This article ties in with my last post on why they hate us. Consider this quote:

The union of Mosque and State in theocracy is what bin Laden is pointed toward. First, his radical world vision is to unify the Arab World, destroy Israel, expel the United States from the Middle East, then to unify all of Islam, then to unify all of the world that had once been under Islam, such as what they call Andalucia, namely Spain, and then finally the world as a whole.

Now, this may seem like a crazy vision to those of us in the West, who are not part of this tradition. But it’s no crazier than Hitler’s 1,000-year Reich or the dream of world communism. Totalitarian movements have these kinds of heaven-on-earth dreams.

Or this:

I went on the Web the night before and, through the Mideast Media Research Institute Web site, downloaded the main themes that the Saudi Religious Ministry had sent out the previous week, drawn from the Saudi imams’ sermons in the kingdom the Friday before. And the Saudi Religious Ministry, every week, takes these, consolidates, develops the major themes that it likes and wants the Wahhabi mosques, whether in Los Angeles or in Rawalpindi, to emphasize in the following week.

This week these three themes were a) that all Jews are pigs and monkeys, b) that it is the obligation of all true Muslims to hate and, where possible, to kill Christians and Jews, and c) American women routinely sleep with their fathers and brothers. Incest is a common way of life in the United States, and that just shows how rotten the Americans are.

Now, this is not some one military officer or some one minister who has happened here saying something like Christianity is better than Islam, and everybody says oh, no, no, no, you can’t say that. No, no. This is not an individual; this is the Saudi government’s planned dissemination of doctrine for Wahhabi ministers, imams around the world, to emphasize the following week. This garbage has been going on for a quarter of a century.

So, if you wonder why sometimes the young men in the streets of Cairo or Fallujah are particularly angry as the news comes from Al-Jazeera, their imam is saying these sorts of things at the mosque. It’s not too hard to figure out where the money is coming from for that, and why it is happening.

That's a lot different from it being our own fault. So, they hate us. Why attack us?

Well, if that’s who we are at war with, why? Why did they decide to come after us? I think there are two reasons. One is the same reason that Hitler probably would have given in December of ’41, when after Pearl Harbor he declared war on us, even though he really didn’t have to. He knew. He knew that at some point we were going to get into the fight, that we would be his biggest problem, so he might as well come after us while he thought that we were weak

[...] We are hated by the Wahhabis, by the Islamists, for freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, open economies, equal treatment of women – well, almost equal treatment of women, better than they do, anyway. That’s why we’re hated, indeed cordially loathed

I wrote something similar just before reading this. And I'm not a consultant to the Pentagon.

It's a long article but I suggest reading it. In the meantime, I'll sum up the rest quickly. Three different groups have been in a low-level war with the US and the west for years. These groups are the Baathists which is an openly fascist group and two militant Islamic groups - bin Laden's and Iran's. They have been striking against us since 1979, attacking embassies and sponsoring terrorists but, until 9/11, our response amounted to minor arrests, cruise missile attacks, and outright surrender.

Bin Laden's October tape was the first one that didn't include a rant about what cowards Americans are. Iraq is the first time since Viet Nam that we have shown resolve. Until then we had a long track record of trying to fight wars with no American casualties and of leaving at any sign of trouble.

They hate us because we are different. They have attacked us because they think that we are weak and will allow it. To insist that it all comes down to American policies (Israel and oil) is stupidly simplistic.

How can you tell if an elephant has been in your refridgerator? Look for his footprints in the Jello.

I was reminded of this joke by an article on Alternet, The Elephant in the Room. No, Alternet isn't reviving elephant jokes. It's just that neither stands up to any sort of scrutiny.

The elephant Alternet is talking about is the "real" cause for why they hate us.

The mosquitoes of terrorism were dissected and examined as carefully as biology students once did drosophila, but typing the generic DNA of terrorism proved more elusive. Worse, no attention was given to the swamp in which terrorists breed.

[...] Directly contradicting the president, a panel of the Defense Science Board gave voice to what virtually all in that ornate Senate Caucus Room knew, but were afraid to say. It named the elephants.

“Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf States.

Do they hate us for our freedom or for our policies. It's an important question. If they hate us for our freedoms then we are engaged in a war of civilizations. If they hate us for our policies, then maybe we can tweak something and all will be well between us.

So what policies enrage the Moslem world and can they be changed?

First there is Israel. This is unquestionably a sore spot. The US is Israel's strongest supporter and they receive more foreign aid than any other country.

What can be changed? Will a two-state solution fix things? No. Al Qaeda may hate Israel but they don't care a bit about Palestinians. They never gave any aid to them, either financial or manpower. At the time that 9/11 plans were beginning, a two-state solution seemed inevitable. In fact, prospects of peace and long-term stability for Israel acts as a stimulus for terrorist action. They hope that if they keep things stirred up long enough, Israel will collapse. That's why there is a new wave of bombings any time peace talks get serious.

The only thing that will make the terrorists happy is the complete destruction of Israel. That is unacceptable to a majority of the US.

Ok, we will keep supporting Israel. Maybe we can make it up to the terrorists by supporting the Arab world also? No. Israel may be at the head of the line for foreign aid but Egypt is next. This is interpreted as supporting tyrannies. This puts us in a real damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

Would it help if we overthrew a couple of those tyrannies? Say, the Taliban and Saddam? Nope. It didn't help during the Gulf War either when we freed one Arab country from another's aggression.

Maybe if we supported an Islamic uprising against a secular government? Jimmy Carter tried this in Iran in 1979. That didn't win us any friends either. A few months later they invaded the US embassy and held the staff hostage.

In 2003, President Bush did start an initiative to force reform on the Arab governments. It has not produced any noticeable results at this point. If it does then we might get somewhere with public relations.

Note - bin Laden used to out the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, the Moslem holy lands. The US presence there has been greatly reduced but this doesn't seem to have helped.

What about the freedom argument? Are there points of friction between our cultures?

Just look in the jello in the refridgerator.

First, there is the whole issue of religion. Islam is the state religion of the Arab countries plus some Asian ones and northern Africa. Other religions are, at best, tolerated. In some cases such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, they are outright outlawed.

This extends to freedom of speech. A couple of weeks ago I saw someone wearing a t-shirt with a cross in a circle with a line through it and the caption "bad religion". Had this man worn a shirt making a similar statement about Islam, he would be stoned to death in several Moslem countries. Really. We can say almost anything we want no matter how offensive. In much of the Moslem world this right does not exist and most people think that this is great.

I will not even get into the treatment of women except to point out that in the US, women have equal rights. In the Moslem world they do not, sometimes to a shocking degree.

Tying these last two points together is the murder of a Dutch film maker who was critical of Moslem treatment of women. Not only was he brutally killed but his death was tied to a plot to assassinate two members of the Dutch Parliament.

And here is the real problem with the "policies" argument - other countries are having their own problems with Islamic terrorists. I mentioned the Dutch problems. Spain changed governments and pulled out of Iraq but there was still a terrorist plot to assassinate some Spanish judges.

France has been targeted before, also. In the mid-1990s an Islamic terrorist group from Egyptian tried to hijack an airplane and crash it into the Eiffel Tower.

What is really happening really is a clash of civilizations, not militarily, but socially. The west is pressuring the Moslem world into assimilating into western society. This involves a whole new mindset. Consider the stereotypical European - cosmopolitan, agnostic, cynical , and critical of historical values. Contrast this with the Taliban or Iran.

The points of conflict are not political policies, they are pressures being exerted on the Moslem world by media and expanding western culture.

The 9/11 hijackers were all people who had spent considerable time in the west and felt alienated by it. They went to a strip show but worried that a woman might touch their dead bodies.

If they were only aggrieved by US policies then they would only have attacked the Pentagon and the White House. Instead they included a center of western commerce (which they also attacked in 1993). Yes, they hate the US government, but they hate western culture as much or more.

Bin Laden is quite happy living in caves. He wants a world where men can be arrested for trimming their beards, women have to stay inside or cover themselves, and children can be stoned for eating during the day during Ramadan. On the other hand, the west sees all of this as massive human rights violations and wants it changed.

