WILL OF THE PEOPLE


U.S. army soldiers guard the scene near a body after two men were found murdered in Mosul, Iraq , Thursday, Nov. 25, 2004. Previously, 20 bodies were found in Mosul in the past week, including ten identified as Iraqi regular army soldiers. Insurgents rose up this month in Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, during an offensive by U.S. and Iraqi forces in Fallujah. (AP Photo/Jim MacMillan)
AP - Nov 25

In Mosul, grisly discoveries follow in insurgents' footsteps
By Kirsten Scharnberg, Chicago Tribune (via The State), November 25, 2004

Almost every morning for the past several days, American soldiers have made the gruesome discovery. Sometimes the bodies are partly burned; sometimes they are dismembered; sometimes they are shot in the head.

When two more victims were found slumped on a busy street corner this week, Lt. Col. Erik Kurilla finally lost it. The Army commander, a bear of a man who usually is the first to crack a joke even in the direst of circumstances, stormed across the street and began chastising the Iraqis gathered there.

"Why do you not have the common decency to clean them up?" shouted Kurilla, who is in charge of securing much of historic Mosul, as he angrily motioned to the bodies.

"Your fellow Iraqis are lying dead in the streets, and you sit there doing nothing. To say nothing is to support the insurgents. These were Iraqi soldiers who were trying to help your country, to serve you. How can you do nothing?" ... ...


... But the joint missions do not always go flawlessly. Many Iraqi soldiers insist on wearing masks while conducting missions and patrols. And sometimes they are reluctant to talk with residents on the street for fear that someone will recognize their voices. That frustrates U.S. military officers who struggle to overcome the language barrier with the Iraqis and who long have hoped that Mosul's residents would trust local troops far more than the Americans who routinely kick in their doors during searches and patrols.

Even more, because the Iraqi troops often ride in the kinds of unarmored vehicles that are most vulnerable to suicide attacks and roadside bombs, they can be jumpy. Sometimes they open fire with little cause on passing cars or start shooting without warning during foot patrols. ... ...


... Where in places such as Fallujah the insurgents came out into the streets with machine guns, mortar tubes and rockets, in Mosul they have grown adept at working just below the radar.

Under the cover of night, the insurgents have taken to the streets and covered the walls of homes with intimidating graffiti: "God be with the mujahedeen forever." Or "Together we will all fight America." Or "Allawi, we will kill you," a reference to the U.S.-backed interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi.

In one neighborhood, the insurgents handed out leaflets warning that anyone seen cooperating with the Americans would be killed; in another they dumped the bodies of those who were.

It appears to be an effective strategy.

- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:28 pm 0 comments

 
There is No One Left to Stop Them
Paul Craig Roberts,Counterpunch, November 19, 2004

The United States is in dire straits. Its government is in the hands of people who connect to events neither rationally nor morally.


If President Bush's neoconservative administration were rational, the US would never have invaded Iraq. If Bush's government were moral, it would be ashamed of the carnage and horror it has unleashed in Iraq.

The Bush administration has no doubts. It knows that it is right and virtuous. Bush and the neocons dismiss factual criticisms as evidence that the critics are "against us."

People who know that they are right cannot avoid sinking deeper into mistakes. ... ...

Eight of ten US divisions are tied down in Iraq by a few thousand lightly armed insurgents. Polls reveal that most Iraqis regard Americans as invaders and occupiers, not as liberators. US prestige in the Muslim world has evaporated. The majority of Muslims, who were with us are now against us. Sooner or later, this change of mind will endanger our puppet regimes in Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

In a futile effort to assert hegemony in Iraq, the US has largely destroyed Fallujah, once a city of 300,000. Hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians have been killed by the indiscriminate use of high explosives.

To cover up the extensive civilian deaths, US authorities count all Iraqi dead as insurgents, delivering a high body count as claim of success for a bloody-minded operation. The human cost for American families is 51 dead and 425 wounded US troops--casualties on par with the worst days of the Vietnam war.

The film of a US Marine shooting a captured, wounded and unarmed Iraqi prisoner in the head at close range has been shown all over the world. Coming on top of proven acts of torture at US military prisons, this war crime has destroyed what remained of America's image and moral authority.

On November 17, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for investigation of American war crimes in Fallujah. This is a remarkable turn of events, showing how far US prestige, and the morale of our armed forces, have fallen.

