I really like watching election results. Generally, I go back and forth between Steve Kornacki on MSNBC and John King on CNN, each operating their magic boards, with the latest state by state, county by county, district by district, precinct by precinct results. I like listening to their analysis – when one candidate looks to be heading for an easy victory, until they say something like “But we haven’t heard from the city of _____, where we expect a big margin for _________”.

Alas, this year I couldn’t do that because of a problem we are having with the cable box in our family room. We are unable to pick up any of the cable channels, so I had to walk back and forth from the family room (where we were doing some other things) and my office (where the cable is fine) to try to keep up to speed.

By and large, the results were positive for the good guys. I think it does show how important female reproductive health is and will continue to be. In Ohio, for example, the right to abortion will now be a constitutional right (as I understand it, abortion will be permissible up to 23 weeks, and then – if the legislature wants to – later abortions can be banned, but not if the woman’s physician declares that the continuation of the pregnancy would be harmful to her life or health – something like that), but 1,675,728 Ohioans voted against this provision – that was 43.4% of those voting, and they were voting in a state where the Republicans (who control all aspects of state government) were toying with a 6 week ban.

There was also, on the Ohio ballot, a provision to legalize marijuana. This also passed. Interestingly, 2,186,962 voted for the constitutionality of abortion, and 2, 183,734 for the legalization of marijuana. You have to wonder if these were all the same people. In any event, a “red” state voted “blue” on these policy issues. Whether it is meaningful beyond these two issues – that’s another question. There was no Trump on this election, and no Biden. Could it be that the existence of these two controversial politician distorts what would otherwise be very different voting patterns? I don’t know.

There were two other “red” states where there were governor races. In Kentucky, Democratic Governor Beshear won a second term. I find him an impressive fellow (I watched his victory speech last night), and clearly even the red blue-grass state can vote blue on an ad hominum basis. In Mississippi, on the other hand, there was some hope that the Democratic contender could upset the Republican incumbent. No such luck there.

Virginia is the other state of interest – where the State Senate remained under Democratic control, and the State General Assembly flipped out of Republican control into Democratic control. The state Republicans had hoped, and maybe expected, that both houses would wind up Republican and Governor Youngkin, who has had some success in his first two years and who may have presidential ambitions, was hoping that a friendly legislature would help his program, which includes a 15 week abortion ban, would go forward. No such luck.

Not that the Democratic victory in Virginia was overwhelming. It looks like there will only be a one seat majority in each house. I decided to do a little calculating. I took the 40 member State Senate, where there will be 21 Democrats and (it appears) 19 Republicans. I looked at the results in each of the 40 districts – some were very close, and some where won by up to 80-20 differences. I counted the overall state vote and (if my numbers were correct), I came up with 1,196,000 Democratic votes and 1,167,000 Republican votes. Boy, that’s close, and mirrors the 21-19 party split. But there were three Senate districts where the Democrats didn’t run a candidate – so the vote there was all Republican. Had the Democrats run a candidate, the Democratic vote would have been somewhat higher – based on contested very red districts, maybe a total of 30,000 Democratic votes would be added to the list. All I was doing was seeing if I could foretell the likely winner of the 2024 Presidential vote in this purple state. Not surprisingly, I can’t.

OK, let’s switch to Saddam Hussein and Israel. I just finished reading a book called Saddam’s Secrets, by Major General Georges Sada of the Iraqi Army. Sada was a high ranking officer in the Iraqi army, and someone who was often in close contact with Saddam, but also an outsider, because he is an Assyrian Christian, not a Muslim, and not a Baath Party member. He has been a very dedicated patriot of his country, a talented pilot trained both in the USSR and the United States, and he wrote a scathing book about Saddam, published in 2006. I have no reason to doubt that he is speaking honestly – he is well respected and the books highly regarded.

His career is very interesting, and his telling of Saddam’s upbringing and reign is frightening, but one thing he said, I had not heard before (obviously, it isn’t a secret today, since the book has been out over 15 years). He said that when Iraq entered Kuwait (which Sada said had basically to do with oil resources, shipping networks, and supply and pricing), Saddam did not expect the United States or the rest of the west (which Saddam thought weak) to do anything about it. When it became clear that George H.W. Bush was putting together a coalition to force Iraq out of Kuwait, that Saddam decided that if the West attacked, he was going to respond by having an all-out attack on Israel. He wasn’t even going to tell Jordan that he was about to use their airspace to fly over (illegal to do without permission); he was just going to do it. And he got his military to prepare for the invasion, until he was talked out of it by Sada and others.

One more thing, I didn’t know. And one more thing that puts an emphasis on the fragility of Israel’s security. There was a lot of interest in this book and the proposed attack on Israel only takes up about two pages, but it certainly is memorable. Does anyone else remember hearing about this over the past 30 years?