Asia is combining their culture with western culture, producing a new culture at the expense of some ancient traditions. This is what the terrorists are fighting against. This is why there will be no simple peace.

When the progressives over at Alternet say otherwise it is because they want things to be simple. They want to believe that all of the world's problems are the result of US imperial ambitions, they want to be able to blame the US.

They want to be able to fit an elephant in their refridgerator without getting footprints in the Jello.

Culture Wars. Sometime in the mid-1990s, they had a big production on the Ohio State House grounds. I think that it was sponsored by downtown merchants who wanted to draw Christmas shoppers. The production was very elaborate. It had skaters including a giant skating candle. It taught a little message - something about self-esteem. For the finale they projected a moving train onto the State House with candles on the pillars. This was all very impressive.

After it was over I realized that they had not used the word "Christmas" once. After that I noticed that the Governor only talked about the "Winter Holiday". This was following the lead of the school system. Around a decade ago my daughter came home with a carol asserting, "Christmas and Hanukkah, just the same, both the Winter Holiday."

Columbus city government is following in this tradition. Here is the press release for this year's tree lighting:

Warm up your holiday season at the

City Hall Tree Lighting Ceremony

On Tuesday, December 7, Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman, City Councilman Kevin Boyce and Recreation and Parks Executive Director Wayne A. Roberts will be joined by youth from the Kids In Government program to host Columbus' official holiday tree lighting ceremony at City Hall. The ceremony will take place on the South Plaza, starting at 5 p.m.

This year's honorary tree is a 40-foot Norway Spruce donated by Don Fritch who is a resident from the west side of Columbus. The tree is decorated with sparkling white lights, glistening garland, silver bells, dazzling stars, bright red bows and festive candy canes.

The annual tree lighting tradition will feature performances by the Columbus Children's Choir, the Glo-ettes dance troupe, and a special visit from Santa to make the festivities complete. Delicious holiday treats will be provided courtesy of Keebler and Starbucks Coffee.

Notice that it has become an "honorary tree"?

Things weren't always that way. In the 1960s, the state out a nativity scene on the State House grounds (later it moved to City Hall). Obviously this was going way past constitutional limits. When Nixon asked people to limit Christmas displays during the gas shortage of 1973, the State stopped decorating except for some red and green spotlights.

In the 1980s, cities still put on Christmas displays. The ACLU took some cities to court and the courts upheld the use of "Christmas" and even the inclusion of a small acknowledgement of the religious roots of the holiday.

What really spoiled things was the KKK. After Ohio allowed a menorah on the State House grounds, the KKK sued to be able to put up a cross. They won on the grounds that once you let a group put up a religious display you have to let anyone put up religious displays. Since then the State has banned any mention of any religion.

Sidebar: the state should have countered that a white cross with KKK slogans is not accepted by anyone as a religious object and therefore would be banned. There is also a long history of the KKK using crosses for non-religious messages. For some reason the State didn't pursue this argument.

So here we are.

However, even with Winter Holiday trees, it is possible to offend some people. In fact, the City of Lancing, Michigan managed to offend nearly everyone. They decorated their Winter Holiday tree with red, white, and blue lights. This offends the Christians who don't like mixing religion with patriotism, it offends the anti-Bush crowd because it implied supporting the President, and if offends at least some atheists because, no matter what they call it, it is a Christmas tree.

Then there is the Virgin Mobile Phone ad that refers to "Christmahanukwanzakah." This not only hits you over the head with the idea that all December holidays are the same, it rolls them into one for you.

I wonder how it is doing. If it offends me...

More post-election news. Wired has a couple of articles. First, it seems that there has been a falling out between the Democratic Underground and Bev Harris. Most of the theories about voter fraud started with Bev.

In a written statement, site administrators said Friday that they barred Bev Harris, founder of Black Box Voting, because her postings on the site "have made positive discussion of verified voting increasingly difficult'

Democratic Underground said Harris' postings have been belligerent at times to other members of the forum and that she used the website to threaten its operators with lawsuits.

"We no longer believe that it is productive to allow her to use DU as a platform to promote herself while simultaneously trashing us, our moderators and others who have been previously supportive of her cause," site administrators wrote in the statement.

Remember that MSNBC's Olbermann also stopped getting along with Bev last week.

The other Wired article is about the Berkley study showing that Bush got too many votes on electronic voting machines. It turns out that the study was done by grad students who had no idea what they were doing.

"What they did with their model is wrong, and their results are flawed," McCullough said. "They claim those results have some meaning, but I don't know how they can do that."

McCullough said they focused on one statistical model to conduct their analysis while ignoring other statistical models that would have produced opposite results.

"They either overlooked or did not bother to find a much better-fitting (statistical) regression model that showed that e-voting didn't account (for the voting anomalies)," McCullough said.

In other election news:

An exhaustive investigation has turned up a link between current Florida Republican Representative Tom Feeney, a customized Windows-based program to suppress Democratic votes on touch screen voting machines, a Florida computer services company with whom Feeney worked as a general counsel and registered lobbyist while he was Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, and top level officials of the Bush administration

According to Curtis, Feeney and other top brass at Yang Enterprises, a company located in a three-story building in Oviedo, Florida, wanted the prototype written in Visual Basic 5 (VB.5) in Microsoft Windows and the end-product designed to be portable across different Unix-based vote tabulation systems and to be "undetectable" to voters and election supervisors.

This is wild enough that even Bev Harris doesn't believe it. Among other things, programming in Visual Basic is nothing like programming in Unix. (BTW, Bev Harris's original issue with voting software was that it runs on Windows.)

The story is lacking links between the programmer and any voting machine companies (who could certainly write their own programs). The biggest bit of proof is a fake check (really).

Yet another fake conspiracy story is related by Dave Shuster, MSNBC's hardblogger:

Today, I was presented with an e-mail bouncing all over the Internet from somebody identifying himself/herself as Brad Menfil. Menfil writes, "I work for the RNC. I fear reprisals if I'm found out." Menfil alleges that "Florida and Ohio had to go for Bush in order for him to win the election... in reality, he lost both states. In fact, he did not even win the popular vote. He lost the national popular vote by at least 1,750,000. This shows you the scale of the fraud."

After deconstructing the facts presented, Shuster ends with:

The fact is, Brad Menfil, or whatever his/her real name is... is a self absorbed and sick punk. Menfil only seems to care about making an argument, not about proving one. There are some thoughtful discussions and honest investigations into the troubling election "irregularities." Let's not allow those to get shoved aside or replaced because of quacks like this.

Olbermann continues to flog the recount story. How much longer will MSNBC let him keep up this story before they make him wear a tin foil hat?

What do Ohio's newspapers think about possible election fraud?

"We have written a lot about it, but we have found very little evidence that anything has happened in the election that didn't happen in every other [Ohio] election," said Ben Marrison, editor of The Columbus Dispatch. "Every rock we have turned over, we've found nothing."

He cited the state's biggest election problem being too few voting machines. "But our analysis shows they had waits everywhere," he adds, "in Democratic and Republican precincts."

Why is the left so convinced that Republicans stole the election? Maybe it is because they are not above doing it themselves. There is an on-line poll for the best blog and someone at the Daily Kos posted a program for cheating. Rather than removing it or condemning it, they think that this is great.

Hugh Hewitt has some thoughts about how this reflects on their character:

That there is no great consequence from their cheating does not mean that the cheating is without significance. In fact, I think it is a great piece of evidence to put forward in the case of why center-right activists fear "recounts" like those underway in Washington State and those conducted by Gore-Lieberman forces in Florida in 2000.

The Captains Quarters has worse to say:

It's the equivalent of bringing a marked deck to a poker game with matchsticks for stakes. It reveals Moulitsas' character more than anything he writes for his site. Isn't it odd that the same people who claim that Republicans and conservatives spend their time ginning up new and creative ways to cheat in elections have no qualms about screwing Kevin out of an opportunity to do something fun for the entire blogosphere? If not odd, their ease and pride in cheating is certainly instructive.

