November 2008 Archives

“It would be hard to overstate how fervently vast stretches of the globe wanted the election to turn out as it did”

(New York Times on The Promise - For Many Abroad, an Ideal Renewed)

Yup, here too! TPM have a full transcript of Obama’s speech.

The new American president sure is setting himself up with some high expectations. Awesome! Enough with pandering to the regular guy. Let’s have smart people govern instead. What a concept!

(Update - If you have a BitTorrent client then I have a .torrent for a high resolution (1280x720) version of the victory speech. Right now there are about 60 seeders, so it should be pretty fast).

Immensely disappointing (and frustrating to many) on the other hand is that the voters seem to be passing prop 8. Yikes.

On one of the news programs earlier they had interviews with some supporters. The best arguments they had was some hand-waving about their children. That’s even more offensive than them voting yes on the proposition! Don’t attribute political opinions or labels to your children - and much less sexuality. Look lady, your kid is 5 years old. I promise that other than your indoctrination he has absolutely no opinion or judgement on the matter.

In the mall the other day I walked by a stand with baby clothes. One had a text on it saying “Lifelong Democrat”. It’s the same thing: Not cool. While our children are overwhelmingly likely to grow up with the political leanings of their parents, it’s completely unfair to label them as such until they at least have had a chance of forming their own opinions.

Oh man. Nervous with crossed fingers, knocking on wood. Less than 24 hours and this should be over.

Fivethirtyeight.com. says there's a 98.1% chance Obama will win tonight. But at least in this household we're nervously biting our nails all the same.

Here in California there's of course not any suspense over where the electoral votes will go, but there are a couple of looney awful propositions on the ballot. In particular prop 4 and prop 8. Both are basically too close to call in the latest polls. Unbelievable, but true. Please vote no.

(Of course the better solution is to not have to government marry people but rather just recognize unions and leave the marrying stuff to peoples personal lives - but in the US we're pretty far from there).

Anyway - hopefully early tonight it'll be clear that the next president won't be the one who's energy/security policy includes the illusion that there are no global markets and oil isn't a fungible commodity. Hopefully early tonight it'll be clear that the next president won't be the one who spent the last few weeks of his campaign talking about taxes with a guy who doesn't understand the tax system (and didn't get it explained). Someone please bring Joe the "plumber" to an accountant who can explain to him about how you don't pay income taxes on money that your business spends on salaries for employees. The number of weird and stupid things McCain and his campaign says is just amazing.

Or leave that alone and say McCain would make a decent president. I don't agree, but sure - whatever. Hello bad vice presidential choice. It's a joke! It's offensive. As Josh Marshall wrote today:

The woman is an ignoramus of almost unprecedented magnitude in the annals of national politics. It's not just that virtually every-non-Republican has a negative view of her. I just don't see a national party getting behind someone like that. And before you snark, "What about George Bush?" Sorry but there's no comparison. Whatever else I think of him, he's not a moron. And while he appears to be astoundingly incurious, there's simply no comparison to Palin.

The number of sane conservative thinkers who's endorsed Obama in the last week is incredible. How come there's even a contest anymore?

I can't imagine I'll ever be a republican, but I sure hope that after this the GOP will get it together and 1) kick out the looney evangelical christians out of "people we pay attention to", 2) quit with the Karl Rove inspired hate and fear mongering and 3) pick the smartest and most mentally alert guy in the room for their candidate for once. What's with electing the folksy "regular" folks? It's not a regular job!