THIS MODERN WORLD

Still not sure what to think on this. On the one hand, it seems unlikely that the Republicans stole not only the presidency, but all those Congressional races, and all those anti-gay-marriage initiatives as well. Occam’s Razor would tend to suggest that the country simply tilted slightly to the right this time around. On the other hand — well, remember who we’re dealing with. They stole one election already, and they spent four years lying about pretty much everything. Anyway, I’m remaining agnostic on this one for the time being, but Bob has some interesting stuff up:

Without getting into all the state-by-state details — I’ll let Prof. Freeman tend to the numbers — what happened last Tuesday, where a wide variety of extremely accurate exit polls suddenly turned out to be at the extremes or even beyond their margin of error, was exceedingly unlikely — even if the benefits of these errors had been evenly distributed.

But they weren’t evenly distributed. They favored Bush. Over and over and over. That’s the coin flipping. And flipping. And still coming up heads. Heads in Florida. Heads in Ohio. Heads in a bunch of other swing states (even while the exit polls remained relatively accurate elsewhere). Almost everywhere the election was close, the coin just kept coming up heads.

How bad was it?

According to Dr. Freeman’s analysis… 1 in 250,000,000.

One in a quarter of a billion.

In simpler terms, that 50-50 coin flip just came up “heads” almost thirty times in a row.

One thing I do believe: saying that something is a “conspiracy theory” doesn’t automatically discredit it. People conspire all the time. Anyone who’s ever had a job should understand this. Any time two people try to hide something from their boss — that’s a conspiracy.

Got a couple of ebay auctions up — a very rare poster and an original strip. A note about the latter — over the years I’ve gotten a lot of email asking if I ever sell original art. Mostly I haven’t, because even when I was working in pen and ink, the “final” art was the product of several layers of xerography and zip-a-tone, not exactly what most comic art collectors have in mind when they want to buy a pen-and-ink original. But since about 2000, my artwork has been created entirely digitally, which means there is a finite supply of the pre-digital originals. On top of which, I almost never sell them. So that’s got to be worth something, right? We’ll see…

Inspired by this:

Several ABC affiliates have announced that they won’t take part in the network’s Veterans Day airing of “Saving Private Ryan,” saying the acclaimed film’s violence and language could draw sanctions from the Federal Communications Commission.

Stations replacing the movie with other programming Thursday include Cox Television-owned stations in Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C., three Midwest stations owned by Citadel Communications.

“Under strict interpretation of the rules, we can’t run that programming before 10 p.m.,” said Ray Cole, president of Citadel, which owns WOI-TV in Des Moines, KCAU-TV in Sioux City and KLKN-TV in Lincoln, Neb.

The Oscar-winning film includes a violent depiction of the D-Day invasion and profanity.

“We have attempted to get an advanced waiver from the FCC and, remarkably to me, they are not willing to do so,” Cole told The Des Moines Register…

Cole cited recent FCC actions and last week’s re-election of President Bush as reasons for replacing “Saving Private Ryan” on Thursday with a music program and the TV movie “Return to Mayberry.”

“We’re just coming off an election where moral issues were cited as a reason by people voting one way or another and, in my opinion, the commissioners are fearful of the new Congress,” Cole said.

Hat tip: Jim M.

I don’t mind the monkey mail, the gloating conservatives who haven’t been this happy since Pulling-Down-the-Statue Day. But this sort of crap really gets on my nerves:

Many of us look to blogs as a gateway to more accurate, unbiased information than is available on the mainstream media. Your readers deserve better.

You, like Kerry, might find it easiest to simply walk away from a tough fight, but he owes the American people better than that (and you owe us readers and your supporters something too) …because it is about all of our votes counting not about him winning or losing.

And you as an alternative news resource owe us readers the opportunity to make up our minds by at least discussing the news of widespread irregularities in the election process.

Or are you so battle weary that you have resigned to the fact that we no longer live in a democracy?

What can I even say? To this reader specifically: if you feel you are “owed” anything you are in the wrong place. Go away. Go elsewhere. Your expectations far surpass anything you will ever find here, and you will only be disappointed.

…sorry, just had to get that one off my chest. You know, straw, camel’s back, blah blah blah. (Minor edits.)

Mine, that is. The word “unbelievable” no longer has meaning. What am I going on about? Why, Bush’s choice for Attorney General, of course (via Willis).

Gonzales then laid out startlingly broad arguments that anticipated any objections to the conduct of U.S. soldiers or CIA interrogators in the future. “As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war,” Gonzales wrote to Bush. “The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians.” Gonzales concluded in stark terms: “In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.”