One state, two state, red state, blue state: if I see any more political nonsense about "red states" and "blue states" I'm gonna scream. The notion is at best a convenient fiction, but generally it seems to obscure more than it reveals. Calls for "blue states" to "secede" from "red states" seem particularly foolish, if you bother to look at the particulars.

This is one rare occasion where I have to credit The Stranger with having a more nuanced and incisive political analysis than most others, by speaking of an "urban archipelago" (http://urbanarchipelago.com). One look at a map of voting patterns by county (including various shades of purple) will forever cure you of your red-state-blue-state oversimplifications. (See http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/.)

On the red-state-blue-state map, the West Coast may appear ripe for secession, being cut off from blue-state brethren by a vast expanse of middle America red. But looking at the county-by-county, shaded map, fantasies of secession quickly fade. (And trust me, I'm a Cascadian/Ecotopian fantasizer as much as anybody...) Not only is most of the geographic area of Washington state red to violet, but even in blue zones like King County, we know there's a big difference between Seattle and Bellevue, not to mention North Bend.

But while secession may not be in the cards, this more detailed analysis does suggest some interesting possibilities. What if urban progressives became less fixated on federal politics and focused our energies where progressive ideals can more realistically take hold--in our own cities? What if Seattle progressives paid as much attention to what's happening in South Lake Union as we do to what's happening in Fallujah? And doesn't Seattle really deserve a better mayor than Greg Nickels?

Next year is a year of local elections. Might be a good time to see what's possible in our urban oasis within the evil empire. --Lansing Scott

Since the US media has blacked out any news of the massive Sunni uprising that's sweeping Iraq right now, here's a partial list of cities and towns that have been wholly or partially occupied by the rebel forces in the past week or have seen massive fighting between US forces and the insurgents: Mosul, Ramadi, Samarra, Baqubah, Zahara, Baiji, Balad, Qaim, Kirkuk, Tal Afar, Hilla, Buhriz, Suwaira, Hit, Iskandariyah, Haditha, Latifiyah, Khaldiyah, and several neighborhoods in Baghdad, including: al-Dora, al-Amiriyah, Abu Ghraib, al-Adhamiyah, Hur Rajab, al-Abidi, Salman Bak, and Khan Dhari. The holy Shiite city of Kerbala has also seen a lot of fighting. The guerrillas blew up four oil wells near Kirkuk and a pipeline that links the northern oil fields to the country's largest refinery at Baiji. The LA Times reported that British troops have withdrawn completely from the Shiite city of Amarah because they "got tired of fighting their way out every time they needed to be resupplied." Now they just run patrols on the outskirts of the city and peer into the town through their night-vision goggles, hoping to see what's going on. Doesn't that just sum up this insane war?--Maria Tomchick. Sources: "A Thousand Fallujahs," Pepe Escobar, Asia Times Online, 11/14/04 and "Unlikely Challenge in Shiite Province," Bruce Wallace, LA Times, 11/18/04.

While the US is busy destroying Fallujah in order to pursue peaceful elections in Iraq (that's what Donald Rumsfeld said, I'm not kidding you), the interim interim government in Iraq is waking up to reality. On Nov. 18, they held a summit in the Kurdish north to discuss how to structure the elections in January. Instead of discussing the topics on the agenda, the Iraqi ministers and council members ended up calling for a delay in the elections for security reasons. They acknowledged what the Bush administration has been denying all along: if the elections go ahead in January, the Sunnis will not participate, and if they're officially disenfranchised, a civil war is likely. It's not clear, however, who has the authority to change the timetable. Interim interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi will be consulting with the UN and the US embassy to sort it all out (and they may just push for January elections anyway). I don't say this very often, but this situation deserves it: "I told you so!" Damn, that felt good.--M.T.