That is all.

One can only imagine the veritable orgy of paper-shredding going on around Washington right now.

I am having difficulty remembering a time that I have been this happy to have been this wrong. Democrats picked up (by CNN’s count) 28 seats in the House—not a veto-proof majority, but a comfortable one to be sure. In the Senate, control depends on the outcome of races in Montana and Virginia, which are still being counted. Both appear to be favoring Democrats, but the margins are too thin (especially in Virgina) to say for sure.

Normally, when watching someone’s dreams come crashing down around them, I am able to summon up some degree of sympathy. In the case of George W. Bush, Karl Rove, and the Republicans who hoped to establish a permanent majority whereby they could cram their hard-right agenda down the nation’s collective throat, I could hardly be happier.

The current spin from the right seems to be that:

1. This isn’t really that big a win for the Democrats, and
2. The Democrats were able to pick up seats only by running to the right.

The truth is, this is huge blow for the President and his party. While Democratic candidates had varying positions on issues like gay marriage and abortion, they were, across the board, united behind a message of opposing unchecked executive power, runaway corruption, and the ineptitude and mendacity that has characterized Republican rule.

Let’s keep in mind, though, that Bush has two more years in office. He is not running for re-election, and doesn’t have a Vice-President waiting in the wings to run. In other words, there is no reason to expect an immediate turn-around. Democrats, meanwhile, lack the iron-clad party discipline that kept Congressional Republicans in legislative lockstep with one another and the White House throughout most of their reign.

It remains to be seen if they will be any more effective in a leadership role than they were as the minority—while I would like to believe they will be, I have been surprised before.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: This must be what the Superbowl is like for sports fans.

Having stopped off at Woodstock Town Hall this evening after work to cast my ballot, I am happy to report that there appeared to be no voting problems—the ancient but reliable mechanical voting machines worked just as they are supposed to, and the ancient but reliable election workers had the situation well in hand.

New York is, of course, a guaranteed win for Democrats. Hillary Clinton has won her Senate race with 70% of the vote, while Elliot Spitzer won the governship with a whopping 72%.

Around the country, highlights of the evening so far include:

• Rick Santorum goes down. So long, Senator Bestiality!
• Ohio gets its first Democratic governor in decades as right-wing nutjob and election-fixer Ken Blackwell loses to Ted Strickland, despite several weeks’ worth of insinuations by the Blackwell campaign regarding Strickland’s sexual orientation.
• To the surprise of exactly no one, Katherine Harris’s campaign goes down in flames.

There’s plenty of other stuff going on, so I’ve put another log on the fire and am settling in for a long evening. While I stand by my prediction that Democrats will not win control of the Senate and are unlikely to win control of the House, I have to admit to feeling a bit giddy at the moment.

Since even the New York Times has picked up the right-wing talking point that anything but a massive blow-out will amount to abject failure for the Democratic Party, I remind everyone to go vote today.

Democrats will pick up seats in both houses of Congress in tomorrow’s mid-term election. They will not, however, take back control of the Senate. While the House is more of a toss-up, it will be a surprise if they win a majority there, either.

The media has been trumpeting the possibility of a Democratic takeover of one or both houses for the last few weeks, and polling data has shown that result to be more likely this year and than at any time in recent memory. However, it is in the media’s interest to have the race come down to the wire.

As for the polls, they indicate an increasing level of voter dissatisfaction on any number of issues. The question is how relevant the polling results are when a voter is standing in front of the ballot box.

In a contest that is a statistical dead-heat (or close to it), the advantage will go to the Republicans. While their hold on the country’s visceral fears may be slipping, it is still there. When faced with a choice between two equally unsavory candidates, or two candidates whose actual positions and policies are unclear, the average voters will default to voting for the candidate they feel is more likely to protect them from the scary people (e.g., Terrorists and The Gays).

For most people, that candidate is the Republican. Sure, s/he may be the subject of five different ethical probes, but that’s probably just a witch hunt like Rush says, and besides—if I vote for the Democrats, they’ll raise my taxes to pay for state-sponsored abortions, send my kids to Gay Camp, and help the terrorists destroy America.

But what about the war in Iraq?

True, voters are turning away from their support of the Iraqi adventure in droves. This war is not Vietnam, though—body bags aren’t coming home by the thousands, and kids from the neighborhood aren’t being drafted. People may be growing dissatisfied and frustrated with our involvement in Iraq, but it is still in a disconnected, read about it in the papers sort of way.

I truly hope I am wrong, as I would like to see nothing better come Wednesday morning than an end to the one-party rule that has plagued this country for the last four years. However, it just doesn’t seem likely that the electorate will head in that direction.

“So far, the Democrats have refused to tell us their plan on how they’re going to secure the United States.”

That’s President Bush, giving a speech in support of Missouri Senator Jim Talent today.

I like this whole “Democrats don’t have a plan to win in Iraq” business about which the President and his minions have been bloviating lately. It’s particularly amusing, I find, if for “to win in Iraq,” one substitutes “sprouting wings and flying.”

Here’s what I mean:

Let’s pretend you and I are having an argument about whether or not we can fly. I say, “I’m going to sprout wings and fly,” to which you respond, “That’s crazy-talk! People can’t just sprout wings and fly.”

