I can not believe it. This is huge, despite my specific misgivings, disappointments, and frustrations with Obama and with his party, this is still absolutely incredible. He won’t pursue the things most of us MoAers wish he would – prosecuting the criminals in the Bush junta chief among them, but he does represent a genuine break from them. There is a difference between his vision and McCain’s.
With an Obama administration, we may steer away from the warmongering and terrorizing other parts of the world. And they may be capable of taking constructive action on the financial sector. None of these things would happen in a McCain Administration. So for the moment I will try to keep my judgments in check and see what happens, and celebrate the moment.

Posted by: Maxcrat | Nov 5 2008 5:51 utc | 3

maxcrat, i posted on the other thread, but i am with you on this. my outlook is dramatically different than it would be with a mccain win. i sense that most of the country will be feeling similarly and that has to mean something.

Posted by: sharon | Nov 5 2008 6:03 utc | 5

Even at this distance I am moved by scenes of black Americans crying with joy at the news of Obama’s victory. It seems to be a Victor Hugo
moment, the power of the idea of equality finally being incarnated with
Obama’s victory. Obama will need a lot of help and enormous good luck to have a successful presidency, and I hope he finds both. Certainly, knowing that the Bushites will soon be out of power is a cause for celebration.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Nov 5 2008 6:34 utc | 7

SMALL AXE FALL BIG TREE — “Jamaican proverb”
Congrats Obama and I’m also taking this moment to celebrate JFK’s likewise ground-breaking historic victory in 1960. It’s JFK’s America, his triumph over adversity and his message to America — “we have nothing to fear but fear itself” that have become Obama’s today.
And in the spirit of thinking together & working together, I also commend this moment to waldo, beq, annie, billmon, myself, … and the rest of the “SMALL AXE CREW”.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Nov 5 2008 7:03 utc | 9

Pelosi defeats Cindy Sheehan to win 12th term

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 5 2008 7:06 utc | 11

Pentagon ready to brief incoming administration immediately

Tue Nov 4, 1:37 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Pentagon said it was prepared to begin briefing the president-elect’s team immediately, stressing the importance of a smooth wartime transition, as the US voted for a new president Tuesday.
“If somebody were to show up here tomorrow, we would start working with them tomorrow,” said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.
Changes of US administrations historically are periods of heightened risk, but wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an ever present danger of attack by Al-Qaeda make an orderly transition crucial this year.
Whitman said Defense Secretary Robert Gates has undertaken “pretty unprecedented early preparations to minimize disruption while ensuring we provide the most comprehensive guidance possible.”
A Pentagon task force has identified and is highlighting the most important events, milestones and actions that the new administration will face in the first 90 days, he said.
Among them are troop rotations and the presentation of the 2010 defense budget, which is due to go to Congress in February, just weeks after the new president — Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama — moves into the White House. The others were not disclosed.
“Obviously, they (the incoming administration) will give immediate attention to whatever it is they want to, whatever their priorities are,” Whitman said.
“But there are some things that in the natural course of this department have to be addressed, like the budget, or you’re not going to have money,” he said.
Work space and computers have been set aside in the Pentagon for as many as two dozen people assigned by the new president to manage the transition.
Transition team members must receive security clearances, but Whitman said that can be done quickly for at least small numbers of people that typically make up the initial teams.
There are at least 215 political appointees at the Pentagon who will be replaced in the transition.
About 50 are presidentially appointed positions that require Senate confirmation, which can move slowly.
Gates has polled members of the outgoing team to see who would be prepared to stay on in a new administration until their replacement can be confirmed.
A number of them have agreed to stay on, if asked, but other key positions are already vacant.

A round for the house and the ladies, but only a few, as there is more to do…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 5 2008 7:18 utc | 13

And the cry around our house tonight was:
ABOUT FUCKING TIME!

Posted by: Tantalus | Nov 5 2008 7:26 utc | 15

Is all the mania justified? Do people actually expect things to change that much? This ‘hope’ phenomenon all seems rather childish and manufactured to me.

