Christian talk-radio host Frank Pastore:

The left bewitches with its potions and elixirs, served daily in its strongholds of academe, Hollywood and old media. It vomits upon the morals, values and traditions we hold sacred: God, family and country. As we learned Tuesday, it is clear the left holds the majority of Americans, the majority of us, in contempt.

Frank Pastore loves the GOP.

AMSTERDAM — The Dutch Cabinet has declared war on Islamic extremism, Deputy Prime Minister Gerrit Zalm has announced....Zalm rejected speculation the Government had fallen behind in the fight against Islamic extremism, pointing out that many people who had been threatened with death had not been killed.

REPORTER: Thank you, Mr. President. How will you go about bringing people together? Will you seek a consensus candidate for the Supreme Court if there's an opening? Will you bring some Democrats into your cabinet?

BUSH: … first of all, there's no vacancy for the Supreme Court. And I will deal with a vacancy when there is one. … I haven't made any decisions on the cabinet yet.

REPORTER: How else will you bring people together?

BUSH: We'll put out an agenda that everybody understands and work with people to achieve the agenda … plenty of places for us to work together.

"Over the next four years, I will make permanent a tax cut that redistributes money to the wealthiest taxpayers, continue to weaken environmental standards, and appoint more right-wing neanderthals to serve on the nation's highest courts.

"Understand?"

“I earned capital in the campaign, political capital. And now I intend to spend it.”

George W. Bush, Nov. 4, 2004 press conference

Ronald Reagan (R) 1980/1984 …….......…….. 507

Franklin Roosevelt (D) 1932/36/40/44 ….... 469

Dwight Eisenhower (R) 1952/1956 ….......... 450

Richard Nixon (R) 1968/1972 …................... 411

Bill Clinton (D) 1992/1996 ..…..……........….…. 375

Woodrow Wilson (D) 1912/1916 ….........….. 356

George W. Bush (R) 2000/2004 …….........…… 279

NOTE: All averages were rounded up to the nearest whole number.

A vote on some middle and high school health textbooks was delayed Thursday after a State Board of Education member raised concerns that language referring to "couples" and "partners" in the books legitimizes homosexuality.

Terri Leo, a Republican board member from Spring, also asked publishers to include language in the books' teacher editions saying that gays and lesbians "are more prone to self-destructive behaviors like depression, illegal drug use and suicide."

"Neutrality — the word 'partners' — when you use neutrality, the very purpose of using that language is to be inclusive of homosexuality," Leo said.

Leo proposed dozens of language revisions that would change the wording to "husbands and wives" and "men and women."

Arizona Latino leaders say they have been inundated with calls since voters approved Proposition 200 Tuesday, asking whether immigrant parents should send their children to school or whether it's safe to go shopping.

Representatives of the Valley's Head Start program said attendance dropped substantially Wednesday as worried parents kept their children home from school. In one classroom, only two children showed up. Normally, there are 20.

[edit]

Martin Delgado, a legal resident, said he fears for his wife, Antonia, because she's here illegally. She is among the estimated 300,000 to 350,000 undocumented immigrants in Arizona who, Latino leaders fear, may be forced to go further underground.

"She fears even to go out to walk because anyone can ask her for legal papers," said Delgado, 33, who works at a grocery store in Phoenix. "She doesn't have any type of identification, and now it will be harder to go around."

[Roy] Moore's former spokesman, Tom Parker, was one of three victorious GOP Supreme Court candidates. Parker was Moore's legal adviser when Moore was ousted from office for refusing to remove a monument to the commandments from the rotunda of the state judicial building.

The narrow failure of Amendment 2 confused some voters who thought removing segregation-era language from the state constitution was a good idea.

The failed measure would have re-written an education section of the constitution, specifically taking out a line about separate schools for "white and colored children."

"It would be better to re-do it, you know, and kind of put a lot of people's minds at ease," said Quincy Moore, of the Magic City Barber Shop.

"We decided it was a bad amendment, and we voted against it," said Percy Hornbuckle.

Hornbuckle worried that Amendment 2 was a backdoor to higher taxes and didn't think out-dated racist laws were a problem for the modern black community.

"We're full-fledged Americans, and whatever anybody else gets, we ought to be entitled to the same thing," said Hornbuckle.

