Subject: Dude

I have been thoroughly enjoying your site these past weeks, since
a good friend turned me on to it. You da man. I'm writing you
this depressing morning just to share with you a little screed
I've written to some friends of mine, replying to one friend's
remarks at 2:30 a.m. PST this morning. I have adopted your name
for the (apparent) Smirk-elect.

---------------

> However if Fla. goes for Gore,
> W.will ask for recounts in Wisc. & Iowa.

Mark my words -- Nobody EVER wins a recount. Not Gore in FL,
not Smirk elsewhere. Gore won WI and IA each by about 6k votes,
very close, but not likely due to error. Smirk apparently won FL by
about 1700 votes out of 6 fucking million. Unbelieveable. Big Al wins
260 electoral, and he might as well be Walter Mondale.
 
> Senate will probably break 51-49 GOP, House will stay about the same;
> Demos may pick up a seat or two. Hillary won fairly easily; of the three
> really odious impeachment managers I know of, Barr won in GA, McCollum
> lost for the Senate in Fla., and Rogan lost his seat in SoCal. Locally,
> Tauscher and Honda won. Vouchers got killed--maybe badly enough to kill
> the whole mean-spirited movement. (They lost in MI too.)

It's 50-48 with, I believe, 1 race still up for grabs (an incumbent Rep.
was hanging by a fingernail in Washington state) and 1 independent.
The dead guy won in MO., Rep's are vowing to fight it since the corpse
is "not a resident of the state, as required by Missouri law." I kid you not.
Ashcroft has no sense of decency, and the R's in the Senate might
(since they have control) decide not to seat her, although I think that'd
be pretty bad PR.

> My guesses: Bush will win in the end, but as a result of the narrow win
> and Gore winning the popular vote might be forced into some ersatz
> coalition, as in appointing moderate Demos. to a couple of cabinet
> posts.
 

NO FUCKING WAY, DUDE. A win is a win. I heard them say it last night
in Austin, and that's what they really think, regardless of the pap they will
surely be putting out from here till Inauguration. These power-hungry bastards
will act humble now, but just wait. They have been licking their chops to
get in and do their thing with nothing -- nothing -- to stop them. The Dick
Armey, DeLay, Lott, etc. -- motherfuckers have a free ride now. Smirk will not stand
in the way of their hideous agenda; he will just rearrange the deck chairs
on their legislative Titanic, and call it "compassionate."

> Maybe if we're real lucky it will even somewhat moderate his
> choices for the courts. However Rehnquist will retire and be replaced by Scalia.

You are punchy. Not a chance this narrowest of wins (which actually is
an utterly shocking loss in the popular vote -- special thanks to the pollsters,
some of whom had Smirk up by 7 to 9 on Tuesday morning) will humble these
bastards for anything except the media interviews for the next few days.
After that, THEY WILL SEIZE POWER and the margin of victory will be
a footnote in the history books.

> There will be a serious movement to dump the Electoral College,
> but it will fail. Democrats will clean GOP's clock in the '02 off-year elections.

I may have to re-think this Electoral College thing. I was all set to defend it.
Did anybody, anywhere in the world, give even a moment's thought to the
possibility that Gore could win the popular and lose the electoral?
Unbelievable.

> By the way, Nader got a little under 100K in Fla.  I understand what
> he's trying to accomplish, and that Corvair thing was nice, and but this
> is a very small tail wagging a very big dog. The sorry SOB will never
> get another dime from me.

Nader had better be in fear for his life. He cost Gore 3 states -- FL,
OR, and NH, check the numbers yourself if you don't believe me -- and
damn near a few others, notably IA and WI, which I was watching
nervously until they gave Gore IA (he needed something, anything,
plus FLA as of about 10-11 p.m. last night). I believe Nader has now
wrecked the Green Party for all time; sympathetic Democrats will
want nothing to do with them and be pissed off for, oh, about the
same length of time that Smirk's Supremes will stay on the Court.
That's quite a trick, ro wreck two parties in one night. Fucking
self-righteous egomaniac asshole.
 

> Finally, you'll probably be hearing a lot about this between now and
> December, but in only 24 states are electors bound by law to vote for
> the winner of the popular vote in their state.
 
Won't matter, in all likelihood. If only FLA could split theirs 13-12 for Smirk...

> Maybe this shit will make some sense in Japanese.

No doubt the rest of the world finds this amusing, except for those in
countries who have reason to be scared shitless of Smirk with his
finger on the button. Oh, I guess that'd be pretty much the whole world.
I heard at 3:00 a.m. from some CNN dude in Moscow that Victor
Chernomyrdin is pursuing his libel suit against Smirk, who claimed
in the 2nd debate that Victor had stolen IMF money. And the CNN
dude in London held up a tabloid with Smirk on the cover and the
headline "Don't Dump Dubya On Us." In the rest of the world, the
guy is already a joke. Only in America do we somewhat routinely
elect such out-and-out morons.

  Z, on 2 hours sleep, and noting that adrenaline is better than any drug