There was a great deal of conversation last night on CNN about ‘American morality’ and how Kerry and the Democrats failed to appeal to this moral demographic. Well... it’s pretty damn simple. The majority was made up of Republican conservatives with this so-called American morality engrained in them. It’s not an American morality, it’s a conservative, generally Christian, morality and the GOP appeals perfectly. With this moralism lurking about the Democrats end up in a hole: on one hand, you want to be a true alternative and appeal to factions that aren’t this wonderful moral majority. On the other hand, if you don’t appeal to this majority through your stance on abortion especially, you have no chance of winning. If you don’t appeal to the majority of voters then you won’t win and this in the problem. Every two-bit analyst has been out trying to see where the Democrats go now and they’re facing an uphill battle. They did pull out more voters from the fold, the youth vote increased in terms of numbers but stayed at the same level in terms of percentage (17%). For every extra person Kerry pulled in, Bush added almost two. The backroom GOP staff led by Karl Rove did an amazing job in galvanizing their voters. There’s many accusations here that Bush appeals to nobody other than white rednecks and the lack of democracy here. Well, look at the figures… the split in female voting was slight in favour of Kerry but Bush made gains on the 2000 performance. Voting in immigrant heavy areas like New Mexico was in favour of Bush. Florida with its high percentage of Cuban immigrants/Cuban-Americans went with Bush. A voter turnout of nearly 120 million people (just under 60%) is also impressive given recent Western population voting figures in their respective countries and is favourable to both candidates, it shows that both Kerry and Bush got people off their asses and into the voting areas. Definitely reconsider the idea that only university educated swine voted Kerry. The current CNN exit poll suggests that college graduates were split with 49% voting for each candidate. It’s only when you get to post-graduate level that Kerry appealed to an educated majority.

In the end it’s pretty simple. If you’re trying to sell manure and there’s way more people in your country who want manure than those who don’t want manure, you’re only selling to one faction. When that faction is the majority you’re on a winning ticket.

Bush being re-elected coincided with Democrat losses and Republican gains in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. This is far more worrying than a straight Bush victory as it strengthens the power he can wield in both departments. Add in to the anticipated Supreme Court changes and there’s a reasonable case in saying that Bush is strengthening the GOP hold ion for the 2008 election when he’ll be lying down for his successor.

From Blair’s position, he should be anxious. The Aussie and US elections were meant to be barometers of the Iraq issue affected voters. This definitely will affect Blair and much of his success/failure will be judged on the success of the Iraq voting currently scheduled for January. I’d also say that home issues in the UK will affect Blair far more than they affected both Howard or Bush. There’s a lot of pissed off people in the UK and to appease these persons, he really will have to pull something out of the bag.

no fullerov, creakyknees definitely has a point there.

have you ever heard of the german nazi wernher von braun? von braun, who was member of both the nsdap and the ss, developed the infamous a4/v2 rockets for the nazi regime. the v2 was produced in a concentration camp (mittelbau-dora). as a result of the horrible working conditions, 10000-20000 people died. that's even more than the estimated 7000-10000 victims that were killed by the v2 in england, belgium, netherlands and france.

guess what happened to von braun after ww2? was he rightfully punished as a war criminal at the nuremberg trials? nope. shortly after the war, von braun and about 1000 other nazi scientists were secretely transferred to the us (known as the operation overcast/paperclip). from then on, von braun and the others worked for the us government.

yada, yada, yada. to cut it short, von braun continued to be one of the leading rocket technology scientists and later led a team that developed the saturn rockets (-> apollo program -> moon landing).

furthermore, everything i just wrote is completely irrelevant. the moon landing is not an achievement of the united states or any other nation. it's the achievement of a group of individuals and humanity in general. it doesn't matter where those individuals came from. the united states merely had the money and political power to employ those individuals.

Well of course you are right about the transferance of knowledge, but to take your viewpoint you would have to say that although the manhatten project had physicists etc of many nationalites , it was the US that actually dropped Little Boy and Fat Man.

I dont think that one action indicates the competancy of a nation, lets face it if the Soviets had
the same resources, do we doubt that they would have acheived this.
Again one, could have argued, that the Soviets put a man in Space....."Any country that could put a man into space...etc etc etc"

Sorry but I have to disagree with you now that we are rivals.

And if yer interested in a great investment, lemme tell ya about this super bridge we've got in Brooklyn....