Ohio is the New Florida - but without chads, election fraud and Brother Jeb

I always kind of knew that Bush would win but it wasn't until it really happened that it sunk in. This time, Americans chose Bush as the President. The people have spoken. After four years of his bungling, Americans decided that they liked him. Americans decided that the election fraud of 2000 was forgiveable, as was lying to one's citizens about WMD to go to war in Iraq - a country not containing Osama Bin Laden. The Iraq quagmire continues, but hey Halliburton got their oil, so that's good right? Therefore, lying about WMD to send America's sons and daughters to war is ok because the price of gas won't go through the roof. Likewise, Americans don't seem to be bothered with the erosion of civil liberties or the tanking economy. They also don't seem to mind living in a thinly-veiled theocracy that has more in common with Iran than with countries in Western Europe when it comes to separation of Church and State. They also don't seem to mind that because this is Bush's second term, there is a republican-controlled congress, and Cheney has already stated that he's not running in 2008, there is little accountability on Bush over the next four years, and he can veer as far right as he wants.

This morning I was convinced that Kerry would fight it out for those 200,000 provisional votes in Ohio. C'mon Kerry, every vote counts. You go. By midday I thought that the world was going to hell in a handbasket and that I didn't really understand Americans at all. I mean, is it really worth selling your soul for a piddly tax cut - unless you're a billionaire, in which case a ginormous tax cut? What about ethics, accountability, responsibility?

By the end of the day, I came across this article on Slate.com.
http://www.slate.com/id/2109079/

I had been surfing intermittently throughout the day, but not often because not only was I busy at work, but also I had the inability to open up a web page without wanting to punch out Bush's stinking, smirking mug. The article is titled "Why You Keep Losing to This Idiot." It drew my attention immediately. The author is right, Bush won because he's simple. In 2000 I made fun of the fact that the CBC found no shortage of people who were voting for Bush on the basis of personality. "He's the kind of guy you can have a cup of cawwffeee with." Didn't these people want the smart guy to run the world's superpower, instead of the affable Joe? Who were these idiots? Well, apparently the majority of the American population. When you look at the State map, the West Coast is blue, the North-East is blue, most of the Great Lakes States are blue, with the notorious exception being Ohio, but I'm blaming that on the fact that it also borders West Virginia and Kentucky (cue song from Deliverance here). The rest of the map is a great patch of red - otherwise known as fly-over country. These are the people whose only source of news is the local TV station and the local paper - highly-skewed and no foreign content (don't want that). These are the people that The Onion was referring to with their headline "Lowest Common Demoninator Drops Further: Network Execs Flock to Fill the Bilge". They made Big Momma's House number one at the box office for one week a couple of years ago, and last time I checked, "Yes, Dear" was still on the air. That's who Bush was talking to. That's who Kerry wasn't talking to. Bush did the better job of convincing people that if they didn't vote for him, Osama was going to get them as they were unsuspectingly shopping at Wal-Mart and if that didn't happen, then the homos were going to grab them, bend them over and rape them of their family values.

The author of that article is right. The Democrats do have their person for 2008 in John Edwards. He's personable, has a 1000-watt smile, is attractive, has charisma and he's from North Carolina. Americans want leaders with a simple message and a great personality. Bush gets that. The Democratic party doesn't. In the meantime it's four more years of a virtual civil war in the US. The hippies/Yankee bluebloods against the southerners/mid-westerners and the rural/suburbanites against the urbanites. Let's hope Bush doesn't do too much damage in the US and abroad in his (thankfully) last four years in office. At least that also means four more years of Bush jokes - don't see them running dry any time soon.