'Muslims do not hate our freedom, but rather they hate our policies [the report says]. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the long-standing, even increasing, support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and the Gulf states. Thus, when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy.'

"Wrinkles aside, The Herald count confirmed that Bush's message sold in a part of the state where many voters may be Democrats by registration only.
'They're not going to vote for a Northeast liberal,' said Lafayette County Judge Harlow Land, director of the county canvassing board."

It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service [forming the U.S. government] had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

Webb maintains that Scots-Irish attitudes form the bedrock of American society, especially among the working class. Scots-Irish culture has produced American presidents from Andrew Jackson to Bill Clinton, soldiers from Ulysses S. Grant to George Patton, pioneers, preachers, and others whose most common characteristics may be described as fierce individualism, persistent egalitarianism, and a strong sense of personal honor. Perhaps the most visible examples of broad and ongoing Scots-Irish legacy are the fundamentalist Christianity (a potent combination of Scottish Calvinism and headstrong populism) of America's Bible Belt and country music.

"Born Fighting is going to terrify many people in academia, journalism, and book publishing: those Leftist 'elites' who also hated and feared Mel Gibson's films Braveheart, The Patriot, and The Passion of the Christ. Many of them will become hysterical in their attempts to smear this book and its author."

Making sure you know the basis for my choices after the incident is as important to me as knowing how the incident went down. I did not in any way feel like I had captured some kind of "prize" video. In fact, I was heartsick. Immediately after the mosque incident, I told the unit's commanding officer what had happened. I shared the video with him, and its impact rippled all the way up the chain of command. Marine commanders immediately pledged their cooperation.
...For those who don't practice journalism as a profession, it may be difficult to understand why we must report stories like this at all -- especially if they seem to be aberrations, and not representative of the behavior or character of an organization as a whole.
...So here, ultimately, is how it all plays out: when the Iraqi man in the mosque posed a threat, he was your enemy; when he was subdued he was your responsibility; when he was killed in front of my eyes and my camera -- the story of his death became my responsibility.

You see photos of the violence committed by the insurgents on the news already, and there is no need to post them here. This website exists to balance things by presenting photos that don't make it onto the news. The point is that there is loss on both sides. But if you insist that the two-year old with his leg blown off is one of the bad guys, then there is no arguing with you.

So many civilian deaths were reported in Fallujah that the researchers threw out the data, reasoning that the tremendous mortality rate in that city could not be extrapolated to the rest of Iraq. If the Fallujah data were included, the group's estimate of Iraqi casualties would have tripled, to 300,000.

"The Islands, which is hands down the strangest of the nine nations, is the entire Caribbean Rim and what some purists like to think of as the tip of South America, or Venezuela. Its center is in South Florida and Miami. The reason that it is so strange is that its No. 1 industry is drugs: $35 to $55 billion a year, pushing Exxon for No. 1 on the Fortune 500 list.
...In Miami this is affecting everything because these $100 bills are coming home and buying shopping centers and office buildings. It's affecting the entire economy."

The best thing the Democrats can do is move out to the 'burbs. You'll survive, believe me. I did.

Baker County, Florida, on the Georgia border for instance. 69 percent of voter registered Democrats. 24 percent Republicans. Yet President Bush got 7,738. And Senator Kerry, just 2,180. In Holmes County, in the panhandle, seven Democrats for every two Republicans in the district. Bush beat Kerry 6,410 to 1,810. In Dixie County, 77.5 percent registered Democrats, Bush 4,433, Kerry 1,959. Lafayette County, 83 percent Democratic, Bush, 2,460. Kerry, 845. In Liberty County, Bristol, Florida, 88 percent of registered voters there are Democrat. 8 percent Republican. Bush, 1,927. Kerry, 1,070.
Five examples in 29 counties with decided Democratic margins that suddenly voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Bush.

• From three University of Michigan profs, changes the shape of the U.S. to reflect population.
  
• This one, reproduced from the NY Times, shows colored spots for voters rather than shading in a whole state or county.
  
• Another NY Times map changes the shape of the U.S.
  
• From Princeton prof. Robert Vanderbei, this one shades the map by counties and proportion of the vote, but also by population.
  
• This geography blog has links to more maps and discussion.
  
• Tax Prof Blog shows that most of the states getting the most federal money are red (Bush) states....and blue states provide more of the money.
  
• Via Blogging of the President, a fascinating map showing the U.S. divided into states that make much more sense for the electoral vote: it makes each state proportional so rural states don't have an advantage. (I like 'Everglades' for South Florida and 'Smokies' for mountainous NC, TN, GA and VA. Some of the names are strange and might require some discussion.)
  
• Blogger Ken Layne points out that the results maps seem to echo this map.
  

"...we lost because they are better at the game.
We're the little mom and pop hardware stores, dress shops, and shoe stores on Main Street. We have a little merchant's association that meets once a month at the coffee shop to talk about the parking meter situation and maybe pitch in a few bucks for a co-op ad or two. We volunteer at the local charities and sponsor the Down Home Music and Crafts Festival every year.
They are Wal-Mart. They operate out of taxpayer-funded mega-developments with lots of free parking. At their glass and steel corporate headquarters they have the worlds largest retail/consumer database and the most advanced technology ever devised for managing their worldwide operations with ruthless efficiency. They have the purchasing and marketing power to create or destroy entire industries and they rule their suppliers and employees with an iron fist to keep them in line."

"Be sure to crow about Bush's "mandate", but be sure not to mention the fact that 55,592,568 (and counting) of us disagree. And when you're talking about Bush's "historic victory" be sure not to mention that Kerry, too, got more votes than any previous president in history. Idiots."