However, for Bush administration partisans, war crimes are no longer something of which to be ashamed. ... ... and retired military guests have arrogantly defended the marine who murdered the wounded Iraqi prisoner.

... Right before our eyes, the CIA is being turned into a neoconservative propaganda organ as numerous senior officials resign and are replaced with yes-men.

With its current troop strength, the Bush administration cannot achieve the Middle East goals it shares with the Israeli government. Either the draft will have to be restored or mini-nukes developed and deployed. As insurgents do not mass in military formations, the mini-nukes would be used as a genocidal weapon to wipe out entire cities that show any resistance to neocon dictates.

Many Bush partisans send me e-mails fiercely advocating "virtuous violence." They do not flinch at the use of nuclear weapons against Muslims who refuse to do as we tell them. These partisans do not doubt for a second that Bush has the right to dictate to Muslims and everyone else (especially the French). Many also express their conviction that all of Bush's critics should be rounded up and sent to the Middle East in time for the first nuke.

These attitudes represent a sharp break from American values and foreign policy. The new conservatives have more in common with the Brownshirt movement that silenced German opposition to Hitler than with America's Founding Fathers.

Bush's reelection, if won fair and square, was won because 20 million Christian evangelicals voted against abortion and homosexuals. However, Bush's neoconservative masters will use his reelection as a mandate for further violence in the Middle East. They intend to set the US on a course of long and debilitating war.

There is no one left in the Bush administration, the CIA, or the military to stop them.


- posted by ARYABHATT @ 2:41 pm 0 comments

 
Bush Speaks.com: [Conservative; Responsible; Patriotic - Everything Bush Is Not]-- November 2004



"I want to thank. . . the architect, Karl Rove."
— G. W. Bush (Source: The WhitewashHouse)

...........................................
Apocalypse Soon: Storm Clouds from Heaven
Dave Lindorff, Counterpunch, November 20-21, 2004

The allegedly pious George Bush, champion of the saved, is said to be a believer in Armageddon.

He may indeed live to see the apocalypse in his final term of office, but it will not be the one he had read to him in from the Bible. It is likely to be rather more secular in nature, though perhaps nearly as cataclysmic.

As he heads towards his second inauguration, Bush's handlers and new neo-con cabinet will be looking at storm clouds gathering all around.

First, of course, there's the war in Iraq, which is getting nastier by the day for the U.S. Hungary is the latest to leave the coalition of the willing, and Poland, the third largest "ally" after Great Britain, with its 2000 troops, won't be far behind. Soon it will just be stop-loss indentured American troops doing the fighting and dying, with a few British soldiers standing near the gangplank in the port city of Basra, ready to beat a hasty retreat. [...more]

Then there's the U.S. dollar. In case you haven't noticed, it's been sinking like a rock, trading at roughly 100 Japanese yen to the dollar and $1.30 to the Euro.

Today, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, who in the run-up to the election was pooh-poohing any concern about the U.S. dollar and the ballooning trade deficit, told European bankers that he is worried that foreign investors, who have been propping up the greenback for decades, are finally showing signs of giving it up for dead. Should that happen, we can expect to see in short order a major economic disaster here in the U.S.

The first thing that would likely happen is that the big oil exporting nations--Russia, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Venezuela and Iran--would, along with the rest of the producing countries, switch their pricing away from dollars to Euros, or perhaps a basket of currencies. That would have the effect of undercutting all support for the dollar, while causing energy prices in the U.S. to go through not just the roof but also the stratosphere. The impact on the U.S. economy would be immediate and drastic--akin to your SUV runing out of gas on the freeway.

Yet another storm cloud on the horizon is the U.S. budget deficit. As long as the economy stays marginally healthy, this is a problem deferred, [...more]

... As the deluge begins, this sleight of hand will become much harder to pull off, even with the unflagging help of the Foxed media.

Bush may be surrounding himself this term with an amen chorus cabinet, but the amens from the public will not be very loud or inspired as these storms begin to hit.

- posted by ARYABHATT @ 2:34 pm 0 comments

 
Who and What Killed Margaret Hassan?
Christian Harleman and Jan Oberg, Counterpunch, November 17, 2004

Margaret Hassan has been murdered. That is the most probable conclusion from a video given to Al Jazeera yesterday. For one who met her and got to know her, even if just a little, it is hard to write and read that sentence. But Margaret Hassan--Umm Margaret--in Baghdad has been murdered.


