People first? The reign of a strongman leader in the Maldives ends at the ballot box as he tries to rig an election but loses anyway.

We begin this report about an election upset in the Maldives with the gratuitous use of the "L" word.

Unrivalled luxury, stunning white-sand beaches and an amazing underwater world make Maldives an obvious choice for a true holiday of a lifetime.

One million annual tourists visit the islands, which have a population of a little more than 420,000.

The Maldives is a republic lies south-west of the Indian sub-continent. It is made up of a chain of nearly 1,200 islands, most of them uninhabited.

None of the coral islands stand more than 1.8 metres (six feet) above sea level, making the country vulnerable to any rise in sea levels associated with global warming.

The economy revolves around tourism, and scores of islands have been developed for the top end of the tourist market.

Its political history has been unsettled since the electoral defeat of long-serving President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom in 2008.

Back to that election.

President in paradise: An election upset in the Maldives (The Economist)

Abdulla Yameen, the strongman president, lost to a diminished opposition

THE last time Abdulla Yameen looked on the verge of losing power, in February, he declared a state of emergency and locked up two Supreme Court justices, members of parliament and even his own half-brother. His preparations for the presidential election on September 23rd appeared just as thorough. The most prominent leaders of the opposition remained in jail or in exile. The government had showered voters with pre-election goodies, such as waiving rent fines and trimming prison sentences. The police went as far as to raid the opposition alliance’s headquarters the day before the vote.

What could possibly go wrong for Yameen?

And yet, when the results came in, to general astonishment, Mr Yameen was declared to have lost, with only 42% of the vote. The winner was the unassuming but unjailed Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, the leader of the diminished opposition in parliament. Mr Yameen, who had appeared determined to cling to power just six months before, conceded without protest.

Solih eloquently placed his victory into context.

“For many of us this has been a difficult journey, a journey that has led to prison cells or exile. “It’s been a journey that has ended at the ballot box.”

It seems that luxury projects and accompanying corruption scandals were a hallmark of the defeated Yameen.

Many of Mr Yameen’s big schemes will doubtless receive the scrutiny parliament was unable to give them previously. Some of his strongman policies, such as the re-introduction of the death penalty and the re-criminalisation of defamation, may be rolled back. And the corruption scandals and unexplained murders of critics that marred his rule are likely to be investigated more thoroughly.

When power-hungry candidates lose, it lifts one's spirits.

Random thoughts from a fatigued place.

Random Monday thoughts, some used already at other portals.

With much work to do yesterday, I listened a bit to the Super Bowl, watched a handful of the ads, and viewed both the halftime show and highlights of the Who on DVD.

Conclusions: Any coach who begins the second half with an onside kick deserves to win even if I was indifferent to the ultimate outcome. The commercials were uniformly crass and insulting to persons of average intelligence, which is to say that I imagine the bulk of America wailed in delight. And, strangely, while I fully expected to find nothing of value in the nostalgic halftime medley, the old clips of the Who failed to inspire me, too. All of it, from hype through game and the NFL's calculated timidity in entertainment options, strikes me as past-date, old hat and too predictable even for Pavlov's dog to salivate.

With crusty bile, tea parties and Alaskan non-entities making the headlines, I just find it noteworthy when one's definition of injustice extends no further than a calculation of his tax bill.

Beyond the spite perpetually dispensed by Dan Coffey, Steve Price and their disaffected coterie of failed flat-earther birthers, can anyone deny that the food, dining and entertainment district currently emerging downtown is worthy of pride, patronage and positive thinking?

Or, that in its infancy, it is garnering an unprecedented level of media attention in Louisville, as well as achieving the previously unthinkable by convincing native New Albanians that we can be a “possibility city,” too? Given our recent past, it's cataclysmic.

What ever happened to that racist antique dealer? Has the rudderless local Democratic party elevated him to chairman yet?

I might be able to abide abject cluelessness if it were not so often deployed as fertilizer for intolerance and cruelty. As a species, we humans have short lives in the overall context of Earth's span. It should make us humble, but instead, it moves us to wave flags, hate, embrace stupidity and dispense religious hokum as an excuse. Your Bible tells you that it's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve? Fine. Read your Bible, and leave me out of it. It's your God, not mine.

Thinking -- what a concept. That's why it isn't fashionable.

Quite unexpectedly, I've warmed to the book that we're reading in our reading circle, samizdat. It's called "Annals of the Former World," written by John McPhee," and might be described as an explanation of geology in layman's terms. I'm profoundly non-scientific, but the discussions of deep time, plate tectonics and other vivid refutations of creationism have been fascinating.

Apologies for having so little time to write here of late. To be honest, the bits I consider best go toward my columns, and after the usual daily NABC propaganda, there are not always prime cuts left over for posting here. Couple that with Bluegill's commitments, and you can see how much we need IAm Hoosier to step up to the plate ...