Posted by: Al | Nov 5 2008 8:04 utc | 17

I cheer! I voted! and now I cheer! wow…
!

Posted by: gus | Nov 5 2008 8:10 utc | 19

And Darcy Burner (WA).

Posted by: anna missed | Nov 5 2008 9:11 utc | 21

(& by policy I mean to say – what a politician actually does in the real world, opposed to what, in the ‘public sphere’, he says he will do: quite an important distinction.)

Posted by: Al | Nov 5 2008 9:57 utc | 23

For those who imagine that this national euphoria is universal, do keep in mind that it is shared by only two out of three Americans. A solid third of the populace would do just about anything to have Sarah Palin in charge instead this morning. In fact, they believe that is their right, and is the only outcome that is right by Heaven. They aren’t going away. We all get to live with them.
What may be going away is the most powerful political, financial, media machine the world has seen to date, in the form of the generic conservative movement in America within both political parties, but most specifically within the Republican Party.
That Party has thrown its weight around since 1980, always on the basis of vast, borrowed sums of foreign capital, and has lately come to the state of affairs such profligacy always comes to — complete collapse, brought about by the failure of rotten, rotten foundations.
That Party had held together a fragile voting coalition of evangelicals, libertarians, big industry, high finance, and neocons for decades, largely by richly rewarding its donors while teasing popular support out of the Christianists by feeding them cultural myths about their innate superiority, and exceptionalism. That coalition is broken now. None of the factions trust one another.
These factions will now seek room and board within the Democratic camp, of course, so watch the Democratic Party change to accept them. Rahm Emmanuel is dreaming Rovian dreams of a permanent majority this morning.
But the foundations of America are rotten, and no euphoria or permanent majority will address the rot. Only addressing the rot will do that, and that means taking apart the current system to a dramatic degree.
The entire banking and manufacturing sectors are as hollowed out and gutted as they can be, and yet stand. The defense industry is the only solid sector, since it spends as much every year as the entire rest of the world does on their defense industries — and yet every single penny of America’s defense budget is borrowed from abroad. Every penny.
Just as one must take into account what is still standing when one renovates a building, Obama must take into account how severely unbalanced, and dysfunctional the American economy is. It is leaning way, way forward into a headwind, a jet stream of foreign loans, and has been doing so for such a long time that Americans call that extraordinary state of affairs ‘normal.’
It isn’t normal, and it is over. The economic collapse going on around the world is just getting started, and the most obvious outcome for America is the loss of this immense headwind over the course of the coming year. Even if China wants to sell us consumer goods, and the Saudis want to sell us oil, the American citizens are tapped out. We are maxed on loans, cash, equity, mortgages, you name it.
If it is all totaled up, balance sheet style, the theft of America’s wealth and prosperity is close to complete. It has disappeared relentlessly into the coffers of the richest of the rich, who knowingly, specifically, created and financed and pushed and sold the conservative philosophy upon the American populace, spreading money on all sides through astronomical deficits while pretending that money was due to the success of their voodoo economics.
It was outright fraud. It was legal only because they bought the legislators who rewrote the laws to make it legal. On paper, it is not the biggest transfer of wealth upward in human history. On paper.
It still is what it is.
Barack Obama’s single biggest challenge is to educate Americans about their stupidity. Nine-tenths of them are unaware that we have been thoroughly cornholed by a tiny sliver of clever rich people masquerading as public servants.
His second challenge is to get the nation standing up straight again, out of that jet stream of foreign debt. This necessarily means putting the defense industry budget on the cutting block.
His third challenge is to put Americans to work on knowing themselves, and governing themselves. To turn euphoria and hero worship back at the people themselves, telling them the task of running the nation is in their hands, in their minds, and not in any one person’s hands.
I voted for Obama yesterday, as a practical means of voting against the conservative movement to the degree available.
But Obama will do none of these things, I know. Instead, he will move on Pakistan, he will continue to bail out the banking industry well beyond the breaking point of the Treasury, and he will use his popular mandate to rebuild America’s image abroad so as to protect that jet stream of foreign money America leans so very heavily on.
The Chicago School of economics is still in charge. America will not stand up. America will lean harder, and hope that works out.
Hope won’t do a damned thing.