Who killed her?

Desperate, fanatic people who thereby cast a dark shadow over their nationality, organisation, religion and philosophy. People who mistakenly believe that a better Iraq will emerge from such a crime and who cares nil for the welfare of the Iraqi people to whom she devoted most of her life and work. Or someone related to the occupation forces seeking to discredit the image of all Iraqi resistance.


Why she of all?

Because she was a courageous, principled and determined humanist who defied danger and could not be intimidated. She represented the best of the Western and the Arab world in one person and, thus, was a threat to the worst elements in both. For, alive she would remind everyone about the essential difference between genuine goodness and the grim reality of the self-proclaimed "good" policies of George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Ayad Allawi.


What caused her death?

The occupation itself and the governments responsible for it.

Margaret Hassan was married to an Iraqi, lived for more than 30 years in Iraq, by and large simultaneously with Saddam Hussein's brutal rule. She could live and work there, both with the British Council in the 1980s and with CARE. She considered herself an Iraqi and never thought of leaving the country during the various wars and constant human rights violations. Time and again, she voiced her deep concern to everyone she met--including us--about the inhuman consequences of the economic sanctions and the further suffering of the citizens in case the country would be attacked and occupied.

Margaret Hassan was not killed in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, she was murdered in the Iraq that has been created by Messrs Bush, Blair, Berlusconi, Fogh Rasmussen and other Western leaders and by U.S. ambassador John Negroponte as well as by the former exile CIA hand and hand-picked prime minister Ayad Allawi.

In their Iraq people are angry, very very angry. They are hateful of the West that has promised them a better life and delivered them one that is, in all ways but one--that Saddam dictatorship is gone--much worse than under Saddam.

Bush recently asked Blair to move British troops from the south to the troubled central Iraq including Baghdad. We heard Margaret Hassan on video, "Please help me. The British people, tell Mr Blair to take the troops out of Iraq and not bring them here to Baghdad. That's why people like myself and Mr Bigley are abducted, and we might die."

BBC put it all in perspective: "Her plea follows UK Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon's announcement that 500 Black Watch soldiers and 350 support personnel will move from Basra to the US sector in central Iraq."

That is the what--not who--that murdered Margaret Hassan.

....................

Now And Then: 2004 vs 1860
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 2:22 pm 0 comments

 
WINNER TAKES ALL .........?
And now let's see what Mr Bush has won

Mark Fiore.com, November 3, 2004

- posted by ARYABHATT @ 7:44 am 0 comments

 
Post-Mortem--Let the Disobedience (and Real Work) Again
By Mickey Z., Counterpunch, November 3, 2004

"Liberals can understand everything but the people who don't understand them."
--Lenny Bruce

"Crying won't help you...praying won't do you no good."
--"When the Levee Breaks," --Led Zeppelin


So...it seems the shorter of the two rich straight white male Yale-educated war criminals won, huh? The rancher beat the windsurfer. George W. Bush finally knows what it feels like to win a presidential election and thus will remain the public face of the American Empire for a little while longer.

Wait...shhhh. If you listen carefully you can hear all those protestors dusting off their Hitler mustaches, Bush/Dick jokes, and "regime change begins at home" posters. Four more years for them, too. (Then again it was four more years for everyone on the planet...no matter who won.)
And what of the luminary Left who made it all look as easy as A-B-B?

So much for any delusions we might have had about the influence of Chomsky, Zinn, McMoore, Springsteen, and the rest. More people DID come out to vote in 2004 than in 2000...to vote Republican, that is. Vote or die? Time to run another marathon, P. Diddy. This publicity stunt was a dud.

It's not too early to say: Never again (now there's a rallying cry if I've ever heard one). Never again should we endure "radical" support for anything that even looks like a Democrat..and that goes double for when Hillary runs against Rudy. (Keep your "small differences" and "ledge" to yourself in 2008...please.)

To everyone who did not lose their nerve, hit the panic button, or pull a flip-flop even JFK2 would never attempt, well, here we are.

Now what?

The Nuremberg Tribunal (1945-1946) proclaimed: "Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience ... Therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."

Mind you, this is the Nuremberg Tribunal I'm quoting...not an anarchist collective or a dusty Thoreau tome.

This is an edict borne of a population that chose to remain silent in the face of its government's criminality.

