Welcome to the Way, Way Back Machine

Greetings, friends,
And so, here we are, in the way, way back machine. How far back can we go? To the17th century, when a Puritan dictatorship controlled England, or the 18th, when Protestant sects were driven out of Ireland, Scotland, France and Germany, many of them ending up in the American South?

Nope, this is the 21st century, when the Hindu, the Muslim, the Buddhist, the Christian and the Jew all try to draw a line around their borders (and find they don't correspond to any national border.) Can we get beyond ethnicity and religion and form a true United Nations? Stay tuned, because I doubt that question will still be hanging in the air in another fifty years.

Anyway, onto our joke of an election, which was really a last attempt to create a Christian Republic out of the United States...I've included a chart of the exit polls (thanks, Mark) comparing them in states with paper ballots and with all-electronic ballots. That should make you wonder...as will these two articles by Greg Palast.
An Election Spoiled Rotten
By Greg Palast
TomPaine.com
It's not even Election Day yet, and the Kerry-Edwards campaign is already down by a almost a million votes. That's because, in important states like Ohio, Florida and New Mexico, voter names have been systematically removed from the rolls and absentee ballots have been overlooked­overwhelmingly in minority areas, like Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, where Hispanic voters have a 500 percent greater chance of their vote being "spoiled." Investigative journalist Greg Palast reports on the trashing of the election.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110204V.shtml
Kerry Won
By Greg Palast
TomPaine.com
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110504V.shtml

HOWEVER, I am not a strong believer in this election being corrupted. Sure, maybe even a million votes were stolen by voting machines, but that doesn't belie the results, which followed a pattern far more disturbing than graft. HERE COME THE MAPS, keep reading.

I've included both of the "United States of Canada" maps which were sent to me by many, many people. You'll notice, in the more crudely done hand-colored map, that we've seized Southern Alaska and the eastern Chesapeake peninsula from Virginia.

But these maps, while cute, don't express the real results of the election, just state results that were often very close. We (and I mean the non-denominational we) have friends as deep in the South as Houston and Mississippi, and "Jesusland" surrounds Los Angeles and New York, from the Mexican border to well against Canada.

Here are the electoral results by state; scroll down and you'll see the results by COUNTY, which is far more telling.
http://www.electoral-vote.com/

HERE is the same map in greater contrast. Notice the blue urban cities, even in the heart of the South and the Midwest, blue swaths of New Mexico and Colorado populated by poor Indians and Hispanics, the poor Democrat blacks of the Mississippi Delta and the rural South, the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and around the Great Lakes, especially in eastern Iowa and western Wisconsin.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/countymap.htm

HERE is another version of the county map, with the color adjusted to show a continuum of the degree of victory in each county (i.e. from red to blue through purple.) Notice that some places (like Clark County, Nevada, where Las Vegas is) were actually more liberal than the adjoining counties in California; also notice that Bush and Kerry both had support everywhere; the only deep blue areas are the large cities, and the only real red blots are not in the South, but in the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming, Utah, Montana, and Idaho, where I can vouch for the Christian nature of the place.
http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/

Another version of this map...the truth of a close election:
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/11/03/purple_haze.html

And here is the California map in greater detail. We're lonely here in urban LA County; we're not as liberal as we thought:
http://vote2004.ss.ca.gov/Returns/pres/mapAN.htm

Here's a chart of the results for Arizona, a state of some interest to us, because demographically it's a lot like Southern California (numbers only.) Notice the high votes for John Kerry in Pima County (Tucson), Yavapai and Coconino (Sedona, Flagstaff) vs. Maricopa County (Phoenix), which is riven by racial politics and also contains the greatest concentration of Mormons, who supported Bush almost without exception; the only large cities to REALLY support Bush by large numbers were Salt Lake City and Phoenix.
http://www.azsos.gov/results/2004/general/GEN-100.htm

To disturb my friends from Chicago, the map for Illinois:
http://www.suntimes.com/elections/results/cst/il_president_county_map.html

