AddieStan

Over the course of the last week, your blogstress has received all manner of angry, amusing and rueful missives and graphics from her faithful readers. Bai Lon, our beloved White Dragon, was the first to send the now-famous "Jesusland" map (admittedly funny); Beltway Breaker sent some witty screeds from the London Daily Mirror , the fabulous Frankie G. (your blogstress's partner in musical crimes) passed on a vast array of visual gags and expressions. Others sent evidence of rage and frustration, as well. Though the impulse to post on these was strong, and your Webwench went so far as to request links to much of the amusing material, in the end she refrained, momentarily obeying the Victoria's Secret angel on her shoulder who whispered, "What does this do for us?" There being no shortage of cyberspace available, indeed designed, for the venting of spleen, your cybertrix has declared, for the time being, her breakaway republic to be a spleen-free zon...

As Arlen Specter (R-Penn.), upon winning his fifth term to the U.S. Senate, prepared to assume the chairmanship of the chamber's powerful Judiciary Committee, he let it be known that he was in no mood to pussyfoot around. When asked about the kind of jurists likely to ascend to the Supreme Court, Specter said, "When you talk about judges who would change the right of a woman to choose, or overturn Roe v. Wade, I think that is unlikely." The media promptly reported Specter's comments as a warning to the president when considering nominations, and the right went nuts. James Dobson, creator of the Focus on the Family empire, said on ABC's "This Week," that Specter "is a problem, and he must be derailed." According to the Washington Post 's Susan Schmidt : Senate offices were swamped with calls about Specter late last week, and the uproar is "not going to go away," Dobson said. "Republican senators know they've got a probl...

Okay, America, so we're screwed. Time to put on our thinking caps and figure out, what next? Hey, your blogstress has this idea: How 'bout organizing around something other than an election? The liberals, progressives, and people who just like having some civil rights, did a mighty fine job of organizing folks and getting them to the polls. It would be a shame if, like too many liberal endeavors, that was declared "Mission Accomplished," because we know that the real war has just begun--so strip off those flight suits, kids. One thing your cybertrix is hearing over and over again from people just back from organizing in the field is what an uplifting and inspiring experience it was. It seems not to matter where they were--Columbus, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, East Cleveland, Seattle--they've all come back in a state of subdued bliss. Let us not forget how Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed built the Christian Coalition out of the mailing lists from Robertson's...

As much as it pains your Webwench to extend the ever-widening platform afforded the we've-got-a-three-percent-mandate-so-get-outta-the-way other side, it would be unfair of your blogstress not to commend Barry Johnson of The Hopeful Cynic for his thorough examination of why the exit polls were so off the mark in the presidential election. Since polls drive so much of the campaign process, this is a must-read for those who wish to consider the mechanics of confusion. Read Johnson's piece on the polls Of course, your blogstress prefers to believe that the exit polls were actually correct, and the voting machines just wrong. (Which is actually possible, even in a republic as great as ours.) More likely, though, Bush did really win by his slender margin--by boxing up people's fears and selling them in swing states as religion. NOTE: Why can't these self-described Christians just read the New Testament, and do as Jesus instructed them? As our friend, the Sp...

WASHINGTON, D.C.--This morning, 9:00 a.m., intersection of North Capitol and D Streets, NW: On a bicycle, a sixty-something lady in a billowy raincoat of Wedgewood blue, pedaling away in navy-blue nylons and matching pumps. Nice legs.

Our friend Mallemaroking sends this note of encouragement: Somehow, we will muddle through this. I love this country to the depths of my soul and I refuse to believe that BushCo is what we are about. We will sail to a better place and fulfill the opportunity that was given us. Of this, I have no doubt.

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Please forgive, dear readers, your delinquent cybertrix for being a bit behind the eightball in posting all your brilliant comments. You all wrote with such a fury, and your Webwench is presently not up to doing much more than lolling about the Oppo Factory in her cat suit. Do bear with.

From your blogtress's good friend, Deep South (who had the misfortune of lending his well-muscled form to one of your Webwench's many ill-planned moves between apartments), comes this: As of today, November 3, 2004, my life is proceeding along happily with the assumption that President Bartlett (a.k.a. Martin Sheen) retains control of the White House. I can rest assured that he will use force abroad only as a last resort, that he will attempt to unite the country, that he will maintain a balanced budget, and that he is acutely aware of history and the true dynamics that drive the world. I will get my news only from NBC on Wednesdays , at 9:00-10:00 p.m. Denial is bliss. Deep goes on to rhetorically ask whether reality could really be that much worse than his alternate televised universe, only to arrive at the conclusion that, well, it could--and probably would--be, but only should he wish to marry the man of his dreams ("I'd have to FIND one first, right...

AMTRAK 79, BALTIMORE, MD.--"Remember, they're not done counting in Ohio," said the beautiful young man who drove your blogstress to the Trenton train station this morning in the hotel van. "Keep hope alive," he added, as he handed your Webwench her bags. Your cybertrix has begun to wonder whether hope isn't a pursuit best suited to the young. While she refuses to embrace cynicism (though she has been guilty of periodic dalliances with that cad), a sense of weary sadness so fills her being that she finds it difficult to feel much of anything else. Your écrivaine would feel less depleted, she thinks, had the president ever given her reason to believe that he had the humility to read the fact of the evenly-divided electorate as something less than a mandate for his earth-raping, pocket-picking, Constitution-mangling, innocent-killing agenda. And his deployment of the politics of trauma in his own cause--his blatant exploitation of the 9-11 horror...