Lucy Gwin, editor of the essential disability rights zine Mouth, once told me she believed the greatest gift that could ever been given to the American people is the permission to disobey.

We should consider that permission long granted...

- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:40 pm 0 comments

 
Four More Fears
Billmon.org, November 3, 2004

This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it -- that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable

--Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail
November 1972
..................................




- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:26 pm 0 comments

 
Wallow In Chaos, And Laugh
Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist, November 3, 2004

A Bush-leaning outcome and one enormous bitter pill--and you without your vodka

Oh dear God please not again.

Oh dear God please don't let it be all convoluted and depressing and messy and stupid and please don't let it all embarrass us on an international level all over again even more than it already has and even more than it already is and even more than we've endured lo these past four debilitating and soul-crushing years. Hello? Please? Is it already too late?

Why yes, yes it is.

And lo and behold, it's apparently another completely tortuous and entirely knotted presidential election, ... ...

Which is, well, simply staggering. Mind-blowing. Odd. Gut-wrenching. Colon-knotting. Eyeball-gouging. And so on.

You want to block it out. You want to rend your flesh and yank your hair and say no way in hell and lean out your window and scream into the Void and pray it will all be over soon, even though you know you're an atheist Buddhist Taoist Rosicrucian Zen Orgasmican and you don't normally pray to anything except maybe the gods of really exceptional sake and skin-tingling sex and maybe a few luminous transcendental deities that look remarkably like Jenna Jameson.

It simply boggles the mind: We've already had four years of some of the most appalling and abusive foreign and domestic policy in American history, some of the most well-documented atrocities ever wrought on the American populace and it's all combined with the biggest and most violently botched and grossly mismanaged war since Vietnam, and still much of the nation still insists in living in a giant vat of utter blind faith, still insists on believing the man in the White House couldn't possibly be treating them like a dog treats a fire hydrant.

Inexplicable?

Not really. People want to believe. They want to trust their leaders, even against all screaming, neon-lit evidence and stack upon stack of flagrant, impeachment-grade lie. They simply cannot allow that Dubya might really be an utter boob and that they are being treated like an abused, beaten housewife who keeps coming back for more, insisting her drunk husband didn't mean it, that she probably had it coming, that the cuts and bruises and blood and broken bones are all for her own good.

This election's apparent outcome, this heartbreaking proof of a nation split more deeply and decisively than ever,

--it simply reinforces the feeling among much of the educated populace: It is a weirdly embarrassing time to be an American.
It is jarring and oddly shattering and makes you rethink what it really means to be a part of this country.

The answer: It doesn't mean much at all. Not really. Not anymore.
...
...

Here's the thing: For tens of millions of us, it is simply unconscionable that we could possibly be led for another four years by a small and spoiled little man who has very little real idea what he's doing and even less of how the hell he got there. It would be funny, in a Adam Sandler, toilet-humored sort of way, were it not so poisonous and depressing. And yet it looks like we're stuck with it, like a shard of glass buried deep in the eye.

And the rest of the world? Well, it can only watch us and shake its collective head and wonder just what the hell is wrong with us, why so many millions of us would even consider re-electing the world's most inept and war-hungry and insanely inarticulate man to four more years of unchecked power, why our much-hyped much-coveted supposedly ultra-superior democratic system is so very deeply blotchy and knotty and spoiled.
...
...

And all signs point to the fact that the GOP steamroller appears to be just too powerful, just too well-oiled and blood soaked and fear inducing to be stopped just yet. After all, the Right has been working on this master plan and building their takeover strategy for about forty years. It's gonna take those of us working for change and progress and raw spiritual juice a little more than one or two to dissolve it away like the cancer it so obviously is.

Apparently, there are lessons yet to be learned. Apparently we must hit some sort of new low between now and 2008, attain some sort of seriously vicious status in the world before we will snap out of it. You think?
... ...

Maybe the best we can hope for, at this ominous and slightly sickening moment, is one hell of a lot more patience.
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:04 pm 0 comments

 
Simple but Effective: Why you keep losing to this idiot.
William Saletan, Slate.com, Nov. 3, 2004

[PT: Sigh. I really didn't want to have to write this.]

George W. Bush is going to win re-election. Yeah, the lawyers will haggle about Ohio. But this time, Democrats don't have the popular vote on their side. Bush does.
If you're a Bush supporter, this is no surprise. You love him, so why shouldn't everybody else?

