Summations Only

Dewey wins.

We did it.

Last election the NoNukes family established residence in Virginia thus leading to an Obama win of that state an and electoral college monster win for Obama.This election, I left my newly of voting age son in VA while I moved back to North Carolina. The resulting split state voting resulted in a loss of both North Carolina and Virginia to Romney. In short, I apologize for almost single handedly making the election close. As a result, those of us who want to be sure about the results are probably gonna half to stay up an hour or so more.I apologize to all of your bosses for the resultant loss of tomorrow's productivity.

CHTULHU IS VICTORIOUS. DESTRUCTION IS IMMINENT. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.

You're welcome, the rest of the world.And on a side note, Colorado just brought tears to my eyes legalizing recreational use of marijuana. - Oni

Hit a oney for me.

Will do. And add one more for the stoners, Washington legalizes it for rec use too.- Oni

The electoral college is FUCKED and needs to go the way of the dodo bird (but it was fine in 2000).

I stayed up late even though work beckons, but I think I will sleep well tonight.

May the dismantling of the police state begin.

Granted.

Maybe there is a god after all.Many thanks,The Rest of the World.

I was thinking about this the other day, and I realise that I know literally nobody who wanted Romney to win. People who don't like Obama - sure; even people who actively despise Obama and consider him a force of evil, but they're generally either on the far left or crazed conspiracy theorists for whom the Republican Party is not an improvement. Admittedly, my circle of acquaintances is hardly a representative sample of Europe, but it feels here that even the right prefer Obama to Romney.Is this still lag from Bush's overwhelming unpopularity or the result of the Republican's recent pandering to the more extreme of their supporters?

You have made a very good post.Let me respond to your post and perhaps to many others all at once.I am not thrilled with the outcome of the election, but it is what it is and I'll live with it.There are many things on the right I am not thrilled with--the socons particularly. What I prefer might be best referred to as rational libertarianism, perhaps a very minor choice now-a-days.But there comes a point where the electorate can't continue to vote for bread and circuses. As Margaret Thatcher is reported to have said, "The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."And a more detailed quote from Heinlein:

The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’

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‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invaderthe barbarians enter Rome.

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Robert A. Heinlein

Now I guess we'll see what the next four years will bring.

It is a common and tired mantra that democracy is dangerous because the people will only ever vote themselves more and more bread and circuses in an unstoppable wave until society collapses. The idea falls down on the basis that it's one of those ideas thought up in the quiet of a living room that refuses to expose itself to the real world for investigation.The trend across European democracies since the 1980s has been the reduction of social spending and limitations on the welfare state. Democratically elected politicians, like Margaret Thatcher, promised to get rid of some of our bread and circuses, and they did so. Democratic socialism is no longer a mainstream political force, with most of Europe's centre-left parties shifting to the right.There is no unstoppable trend.