Posted by: Antifa | Nov 5 2008 12:27 utc | 25

Antifa wrote:
“For those who imagine that this national euphoria is universal […]”
Sorry to say to you this, but I am from Brazil, and I am very very happy with President Obama. I am not alone, there are a lot of brazilian people happy too.
And get real. Obama will be comparated to Bush, and nothing can be worse than the chimp in chief.
João Carlos
Sorry the bad english, my native language is portuguese

Posted by: João Carlos | Nov 5 2008 12:57 utc | 27

Biden wasn’t on stage with Obama when he gave his acceptance speech. Interesting. Also, they keep drilling first black president. I don’t agree. A man should not be judged by the color of his skin, and barack is no different. He is not the descendent of african-american slaves, nor was he raised in an african-american family, so he does not share the heritage or the culture. He adopted it as part of his strategy to ascend the political ladder just as surely as Bush, the New Englander, adopted his Texas Swagger in order to climb his political ladder. Martin Luther King would have been a black president, or Malcolm X….but no, Obama is not the first black president. It is a false projection.

Posted by: Obamageddon | Nov 5 2008 13:44 utc | 29

Congratulations! Regardless of failings, shortcomings or even intentions, Obama at least comes across as a human being, flesh and bone, warm to the touch. That alone should make a world of difference for the US people after eight years of a melamine George Bush.

Posted by: Alamet | Nov 5 2008 14:19 utc | 31

What Antifa said…

Posted by: vbo | Nov 5 2008 14:37 utc | 33

Looks like he already tapped Emanuel as Chief of Staff.

Posted by: Tantalus | Nov 5 2008 14:42 utc | 35

And if this is as much of a shiny new dawn as I hope it is, I want nothing more from it than to be able to open the morning paper and not see stories like this:
US accused of killing dozens in Afghanistan air strike.