His support was up an astonishing 10 points among those with no high school education, a traditional Democratic stronghold.
...his support was up by 10 points in urban areas and down by 2 points in rural communities, including a surprising 9 point decrease from residents of small towns.
...the gun vote was a net negative for Bush this year compared to 2000.
...Religious belief doesn't seem to have made much difference in the election.
...Bush apparently has done a great job of persuading people who think the economy is doing well that his policies were responsible.
...my tentative conclusion is that the "moral values" vote is a red herring. It played no bigger a role this year than in 2000.
Terrorism played a bigger role, mostly by being a more important issue to a lot more people.
And that good old mainstay the economy was the most important of all.

"...believing that 9/11 was a vast, right-wing conspiracy is as pointless at this stage as believing in the likelier possibility that the exit polls were actually as accurate in Ohio in Florida as they were everywhere else. Maybe it will all come out someday, but there's precious little we can do about it now. Who are we going to complain to? The authorities?
..."Saddam was killing them too." I doubted that even Saddam has ever killed as many Iraqis in a year and a half as we've just polished off, but I let that pass.
...I have a long history of pre-announcing The End of the World As We Know It. Clear back when I was a budding young libertarian, I believed that Barry Goldwater's crushing defeat by Lyndon Johnson was the end of conservatism in America. Boy, was I ever wrong about that.
...I will still believe that truly free societies maintain mechanisms to promote the even distribution of wealth. I will go on believing that liberty is worth living for and not to be sacrificed so readily to fear. I will go on believing that my daughters should not be forced to bear children they are not prepared to raise properly and I will not forget that people make mistakes.
...This will be a tricky four years. In addition to a sense of humor, which should have plenty of dark meat to feast on, we will need cunning, courage, clarity, and, as I say, forgiveness."

"...as a result of the passage of the 28th Amendment in 2006 and its ratification by the states the next year, in 2008 Mr. Bush announced his candidacy for a third term. He was overwhelmingly defeated that November by former President Bill Clinton.
...President Bush led the United States into four wars, oversaw the dismantling of Social Security and Medicare, and enforced a drastic shrinking of elementary, secondary, and collegiate education.
...He is survived by his parents."

"Canada, in particular, is no longer a paradise awaiting American dissidents: whereas in 1970 roughly 20,000 Americans became permanent residents of Canada, that number has dropped over the last decade to an average of just about 5,000."
In France, "...Assimilation is reserved for persons of non-French descent who are able to prove that they are more French than American, having mastered the language as well as the philosophy of the French way of life. "

• Open Secrets: Money Wins. The Center for Responsive Politics, which does such a great job of keeping track of campaign financing and its effect on government, looked at the races and determined that most winners were the ones who gathered and spent the most money.
  
• Simple but Effective: Slate's political editor William Saletan says that's what George W. Bush is:
  
  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.
  ...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."
  
  
• Mark Lane, at Florida Blog, discussing the Martinez-Castor Senate race, said: "...the guy who goes negative the hardest wins."
  
• Moral values: it's what people cited most as their reason to vote for Bush. Beliefnet has the statistics.
  
• The Maps: here are a couple maps that can help focus on exactly who voted how: USA Today shows vote by county. It makes the red/blue even more obvious...even in the states that went for Kerry the votes were mostly in the cities (and, maybe, some predominately black rural counties). Boing Boing has a map by a reader that changes the stark red/blue states to shades of purple, showing how close it really was....
  
• Gary Wills, in the New York Times (The Day the Enlightenment Went Out), emphasizes the religious question:
  
  "This election confirms the brilliance of Karl Rove as a political strategist. He calculated that the religious conservatives, if they could be turned out, would be the deciding factor.
  ...America, the first real democracy in history, was a product of Enlightenment values - critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences. Though the founders differed on many things, they shared these values of what was then modernity."
  But, he says, the Enlightenment is over in this country. America is now a fundamentalist nation.
  "...Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in Al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists."
  
  
• Joel Achenbach, in the Washington Post ("A Victory for 'Values', but Whose?) says it's the Gay thing:
  
  "...gay marriage now seems essential to any conversation about the 2004 election.
  ..Bush won 61 percent of the white male vote in a nation that, despite everything you hear in the progressive media, is still swarming with white guys."
  
  And quotes a minister who voted for Bush: ""The Democratic Party stands for, by and large, the dismantling of marriage as we've known it as a civilization," he said."
  
• Bill Bennett, in the National Review, says pretty much the same thing.
  

After the election results are in, I promise to:

Support the President, even if I didn't vote for him.

Criticize the President, even if I did vote for him.

Uphold standards of civilized discourse in blogs and in media while pushing both to be better.

Unite as a nation, putting country over party, even as we work together to make America better.

I was all set to vote for George Bush even after finding out that he wouldn't let me marry Mary Cheney if I wanted to...But in the end, with the fate of the free world at stake and all, I've got to go with the guy who would admit that sending thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians to their deaths to protect us from imaginary weapons was, in fact, a mistake.)

• DCCC Resultron claims to have the results as they come in. Get by RSS or IM, or See all results on one page.
  
• Electoral College Vote Calculator also will have results as they come in.

Oh, but these young people never vote, the tales read. They will this time, and because of a one-word issue.
Draft.

Blackwater added a 36 percent markup, plus its overhead costs, and sent the bill to a Kuwaiti company that ordinarily runs hotels. That company, Regency Hotel, tacked on its costs for buying vehicles and weapons and a profit and sent an invoice to a German food services company called ESS that cooked meals for the troops.
ESS added its costs and profit and sent its bill to Halliburton, which also added overhead and a profit and presented the final bill to the Pentagon.
It's nearly impossible to say whether the cost for Zovko doubled, tripled or quadrupled. Congressional investigators and defense auditors have had to fight the primary contractor, Halliburton, for details of the spending. The companies say the subcontracts are confidential and won't discuss them.