Ridge Resigns Homeland Post

This makes what, 7? 8? resignations (AP: Ridge Resigns Homeland Post). Wouldn't it be great if Bush, dizzy with all the resignations, high on crank, gets confused and resigns as well? Yeah!

{2009 Update, great clown Ridge pic from here.}

Biur Biur Biur

It turns out that the "Biur Chametz" dude (dudette?) is a friend of mine. He/She links to my post, and comments on it, here. Our conversation will soon be featured on the Fox telecast of "When Blogs Collide!"

More Support for the Psak

Turns out that I was not the only one dealing with this halakhic issue. Some blogger wrote about it and you can see his discussion here. DO NOT BE FOOLED - his blog "Biur Chametz" looks exactly like mine. Rackenfracken templates, now I have to change the colors!

The Real Cheese

For those who are skeptical about the dollar value for the hello kitty grilled cheese, see this story in Slate about the $28000 original. Note, I made a cheese sandwich this morning (and am in the process of eating it) and, hey, it looks like a cloud.

Hello Kitty Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Bid quickly - especially if you were outbid on the Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich, the Hello Kitty Sandwich is still available:

eBay item 5536791340 (Ends Nov-25-04 14:19:11 PST) - A Cute Miracle! Hello Kitty Grilled Cheese Sandwich!

Psak Reaction

I wrote that two weeks ago I ruled that the shul wouldn't say tachanun in reaction to the death of Arafat. While most of the congregation applauded the loss of tachanun, if not the loss of our enemy, there was some opposition. One member asked me for the sources of the halakha and I have spent the time since shoring up the halakhic support for the psak.

First of all, the Shulchan Arukh is very clear in Orech Chaim 575:11-13 that when we fast for rain, and the rain falls, we can say Hallel. Siman 576 then expands the need to fast to all difficult situations - including a feared enemy.

In any case, every shul Rav I've spoken to agrees that we have the power to suspend tachanun for a communal simcha, but that wasn't enough for the textually minded. Two poskim - one black, one white - ruled on the matter. Rav Nachum Rabinovich, the Rosh Yeshiva of Ma'ale Adumim, agreed with my decision (said that I did the right thing) and said that since tachanun was a minhag, I as Maara d'Atra could make that decision.

Rav Ephraim Greenblatt (the famed Rivevot Ephraim, whom I know from Memphis) was less enthusiastic about my ruling but said that I had halakhic grounding, specifically the Chaya Adam, klal 155, siman 41.

Rav Greenblatt pointed out that people associate omitting tachanun with the death of a tzadik and thus my psak was difficult. I explained that the omission of tachanun is only with the yahrzeit of a tzadik - the death of a tzadik (according to the Shulchan Arukh) requires everyone who hears to tear kriah! However, the death of an enemy requires rejoicing and the yahrzeit is forgotten (because of the yimach-shemo stuff)

Since then, it was pointed out to me that there were those in Israel who ruled the same as I: see this story from (ugh) Arutz-7.

It's gratifying to know that my halakhic-intuition was on the mark.

Elvis Has Arrived

A successful low-ball purchasing spree from Digitaleyes yielded [dramatic music] Bubba Ho-Tep! You remember, the Elvis vs. Mummy movie with Bruce Campbell. Yeah, that one.

Thank you... thank you very much.

And this was a Blue State

According to this New York Times story (5 Killed in Hunting Dispute in Wisconsin):

BIRCHWOOD, Wis. (AP) -- As several deer hunters made their way through the woods of northern Wisconsin, they were startled to come upon a stranger in their tree stand. .... Asked to leave, the trespasser, wearing blaze-orange and carrying a semiautomatic assault rifle, opened fire on the hunters and didn't stop until his 20-round clip was empty, leaving five people dead and three wounded, authorities said.

Makes you feel glad the assault weapon ban was led to die in Congress. Or else these men would have been killed by a crazed deer!

{2009 Update: link fixed to this CBS story. And pic of crazy gun from here.}

What If: If Kerry Had Won

Then maybe SpaghettiOs would still be made by Franco-American!

Here We Go With Stage Two

If I ever run for public office, I believe my platform will begin with a public condemnation of PETA. The "animal rights" organization is filled with pernicious wrong-headed views (that would allow me to bash the Left). The newest stage of their lunacy: Fish Rights.

Check it out.

Hatzoloh Should Recruit Him

According to this AP story, David Lee Roth of Van Halen fame is becoming an EMT in New York City.