But if you're dissatisfied with Bush—or if, like me, you think he's been the worst president in memory—you have a lot of explaining to do. Why don't a majority of voters agree with us? How has Bush pulled it off?

I think this is the answer: Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.
Bush is a very simple man. You may think that makes him a bad president, as I do, but lots of people don't—and there are more of them than there are of us. If you don't believe me, take a look at those numbers on your TV screen.

Think about the simplicity of everything Bush says and does. He gives the same speech every time. His sentences are short and clear. "Government must do a few things and do them well," he says.

True to his word, he has spent his political capital on a few big ideas: tax cuts, terrorism, Iraq. Even his electoral strategy tonight was powerfully simple: Win Florida, win Ohio, and nothing else matters. All those lesser states—Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Hampshire—don't matter if Bush reels in the big ones.

This is what so many people like about Bush's approach to terrorism. They forgive his marginal and not-so-marginal screw-ups, because they can see that fundamentally, he "gets it." They forgive his mismanagement of Iraq, because they see that his heart and will are in the right place. And while they may be unhappy about their economic circumstances, they don't hold that against him. What you and I see as unreflectiveness, they see as transparency. They trust him.
[...more]

- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:33 pm 0 comments

 
Leader:The Independent, November 3, 2004

A time of trepidation: America has voted for Bush, and the world must live with the consequences

A marathon campaign, a massive turnout and a long night of shifting fortunes have culminated in the result that many had feared. George Bush's victory comes as a bitter disappointment to those many Americans who had worked so hard for change and to the millions abroad who had desperately hoped to see a more progressive president in the White House.

So the result may not be to our liking, but it is conclusive, and we will have to live with it. This does not mean, however, that we do not contemplate the second Bush term with considerable trepidation. Another four years of a president in thrall to the religious right and the neo-conservatives is another four years in which the United States risks sliding back into an earlier age of bigotry and social injustice.

- posted by ARYABHATT @ 2:40 pm 0 comments

 
Deal with it
Martin Kettle, Comment: The Guardian, November 3, 2004

While the Republicans should be magnanimous in victory, the Democrats should acknowledge that this time around George Bush and his party have won a legitimate mandate, says Martin Kettle

Has the remarkable 2004 presidential election merely produced a repeat of the 2000 contest, proof that United States remains as much at war with itself in the aftermath of the second Bush election as it was after the first?

Judging by the closeness of the likely electoral college figures, it may look that way. But look more carefully.



Here is a big difference that really matters. In 2000 half a million more Americans voted for Al Gore than for George Bush.

Yesterday, on a radically increased turnout, nearly 4 million more voted for Bush than for John Kerry.
Here is another difference. In 2000, Bush took Florida by only 537 votes, a margin of a mere hundredth of a percentage point. Yesterday Bush captured the sunshine state by more than 360,000 votes, a clear majority of five full points. Another decisive change.

And here is a third. Four years ago, it is beyond doubt that Ralph Nader, running as a third party candidate, took enough votes in Florida and elsewhere to hand the White House to Bush. Yesterday, the Nader effect faded to negligibility.

But it was a sweet night for the Republicans in other ways too. In both houses of Congress, they strengthened their narrow advantage.

In the senate, where John Thune knocked off the Democratic minority leader Tom Daschle in South Dakota, Republican control is now locked in, another difference from 2000.

In the House, for the sixth election in a row, the Republicans retained and strengthened their control.
[...more]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 2:20 pm 0 comments

 
Bush Pledges To Earn The Support Of All Americans
MTV.com, Headlines, November 3, 2004

Less than an hour after Senator John Kerry conceded the 2004 election on Wednesday, President George W. Bush was finally able to say something his father never could:

"A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to a nation," he said. "The voters turned out in record numbers and delivered a historic victory."

Speaking at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., before a raucous, flag-waving crowd on Wednesday afternoon (November 3), Bush thanked Kerry for a "spirited" campaign, calling him "very gracious." He also reached out to those who voted for the Democratic challenger, calling for unity and — as Kerry had mentioned in his concession speech — a need to end the feelings of division in America.

"Today I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I need your support, and I will work hard to earn it," Bush said. "I will do all I can do to deserve your trust. ... We have one country, one Constitution and one future that binds us. And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America."

