The final(?) results are in from the polling on Tuesday and are given below. Thank you, one and all, for your support!
With some 29,000 absentee ballots – nearly 15% of the total – still to be counted, I hope to make further gains, including from troops in Iraq and elsewhere. Maybe I’ll even climb out of the cellar! (Don’t ask me what the “O” means.)

Diane Benson - D 81,408 40.2 %
Alexander Crawford - L 3,390 1.7 %
Eva Ince - G 1,437 0.7 %
Bill Ratigan - O 1,409 0.7 %
Don Young - R * 115,062 56.8 %
439 of 439 precincts reporting

Nationwide, sixty percent of eligible voters are so alienated from the political process that they didn’t bother to vote. It is certainly understandable that masses of workers and impoverished see no hope for change under the new Democratic majorities in Congress.
Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated once again on Wednesday that “impeachment is off the table”. Two weeks before the election, MSNBC reported that 51% of Americans think that impeachment should be "on the table". Two months before the new Congress convenes, Pelosi announces that the majority voice SHALL NOT BE HEARD.

Leaders of both capitalist parties enthusiastically welcomed the firing of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, but the nominee to succeed him, Robert Gates, has a “curriculum vitae” that could be swapped with practically any other member of the Bush inner circle, including Rumsfeld. Here is what the World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org) says about Gates:

“In nominating Gates, Bush praised the career CIA official as someone who ‘understands the challenges we face in Afghanistan’ because of the role he played as Reagan’s deputy director of the CIA when he ‘helped lead America’s efforts to drive Soviet forces from Afghanistan.’

“In other words, he is one of the American intelligence officials who established intimate ties with Osama bin Laden during the CIA-backed war that shattered Afghan society. As such, he played a role in fostering the very Islamist terrorists who ultimately carried out 9/11. Nothing could express more starkly the cynicism of America’s ruling elite than Bush’s touting such a record as a qualification for leading the ‘war on terror.’

“Gates’s ties to terrorism do not end with bin Laden. In the mid-1980s he was tied to the network of White House operatives and CIA agents who organized the ‘Iran-contra’ operation, in which covert arms sales to Iran were used to provide illegal funding for the US-backed ‘contra’ terror war against Nicaragua. He has likewise been linked to covert efforts in the 1980s to supply weapons to the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein during its war against Iran.

“That such a figure is being introduced as the champion of a ‘fresh perspective’ on Iraq is the clearest warning that even more horrific crimes are being prepared.”

Thanks again to everyone who supported my campaign. I will continue to offer my opinions and ideas, here and elsewhere.

Election Day is here, and “all my trials soon be over”. I have suggested to a few people that everyone should run for Congress (or other political office) at least once in their life. I have no idea how many votes I'll get, but I get good vibrations here in Juneau, even though many who offer smiles and encouragement will vote for Diane Benson. (Even Diane thanked me for running and highlighting important issues, and I appreciate it.)

Regrettably, I have had to "block" one of my most prolific critics. I explained it to him in the following email:

"One of the functions of my blog is a campaign website. It is listed in the election pamphlet and elsewhere as such. It seems self-evident to me that any candidate who allowed his website to be used for purely personal attacks on himself - or anyone - does not take himself seriously, at the least, and is probably mentally unstable to boot. Why don't you criticize the contents of the blog?
"I appreciate your concern for my health, and I do the best with what I got, but isn't one of the great merits of the internet that anyone can get on his soapbox and air his opinions? You don't have to like them; you don't even have to read them,"

Perhaps Ted will use his energy to go after Young or Stevens in two years. (And, Ted, surely a man of your years and experience must know that he who laughs last, laughs best. I may be in my grave when the day of reckoning comes, but come it will.)

Below is a message I sent to the political newsletter “counterpunch”.

In doing research for a blog article on "John Negroponte and the Kiss of Death", relating to his recent visit to Baghdad, I have tried to uncover (so far without success) his hand in the coup that overthrew the first democratically elected government in Fiji, in 1987.

I recall from the time that Negroponte had been relieved of his death squad activity in Honduras and Nicaragua in order to "help" the U.S. Embassy in Fiji in the days between the election, for the first time, of the Fiji Labour Party, and the coup. The Wikipedia article on the coup says that although some have suggested a U.S. hand in it, the theory "has little support among educated commentators".

I felt at the time and remain convinced that the mere presence of Negroponte provided a huge enough fingerprint to convict the Reagan administration of this anti-democratic exercise in regime change. But then, I didn't go to Yale, so I guess I'm not educated.

The issue is timely not only for how it relates to the Maliki government in Iraq, but because Fijians, in particular the Indian population, continue to suffer from the effects of the 1987 coup, up to and including the current constitutional crisis. (The Bush administration now hypocritically warns against a military coup.)

May I suggest that you use your superior resources to investigate and analyze the Negroponte connection and disclose it to a wider reading public. I would also appreciate any links or references to assist my research.
Thanks.

Bill Ratigan

I have tried to avoid entries consisting of little more than links to other sites. The main argument for this was that by researching various sources and “collating” them, I improved my grasp of a question and my understanding of possible solutions.

I break that tradition here. Yes, I’m getting a bit lazy, but sometimes I can do no better than what others say on a given problem, and I also want to refer you to one of my principal news sources, the World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org). They collate the news and provide insightful analysis. I don’t always agree with their conclusions, but they’re certainly thought-provoking.

As examples I present two articles from Friday’s edition. The first is on John Kerry’s botched joke. The opening sentence is a gem: “John Kerry is guilty of the most fatal of blunders for an American bourgeois politician: speaking the truth inadvertently.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/nov2006/kerr-n03.shtml

The second article is important because it deals with a subject which must not be discussed in polite society, including most of the mainstream press: the inhuman treatment of Jose Padilla, an American citizen, in a naval brig in South Carolina.

Padilla was given up during the “aggressive interrogation” of Abu Zubaydah, a mentally handicapped al-Qaeda functionary. There’s no doubt that Padilla bore watching – he may have led to other dangerous people. Instead, the FBI arrested him and, based on his fantasies about a “dirty bomb”, Bush declared him an “enemy combatant” and sent him on his Kafkaesque journey. Of course, Padilla was no closer to making a nuclear weapon than I am to riding a jackass to the moon. His current indictment makes no mention of the dirty bomb. The article quotes the conclusion of his legal brief:

“For most of one thousand three hundred and seven days, Mr. Padilla was tortured by the United States government without cause or justification. Mr. Padilla’s treatment at the hands of the United States government is shocking to even the most hardened conscience, and such outrageous conduct on the part of the government divests it of jurisdiction, under the Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment, to prosecute Mr. Padilla in the instant matter.”

The link is:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/nov2006/nyt-n03.shtml

One final request: in case you are unfamiliar with the case of Ali al-Timimi, please research it. This is a heinous miscarriage of justice – as are most of Bush’s anti-terror prosecutions. I’ll paste the Wikipedia article to get you started:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_al-Timimi