He's Jewish, so I think Hatzoloh should give him a call. How cool is that?

Political Discourse: Texas Style

Put up your dukes.

Getting Messy

The world is getting messy quick. Colin Powell resigned from Sec. of State today and considering who they have to replace Ashcroft, I expect Zell Miller to be the replacement. Goss, the new CIA chief is leading a "shakeup" (to use the Times term), Condeleeza Rice may be the new State (which means a new Nat Sec Director) and ODB died. A full week.

The CIA story is the most important in my eyes. This is simultaneous with a shakeup in the FBI and the new department of concentrated Intelligence Agencies (or whatever) being created. This means (a) our intelligence agencies are being gutted and will spend more time keeping their bureaucracies alive than keeping us alive, (b) in a battle between the FBI or CIA and the President, back the FBI/CIA.

I'll explain. As soon as I admitted that, yes, Goofy was elected in '04, I said to whatever Republican wandered into my path, that they could have done this the easy way - by having Bush go down gracefully - but now we gotta go the impeachment route.

Unless Clinton, who basically did nothing, Bush and his Band of Happy Elves have done so many prosecutable actions that only their tight control of information and curtain of radiating fear keeps them in power.

Bush is Nixon. Nixon was finally caught. Who did it? Yup, Woodward & Bernstein.

Actually, they didn't. They were just young and ambitious enough to be witting pawns of two very powerful agencies. The first was the man "Deep Throat" (whose identity we still don't know) but who was leaking all the damning info to Woodward.

The second, and most important agency was the FBI. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was the most powerful man in America - he had secret info and surveillance on hundreds of politicians and he knew all the skeletons. He died on May 2, 1972. His successor, L. Patrick Gray was cut from very different cloth (e.g. Gray appointed the first women as Special Agents, see the FBI website).

Gray and the new FBI leadership did not play Hoover's games and they went hard and heavy after the Watergate break-in. The key elements to the Woodstein stories were the grand-jury investigations opened by the FBI.

Put simply, the FBI put the President out of business. And I pray to God that they do it again.

Thunder & Lightning

My thunder & lightning theory of babies crying:

Just as you wait after seeing lighting, counting the seconds before the thunder, to see how far away the storm is. Well, that works with babies too - when you hear the first little "weh" you wait for a few seconds, each second will tell you if it's a cry of wet or tired or aliens from planet zoombah.

Kill Sears

This article in Slate (Jeers and Cheers for Sears ) says that some real estate tycoon may be buying Sears so he can raze the stores and sell/rent the real estate. Whatever. I just applaud anyone's effort to destroy Sears. They were utterly horrible to me when I moved in and I hope they go under fast and painfully. I told them that I was going to tell everyone I knew how horrible they were and they didn't care in the least.

In sum: don't ever ever ever shop in Sears if you can avoid it.

Another good source about the Monster

Some more good pieces about the 'Monster':

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: Arafat Terrorism

I Apologize

Seriously, I need to apologize. My brother asked me if I should be so happy that Ashcroft was resigning because 'maybe they'll find someone worse.' I said, well sometimes the Devil You Know is already bad enough.

I was wrong. The new AG candidate, Alberto R. Gonzales, is another one of the GOP tokens but this time, with his own baggage. According to many reports (This from washingtonpost.com), Gonzales may be responsible for the "legal" decisions that threw away the Geneva conventions and led to the horrors of Abu Ghraib.

My brother was right, I was wrong, I apologize. In the future, when trying to predict the actions of the President, always choose the most despicable path.

Faces of the Fallen

For a long time, I was looking for a way to recognize all the soldiers who were dying in our two wars - the same way that I acknowledge the fallen in Israel's wars. The government was hiding the information for a long time and so I stopped looking. Just today, I found that the names have already been released.

This is one of the resources, from the Washington Post: Faces of the Fallen

Columbia Journalism Review's Too Late

When I did my senior thesis (almost 10 years ago, egads!) I used the CJR as a necessary balance to the excesses of journalism back in the day. The freakshow that exists now was barely imagined in 1994 and CJR (and other watchdogs) have not kept up.

In this post-mortem of the 2004 political coverage CJR tries to make up for the collective lack of talent and restraint of the whole industry.

