If the canvassing board declares this ballot to be in the Other/No one category,

Then, what category does this ballot belong in.

a) Other/No one

b) Al Franken

If you answered (a), you have sound logical capabilities.  If you answered (b), you are either a complete moron, or you are part of the Canvassing Board deciding the outcome of the Minnesota Senate race.  Or both.

So, it looks like Stuart Smalley will win the Minnesota Senate seat after all.  The recount has him up at this point, with the canvassing board using the following criteria when deciding the outcome of the challenged ballots: if it benefits Franken, it’s in.

This is an outrageous failure of democracy.  I don’t doubt that this kind of stuff goes on all of the time, but the fact that it is going on with the spotlight of the national media shining brightly upon it is cause for concern for what the next four years will hold.  Apparently, the Democrats are feeling a little emboldened these days.

Hope and Change!

The first is the political climate.  The left would not have accepted defeat graciously (just look at Gaye Symington’s catty concession speech). They would have become unhinged. America might not have been able to weather the storm that would have followed.

The divisiveness and nastiness of the past 8 years has been almost unbearable. Four more years would have been.

Let me be clear here, I am not saying that an Obama presidency will unite us and end disagreement. I am saying that the left needed a win because they were getting just too nasty.

I did not realize how destructive to our civil discourse a McCain win would have been until I read this.

War of choice

throwing economic gasoline onto our global financial firestorm

letting the super-rich squeeze out every last drop of money they can from a middle and working class on the brink

throwing environmental degradation into high gear

using the power of the office to force her frightening religious beliefs into every corner of our Republic

zeal for a culture war against me and my family

It reads almost like a parody, the claims are so wildly exaggerated. But then I realized that for countless people, this is their reality. And those are the same people who are actively engaged in our political discussions.

I don’t expect world views to suddenly sync up. I know that there are still great divisions in this country ideologically. But Obama’s election will go a long way toward ending the outrage over the elections of 2000 and 2004.

Hopefully now, we can discuss our differences with a more civil tone.

At least for two more years.

The second, and most important, good thing about Obama’s win – race relations. As many of you know, I have two black sons. They are 10 and 11. It has been my deepest hope for this country that by the time my sons were grown, we would have put the past behind us and embraced the future. I hoped that the race hustlers would be silenced and no longer propagate the belief that race is an insurmountable barrier to success in this country, and instead recognize what we have become and the bright future that lies before us if we can only learn to forgive the past mistakes.

This election was tainted with an undercurrent of condemnation and accusations that we are too racist a people to elect a black president. I knew that was false. I have always believed in Americans and, though I know all too well that racism still exists and is very ugly, I know that is not who we are as a country.

The election of Barack Obama has proven that to be true. Ironically, Sen. Obama’s election validated what conservatives have been saying all along, and what John McCain said so eloquently in his concession speech, “I’ve always believed that America offers opportunities to all who have the industry and will to seize it.”

This is an historic election, and I recognize the special significance it has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight.

I’ve always believed that America offers opportunities to all who have the industry and will to seize it. Senator Obama believes that, too.

But we both recognize that, though we have come a long way from the old injustices that once stained our nation’s reputation and denied some Americans the full blessings of American citizenship, the memory of them still had the power to wound.

A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt’s invitation of Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage in many quarters.

America today is a world away from the cruel and frightful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States.

Let there be no reason now … Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth.

Let there be no reason now.

I hope and pray with all my heart that we can finally heal as a nation and begin to move beyond race.

As I listened to stories of older black Americans who lived through segregation and oppression, I could not help but think, they deserve this. They deserve to know, once and for all, that America is not at its heart a racist country.

When I read Cathy Resmer’s interview with Nari Penson, who shared stories of what her grandmother and father went through to vote in the past, a part of me wanted Obama to win for her and for the millions with stories like hers.

My how far we have come.

So, I congratulate President-elect Obama. And while I did not vote for him and I have vast disagreements with him, he will soon be our president – my president – a title that warrants honor and respect, regardless of our political differences.

Go Vote!

And remember, if you are in the Greater Burlington Area, watch the live election coverage starting tonight at 7:30 on Channel 17 or online at channel17.org. I’m not just saying that because I will be on reporting live from Montpelier, with interviews from the Vermont Republicans.

There will also be coverage at Exit Voices, the Channel 17 election blog.

If you Twitter, tag your tweets with #vtelxn to be included in the Vermont election tweet stream.

I cannot believe this day is finally here. Although this election seemed to go on forever, there are still so many things I never got a chance to blog about.

Oh, well. Pretty soon it will all be over and we will know who our next president is. Whoever it is, there will be plenty to blog about, I’m sure.

Feel free to use this as an open thread to share your election day thoughts.

I decided, though, that it makes little sense to go with a third party.

No, not because we need to stop Barack Obama at any cost and John McCain is the only one who can do it, although those arguments are persuasive.

There is nothing that the left can do to this country in two or four years that cannot be undone. (I know that many people, including my husband, would disagree with that.)

If anything, I think two or four years of unbridled Democratic control will finally put to bed the notion that these liberal ideas, which have failed elsewhere, will be embraced America, not to mention this silly notion that conservatism in America is dead. If liberalism was popular, Obama would run on it, not from it.

But, back to the third party thing.

If I may, let me use as an analogy Bill Ayers. Now here is a guy who has a commitment to a particular ideology. At first, he thought the best way to further that ideology was to attempt to overthrow the government using terrorism tactics, send people to re-education centers to get them in line with the new way of thinking, and exterminate the approximately 25 million people who refused to be re-educated.

At some point, Mr. Ayers decided that a better way was to work within the framework of the current system. He became an education professor, where he could freely indoctrinate the future teachers, who would then indoctrinate countless numbers of impressionable young minds. He worked on boards where he could collaborate with others to implement some of his ideas. He used his home to host the launching of the political campaign of a future presidential candidate.

