You’d think the one good thing about merging church and state would be that politics would be suffused with glistening Christian sentiments like ‘love thy neighbor,’ ‘turn the other cheek,’ ‘good will toward men,’ ‘blessed be the peacemakers’ and ‘judge not lest you be judged.’

Yet “somehow I’m not getting a peace, charity, tolerance and forgiveness vibe from the conservatives and evangelicals who claim to have put their prodigal son back in office.

I’m getting more the feel of a vengeful mob – revved up by rectitude – running around with torches and hatchets after heathens and pagans and infidels.

One fiery Southern senator actually accused a nice Catholic columnist of having horns coming up out of her head!” — Maureen Dowd (New York Times op-ed)

“An effort led by Common Cause and the Alliance for Democracy is underway in Ohio to conduct a statewide recount.

Efforts to launch an official statewide recount of the Ohio presidential vote are underway. While it’s unclear if a recount will result in a Kerry victory, it’s likely to highlight many flaws in Ohio elections that may have tilted results toward Republicans and against Democrats.

…While there have been many accounts of problems associated with the Ohio vote, from reports of 90,000 spoiled ballots, to software glitches resulting in more votes tallied than the number of registered voters, to new voters not being notified where their polling places were, to too few voting machines in Democratic strongholds, the only legal process that could immediately address some of these concerns is a recount.

The recount would be just that: a recounting of all the votes cast. If the results change, meaning more votes are added to Kerry’s total – then the official result, what the secretary of state certifies, is changed.

“It’s re-certified,” Arnebeck said. “If Kerry emerges victorious, he’s president.” Of course, a certification in Kerry’s favor for Ohio won’t take away the fact that Bush won the popular vote by 3.5 million votes.

And the clock is ticking on the Ohio process. In coming days, the Ohio secretary of state is expected to announce that the provisional ballots have been counted. A losing candidate for president then has 5 days to request a recount, filing the paperwork and filing fee. That cost is $10 per precinct, which comes to slightly more than $110,000. As of Friday morning, $35,000 had been raised. There is a possibility that not all Ohio counties will finish the provsional ballot count, which would prompt those seeking the recount to pursue other actions, Arnebeck said.” (AlterNet)

“As the band plunged into ‘Vertigo’ and ‘All Because of You,’ the sound of early U2 – the Who’s power chords blasted into U2’s own domain of spaciousness and yearning – was merged with an added 25 years of experience, experiments and world-beating success. Standing with one leg forward and one behind him, Bono rocked back and forth and belted, ‘I’m at a place called Vertigo/It’s everything I wish I didn’t know/Except you give me something I can feel.’

Tensions between intellect and passion, and between pragmatism and faith, drive the songs on ‘How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb’; so do burly guitar riffs, galvanizing crescendos and fearlessly emotional vocals. The album easily stands alongside the best work of U2’s career – ‘Boy,’ ‘War,’ ‘The Joshua Tree’ and ‘Achtung Baby’ – and, song for song, it’s more consistent than any of them.” — New York Times rock critic Jon Pareles.

‘Though Dean, a Democrat, complimented President Bush, saying he “ran a great campaign” and was “very disciplined,” he compared the president to former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, at least in one regard.

“The truth is the president of the United States used the same device that Slobodan Milosevic used in Serbia. When you appeal to homophobia, when you appeal to sexism, when you appeal to racism, that is extraordinarily damaging to the country,” Dean charged. “I know George Bush. I served with him for six years [as a fellow governor]. He’s not a homophobe. He’s not a racist. He’s not a sexist. In some ways, what he did was worse … because he knew better.” ‘ (Editor and Publisher)

On ‘Moral Values,’ It’s Blue in a Landslide: “There’s only one problem with the storyline proclaiming that the country swung to the right on cultural issues in 2004. Like so many other narratives that immediately calcify into our 24/7 media’s conventional wisdom, it is fiction. Everything about the election results – and about American culture itself – confirms an inescapable reality: John Kerry’s defeat notwithstanding, it’s blue America, not red, that is inexorably winning the culture war, and by a landslide. Kerry voters who have been flagellating themselves since Election Day with a vengeance worthy of ‘The Passion of the Christ’ should wake up and smell the Chardonnay.” — Frank Rich (New York Times)

“David Cobb and Michael Badnarik, the 2004 presidential candidates for the Green and Libertarian parties, today announced their intentions to file a formal demand for a recount of the presidential ballots cast in Ohio…

The candidates also demanded that Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who chaired the Ohio Bush campaign, recuse himself from the recount process…

The Cobb and Badnarik campaigns are in the process of raising the required fee, estimated at $110,000, for filing for a complete recount. The campaigns are accepting contributions through their websites. The Cobb-LaMarche website is http://www.votecobb.org. The Badnarik-Campagna contribution page is https://badnarik.org.

The Cobb and Badnarik campaigns have displayed a level of cooperation and civility rarely found in electoral politics. The campaigns jointly participated in and/or sponsored a series of independent debates. Cobb and Badnarik were also simultaneously arrested in St. Louis protesting their exclusion from the restricted, two-party corporate-sponsored debates. “

“An effort led by Common Cause and the Alliance for Democracy is underway in Ohio to conduct a statewide recount.

Efforts to launch an official statewide recount of the Ohio presidential vote are underway. While it’s unclear if a recount will result in a Kerry victory, it’s likely to highlight many flaws in Ohio elections that may have tilted results toward Republicans and against Democrats.

…While there have been many accounts of problems associated with the Ohio vote, from reports of 90,000 spoiled ballots, to software glitches resulting in more votes tallied than the number of registered voters, to new voters not being notified where their polling places were, to too few voting machines in Democratic strongholds, the only legal process that could immediately address some of these concerns is a recount.

The recount would be just that: a recounting of all the votes cast. If the results change, meaning more votes are added to Kerry’s total – then the official result, what the secretary of state certifies, is changed.

“It’s re-certified,” Arnebeck said. “If Kerry emerges victorious, he’s president.” Of course, a certification in Kerry’s favor for Ohio won’t take away the fact that Bush won the popular vote by 3.5 million votes.

And the clock is ticking on the Ohio process. In coming days, the Ohio secretary of state is expected to announce that the provisional ballots have been counted. A losing candidate for president then has 5 days to request a recount, filing the paperwork and filing fee. That cost is $10 per precinct, which comes to slightly more than $110,000. As of Friday morning, $35,000 had been raised. There is a possibility that not all Ohio counties will finish the provsional ballot count, which would prompt those seeking the recount to pursue other actions, Arnebeck said.” (AlterNet)