{2009 Update: broken link because CJR decided to close it's domain name; cheap bastiches.}

More Arafat im"sh Stories

Some good pieces about the 'Monster'

• From the Boston Globe: Arafat the Monster
• From Honest Reporting: The legacy of Arafat (a shockwave movie)

Arafat is Dead

In my power as Ma'ara D'Atra I declared that we would not say Tachanun today. No, it wasn't just because it's Thursday; after weighing the proper responses to the death of Arafat, no tachanun was a start. This is what I said:

We're told in Pirkei Avot, 4:24:

Shmuel HaKatan said: "When your enemy falls, do not rejoice, and when he stumbles let your heart not be glad, lest God see, and regard it with displeasure, and divert His wrath from him [to you]."

Our response is tempered; despite our joy we cannot respond with Hallel. But we recognize that with the death of Arafat, God has shown us mercy and we acknowledge that by not saying Tachanun.

Arafat was the greatest enemy of the Jews since Hitler.

He is called "the father of modern terrorism" - he gave the world suicide bombers, children as targets, the car-bomb. He also created the falsehood of a "Palestinian" - there is no such thing, no such person, no such state, and Arafat's evil made that falsehood live [one of the only things he let live]

The IDF claimed that for Arafat to die from natural causes outside Israel was the best possible scenario. And for that we're grateful as well.

In response, we will say three chapters of Tehillim: 121, for the ongoing war; 124 - which is about God saving us from enemies, and 125 - where we acknowledge that we must respond to God's mercy with mitzvot. We must increase our tzedaka and other good works today.

[After the tehillim, I had to say a quick comment and "Rebbi Hananya ben Akashya" so I said:]

There's a popular joke about Hitler and now Arafat that whatever day he died would be declared a Jewish holiday. It didn't happen - because we don't celebrate the death of enemies; we ask God to "yimach shemo" - to blot their names out from the world. No day to commemorate the obliterated names.

P.S. Psalms 124 & 125

A Song of Ascents; of David. 'If it had not been God who was for us', let Israel now say; 'If it had not been God who was for us, when men rose up against us, Then they had swallowed us up alive, when their wrath was kindled against us; Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul; Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.' Blessed be God, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth. Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we are escaped. Our help is in the name of God, who made heaven and earth.

A Song of Ascents. They that trust in God are as mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abideth for ever. As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so God is round about His people, from this time forth and for ever. For the rod of wickedness shall not rest upon the lot of the righteous; that the righteous put not forth their hands unto iniquity. Do good, O God, unto the good, and to them that are upright in their hearts. But as for such as turn aside unto their crooked ways, God will lead them away with the workers of iniquity. Peace be upon Israel.

Canada's View of America

Evidently, Canada has been receiving quite a number of investigative requests since Bush's overwhelming crushing stunning majority victory. The Toronto Star suggests that this be the new map of North America.

AWRIGHT!! Ashcroft is Gone

Finally, a silver lining! Ashcroft is leaving the government! (Ashcroft, Evans Resign from Bush Cabinet)

Oh my! He was the absolute worst of the gang of thugs. Worse than the lying thief Cheney; than the incompetent torturer Rumsfeld. True, Ashcroft should be wearing handcuffs, but sometimes you gotta celebrate the small wonders.

Kerry is what now?

According to the AP wire, Kerry hints White House run in his future. He's hinting that he wants to run in 2008.

I must admire the type of abject idiocy that makes someone think he can prevail in what others would think are hopeless circumstances. However, this ain't that. Didn't Kerry get the memo? He was running against the most hated man since Richard Nixon and HE STILL COULDN'T WIN! It wasn't because there weren't enough Democrats, or "swing voters" or "get out the voters" - it's because he was so profoundly unappealing as a person and 'leader' that more Americans went with the inbred frat-boy thug.

In fact, my rage over Kerry has redoubled with this rumor. How dare he?!?

{2009 Update: French Kerry pic nabbed from a lost part of the interwebs and recreated on my computer - enjoy you image-googlers.}

Shiva Over

Depending on how you count, Shiva for the world ends today. The election was on Tuesday, but the concession was on Wednesday... hard to tell when I can get off the floor.

For those who wish to retain some sanity and clarity in the past week's horse-sheiss storm, especially as it relates to the "Republican Mandate" - see these proportional population electoral maps.

Just like Greenland, the red states of our vast Midwest & south and rendered as mere bulges of pitiful red-neck splotches.

