. . . is up here, in honor of his millionth hit.

I should do something equally spelendiferous for my 45,000th hit. Though I'll concede that's a more anti-climactic number.

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Jeff at Beautiful Atrocities has a spirited discussion of the Theo Van Gogh murder, and the frightening possibility that Europe is slouching toward a new Kristallnacht against non-Muslims. (Jeff doesn't mention Kristallnacht, but his post scared me, and it should scare you, too.)

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1 Thanks! It's funny you should mention Kristalnachtt, I thought of that while writing that post, but thot, oh people will say that's too over the top. I don't think it is. They are in deep shit over there. But Russ from Mean Mr Mustard left an interesting comment from that post: "Once any large section of the West becomes sufficiently energized, this war will be over very fast. The current route is meant to muddle us through this whole ordeal with the smallest loss of life and wealth on both sides, and also to retain the comfort and freedom that we enjoy. But once that portion of the West (smart money is currently, of course, on the US, but don't totally count out a visceral backlash somewhere in Europe) looks at a calculus involving enough terrorism and deterioration in quality of life from Islam's influence, I'm expecting a drastic shortening in the length of the war, coupled with a huge increase in the amount of casualties, all of them on the other side.

Posted by: jeff at November 07, 2004 03:14 PM (23Azh)

2 What was also disturbing was the artist who painted a mural that said "Thou shall not kill" and the local mosque complained it was racist. To which the government responded by sand blasting it clean and destroying any tapes people made of them sandblasting it.

Posted by: The Pirate at November 08, 2004 07:44 AM (0ZKi5)

3 I thought video was still available of that . . . ? I could have sworn I saw that there was even a version that was translated into English. Of course, once video is online, it's online Sometimes, information does want to be free.

Posted by: Attila Girl at November 09, 2004 12:23 AM (SuJa4)

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Rusty Shackleford has a reasonably plausible explanation for the wildly inaccurate polling data that was leaked to the media on Tuesday morning.

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James Joyner rejects the notion that gay marriage (or other religous issues) decided the election, and runs a small roundup of articles/entries that have disputed the idea—including pieces by David Brooks, Paul Freedman, Kevin Drum and Sully.

Freedman has the statistical goods:

The evidence that having a gay-marriage ban on the ballot increased voter turnout is spotty. Marriage-ban states did see higher turnout than states without such measures. They also saw higher increases in turnout compared with four years ago. But these differences are relatively small. Based on preliminary turnout estimates, 59.5 percent of the eligible voting population turned out in marriage-ban states, whereas 59.1 percent turned out elsewhere. This is a microscopic gap when compared to other factors. For example, turnout in battleground states was more than 7.5 points higher than it was in less-competitive states, and it increased much more over 2000 as well.

Brooks sums it up:

Every election year, we in the commentariat come up with a story line to explain the result, and the story line has to have two features. First, it has to be completely wrong. Second, it has to reassure liberals that they are morally superior to the people who just defeated them. In past years, the story line has involved Angry White Males, or Willie Horton-bashing racists. This year, the official story is that throngs of homophobic, Red America values-voters surged to the polls to put George Bush over the top. This theory certainly flatters liberals, and it is certainly wrong.

The only thing I have to add is that the story line is also being pushed within the religious and evangelical right, because it flatters them as well. "See what happens when you push us too hard in the culture wars? Behold our power." But in reality, it was Bush's gains among women, black people, Jews and Catholics that pushed him over the top, and the biggest "moral value" in this campaign was the idea that people who kidnap others and decapitate them should be put out of business.

(Head over to Outside the Beltway [link at the top of this article] to access the links to the original pieces; I'm way too busy to sling the code in here myself. Besides, Dr. Joyner has written on this topic before, and it's worth scrolling around to find his other thoughts on the subject. There's a nice entry yesterday, IIRC.)

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It appears that all is forgiven, and The Wall Street Journal is taking Peggy Noonan back agian [/joke]. This ran, as I recall, circa Thursday:

Let us get our heads around the size and scope of what happened Tuesday. George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, became the first incumbent president to increase his majority in both the Senate and the House and to increase his own vote (by over 3.5 million) since Franklin D. Roosevelt, political genius of the 20th century, in 1936. This is huge.