Powerline Blog also weighs in:

This is sickening, but typical. Kevin Aylward of Wizbang goes to a lot of trouble to set up a competition that is intended to recognize as many blogs as possible and introduce people to blogs they don't already know. It's done in a spirit of fun, and relies on a modicum of good faith among the participants. But liberals don't seem to be able to do anything honestly, to follow the most minimal standards of sportsmanship, or to do anything in a spirit of good will and good humor. Since Kevin hasn't designed the competition using national security-level safeguards against cheating, the liberals think it's OK to ruin the contest for everyone else by writing code that racks up thousands of fictitious votes for "their" blogs. Not only do they see nothing wrong with this, they brag about it openly.

All of this is nothing new. With each debate, the Democrats organized a massive effort to skew on-line polls on who won. They were also so successful at orchestrating letters to the editor that a few letters arrived before the debates.

So, are we to trust the country to people who think cheating is right is their cause is just?

and don't tell me that Bush lied. Saddam lied and everyone, Democrats and Republicans, believed him.

Yesterday I wrote about the contrast Media Research Center and MediaMatters for America. One thing I probably didn't make clear is the difference in what the organizations see as their mission. Media Research Center documents bias in the main stream media (MSM). MediaMatters documents "lies" by conservatives. This means that Media Research spends most of their time quoting the MSM, allowing their words to speak for themselves. In contrast MediaMatters often editorializes about their subjects.

To see how each site handles the same event, look at an ad created by the United Church of Christ. The ad shows black-clad bouncers refusing entrance to a church. Some people are refused, either because of skin color or because they look too gay. A white family is allowed in. The then says that everyone is welcome at the United Church of Christ.

The big three networks have refused to run the ad. ABC has a long-running policy against religious ads. CBS and NBC declined to run it because it looked controversial. CBS specifically mentioned the gay angle.

MediaMatters complains about the rejection, pointing to past ads that CBS and NBC have run. In CBS's case it was an anti-drug ad during the 2003 Superbowl. In NBC's case, it was selling 30 minute blocks of time to Ross Perot in 1993.

Media Research did not cover the ad directly. They reported on ABC's coverage. The entire report is transcribed and Media Research provides a link to the UCC's web site where you can see the ad for yourself. MediaMatters does not link to the ad, only to UCC's press release about it.

Go look at the ad yourself. Personally I find the ad very offensive. It is making a blanket slam on all other churches. I have always been offended anytime anyone makes light of someone else's religion.

We are living in a Bizarro world. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has been keeping the voter fraud issue alive for weeks. His blog has nearly daily entries on it. I've mentioned him several times before.

So what does a champion conspiracy theorist think about the election? See if you can guess who this quote came from:

"I think Bush got more votes." [audience cheers]
"I think that the, I think the people don't want to change Presidents during a time of war. We've never done that. People were afraid, we were attacked, you know, he promised that he would -- you know, the Republicans, I'll give them this, they had a story to tell, and the Democrats oftentimes aren't very good at telling a story. But the Republicans tell really good stories. And his story was very powerful."

..."I think he's very good at telling that story, and the story was, 'Out of the ashes of September 11th rose one man, and he stood on the rubble of lower Manhattan with a bullhorn, and he said, "I will protect you." And he did. And we were never attacked again.' [light applause]

"And that's a powerful story to tell. It has nothing to do as to whether or not we will be attacked again or whether we're really safer now as a result of his actions. But when you ask people, 'Now, tell me the Democrats' story. What was the thing they were trying to tell the American people? And you start to flummox all around trying to figure out what exactly, you know, was that."

Who said it? Michael Moore to Jay Leno. (transcribed by Media Research Center)

In the meantime, Olbermann has been getting a lot of his information directly or indirectly from a woman named Bev Harris who runs a web site called Black Box Voting.

By now, even Olbermann is getting a little suspicious of Harris.

What Ms. Harris has left herself open to is a charge that as much as any interest she has in the justifiable public concern over our most precious right - the right to a reliable, honest election - she may also have an interest in making her own documentary, on her own schedule, for her own purposes.

What Ms. Harris has also left herself - and by extension anybody who is advocating investigation, or merely covering the story - open to,is the charge of grandstanding, of tin-foil hatting, of being somebody who bursts in to a room and screams at public officials, videotape running all the time, artificially creating news.

Ms Harris denies everything and blames Olbermann.

I mentioned Media Research Center above. It is a conservative web site that documents liberal bias in the media. It has a liberal counterpart, Media Matters, which documents conservative bias.

So which is it, does the MSM have a liberal or conservative bias? It is instructive to look at what each site covers. Here are today's points from Media Research:

1. ABC's Sawyer Frets Ridge Departure "Makes Us More Vulnerable"
2. Tom Brokaw: "I Reflect the Sensibilities" of Red & Blue States
3. MSNBC's Olbermann Insists: "I'm Not Political. I Don't Vote" (If you don't know who Olbermann is, go back to the top of this post.)
4. Kalb Admires Rather's "Inner Strength" to Denounce Conservatives ("in a Los Angeles Times op-ed on Wednesday, Marvin Kalb, a former correspondent for CBS News and NBC News, saw the threat to journalism as coming from the right and praised Rather for assailing conservatives")

Two involve major network anchors, the third is the host of a prime-time cable news show, and the fourth has been a correspondent for two major networks.

And here are the points from Media Matters:

1. Coulter quoted Donna Brazile out of context; mocked her as "liberals' idea of a 'competent' black woman"
2. Horowitz's "racist" habit
3. Coulter: Canada is "lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent"; Carlson: "Without the U.S., Canada is essentially Honduras"
4. FOX's Jonathan Hunt trafficked in innuendo, vague allegations in oil-for-food coverage
5. SeeThePassion.com founder back on Scarborough to falsely slam Kinsey
6. Discredited Swift Boat Vet seeking conservative handouts
7. Proven liar Horowitz said Media Matters ignores the facts
8. CBS, NBC rejected United Church of Christ ad as "too controversial," despite networks' past airing of advocacy ads
9. O'Reilly to Kerry: "You're a sissy"
10. FOXNews.com, Chicago Sun-Times deleted connection between Ohio official, Bush campaign from AP story

Four (#1, 2, 3 & 7) of these involve two conservative columnists (Horowitz and Coulter). O'Reilly (#9) is a known conservative host. #6 makes an assessment of someone rather than simply repeating what was said. Scarborough County (#5) is a conservative show. Networks have refused to air inflammatory ads before (#9) and the fact that they have aired non-inflammatory ads from other parties is irrelevant.

#10 is a valid point although they are guilty themselves. They describe Blackwell as "co-chairman of Bush's reelection campaign". His post was actually, "honorary co-chairman."

So to summarize a typical day on both sites, the Media Research Center relies mainly on quotes from the nightly news and prime-time news shows. Media Matters relies mainly on quotes from conservative columnists and talk cable shows. Media Research does not have to quote liberal columnists and Media Matters cannot find quotes from MSM prime time shows.

And they wonder why we think that the media is liberal.

The Clinton Legacy. Remember Marc Rich? Clinton granted him a presidential pardon just before his term ended. It was widely believed that Rich's ex-wife bought the pardon through contributions to the Clinton Presidential Library.

The ink on Rich's pardon was still wet when he got into the middle of the oil-for-food scandal.

Former American fugitive Marc Rich was a middleman for several of Iraq's suspect oil deals in February 2001, just one month after his pardon from President Clinton, according to oil industry shipping records obtained by ABC News.

"Without that kind of middleman, the system would not work because the major oil companies did not want to deal with Iraq because there was a mandated kickback," said human rights investigator John Fawcett.

It has been nearly four weeks since the election but some Democrats are still fighting a lost cause. Now Jesse Jackson brought his rhymes to Ohio.

"We must use litigation, legislation, and demonstration. We must not stop until every vote counts. This is not about whether the Democrats or [John] Kerry will stand up. It's about you. It's about your dignity," Mr. Jackson told about 350 who gathered yesterday afternoon at Mount Hermon Baptist Church.

Jackson does bring something new to the discussion. The proxy for voter fraud this time is Ohio Supreme Court candidate C. Ellen Connally. It seems that she ran better than Kerry in some counties despite being a black woman and despite her opponents being better funded.