Posted by: Tantalus | Nov 5 2008 14:53 utc | 37

Building on what Antifa and Al said:
Remember those old TV commercials where the unsuspecting housewife learns that her old brand of laundry detergent has been surreptitiously replaced with a newer better brand, and she just can’t believe it?
Well, that’s what happened to us. The brand was changed with the pre-planned financial collapse and the largest transfer of wealth in human history. We all really know this, but because the corporate press does not “catapult the propaganda” it still doesn’t seem real.
All we’re seeing now is the paper being peeled back to reveal the new brand we will be using for the next four years. Sure, we’ll like the tone and timbre of this new product, but the structural adjustments were put into place well ahead of time.
A system whereby two corporate controlled images are put before us, allowed to say whatever they want knowing that they will never be held accountable (eg. Bush: humble foreign policy), and we are told that voting for the preferrable image, who will then “represent” us; such a system whereby the fetish act of voting is intended as a substitute for actual democratic engagement (something most of us, as structurally intended, have no time for anyway) is not a Democracy, but a triumph of totalitarian propaganda.
(I have recently been involved in legislation at the State level, and just to see how relatively innocuous legislation is taken hold of by monied interests, how swans are turned into arcane pigs — too complex for any but the smartest of those professionally involved in all of this to grasp — given cute names, and foisted upon the ignorant, prejudiced and fearful public; to see how these bulbous, heinous, genetically-modified creatures are dumped on the public plate and called meat is more than discouraging.)
So, what has happened? People have been so scared, so shock-therapied, that they have endorsed a man who says things they don’t advocate and cannot be held to his pronouncements anyway. Endless articles have been written daily, on Counterpunch for one, detailing those pronouncements, the advisors, where the unprecedented amounts of moolah where coming from, but all of this counts for nothing for the True Believers, where belief and hope short-circuit logic and strategy. I’m sorry that Arthur Silber came up against some unforseen problems, because his expected but unpublished series on tribalism promised far more insight into this phenomenon than my poor mind is able to come up with.
In the end, people are controlled by stimulating them until their emotions overcome their reason. Resistance falls away and they are easily lead.
What is so galling to me here is not the expectation that things will change for the better in spite of all evidence to the contrary, not this magical thinking, no, but the almost universal belief around here that strategies for fundamental change come from elections and that such strategies for fundamental change must necessarily be limited to single election horizons, even if proved strategies, which could take a generation to effect deep, meaningful, and life-affirming change, exist. Obama Tina (There Is No Alternative, as Maggie Thatcher used to say about the neo-conservative program). Just don’t labor under any illusions that the elite limits their own plans and machinations to single election spans. That’s not what think-tanks are for. So who has the advantage in this contest, this game of chess — the voters, or the ruling elite?
The ruling class has nothing in common with the common man, indeed cannot have anything in common with him, because their job is to control you. It’s called the ruling class because it rules. It doesn’t matter how smiley the face you see and hear daily is — it will be just as lethal because the beast is a shark and that is its nature. Yes, crony dollars will now trickle down to the equally dirty democrats now, but all others in its voracious path will be destroyed.
It was clear for quite some time that a much larger faction of the ruling elite preferred the Obama image, knowing that USAans have had their fill of the current public tenor. (If we stop bombing people, we will go back to bombing water plants and farms. Peasants must be starved before they will give up their farms and local foods and brands and incorporated into the wage-slavery system as the new place to open low-cost factories in the inevitable drive to the bottom. This is how we won in Vietnam, and how we will inevitably win in Iraq and Afghanistan. TINA. Starve them into submission, then let the NGO’s come in and feed them.)
The corporate media could have destroyed Obama as easily as one brushes away a gnat if they had wanted. No stories about what type of underwear Obama wears, or whether his ears are too flappy, his suits too loose, his face too much like Alfred E. Neuman’s. Instead, the corporate media turned on McCain with a vengeance. The straight-talk express of eight years ago became a mean, surly cur. The media manufactures consent and the public buys it. Even those who study and know its rules fall for it. The images of the two candidates could have been reversed with ease if those who own the media had wanted it.