George W. Bush is the first president to win more than 50% of the popular vote since 1988. (Bill Clinton failed to twice; Mr. Bush failed to last time and fell short of a plurality by half a million.) The president received more than 59 million votes, breaking Ronald Reagan's old record of 54.5 million. Mr. Bush increased his personal percentages in almost every state in the union. He carried the Catholic vote and won 42% of the Hispanic vote and 24% of the Jewish vote (up from 19% in 2000.)

She is just so good. The leitmotif on this essay is the word "savor," which somehow annoyed me, either despite or because I knew it wasn't a synonym for "gloat." But in between the "choruses," the verses are still so damned good: vintage Peggy. Read the whole thing, if you haven't already.

There is a tendancy to try to find one cause for Bush's victory, to place this all on evengelical voters without seeing that Bush could not have won without increasing the percentages of Jews, Black people, and Catholics who voted for him. Or to link this election more strongly to the issue of gay marriage than to that of Kerry's own personal integrity, simply because "moral values" were mentioned in some exit polls. (Not lying in front of Congress could be perceived to be a moral value, no? Or not exacerbating the suffering of American POWs during the Vietnam war . . . ?)

Michele of ASV recommends that the left chill the hell out:

If you don't mind, I'd like to address the throngs of Chicken Littles who seem to be out in full force on the net today. I just want to clear up a few things, as you all seem to be pretty misguided in more than one area today.

I voted for George Bush.
I am not a redneck.
I do not spend my days watching cars race around a track, drinking cheap beer and slapping my woman on the ass.
I am not a bible thumper. In fact, I am an atheist.
I am not a homophobe.
I am educated beyond the fifth grade. In fact, I am college educated.
I am not stupid. Not by any stretch of facts.
I do not bomb abortion clinics.

You will not be thrown in jail for the sole reason of being a liberal.
Your child's public school will not suddenly turn into a center for Christian brainwashing.
Your favorite bookstore will not turn into puritan central.

This is not Nazi Germany in any way.
You will not be forced into concentration camps.
You will not be burned in human-sized ovens because of your religion.
We will not be forced to wear uniforms and march in line every day.
You will not live in fear.
If you think this is a country in which you have to live in fear, I have some friends in Iran who would like to have a little talk with you.

Finally, Micheal J. Totten has been discussing this a lot lately—the myth of the Christian Takeover. In one entry, "An Exodus of Women," he points out that females abandoned the Democratic Party in droves this last election. Lively discussion ensues on his comments board: one commenter points out that the 2004 results simply reflected a liberal-conservative coalition against the left. I think that's about right.

IÂ’m not buying the now-popular theory that says Bush won because he whipped up an evangelical frenzy against gay marriage. John Kerry also opposes gay marriage. Both Bush and Kerry are in favor of civil unions. Kerry bragged that his position on gay marriage is exactly the same as the presidentÂ’s. (I think theyÂ’re both wrong, for whatever thatÂ’s worth. IÂ’m to the left of both of them on this question.) Besides, my state of Oregon voted to ban gay marriage and also chose Kerry in a landslide. The gay marriage debate was barely whispered here. It didn't help Bush at all. Lots of people around here saw no contradiction voting against gay marriage and also for Kerry.

And in a follow-up piece, "Zombie Hordes of Theo-Cons," he links to an Andrew Coyne essay and shares his own thoughts:

The Republican Party has a nut-job wing. Pat Robertson is real. James Dobson is real. Michael Savage is real. These guys have fans, and they voted. ThereÂ’s no denying it. But thereÂ’s also no denying that if John Kerry faced Pat Robertson in an election the Republican Party would have to dig itself out of a smouldering crater.

45 percent of the people who voted for Bush are self-described liberals or moderates. (Earth to Democrats: ThatÂ’s why he beat you.) Only 55 percent of the people who voted for Bush are conservatives. (See AndrewÂ’s piece for the details.) And, as most of us know, there are many different kinds of conservatives. There are neocons and paleocons, Wall Street conservatives and religious conservatives. Not to mention plain old run-of-the-mill conservatives. ItÂ’s a fractious group of people who have little in common but, oddly enough, happen to wear the same useless label.

Zeroing in on only one of those factions and blowing it all out proportion will get the Democrats nowhere. It makes as much sense as Ann Coulter accusing every leftie in the land of being pro-terrorist. ItÂ’s not only dumb but exceptionally counterproductive.

