Election Map

Ooooh, thanks. I’m stealing this one.

Awesome map.

I was surprised to find that Obama carried Riverside County, CA (according to this map, by a difference of two points) when I expected it to be otherwise.

Orange County, on the other hand, was for McCain by 4 points. No surprise there.

And check out Box Elder, UT and Campbell, WY: both 80% for McCain!

Orange County, on the other hand, was for McCain by 4 points. No surprise there.

speak for yourself. given the amount of pro-8 propaganda bombing all over the place, i’m surprised turnout wasn’t higher.

Tsk:

Not sure I agree– Prop 8 was a huge deal here in Riverside County, and proponents were quite numerous (and vociferous), but Obama still got the county.

a nice visual prelude to this excellent news: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/11/obama-to-create.html

The NYT website has been clogged at various moments, but I was able to catch a couple of editorials. Cut and paste jobs for ya’ll for your enjoyment:

We Apologize
By NYTimes Editorial
Published: July 4th, 2009

The momentous occasion of the end of the war in Iraq also marks a time for reflection at The Times. As many of our readers have pointed out for years, this newspaper played no small part in making the case for the war in the first place, and in supporting the costly and deadly U.S. occupation of Iraq for five years — long after public opinion had turned against it.

We have in the past acknowledged botched reporting. In May 2006, we published an editors’ note acknowledging no fewer than nine articles that uncritically repeated erroneous claims about W.M.D.s by anonymous officials.

Those admissions, we realize, didn’t go nearly far enough. Notably, we failed to single out the instrumental role that Times reporter Judith Miller played in bringing unfounded W.M.D. allegations to a national audience.

Miller’s prominent stories hyping purported Iraqi weapons go back to 1998, and were full of dramatic but unverified claims and unreliable sources. “All of Iraq is one large storage facility” for W.M.D.s, she credulously quoted one source (September 8, 2002). Miller systematically played down skepticism and conflicting evidence, both of which were readily available to any reporter. In so doing Miller lent crucial support to the Bush administration’s agenda. It took Miller’s involvement in the vengeful leak of a C.I.A. officer’s name before we finally let her go — with a hefty severance package.

Even after this episode, we continued publishing articles based on claims by anonymous officials advancing unverified claims — this time, against Iran.

As for our opinion pages, what we passed off as “debates” on the Iraq war have consistently excluded the views of people with a track record of being right. Conversely, in January 2008, we boosted Bill Kristol’s already considerable national platform by offering him a regular column. It is hard to say why.

As early as 1997, Kristol had penned a Weekly Standard cover story, “Saddam Must Go,” in which he and contributing editor Robert Kagan called for war against Iraq: “We know it seems unthinkable to propose another ground attack to take Baghdad. But it’s time to start thinking the unthinkable.” They argued that Saddam Hussein had humiliated the United States by expelling U.S. officials from U.N. weapons inspection teams. The editorial cited unspecified sources about Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons capabilities, and concluded with this dark warning: “If you don’t like this option, we’ve got another one for you: continue along the present course and get ready for the day when Saddam has biological and chemical weapons at the tips of missiles aimed at Israel and at American forces in the Gulf. That day may not be far off.”

Why did we decide to reward Kristol for having been utterly — and lethally — wrong on Iraq? We can’t say for sure, but as of yesterday Mr. Kristol has been terminated as a columnist at The Times. In the same spirit, we also welcome Thomas Friedman’s resignation.

Beginning today, you will see a giant overhaul of our paper, from the front page to this page, as, belatedly shouldering our responsibilities as the newspaper of record, we make a practice of hiring writers who get it right.

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And Tom’s little speech:

The End of the Experts?
By Thomas J. Friedman
Published: July 4th, 2009

The sudden outbreak of peace in Iraq has made me realize, among other things, one incontestable fact: I have no business holding a pen, at least with intent to write.

I know, you’re thinking I’m going too far. I haven’t always been wrong about everything. I recently made some sense on global warming and what we needed to do about it, for instance.

But to have been so completely and fundamentally wrong about so huge a disaster as what we have done to Iraq — and ourselves — is outrageous enough to prove that people like me have no business posing as wise men, and, more importantly, that The New York Times has no business continuing to provide me with a national platform.

In any case, I have made a decision: as of today, I will no longer write in this or any other newspaper. I will immediately desist from writing any more books about how it’s time for everyone to climb on board the globalization high-speed monorail to the future. I will keep my opinions to myself. (My wife suggested that I try not to even form opinions, but I think she might have another agenda.)

Baffled? I don’t blame you. So I’ll cite some facts to support my decision — a practice, I must admit, I have too seldom followed.

Let’s start with the invasion itself. I was pretty much all for it. Mind you, I was not one of the pundits, reporters, or public figures who said that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the United States. I knew better — but I said it didn’t matter!

Back in February of 2003, I wrote in this space: “Saddam does not threaten us today. He can be deterred. Taking him out is a war of choice — but it’s a legitimate choice.” In other words, we should invade a sovereign state and replace its government in order to remake the world more to our liking.

Now the simple fact is, an unprovoked attack on a sovereign state is a war crime, even when linked to grand ideas of the future of mankind. In fact, that’s exactly what Hitler did, for exactly the same reasons. The Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal called it the “the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

What was I thinking? And more importantly, why didn’t anyone stop me?

But wait, it gets worse. Having expressed how acceptable it was to commit Hitler’s signature crime, I then applauded the invasion of Iraq as an “audacious roll of the dice.” It should have occurred to me that this gamble would be unspeakably painful for an untold number of Iraqis who had done nothing to us — in other words, any of them.

Soon, when it became obvious that my pipe dreams for a peaceful and democratic subject nation were just that, I decided to say it was too soon to tell how things would turn out in Iraq, but that we would definitely know in six months to a year. I said this pretty much every six months for five years. And The Times just kept giving me more and more column-inches.

I’m not trying to beat myself up here. I’ve done that plenty already, believe me — and my wife has done the rest! But I have one question: why are newspapers like The New York Times letting people like me make fools of themselves, mislead the American people, and, worst of all, give their wives a lifetime of ammunition?

To err is human, but to print, reprint, and re-reprint error-mad humans like me is a criminally moronic editorial policy.

Nor, of course, is it only me. Just consider who populates the opinion pages of America’s top newspapers. Bill Kristol, who was actually hired by The Times long after being proven wrong on Iraq. Charles Krauthammer. Robert Novak. Mona Charen. Fred Barnes. The list goes on and on of officially-approved wise men (and a woman or two) who never once doubted that Iraq had vast stockpiles of W.M.D.s. And that’s just in newspapers.

We were all wrong again and again — and the consequences were devastating. Can anyone tell me why any of us should ever be asked, let alone paid, for our opinions ever again? Or, for that matter, why Richard Perle or Paul Wolfowitz should be allowed behind any sort of desk whatsoever as long as they live?

Peace in Iraq will undoubtedly have many far-reaching consequences. As promised, I’m not going to speculate publicly about what they might be.

Except one. As of today, I’m putting down my pen, to take up a screwdriver. I am going to retrain as an engineer and spend the rest of my life working to build non-carbon-based energy technologies. And I’m going to spend a lot of time washing my hands.

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