It's hard to get on a political website this week without confronting the question of whether our recent presidential election was fixed. This is a shame because it largely overwhelms what is probably a more valid, fixable issue, which is whether our recent presidential election was run with all possible competence. It may well be that no one tried to rig the vote in any way but that there were still a lot of errors committed and undependable machines employed, and that the people responsible need to be slapped around a little and forced to correct things.

Unfortunately, Americans don't seem to get mad about the possibility that votes were lost or miscounted unless they think it caused their side to lose an election. After the mess of 2000, I can't recall a single prominent Republican expressing outrage that the machines yielded such arguable results, that voters were wrongly purged from the voting rolls, that ballots were confusing, etc. Some quietly urged a reform of the system, if only so that their side wouldn't get accused of cheating the next time…but there was no public outrage from the winners, and the losers were too busy charging fraud to deal with what may have been simple ineptness.

If principle trumped partisanship, both sides would have been equally incensed…and probably about errors, not rigging. Most of the improvements that were put in place seem to have been a matter of local officials knowing they could not defend their voting machines and procedures and not wishing to become "the next Florida." In some cases, it would seem they replaced old, unreliable systems with newer, unreliable systems…and that the appeal of paperless voting machines is not that they're easier to rig but that it's more difficult to prove if they're just plain wrong.

My hunch is that the recent election was not stolen but that there were an awful lot of irregularities that should not have occurred. My further hunch is that if angry Democrats were to shut up about the vote now, there would be a lot less impetus to fix those irregularities.

I know this was not likely but I kinda wish John Kerry's concession speech had instead said something like this…

It now appears that when all the ballots are counted, we will not have enough electoral votes to win the presidency…however, Senator Edwards and I have decided that it is not in the best interest of this country that we concede at this time. We have dozens of reports of questionable vote counts, of precincts that logged more votes than they have registered voters, and of provisional and absentee ballots that have not even been opened. Many of these are in states where they cannot possibly affect whether the state's electoral votes go to us or to the President…but that doesn't matter. Most of these are probably innocent, explainable errors…but that doesn't matter, either. Every American has the right to have his or her vote counted, and to have it counted accurately and given the same respect as any other vote.

We do not expect the result of this election to change but in the hope of changing how votes are recorded and counted in the future, we have decided not to concede until we are satisfied that every vote — whether it is for us, the President, Ralph Nader, Michael Badnarik or Daffy Duck — has been counted, and counted properly. If you are upset that this delays the resolution of this election, I'm sorry. Please direct your outrage to the people who are paid to count the votes accurately and, in some cases, have not done this.

There would have been howls of anger and charges of "sore loser," I'm sure. But I think most of America would have respected it, and it might have done some good. In this day and time, there's no excuse for a vote count the losers can't accept just as readily as the winners.

You all know Tom and Jerry, the cat and mouse from M.G.M. cartoons. If you are a true animation buff, you also know Tom and Jerry, the tall-and-short pair that appeared in Van Beuren cartoons before them. This new website tells you all about the human duo, whose cartoons I remember well from my early television viewing. Sheriff John ran them, over and over, on his Lunch Brigade cartoon show on KTTV, Channel 11 here in Los Angeles. After the feline/rodent characters named Tom and Jerry became famous, the old Van Beuren shorts were retitled "Dick and Larry"…but I am certain that the ones Sheriff John ran were still named "Tom and Jerry."

In fact, I recall wondering how the cat and mouse in my Tom and Jerry comic books and in the cartoons over on Channel 13 could have the same names as the two guys on Sheriff John's show. Around this time at a restaurant, I heard an adult order a "Tom and Jerry" from the bar and I wondered if the drink was named after the human Tom and Jerry or the animal Tom and Jerry. When you're a kid, the world can be so mysterious.

The Washington Post has set up a searchable web page with info and, where available, photos of all the soldiers who've died in the Iraq conflict. A sad reminder of just some of what this is costing us.

As we all know, NBC runs an old episode of Saturday Night Live very early Sunday morning each week…and they run the full 90-minute versions of them, not the 60-minute cutdowns that are more often available. Lately, they've been jumping around the Eddie Murphy years, running some shows that haven't been seen — at least in their entirety — for a very long time. This coming weekend, the schedule says they're airing the episode from December 11, 1982. Once in a while, they inexplicably don't air what they've announced but if they do, you'll get to see a show from Season 8 hosted by Mr. Murphy and featuring musical guest Lionel Richie and a comedy-magic routine by Harry Anderson.