Still No Blogger

Blogger still isn't allowing me on - or putting up my recent posts. I'm sitting here exhausted and furious. I'm especially angry at Kerry for not coming himself with a public statement of confidence. All I see from the online NYTimes and WPost is Andrew Card and a big banner headline "Bush Confident of Victory." Kerry needs to come out strong, and he's not and I want an explanation.

Note, the "confidence" thing is all part of the Rove playbook. By playing the press into declaring him the victor, all attempts to actually count the votes are called "recounts" instead of, uh, ya know, "counts."

I've heard and read some frum Jews saying that this is God giving another victory to George W. I want to remind ya'll that this is a vote, not a lottery, and so our fate is being sealed by human action - but even then, God's invisible Hand could very well be giving Bush victory but as a punishment. That's how it feels to me.

Four More Years of Abu Ghraib

Just in case the recent pronouncements of the domestic agenda and the 'political capital' of a razor thin victory have confused you, the reports are coming in of systemic abuses in Guantanamo prison (AP: Guantanamo Abuses Reported.)

This was one reason why Bush had to lose: so the abuse, which was ordered down from the highest levels of the Executive Branch, could have been exposed and the 'evildoers' brought to justice.

I won't say that anyone who supports Bush or voted for he and his mobsters is guilty of suppressing these crimes. As I said before, you Republicans have a chance to communicate to your Embarrassment in Chief that you want justice done. As non-base, I will be ignored (to say the least).

But if Abu Ghraib, and now Guantanamo, doesn't keep you up at night, then there's not much hope for you as a moral person.

Doubled Posts

It seems that the emailed posts I sent on Wednesday morning have taken two full days to actually be processed by blogger. If you see doubled posts, that's the reason. I will attempt to eliminate them as they arrive but we will be in Cornell this Shabbas and I'm not sure how accessible computers are in Cow Country.

Arafat in a Coma

Yup, so sez the AP. And it would be glorious poetic justice if he died on November 4th - 9 years to the day after his partner, Yizhak Rabin ob'm, died.

{2009 Update, Arafat-Fish pic from here.}

The New Republic: 51-48

"51-48," by the New Republic Editors
Post date: 11.04.04

This hurts. The convictions and the dreams of American liberalism have genuinely failed to carry the day; and so, for the sake of liberalism, but also for the sake of America, it is the hour for making discriminations among the varieties of despair.

There certainly are grounds for despair. In their first term, without a popular mandate, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney governed in a radically sectarian manner, in conformity with only the wishes of their hallowed base; and there is no reason to think that the popular mandate that they have now secured for a second term will provoke them to reconsider their virulence and their smallness and their indifference to the evidence of experience beyond their own. In the aftermath of this election, the president speaks about unifying the country, but he spoke that way in the aftermath of the last election, and he became the most spectacular disuniter of America in contemporary history. We must not expect the Bush administration to rise above its theology, its secrecy, its instrumental attitude toward the courts, its sympathy for the rich, its economicist approach to health care, its easy conscience about the exploitation of the environment, its belief in its own infallibility, its regular sensation of perfection. There is no sign that the Bush administration has any good idea about how to correct its course in Iraq or to put an end once and for all to Osama bin Laden; or that it regards anti-Americanism as a serious impediment to American values and American interests abroad. The Bush administration may now be expected to behave triumphally and (as the talking heads say) to move forward with its agenda. Hard times, brutish times, lie ahead.

But there is a kind of despair, a glamorous pessimism, that liberals must at all costs avoid. The cartography of the electoral college may show a continent of red with some blue lesions at the extremities; but the popular vote in the election of 2004 was 51 percent for Bush and 48 for Kerry, and those are not the numbers of a political or philosophical rout. Fifty-one to forty-eight: Those are the numbers, rather, of a conspicuously unclear and unthrilling Democratic candidate, whose advantage in money did not offset a disadvantage in authenticity. But the important point is that, all the healing pieties of the morning after notwithstanding, this is a country divided against itself about many matters of first principle. The diversity of worldviews upon which we pride ourselves is haunting us. In such a welter of fundamental differences, the work of argument and organization becomes even more necessary. American liberalism did not die on November 2. It merely lost an election.

There is honor, moreover, in a certain kind of loss. In our distracted and accelerated and gamed society, with its religion of winning, we sometimes forget this. But the many millions of Americans who believe that the tax code should be more fair; and that one of the ends of government is to bother itself about its neediest and least fortunate citizens; and that the morality of the market is not all the morality that a society requires; and that the Bible is not the basis of a democratic political order, or of our political order; and that robust stem-cell research, and science more generally, is a primary social good; and that gay marriage is a question of equality and not the beginning of the end of civilization; and that American troops must not be sent to war ignorantly or dogmatically, or without the means to win; and that the good reputation of the United States in the world is one of its most powerful historical instruments--the many millions of Americans who believe these things are not wrong. They are merely not a majority. But they are a very large minority.