(My emphasis.)

So enough with the stereotypes, okay? And enough with picking one strand out of the tapestry and suggesting it represents the whole thing.

The Democratic Party has to dig itself out of the "victim mindset" it uses to foster dependency within its various client groups, and do a little soul-searching.

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1 Well, having lived in NC for so long, I qualify as a redneck. I love when the left refers to me as such, and thinks that that means that I am an "igit". I always ask them if they realize how much food is grown by us "rednecks," and how many tech companies have moved south of the Mason Dixon line. Never get an answer from them Then I ask them why they are moving down south from NJ, NY, etc, where all us rednecks live, in droves. No answer to that one, either. But then, I guess all us RWers are just sheeple and lemmings. PFFFTTTT!

Posted by: William Teach at November 06, 2004 11:11 AM (TFSHk)

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. . . has been a little light, and will continue to be through this coming Wednesday. Attila the Hub and I are working on getting the house ready for what the social worker calls the "home vist," and we are calling "the inspection." Interesting little facts about this phase in the adoption process:

1) We have to pull credit reports on both of us, and I'll have to explain that I've used my own checking account (and credit cards) as a sort of wading pool, playing around because I know that whatever I do won't affect the family finances (until it finally did, drastically increasing the challenges when we refinanced the house—and I therefore had to stop acting liike a 14-year-old; this is always such a painful moment for the middle-aged:

Discussion about twenty years ago with my dad—

Attila Girl: Your parents were full of caveats when you borrowed their car.

Attila Dad: They treat me like I'm 16 years old.

AG: Why?

AD: Because I acted that way till I was in my mid-forties.

AG: When did you stop?

AD: A couple of weeks ago.)

2) I have clutter all over my house, which simply won't do because it makes the home less inviting, and creates all kinds of tripping hazards. Therefore I'm getting rid of what I can, and boxing up the rest to hide in storage. This process would be less tramautic if it didn't involve all kinds of self-flagellation: "how did I let these stacks of books pile up this high? And why do I even have these? I haven't even read half of them!" And so on: "Bad Attila Girl. Bad. Bad!" These questions, naturally, answer themselves: I let the piles get high because I knew someone was going to mentally abuse me when I started tackling them. And I need to stop doing this, because I certainly have no intention of treating my child the way I treat myself. Or the way I have treated myself historically, let's say.

I've been told that clutter stems from a mild form of ADD, or ADHD. I tend to think that in my case it's learned behavior, or possibly a genetic quirk: my mother doesn't acquire things so much as marry them—and her father was the same way.

But I must stop accumulating junk and dodging my bill deadlines. Maybe I'll start overeating, like the rest of my countrymen. Or I'll become a moonbat, and construct elaborate arguments as to why all my problems stem from Chimpy McHalliburton. But compulsively, substituting the new behavior for the old. I'll start a blog, and obsessively write entries when I should be sleeping. Oh, wait . . .

3) The standards for "baby-proofing" these days are so high that my husband is once again joking about how he shouldn't have survived his childhood, what with all those exposed electical outlets without little plastic plugs in them. We now have a "configure gate" (which is a little baby fence) around the upstairs fireplace, gates on our balconies, a gate at the top of the stair, and a baby fence that blocks off access from the bottom of the stair. And netting around the railing that surrounds the stairwell, as well as netting on the outside railings.

It does strike me as rather insane. But in our particular case, it's mandated. So there's no philosophical discussion to be had on whether all the baby-proofing in our culture is somehow an abdication of parental responsibility, a way to avoid supervising the child's play, and teaching him/her to stay away from dangerous things. In our case we have to do it to the nines, so our social worker will stay happy. (When the social worker is happy, everyone is happy.)

And now I'm off to sleep. Have a great day, and don't trip over any electrical cords—or strangle yourself on them. Don't try to swallow any buttons or coins. Okay?

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Spoons has some funny election "predictions" that I suspect were made circa Wednesday evening.

And a few of the comments that follow are actually from their "authors."

Via Patterico.

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Kate McMillan has a red/blue map of Canada, so that when you move up there to escape Bushitler you don't settle in a "red" area by mistake.

Although that would be amusing to the rest of us.

Via James.

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“Who is the father of George W. Bush?” Gnat asked on the way to school today. Oh boy.

“You’re not going to believe this, but his name is George Bush, too.”

