Oh, by the way, while you were out at the election...

...the rest of the world carried on as usual, as the New York Times lets us know.

Insurgents blew up a northern oil export pipeline [in Iraq] on Tuesday, dealing a severe blow to the national economy, even as car bombs and gun battles across the country left at least 12 Iraqis dead, Iraqi officials said.

The sabotage of the northern oil pipeline forced a shutdown of crude oil exports to a port in Turkey, Iraqi officials said. The pipeline pumps out 400,000 barrels a day of crude oil and is the frequent target of sabotage. ...

The attacks on oil pipelines near Kirkuk and around Basra in the south, where the oil fields are much more extensive, have sharply cut into Iraq's main economic hope. American and Iraqi officials are relying on steady oil exports to help revive the stagnant economy in a country where the unemployment rate hovers at 60 percent.

Meanwhile, there were at least three car bombings: One outside the Ministry of Education offices in northwestern Baghdad, killing at least six people and wounding dozens more; one in Mosul, aimed at a military convoy near the police academy, which killed one and wounded at least seven others; and another in Mosul, set off near convoy of Iraqi National Guardsmen, killing two civilians and wounding seven others.

The latest attacks came about halfway through the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan. During the holiday, the number of attacks in Iraq per day has spiked by 30 percent, and suicide car bombs appear to be an increasingly common weapon, American military officials say.

Since April, when a two-front uprising convulsed the country, American-led forces have been unable to dampen what appears to be a growing insurgency, much of it led by disenfranchised Sunni Muslims ousted from power with the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

STDD>HO.