In case you think I was overreacting a little in today's Almanac, please read this piece of bile from "wise liberal" Jane Smily in Slate.

Here's a sample of everything that's wrong with today's liberal elite:

The history of the last four years shows that red state types, above all, do not want to be told what to do—they prefer to be ignorant. As a result, they are virtually unteachable.

Quick, someone tell me how Ms. Smiley could be any more insulting. Be sure to tell me in little-bitty sentences made up of itsy-bitsy words, because otherwise poor little "red state type" me might not understand.

But wait, here's another nugget:

Progressives have only one course of action now: React quickly to every outrage—red state types love to cheat and intimidate, so we have to assume the worst and call them on it every time. We have to give them more to think about than they can handle—to always appeal to reason and common sense, and the law, even when they can't understand it and don't respond.

Here's an appeal to common sense, Jane Smiley: stop talking before you make yourself look any stupider.

But I better stop myself while I can... I still have some more cheating and intimidating to take care of tonight, and more Danish to learn in spite of my unteachability.

...I mean, really... shame on Slate for publishing that hateful bile...

Today's Almanac is mostly an open letter to American Democrats and European leftists. It contains constructive advice on making political in-roads with stupid American hayseeds like myself. Also some stuff about radio-activity.

The subjects are not related.

It's finally over. Not just the election—all the "selected not elected" nonsense, all the stigma of a appearing to be a country that can't figure its own ballots out. Thank you, thank you, thank you, America! I knew you wouldn't let me down!

Andy Card, a few moments ago: Ohio's Secretary of State has assured him that Bush's existing margin in that state is "statistically insurmountable," even allowing for the provisional ballots.

"So," Mr. Card announced to supporters, "President Bush has won the state of Ohio."

And, ipso facto, the nation.

So the gauntlet is thrown: the president will give the senator "the respect of more time to reflect on the results" of this election.

* * *

One definition of "mathematical elimination" down. One to go...

What does the total on the bottom of this page have to reach for Kerry to have a realistic chance of getting a net gain of about 145,000 more votes in Ohio? I guess that's the only question.

Seems to me it'd need to be at least a quarter million, but even then it'd have to track better for Kerry than the "straight vote" in the state did—and that's assuming every one of these provisional ballots was actually valid, which is unlikely.

Hm.

The best thing about today's election is that it represents a final reprieve from the harassment of every goddam non-American I know—which is pretty much everyone in my life right now.



At Studieskolen today I had to give the class a spontaneous half-hour tutorial on the Electoral College. I explained about the bicameral system, the allocation of Senators and Representatives, and how the same philosophy had gone into the development of the Electoral College. I had to do it Danish, obviously, so I may have done more harm than good. I was then besieged (yet again) with requests for assurances that I had voted for Kerry—requests I couldn't comply with.

Later in the class our teacher delivered a fifteen-minute homily on the importance of John Kerry winning the election. (When the Chinese girl boasted a few weeks ago of China's having the highest mountain in the world, this same teacher observed only that, "some people might say that Everest is in Tibet, not China, but that's political so we won't get into it.")

Anyway, I already went into this on today's Election Day Almanac, so there's no need to carry on any further here, but good God... let's get this thing behind us.