So, who are they?

The people who voted for Bush, I mean. I spent 6 years living in the US and in that time met one person who professed to be a Republican (but even he said that Bush was a disgrace to the party and he wouldn't be voting for him), and one person who never actually came out and said it, but who I suspect was a Bush fan. In SIX years. Now, admittedly I was living inpossibly the most liberal county in the most liberal state in the union (Windham County, Vermont), but even so, I'd expect to have met some people who supported Bush, given that there are apparently nearly 60 million of them out there.

It's the cretins who called the TV stations in horror at the exposure of half of Janet Jackson's right breast at the Superbowl isn't it? The people who were so appalled at such a display of indecency that they couldn't help but complain. "It's a family event" they cried in mock indignation. This in a half time show that was interspersed with ads for impotency drugs. What they were really worried about obviously was the idea of a white man and a black woman doing such a show. That kind of interracial sexuality is obviosuly quite out of place in middle America. Britney's breast would have been OK (unless of course it was exposed by Puff Daddy or someone), but Janet's? No thank you. If people had complained about the mind-numbing awfulness of the "entertainment" on view, then fine, but no, it was the sight of a breast on TV. A black breast.

What conclusions can one darw from this, and the election that followed? Half of all voting Americans are racist homophobes with limp dicks. It's fairly simple. Should the rest of the world accept these people with open arms and say, OK we need to reach out to you? No. No more than we should reach out to any other fundamentalist nut jobs - whether they be Al Qaida, the Taliban, the Settler movement, or the Saudi regime. Tolerance is a good thing. Tolerance of intolerance is not.

Bush will now claim to reach out across the divide. This will mean hosting a breakfast and inviting some Democrats, and telling them "we're going to ban abortion, and criminalise homosexuality, and you're all either with us or your against us. The US public have spoken, and you have no choice". This is not reaching out and it should not be confused as such.

Screw them. Keep fighting the regime in Washington. Keep arguing, keep the media on their toes and don;t let them get away with their ridiculous propagandist bias of the last four years. The world, and the USA needs people to keep fighting. If you need proof, check out www.sorryeverybody.com

And then, to see the latest questions of vote rigging and odd stuff that went on at the polls, Greg Palast has written a good article here (His book "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" by the way, is an excellent one): http://www.tompaine.com/articles/kerry_won_.php

And finally an interesting picture among some of the figures from Ohio...

Franklin County, OH: Gahanna 1-B Precinct
638 TOTAL BALLOTS CAST

US Senator:
Fingerhut (D) - 167 votes
Voinovich (R) - 300 votes

US President:
Kerry (D) - 260 votes
Bush (R) - 4,258 votes

And we are told that this wasn't fixed? Bollocks.