Armed with my trusty calculator and the state-by-state results at CNN (http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/dates/#20080205) as of about 9:30 am ET, I have totaled the votes by party in each state. I used only states where votes, rather than caucus results, are reported. The grand total is overwhelming: Democrats cast 14,435,174 votes to only 8,758,508 votes for the Republicans, or a Democratic win of 62 to 38%. Democrats turned out more voters than Republicans in 12 of the 15 states for which totals were reported. Here are my numbers:

_____________D_____________________R___

AL:________533,521_______________550,573

AZ:________368,828_______________439,347

AR:________273,449_______________199,679

CA:_______3,828,921_____________2,144,295

CT:________349,288_______________149,068

DE:_________95,978________________50,062

GA:_______1,040,873_______________959,500

IL:_______1,937,730_______________873,095

MA:______1,227,388_______________487,774

MO:________820,453_______________584,618

NJ:_______1,103,824_______________554,894

NY:_______1,717,857_______________601,265

OK:________401,656_______________331,796

TN:________612,791_______________548,783

UT:________122,617_______________283,759

I was amazed particularly by higher Democratic turnout than Republican in states such as Georgia, Oklahoma, Missouri and Tennessee. Alabama even would appear to be in play in the general election. If the Democrats can match this relative turnout in the general election, it will not even be close.

I see a strong need for the Democrats to be careful not to destroy the enthusiasm that is bringing so many to the voting booth. Real change could well be on the way.

Will the Democrats in Congress see and understand what happened yesterday?

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/11/perceived_risk_2.html

Let's raise the thread level from the troll-black-slop pig-wallowing in a ground-puddle, sewer gutter. They get a splash but it's nationally sickening. What lowly and ruinous...Bad ilk-Glops ~

Those scum-people are neo-type-ilk,

who use to place a dead mule head,

on a front seat of their perceived,

"enemies" golf carts. It's vile-rude.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/john_mueller/2006/11/john_mueller.html

To address the underreported and growing dire threat of bathtub drownings.

The disproportionate fear of spectacular events is well documented in the scientific literature. That it is being exploited by self-serving liars is also well documented. That folks like shooter are being played like violins is the inescapable conclusion.

Susie Madrak at the Huffington Post supplies a link for signing a petition sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee:

Sign the DEFUND/REFUND Petition

Defund the war in Iraq

Refund human needs at home and in Iraq

The estimated cost of the first four years of the Iraq War is $1 trillion.

For what we have spent for just ONE DAY of the Iraq War, we could have funded:

* 95,364 Head Start Places for Children or

* 12,478 Elementary School Teachers or

* 163,525 People with Health Care or

* 34,904 Four Year College Scholarships or

* 6,482 Families with Homes

Please sign the DEFUND/REFUND petition below to shift war funding to support human needs here and real solutions in Iraq.

To Members of Congress:

U.S. military personnel continue to die in Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died since the U.S. invasion and 4 million have fled their homes. U.S. taxpayers have contributed more than $1 trillion to pay for the current and future costs of the first four years of war.

We, the undersigned, urge you to take action to bring the U.S. troops home from Iraq and take care of their needs upon return; to fund aid for the humanitarian crisis in Iraq and an eventual Iraqi-led repair and reconstruction; and to fund critical human needs here in the United States.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-madrak/what-this-war-costs-us-al_b_85273.html

http://support.afsc.org/site/PageNavigator/DefundRefundPetition

Keep looking upward for flying gopher guts and be watching out for those dollops falling from the sky. Those dropping gop-goose are the brown balls that splat on your head if you're not careful.

Wear a orange construction plastic troll hat. Take one for Mr radio spewer-stinky, Limburger cheese? Tattoo on the rump, "shooter 242 loves gop-poo." I doubt that will protect

you.

Also:

Beware for the flying tweety birds. It's been rumored they are armed in their talons, grasping those hard shell box turtles for a direct hit. Kapok! Plonk!

Nature has many tricks and guises. If it's not Al-Qaida comming...

Some Al-Qaida labeled turtle may plunk trolls on the nitwit empty cranial

noggin.

O, crock!

kick a tin bucket?

A hole may be in the head?

O, what crocks is RWA-right.

"Some 800 organisations, including the police, the revenue, local and central government, demanded (and almost always got) 253,000 intrusions on citizen privacy in the last recorded year, 2006."

Simon Jenkins, in the Guardian, today cites these government figures to argue that Great Britain is "slithering" toward a police state.

Jenkins says recent reports that a member of Parliament was bugged by police opens a dark curtain into what is going on.

Jenkins reports the MP, described by police as a "civil rights lawyer" and a "nuisance," was bugged as he interviewed a constituent who was being held in prison. The police claim, according to Jenkins, that the inmate was the target of the bug.

Jenkins says this incident has destroyed the so-called Wilson doctrine (named after former prime minister Harold Wilson) that "MPs can't be bugged," and overturns former prime minister Tony Blair's claim, post 9/11, that "ministers are in control" of the country's domestic spying apparatus.

"The grim reality of the past week alone," says Jenkins, " is that it has seen a substantial section of the British establishment allowing itself to believe that private dealings between lawyer and client, and between MP and constituent, should no longer be considered immune from state surveillance. A cardinal principle of a free democracy is coolly abandoned. It is not a victory for national security. It is a victory for terrorism."

Source: The Guardian

The average American is far, far, far more likely to die in an automobile accident than in a terrorist attack, and yet the government spends far, far, far less time warning us of the dangers of dying in an auto accident and far, far, far less money in trying to protect us from auto accident deaths.

I would disagree with the part about government leaving us to our own devices when driving and the cost. It has mandated ....
* Seatbelts and their use with "click it or ticket" campaigns.
* mandated airbags.
* crash standards,
* air pollution standards
* traffic studies
* highway design studies
* costs of law enforcement....

I have absolutely no doubt that if the total cost of automobile safety expenditures were totaled up, it would dwarf that of homeland security et al. The difference is that auto deaths are accepted as inevitable, while things like 9/11 aren't.