Howard Dean has one of the most upbeat messages from any Democrat today. I guess the 2008 campaign starts today. Not that Dean will run himself, but he’s obviously not stopping everything.

So I’m watching and listening to the election results trickle in. Various members of the different parties are, of course, being interviewed. And they are all “optimistic” that they will win and say that they strongly believe they will win. Even in the same state.

Obviously they can’t both be right.

My question is: why are they still spinning? The polls are closed in the states they’re talking about! What is the point? Can’t anybody admit to any unease ever?

Four years ago, I listened to the election returns on the BBC world service and NPR. I also had a TV on in the background and occasionally watched it, but my primary source of information was BBC. This provided an interesting perspective — and in fact, proved to be more accurate than the American media that night.

This year, I again plan to listen to the BBC world service. If you want to listen, you can go to the world service page and find traditional frequencies near you or global shortwave frequencies. Note: in North America, try the Central America, North Africa, or West Europe feeds. You can also listen live via streaming radio.

I’ll probably also listen to NPR. On the TV, I’m going to have LinkTV’s global coverage going. And probably a little but of more mainstream networks here and there.

I’ll be glad to hear some viewpoints that I haven’t already been inundated with.

Update: I forgot to mention news.google.com, a great resource.

The latest Paul Graham essay is again food for thought. This time he advocates using hackers as a sort of warning system for preventing the destruction associated with the erosion of civil liberties.

This is an interesting commentary from Mark Shields of PBS.

The Lone Star Iconoclast, the newspaper for George Bush’s hometown of Crawford, TX, has strongly endorsed John Kerry for President, citing a long list of troubles with Bush.

If you claim to be such devout Christians, why do you go to war instead of trusting God to resolve problems in Iraq and elsewhere?

If you claim to follow Jesus, why do you ignore his instructions to love one’s enemies and be peaceful rather than violent?

Since you want to spread democracy throughout the world, why do you support dictatorships in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait?

Have you forgotten that the United States armed and supported both Saddam Hussein and Ossama bin Laden at a time with their thugish, brutal nature was already known?

Have you forgotten that Ossama bin Laden originally started his terrorism as an attempt to topple a non-democratic government, and only became opposed to the United States when we supported those dictatorships?

Why then do you believe that arming and supporting other regional dictatorships is in the best long-term security interests of the United States?

Why do you believe that spending billions of dollars we don’t have to kill people that are not a threat to us and turn friendship into hatred is better for our long-term wellbeing than investing in our domestic welfare?

Why do you believe that responding to terrorism by reducing the freedom of Americans is anything other than giving the terrorists exactly what they want?

There’s a very interesting piece up on Salon: John Kerry, Senator. It takes a deep analysis of his Senate voting record and also manages to catch Dick Cheney in an outright lie.