All of my research into the mechanics of elections over the past eight years have proven to me that this election could have been stolen just as easily as the past two, if the elite had wanted it. That they didn’t does nothing to restore my faith in the ultimate justice and reliability of the system. Those who spent their time campaigning may have helped assuage their own feelings of hopelessness and uselessness, but the fix was in, and in the end they changed nothing. (We have no idea how many votes were stolen in this selection to preserve some sense of contest and excitement. (It is hard to draw people into an inevitable confidence game.)
Well, it’s a new morning in America, or whatever the slogan this time was. Ah yes, “Change.” I advise you all to beware the pernicious word “reform,” which inevitably follows the word “change.” Welfare reform, entitlement reform, social security reform, health care reform. Beware. Some fool here actually mentioned health care reform as a reason to support Obama and no one called him out on it. First of all, peel off the Orwellian use of words. We have no healthcare system in the US. The rich can afford healthy food and safe working conditions and less stress and clean air and non-polluted locales and the poor cannot. What is hoped to be thrust down the gullets of the sheeple is a catastrophic illness program, which would be well needed, but instead is a give-away to the insurance industry, as pioneered in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney (remember him?) whereby one is obligated by law to purchase health insurance, regardless of your ability to pay, and regardless of how flea-riddled said insurance proves to be.
Obama will not be a savior. He has no answer to the real structural problems which are never addressed in elections: the fact that, as Sheldon Wolin points out, we spend almost as much of our offensive mlitary in this country as the sum total of all corporate profits (ponder that and what it says about us as a people), or the fact that, according to Derrick Jenson, plastic now outweighs phytoplankton in our oceans by a ratio of six to one.
Change. Remember how seven years ago Shrub was drifting along aimlessly when suddenly “A New Pearl Harbor” happened and the small Bush was transformed into a wartime leader while the rest of us had little option but to follow the piper? Detestable corporate-whore, now VP Biden, has already informed us that if the protests for genuine change become too loud we will be treated to a similar enactment. (As Dr. Johnson said about the purpose of art: Instruct and delight, instruct and delight.) Beware. We are soon to be instructed and delighted.
Change never came from an election without social movements, just as love never came from a hand that happened to be your own.
So everyone here now has their candidate; even the casinos where I live let you win every once in a while so you keep coming back. All of those who invested time and energy in the campaign; all of those who supported the duopoly by voting for Obama have every moral right to take credit for any good they may have helped bring about. But, by the same logic, every death — whether by bombing or democratic starvation — that Obama brings about during the next four years, well, some small part of the responsiblity, the guilt, the violence, the vengence, the pain caused, and the lives shredded so effortlessly by the machine, some part of that must also rightly accrue to you and your efforts.
Yes, even my pacifist housemate, whose father was a conscientious objector during the “Good War,” WWII, and later became a minister and went to France to aid the afflicted, all at great personal cost, even she voted for Obama and had no answer to my challenge. She does not believe in killing under any circumstance (the simplified fairy-tale we are sold about Gandhi), but she voted for a killer, a supporter of murder, hence a murderer himself. I believe that the oppressed of the world have the right to defend their lives against those who would exterminate them — by violence and even by killing. But I could not bring myself to share in the complicity of being, even in some small measure, the oppressor of others, the killer, as Martin Luther King said, “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”
It’s a deadly game I want no part of, and I just couldn’t do it. I could not bring myself to feed the machine of oppression, pillage and murder.
Change. Enjoy. Bask. Even gloat. Your team won this time. The tribal part of you, the “us against others” deserves to feel good. Hey, what’s that red stuff on my hands?

