I love these pictures, they should be published.
They say it all.

what's up with those people smoking the cigars?

Bona Fide Fat Cat Republicans cherishing the moment. I think I overheard them say that intermission was almost over, so I assume they were seeing a show.

apparently if you didn't vote you would have died. thankfuly i voted.

A great day for the USA.

Great Photos.

the eyes wide open -- waiting, as you say -- now with pits in our stomach and a cloud of sadness hanging. its hard, but we have to remember the good of the people. the people we surround ourselves with everyday. the people we are. we cannot make room for hate, but we must make time to combat it.

But let us remember this: those of us who surround ourselves with a large and diverse body of people, the ones who live the larger cities, filled with people who are all colors, all races, all sexual orientation — we are not the ones who voted for the politics of hate. We cannot afford the hate that middle America can, because we live with the people they hate. We are the people they hate. We surround ourselves with the world, they surround themselves with themselves.

This election was won on hate; middle America was scared that Kerry would let them damn queers git married.

The good of these people, these who believe themselves to be moral, is obscured by their hate, their fear, their homophobia. Those who voted for Bush on social issues have no hearts. Those who voted for Bush on economic issues, despite the social issues, have no soul. (And those who voted for Bush on foreign policy have no eyes and no ears.)

A great day for the USA? No. The USA should be ashamed of itself.

This country's shores don't begin with the East River and end at the Hudson. The left knows alot about hate. They are so blinded by it they have lost there way. You would think after Dukakis, McGovern, Mondale and Carter they would understand. This election was the death nail. The left is dead.

Let's take a deep breath :o

If that's so, it's a disaster — The left is the only thing keeping this country from becoming a moral cesspool. The left is the conscience of America; the people who care about people over profits.

But the left is not dead. I take heart from the "pendulum" argument a friend presented: the further right we swing, the further left we'll eventually swing. When the consolidation of businesses continues to a point where competition is no longer viable (which it will, with further deregulation) and prices rise, when jobs continue to be lost at record rates, and when even those with jobs can't afford health insurance because profit is more important than people, when tourist revenue plummets because no one from other countries wants to visit us, when farmers realize that they've lost their land because the thousand-acre cow-factory next door has been put in the "organic family farm" category, when the market crashes even harder than it did last time we were leaning this free market, when the working people of America realize that it's the left that has their best interests in mind, and not the profit-obsessed CEOs who run the right, when unconsidered, internationally unsupported wars alienate the world and create more terrorists than they destroy, then the left will rise again, stronger and more powerful than ever.

It is the right that is dead, or dying, because it is rotting from the inside. Whatever high-minded ideals once existed therein have been expunged in favor of a strong eye on the profit margin (while paying lip service to evangelical ideals). The populace, full of fear and hate and confused by rhetoric (on both sides), voted with their anxieties and made a choice that will, in the long run, cost them dearly. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but...

No, the country doesn't begin at the East River and end at the Hudson — after all, both the proprietor of this site and I live in Brooklyn, which is outside those boundaries. But there is more of the country (and the world) crammed into these five boroughs than in many states. I (a native New Yorker) spent election night with people from Wisconsin, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Kansas. How many people in other states can make a similar claim? Yesterday, I rode the subway with Asian-Americans, African-Americans, Arab-Americans, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Wiccans, Homosexuals, Heterosexuals, people who came from all over this country and all over the world to escape the oppression of their native country, or their native state. How many "Americans" can claim to have encountered that much of America in the past _week?_ I'd wager no more than a small percentage of those that voted for Bush can do so. We in the cities lean left because we can't afford not — we spend too much time with each other to build up that truly passionate hatred that comes of ignorance and lack of experience.

You say "The left knows alot about hate. They are so blinded by it they have lost there way," but you do not explain how you came to this conclusion, or provide any examples. Please expand.

I have been too disillusioned since Wednesday to post here, but I guess it is time to move on---I feel that Thomas Friedman summed up my feelings brilliantly in his NYTimes OP ED piece on 11/4/04--"Two Nations Under God". I think the hardest part of this election for those of us on the "left" is that we now realize that it isn't that we are on the oppostie side of the issues from the right.....this time around, we were not even battling the same issues!! We are not losing the fight to the right; we aren't even fighting in the same boxing ring as them---

We cannot comprehend how half of this country would vote on Guns, God and No Gays....that is inconceivable. Goes against everything that is sacred to us....freedom of choice to control our own bodies and to love whoever we please regardless of their genetic make-up, the Bill of Rights, separation of church and state.....

