Guided By The Beauty Of Our Weapons

Leonard Cohen wrote the title of this post, but many of those depraved on account’a they’re deprived might have first encountered them when Brian Williams wet his drawers on national TV over the awesomeness of US warships launching missiles with big, big fire. For Williams, the awe at the destructive power of the missile was somehow an affirmation that the US was right, that the US was working good.

Of course, Cohen never intended to mean anything like this. Cohen’s the kind of person who might have said this sarcastically, meaning to satirize the Brian Williams of the world, but in fact he didn’t even intend that. Instead, in Cohen’s song First We Take Manhattan he’s talking about changing the world not militarily, but through individual effort:

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Persky Recall Preliminary Numbers

At about 7:40 am Pacific, several outlets are calling the election in favor of the recall. I don’t have any updated numbers (so I’m not sure how they’re sure, though they seem to be), but I can link you to Splinter’s reaction.

I’ll post a separate update on Persky later.

Don’t know when things will be official, but the percentages haven’t been changing as more precincts report. Best guess at 12:20 Pacific is that Persky is gone. I’m so happy about that.

11:48 pm Pacific time:

With 43 percent of precincts reporting, 59 percent of the county’s voters favored recalling Persky while 41 percent opposed the recall. On the same ballot, Assistant District Attorney Cindy Hendrickson led civil rights lawyer Angela Storey, 70 to 30 percent, in the election to serve the last four years of Persky’s term.

At 10:58 pm pacific time:

With 39 percent of precincts reporting, 59 percent of the county’s voters favored recalling Persky and 41 percent opposed the recall. On the same ballot, Assistant District Attorney Cindy Hendrickson led civil rights lawyer Angela Storey, 71 to 29 percent, in the election to serve the last four years of Persky’s term.

More updates as the SFC updates their reporting.

At about 8:45 pm the San Francisco Chronicle reported these numbers:

With 17 percent of precincts reporting, 59 percent of the county’s voters favored recalling Persky and 41 percent opposed the recall. On the same ballot, Assistant District Attorney Cindy Hendrickson led civil rights lawyer Angela Storey, 71 to 29 percent, in the election to serve the last four years of Persky’s term if he is removed from office.