Posted by: Malooga | Nov 5 2008 15:20 utc | 39

@ 40,
For the Obama family to take the stage at the beginning before B’s speech (at which point the females left the stage) seemed appropriate to me. And for the Bidens et al. to join B after his speech also seemed appropriate. So the stage was shared by all of them.
Now to thrash about a bit in the semiotics of dresses, I did think that what looked to me like a black dress (or was is dark blue? or dark green?) for the younger daughter was a bit strange for a little girl. The older daughter in a red dress was striking, in a nice way. Michelle, who usually looks terrific IMHO, in that particular dress looked like she had pressed her body against a freshly red painted wall, producing those big red splotches. If their attire signaled a black identity or victory, fine with me.
His speech signaled inclusiveness gangbusters.

Posted by: Hamburger | Nov 5 2008 17:10 utc | 41

@27
João, não é necessário se desculpar pelo seu inglês, que, aliás, é muito bom!
cheers all

Posted by: rudolf | Nov 5 2008 18:42 utc | 43

I also noticed that Obama was starkly alone on the stage while giving his speech, with only the teleprompter, which meant it went better than without. But it was only him up there–The One. Not a team.
I tried to remember what happened when Clinton and Gore won. My recollection is that they were both on stage, appearing as a team.
I found myself wondering why the VP was relegated to a walk-on. A subtle message that Obama’s is no Bush-Cheney relationship? A message to Biden? A way to focus attention on just Obama? I don’t know.
I also remembered my joy when Clinton and Gore won in ’92. After 12 long and agonizing years of Reagan and Bush I, my friends and I were delirious–sort of like the description of Britain when Blair came to power and there was such hope. Such promise. I knew people without health insurance, who couldn’t afford coverage for preexisting conditions–and I felt finally they would lose this terrible worry. A Dem Congress and a progressive Dem president! So much opportunity. Someone collected dreams people had about the Clintons, especially Bill, and put them into a book.
As the transition weeks went by, the press still seemed to be reporting pretty fairly on Clinton. The MCM* even went a bit bonkers about how well Clinton handled his business roundtable meeting, asking many who did not share his political and social goals to attend. The press reported that Clinton was able to understand what his critics as well as supporters were saying, often summarizing the ideas better than the persons who had voiced them.
In my memory, that December meeting was the last time the MCM was completely fair to Bill Clinton. Well, last time really laudatory.
I don’t know why the MCM turned (Bob Somerby at DailyHowler.com has taken some stabs at explaining why the press turned so quickly and far against Clinton), why it happened. I recall Hillary being dissed for the hat she wore to the January inauguragion. And then I recall that almost immediately after his inauguration, Sam Nunn announced that he and the joint chiefs could not tolerate Clinton’s executive order to cease discrimination against gays in the military–something Clinton had run his campaign on and said he was going to do ASAP. Nunn and others kneecapped their new president.
Again, I do not understand why Nunn did it–I thought at the time it was to preserve his electability in his Southern state (GA?), but he didn’t even run for reelection.
It was the start of trying to take down Bill and Hillary Clinton. The MCM aided and abetted the scandal mongering of the Repubs, and from there it was all downhill. While the Repubs were for vicious, it was bipartisan. William Kristol wrote that if the Dems succeeded in providing national healthcare, the Repubs would be out of power for generations, and that killing the Clinton healthcare plan was an existential necessity for the Republican Party.
I don’t track these things, but Kathleen Hall Jamison who does, minutely, said that Clinton enacted or attempted to enact every promise he made during his 2000 campaign. When he decided he had to increase taxes on the wealthy–following advice of Rubin who said it was necessary to ensure economic growth and also to stave off actions Greenspan said he would have to take–he explained to the public exactly what he was doing, why, and what he felt the outcome would be. The Repubs lied about it, of course.
I agree that if the MCM had not wanted Obama to win, they could easily have destroyed his candidacy. Perhaps they’re saving that kind of thing for controlling him if he gets too progressive and doesn’t fulfill the Big Banker Boyz and Villagers’ sense of what they need to stay in power. I also believe that the MCM held back against Clinton bcz they wanted Bush I out of office, then wanted to prevent his enacting programs which would ensure a more liberal, socially responsible society.
I don’t know what Obama will do as president, and I worry about that. As a symbol, I try to feel good about his win. But, still, I worry about what he will actually do. His secrecy about his life experiences seems to indicate he will perhaps embrace the BushCo model of lack of transparency. I double Obama will reverse the Bush II order to keep presidential records secret far longer than the initial law dictated. Based on how maelable his stands on issues have been while in office, how he tends to the requirements of Repubs, I don’t have much faith in his following through on what people think they have heard from him about many, many programs.
We will see.
I will be delighted to find Obama is liberal and progressive and not imperially minded.
*MCM–Mainstream Corporate Media

Posted by: jawbone | Nov 5 2008 19:29 utc | 45

Hamburger,
Maybe you’re right in that I’m making way too much to do about seeing black-but-not-blue in Obama’s victory speech. But maybe you’ll think otherwise if you’d take in consideration that about the only thing the MSM talked about with regards to his speech is the color of his skin. And this irks me to no end not only because Obama is just as white as he is black, but because the MSM would rather discuss how Obama’s skin color will change the course of history than discuss how he plans to turn the economy around and get us out of not just one, but two wars to nowhere.
And believe me, I’m already miserable enough about being a very blue-state girl stuck in a very red state and being a white minority working in a black majority workplace without you reminding me of my misery about being a flaming liberal who prefer to wear flameless conservative clothes.;-)

Posted by: Cynthia | Nov 5 2008 20:14 utc | 47

Who would want Biden on stage? The only difference between him and Cheney, policywise, is that Joeyboy talks too much for his own good.

Posted by: Malooga | Nov 5 2008 20:33 utc | 49

obama is the physical embodiment of an americanization campaign

Posted by: b real | Nov 5 2008 20:41 utc | 51

I have lurked here for a long time, occasionally making a comment. Many times I have found your comments enlightening, interesting — even if I didnt fully always agree.
I am sad to say tonight, that though I respect your rights to speak your mind/s as you see fit, I also see sad pseudo intellectual trivialism and resentment from some of the commenters. How sad that some of you must wait for a level of perfection of incredible rarity before you can ever acknowledge even the smallest success or occasion for hope. Your cynicism suffocates more than enlightens. How could anyone hope to try anything when the only threshold is your endlessly suspicious and self righteous perfectionism?
And what are YOU doing? Are you stickin it out there or just sitting around banging keyboards, flailing others not with positive energy or the hope for progress, but resentment, cynicism and pessimism? Nothing much is ever saved or accomplised with that stuff…
Just sayin’ – but have a nice day.

