USA Today Story
You might be able to find video on MSNBC, but they don’t like Macs over there.

My political compass
Economic Left/Right: -4.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.28

I still don’t understand. The Daily Show had a good segment the thanked the Red States for saving us from ourselves. The blue states have to deal with terrorism and gays all the time so the fact that we voted for Kerry shows that we don’t know what we are doing and the Red States have a better grasp of the situation being able to view it from afar.

I’m also trying to figure out how these people can have views that are so different from mine but I can’t grasp how you can have any different view. Here are some examples of what I think are similar situations, will be especially helpful because I couldn’t quite word that last sentence correctly:

Leno gets better ratings than Letterman: This has always bothered me. Did people automatically set their TVs to watch Carson and haven’t been able to figure out how to change that? The Tonight Show is not funny, I enjoyed the Late Late Show with Kilborn much more than I’ve ever enjoyed The Tonight Show. When Conan takes over in five years people are going to flip out and not understand what Conan is doing, since he is actually funny. My fear is that NBC will water down Conan for The Tonight Show. Just like Jay, from what I’ve been told he was funny before The Tonight Show. Of course comparing anyone to Letterman in my mind is a losing battle. He is a legend. If I was old enough to have watched his NBC show and see him get passed over for The Tonight Show I probably would never have watched NBC again (I probably would have broken that rule to watch Ed, but that’s it). What was I talking about?

Keeping with 11:30pm comedy … Tough Crowd: This brings in another issue I wanted to complain about. Thursday was the last episode. Most of you probably didn’t know there was a first one. It was a Politically Incorrect-type show hosted by Colin Quinn and it came on after the Daily Show. It was actually on for two years, I started watching at the beginning of the second year. Almost every night it was the funniest show I saw all day, usually more laughs than the Daily Show. The ratings were always low (but to be expected on Comedy Central if you’re not South Park or The Daily Show) and it got a lot of bad reviews. There were a few regulars that were on a few times a week and then other comedians came on. They talked about serious issues (sometimes) and weren’t afraid to say what they were thinking (even if it upset almost everyone). It was fun because everyone knew each other, they all took shots at each other and only in a few occasions did someone get offended. That one was a reach.

Country Music: I don’t get it. My parents listen to it, my sister does, I know lots of people at school here that enjoy it. I don’t get it. Why do I need two channels for country music? Its the same song everytime. It makes my ears hurt. I don’t know why its called country, I wouldn’t have it in my country if I had the choice. I think this may be what divides us from them. I think if we could figure out how to write country music we could reshape their thinking. Think about it, find someone who sounds southern, give him a guitar, have him complain about a few things, and throw in some liberal talking points. Bang, you immediately have a split electorate, they won’t know what to think. Do we believe Toby Keith or the Healthcare Welfare Gays-are-OK Chicks?

As for Revenge:

End Red State Welfare. Its more like Midwest State Welfare, but those are red states so that’s the title its been given from what I’ve been reading. These states would have to learn to be a little more self sufficient, can they handle it? I think we should find out.

Boycott Red State Quarters. Just throw them out (don’t tell anyone I don’t think its legal).

Split the Country Up. I’d like to run for President of the Northeast States (and California) of America. We are going to drag Cali around and stick it somewhere in the Atlantic. We won’t have a lot of open land so we’ll have to import quite a bit but that will be all from Canada. The key to our success: No Oil Required.

The sweetest revenge requires the administration to continue screwing up for four more years (it will be tough to keep up the pace, but I have confidence). The goal is to get the entire country to be in such confusion and despair that they won’t vote Republican. We trot out Obama and Clinton (of the Hilary variety). Come Jan 20, 2009 the red states regain consciousness realize what happened and … wait, I’m having too much fun.

Red State Welfare – Something is wrong with the system here. I understand that it isn’t going to be even but if I ever hear someone from South Dakota complain, wait, I’ve never going to meet anyone from South Dakota.

State-by-State IQ – This one is self explanatory, you should have figured this out on your own. Thanks to Evan

O.K., Folks: Back to Work – Good column from The NY Times. Thanks to Uncle Bob

County by County Map – This one is always fun/scary.

PA Counties – You can see Montgomery County (home) there in a light blue and Centre County (school) barely red.

17 Reasons Not to Slit Your Wrists…by Michael Moore – Michael Moore goodness. When I posted this it was on the main page so it might not be there anymore.