The strongest message was delivered to the city that suffered the most from real terrorism, and will be the most isolated by a Christian America:
A Blue City (Disconsolate, Even) Bewildered by a Red America
By Joseph Berger
The New York Times
Striking a characteristic New York pose near Lincoln Center yesterday, Beverly Camhe clutched three morning newspapers to her chest while balancing a large latte and talked about how disconsolate she was to realize that not only had her candidate, John Kerry, lost but that she and her city were so out of step with the rest of the country.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110504Y.shtml

Of course, the election results could be based on IQ (thanks, Una):
http://chrisevans3d.com/files/iq.htm

Or they're JUST DIFFERENT:
CNN.com - Scientists scan brains for political clues - Nov 2, 2004*

Or...maybe not:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/gop.asp

But either way, THIS IS THE NEW AMERICA. DO NOT BELIEVE IN ABERRATIONS. NOW do you see why I'm looking over the borders to set up shop? The success of America in war and in peace has created a very dangerous psychology in this country. Half the country really believes that God is on our side:
** Election reveals divided nation **
The 2004 election reveals an electorate deeply divided not only over foreign policy but over cultural and economic issues.
< http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/americas/3973197.stm >

The Christians could only be encouraged by trumping all the omens:
Baseball, Football, Bloodline All Failed Kerry Bid
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041104/od_nm/election_omens_dc

No, but I agree with Hunter Thompson (thanks, Robert):
"I feel like somebody's died," Thompson lamented as the sun was preparing to rise early Wednesday morning. "I'm just not sure who it was." He deemed the election "another failure of the youth vote."

"Yeah, we rocked the vote all right. Those little bastards betrayed us again."

But despite his disappointment, Thompson remained remarkably upbeat. "Their army is how much bigger than mine? Three percent? Well shucks, Bubba. Now is the time to establish a network and an attitude," he said. "You make friends in moments of defeat. People in defeat tend to bond because they need each other. We can't take the attitude that it's over and we give up. We're still here."

We have a long way to go...the Christians are on the march:
11 U.S. States Outlaw Gay Marriage
Agence France Presse
Los Angeles - Voters in eleven US states voted overwhelmingly to slap constitutional bans on gay marriage, one of the hottest issues in this year's presidential poll, early results showed.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110404E.shtml

This is NOT a phase in American politics, it's the beginning of an era:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/comment/story/0,14259,1342920,00.html
Jonathan Freedland
The Guardian
Once it looked like an aberration. Now it is an era. George W Bush's tenure of the White House was born in 2000 to an electoral quirk, the fruit of a Florida fiasco, the arcane algebra of the US electoral system, and a split decision of the supreme court. It seemed to be the accidental presidency, one that would stand out in the history books as a freak event.

And, sorry, my friends, but it can and will get a lot worse:
What a Bush Win Will Mean for America
By Mark Tran
The Guardian U.K.
A second term in the White House for Bush could have far reaching effects not only on the economy, but on the social fabric of the country, says Mark Tran.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110404X.shtml

At least we can still play this stupid game for four more years (thanks, Dana and Aunt Nona):
Just for fun..............
http://www.beatgreets.com/view.pd?i=179386905&amp;m=5940&rr=y&source=bg999

And we'll be hearing a lot more from this clown (thanks, Miles):
bin Laden transcript:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6387378/print/1/displaymode/1098

But I would never go over-and-out on a sour note. Some good things came out this election; in South Carolina you can now serve a drink from a regular bottle:
http://www.abcnews4.com/news/stories/1104/184854.html

Though the Canadians are way ahead in this area as well:
Trick-or-treaters in Saskatoon surprised to get beer from neighbourhood house
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cpress/20041101/ca_pr_on_od/oddity_halloween_beer

Anyone with half a brain will be glad to hear this news:
Ashcroft Likely to Leave PostBy
Curt Anderson
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Attorney General John Ashcroft is likely to leave his post before the start of President Bush's second term, senior aides said Thursday.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110504W.shtml

And over in England,
Spam back on the menu
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041102/od_uk_nm/oukoe_life_spam

Vive le screed!