High-profile political candidates, like Supreme Court Justice-elect Tom Parker, claimed victory for the failure of Amendment 2.

Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma have a combined land mass of 227,354 square miles and a population of 7,974,330.

Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut have a combined land mass of 13,730 square miles and a population of 10,992,958.

"The Republican Party is a permanent majority for the future of this country," House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, told supporters Wednesday. "We're going to be able to lead this country in the direction we've been dreaming of for years. . . . We're going to put God back into the public square."

"Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful. They don't go around peeing on the furniture and such."

When our youth are influenced by the “fairness” argument for gay “marriage,” help them understand that matrimonial law is not based on “feelings” or “fairness,” but on moral and natural law judgments that marriage is inherently heterosexual, monogamous, fruitful, and permanent.

Even with a believer in the White House, Christians are not released from our obligation to teach worldview and to work for righteousness. As agents of God’s common grace, we are called to help sustain and renew His creation, to uphold the created institutions of family and society.

Early results indicate that the Republican Party lost some of the ground it gained in state legislative races in 2002 and that the 2004 elections have deepened the political divide in statehouses.

Democrats and Republicans pulled out a number of close but concrete victories in the 44 states that held elections, flipping political control in at least 10 legislative chambers. Power in two legislatures – the Maine Senate and Oregon House – was riding on the outcome of races still too close to call.

Explosives were looted from the Al-Qaqaa ammunitions site in Iraq while outnumbered U.S. soldiers assigned to guard the materials watched helplessly, soldiers told the Los Angeles Times.

About a dozen U.S. troops were guarding the sprawling facility in the weeks after the April 2003 fall of Baghdad when Iraqi looters raided the site, the newspaper quoted a group of unidentified soldiers as saying.

U.S. Army reservists and National Guardsmen witnessed the looting and some soldiers sent messages to commanders in Baghdad requesting help, but received no reply, they said.

"It was complete chaos. It was looting like L.A. during the Rodney King riots," one officer said.

The eyewitness accounts reported by the Times are the first provided by U.S. soldiers and bolster claims that the U.S. military had failed to safeguard the powerful explosives, the newspaper said.

"We stand with the international community in holding the government of Sudan responsible for the violations, and we request immediate return of all displaced persons back to the camp at El Geer where they were moved from," Boucher said.

We call on the Government of Sudan to cease the forcible relocation of civilians, disengage forces surrounding other camps and allow humanitarian workers immediate access.

"We feel strongly that our pre-election polls were accurate on virtually every state. Our predictions on many of the key battleground states like Ohio and Florida were within the margin of error. I thought we captured a trend, but apparently that result didn’t materialize."

Amongst the 11% of voters who reported that "Honest/Trustworthy" was the most important quality they wanted in a President, 70% chose Bush and 29% chose Kerry.

Barack Obama, 1,083,197 (80%)
Alan Keyes 237,585 (17.6%)

If you want to launch a terrorist attack on a particular country, you must refrain from launching said attack if that country has placed troops in the Middle East.

The Sudanese army has surrounded two refugee camps housing thousands of people in the Darfur region and denied access to groups providing humanitarian aid, a United Nations official said Tuesday.

The action came about 3 a.m. with no warning at the Abu Sharif and Otash camps in the Nyala region, said Christiane Berthiaume, spokeswoman for the World Food Program, a U.N. food agency, in Geneva. The Otash camp alone holds 17,000 refugees.

Army officials explained the move by saying they are relocating the refugees to a larger camp, Berthiaume said. But WFP is concerned the refugees will be sent back to their villages, where there is less protection from government-backed militias known as the Janjaweed.

asserted that the risk of chaos, confusion, or inordinate delays from the announced plans for challenges this year was “wholly speculative, conjectural, and hypothetical.” (p. 1-2). “The plaintiffs have offered no evidence that the injury they allege will occur tomorrow [Nov. 2].” Judge Ryan added: “Should the inordinate delay and related horrors the plaintiffs posit become a reality tomorrow, the federal courts will be open to respond to proof-supported allegations of an unconstitutional burden on Ohio citizens' right to vote.”

Rehnquist Undergoing Radiation and Chemo

Kevorkian Loses Supreme Court Appeal

According to the accounts of several people, at a recent noon Sunday mass, Father Stephen Schroeder described the Catholic Church's positions on such issues as abortion and same-sex marriage in a way that some in the pews perceived as overtly pro-Bush.