“Oh, daddee.”

“True.” Pause. Should I? Might as well. “And he was the president once, too.”

“George Bush’s daddy was president too? You’re joking me. That’s silly.”

And so it begins. But if all goes as it usually does, in 14 years sheÂ’ll vote for someone I donÂ’t like; heÂ’ll win, and sheÂ’ll and remind me: you taught me to respect the President.

If I can give her that much, IÂ’ve done my job.

Read the whole thing; and check out his new book, now being promoted on his site. Looks like good stuff.

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particularly in terms of the Electoral College, which we've all been focused on (for obvious reasons). But the President got 51% of the popular vote (first time since 1988 that anyone has pulled that off [it was his father]). And he got an unprecedented raw number of votes.

Turnout helped both guys, but Bush more than Kerry.

And, furthermore, Bush had coattails: Republicans down the ticket benefited from the association with him.

Not a landslide. But a mandate.

He also benefitted from all the pro-gay-marriage initatives, which energized the "devout Christian" vote—to the point that I think advocates of gay marriage (and I am one, though I don't breathe fire on this issue) should regroup and start pushing for civil unions, and finding a way to assure full federal benefits for these types of partnerships. If there's a way to get the legal and financial protections that gays and lesbians need without forcing people to place the label "marriage" on it, it would get us through the next 10-20 years while we work this thing out. (Ultimately, I believe the state should only grant civil unions to any couple, and then the specific church/religious group would be responsible for pronouncing it a marriage.

The average person doesn't feel ready yet to go up to a man and discuss his husband. They can say "boyfriend," or "partner," but they're hung up on "husband," and need a few years to get used to that idea. Provided we can get all the necessary legal and financial protections in place, why does it hurt us to wait on that semantic issue?

Also, ixnay on the hate rhetoric. That Michael Moore stuff did you guys no good whatsoever, unless your goal was to make money for terrorists in the Middle East through distribution rights—or to savage the morale of American troops. Cut Moore loose, and thank me later.

And grab yourselves an electable candidate next time.

End of advice-giving.

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Sean Hannity is running a map created by USA Today on his web site: it shows which counties voted for Bush, nationwide.

It's time for Manhattan, Hollywood and SF to wake up and realize that they and their chosen party will have to cooperate with the rest of the country if they aspire ever to be in power again.

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1 Miss Attila? I'm confused! ...The red part is "Middle America," right?

Posted by: Zoot at November 05, 2004 05:59 PM (yvtyP)

2 aka "Flyover Country"

Posted by: Attila Girl at November 05, 2004 07:11 PM (SuJa4)

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Sondra K offers us one good reason not to be "good sports": a portrait of George W. Bush composed of pictures of dead American soldiers. According to one Freeper, it's tucked away on an obscure part of the Michael Moore web site, so presumably it's "yet to be released" as an official part of Lord Pork Pork's electronic presence.

It's disgusting, and inexcusable. If I had lost a family member in the War on Terror, I'd be livid. As it is, I'm pretty furious.

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Edwards just came to the podium to tell the country that the concept of democracy is shit.

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1 I didn't hear this. What exactly did he say?

Posted by: David Foster at November 03, 2004 07:20 AM (XUtCY)

2 "We will have the votes to win as soon as Ter-AY-zaH gets back from Kinkos."

Posted by: The Pirate at November 03, 2004 08:19 AM (0ZKi5)

3 Is it any wonder why those of us who live in North Carolina weren't going to relect edwards? The guy is scum. Might have to drive by his house and TP it

Posted by: William Teach at November 03, 2004 01:35 PM (KCG7N)

4 David, he said essentially that they weren't going to concede, and muttered some nonsense about making sure every vote counted and was counted. I figured they were setting the stage for a long series of court challenges on an unambiguous result, and I lost my temper.

Posted by: Attila Girl at November 03, 2004 05:00 PM (SuJa4)

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I’m at Interocitor’s house with the LA Bear Flag Leaguers. I’m not live-blogging, because the WiFi system is close to overloaded, with ten computers hooked up at the same time. So I’m composing this in Word, and I’ll post it afterward. (Every once in a while, someone will have trouble loading a page and ask our host, “hey, would you kick the router for me?”)

IÂ’m here with Baldilocks, Master of None, the Angry Clam, Xrlq, Patterico, the Armed Liberal, The Pirate, and Presto Pundit.