This is not to say that the wounding outcome of this election should fill liberals with a sense of their own purity. Not everybody to the left of Bush is like everybody else to the left of Bush; and it would be catastrophic for the Democratic Party to wallow now in the sort of Michael Moore leftishness that made many Americans worry whether John Kerry was sufficiently obsessed with American security, and sufficiently excited about American power, to protect them at home and to promote their purposes abroad. (On the question of American power, the American people are right and Ted Kennedy is wrong.) An internecine quarrel must now begin. But it cannot begin where there is only alienation, and the self-fulfilling confusion of the Bush administration with the United States of America. This country is bigger than its every president. This Constitution is not easy to destroy. This is not the apocalypse. But it is the most formidable challenge to American liberalism in our time.

{2009 Update, all the Epic Fail pictures from all over the interwebs}

Why the election results are devastating

It's not because "my man lost" - as you know, I did not like Kerry and thought the Democratic Party base that chose him in the primaries were dead wrong. It's because I believe - and have mountains of fact to back me up - that Bush and his cronies have been deceiving the public and the world in the worst way. And I felt that after the election of Kerry the truth would finally come out; that the frightened and muted Press would finally open their mouths and report what they already know and have been hiding.

And then a sizable majority of America would see that Bush was not what he claimed to be. That this government is *not* what America wants.

I still believe that. I believe America was robbed. And maybe now the Press will realize that they have been complicit in this agony and will start doing their jobs.

Terror Alert!

Hey, according to my Sesame Street Alert, there's no longer an Orange Alert in NY and DC!

And, sure enough, that's what the Homeland Security Page says. When was the level reduced? After Kerry's concession or after Bush's victory speech?

Worth Seeing

From Michelle Cottle in The New Republic online:

"Early indications are that this election laid to waste a couple of fundamental pieces of the conventional wisdom that we all heard in the closing days of the race: one, that high voter turnout benefits Democrats; and two, that undecided voters tend to break in favor of the non-incumbent. Figuring out how these two tidbits turned out to be so wrong will give the hard-core electoral handicappers something to obsess about for the next several weeks.

Meanwhile, the rest of us might want to turn our attentions to a more basic question: What the hell happened with the exit polls? I understand that these samplings are always less-than-spot-on. But come on, people, these babies were so wrong last night that Bush backers looked ready to kill themselves--and each other. (And as a result, I have more than a few dear friends, not to mention a husband, now finding it very hard to cope with their dashed hopes.)"

To be honest, the numbers are waaaay off. And, as my brother points out, www.electoral-vote.com says

"One thing that is very strange is how much the exit polls differed from the final results, especially in Ohio. Remember that Ohio uses Diebold voting machines in many areas. These machines have no paper trail. Early in the campaign, Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell, a GOP fundraiser, promised to deliver Ohio to Bush. He later regretted having said that."

Kerry conceded for *what* reason?

Finally Back Up

We needed to run out and do some imperative errands so I missed all the speeches. I've been feeling like the world has crashed down and I can see only these conclusions:

1. The only silver lining is that if the vote is determined to be accurate then Bush has the majority of the popular vote - making his brand of feckless evil more palatable knowing that the American people actually asked for it. What made the past four years unbearable was knowing that he had ripped us of in 2000. Now we truly get what we deserve

2. Kerry has proven himself to be a coward and a loser. Gore had an excuse to give up - because who knew the extent of the thievery and lies of his opponents. Kerry knew that and he still gave up the ghost.

3. I hope Edwards will still take up the fight - maybe he'll spearhead the legal effort to ensure every vote has been counted (even in the precincts of Florida and Ohio where the computer polls left no paper trail)

4. Now that we're facing 4 years of W, I don't see McCain being possible in 2008. The GOP will make it a rule that whomever runs for president must use Rove - and McCain seems to have too much integrity to do that. Giuliani doesn't so maybe we'll see him, but I think with W as strong as he's been made, we'll see Jeb in '08.

5. I'm very afraid that the democrats will learn the wrong lesson and shift to the left (and thus Hillary in '08). The lesson was to get a Southern democrat with charm and a popular message - i.e. Edwards.