Rose and Tom Osowik, pro-Kerry Democrats, merely steamed as the priest referred to the Iraq war as "just" -- a claim at odds with both Pope John Paul II's stand and a pastoral letter Mrs. Osowik had read on the U.S. bishops Web site. But when she felt Father Schroeder was dismissive of the value of embryonic stem-cell research, "I don't know what overcame me," she said, "I just stood up." Her husband, four sons and one boy's friend followed her out of the pew.

The Dmytrykas were next. Dave Dmytryka, an active pro-Bush Republican, later said his family walked out because they were moved by emotions related to the recent death of Mr. Dmytryka's father-in-law.

"You go to church for some peace, and it's not there," he said.

Next, a young man stood up and charged that the priest misrepresented the bishops' statement. Others cheered. Father Schroeder gave "a passionate response," Mr. Dmytryka said. But then, when the priest was interrupted, he snapped, "That's it, this is over." About 30 members stalked out, parishioners say.

The priest declined an interview request.

Mr Bush was inspiring in the way he reacted to the new world in which he, and America, found itself [after 9/11]. He grasped the magnitude of the challenge well. His military response in Afghanistan was not the sort of poorly directed lashing out that Bill Clinton had used in 1998 after al-Qaeda destroyed two American embassies in east Africa: it was a resolute, measured effort....The biggest mistake, though, was one that will haunt America for years to come. It lay in dealing with prisoners-of-war by sending hundreds of them to the American base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, putting them in a legal limbo, outside the Geneva conventions and outside America's own legal system....Guantánamo Bay offers constant evidence of America's hypocrisy, evidence that is disturbing for those who sympathise with it, cause-affirming for those who hate it. This administration, which claims to be fighting for justice, the rule of law and liberty, is incarcerating hundreds of people, whether innocent or guilty, without trial or access to legal representation.

[snip]

To paraphrase a formula invented by his ally, Tony Blair, Mr Bush was promising to be “tough on terrorism, tough on the causes of terrorism”, and the latter he attributed to the lack of democracy, human rights and opportunity in much of the world, especially the Arab countries. To call for an effort to change that lamentable state of affairs was inspiring and surely correct....Mr Bush's credibility has been considerably undermined not just by Guantánamo but also by two big things: by the sheer incompetence and hubristic thinking evident in the way in which his team set about the rebuilding of Iraq, once Saddam Hussein's regime had been toppled; and by the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, which strengthened the suspicion that the mistreatment or even torture of prisoners was being condoned.

Invading Iraq was not a mistake....But changing the regime so incompetently was a huge mistake. By having far too few soldiers to provide security and by failing to pay Saddam's remnant army, a task that was always going to be long and hard has been made much, much harder. Such incompetence is no mere detail: thousands of Iraqis have died as a result and hundreds of American soldiers. The eventual success of the mission, while still possible, has been put in unnecessary jeopardy. So has America's reputation in the Islamic world, both for effectiveness and for moral probity.

[snip]

This only makes the longer-term project more important, not less. To succeed, however, America needs a president capable of admitting to mistakes and of learning from them. Mr Bush has steadfastly refused to admit to anything: even after Abu Ghraib, when he had a perfect opportunity to dismiss Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, and declare a new start, he chose not to. Instead, he treated the abuses as if they were a low-level, disciplinary issue.

[snip]

Many readers, feeling that Mr Bush has the right vision in foreign policy even if he has made many mistakes, will conclude that the safest option is to leave him in office to finish the job he has started. If Mr Bush is re-elected, and uses a new team and a new approach to achieve that goal, and shakes off his fealty to an extreme minority, the religious right, then The Economist will wish him well. But our confidence in him has been shattered. We agree that his broad vision is the right one but we doubt whether Mr Bush is able to change or has sufficient credibility to succeed, especially in the Islamic world.

[snip]

Furthermore, as Mr Bush has often said, there is a need in life for accountability. He has refused to impose it himself, and so voters should, in our view, impose it on him, given a viable alternative. John Kerry, for all the doubts about him, would be in a better position to carry on with America's great tasks.

Brokaw: "The other issue that has developed quite dramatically in the last week or so is the disappearance of hundreds of tons of explosives from an ammunition depot in Iraq."

