Kathy Griffin hilariously skewers celebrities who thank Jesus for their awards and gets censored by E! for her trouble.

Huh. You think?

The truth is inconvenient.

Anyone like me who grew up in an "end times" household knows this story by heart: Christians must witness to all the world in order to bring about the Second Coming of Christ.

For those who don't live in the Seattle metro area and might have missed it, there was an outstanding guest column in last Friday's Seattle P-I written by University of Washington professor Michael Honey who discusses the Lt. Ehren Watada case (the Fort Lewis Army soldier who is refusing deployment to Iraq on moral grounds).

The Alito debate got me to thinking about the representative nature of the U.S. Senate. Yes, I know about its history and how it was set up as way for states to have a voice. But in my opinion, it's fundamentally anti-democratic and inappropriate for the modern era, as we'll see on the flip.

Interesting story breaking that came to my attention today claiming that Kerry now suspects that the election irregularities of 2004 were in fact the result of GOP fraud.

I've been tallying since election night, and now, all states have reported final official results. The bad news? Bush still leads. :-) The good news? His final margin dropped to under 3 million votes.

The totals:

Bush: 62,027,466 (50.73%)
Kerry: 59,027,612 (48.28%)   
Nader: 456,356    (0.37%)
Badnarik: 396,888 (0.32%)   
Others: 361,079    (0.30%)

Bush's margin over Kerry: 2,999,854 (2.45%)

Total Votes Counted for President: 122,269,401

I've been keeping track for the sake of history (and perception). Only two states have not provided official final results (CA and MS). All others are official.

Nationally, as of 5 PM PST, 12/10, it's:

Bush: 62,017,560 (50.74%)
Kerry: 59,007,324 (48.28%)
Nader: 436,981 (0.36%)   
Badnarik: 396,709 (0.32%)   
Others: 360,751 (0.30%)

Total Cast: 122,219,325

Bush's margin over Kerry: 3,010,236 votes (2.46%)   

A little tidbit from the U.S. Census Bureau. A state-by-state ranking of the percentage of persons 25 and over living in the state with a bachelor's degree or better (2002). If I knew how to post this as a nifty red/blue chart like the one on teen pregnancy, I would.

(Hint: blue tends to cluster at top; red at bottom. :-)

I've been keeping track, just to see how close late returns would narrow the gap for Kerry.

As of 3 PM PST (12/03/04):

Bush:     61,707,444 (50.83%)
Kerry:    58,506,252 (48.20%)

Margin: 3,201,192 (2.64% -- due to rounding)

Est. Total Votes Cast for President: 121,393,696

States that have still not posted final official totals:

California
Indiana
Maine
Maryland
Minnesota
Mississippi
Nebraska
New Mexico
New York
Ohio
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
Tennessee
Texas

As I reported last night, the current popular vote totals stand at:

Bush: 61,250,726 (50.88%)
Kerry: 57,968,492 (48.15%)
All remaining: @ 1.16 million

To put Bush's 2.73% win in perspective, with the added caveat that his final spread will be closer to 2.6% when California and New York make their final reports in December, I used Dave Leip's outstanding data to compare Bush's "crushing mandate" to other presidential winners and their percentage-of-victory margin since the end of WW2.

2004. Bush 2.6-2.7%
      
2000. Bush -0.5%
      
1996. Clinton 8.5%
      
1992. Clinton 5.0%
      
1988. Bush Sr. 7.7%
      
1984. Reagan 18.2%
      
1980. Reagan 9.8%
      
1976. Carter 2.1%
      
1972. Nixon 23.2%
      
1968. Nixon 0.6%
      
1964. Johnson 22.6%
      
1960. Kennedy 0.2%
      
1956. Eisenhower 16.4%
      
1952. Eisenhower 10.9%
      
1948. Truman 4.5%

Not trusting AP to keep all their running totals updated, I spent the evening going through each state's election site and comparing it to AP's tally. Several comparisons and contrasts later, I have the latest totals for Bush and Kerry:

Bush: 61,250,726

Kerry: 57,968,492

All remaining candidates: @ 1.16 million

I didn't add every minor candidate's total, but using Dave Leip's site, I made some estimates based on the percentages I added and updated. That's where the extrapolated figure of 1.16 million comes from.

So that gives about 120,380,000 total votes (so far recorded) cast for President this year. Bush's percentage of the vote is 50.88% and Kerry's is 48.15%.

A new report ranks the healthiest states in America:

http://www.unitedhealthfoundation.org/shr2004/Findings.html

Note that Kerry won 14 of the top 25 states (and 8 of the top 10), while Bush won 20 of the bottom 25 (and an astounding 16 of the bottom 16).

Taken together, states that voted for Kerry are on average 9.85% above the national norm for health (median, 9.7%); states that voted for Bush are on average -1.72% BELOW the national norm (median, -2.7%).

I guess when you're in good health, the mind is sounder. And let's not even get into "moral issue" folk voting against their own best health-care interests by voting for Bush.