In accepting Kerry's concession and winning a second term in office, Bush brings to a close one of the most contentious, divisive and hotly contested elections in recent history.

As the clock struck midnight on the East Coast Tuesday night, Bush held a slim lead over Kerry in Electoral College votes, several key states remained up in the air, and pundits from coast to coast were declaring that the race for the White House would be coming down to the wire.

What a difference 15 hours can make. ... [...more]

- posted by ARYABHATT @ 1:34 pm 0 comments

 
Decision 2004: Fear Fatigue vs. Sheer Fatigue
Frank Rich, New York Times, November 1, 2004

... No president has worked harder than George W. Bush to tell his story as a spectacle, much of it fictional, to rivet his constituents while casting himself in an unfailingly heroic light.

Yet this particular movie may have gone on too long and have too many plot holes. It may have been too clever by half.

It may have given Mr. Kerry just the opening he needs to win.



... ...
As Mr. Bush said of the war to Matt Lauer in a rare moment of candor, quickly rescinded, "I don't think you can win it."
Especially if you've so bought into the myth of your own invulnerable star power that you failed to secure nearly 380 tons of explosives destined to blow up American troops.
... ...

The president hoped to give the tragedy of 9/11 a speedy happy ending by laying out a simple war pitting God's anointed against the evildoers, then by portraying Iraq as the 'central front' in that war, then by staging a stirring victory celebration weeks after that central battle began. But when our major combat operations turned out not to be 'over,' this purported final reel was seen as the one thing the American public hates even more than an unhappy ending - a false one.

The triumphalist cinema that had led up to it, culminating in the toppling of the Saddam statue, was, like 'Mission Accomplished' itself, too slick. It whetted our appetite for sequels.

But what came instead were pictures by upstart independent filmmakers hawking an alternative scenario to 'Shock and Awe': the charred corpses of civilian contractors strung up in Fallujah, the beheading of Nick Berg, the tableaux vivants of Abu Ghraib, the neat rows of 49 slaughtered Iraqi recruits decomposing in the sun.

The scenes the administration created to counter them all backfired. A surprise Thanksgiving visit by the president to the troops turned out to feature a 'show' turkey supplied by Halliburton.

An elaborately staged presidential D-Day address in Normandy was upended by the death of the war-winning president Mr. Bush's handlers hoped to clone, Ronald Reagan.

The handover of sovereignty was marred by the shot of Paul Bremer re-enacting the fall of Saigon by dashing to a helicopter to flee.

There hasn't been an unalloyed feel-good video out of Iraq since the capture of Saddam.

That was before last Christmas.
... [...more]

- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:59 pm 0 comments

 
ELECTION DAY PREDICTIONS
The Rittenhouse Review, November 01, 2004

Coming Soon . . . Morning in America--But For Real This Time


It's time I stepped up to the plate with Election Day predictions, joining so many fellow bloggers and pundits who already have published their expectations.

As you can see, I'm feeling cautiously optimistic as the campaign winds down to the final hours.

The tide is beyond having turned in favor of Kerry-Edwards, it's growing at the time when it counts most. It soon will be morning in America. But for real this time.



First, a few premises underlying the predictions:

I suspect Democrats, minorities, newly registered voters, and young voters have been undercounted in the polls;

turn-out will be far heavier than any time in the last two decades; the president's standing is too low for an incumbent to win, causing the so-called undecided voters to swing to the Democrats;

Osama bin Laden's effect on the election is nil;

domestic issues, including employment, wages, and health care, are more important to voters than pundits think and polls reveal;

and the passion of anti-Bush voters is a truly transformative phenomenon.




Swing States: Supporters listen to rock music as they wait for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry to arrive for an election eve rally in Cleveland, Monday, Nov. 1, 2004. (AP Photo/Mark Duncan)


And the predictions:



Blue: Kerry-Edwards Red: Bush-Cheney (Note: Map not drawn to scale.)


POPULAR VOTE

Kerry-Edwards: 52 percent
Bush-Cheney: 48 percent

ELECTORAL VOTE

Kerry-Edwards: 304 votes
Bush-Cheney: 234 votes


STATE DISTRIBUTION

Kerry-Edwards (22 states and D.C.): California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.

Bush-Cheney (28 states) Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.


U.S. SENATE

Democrats: 51 seats
Republicans: 49 seats


- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:30 pm 0 comments