Bush: "Well, first of all, there's a lot of data, a lot of conflicting information about the ammunitions sites. What is a fact is that we have secured or destroyed 400,000 tons of ammunition. The accusation made that this was a sealed sight is being contradicted by a marine major who said he was sent into the site to destroy the ammunition there. But, what is important about this issue, and I think it's illustrative in this campaign is that my opponent jumped on the issue before all the facts were in. The Commander in Chief has got to wait to collect the facts before making accusations for political reasons."

For over a year, the people of Darfur have endured a vicious campaign of violence and terror which has led to huge numbers of deaths and forced more than a million people to flee from their destroyed villages in search of safety. Over a year after their escape from their villages and after countless promises from the Government of Sudan and world leaders, safety has still not been found. The victims of violence were forced out of their homes; their homes were destroyed; they were pursued during their flight; harassed and violated during flight and they have continued to be persecuted and intimidated as they seek shelter in crowded and miserable displaced settlements.

The pervasiveness of the violence against civilians in Darfur, as well as its duration over time represents a crime of enormous magnitude. The failure to stop the violence against civilians in Darfur was matched with an equally staggering failure to provide the necessary assistance for these devastated communities in the first year of the conflict.

This year, however, the Ohio Republican Party declared that it planned “to have representatives acting as challengers in as many precincts as possible . . . to ensure that voters are not disenfranchised by fraud.”

[snip]

[T]he evidence shows a significant amount of confusion regarding the training of designated challengers....Drew Hicks, an attorney designated as a Republican challenger...testified that the October 31 Republican challenger training session was attended by approximately 200 people, less than one-third of the number of people designated as Republican challengers....Hicks also testified that the challengers were instructed to challenge only people listed as having requested an absentee ballot who then arrived to vote. Under section 3505.20, however, request of an absentee ballot is not an acceptable ground for challenge.

[snip]

Hicks had no idea who had compiled the lists of voters that he was supposed to challenge nor did he know if it was reliable. He did know that should he see the presiding judge give a regular ballot to a voter that Hicks believed should receive provisional ballot, Hicks should call one of the phone numbers given to him. He did not know what would happen if he called the number.

[snip]

In the race between parties over challengers, both sides have massed hundreds and hundreds of challengers without, so far as the evidence shows, any prior experience in the electoral process or any experience in determining the eligibility of potential voters.

Further, the testimony reflects that...challengers have never before appeared at the polling place. In this election, however, the Board of Elections clearly expects challengers to appear at polling places, and, consequently, precinct judges will be put in the situation of attempting to limit, restrain, or even exclude hundreds of challengers without any prior experience of how to do so and without any significant guidance regarding what limits are appropriate.

[snip]

The sheer number of people present in and around the polling place, the unprecedented number of newly registered voters, and the presence of inexperienced challengers, lacking any significant training and limited by
precinct workers who have never before had to deal with such a situation,
creates an extraordinary and potentially disastrous risk of intimidation and
delay. Such intimidation and delay are virtually certain given the complete
confusion among designated challengers and even between the two top elections officials of Ohio as to how this process will actually work.

Burke [Chairman of the Hamilton County Board of Elections] also testified that of the 251 challengers listed in Plaintiffs’ exhibit 3, two-thirds of them filed to be challengers in predominantly African-American precincts. The evidence presented at the hearing reflects that 14% of new voters in a majority white location will face a challenger listed in Plaintiffs’ exhibit 3, but 97% of new voters in a majority African-American voting location will see such a challenger.

AMSTERDAM — A large majority of Dutch people want US presidential hopeful Senator John Kerry to defeat George W. Bush when Americans head to the polls on Tuesday, a survey has revealed.

Research bureau Trendbox said on its website that 77 percent of 500 respondents aged 16 and older would vote for Kerry, compared with 23 percent who are hoping President Bush will regain the White House on 2 November.

84 percent of singles, 83 percent of people living in the west of the Netherlands, 80 percent of high income earners and 80 percent of high educated Dutch nationals prefer Kerry.

Among the Bush supporters, 28 percent of people aged 35-49 would vote for the Republican, as would 28 percent of people living in the Randstad [the densely populated heart of the country from Rotterdam to Amsterdam], 29 percent of low income earners and 40 percent of low educated people.