Word is that the major networks and newspapers withheld stories the week before the election on Bush's bulge during the debate, the forged Niger documents, and a scathing look at Saudi Arabia because they didn't want to prejudice the election against the President.

Looks like the CBS fake documents scandal, which probably had its roots with Rove or one of his surrogates, worked.

Think about some of the big stories during the campaign: the Swift Boat vets, Bush's AWOL status, Teresa Heinz Kerry telling a reporter to buzz off, the Cheney's lesbian daughter. Man, I can hardly think of a collection of stories that affect my life more than those.

And now, after the election, no one in the mainstream media will examine if the election was conducted fairly. It would upset their corporate masters and they might actually have to do some work. Copy and post these links for exit poll information and Dem. vs. Repub. registration in certain areas. The information is scary.

http://www.rubberbug.com/temp/Florida2004chart.htm

http://img103.exs.cx/img103/4526/exit_poll.gif

Jethro vs. Fraser
If you're reading this, you probably don't like country music. Not real country music like Johnny Cash or George Jones, but today's country like Brooks & Dunn or Toby Keith. You probably don't like NASCAR either. And you think those Jeff Foxworthy comedy specials are corny.

And you probably didn't vote for Bush either.

Well, guess what? There are millions of people who love those things. And they voted on Tuesday too.

One of the handicaps Kerry faced was his long windedness, his tendency to use 20 words where one would have done. Also, oddly, the indeptitude of the Bush team made it harder to craft a simple message why he shouldn't have been re-elected. There are so many egregious examples that it's hard to sum up.

How many times have you been arguing with a conservative and you knew what you wanted to say but it came out like this, "But he led us into an unjust war and 1,000 American troops died and 100,000 civilians, and the Patriot Act is taking away our rights, and Cheney's secret energy task force meetings, and Bush was AWOL, and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are nuts and Lynne Cheney wrote a book about lesbianism on the prairie and those guys had all those deferments..."

Not pretty right? Conservatives just say, "Kerry is a liberal who wants gays to marry and won't protect our country from terrorists."

It's nice to be concise. The slogan for Coke isn't "The excellent soft drink that is really tasty with bubbles that sometimes go up your nose and tickle..." You get the point.

To liberals, Bush was like Jethro Bodine, running around barefoot with a piece of hay in his mouth. To conservatives, Kerry was like Fraser Crane, long-winded, self important, and pompous.

Guess what? Jethro won.

Lots of questions
I'm listening to Kerry's concession speech. He's relaying his conversation with the President and how they agreed that the country needed to be healed. I wish he had told Bush to screw. The divisions in this country have been caused by this hideous Administration. Arrogance, needless war, disregard for the Constitution, and fiscal irresponsibility are the hallmarks of the Bush team.

I'm left with a lot of questions:

* Can a Democrat from the East Coast ever get elected again as President? In the last 40 years, the only Dems elected president have been LBJ, Carter, and Clinton. Are we nearing some sort of litmus test where East Coast Dems should be eliminated from consideration for President? I'm thinking so and that goes for Hillary too. Who will they put forward next time? Hopefully, someone with a drawl.

* How dumb can people get? Recent surveys indicate that almost 3/4 of Bush supporters think Saddam was behind 9/11 and that we had discovered WMDs. These people are the definition of gleefully ignorant. They like being lied to. Their children and grandchildren will thank them when there's no Social Security or Medicare. And the God of so many of these avowed Christians will hold them to account for supporting a man who has killed more than 100,000 innocent civilians in Iraq.

* Can the Democratic party come back? Maybe, if people stay organized or motivated. After Goldwater got pummelled in the sixties, the conservative dug in their heels until they cam back to power. It took decades but they did it. Left leaning types need to do the same.

* How crazy will the next four years be? Get ready for Bush Unchained. Hell, Bush might even start drinking publicly and snorting lines of cocaine off the Constitution. Get ready for more dead soldiers and civilians, more debt, fewer jobs and civil rights, and more arrogance. Get ready for Colin Powell to resign, thus taking the breaks off the wagon as it rolls down the hill. Party!

Something wicked this way comes...
I'm going to bed. The networks are edging towards calling it for Bush. There's something really weird going on. Go back to when Saxby Chambliss beat Max Cleland in Georgia, despite exit polls that showed the opposite. Of course, there was electronic voting there.

The sad thing is, we'll never know. Tens of millions of people vote and are left with nothing but questions. And we're stuck with four more years of incompetence, war, and secrecy.

I'm assuming there are going to be multiple legal challenges, but who knows if they'll go anywhere? If they're going to fight this, the Dems better have a legal and pr strategy they can unleash tomorrow morning.

Just past midnight
Looks to me that whoever wins Ohio wins the whole enchilada. And of course, Ohio is the place where the Republicans were screwing with people's right to vote.

What do they know?
At this point, Bush is leading Kerry 193-112 in electoral votes. Something weird has been happening all night. Many of the pundits -- including those on Fox News -- seem to think Kerry is in a good position. Bill Kristol just said he'd rather be in Kerry's shoes than Bush's. I'm wondering what he knows that we don't.

I think Bush is trying to give off the air of inevitability. Seems the exit polls were way off. You have to wonder about the electronic voting. None of us, sitting our homes, know what is really happening, but I feel like something screwy is going on. I hear many of the Democratic counties in Florida haven't been counted yet and might not be until Thursday. Also, something weird is going on in Ohio.

I guess I was way off on my 9 o'clock prediction.