I did fail to take account of how far the powers would go to steal the election. I didn't think they could do it, and like many, as I watched the numbers pile up in favor of Bush, I felt despair and even shame that I had so wrongly interpreted the mood of the the American People.

Then, a day later, I heard the news. The network's exit polls all showed Kerry winning, by a margin of around 1-3 percent. But they didn't report this, because the reported numbers coming through the official sources showed Bush winning, and the networks (of course, being chicken hearted in the extreme) didn't have the courage to report the odd difference, for which they didn't have an easy explanation.

Unfortunately for us this means only one thing. Somehow there is a tweak in the software or the chips in all those voting machines (remember in 2000, there weren't that many of them) which is able to total the votes and slip a small margin of change into the situation, for which the only check on their accuracy is the exit polls. There is no other explanation for this difference between the exit polls and the officially reported results.

Expect a lot of books over the next year or so, as various folks try to figure this out. I also must confess that I no longer believe that 9/11 was done by Islamic terrorists, but that is a whole other story. I also have to digest this stuff, before I decide just how radical I want to respond to these outrageous manipulations of our democracy.