Does this prove anything? Yes. It proves that people who would normally vote a straight Democratic ticket might change their vote for the person at the top. It means that the presidential campaign is not only about turning out the vote but also about convincing people from the other party to vote for you.

Four time Ohio governor, Jim Rhodes is supposed to have said that Republicans alone are not enough to elect a governor. You need Democrats' votes, also.

That means split tickets. It means that winning candidates will get a higher percentage of the vote than losing candidates did.

All of these conspiracy theories are based on mathematical analysis of the vote. None are based on actually counting ballots. The one place that this has been tried, the election night count was accurate.

BTW, Connally lost. Jackson and company are only looking at selected counties. If they looked at the state as a whole they would conclude that Kerry got too many votes.

There's a new rumor going around the Internet that the election was fixed. Actually the new part is that they came up with specifics. Lots and lots of specifics.

It seems that Bush used $26 million in Enron money laundered through the Saudis to bribe a bunch of voting machine technicians. Claiming to be FBI and Homeland Security agents, the technicians went to polling places were they ordered lockdown and altered the totals. But, Karl Rove didn't pay up so some of the technicians are going public.

This story has everything including gaping holes. To start with, the only time the low-level functionaries know all of the details is in bad movies. In real life, you would never bother to tell people where the bribe money was coming from. Nationwide, only one place was locked down and with all the publicity hat one got, any other lock-downs would have made national news long ago. Since when did Bush get access to Enron money? Heck, since when is there any left?

And ignoring everything else, why renig on paying the technicians when they know too much?

Even MSNBC's Keith Olbermann who has been repeating every other rumor doesn't believe this one.

Setting the record straight on some issues.

Smoking will kill you, even if someone else is doing the smoking, right? No. Call it what you will - passive smoking, second hand smoke, whatever - it isn't dangerous. Think about it. Smokers are drawing the smoke directly into their lungs. Anything that others get has been diffusing into the air. For more information, see here.

Even if the results are accepted at face value, the impressive-sounding risk figures for lung cancer and heart disease imply that passive smoking accounts annually for one extra death in every 10,000.

This article puts the whole thing in perspective.

Habitual, lifelong smokers face a 30 to 40-fold higher risk of contracting lung cancer than non-smokers. That sounds massive and many smokers are persuaded to quit because they believe it is. But, since the risk of lung cancer in non-smokers is minuscule, it does not amount to an objectively high risk.

Sandford admits: "Smokers are more likely to die of heart disease than lung cancer." And pro-smoking campaigner Joe Jackson argues: "Even if you're a heavy smoker, your chances of not getting lung cancer are still more than 99 percent.

And my favorite quote:

Dr Ken Denson of the Thame Thrombosis and Haemostasis Research Foundation says: "I simply do not know where they conjure up their statistics. The statistics for passive smoking in particular would not be published or even considered in any other scientific discipline.

BTW, Shaken Baby Syndrome doesn't exist, either. A new study found that an adult man or woman cannot shake a baby hard enough to cause internal damage. If a baby is shaken it will damage the neck, not the brain.

And the arctic is not warming.

"Antarctica has been cooling for the last 50 years. Most of the Arctic has not warmed over long time scales," she told the news service. "Temperatures (have) always changed in the past and (they) always will. . . . We don't have enough understanding of natural variability and we don't see enormous amounts of temperature change to be alarmed about," she explained.

And this:

Naurzbaev, et al (2002) created a proxy temperature data set spanning nearly 2,500 years for the Taimyr Peninsula of northern Russia, all of which is poleward of 70° N. The authors studied tree rings-widths of living and deceased larch trees. They reported that "the warmest periods over the last two millennia in this region were clearly in the third, tenth to twelfth and during the twentieth centuries." The first two, they claim, were warmer than those of the last century. Twentieth century temperatures appeared to peak around 1940.

...

The ACIA appears to be guilty of selective use of data. Many of the trends described in the document begin in the 1960s or 1970s -- cool decades in much of the world -- and end in the warmer 1990s or early 2000s. So, for example, temperatures have warmed in the last 40 years, and the implication, "if present trends continue," is that massive warming will occur in the next century. Yet data are readily available for the 1930s and early 1940s, when temperatures were comparable to (and probably higher than) those observed today. Why not start the trend there? Because there is no net warming over the last 65 years?

For that matter, can't we dispense with the use of linear trends for cyclical time series which have a cyclical nature? My college statistics prof would have been very upset at this practice, because the character of a trend line in a data set like the one shown in Figure 3 is largely a function of the starting and ending points selected.

I also looked closely at many of the charts and saw misleading information. For example, the chart on global sea level rise goes back only 10 years but shows a steep increase. Then I read the y-axis -- a total rise of about one inch! Since we don't know where the data originated (the caption says "from a satellite launched in 1992") we can only wonder whether the measurement accuracy is sufficient to even measure a one inch change (or whether such a change even matters!).

Dan Rather is retiring. It's about time. When your credibility has become a punchline for both Jay Leno and Dave Barry you have overstayed your welcome. He's not leaving for months, yet so there is still time to get some digs in. Here's one.

Someone over at the Democratic Underground figured it out. Maybe they've been reading my blog (actually, I hope not, these guys drip venom instead of spit).

I'm about as pissed off as anybody about * winning. The Red-Blue crap is largely useless; especially talks about a boycott! Here is why:

(1) We need the Red states in 2006 and 2008. What a perfect softball for Rove to hit in those states -- see what these elitists really think of you.

(2) We don't campaign in the Red states, advertise much, or pay much attention to them. How the F are they going to get the message about our commitment to their issues? I wondered why we didn't do massive local radio advertising; great medium and lots of people listen while they drive all over the place.

(3) California elected Reagan twice and Deukmejian (R) twice. What a great move that would have been back then; boycott California. Give me a break.

(4) Are you comfortable adopting the same strategy that Nixon used to screw us; except this time we're screwing ourselves. Nixon's Southern strategy was to pit middle and lower class whites against blacks on the race issue, thus getting the white vote while not representing their interests. We're not screwing ourselves. Pit Red and Blue states against each other on location, religion, etc. when the real issues pertain to war, economic justice, racial-ethnic justice.

(5) I'm in very Blue part of a Red state, Northern Virginia. We have a Democratic Governor. I don't even think about Red-Blue (raided in CA, lived in NYC before here). Guess what we produce that you will boycott -- the f'ing internet. Telenet was the first public data network (Reston, VA); MCI set up the internet backbone (Arlington, VA); UUNET was the backbone integrator (Fairfax, VA). Go right ahead and boycott VA but be sure to use one of the other "internets."

Venting time is over. Lets be both tactically and strategically smart. If you want to see what's up, look at Montana state-wide elections, look at Colorado, look at Virginia's governor and potential in 2008.

Pretty rational post from a site that speculated that Bush (43) tried to kill his father (Bush 41) in a plane crash.

Speaking of venom, one of the most venomist cartoonists, Ted Rall, was dropped from the Washington Post. Why? Because he said that President Reagan is rasting in Hell? No. Because he said that Pat Tillman, the football player who enlisted in the army to fight terrorism deserved to die? No. Because he compared allowing Republicans to vote is like mainsteaming retarded kids? Yes, but only because he offended parents of retarded kids.

How will the Blues ever win over the Reds? In order to take the White House in 2008 they will have to convince a majority of the voters to switch parties, or at least a majority in enough states to give an electoral victory. Congress will be trickier since the Republicans have majorities in both houses.

The Blues need to make nice to the Reds. They need our votes or at least for us to stay home while they vote in their candidates. The trouble is that right now they hate us. They talk about succession, joining Canada and leaving us "Jesusland". They stereotype us as homophobic , racists fundamentalists.

As long ago as August the left felt that being a Republican was a moral failure. Remember the attempts to stage sick-outs in New York City during the Republican National Convention? More recently, the Bush twins were denied service at a restaurant.

Freemans, tuesday night the 16th of nov. the bush twins , along with 2 massive secret service men, tried to have dinner. They were told by the maitre'd that they were full and would be for the next 4 years. Upon hearing, the entire restaurant cheered and did a round of shots... it was amazing!!! [Ed: We're hearing that this is actually true.]

