"Democrats in End Time:

Republicans Gain Shattering Victory; Who to Blame This Time?"

Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair, Counterpunch

The crusade that George Bush called for in 2001 against terrorism from abroad came to fruition yesterday in a more homely context as Christians flocked to the polls in stronger numbers than in 2000 to battle against such manifestations of post-modernity as gay marriage.

"Why Kerry Lost"

Doug Ireland, Z-Net

John Kerry has definitively lost the popular vote by some three and a half million votes. That makes an all-out lawyers’ war in Ohio devoid of moral force (and I doubt that in the end there’ll be one).

Kerry ran a tactical campaign, devoid of vision or explicable alternatives, utterly lacking in message discipline, and riddled with misjudgments--it was one of the most incompetently run presidential campaigns by a Democrat in my lifetime. In addition, the voters just didn't like the rich stiff--and, as I've often observed, Americans don't want a president thay can't like. (In the exit polls, 76% said the one candidate quality which mattered most in how they voted for president was "he cares about people like me," which is the way pollsters determine likeability).

Anonymous Comrade writes:

What Does “Victory in the War on Terror By Any Means Necessary” Really Mean?

British political commentator Jonathan Dimbleby has recently — in a high profile 2 hour documentary for British TV channel ITV (30th Oct and 1st Nov) and in a supporting article in the U.K. Observer (30th Oct) — made the increasingly-heard argument that winning a war on terrorism requires waging and winning a war against global poverty (which in turn requires waging and winning a war on biodiversity loss, soil degradation, global warming, and so on, but let us leave the environmentalist aspects out of it for now). I would like to respond here to two main points made by Dimbleby in his Observer article which can be summarized as follows:

stevphen shukaitis writes:

"The University and the Undercommons: Seven Theses"
Fred Moten and Stefano Harney

"Philosophy thus traditionally practices a critique of knowledge which is simultaneously a denegation of knowledge (i.e., of the class struggle). Its position can be described as an irony with regard to knowledge, which it puts into question without ever touching its foundations. The questioning of knowledge in philosophy always ends in its restoration: a movement great philosophers consistently expose in each other." — Jacques Ranciere, On the Shores of Politics

"I am a black man number one, because I am against what they have done and are still doing to us; and number two, I have something to say about the new society to be built because I have a tremendous part in that which they have sought to discredit." — C. L. R. James, C. L. R. James: His Life and Work

The Only Possible Relationship to the University Today Is a Criminal One

"To the university I'll steal, and there I'll steal," to borrow from Pistol at the end of Henry V, as he would surely borrow from us. This is the only possible relationship to the American university today. This may be true of universities everywhere. It may have to be true of the university in general. But certainly, this much is true in the United States: it cannot be denied that the university is a place of refuge, and it cannot be accepted that the university is a place of enlightenment. In the face of these conditions one can only sneak into the university and steal what one can. To abuse its hospitality, to spite its mission, to join its refugee colony, its gypsy encampment, to be in but not of — this is the path of the subversive intellectual in the modern university.

"Was Nietzsche an Anarchist?"

Brian Morris

Nietzsche is now all the rage in academia. The man who
spent much of his solitary life wandering southern
Europe as an "eternal
fugitive" (his own words), looking for some place or
climate that
might ease or stay his deteriorating health, has now
become the academic
icon of those apocalyptic thinkers, the
postmodernists. As Bakunin,
Kropotkin and Malatesta have been declared obsolete,
Nietzsche has
replaced them as an icon for certain anarchists.
Indeed the question has
often been asked, was he an anarchist himself?

Michael Steinberg writes

"The Liberal Mirage:
(A Pre-Election Day Rant)"
Michael Steinberg

"By most standards the Bush Presidency has been a humiliating failure. There is one group, though, that has done very well, and it's not the corporate elite. It's American liberals.

Bush has done wonders for their self-esteem. One can almost hear the happy buzz on any liberal blog. All those new voters, the 527 groups, the ads: liberalism is BACK! Not only that: the whole world is cheering them on. In sober moments they can be made to admit that John Kerry was just about their last choice as a Democratic nominee. He is, after all, a man who took his one claim to moral authority and repeatedly trashed it on national television. But wait until the election is over, they assure us. A revitalized liberal movement will take back the ground it's lost since—well, since the Nixon years ended.

League of Pissed Off Voters Guide to New York City Candidates

Complacent

Here we are in the eye of the storm. After an epic and
endless weekend living loud on the streets of New York City,
we pause and prepare for the coming election day. Tuesday
will be historic and you get to be in the thick of it. But
who will mislead this country for the next four years is
only one of the decisions we need to make as we step into
the voting booth tomorrow.

"Don't Let Problems at the Polls
Take Away Your Right to Vote"

Andrew Greenblat, True Majority

We've read news reports about plans to challenge voters at polling places around the country. Don't let some political hack deny you your most fundamental right as an American citizen — your right to vote. Below, we've created a short guide to protect your rights and advise what to do if someone tries to take them away from you. I encourage you to do two things:

"The Price of a Voter Database"

Jurriaan Bendien, Marxmail

In brief, it's expensive, although possibly a university might get a license
at a discount. Some options listed here.

Caliper's Maptitude for Redistricting is said to cost about four thousand
dollars per copy. The software permits mapmakers to analyze a large amount
of data-party registration, voting patterns, ethnic makeup from census data,
property-tax records, roads, railways, old district lines.

Maptitude

ESRI's ArcView geographic information system has an extension that automates
the redistricting process. The Districting Extension lets you manually move
boundaries, and instantly see the statistical result in table or chart
format. A redistricting wizard can automate the process even further. You
can set target values for quantities such as population for the software to
optimize, and then view statistics of the results. This lets you create
alternative redistricting scenarios.

Arc

ArcView

There's also Voter Vault, used by the Republicans.

Voter Vault

More news here.

Some other possibilities:

VotersOnLine

Voter Access

Adjutant

AlphaSoft

Esit

"Politics For Dummies"

Guillermo C. Jimenez

On the eve of Election Day, the suspense of an uncertain outcome gives the waning American presidential campaign a certain gravitas, a certain ominous majesty — which, unfortunately, it does not deserve. While it is true that the stakes in this election are enormous, when it comes to content this campaign has been as pathetically vacuous as any in history.