[The Independent Weekly]
I couldn't have said it better myself.

[BBC News]
A Pentagon advisory panel has warned that the US is losing "the war of ideas" in the Islamic world. Talk of bringing democracy to Muslim nations is seen as self-serving hypocrisy.

[New York Times]
U.N. tells Bush to go to hell, refuses to ban all human cloning and stem cell research.

[Bloomberg]
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives changed their rules so that Majority Leader Tom DeLay could stay in power if he's indicted by a Texas grand jury. On a voice vote, the House Republican Conference changed a rule that required party leaders to step down if indicted for any crime that carries a prison sentence of two or more years.

[Newsday]
Spinning cliches about the need for Americans to reach out to each other across the divides between red states and blue, conservative and liberal, or evangelical and secular, however sincere and well intended, is fruitless and beside the point. America is comprised of (at least) two distinct, irreconcilable cultures held together historically either by force of arms or by circumstances that have long been irrelevant to the well being and aspirations of its people.

[Mark Newman]
It appears that there are, as the pundits have been telling us, "two Americas," but they are not the ones people usually talk about. They are "divided America," where people split roughly evenly between Republican and Democrat, and "decided America," where everyone is a Democrat.

[Fanatical Apathy]
Adam Felber: I'm talking to you, you ignorant, slack-jawed yokels, you bible-thumping, inbred drones, you redneck, racist, chest-thumping, perennially duped grade-school grads.

[thefourreasons.org]
Some interesting thoughts by Dr. Gerry Lower on the devolution of democracy in the U.S. The values and principles of democracy have been entirely supplanted in America by the values of "compassionate" conservatism and crony capitalism, and much of the American electorate is no longer able to make the distinction.

[Daily Kos]
People under the age of 30 turned out at the highest rate in more than 30 years and voted for change. In battlegrounds turnout was above 60%, and broke for Kerry by an average of almost 20 points. Click link to see electoral map for 18-29 year olds.

[Guardian Unlimited]
In the wee small hours of November 3, 2004, a new country appeared on the map of the modern world: the DSA, the Divided States of America. Oh yes, I know, the obligatory pieties about "healing" have begun; not least from the lips of the noble Loser. This is music to the ears of the Victor of course, who wants nothing better than for us all to Come Together, a position otherwise known as unconditional surrender. Can someone on the losing side just for once not roll over and fall into a warm bath of patriotic platitudes at such moments?

[IHT]
Global observers said they had less access to polls in the U.S. election than in Kazakhstan, that the electronic voting had fewer fail-safes than in Venezuela, that the ballots were not so simple as in the Republic of Georgia and that no other country had such a complex national election system. To be honest, monitoring elections in Serbia a few months ago was much simpler, said Konrad Olszewski, an election observer stationed in Miami by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

[BBC News]
Hungary will withdraw all of its 300 troops stationed in Iraq by the end of March 2005.

[Washington Post]
Some exit poll data. About 22 percent of yesterday's voters were white evangelical or born-again Christians.

[Reuters]
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' top contracting official on 10.29 called the government's grant of multi-billion dollar contracts to oil services giant Halliburton the worst case of contracting abuse she has ever seen.