The Bush twins are not their father. Refusing them service is an act of spite.

Considering the reaction, are any Republicans welcome there?

Then there is the constant insistence that the vote must have been rigged based on the assumption that no one who voted for Gore would vote for Bush.

In 2000 they could blame the Supreme Court but this time they have to blame the voters. That's more than they can stand. They are really mad at us.

So, the Blues are calling us names and saying that they don't want to live in the same country that we live in.

After all this, how are they going to talk any of us into voting for them in the future?

I can hear the ads now, "Back in 2004 you stupidly voted for the wrong side. Now's your chance to make up for it." That's going to convince a lot of voters.

Is there such a thing as free will? Or, when considered as a group, do individual choices cancel each other out leaving a core behavior - sort of like a flock of sheep. That's how the talk of voter fraud strikes me. Statistitions look at the number of registered Republicans and Democrats in a county and make statements on the maximum number of votes that Bush could get vs. the number he actually got. If the actual count is higher than the projected maximum then something must be wrong with the way the votes are counted. After all, Bush couldn't have persuaded more Democrats to vote for him in 2004 than voted for him in 2000. Who you will vote for is fixed. The only variable is how well each side does at turning out the vote. No free will or voter choice involved at all, just organizational efforts by the parties.

Here is one example of this thinking:

The paper was authored by Michael Hout, a professor of sociology at U.C. Berkeley, and three other researchers. The analysis found a statistical relationship between electronic voting machines and votes for President Bush, which seems to have accounted for anywhere from 130,000 votes to 260,000 votes. Hout was not immediately available for comment.

Here's another:

Most people would have expected John Kerry's performance at the polls this year to be similar to Al Gore's in 2000. And in 229 out of 300 voting districts, or wards as they're called in New Hampshire, that was the case. Kerry either matched the percentage of votes that Gore received in 2000 in those wards or did better than Gore. But in 71 wards, Briggs found, Bush did better in 2004 than he did in 2000.

Interestingly, most of the allegations center around optical scan voting which leaves a paper trail. This is an exception. These researchers are looking at touch screen voting. Keith Olbermann (who is flogging this horse even while on vacation) says:

Hout and his research team consistently insisted they were not alleging that voting was rigged, nor even that what they’ve found actually affected the direction of Florida’s 27 Electoral Votes. They point out that in a worst-case scenario, they see 260,000 “excessives” - and Bush took the state by 350,000 votes. But they insist that based on Florida’s voting patterns in 1996 and 2000, the margin cannot be explained by successful get-out-the-vote campaigns, or income variables, or anything but something rotten in the touch screens.

Note that they only factored in two prior elections and failed to factor in the increase that Bush naturally gets as a sitting war president.

So, is there a problem. No, not according to the people doing a recount in New Hampshire.

The New Hampshire vote recount requested by independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader is still in progress, but preliminary results show no significant changes in the numbers.

So what's really going on with optical scan voting? The common points are rural, relatively poor counties that use optical scan voting. Analysis of the Florida counties showed that they have a high percentage of registered Democrats but they tend to vote Republican.

Maybe, instead of finding fraud, these statisticians are discovering two related facts:

1. Poor, rural counties register Democrat by tradition but vote Republican.
2. Poor rural counties often buy optical scan voting machines because they are cheaper than other alternatives.

Of course, statements like this from Nader's spokesman doesn't help.

Zeese said that ruling out voting machines as the problem in New Hampshire's results means "the problem was probably the Democrats."

"If we rule out the scapegoat of the machines, it just means more soul-searching on the part of the Democrats to figure out why they lost to the worst president in history," Zeese said. "You cannot assume that inconsistencies between exit polls and trends in voting or registration are going to turn out to show machine fraud. The Democrats really can be (just) as bad as they look."

Let's get over that "worst president in history" fixation. If Nader really believed this then he would have campaigned for Kerry himself.

Speaking of worst presidents.. the Clinton library opening gives us a chance to look back at Slick Willies record. After near-misses with Kerry and Gore, Clinton is looking better all the time. I don't think that I would call him a bad president. In 1999 he admitted that he was a "C" president and hoped to elevate himself to "B" status. His big initiative in 2000 was to try to establish a lasting peace between Israel and Palestine. Had he succeeded he would have gotten a Nobel Peace Prize. Arafat had other ideas so, failing to bring his grade up on the final, Clinton finished his term with a "C" average.

At best, Clinton's accomplishments were mixed. His assault weapon ban was meaningless. He provided extra finding to police although this mainly went for equipment, not extra manpower (also, he counted 10,000 cops for ten years each is not 100,000 cops). His welfare reforms seem to have worked pretty well.

Yes, he did balance the budget but that required an over-heated economy and cutbacks that left our military too small to properly occupy Iraq.

Yes, he did preside over a huge economic expansion but much of this was caused by Internet startups and a stock market that was way too high. The dot-coms are gone taking a lot of venture capital with them and the stoke market had its inevitable correction. Also, companies like Enron did most of their growth in the Clinton regulatory environment.

Foreign intervention was at a high point but Clinton was too risk-averse. The government that we placed in Haiti has already been overthrown. Bosnia and Kosovo are a mess, still a long way from fair democratic elections. Somalia is worse. Clinton's efforts to force a peace between Israel and the Palestinians provoked an intefada that is just now winding down. Clinton's weak reaction to terrorism encouraged Osama bin Laden to attack us in our homeland.

On a personal level, many of Clinton's associates in Arkansas were jailed over Whitewater. There might have been more to it but Clinton's people stonewalled to an amazing degree.

Clinton's personal life left much to be desired. In 1992 he pretty much admitted that he had played around but promised that those days were behind him. When he got caught with his pants down he lied to his wife, lied to the American people, and lied, under oath, to a grand jury.

His last acts in office were to pardon friends and benefactors and to loot the White House of furniture.

Maybe we should make that a "C-".

Let's take a break from politics and talk about copyright. Hollywood is worried that people downloading movies from the Internet will kill their business the same way that file sharing did the music business. To prevent this they are pushing Congress to pass a new copyright law. I think that most people will be appalled when they discover that the new law prohibits skipping over ads.The broadcasters insist that there is an unwritten contract between them and the viewer that you will watch ads in exchange for receiving broadcasts.

Next they will insist that you use the bathroom during the show instead of the commercial break.

TiVo isn't waiting for this. They have their own way of making sure that you see ads.

Then there is the broadcast flag. This will be part of digital transmissions. When it is set you cannot record.

All of this is to stop the Napster Effect. The music industry saw sales fall several years in a row and blames Napster and other file sharing. But... is this justified?

Several things have happened since the recording industry's high point in the last 1990s. There has been an economic downturn. Three new game platforms came out. DVDs became mainstream and people started buying movies instead of renting them. Entertainment money comes out of the same pool. The same people who are buying PS2s and DVDs are the ones who buy most music and they seldom have separate pools of money for different purchases.

At the same time the recording industry eliminated the single and pushed CD prices over $20. The word is that most CDs have one good track. Why pay $20 for a music track when you can get an entire movie for the same money?

They also reduced the number of new CDs released each year. Granted most of these would have lost money but their proof of lost sales looks at total CDs sold. They don't talk about profits which are still high.

Still, on the surface it sounds logical. Why would people buy a CD when they can get the music through file-sharing? This theory falls flat when you consider how most music is sold - people buy it because they hear it on the radio. For free. The music companies even pay stations to play songs. So free music can sell CDs.

Anyway, hold onto your VCR and your cassette recorder. You may need them in the future.

Back to politics (sort of). I saw a junk fax today asking if you thought that the country made a mistake re-electing George Bush. They asked people to check "yes" or "no" and fax it back. They will send the results to Congress.

The fine print showed that there would be a minimum charge for voting. I wonder how many people who are outraged at the election will fall for this?

Red State/Slave State. In the post-election free-for-all it was pointed out that a map of the pre-Civil War slave states is similar to the slave states. There are all sorts of problems with this analysis.

First, at least half of the red states were either free states or territories "open to slavery". For the most part, these territories were not actually open to settlers until after the Civil War so they hardly count.