From our dear friend, the Composer, comes this: Well, I feel the wind knocked out of me: it feels like an onrushing train--coming toward me. However wonderful it is to know so many people voted in this election, the results are horrifying....If I were a theist, I'd pray for interesting and effective art.

TRENTON, N.J.--Not having slept for days, and only fitfully for weeks, your cybertrix is calling it a night, in order to actually make an 8:00 a.m. train back to our nation's capital. Hang in there, America. We'll figure it out.

"We have waited four years for this victory, and we can wait one more night," Edwards told a weary crowd in Boston. Rather and Ed Bradley say it could be as many as 10 days before Ohio is decided, since the election's outcome may be decided by the provisional ballots delivered by the African-American wards of Cleveland and Cincinnatti. Why so many provisionals there? Republican challengers at polling places, it seems. Looks like Iowa is another cliffhanger.

TRENTON, N.J.--Josh Marshall is keeping watch on what he calls Republican delaying tactics in Ohio, a story he says the media are ignoring (like so many others). Read Marshall on Ohio Your blogstress was told by a poll-watcher on the ground in Columbus (on what is now yesterday) that the president's inpromptu visit to his Columbus headquarters at noon on Election Day served to shut down a number of streets in a Democratic ward. Because the Columbus drop-in was billed, not as a campaign appearance, but as a visit to thank his Columbus volunteers, the media apparently refrained from noting Mr. Bush's violation of a long-standing tradition in presidential politics: no politicking on Election Day after the polls open. But what do you want from a guy who thinks the Constitution was made to be broken?

TRENTON, N.J.--Guess they're not loving that U.S.A. Patriot Act up there in libertarian heaven, otherwise known as New Hampshire. Rather points out that New Hampshire is the first state tonight to go a different way than it did in 2000, and it went for Kerry. Nonetheless, it looks as though a Kerry victory is becoming ever less likely.

TRENTON, N.J.--Well, the Senate may remain in Republican hands, the House definitely will, and the White House is lookin' mighty red at this late hour. In this distressing environment comes this bit of good news: Coors is goin' down in his bid to become a U.S. senator from Colorado. It's hard to get much more hypocritical than the Coorses of Golden, Colorado. The brewing dynasty provided more than seed money for the religious right (they basically bankrolled Paul Weyrich and his Heritage Foundation) and continue to embrace that platform, all the while courting gay male patrons by sponsoring gay festivals (leather parties and the like) that feature some activities which, in the the lock-down minds of morally superior righties, should ensure the imprisonment of the participants, if not their death by stoning.

The smoldering Gang of One responds to your blogstress's post labeled Apocalypse : Ché was a medical school student; Castro, a minor league baseball player; Pancho Villa (née Doroteo Arango), a cattle rustler; Emiliano Zapata, a humble farmer; Mao was a peasant; Lenin was a lawyer. Hitler was the only "revolutionary" who considered himself an artist. Well, probably not the only one (your cybertrix comes to mind)--just the only one among the smoldering Gang's selected group. Intriguing nonetheless.

TRENTON, N.J.--Looks like Ohio will be decided by the county in which Cleveland resides, a single Midwestern county could determine the outcome of the election if the verdict goes negative for Kerry. They all say that he can't win without Ohio, and they're still counting votes in Cuyahoga County--and they figure to be doing so until about 4:00 a.m. From an election-night party in Washington, D.C., the Internationalist informed your cybertrix hours ago (10:55, to be exact) that it would be all about Ohio. About the chance of the election being decided before daybreak, Rather said to Shieffer: "I used to say that if a frog had side pockets, he'd carry a handgun." Your blogstress is not sure what that means, but you gotta hand it to these old guys girding their loins for an all-nighter while your more youthful Webwench finds herself fading.

TRENTON, N.J.--Dan Rather to Kerry Communications Director Joe Lockhart: "I know you'd rather walk through a furnace in a gasoline suit than lose Ohio." This is why Rather is still worth watching on election nights. The forced folkisms are at least amusing, giving the viewer a reason to suffer through all the mathematical electoral-vote scenarios run across the television screen. Your blogstress's favorite harkens back to 1992, when Rather referred to Ross Perot as someone regarded by some folks as being "half a bubble off plumb."

TRENTON, N.J.--Here at Kerry's New Jersey election-night headquarters (Marriott Trenton Yard), the energy is pretty low. True, the state was called early in the evening, after weeks of yo-yo polls that yielded an exhausted sense of relief among the troops once the dead-heat surveys were handily defied. As your cyberscribe blogs, a hard-core group surrounds a large-screen TV in a hotel lounge, fretting and subdued--in fact, exuding a sense of quiet so uncharacteristic of the local culture so as to be downright odd. Earlier in the evening, Governor-not-elect Richard J. Codey* addressed the crowd, seeming like a nice man--which, in New Jersey politics, could account for the perplexed silence of the partisans herein. *Readers will recall the resignation of New Jersey Governor James McGreevey, effective November 15th, which propels the ascendence of the state Senate president to the governor's mansion. McGreevey, who resigned in the midst of a patronage scandal that involved...

TRENTON, N.J.--Drat! Your blogstress just learned that nothing she had posted earlier actually published until now! And it's f'n Election Day (Jersey dialect). Although your blogstress published no witticisms of her own, she had published a heartfelt missive from the smoldering Gang of One, and her own little set piece about a set-to on a Washington, D.C., bus. Really, really she did!