NORTH CAROLINA - BANANA REPUBLIC
You half expect the three Democratic members of the NC State Board of Elections to be dressed in green battle fatigues reminiscent of 20th century latin american dictatorships - think Daniel Ortega. In the race for Commissioner of Agriculture, a Republican, Steve Troxler, received 2,287 more votes than the Democrat, Britt Cobb. In most democracies, we call that a "win."

But, there were 4,438 votes "lost" in Carteret County. If you were going to commit voter fraud - and I'm not saying that's what happened here - and you wanted to hurt Republicans, this is the kind of county where you'd like to lose a few ballots.

In Carteret County, George W. Bush won 69% of the vote (he only got 56% statewide), Gubernatorial candidate Patrick Ballantine(R) got 53% (he only got 43% statewide), and Senate Candidate Richard Burr(R) got 63% (he only got 52% statewide).

So, faced with their Ag candidate losing, the Board considered whether to allow the 4,438 who's votes were lost (apparently, the voters are identifiable) re-vote. In that scenario, if Democrat Britt Cobb were to close the margin and win, he'd need to get 75.8% of those votes. In a county where he could get only 40% on election day, that seemed too steep a hill. So, Democrats decided that maybe they'd just let Carteret Co. as a whole revote - not just the voters whose votes were lost, but the whole county - regardless of whether you voted on election day.

Under that plan, if turnout were the same as on election day (and it wouldn't be), Britt Cobb would need to get 54.8% of the revote in order to win. Not bloody likely.

So, the State Board decided the best chance would be to rerun the whole election througout the state, at a cost of over $3 million. A new election requires the vote of 4 out of the 5 members of the Board of Elections. But the Dems decided that they wouldn't call it a new election, merely an amendment to their court reversed order to revote Carteret Co. That trick meant that the 3 Dems (Larry Leake, Genevieve Sims and Robert Cordle) alone could dictate a new election. Screw the rules, we lost so we won't a do over. You can almost hear the whining. If getting Cobb 55% or 75% of the Carteret Co. vote was impossible, surely it would be easier to get 50.00000001% when George Bush and Richard Burr aren't on the same ballot.

Now, even the mainstream NC press is getting the picture of this corrupt effort.

The Charlotte Observer says:

It also looks -- to Republicans and many Democrats, too -- as though the State Board of Elections:

• Is bent on keeping Republican Steve Troxler from winning an election he was leading and almost certainly would have won if 4,438 missing Carteret County votes had been properly recorded Nov. 2;

• Is about to disenfranchise 3,330,107 North Carolina voters by exchanging their legitimate votes cast on Nov. 2 for newer ones from as few as 10 percent of the likely voters -- meaning that instead of 4,438 votes not counted, there could be something like 3 million votes discarded; and

• Will soak the taxpayers for $3 million the state doesn't have to accomplish this shameful charade.

The Winston-Salem Journal says:

Cobb's remedy is to hold a new statewide vote. Such a vote would cost the state more than $3 million and would produce an unacceptable winner. That's because the turnout would likely be much lower than that of Nov. 2.

The board should declare Troxler the winner because he almost certainly won. The arithmetic tells the story. To have covered his 2,300-vote deficit with the lost Carteret County votes, Cobb would have had to outpoll Troxler by about a 3-to-1 ratio there. That would have been an improbable Democratic landslide in a county that leans Republican.

. . . He can do his state an even bigger service now by conceding the obvious: He lost.

If Cobb doesn't concede by the time the board meets again, it should declare the obvious. Troxler won the commissioner's race, and he should be inaugurated in January.

No surprise, The News & Observer is still trying to figure out how to spin this thing for Cobb.

TSUNAMI
A thirteen year old in Florida called Austin has collected links to 8 videos of the tsunami. When watching some of these, I'm struck by how unviolent the wave looks. Perhaps that's because we are accustomed to the violent wins and rains of hurricane videos. The wave looks like any other wave - it just moves over longer distances. But these things really are violent. Here's a screengrab from Video 3 on Austin's blog, entitled thai.wmv showing the full horror, that would only be eclipsed by the aftermath.



After watching the videos, click over to the Stinging-Nettle to find out how to contribute, but ignore the shallow, one-note commentary.

DOOK SUCKS
Just a little something to get you in the mood for the upcoming ACC basketball season. First a picture from Truthaboutduke.com: Just click here.