Second, the Electoral College gives a poor indication of actual voting patterns. The USAToday breakdown by county tells a different story. Snopes covered this subject and has a different map shaded by the percentage that counties voted Bush or Kerry.

Tech Central Station went a step further. They have the county map and a map showing population. This makes it very obvious that Kerry's support was directly proportionate to population density. The author gives a few possible explanations. One interesting correlation is that people's willingness to help a stranger goes down as population density goes up.

Not discussed is the demographic breakdown of cities. Kerry's support came from minorities, especially blacks and Hispanics, from union members, teachers, trial lawyers, college students, people with advances degrees, and high school dropouts. With the the exception of the dropouts, the rest of these people are mainly found in cities.

Those Wacky Folks at Al Jazeera. The footage of a marine was shown repeatedly but the footage of Margaret Hassan pleading for her life was not shown.

Aljazeera on Tuesday decided not to broadcast the video as it could not be sure that the woman was Hassan. An Aljazeera official said the channel would also not air it out of respect for the feelings of its audience.

I'm just speculating here but I wonder if the footage of the marine had a translation of what he was saying. His words made it clear that he thought he was about to be attacked. In fact, he had been injured by a booby-trapped corpse the previous day so he had good reason to be wary.

One thing I know for certain, Al Jazeera did not bother to tell its viewers that the man who was killed was part of a group that thought nothing of kidnapping and executing the Iraqi head of an international aid organization.

See what happens when you violate the rules of war? I'm referring to the tape of a soldier shooting a wounded man in Fallujah. From what I could hear being said, the soldier thought that the wounded man was faking it and was armed. The enemy in Fallujah was doing things like this. They also would wave a white flag in order to get close enough to shoot at Americans. Once the enemy starts abusing the rules of war, soldiers stop respecting them.

Of course that is not how it is being presented in the Arab world or even in our own MSM.

The battle of Fallujah was savage. Terrorists were using civilians as shields the same way that they do in Palestinian settlements. Innocents will be hurt. The only choice is to ignore the terrorists which is not a choice at all.

Enough about why the Democrats lost the election. Let's talk about why they thought that they would win. How could so many people who should know better be surprised? After all, Bush led Kerry in the polls for months before the election. Here is what the Democrats were telling themselves.

False patterns:
The son or grandson of a president loses re-election.
Presidents who lost the popular election lose re-election.
Members of the Bush family lose re-election.

I could add that the candidate who has the biggest treasury as of Jan. 1 will be the candidate but Howard Dean proved that "laws" like these are actually statistical blips.

Bush really lost in 2000. If every vote is counted in 2004 he will lose again. The assumption here was that Bush had already gotten as many votes in 2000 as he would ever get. This ties in with the next couple of points.

Nader. New voter registration. Getting out the vote. Getting out the youth vote. etc. If Bush had already peaked then all the Democrats needed to do was drum up some new anti-Bush votes and their candidate would be in. Michael Moore spent the Summer insisting that the country is 75% liberal but only 1/3 of them bothered to vote in 2000. By contrast he insisted that all of the conservatives in the country had voted in 2000. By getting out the vote it would be a Democrat landslide.

ABB. Bush voters for Kerry. Etc. The country was supposed to be so fed up with Bush that any presentable candidate could beat him. An obliging media kept giving us stories of people who voted for Bush in 2000 but were voting against him in 2004. For some reason they never found a single Gore voter who was going to vote for Bush even though there was a large percentage of them in nearly every county in the country. Which brings us to...

Anti-Bush Media. Dan Rather was the worst of it but anti-Bush coverage was everywhere - The Bush voters for Kerry I mentioned above, the drumbeat on Iraq, constant stories about Bush's missing months in the Air Guard. Fox News may be bigger than CNN but CBS, ABC, and NBC are each bigger still and they all hated Bush.

The Echo Chamber. This is a big one. The map of votes by county shows how concentraited the anti-Bush people were. They represent 47% of the vote but they all live on top of each other. When everyone you know hates Bush you assume that the rest of the country is the same.

Questioning the polls. The polls showed Bush ahead but Democrats convinced themselves that the polls were wrong. The pollsters were missing young voters with unlisted cell phones or they made too many calls during the week and not enough ont he weekend. The Media Fund took out full page ads arguing that one poll was skewed because they oversampled Republicans.

Misreading the polls. By Memorial Day Kerry's campaign had declared victory. They noted that whenever a president's approval ratings were below 50% he lost. The undecideds would all break for change. Zogby said this nationally several times just before the election. What they didn't look at was that Kerry's numbers were much lower at the same period than any challenger who defeated a sitting president.

Bush Hatred. When all is said and done, the left hates Bush. They think that he is either Hitler in disguise or Karl Rove's talking chimp. They are sure that he lost on 2000 and they could not believe that anyone would vote for him in 2004. Their hearts are pure, they have fire in their bellies, and they did everything right according to conventional measures. They would win because they were right. No one could tell them otherwise.

Not even the actual voters since they keep insisting fraud.

Notice how little a factor Kerry played in this? After the first debate Democrats felt more comfortable with him as their candidate but he never had more than tepid support. Too much effort was being wasted hating Bush.

And that is what it comes down to - Bush hatred. It doesn't matter what Bush does, it is wrong and they will waste even more effort fighting.

This will probably give the Republicans the White House in 2008. After 8 years of hatred, the Democrats will be too exhausted to elect someone.

Far left columnist Eric Alterman is outraged that the FCC allowed Sinclair Broadcasting to air Stolen Valor.

What the public saw was the face of a conservative media corporation that had grown so confident under Powell's Big Media-friendly reign that it no longer felt the need to even make the pretense of abiding by the FCC's fairness rules. Despite the fact that watchdog groups and 38 Democratic congressmen demanded that the FCC consider whether Sinclair's actions violated the Communications Act of 1934, which states that for a broadcaster's license to be renewed, the commission must find that "the public interest, convenience, and necessity would be served thereby," Powell told reporters after the FCC's monthly meeting in Washington, "Don't look to us to block the airing of a program," according to a Reuters report.

What was actually said was that the FCC could not block a program on no other basis than advance reports of its content.

Obviously Alterman didn't bother to watch because what Sinclair actually aired was pretty balanced. In fact, it gave more of Kerry's side than the anti-Kerry side. Only short clips of Stolen Valor were shown.

The FCC's judgement was upheld.

What if it had gone the other way? These things cut both ways. If an anti-Kery show can be blocked, could an anti-Bush segment on 60 Minutes be allowed?

David Shuster at msnbc's Hardblogger points out some interesting things about the election. Kerry got five million votes more than Gore got but they can all be attributed to two groups - Nader voters and youth. Discounting those two groups, Bush got nine million more votes than Kerry. Shuster gives a list of possibilities:

1. The $200 million "get out of the vote" money pumped in to this election by ACT and the Media Fund was totally ineffective or wasteful.
2. The dark Internet conspiracy theorists are correct and something massively fraudulent happened on election day. (The evidence does not support that.)
3. John Kerry was a worse candidate than Al Gore... but it was masked by (1) ACT and Media Fund efforts that made the most of a bad hand;
4. President Bush made significant in-roads among moderates and "security moms."
5. The Republican "get out the vote effort" was far more effective and efficient than the democrats.

I do not agree with 1 and 2. I'm unsure about 3. But I'm definitely inclined to go with 4, and 5.

I think that 2. can be thrown out. No one has proved any fraud and the few cases that have been suggested would only account for thousands of votes instead of millions.

5. is an interesting one. Democrats made a huge effort to register new voters targeting likely Democrats. This is one reason that the actual election results shocked them so much. They won the registration battle and they thought that a high-turnout meant that all of their new voters were going to the polls. Republicans targeted infrequent voters. Since half the country usually sits out an election, this group has enormous potential. It is also easier to get these people to vote than it is to get people who have never bothered to register.

3. and 4. are flip sides of the same coin. Was Kerry a worse candidate than Gore? Is Bush a better candidate now than four years ago? I think that both are true but not for any reasons that Kerry could affect.

