I'm sure that most of you saw Geo. Jr.'s "I won because an overly-Maybelline'd political crony of my brother says I won" speech on television on Sunday. Some of you probably even LISTENED to what Snippy had to say, as if there was going to be some sort of rhetorical diamond hidden in the plate of shit that he was serving you. And most of you probably listened, at the very least, to a sound bite of the ever-pedantic Al Bore's "I'm lecturing to a bunch of idiots" rebuttal speech in which he grasped at one last desperate electoral life-preserver in an attempt to keep Campaign Titanic above water.

But you probably missed the MOST IMPORTANT PART OF BOTH SPEECHES: THE SYMBOLS!

George Bush spoke flanked by TWO FLAGS.

But Al Gore stood in a veritable FOREST of flags; he had SIX of 'em on the set!!

Yes, we have a situation reminiscent of the wonderful halcyon days of the Cold War, where each side gets to escalate the weaponry in an attempt to OUT DO the other guy! We have a clear FLAG GAP between the Republicans, and the Democrats! As any child can tell you, six beats two any day of the week, not to mention the fact that, well, let's face it, THERE'S SOMETHING SUSPICIOUS ABOUT A GUY WITH ONLY TWO FLAGS! If a leftwing anal-retentive like Al can scare up SIX flags and muster up enough backbone to climb on stage with 'em, it makes you wonder: What, exactly, is George Bush afraid of?

I call upon Geo. Jr. to call and raise Al's bet! Get yourself TWELVE FLAGS, buster! Come on, kid, this isn't some limpwristed game of Texas Hold'Em down at the local Beaumont Rotary Club, this is REAL HE-MAN draw poker, and it's time, George, for you to show what our dusky brethren south o' your Rio Grande call "cajones!" And while you're at it, wipe that "deer caught in a pair of oncoming Peterbilt headlights" look off'n your sorry-ass face, too. If I'm going to have to look at you for the next four years, at least let me look at a man with a spine.

Юåf+êrvÕ¡: the 51st State admitted to the Union

Bronten, "He struggles to exude authority. "

On the other hand, Gore's body language constantly exudes stiff-necked, rigid authoritarianism that says "I'm smarter than you, therefore I have the right to be your president." As for amateur theatricals, I can easily picture Al in a production of "The Day The Earth Stood Still," starring as the alien robot. "Gore! Klaatu baradu nikto!" I didn't see Letterman, G.M.A., or read Dowd's column, but they apparently picked up on the same symbolism that I saw: the attempts by both candidates to surround themselves in the trappings of presidential authority and to cloak themselves in the vestments of our sacred yet secular iconography.

Both of them seem unsure of themselves, which isn't surprising as NO MATTER WHO "WINS", at this point, the other side will not accept their legitimacy as president. Regardless of whether it's Gore or Bush, you are going to hear four years of accusations repeating every trumped up charge, and each time in the retelling, the story will grow and grow. Let's face it, (insert name here) STOLE THE ELECTION! That's going to be the level of the public dialog for the next four years, that's going to be the endless litany repeated on message boards until your eyes bleed, and that's the "asterisk" that's going to be sitting next to one of these guys' names in the history books a hundred years from now when we're all dead and gone. "Game called on account of rain, season shortened by strike, record set using a rabbit ball."

Given all that, coupled with our next president's having to face a highly probable precipitous decline in equity markets due to our ridiculously out-of-whack balance of trade, the question goes begging: Are your LONG-TERM political goals best served by having the guy from the OTHER PARTY win this election?

Юåf+êrvÕ¡: Corpse Walks Again, Wearing Footwear. Some Act!

"...maybe some things that need to be addressed about our election mechanics..."

The main problem is that this particular system (the punch card) does not have the necessary degree of accuracy to determine a "winner" when the election totals for each candidate are only a tenth of one percent apart. The margin of error is too large to actually determine who 'won.' Just look at the results of the first machine count: Bush by 1,784. Look at the second machine count: Bush by 327, a difference of 1457 with machine error as the cause. Now, that may be still be enough to declare a "winner," but it is also a statistical certainty that running a third machine count would produce an entirely different number, and it is possible said third machine count would show Gore winning. And a fourth machine count would show yet another total.

And that bugs the heck out of Americans. We like certainty, not an amorphous cloud of statistical probabilities. We can measure which athlete first crosses the finish line with exacting laser precision, we have atomic clocks that mark time to the femto-second, we've broken the atom into it's constituent parts and are now subdividing the subatomic, so why can't we count the Florida votes accurately? Like trying to use a ruler to measure a bacterium, our device does not have the requisite degree of accuracy to tell us with certainty what actually happened in Florida on November 7.

One of these guys actually had more votes than the other guy, but we'll never actually know WHO. My bet is that if we're defining the winner as "the person the majority of voters in Florida wanted on Election Day," then it's probably Gore by a hair. But this is real life, not friggin' Fantasyland, and you don't get to hold second elections, or count ballots marked for two presidential candidates. In that case, the machines say "Bush."

Now, hand counts are a different issue entirely. Due to the subjective nature and human error, some people wouldn't trust the results of a hand count if Jesus Christ himself was doing the counting. Which brings up a good rhetorical point: IF we could bring Jesus out of retirement and set Him up with a card table, every single one of the Florida ballots, as much Gatorade as He could drink, and a souvenir "Go Gators" t-shirt, and got Him to counting, what, exactly, do you think the result would be?

Юªt+êrv°Ï : Everyone's A Weiner

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