Then, this excerpt from the Arizona Daily Star (also discovered at Truthaboutduke.com), proving Duke is ascared o' the Wildcats.

Even today, Olson has to be careful. He said he nearly signed a deal to play at Duke this season, as part of a home-and-home series, but became suspicious when the Blue Devils would not specify a return date for Tucson in 2005-06.

"Then the next thing was I got a call from CBS and they said, 'Well, Duke wants to play you at the Meadowlands,' " Olson said. "I said, 'You know what? We'll play the neutral site game in Phoenix or the Pond (of Anaheim, Calif.). But other than that, you just call Duke up and tell them to go fly a kite.' "

Yeah, check out Truthaboutduke.com. It's fun.

Especially if you hate Duke. I do.

EVIL DEWARS WIN SUPER BOWL
My first ever win in fantasy football. I'd like to thank my starters.

-Trent Green - QB - KC - week start, good finish
-LaDainian Tomlinson - RB - TDs every week but 1.
-Kevin Jones - RB - VT - Det. Early injury, but became the go to guy for the Lions.
-Marvin Harrison - WR - Ind. Plenty of yards and TDs.
-Ashlie Lelie - WR - Den. Donte Stallworth didn't pan out, so Lelie filled in nicely.
-Tony Gonzalez - TE - KC. Didn't show up til mid way through year. Two TDs and 124 yards came at the right time - this week.
-Bills D/ST - 6 TDs in the stretch run. The difference in the Evil Dewars first round playoff win
-Matt Stover - K - Bal. He didn't hurt me.

-Byron Leftwich - QB - Jax - Filled in for Trent Green in early games and got me some points.
-Jeff Reed - K - Pitt. Got me some points.

Otherwise, the bench sucked. Eddie George - Suck. Tyrone Wheatley - Injured. Justin Fargas - Suck. Julius Jones - injured and dropped. Billy Miller - Who? Rod Gardner - yards but few TDs. Donte Stallworth - hot/cold, unreliable.

A 2-5 start. An 8-6 regular season record (despite scoring the most points). An 8-1 finish.

EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI
Who could believe that in this modern world, more than 20,000 people could be killed in a single natural disaster? From Reuters at Yahoo:

An Indian man cries as he holds the hand of his eight-year-old son, who was killed in a tsunami in Cuddalore, southern India, December 27, 2004. The death toll in a tsunami that slammed into coasts from India to Indonesia topped 22,000 as rescuers scoured the sea for missing tourists and fears of disease grew as soldiers raced to recover rotting bodies. (Arko Datta/Reuters)

Heartbreaking. But, you can help. From the Red Cross:

You can help those affected by this crisis and countless others around the world each year by making a financial gift to the American Red Cross International Response Fund, which will provide immediate relief and long-term support through supplies, technical assistance, and other support to those in need. Call 1-800-HELP NOW or 1-800-257-7575 (Spanish). Contributions to the International Response Fund may be sent to your local American Red Cross chapter or to the American Red Cross International Response Fund, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, DC 20013. Internet users can make a secure online contribution by visiting www.redcross.org.

STEYN ON THE "SEASON"
So many busybodies "offended" by Christmas, with nothing better to do than run to the Courthouse shrieking "separation of chuch and state". Here's Mark Steyn:

The seasonally litigious rest their fanatical devotion to the de-Christification of Christmas on the separation of church and state. America's founders were certainly opposed to the "establishment" of religion, whose meaning is clear enough to any Englishman: The new republic did not want President George Washington serving simultaneously as supreme governor of the Church of America, as the queen today is simultaneously head of the Church of England, or the bishop of Virginia sitting in the U.S. Senate, as today the archbishop of York sits in the House of Lords. Two centuries on, these possibilities are so remote to Americans that the "separation" of church and state has dwindled down to threats of legal action over red and green party napkins.
. . . .
In Britain and Europe, by contrast, the formal and informal symbols of religious faith remained in place in national life and there were no local equivalent to America's militant litigants, and the result is the total collapse of Christianity: Across the continent, the churches are empty. In attempting to sue God out of public life, American liberals demonstrate yet again that they're great on tactics, lousy on long-term strategy.

Anyway, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all the Federal Review regulars (even the atheists), and to anyone else who happens by this page.