Using normal acceptable means to further his agenda, he has gotten much further toward his goal than he did using the radical, dare I say, homicidal, means.

I view voting third party as the Weather Underground Ayers. Not that you folks are homicidal radicals, but that you are going to accomplish about as little, except without killing anyone.

The system is against you. Third party candidates are not taken seriously, they get little to no media attention, and it is going to take you ten times as long to accomplish half as much, if even.

You can learn from Bill Ayers. When he chose to work within the system, he went from crazy 60s homicidal radical to respected citizen and university professor, who has worked together with prominent politicians.

The Republican Party is already in place. The media recognizes it, as do the uninformed voters who get all of their information from said media. It once stood for real conservatism, and many people who call it home are still conservatives. Why reinvent the wheel?

We need to be ready on day one to rebuild this movement. If Barack Obama and the liberal Democrats win big, they will provide us with the gift that keeps on giving. Once they try to enact their plans, such as effectively killing people’s 401k accounts and bankrupting utilities, people will come running back to conservatism in droves. We need to be there when they do, not off trying to build a new party from the ground up.

So, for now, I am not going to abandon the Republican Party.

But another rocker that I loved when I was growing up has come out with an endorsement for John McCain, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry.

This quote from Perry had me saying, “Jon Bon Who?”

“I’ve been a hardcore Republican my whole life,” he told the Herald. “My mother and father drilled into me from the very start that if you work hard and be positive, you’ll get what you’re working for. I guess I’m living proof of that.”

On McCain being too old,

“My mother’s in her 80s and she does aerobics. My manager’s 70 and he’s right there. That doesn’t bother me.”

Reaction to the polls,

“I’m an optimist. It ain’t over till its over,” he said. “I think that he’s got a chance.”

Rock on.

Mississippi’s voter situation is hard to believe. Places like Madison County have over 123% more registered voters than people over the age of 18.

“It is terrible,” [Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann] says. “Combined with the fact that we don’t have voter ID in Mississippi, anybody can show up at any poll that happens to know the people who have left town or died — and go vote for them.”

“We have people who registered in 1965 who have never voted,” she says. “We have 486 people (registered who are) over 105.”

Hosemann says 190,000 new voters have registered for this election and he believes the turnout will be historic.

Oh, it will he historic, alright – a historic number of dead people will be voting this year.

Despite knowledge of the fraud, nothing can be done.  Law prevents a purge of voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election.

Hat tip: P.U.M.A., who thinks the fraud was working in Obama’s favor in the primary. Obama won Mississippi with 61% of the votes.

In case you didn’t know, PUMA means Party Unity My A**, and refers to a Hillary Clinton supporter who is not voting for Barack Obama.

So here you go.

Introducing, Zo, in his final video before the election:

There is more Zo at his You Tube page and at his page on the website black-and-right.com.

You also might be interested in his video, Why I’m a Conservative Republican. Good stuff.

“It’s not that I don’t have enough information, it’s that I don’t particularly like either one of them,” explained Moon, 32, a small business owner and father of two.

That’s Chad Moon, an undecided voter profiled in a Reuters story.

The article goes on to ask, “what more do voters possibly need to know to make up their minds?” Heh. What a funny question, given that Moon just said it’s not that he doesn’t have enough information.

The bottom line, that media does not get, is that the candidates in this election stink. If one is not in love with The One, Barack Obama, the candidates are both extremely lacking.

In my recent appearance on The Blog Bunker, I said that I was still on the fence and the host was aghast that anyone could still be undecided.

It’s not that I don’t have enough information, either, obviously. It is that I know I do not like Barack Obama, but I do not really want McCain, either, for several reasons.  My undecided is trying to decide whether to suck it up and vote McCain or go rogue and vote third party.

For Mr. Moon, from the Reuters piece, he “is a fiscal conservative who doesn’t like Obama’s tax plan and a pro-choice secular voter who doesn’t like McCain’s social positions or his vice presidential running mate, Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin.”

(Seriously, dude, Obama’s economic policies will hurt you much more than McCain’s social positions will.)

There are other hypotheses about the undecided voters, but this one – the idea that people are undecided because they equally dislike the candidates – has been obscured by the media swooning over Obama.

Not everyone has Obama fever. And for those who do not, this election has been a real drag.

It isn’t. FOX News is a legitimate media outlet that millions of Americans turn to for news and information. The questions they ask are questions that are on the minds of voters whose opinions are just as valid as anyone else’s.

People have the right to question what Obama’s vision for America is, especially given his past associations, causes he has championed, and things that he has said.

According to a Frontline episode on both Obama and Sen. John McCain, Obama kept his record in the Senate deliberately vague as a strategy toward his future ambitions. A consequence of that strategy is people left having doubts and questions about who Barack Obama is and what kind of vision he has for America.

Obama says he wants to unite America, yet he dismisses his critics as far-right, ignoring the issues they raise. How can one unite America, while simultaneously telling a large segment of her population that their views do not matter and have no value?

How can Barack Obama find a place at the table for people on the left with views that are far out of the mainstream, yet questions about his allusions to wealth redistribution are marginalized?

Under a Barack Obama administration, does ending the divisiveness mean suppressing all opposition? Is his vision of unity a government fully controlled by a single ideology?

That is not what America is about. Even the Founding Fathers had heated and ugly disagreements.

People will disagree with Barack Obama, as is the case for everyone with bold ideas. His vision of unity would be better served by acknowledging his critics and addressing their concerns. He does not have to agree, only show that he is listening and understands where they are coming from.

Without that, there is no unity; there is no end to divisiveness. There is only more of the same.