Season #8 was one of those years where they might as well have called the show, Eddie Murphy and Friends. He was easily the most popular cast member and the rest often didn't have a lot to do. On the episode allegedly airing this weekend, he became the first (and to date, only) member of the cast to host while still a member of the cast. Nick Nolte was supposed to do it that week but a few days before the broadcast, he cancelled, claiming illness. So Murphy got to function as host. It is said that most of the other cast members resented one of their own being singled out that way, and they especially objected when Murphy referred to the program, on-air, as The Eddie Murphy Show. It was…but that was kind of rubbing it in. Some folks think that, in the goodnights, you can see the other cast members registering their annoyance over the whole thing.

By the way: If they air this particular show and if you watch, stay 'til the end. Just before the goodnights, there's a pretty funny surprise guest cameo.

I didn't follow the Scott Peterson case. I didn't see what there was about it that warranted more attention than your average homicide. The O.J. Simpson matter involved a movie and sports star, some other peripheral celebrities, racial tensions, a couple of well-publicized public spectacles, colorful lawyers, some pretty serious charges of incompetence and/or treachery by the L.A. Police Department, and a murder case scenario that was chock full of fun stuff to study and discuss. The Peterson case seems to have had nothing of the sort. As far as I can tell, there wasn't even a good, solid controversy as to his guilt or innocence.

A crowd outside the courtroom cheered when the verdict was read. I'm wondering just what they were cheering for. One presumes they were all pretty certain that Peterson was guilty…so were they cheering because a guilty man was found guilty? I hate to think it's come to that in this country; that it's a cause for celebration when the system works the way it's supposed to work.

On CNN, I just saw a "legal analyst" say that the next task for the Defense is to convince the court that Peterson isn't so terrible that he warrants the death penalty. In other words: Yes, he plotted and committed the murder of his wife and unborn child…but it could have been worse. I don't think I'm going to follow that phase of the trial, either.

Drop by The Oh-Fishul Pogo Possum Website today for a special Veteran's Day Pogo strip from the past. And while you're visiting, there's still time to enjoy The Pogo Election Special, a whole buncha strips that Pogomaster Walt Kelly writ 'n' drew in election years past. It's amazing how many of the things he said in that strip, beyond the inevitable "We have met the enemy" quote are timeless and eminently relevant today. Amazing and sad, in some cases…but amazing, nonetheless. And keep your eye on that Pogo site for more of Mr. Kelly's timeless wit, wisdom and peachy brushwork. He was really ahead of our time, to say nothing of his time.

Those of you who own TiVos need to read this.

Malcolm Gladwell explains the hows and whys of prescription drug costs in America. Read this one now. The link may expire in a few days.

Here's what I think is an important article by Frank Rich. His thesis, with which I agree, is that a lot of the talk about "moral values" in this country is bogus, or at least subordinated to profit. Here's Rich quoting Thomas Frank, the author of What's the Matter With Kansas?, a best-selling consideration of the sensibilities of the so-called blue and red states…

"Values," Mr. Frank writes, "always take a backseat to the needs of money once the elections are won." Under this perennial "trick," as he calls it, Republican politicians promise to stop abortion and force the culture industry "to clean up its act" – until the votes are counted. Then they return to their higher priorities, like cutting capital gains and estate taxes. Mr. Murdoch and his fellow cultural barons – from Sumner Redstone, the Bush-endorsing C.E.O. of Viacom, to Richard Parsons, the Republican C.E.O. of Time Warner, to Jeffrey Immelt, the Bush-contributing C.E.O. of G.E. (NBC Universal) – are about to be rewarded not just with more tax breaks but also with deregulatory goodies increasing their power to market salacious entertainment. It's they, not Susan Sarandon and Bruce Springsteen, who actually set the cultural agenda Gary Bauer and company say they despise.

Anyway, read the whole article. I think I've configured the link so you can read it even if you haven't registered over at The New York Times.

Timothy Noah rebuts an article that argues we should not rid ourselves of the Electoral College. As I mentioned before we knew who won, I think the Electoral College is a terrible idea with no valid arguments in its favor.

I continue to receive 10-20 e-mails a day alerting me to "evidence" that George W. Bush stole the recent election via massive irregularities, primarily in Florida and Ohio. Keith Olbermann has apparently been flogging the issue on his MSNBC show and I caught one segment which, taken on its own, made a semi-convincing case that much was amiss. This article in Salon makes a semi-convincing case, I think, that the kind of anomalies noted by Olbermann and others are just run-of-the-mill, easily-explainable screw-ups…and some of them aren't even that. So far, it all strikes me as a lot of anecdotal, arguable evidence.

