So like many of the millions, no, billions of people around the World that are absolutely gutted that George Dubya Bush has been elected (for real this time!) for another 4 years, I’ve been seeking solace from the various serious and not so serious post-election commentaries online. Here are some of my favourites:

Klamtroob: What Happened

Analysis of a tragedy, by an informed and eloquent American. Thanks to Amy for pointing me to her friend’s blog a while ago.

How Soccer is Eating America

The best long-term hope for a more globally-aware America? Thanks to Scyld for finding this one.

Marry an American

Those good, good people to the North have started a website to help liberal Americans migrate to Canada through marriage. Thanks to Ricky for this one.

Dear Limey Assholes

The Guardian newspaper in the UK launched an initiative to help readers in Britain contact undecided voters in Clark County, Ohio. This page details some of the hilarious responses.

Daily Mirror front page, 4 Nov 2004

The headline of this low-brow left-wing Brit tabloid reads: “Doh! 4 More Years of Dubya! How can 59,054,087 People be so Dumb?” Thanks to George for sending this first, although I also got it from Scyld.

God Help America

More polemic from the Daily Mirror. Not elegantly written, but satisfyingly scathing.

More links as they (inevitably) arrive…

Canada is looking increasingly tempting since yesterday’s election, but the problem is that I now have a lot of friends in the U.S. — here’s a potential solution to all manner of problems:

Wait… Didn’t something a bit like like this happen in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest?

(Thanks for finding this H!)

Well, so much for my cautious pre-election optimism; it looks like Bush has narrowly won the U.S. Presidential election without cheating this time.

So now we have four more years of the Bush/Cheney Administration to look forward to. Four more years of:

• Divisive, simplistic, conservative Christian dogma;
  

• Bombastic isolationist American neo-imperialism;
• An incompetently-occupied Iraq with a growing bodycount;
  

• Global terrorism;
  

• Tax handouts for the rich, increasingly desparate poverty for the poor, and an ever-growing budget deficit for future generations to pay off;
  

• Chronic abuse of the environment;
  

• A nation divided.
  

Bollocks. This is even worse than the Thatcher years.

The U.S. Presidential Election is still too close to call, but I’m still cautiously optimistic that Kerry’s going to win.

So far, there have been no surprises, because most of the key “battleground states” are still too close to call. But voter turnout is huge, which is good for Kerry.

I’ve been watching (terrestrial broadcast) TV a little, but the quality of the coverage is even worse than the reception. Dan Rather, the veteran election anchor on CBS, is even less articulate than Bush! The BBC map on the web is the best presentation I’ve found so far.

However, looking at the map geographically can be quite depressing, because the whole middle of the U.S. is GOP (Republican) coloured… Fortunately most of these landlocked states voting for Bush are sparsely populated, and have very few Electoral College votes — like 3 or 5, compared to California’s 55 or New York’s 31. The New York Times has provided a more encouraging histogram map (click “View Map According to Electoral Votes”).

One thing is obvious — the result isn’t going to be clear until very late.

I think Kerry’s going to win the U.S. Presidential election today. Here’s why:

• Many former Republican voters have gone on record pledging to vote for Kerry this time around. I haven’t heard of any former Democrat voters swinging to the Bush side
  

• Apparently Dick “Sick” Cheney flew to Hawaii to campaign for the 4 Electoral College votes there today — surely an act of desperation!
  

• There are something like 14,000 volunteer lawyers standing by across the U.S. to assist in the case of voting irregularities
  

• Kerry looks increasingly confident, whereas Bush simply looks tired and dogmatic
  

• The opinion polls (which are notoriously inaccurate) are predicting it to be within a few percentage points — easily within the margin of error
  

• Kerry is well-known for making last-minute come-backs
  

• The Boston Red Sox won the World Series, ending the Curse of the Bambino
  

• A left-wing coalition party led by cancer doctor Tabaré Vázquez was elected at the weekend in Uruguay
  

• Because the alternate scenario is just too awful to contemplate
  

I had a very enjoyable Halloween weekend this year; on Saturday night I took Paul & Caroline, two friends visiting from London, to a Halloween Party at The Delancey. The party was fun; we met up with some other friends there, and it was a pretty good venue that I’d never been to before.

I even managed to come up with a low-effort (and low-cost) but reasonably effective Halloween costume idea, which involved only a 99 cent tube of red body paint, a black marker pen and a $6.99 plastic knife with fake blood inside it (I normally hate feeling obliged to come up with a costume at Halloween).

Then on Sunday after a pleasant day strolling around Brooklyn in the sun watching the kids trick-or-treating, and after Paul & Caroline had left for the airport, I went to see the cello rock band Rasputina play to a pretty much full house at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in Times Square. My friend and former colleague Zoë Keating is a member of Rasputina, and so after the gig I went back to Brooklyn in the tour bus with the band (dodging the many autograph hunters outside the venue!), helped unload the gear in DUMBO, and then caught up with Zoë over a pint or two.

And on top of all that, the weather was glorious all weekend!

Very sad news — John Peel, Radio 1’s veteran DJ since the station’s launch in 1967 (a year before I was born!) died of a heart attack in Cuzco, Peru today.

Pretty much anyone that ever listened to music radio in the UK over the last 30-odd years knew and loved the sound of John Peel’s voice, and his eclectic taste in music.

He will be greatly missed.

Because blood is thinner than oil!

http://www.bushrelativesforkerry.com/

The BBC News website has a great interactive infographic about the U.S. election; it’s an interactive map showing American voting patterns state by state.

I found the map of past elections, which adds an interactive timeline to the map, particularly fascinating; I never knew that Richard Nixon gained 520 of the total 538 Electoral College votes, winning in every single state except Massachusetts in 1972, for example, or that Reagan was returned with 525 votes in 1984, elected by every single state except Minnesota.

The best year for the Democrats, however, was 1964, when Lyndon Johnson was elected with 486 of the votes.

This is funny — the Lone Star Iconoclast, the local newspaper in Bush’s home town of Crawford, Texas, with a print circulation of approximately 900, has caused something of a kerfuffle by endorsing John Kerry! Apparently readership has plummeted, but the editors are receiving letters of support from all over the World.