WeÂ’re basically a bunch of blognerds: there are five laptops open in this room, and weÂ’re channel-surfing the election returns on the large screen as we dig out information from the web and call it out to each other.

Bush is at 269 Electoral Votes, so the contest could be a theoretical tie— except that the GOP controls the Senate, so a tie would go our way. The Presidential race is theoretically over except for any legal challenges, because all Bush needs is one more state to break the tie.

Drudge has called the election for Bush.

Of course, a lot of the networks have Bush at numbers much lower than 269, and people have been tracking the points at which each channel calls Ohio for Bush. We flipped CBS on for a while so we could see Dan Rather's sad clown face, and have been following Brit Hume's persistently glum face. ("Why is he so legubrious?" people keep asking.
"It's his image," comes the answer.)

Mostly IÂ’m sticking very close to the Angry Clam, because heÂ’s one of the brightest people in a room full of very smart cookies. As an added bonus, he can do arithmetic in his head very quickly, which is nice when weÂ’re trying to figure out how various possible scenarios might work out in the Electoral College.

Okay. It looks like New Mexico is red for sure. This is probably it.

The consensus here seems to be that Kerry wonÂ’t concede until tomorrow. Wait!—Carl Cameron has just broken in on Fox to tell us that Kerry is consulting with Senator Kennedy, so the speculation is that they may be discussing the timing of the concession speech.

Okay, kids. It looks like weÂ’ll continue to fight this war on terror, after all.

Over and out.

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Heading out to vote in a few minutes. I'm really sleep-deprived, but I promise to concentrate, so I don't vote for JFK by mistake. Then I'm off to my local Bush-Cheney party headquarters, so I can make some "get out the vote" phone calls. Not that it matters at the Presidential Level in the Golden State, but there are some important local issues here. I also want the statewide gap between Kerry and the President to be as narrow as possible, in order to embarass the Democrats and to give W. the strongest possible popular vote numbers.

One piece of advice, less for my blogger friends than for their mothers and brothers and aunts: don't watch (or listen to) any mainstream media sources until after you vote. Remember what happened in 2000: there would have been no dispute about the results in Florida if the panhandle had shown up at the polls. And the panhandle voters didn't bother, because the MSM had already called the state for Gore. There will be attempts by our friends in the MSM to manipulate the data so that things appear as hopeless for W. as possible. Vote, and then turn on the TV—if you must. (By the way, the advice works for Democratic voters as well: voting is a civic duty, and we can all be swayed by last-minute data or a hard day at work: vote as early as you can—before work, if possible—and don't tune in until you've done it.)

Apparently, the fraud has already begun: Vodkapundit has a few examples (hop over there and scroll around). I anticipate there will be many today, and I just hope the poll-watchers stay on their toes.

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I went back to the old Blogspot site, to see when I first predicted a strong showing for Bush in this election. Turns out the first ones predated Kerry's nomination.

Here's what appears to be the very first:

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Welcome to 2004, the year that:

1. George W. Bush will be re-elected in a landslide election;

2. There will be another successful terrorist attack on the U.S., though not on the scale of 9/11;

3. The economy will take off, and employment will go through the roof;

4. My freelance copyediting income will, likewise, increase dramatically;

5. My husband will get another union job, thereby preserving our health care benefits--or he'll sell his screenplay, and we'll be able to afford to buy insurance through his company;

6. We'll be approved to adopt a baby;

7. I'll finally finish a draft on one of my backburnered writing projects.

I pray I'm right about everything but the second prediction.

And then there was this one, a bit later in January:

OKAY, I KNOW I'M LATE

But I'll say one thing about the Democratic primaries: the dems are acting less like lemmings lately, and more like folks who want to win. They appear to be leaning toward guys who have a chance, like Kerry and Edwards, and away from Angry Young Men Without a Prayer, like Dean and Clark.

But it'll all be for naught, and I'll give you two reasons why: 1) the war on terror/national security, and 2) the economy. The only thing that could really un-seat W. is a large-scale, successful terrorist attack on U.S. soil. And even that might backfire, since a lot of people feel he's being very aggressive in pursuing terrorists. As far as the economy is concerned, he's sitting in the catbird seat.

Bush by a landslide. And you know it, deep down.