More as soon as I catch my breath and stop hyperventilating from fear.

The Posts From This Morning

Blogger was worthless; it went down so thoroughly this morning (doubtless from the overload of amateur pundits like yours truly) that all my emailed posts were eaten. Here's the extent of this morning's turmoil:

Wednesday, November 03, 2004 8:44 AM
Blogger Overtaxed
Blogger is overtaxed so I post from the site so I'm doing this by email

Wednesday, November 03, 2004 8:49 AM
Devil's Due
I will give the devil, Karl Rove, his due. He managed to beat the 50% incumbent rule. My predictions were based on that; that undecideds break against the incumbent but by hook or by crook (a phrase which takes on an ominous meaning in Rove's context) he managed it. Even if Kerry is declared the winner in Ohio - and thus POTUS 44 - Rove's career is not over. He managed to pull a miracle, or whatever the diabolical equivalent of miracle is called.

This morning after services I gave a current state of the Electoral College (Bush 254, Kerry 252) and said that you can look at the returns as an optimist or pessimist. A pessimist says that nobody won while the optimist says both people won - so everyone is happy! I did encourage everyone to take the next few days as a vacation from actually having a president since nobody seems to like either one of these guys.

Naturally, I expect Kerry to be successful in Ohio - because the numbers of voters who were cheated came from the Democratic areas. Don't be fooled by the GOP Lying Machine - the fraud will be uncovered.

And if they manage to steal this one too, then this will be a very dark time.

Wednesday, November 03, 2004 9:53 AM
Still No Blogger
Blogger still isn't allowing me on - or putting up my recent posts. I'm sitting here exhausted and furious. I'm especially angry at Kerry for not coming himself with a public statement of confidence. All I see from the online NYTimes and WPost is Andrew Card and a big banner headline "Bush Confident of Victory." Kerry needs to come out strong, and he's not and I want an explanation.

Note, the "confidence" thing is all part of the Rove playbook. By playing the press into declaring him the victor, all attempts to actually count the votes are called "recounts" instead of, uh, ya know, "counts."

I've heard and read some frum Jews saying that this is God giving another victory to George W. I want to remind ya'll that this is a vote, not a lottery, and so our fate is being sealed by human action - but even then, God's invisible Hand could very well be giving Bush victory but as a punishment. That's how it feels to me.

Wednesday, November 03, 2004 12:03 PM
Disaster
Kerry conceded.

I don't know what happened; all the polls were off-base, all the information I had was wrong; I guess my fundamental optimism that people would make the right choice was foolhardy. I feel as if a great worldwide tragedy has occurred. It's like 9/11 - but instead of seeing the mass murder, I have the nightmares of all that this criminal government can perpetrate.

The only good thing about Kerry was his competitive spirit, that he would fight and fight and fight and he just *poof* gave up. I am sick, scared, and devastated. God help us.

Wednesday, November 03, 2004 12:38 PM
Edwards
According to the AP, Edwards was fighting Kerry to stay alive... to put off concession until the votes were counted. Again and again, it's so clear, Edwards should have been the candidate. My frustration valves have burst, I'm too exhausted to even fight, please let me wake up and let this be a long long nightmare.

Sleep, blessed Sleep

I've got to go to sleep. I'm going to have nightmares; I feel sick to my stomach. This morning, I led the shul in 3 chapters of Tehillim - 121, 120, & 122 - because I felt that we need God's protection and help. Oh, please, let this turn out for the best.

Still Tracking

I'm cycling through the Mediamatters reporting & CNN's unexpectedly excellent coverage (at least online). I'm putting my hope in the ability for the votes to be counted and the bloody lawsuits to contest the GOP malfeasance. As the idiot Rather says, "courage."

Eating Posts

The portable computer was way to unreliable; it ate too many posts. I've moved back upstairs to read the returns. Even though I decided to watch the returns on NBC, I was flipping channels constantly to get as much real info I could. I got stuck on CBS - who did have the best coverage - despite my hatred of Dan Rather. The doofus was spouting these goofy sayings all night; but CBS also had the best logo (little animated elephants and donkeys).

Personally, despite the current returns, I don't believe the numbers from Florida are accurate. Considering the voter-intimidation all around the country, I don't think we've finished with this race yet. Ohio is still likely for Kerry and when he gets his 270, maybe the GOP thieves will stop fighting and let the real vote occur.