“See,” I respond, “the problem is, you don’t have a plan for flying. I’m going to sprout wings and fly, and I’m not giving up until I do. What’s your plan? Huh? HUH?!”

That, in essence, is the administration’s strategy. Claim something completely crazy, then insist that anyone who attempts to point out the error in your claim come up with an alternate means of proving your claim.

And just as I was complaining about the dearth of really good new music lately…

KEXP has been broadcasting from NYC all week for the 2006 CMJ Music Marathon, featuring lots of in-studio performances from participating bands. Today was the fifth and final day, and this afternoon featured a set by the Archie Bronson Outfit.

Holy shit.

While I’ve heard this band’s name come up somewhat regularly over the last month or two, I hadn’t actually had the opportunity to check them out. Suffice it to say that I have now taken a solemn oath to go out and find their album Derdang Derdang.

If the KEXP set is any indicator, and there’s no reason to expect that it’s not, these guys seriously rock. Think the Black Angels with a sizable portion of Murder City Devils mixed in—distortion, haze, and plenty of mayhem.

Good stuff.

While I have added some new stuff to my collection over the last few weeks, with the exception of the new Yo La Tengo, there haven’t been many stand-outs.

Here’s a quick list:

• Forward Russia!, Give Me a Wall – Not bad, but not great either. There’s just not much memorable about this record. I think the post-punk, Gang of Four-style revival has just about played itself out, which hopefully means bands will stop being described as “angular.”
• French Kicks, Two Thousand – This is a very well made record, but the songs are a bit too… well… charming for my taste. I recently picked up Pulp’s Different Class, and I think maybe the French Kicks may have done the same.
• Squarepusher, Hello, Everything – The one-man electronic show pulls off a pretty good record here. A few of the tracks are a bit frantic for casual listening, but this one is worth checking out.
• Silversun Pickups, Carnavas – This band has been getting a lot of press in the indie scene of late. However, the album, while fine, is yet another where I can’t remember a single thing about it as soon as the last track stops playing. Right now, I couldn’t tell you what single one of the songs sounds like.
• Comets On Fire, Avatar – Released earlier this year, this album is one I’d been meaning to pick up, but had forgotten about. I’m glad I remembered, as it’s quite good, in a raucous sort of way, although not quite as noisy as their previous outing, Blue Cathedral.

Over the last couple days, I have also picked up new albums from Sparklehorse, The Black Heart Procession, and Califone. While I am most excited about the new Califone (2004′s Heron King Blues having been one of my favorite albums of that year), I haven’t had time to give any of them enough listening to form a meaningful opinion.

I’m starting to think about my best-of list for the year, but, looking back, 2006 has been a somewhat disappointing year, musically speaking. Perhaps my disappointment is due more to the last month or two, though, as offerings have been particularly sparse.

In case you missed it, yesterday’s entire news cycle was consumed by the dust-up over a line in a speech made by John Kerry in California.

Following a string of jabs at the President, Kerry made the following somewhat illy-worded joke about Bush’s stupidity and lack of intellectual curiosity leaving us mired in Iraq:

Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.

According to the Washington Post,

After reading Kerry’s comments to a GOP audience in Georgia, Bush said Kerry’s statement was “insulting and it is shameful. The members of the United States military are plenty smart and they are plenty brave, and the senator from Massachusetts owes them an apology.” The White House tipped off the networks to when Bush would attack Kerry, so the comments could be carried live and make the evening news.

Meanwhile, hordes of outraged right-wing bloggers piled on with accusations that Kerry had called Our Troops stupid, demanding apologies, and publishing alleged correspondence from military personnel both active and retired expressing outrage.

Kerry, for his part, fired back with a lengthy and surprisingly strong statement in which he explained himself, said he had nothing to apologize for, and went on the offensive against the Bush administration and its toadies. Among other things, his response called White House spokesman Tony Snow “a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium” and declared that “Bottom line, these Republicans want to debate straw men because they’re afraid to debate real men.”

It’s difficult to imagine that Kerry won’t eventually get beaten into submission by the Republican hordes and the conventional wisdom and end up issuing some sort of apology. In the meantime, however, his response was just about perfect.

Any sane person (i.e., not the Bush administration’s cheerleaders), as well as anyone not desperate to score political points because they have no actual policies or achievements on which to run (i.e., not Republicans) could see that a veteran politician like John Kerry would not actually say or intend to say that people in the military are stupid. This fake controversy is a clear example of the Right grasping at non-issues because all the real issues play badly for them, and a feckless media looking to cover a circus.

It’s also a great example of the continued fetishization of The Troops.

There is nary a politician at this point who can go five words without some reference to “supporting the troops,” or “our brave men and women in uniform,” or “the heroes serving in Iraq.” It is pretty safe to say that EVERYONE SUPPORTS THE TROOPS. While I am sure that there are a few left-wing nutbags who do not, these people are so far out of the public discourse that they don’t need to be counted. We can all assume by now that everyone supports the troops. This insistence that it be stated up-front, every time any public speaker open her or his mouth is ridiculous, and functions solely as a means to drum up a tempest in a teapot whenever someone screws up and forgets to utter the magic incantation.