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.