Caution

All the networks are claiming that they are being more cautious than in 2000 but that's bull-hooey (to paraphrase Rather). They're now calling states without taking into account (a) some people are still voting in those states (because of the GOP voter intimidation/suppression efforts) and (b) absentee ballots. Considering that Florida has 1 million absentees to count, how can it be called?

Router Trickle

We installed a router to pump e-waves downstairs to my wife's portable wireless computer... which has reduced the mighty torrent of internet into a weensy trickle. Blogging will be sporadic.

At 7 pm, I plan to start watching the returns, see you there!

Anticipation

It feels like the night before my bar-mitzvah (or my wedding) or even that night that we went to the hospital to await the little dude who'd be my firstborn. The anticipation of an extraordinary day. Every minute of tomorrow matters; the entire day is filled with importance. It's the closest thing to secular kedusha.

The stakes are enormous. The only election I can compare this to is England's or America's in 1940. Not because of the players (no FDRs or Churchills around) but because of the stakes. The world is in flames - set by Osama B. but fanned into an uncontrolled deathtrap by Georgie W. I had a late night meeting and I've been struggling to get these words down before I sleep to awake on one of the most important days of my life. But unlike those first three events which applied to me and my loved ones alone, tomorrow everyone on earth will feel the same way - that each life on earth hangs by a thread. And we all hold our breath.

Education Gap

The Democracy Corps has an analysis of their recent survey that brings forward some startling facts. What they call "The Tale of Two Gaps"

The gender gap between Democrats and Republicans is a known factor. But in 2004 - as opposed to 2000 - we now see a clear gap in education.

The key chart:
________________2000 Gore, Bush___________2004 Kerry, Bush

Male________________42____54________________46________49
Female______________54____43________________52________45

Non-College_________48____48________________48________50
College_____________47____49________________52________44

These numbers are frightening, especially for you college-educated Republicans. Basically, as I've said before, the only ones voting GOP tomorrow are those who are irretrievably partisan or utterly uninformed.

If for whatever reason, Bush manages to steal 2004 like he stole 2000, then those of you who are GOP loyalists have a responsibility to tell your grinning idiot man-child in Chief that he needs to clean house. I don't think we in the losing party will have a voice if Bush wins (and who knows when we will again!). Please, for the love of all that's good, tell him that he needs to fire Rumsfeld immediately, retire Ashcroft, put Cheney in the old ogre's home. Please.

And if Bush doesn't win, then I want to buy tickets to the many many trials. If Rumsfeld doesn't get arrested for Abu Ghraib, we're still in trouble.

Vote Predicting - Broken Post

I originally tried to post this on October 28th, but the Blogger messed me up. Honest.

If I try to predict the Oscars, why not the Election of the Century. I'll take another time to add to the hysteria of the critical nature of this election (maybe not, people already feel it). The heilige Electoral-Vote.com has been invaluable and you can use that data to make your own Sundae (Tuesdae?) at the New York Times site - click on "Presidential Calculator."

My prediction is based on the idea that any state which is polling at less than 50% (and that was for Oct 28, it's even easier to see now) for Bush is going to go to Kerry.

That means:

Bush: ID, MT, ND, SD, NE, KS, OK, TX, AZ, UT, AK (51), LA, IN, KY, TN, AL, GA, SC, NC (Bush 53), VA (Bush 51), WV (Bush 51), MS (Bush 51)

Kerry: MO (Bush has 49), ME, NH (B=47), NY, MA, CT, RI, VT, NH, NJ, DE, MD, DC, PA (B=46), OH (B=46), FL (B=47), MI, IL, MN, WI, IA, HI, WA, OR, CA, and NV (Bush is 50), CO (Bush 48), NM (Bush 49)

That means Bush 202, Kerry 336

And depending on how the get out the vote efforts work (and the GOP dirty tricks), the historical trend of incumbents losing 2-3 points on election night may mean that Bush could lose VA, WV, MS, and even NC making a plausible total of 163 to 375.

If my numbers don't match up to the media - who say incessantly that it's a tight race - it's because they are harlots who feign authenticity to sell their product: a horse race is more compelling than a rout.

If this is an honest election, Bush will be back home crying to mommy (and shredding every piece of paper he can find) before long.

{2009 Update: added the picture; and I'm stunned by the hubris of this}

Computer Trouble

I had no computer for a while, hence why no bloggy things despite the critical hour. I'll post soon.