Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fascist fucks. They just can't help themselves.

[I]nternational monitors at a polling station in southern Florida said Tuesday that voting procedures being used in the extremely close contest fell short in many ways of the best global practices.

Voters across the United States have reported problems with electronic touch-screen systems in what critics say could be a sign that the machines used by one-third of the population are prone to error. Voters calling in to an election-day hotline reported more than 1,100 problems with the ATM-like machines, from improperly tallied choices to frozen screens that left their votes in limbo. Voters in Maryland said congressional candidates were left off ballots, while some in Florida told hotline volunteers that their ballots had already been filled out when they stepped up to vote, watchdogs said. Machines in New Orleans, Miami and suburban Philadelphia failed to start punctually in the morning, leading to long lines at polling places and prompting some to turn away from the polls, according to activists with the Election Protection Coalition.

One thing that does seem very clear tonight -- at least if what I'm hearing from the exits is true -- is that the much-ballyhooed youth vote simply did not show up. Simple as that.

So, there's a fairly simple colour scheme in effect on this blog for the immediate future. The black is fairly self-explanatory, the white is to signify the dove of peace which the White House fairly comprehensively barbecued on the twelfth of September 2001 and the red of course for the blood of the victims of Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda, Vladimir Putin, Tony Blair and George W. Bush.

Talking Points Memo, as well as pointing out some examples of right wing hijinks on election day also gives a possible reason for Kerry's failure, as I've put above, they just didn't vote.

But that's not the thing. Even if we pretend that all Republicans are evil scum and all Democrats saints who wouldn't dream of cheating, it's still hard to believe that this result is anything other than Bush getting more votes than Kerry. Fraud on the part of the Republicans to strip enough people who were intending to vote Democrat of their rights would have been spotted already. Which is not to say that it obviously hasn't happened. And I expect the Democrats may have been doing similar stuff, though strangely even the Republican news-sites like Fox haven't actually been able to find anything that wasn't Republicans pretending to be Democrats.

But now Democrats seem to be holding on hoping to do what Bush did in 2000, loose the numerical vote but win in the electoral college. Still, though the BBC is practically shouting at any Democrat spokesperson who comes into the studio to give it up already, all the votes SHOULD be count before an official statement is made. It's enough of a mockery of democracy as it is, there's no need to make it worse.

What I just can't get my head around is the idea that Bush has won. The highest voter turnout ever, apparently, and it's full of people who didn't vote in 2000 and they used that vote to say "Well I didn't vote for Dubya last time but I'm voting this time because I think he's the man for the job"? It seems crazy. Still, at least Bush has finally won a Presidential election for once.

And he has a clear mandate, a clear mandate for his policy of destroying the natural resources of this planet, attacking countries he doesn't like, killing his people, destabilising everything with no care in the world because he thinks that even if we, or he, dies, it doesn't really matter because he'll be going to heaven anyway.

I may appear in this blog to be anti-American. I'm not, I'm anti-stupidity, which is why the Christian Church and the political leaders of the U.S. and the U.K. (soon to be a wholly owned subsiduary of Halliburton Inc.) come in for so much grief. But I've never met in person one American who's been a complete arsehole. True, I've not visited the U.S. and, considering the hassle one has to go through, I'm not going to any time soon, but living in London I've come across a fair few. They've all seemed decent people, it's the cranks that don't leave their country. But I always thought the majority of Americans were decent, moderate, liberal people who wanted equality for all, peace and happiness. So this vote, and the decision by 11 US states to amend constitutions to outlaw same-sex marriages, makes me think this is simply not the case. That America is a place where money talks and the values on which the country was founded have been discarded.

Hopefully some time in the next few weeks the Democrats will do the decent thing and rename themselves as 'The Republican Left'. The prospect of Hillary Clinton as a Presidential candidate for 2008 holds no real thrill, America deserves better than for the baton of leadership to be passed between the Far-Right Bush dynasty and the Centre-Right Clinton family. The Democrats need to stop thinking, as they have done since Reagan's second term, that it's better to put forward Republican candidates that call themselves Democrats rather than Democrats with actual left-wing principles. The news media attack anyone who the Democrats put up as a candidate anyway, so why not choose someone next time who will have genuine differences of policy to offer the voters? Why not someone who'll be able to have a better slogan than 'Our Guy: Not Quite as Evil as Their Guy!'?





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