Gore got a lot of votes from the halo effect. Times were good during most of the 1990s and Gore was part of that administration. He distanced himself from the Clintons personally but he promised more of the same economically. Kerry was never part of the Clinton administration and could not catch any of that reflected glory.

Bush on the other hand was an unknown in 2000. By 2004 we have an idea of what to expect from him. Kerry is now the unknown. He said that he would do better but had no record of leadership (this is why governors make better candidates) .

And of course, September 11 changed a lot of people's priorities.

Suster's column goes on to say

[...]a year and a half ago, Democrats had the making of a cutting edge and impressive "bottom-up" organization. It was known as the Internet-savvy "Dean campaign." The candidate, of course, proved unworthy of what his energetic Internet supporters had built. But remember, the organization included "meet-ups" in cities and towns all across the country, local e-mail lists, and passionate local leaders who knew their neighbors.

He is wrong here. Kerry's campaign tried to make use of meet-ups, debate parties, email lists, etc. They were partly effective. The difference was that Kerry never motivated workers the way that Dean did. Kerry was always the person you thought would win but not your personal first choice.

This editorial from the New York Times touches on something that I have written about before. It is talking about framing the issues.

Values, Dr. Lakoff argues, are the key to framing campaign issues. Democrats have an unfortunate tendency, he says, to see campaigns as product launches, believing that if they roll out a candidate with the best features, or positions on issues, voters will support him. Republicans understand that people vote their identity, not their self-interest - that they seek out candidates whose values appear to match their own.

This leads Democrats to wonder why thy lose when ther campaign included something for everyone.

There are few single issue voters and their vote is usually already spoken for. Each partys base is polarized on abortion and gun control. Free trade is another factor but not as influential. If a candidate seems soft on one of these issues, the single issue voter will not vote for the other candidate, after all, that uy is likely to be worse. More likely the single issue voter will protest either by staying home or by voting for a 3rd party candidate.

The rest of the population looks at the candidate in general, not his position on a limited number of issues. This is as is should be. You have no idea what the next term will bring and you want a candidate who represents your values as a whole, not just on a few issues.

That is why Kerry's goose hunt seemed so forced. He was trying to tell us that he wouldn't take away hunters' guns. At the same time his wild assertions about the expiration of the assault weapons ban told us that he would go after some types of weapons. By trying to pick and choose on issues he seemed forced and insincere. He did the same thing when promising expanded health care and talking about fiscal restraint in the same speech.

The Times editorial doesn't offer much useful advice. The professor they are quoting doesn't want the Democrats to do any soul-searching. He just wants them to come up with catchy names for their positions - "poison-free communities" when talking about pollution and "public protection attorneys" when talking about tort reform.

I don't think that Michael Moore style exagerations will help. It will just make them seem more phony.

Michael Moore is going to make a sequel to F 9/11.

“Fifty-one percent of the American people lacked information (in this election) and we want to educate and enlighten them,” Moore was quoted in Thursday’s edition of Variety. “They weren’t told the truth. We’re communicators and it’s up to us to start doing it now.”

Mikey is flattering himself. I doubt if 5% of the population saw his first film, not 51%

A couple of interesting columns today on TechCentralStation. One looks at the environmental costs of huge wind farms. It seems that wind farms large enough to make a difference would change wind patterns as much as a kilometer up and dry the soil.

The other examines Kerry's take on terrorism and how the Democrats might seek to redefine their position. After reading this I realized why it didn't bother me when Bush said that the War on Terror might never end but it did bother me when Kerry said nearly the same words.

As of September 10, 2001 we assumed that terrorism was something that happened elsewhere. Yes, there were incidents in the US - the first World Trade bombing and the Oklahoma City bombing - but they were law enforcement matters. The rest of the attacks all happened elsewhere and were easily ignored.

Then something awful happened.

Bush came away with the knowledge that we could not ignore state-sponsored terrorists. They only get more audacious. Even groups that had previously been minor can suddenly strike beyond the cost that we are willing to bear. We cannot win the War on Terror because it requires eternal vigilance. Once we declare that we have won we will stop being vigilant.

Kerry sees it as a single group, al Qaeda, that needs to be brought to justice. Once their heads are on bayonets he would declare victory and go back to September 10.

Thankfully that will not happen, at least for another four years. I hope that in that time the far-left wing of the Democrats will come to terms with their own dislike for America and admit that some movements are worse and must be opposed.

I tend to be sceptical of conspiracy theories. On election night when the networks were quick to call states for Kerry but waited for hours after 100% of the vite was in to call them for Bush I assumed that they were being cautious after their problems in 2000.

It turns out that the conspiracy theorists were pretty close to the mark. The networks didn't call enough states to give Bush the election because Kerry asked them not to.

The New York Times told the story. At 12:41 a.m., Fox News declared that Ohio was a win for Bush. "Howard Wolfson, a [Kerry] strategist, burst into the 'boiler room' in Washington where the brain trust was huddled and said, 'we have 30 seconds' to stop the other networks from following suit." The Kerry camp dialed furiously and begged the networks to hold any more projections. The Bush camp called to make sure the networks who called Ohio would not backslide based on Kerry lobbying.

From then on, only Fox and the NBC-MSNBC combo had called Ohio, but refused to project victory in any other Bush state, especially ripe and ready Nevada. ABC, CBS, and CNN all pretended Ohio had not been decided, even with nearly 100 percent of precincts reporting. Millions of Americans woke up with a sick feeling: is there a crisis again?

Everyone, perhaps intimidated by the vision of another Michael Moore documentary accusing them of calling victory prematurely, put the science aside and waited for the politicians to make a move. When John Kerry called the White House to concede, suddenly the anchors mysteriously found the secret math in the trash can that would allow them to call Ohio and/or Nevada. This is the very definition of pack journalism: the TV news elite huddled in a mob, politically calculating, wanting less to get the call right than to avoid the wrath of angry liberals stuck on the losing end of the results again.

Charges of election Fraud go mainstream. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann repeated rumors that something was strange about the votes in Florida and Ohio. I'm not going to examine the charges. That as been done here, here, here, and here. What I'm goin to write about instead s why I dismissed these charges out of hand.

First, all of the charges are one-sided. Are we to believe that wdespread voter fraud exists but that it is limited to Republicans? After Democrats nationwide vowed to do whatever it takes to defeat Bush? If someone came forward and said, 'I can't say who did it but I know a Democrat who has stuffed the ballot box so he knows what to look for.'

Even better would be for the Democrats to produce a Republican who either had done it or knew someone who did.

Without that all we have are projections based on party registration. I suspect that this has the same problem as the exit polls - people in these rural counties are registering as Democrats because it is expected of them but, in the privacy of the voting booth, they vote their heart.

That's why we have secret ballots. To let you vote based on your wn beliefs instead of someone else's.

As for Ohio, I know something about Ohio voting procedures. I just got a refresher a week ago when I voted.

In Ohio you give your name and address to the poll takers. They find it in their book. You sign the book next to a copy of your signature and you are given a voter authorization card. This is taken by the person operating the voting machines. I don't see anyway around this without collusion by multiple people.

According to the reports, 93,000 more people voted in Cuyahoga county than are registered. Given the procedures I outlined above, it would be really tough for this to happen.

But if it did happen, why did Kerry get 2/3s of the vote? Were the Democrats the ones doin the fixing?

And how many voting machines were required?

I will bet that the registration figures were old. Nearly 1,000,000 new voters registered in Ohio. It sounds about right for Ohio's most populous county to get 10% of the new voters.

Democrats act as though voter fraud was something that never existed before 2000 and that electronic voting machine were invented for no other reason than to throw the election.

In Ohio, at least, voter fraud would be difficult. Every county board of elections has, by law, equal number Democrat and Republican members. Ken Blackwell, the Secretary of State, is Republlican so, also by law, the people between Blackwell and the counties are all Democrat. If someone tries something, someone close at hand will notice it.

Bottom line, Kerry lost, the exit polls were wrong, and rural Florida voters are fairly conservative.

Big lies about the election. Democratic spin-masters have already started re-writing the 2004 election.

"Bush won by a smaller margin in terms of percentage of any incumbent who's been re-elected," Al Franken.