Posted by: Elie | Nov 6 2008 4:13 utc | 53

creton post #34 “Shh, don’t tell anyone, but we elected a catholic vice president.”
It is unfortunate that on a leftest blog we find such comments of intolerance/elitism.
Please don’t anyone think, however, that I am a fan of Biden. Biden is to the Financial Industry as to what Cheney is to the Oil Industry.
So often over the years I have heard the praises of Al Gore on this blog. Who was Al Gore’s running mate? Didn’t hear much criticism around here about that choice either. I did hear plenty of cricism about Mcain for his choice of VP and many false or trumped up accusations about Palin here. My favorite was Palin being declared pregnant from nothing more than a photograph. Of course, the common criticism was that of her being a religious fundamentalist who believed devoutly in American Exceptionalism, yet from what I understand, her and her husband were looking into the possibility of removing Alaska from the U.S. This was after she became pregnant and eloped to get married. And Billmon quickly accused Palin of racism when she criticized Obama’s experience qualification as a “community organizer”. I did not see Palin as a racist from that remark. Palin’s ignorance or sins pale in comparison to some of our “experienced” leaders from the left or the right. I don’t care much about political correctness or any other forms of elitism/intellectualism. And I admire hard working rednecks in this rural area that are so often the butt of jokes around liberal blogs. Many of these so called “rednecks” around here voted for Obama.
Palin was demeanonized for her pro-life stance. I criticize her for not being pro-life enough. I believe in the dignity of every human life, and I am solidly against captial punishment, and any form or nature of torture. Awhile back, I stated my position and was chided that it is a woman’s right to choose and then was told that a fetus is not the same as a baby or a child. (As if I didn’t know that already!) I was lectured as if I just fell off a turnup truck with an anaolgy that a tomatoe seed is not the same as a tomatoe. Although my MOA lecturer had changed the argument from one of human dignity to some academic defintion of what a child was, almost within a wink of an eye, I was accused of using a straw man argument by this same poster.
I am thankful that Obama chooses tolerance before elitism. This was a big factor in his election victory. Maybe that is an example we all could follow.

Posted by: Rick | Nov 6 2008 10:46 utc | 55

Anna Missed,
It is this obsessive, ultimately paralysing preoccupation…which you exhibit above [“the utter repudiation of the republican party and their policies, both domestic and foreign, that should condemn them to the back bench for a generation”]… with defeat of the (domestic) ‘other’ vis-à-vis the artificial, highly, highly regulated (by the elite) ‘left’-‘right’ paradigm, which you have been instructed to accept as the final demarcation of ‘legitimate’ politics, ever since you were a young child, which compounds and distracts from the actual real world of policy (opposed to rhetoric) – analysed scientifically, according to verifiable conduct, in combination with verifiable statistics relating to such conduct, in relation to the various areas of policy of course.
Please, refrain from being swept up in the whirlwind of propaganda which you are fed, like you’re a hapless duck with a food-tube shoved down its throat on a fois-gras farm. Instead, try to engage with reality, not rhetoric. Without an informed, intelligent public, capable of making this distinction, separating their arbitrary and unintelligent (read: unjustified) emotions, democracy is just a word, just rhetoric.
To your points, 1 & 2: Far from ‘condemning them {R’s} to the backbench for a generation’, Obama will choose an assortment of Republicans to be included in his government.
washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/06/obama-likely-to-name-republican-to-cabinet
You had great independents like R.Nader and C.Mickinney to vote for – blame yourself.

Posted by: Al | Nov 6 2008 14:28 utc | 57