The networks, at least last night as I refuse to watch them anymore, kept saying how ‘moral values’ determined the election. How moral values and the Republican Party are connected is not apparent to me. I guess my general belief of what defines moral values is that you care about your fellow human being, thats it. That means everyone should have the same rights and be free to make their own decisions based on what they think is right, as long as those choices do not harm anyone else. They should not be forced to follow laws enacted based on the religious beliefs of a radical minority. Eleven states had ballot questions about gay marriage and every single one of them voted that it should be outlawed. Granted in many of these states no one has ever seen a gay person, but still the fact that a law will be made giving a group of people less rights than another group is not only unconstitutional, but its morally wrong. The concept of marriage under the law should be nothing more than it is now, a civil union between two people. In this sense marriage has no religious connotations its strictly in the eyes of the state. A church or religion has every right to not perform or accept a gay marriage in the religious view. Perhaps the word marriage should be defined only as a religious term and civil union be used in the political sense. They are not the same thing and its important to make a distinction. This issue will become a problem across more of the country in the coming years. It will be worse before it gets better. Eventually everyone will get over whatever their fear is and realize that allowing gay marriage does not mean that you must be in a gay marriage. The fear is this sort of religious influence in a debate will bring back the abortion fight, which is just what we need. This time around a few of the Justices will need to be replaced. I’m fairly certain a few of them have been dead for a few years already, they never leave the bench; The Republicans just think that its dedication. Again this is another issue that people seem to have a hard time grasping that if abortion is legal it doesn’t mean you have to have one. On top of that it makes no sense that Republicans would be for an increase in the population since more people means more poor people. There’s nothing Republicans dislike more than poor people, well, except gays.

Its not just the Presidential election that should bother you, some of the people who won across the country should actually scare you to death. Look at the Senate race in Kentucky, Bunning said that his opponent looked like Saddam’s son and then refused to debate in the same room with him and actually read some of his statements off a teleprompter. It was a close race but Bunning still won. For the record I was against the Phillies retiring his number, he doesn’t compare to the big four. In Oklahoma, Coburn won relatively easily. He claims that lesbianism so rampant in the schools that only one girl is allowed to go to the bathroom at a time. He also said that Senators should make more than $133,000 and called the people of Oklahoma City ‘crapheads.’ Those are just some of them. In my Congressional district (PA-6) Gerlach ran ads saying that Murphy sympathized with Al Qaeda. Somehow he squeaked out a victory even though he lost Montgomery County. He’ll lose next time, too bad you have to be 25 to run. I’m sure there are just as many stories from other races. Plus, look at Cheney going to Hawaii and telling them that if Kerry won there would be another Pearl Harbor.

Pennsylvania did do its job, mostly. Kerry won easily, but everyone should have expected that to happen. Hoeffel didn’t lose by nearly as much as the polls were predicting. How anyone who voted for Kerry didn’t vote for Hoeffel makes no sense since Spector’s policies are nearly identical to those of the administration. I still believe Hoeffel never expected to win but that he was trying to get name recognition in order to take on Santorum, who will be much easier to defeat.

So what’s next? I am hopeful that the next four years will be better than the last four. Things can’t get much more screwed up. The conflict in Iraq will have to come to some sort of end, it probably won’t be peaceful, but it will be over. The real effects of the war won’t be felt for years to come when the generation whose homes, families, and country have been destroyed grow up to hate us more than this generation does. There are plenty more threats but another war is out of the question. Congress will not approve anything, they want to keep their jobs. We can’t spent anymore money, we will spend a whole lot more and add to the deficit, but not war sort of numbers. The current active troops are not going to want to go back to war after this war. Recruitment numbers must have dropped dramatically after this war. Then there is the draft. I could only hope that there is an attempt by the administration to reinstitute the draft. Oh would that be fun. I think if it was even suggested Washington, D.C. would be burnt to the ground within the day.

I think the Democratic party is much stronger now. There are now some very powerful men that can lead the way. Howard Dean will likely be the next party chair, which is the perfect position for him. Kerry needs to stay visible to the country and there needs to be more out of Clinton and Gore over the next few years. Who knows which candidate will appear by ’08 but as long as the ideals of the party can remain in front of the country’s eyes then there will be a Democrat elected in ’08. We could only hope that the Republicans march out Giuliani as their candidate.