Please don't send me any more articles or links about this. I agree that it's very important. I don't agree that I have the energy to study it all and arrive at a serious conclusion, or that it matters if I do. I also don't think it's possible to convince a Republican administration to do anything about possible vote fraud by Republicans, nor do I think you can convince any significant number of Republicans that their guy didn't get in, fair and square. About all it can do is make Democrats madder…which, I dunno, may have some value.

A number of things do interest me about this, one being how "certain" some people are that the election was or was not fair, depending on who they wanted to see win. It makes you wonder how fair any jury trial can be, when so many people seem to lack the capacity to see the facts in any light but for the one that yields the conclusion they wish to reach.

Another is that we now have another one of those "facts" that will never die, no matter what. Back in 1960, there was a quote that made the rounds. It came from Richard Daley, who was then the mayor of Chicago, and it was reported more or less like this. The polls had Kennedy and Nixon running neck-and-neck for the electoral votes of Illinois and supposedly, late on Election Day, Daley phoned J.F.K. and said, "With a little bit of luck, and the help of a few close friends, you're going to carry Illinois." Kennedy did — and the vote totals in that state seemed suspicious, though perhaps not as odd as Nixon partisans later insisted. In any case, the Daley quote was taken as a prima facie admission that he had somehow manipulated the count.

I never thought the quote was as damning as some made it out to be…and I've also wondered about its authenticity. Just how did a private conversation between these two people become public? Do we think either man was dumb enough to allow a reporter to listen in on a discussion of how they'd rigged a presidential election? And if so, was it reported verbatim? Nevertheless, it's a widely-accepted part of history, and a lot of folks take it as proven fact that Daley arranged for Kennedy to steal the presidency. (It's also widely-accepted that Nixon was noble enough to not contest the result — a point raised by pundits when Gore conceded in 2000 and again recently when Kerry gave up. And that seems to be demonstrably untrue.)

In the same category as the Daley quote, we now have the 2003 line from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc., that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." Actually, it's about as arguably damning as what Daley supposedly said, but O'Dell wrote it in a fund-raising letter so its veracity and exact wordage are not in doubt. That the head of the company that was making the voting machines should pen such words strikes me as foolish but it's not an admission of rigging. Nevertheless, twenty years from now, you'll be at a party, someone will mention the 2004 presidential election and someone else will say, "Oh, yeah…the one Bush stole. The guy who made the voting machines even admitted it."

The last thing that interests me about all this is that an awful lot of the debunking of the charge that Bush stole the election is coming from so-called "Liberal" sites like Salon, and a series over on Slate. Matter of fact, I read a fair number of Liberal and Conservative political sites and most of the reasoned, substantive debunkings are on Liberal sites. The Conservative sites are kind of addressing the issue with the attitude of, "You lost, stop whining, shut up." That alone convinces me we may all be in for a pretty rocky four years.

The London production of The Producers — starring Nathan Lane on short notice — seems to be a smash.

For those of you who are getting bombarded with the idea that most of America is now "red states," here's an entry from a blogger who helps to put things in perspective.

No, I haven't forgotten you, dear POVonliners. I've been busy with a script, and whatever time I can spare for Internetting has been spent writing and designing a couple of new sections I'll soon be adding to the non-weblog part of this site. You'll see them here in a week or so.

I've received a lot of e-mail from fans of Supercar and other Gerry Anderson shows. Dave Hobson wrote to tell me of his new website that's devoted to Supercar memorabilia. Neat.

I've also received an awful lot of forwarded mail and links to pieces asserting that nefarious things were done during the vote count last week, especially in Florida and Ohio, and that John Kerry won or should have won. That strikes me as unlikely but not impossible…and I guess I lack the energy to get too immersed in such charges. These kinds of things depress me in how the evidence — whatever there is — gets processed not on its merits but as just another partisan response. There may be enough proof to convince those who really, really don't like George W. Bush but there can never be enough to convince those who want him in the White House…and probably not enough to get the major news outlets to cover it like a real story. Which is why it'll never amount to much.

Lastly, a couple of folks have asked where they might see the next round of the popular Quick Draw! game that I host at conventions, usually with Sergio Aragonés, Scott Shaw! and another cartoonist or two drawing challenges that I throw at them. At the moment, the next outing looks to be at the Wondercon in San Francisco, next February 18-20. Details are not yet posted at the con website but you can register online there, and you may want to begin making plans to be there.