It saddens me that I have such fundamentally different morals that half of this country---and that the people I meet on a daily basis, who help inform my morals are people that half of the country will never meet and would quite admittedly prefer didn't exist at all. I feel pity for all those people that are so closed off from the diversity this country has to offer. But that is another topic I suppose.....I will stop rambling now...

But one more thing--

HATE? Hate involves judgment, and those of us on the side of social freedom don't have the room to judge others' choices of how to live their lives.....Hate is the luxury of those who are scared of the unknown, those who are threatened by those who they have not met.....

All one has to do is read your post. Most of my friends are liberal. I doubt if you have many conservative friends or associates. This was the easiest campaign for democrats to win but they choose not to by wrapping themselves in Michael Moore, Hollywood (lewd and crude Woopie Goldberg + Al Franken), George Soros and Moveon (anti-semetic).org. The hatred of Bush worked against your party. You're not going to win many elections with hatred of the president as the main focus of the campaign. Making fun of the president may make you feel good but it doesn't play well with much of the country.

It is always easiest to justify one's position by attacking the "other side". I could easily point to a few zealots (cough--Zell Miller, Ralph Reed) that give the right a bad name...but is that really honest and healthy debate? No, that is just venom, and I would rather discuss why I think we as a country deserve better than an administration that stands for taking away people's civil liberties that the founding fathers fought so eagerly for.

And I find it interesting that you mock George Soros, the second largest philanthropist in our country....I certainly see why he might someone the right cannot abide.

"You're not going to win many elections with hatred of the president as the main focus of the campaign."

He is a difficult man not to hate. You could say he inspired us to hate him; He was given a chance to unite a wounded country, and instead championed policies that have left us more bitterly opposed than ever. He is a divider, not a leader.

But your point is well taken; I agree that the left needs now to let the anger go. We should calmly point out to the American people how little the Republican party actually cares about them. The reality of the situation has been hidden behind a masterful and blinding executive optimism. People want — need — to trust the President, and so they do, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that he is dissembling for the sake of political gain.

Personally, I have no time for hate any more, even for Mr. Bush. I have time for cogent discussions with those willing to discuss, people who are open-minded enough to recognize and discourse on not only the strengths, but also the flaws, of their candidate. Unfortunately, this seems a rare trait, especially on the right.

As for Michael Moore, Rush Limbaugh and others like him set the stage for that type of debate many years ago — Moore uses similar tactics, but with opposing ideals, and is lambasted by the same people who built up Limbaugh. An then there's Hollywood, that perennial right-wing target. But I think — given the fact that Schwarzenegger and Gibson are two of the right's main newsmakers these days — that we can abandon this myth of Tinseltown as a hotbed of liberal activity. Making fun of the president? That's an American tradition, one of the many freedoms I now believe to be at risk. Did you have similar objections when people were making fun of Clinton?

There are a lot of liberals around me, true; MLE eloquently noted in her above post why those of us that live in large cities tend left. But not all my compatriots agree; I number some Bush-supporting Born Again Christians among my friends. I consider them to be intelligent, well-spoken, good people. The difference between them and me: I simply think their opinions are incorrect. They, on the other hand, think my opinions mean I'll spend eternity in hell. Which mindset is preferable?

Busy week at work made it hard for me to get involved in this discussion. But thank you for keeping this discussion spirited and civil.

I am still processing my opinions on many of these matters.

As an documenter by trade, I have been exposed to many ways of thinking, some of which I have found distasteful and offensive. But I don't think I have the right to tell them to stop thinking a certain way unless it actually hurts someone else or takes away another person's freedom.

If their moral opinion comes from what they consider the highest source, that is fine as well. I don't understand it, but I am not a religious person. But they have no right to tell me what I can or can't do based upon what they thought God is telling them.

Osama thought that Allah was telling him to do a couple things as well.

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