Friday: Election Wrap-Up, Arafat, Duchess of Gloucester, Our Dear Allies.

Still over the moon about the election results. Iowa officially moved into the President’s win column today, making the final result 286 electoral votes for the President, 252 for Senator Kerry. El Jefe Maximo, tooting his own horn of course, points out that he was only three electoral votes off, predicting a final Bush victory of 289 electoral votes, primarily because he gave Iowa to Kerry, and thought Bush would win Wisconsin.

Yasser Arafat, notable bandit leader and thug, who styles himself Chairman of the so-called Palestinian Authority, lies near death in Paris. Well, either that, or he’s dead already, and his heirs are finishing their squabble over his dubious legacy before the event is made public. One is tempted to say “good riddance to bad rubbish” but so many of his probable replacements are even less savory. But a proper El Jefe obituary on Mr. Arafat will have to, for the moment, wait.

Meanwhile, El Jefe notes that H.R.H. Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, died in her sleep last Friday at the age of 102. The funeral, attended of course by H.M. the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, was yesterday in St. George’s Chapel of Windsor Castle (itself the burial place of ten monarchs). El Jefe, it must be confessed, is a royalist, which explains his comments on such sad events.

Across the Channel, the Daily Telegraph reports today that the French Foreign Minister, M. Barnier, says that four more years of a unilateralist administration in Washington requires Europe to develop its own diplomatic and defence machinery. "Our world needs several powers. We are in the process of gathering the pieces and the will to become another power." Mon Dieu et Sacre bleu, the Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys want to rattle sabres.

What this means of course, is that the French and the Germans will supply M. Barnier's "will," and all the other suckers in the EU will be privileged to, like it or not, pony-up for the "pieces." The one pathetic aircraft carrier possessed by the French Navy, Charles de Gaulle, plus its support vessels, about breaks the French military budget. Good luck with that one, M. Barnier, and do call us next time the Germans get tired of making le nicey-nice and decide to come visit Paris.