We're Sorry, World

Sorry Everbody is a hoot! A website features a huge gallery of mostly young arty types with their graphic apologies to the rest of the world for the fact that their country has re-elected Bush. You can participate if you wish - all you need is a camera (or photo-enabled mobile phone) and maybe a sheet of paper and a pen.

MoveOn.org fights The Battle of Kenwood Hill

Another election day "human interest" story from City Pages. Or is it local colour? As you can probably tell from its name, "Kenwood Hill" (it's really just Kenwood, and it doesn't have hills) is the posh neighbourhood in Minneapolis. City Pages tells the story of how MoveOn.org fought the fight and won the prize in Minnesota.

Ten Reasons Not to Move to Canada

A motivational talk for progressives from Common Dreams.

City Pages: Election Day's Checkpoint Charlies

Election Day paranoia is encountered by City Pages G. R. Anderson, Jr. as the voter turnout in the state soared to 77% and a Republican Secretary of State is accused of partisan trickery in the run-up to the election.

Magnanimous Defeat - essay by JPB

I like it when John Perry Barlow of Barlowfriendz gets all elegaic like this. Magnanimous Defeat is, unsurprisingly, Barlow's musings on the election results and his reaction to them and where he thinks we should go from here. In case you don't know who JPB was before the Internet, he is mainly a lyricist, which is a type of poet in my view and there is a definite beat-poetry / cowboy-ballad esthetic in his prose. I particularly liked this part, which also struck a bit of a nerve for me:

I have a terrible admission to make. I've been so fanatically opposed to this administration that I have taken dark satisfaction in their failures, even though they were American failures as well. I welcomed growing indications that the situation in Iraq was deteriorating into a sump-hole of back-alley insurgency. Good economic news was bad economic news as far as I was concerned, and vice versa. I was tickled to death with Al Qaqaa and its terrorist-purloined WMDs, and not just because the name was so great. Surely all these bad tidings would eventually add up to an indictment that would convict Bush in the eyes of the American people and they would rouse themselves from Fox-hypnosis and 'possum sleep and vote for change.
But it didn't turn out that way. While I still believe that half of America is hallucinating on hot religion and bad TV, I can't say I have been any too sane, having been delivered into a condition where I took comfort in the successes of our enemies and frowned at news of economic recovery. Despite my own financial anxieties, and those of all around me, I have been so zealous that my own well-being was secondary in importance to the political damage bad times might do the Bush administration. Now that's hallucination. And I'm sorry.

O, Canada!

This priceless gem via Firebrand:

Ladies and gentlemen, Drop your borders Now that George W. Bush has been officially elected, single, sexy, American liberals - already a threatened species - will be desperate to escape.
These lonely, afraid (did we mention really hot?) progressives will need a safe haven.
You can help. Open your heart, and your home. Marry an American. Legions of Canadians have already pledged to sacrifice their singlehood to save our southern neighbours from four more years of cowboy conservatism.

The kids are alright!

I knew it! When they told me that young voters stayed home in droves on Tuesday, I said I didn't believe it. "I bet it's just the craven media distorting things again." And you know what? I was right.
In fact

despite long lines and registration snafus, voters under age 30 clocked the highest turnout percentage since 1972. The good news is that America's young people are more engaged in politics than at any time in two generations. Aging cynics have been quick to blame the kids for a host of political lapses, but the cynics have it wrong

according to the Boston Globe.

Don't mourn . . .organize

So, yesterday I stayed home from work, taking a day's vacation to chill out from the stress and to be able to watch the election returns as obsessively as only a Scorpio can without feeling guilty (intense loyalty, even to shitty jobs, being another possible Scorpio trait, or maybe that's my Taurus rising.) I didn't expect two things - I didn't expect Bush's win to be so decisive and I didn't expect to feel so sanguine about it. I guess it's a product of having lived through 1972 and 1984 and other similar disappontments. Or maybe it's just age and wisdom. But the relatively early finish to the agony gave me some time to peruse the blogs of the passionate Bush opponents, and there again there was no great surprise. Those whose opposition to Bush was puerile, febrile and ill-informed (and, yes, there are a few of those) had a response in the same vein - I'm leaving the country, going underground, getting really drunk. OK, I admit, in my younger days I had a similar reaction, for about an hour. Then common sense set in - in 1984 I had two kids and adult responsibilities. In 1972, I realised that I wasn't all that grounded anyway so better stay where I am and sort myself out.
On the other hand there were many in the left blogosphere, the ones I consider my real soul-mates, who reiterated in so many different ways that old refrain: Don't Mourn, Organize. I also had a few good e-mail exchanges with friends from Minnesota and elsewhere that went along the same lines.
Unity is another theme that is being played in the aftermath. I have a few observations on that. The left's big problem is and has always been the old circular-firing-squad metaphor. Those feverish, firecracker types I referred to earlier will put a high priority on finding someone to blame. So the losing side (that's us) will not reach out to the winners, and will have to struggle even to stay together with those whom they have infinitessimal stragegical differences with. Sad, but true. Bush, on the other hand, can blithely assume (boy, can he assume) unity in his camp. He speaks, like a good Christian, of building common cause with those Americans who voted against him, and I'm sure he thinks this is the epitome of healing. But wait a minute, can anyone who is so blindly, chauvinistically nationalist be a good Christian? What about healing the gaping wounds in Europe, the middle East and the rest of the world? Speaking of the rest of the world, how about some of that big-hearted love for the planet?
Let's not leave healing and unity up to the neo-cons and the fundies, because their version of unity is oddly exclusive. As for me, I will mourn and organize simultaneously.

