cottage 

Asymmetrical warfare

I can't believe I live in this country.

Less bread; more taxes!

Overheard on the train back from Canada on Sunday: "I just want an election where everybody who shows up to vote can vote."

I wish that election had happened. But it might not have changed things that much.

I was expecting something more openly apocalyptic. I know, it's been bad enough, 100,000 dead civilians in Iraq, voter suppression here... but I mean, I thought there'd be a bigger crisis of legitimacy already. Courts. Protests. I thought Bush might declare martial law, lock himself in the White House (or Crawford) and not leave, declare himself emergency president. I thought he might arrange an October surprise, a big terror event...

I never thought he'd just get voted in.

(Not that I thought he couldn't win. Just, I thought it would be... different. Bloody*, or something.)

Can we start re-thinking democracy already? This voting shit is not working.

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Later, edited Nov 9:

*It's bloody enough now.

Rumsfeld, in every U.S. paper today: "Over time you'll find ...that more and more of the Iraqis will be angry about the fact that their innocent people are being killed by the extremists," he said. "And that they'll want elections, and the more they see the extremists acting against that possibility of elections, I think they'll turn on those people."

I think so, too. Not the part about clamoring to elect a puppet government, but turning on the "extremists" who're killing civilians.