Those were written 10-11 months ago. And now we'll see how I do. As at least one friend has pointed out, I've been "waaaay out on a limb" for many months—and not always when things looked good for the President.

If Kerry is elected, the Republic will survive, but hundreds or thousands will die here that wouldn't otherwise have to, and thousands of Iraqis will as well. In fact, the future of the Iraqi experiment will be in doubt if Kerry wins. And we need a democracy in that region other than Israel; we really do.

I'm no longer hoping for a landslide; I'd just like a lawyer-proof victory.

Goodnight, now. I'm voting first thing in the morning so I can go to Bush-Cheney headquarters around noon, have a couple of friendly arguments with the social cons there, and do a little get-out-the-vote phone calling.

Then it's out to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Interocitor for a little gathering with the Angeleno Chapter of the Bear-Flag Leaguers. It'll be the first time they'll be meeting Attila the Hub. I'll bring the laptop, but I'm not committing to live-blogging, particularly since this will partially be a social event. After all, I'm a nerd, but I do try not to let that show.

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Most bloggers, pundits and poll-collectors give it to Bush 286-252. That assumes Hawaii doesn't flip, New Hampshire goes to Kerry, and Kerry takes the West Coast, New England, and Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois. Pennsylvania to Kerry, Florida to Bush, New Mexico to Bush and Ohio to Bush.

I'm going to say that we get at least four more EVs than that, for a minimum of 290 Bush votes: Hawaii will come over, and maybe New Hampshire as well (which would bring us to 294). And I think it's likely we'll get one more of the Great Lakes states, in light of the bin Ladin threats. Americans do not like to be threatened.

But what do I know?—I'm a middle-aged gal with a computer.

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Yigal Carmon, President of The Middle East Media Research Institute, wrote an article on the MEMRI web site that corrects an early mis-translation from Osama bin Ladin's recent video:

The tape of Osama bin Laden that was aired on Al-Jazeera on Friday, October 29th included a specific threat to "each U.S. state," designed to influence the outcome of the upcoming election against George W. Bush. The U.S. media in general mistranslated the words "ay wilaya" (which means "each U.S. state") to mean a "country" or "nation" other than the U.S., while in fact the threat was directed specifically at each individual U.S. state. This suggests some knowledge by bin Laden of the U.S. electoral college system. In a section of his speech in which he harshly criticized George W. Bush, bin Laden stated: "Any U.S. state that does not toy with our security automatically guarantees its own security."

The Islamist website Al-Qal'a explained what this sentence meant: "This message was a warning to every U.S. state separately. When he [Osama Bin Laden] said, 'Every state will be determining its own security, and will be responsible for its choice,' it means that any U.S. state that will choose to vote for the white thug Bush as president has chosen to fight us, and we will consider it our enemy, and any state that will vote against Bush has chosen to make peace with us, and we will not characterize it as an enemy. By this characterization, Sheikh Osama wants to drive a wedge in the American body, to weaken it, and he wants to divide the American people itself between enemies of Islam and the Muslims, and those who fight for us, so that he doesn't treat all American people as if they're the same. This letter will have great implications inside the American society, part of which are connected to the American elections, and part of which are connected to what will come after the elections."

Another interesting aspect of the speech is the fact that while bin Laden made his specific threat to each U.S. state, he also offered an election deal to the American voters, attempting to influence the election by these means rather than influencing it through terrorist attacks.

The short version?—Binny says, vote Kerry if you know what's good for you.

Adds Jeff of Protein Wisdom:

Reached for comment, California pulled two enormous bong hits, opened a bag of Doritos, and fired up the Playstation 2.

Protein Wisdom also has a pretty good roundup of blogger reactions, so follow the link right above this if you want to read more.

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Hawaii is in play (Bush slightly ahead), and so is Michigan (Kerry still ahead there). If Kerry loses either of those states it's going to be embarrassing. As it is, he lost Nevada and New Mexico. But I guess he'll be hanging on to New Jersey by his fingernails. Maybe even Pennsylvania and Minnesota.

Hell--California's looking like Kerry is only ahead of Bush in the single digits. Is there any state that's still rock-solid for JFK?--Oh, right. New York. And Illinois.

This could be a bloodbath—or at least, a strong enough result to save us from the lawsuits.

I suspect we'll all be pretty cheerful Tuesday night: expect lots of toasts.

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