If the rest of the world could vote

John Kerry would win by a landslide. This is the news from the worldwide (somewhat controlled) straw poll for US president, Theworldvotes.org. Billed as the first global experiment in e-democracy, the site allows anyone in the world (US citizens included) to register electronically in advance of the election, then receive an electronic ballot and vote in advance of November 2. Intermediate surveys in the run-up period have been published showing preferences amongst the site's registered voters. The faq page promises that "a global Electoral Commission will be established to validate the election process and results. It consists of the most experienced managers of national elections" but I don't see any follow-up on that, and today is their election day. Unsurprisingly, given the tense, partisan atmosphere in the US, cyber-attacks have been threatened against the site and the coalition it forms part of, The World Speaks, for "trying to affront the sovereignty of the United States".

What I struggle to say is articulately stated

What I struggle to say is articulately stated by John Pilger. What will be the aftermath of this surreal election? I can see one of two scenarios, and both are equally violent, though one is far preferable. They actually do not depend at all on who wins the election, but on the state of consciousness of the American electorate. The metaphor of sleeping giant is often used about America, but it's usually used mistakenly. Pilger gets it right when he nails our previous waking up episodes as the civil rights campaign and the ultimate revulsion against our actions in Vietnam. The question is - will there be such a waking from the slumber on the 3rd of November? If Bush is re-elected and such a reaction does occur, it will be inevitably violent, because of the instant repression of the triumphant administration. If Kerry is elected and the anti-war crowd try to hold his feet to the fire, and it turns out that his wimpy pronouncements about the war are what he really believes and not just what he said to get elected, well, that could go almost any way.
The less preferable outcome, and the one I fervently hope is not inevitable, is that whether it is Bush or Kerry who is elected, it means that the majority, slight though they may be, actually support this imperial project that both candidates tout, only pausing to criticise each other's competence as a warlord-emperor. And then as Pilger says, we will see the American war on Terra unleashed.

Hollow Victory

Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos and Our Congress, writing in the Guardian on 20 October, has a rundown of some of the low points of voter registration fraud, obviously a centrepiece of the US elections of 2004.

Jeanne of Body and Soul

. . .has a great quote in her post titled More smart people who don't like Bush:
Maybe this isn't the best timing, but I can't help but remember the famous Stevenson story: During his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to Adlai E Stevenson 'Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!' Stevenson called back 'That's not enough, madam, we need a majority!"

Save Marriage! It's all the fault of the homos ...

This website was included in an official Oregon pamphlet to help voters consider the issues on the ballot. It is unclear whether election officials knew that it was satire.

Election day today

For me, that is. I received my absentee ballot a few days ago, and I have decided to vote tonight and go to the post office Saturday morning to get the postage put on, taking no chances that I get it wrong. I didn't vote in 2000. First general election I have missed since 1972 and look what gets in! Ralph Nader, by the way, is listed in the "Better Life" party. His running mate (in case you aren't following the campaign that closely) is Peter Camejo, noted former leader of the Socialist Workers Party. I won't say ex-Socialist Worker, because I believe Trotskyism is sort of like Catholicism in that you can lapse but never really leave. Here is an interview with Camejo and his defence of the Nader campaign.

Supporting Kerry Anyway...

Although I seem to be developing an election theme here, and I do hope it doesn't continue unbroken right up to the election, I had to mentionJohn Perry Barlow's views on how we elect our Presidents and how that needs to improve. Or as he so cogently puts it:

We all need to get a grip and quickly. Whatever it has been traditionally, this Presidential race should not be a personality contest. I say this as much to myself to myself as I do to you. I have to snap out of it and remember we are not electing our new best friend here. We were electing a set of ideologies, cultural predispositions, policies, practices, and beliefs - many of them religious - that may literally affect the fate of life on earth. And one thing I will say for George Bush, he has disabused me of my old belief that it doesn't really matter who's President.

George Soros enters the fray . . .

GeorgeSoros.com is a new site with an associated blog which is dedicated to the proposition that "President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests and undermining American values". The WaPo says: "Soros is a figure whom Republicans should extol -- arguably the world's most effective capitalist anti-communist. He made his money the old-fashioned way, on Wall Street." And the LA Times Book Review says of his book The Bubble of American Supremacy: "Soros' intensely polemical but also succinct and well-reasoned book ought to provide a welcome template for how the candidates might begin to think their way through to a more coherent view of America's place in the world." And Booklist's reviewer says (briefly and to the point): "This may be the one anti-Bush book that reaches an audience beyond the Democratic amen corner."

The Lone Star Iconoclast endorses Kerry

All of us in Liberalbloggerland are very excited about this Crawford Texas publications high-profile endorsement of Kerry for President.

Why Bush Left Texas

Finally someone (and I'm not surprised it's someone at The Nation) is doing some serious journalism about the AWOL issue.

Tom Hayden tells it

A very powerful article by Tom Hayden in the Nation, concerning the myths of the Vietnam War and why now is the time to examine them and refute them.
"If I were George W. Bush, I would be terrorized by the eyes of those scruffy-looking veterans, the so-called band of brothers, volunteering for duty with the Kerry campaign. They look like men with scores to settle, with a palpable intolerance toward the types who sent them to war for a lie, then ignored their Agent Orange illness, cut their GI benefits, treated them like losers and still haven't explained what that war was about. They know Jane Fonda is a diversion from a larger battlefield. They are the sort who will keep a cerebral United States senator grounded, who have finally figured out who their real enemies are and who are determined that this generation hear their story anew. They are gearing up for one last battle. Chickenhawks better duck."
Thanks once again to non-blogging friend Joani for this link.

What are you thinking, Ralph?

What in the world is Ralph Nader doing in bed with the ultra-sectarian cult-racket formerly known as the New Alliance Party? asks Doug Ireland in the Nation article Nader and the Newmanites.