The election was close but a lot of absentee and military ballots have favored Bush. By the end of last week, Bush's lead over Kerry had grown to 4.5%. This is slightly higher than Truman's 49.51% - 45.12% lead over Dewey.

Also, notice that Franken limited his sample by only looking at presidents being re-elected. Bush's margin of victory was, of course, way ahead of presidents who were not re-elected. It was also much higher than some presidents first victory. Kennedy, for example, only won by 0.2% of the vote (49.9% to 49.7%).

"We lost on "values." Given that "values" is a euphenism for anti-abortion, anti-gay..." the daily Kos.

Around 1 in five people gave 'values' as their top consideration in exit polls. This was ahead of everything else but still only a small percentage. The question itself is so vague that it can mean different things to different people. For some people, anti-abortion is an important value. For others it is as simple as viting for the candidate who says he prays daily instead of the one who was once an altar boy but is vague about his current beliefs.

Anti-gay is not much of a factor. Anti-gay marriage won nationwide by much higher margins than Bush got so Kerry got a significant number of anti-gay votes.

Fallujah is the center of operations for the worst of the terrorists in Iraq including the folks who saw the heads off of infidels for webcast. In preparation for the upcoming election, the collition is cleaning out the city. The city was given plenty of notice and women and children were ordered out before the attack started.

This is likely to bring some real peace to Iraq since the rebels in Fallujah have no compunction against killing fellow Iraqis.

So how does the left react? With an emergency demonstration on Tuesday in support of Fallujah.

But then, what else can you expect from an anti-American organization run by communists (really).

Reality Check. Lots of liberals think that Bush has a secret agenda that he will push through now that he has a clear majority in Congress and no longer has to worry about re-election. It will not happen. Bush will have trouble just getting his public agenda passed.

In making this prediction I am looking at recent history. Clinton took office in 1993 with a majority in Congress and a determination to roll back the Reagan/Bush years. His achievements were, at best, modest and he lost Congress in the 1994 election.

In 1995 Republicans took over Congress for the first time in decades. They were going to dismantle the welfare state, abolish PBS, and re-tool the country. It didn't happen. Clinton took the lead on welfare reform and little else was accomplished.

If Bush stays focused he can partially privatized Social Security. Some sort of major overhaul has to be done soon and the only real alternative that I have heard is to raise retirement age.

More on economic interest. My last post gave some examples of policies favored by some vocal members of the Democratic party that are against the economic interests of the working class. Here are a couple of more examples.

Global Warming. If you take the time to seriously research the subject you will find that there is a lot of reason to be skeptical. Never the less, many on the left want to go ahead and enact limits on CO2 emissions. In order to have any real effect we would have to cut emissions more than 60%. Industry would just about have to shut down (actually it would all move to China and India who do not have any limits under Kyoto).

Schools. 20 years ago I was a strong supporter of public schools. Then my daughter reached school age. It turns out that public schools are not set up to handle kids who are unusual. If the child has attention deficit problems (my daughter) or behavioral problems then they are labeled troublesome. Classes that are set up so that dumb kids can pass will fail smart kids with certain problems. The only alternatives are private and charter schools. Paying for private school is a burden and most Democrats want to shut down charter schools.

This is an area where the Democrats are losing some blacks. The Democrat image of the people using school vouchers and charter schools is whites running from minorities and evolution. In fact, it is overwhelmingly blacks, especially ones whose children have problems. The public schools have already failed these kids and they are looking for alternatives.

The Democrats are against all of this. The teachers unions are a major wing of the party and they hate the non-unionized private and charter schools.

Nice to know that they care. The British-based computer industry web site got a letter from the New Democratic Outreach Program. It is addressed from the blue states to the red states. Among other things is says:

Here in the Blue States, Democrats and Republicans alike generate the
lion's share of America's wealth, although it is you Reds who provide the lion's
share of the stoop labor. You are our Mexicans, so to speak. We could not have
accomplished the economic miracle that is America without your willing
capitulation to a system that lies to you and fucks you over at every
turn.

Look at economic output and educational achievement on a state-by-state
basis: it's painfully evident that we Blues are immensely more productive and
better educated than you Reds. We have lots more money. We live longer. We eat
better. We work less. We fuck more. We do cocaine and smoke fine Canadian buds,
not the homebrew crank and cheap Mexican headache reefer you guys are stuck
with. We drink French wine and Stoli martinis, not Budweiser. Our children
rarely bother us: we've got them on Ritalin and Prozac. Our teeth are straighter
and whiter, our necks longer, and our fingernails cleaner. And many of us are
the Republican elite who have just punked you.

That outreach is going to win over a lot of voters.

Whose Interests? Nickolas Kristof says this in a recent column about the election:

I'm writing this on tenterhooks on Tuesday, without knowing the election results. But whether John Kerry's supporters are now celebrating or seeking asylum abroad, they should be feeling wretched about the millions of farmers, factory workers and waitresses who ended up voting - utterly against their own interests - for Republican candidates.

This says a lot about why Democrats are losing ground. First, the column is incredibly condescending. A columnist living in New York City knows more about what is best for a factory worker or farmer in the midwest? Please!

I've seen this before. Demcrats are convinced that they have won the high bid for votes but Karl Rove keeps distracting the poor dumies with non-issues like gay marriage.

When they talk about workers' interests, they mean free medical coverage, trade protection. They also add in minimum wage rates.

What they never consider is that any of their policies hurt these workers. The green wing of the Democrats is against housing construction both through "smart growth" policies and through anti-logging policies which raise the costs of housing construction.

Trade protection tends to be a two-edged sword. Put a tarrif on steel (something that Bush shouldn't have done) and you make American cars more expensive. Some car production is moved off-shore in order to get around the tarrifs. Ao one industry is helped and another hurt.

Farmers are hurt by the Green/Democrat dislike for genetically modified crops. They also hate pesticides and furtalizer.

Plus a big factor in the rise of health care costs is lawsuits. We need tort reform but this will not happen under Democrats. Trial lawyers rank with teachers as major contributors. John Edwards said that tort reform would happen over his dead body.

The point here is that Democrats do no have a monopoly on helping the average worker and they should not fool themselves that they do.

Well, that didn't take long. The loony left have it all figured out. It seems that Kerry actually won and that Bush stole the election. The exit polls which showed a huge Kerry win were actually correct and the actual counts were wrong.

I hope that this dies down quickly. It doesn't help anyone to insist that elections are fixed. In this case they are blaming most of it on punch cards, just like in 2000. The solution to punch cards was supposed to be touch-screen voting but, after Democrats noticed that the biggest company making these machines, they changed their minds. They are convinced that the newer voting machines have secret code that allows Karl Rove to change votes at will. So, pending all sorts of challenges against these machines, we are stuck with punch cards.

What about those exit polls? There are all sorts of theories. One is that the pollsters oversampled women. Others think that it was a deliberate attempt by the media to give Kerry a last-second boost while the west-coast polls were still open.

My opinion is that:

1) They oversampled and were in such a rush to get out results that they did not properly correct.

2) Different people vote at different times. I happened to be taking the morning off for a doctor's appointment. Otherwise I would have voted after work. There must have been a few hundred people in line with me but no more than a couple of dozen were dressed for work. This was even more true when I tried to vote at 9:00. I suspect that this skews things. This is probably why they over-sampled women. They were sampling stay-at-home moms. Is this a group more or less likely to vote for Kerry? I don't know.

3) The pollsters say that they gave out warning with their numbers but the networks ignored them. If you assume that most people in the media wanted Kerry to win then they were less likely to question good news.

4) I've said it before - there are a lot of closet Bush supporters out there. When asked, face to face by someone with a clipboard, they will not admit it but in the privacy of the voting booth they can vote their preference.

Instapundit and others noticed that the networks were quick to call states for Kerry but slow to call them for Bush. This is because they check actual counts in against exit polls. When the two agree they call the state, even when a fraction of the vote has been counted. When the exit polls show a different candidate winning they assume that there must be some important precincts that haven't reported yet or some other factor.

I don't think that any of this shows a crooked system but I do think that it shows some media bias in not looking closely enough at data that matches their hopes.

And to the loony left - Bush won! Again! Get over it.