44 discusses his plan to create jobs and kickstart the economy by doing sensible things like putting people to work repairing our crumbling roads and bridges.
God...it's gonna be nice to have a President who says things that I agree with.
Showing posts with label President. Show all posts
Showing posts with label President. Show all posts
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Why I voted for Obama today
Eight years ago, I was a cynical, idealistic, radical, 21 year old college student. I didn't believe that there was a real difference between Bush and Gore, and I didn't think that either of them would do what I thought needed to be done. I saw Gore as a milquetoast corporate-controlled candidate, and I saw Bush as a far right moron. I voted for David McReynolds, the Socialist Party candidate for President, who got something like 7,000 votes nationwide.
Something happened to me between 2000 and 2004. I saw Bush do some really, really awful things to the country. I saw him fail to prevent the worst terrorist attack on America's soil. I saw him react to that disaster by attacking a country that had nothing to do with it. I saw him give tax breaks to the rich, gut social programs, and begin to create a surveillance society that started to break down constitutional barriers of privacy. I saw him take a hammer to the wall between church and state.
But I still had very little confidence that the Democrats would have been much better. I worked for a Democratic candidate for Congress in 2002, because I thought that I wanted to become a campaign worker and try to move the Democratic Party to the left.
In that campaign, I saw that the Democratic Party really did have different ideas from the Republican Party, and while in no way did the Democrats go as far as I would have liked, they would at least put a stop to the horrible things the Bush regime was inflicting on the country.
In 2004, I finally found myself inspired by a Democrat. Howard Dean had the kind of message that I was looking for. "You have the power," he said, and I believed him. His campaign was grassroots and real, and it was a movement of people who really cared about change. I worked my heart out for Dean's campaign, and I was crushed when he was destroyed by the media. I voted for Kerry, even though he ran a miserable campaign, and I was again crushed when Kerry conceded.
The 2008 primary campaign was a giant mess, and I didn't know who the hell to support. I saw Obama's campaign as inspiring but empty, and I hated Hillary. I vacillated between Edwards and Kucinich. By the time Oklahoma's primary came around, it was between Hillary and Obama, and I voted for Hillary. I still didn't see enough out of Obama to vote for him.
But then I saw Hillary's campaign take a nose dive into the toilet, and I saw Obama rise above the fray. I saw Obama's campaign finally go into substantive detail without losing the inspirational message that defined it. I shook off my shell of cynicism and began to believe again.
Obama has run an exemplary campaign, one that not only inspires passion among his followers but also has a coherent, defined policy message. He may not be as progressive as some of us might want, but he's at least honest and genuine about his positions. His positions in favor of "clean coal" bother me, but I can see myself agreeing with almost every one of his other policies. More importantly than that, however, Obama is fiercely intelligent, which will perhaps be the most dramatic change from the last eight years.
But it's not just about policies, as we all know. It's about hope. Obama's campaign has created a real grassroots movement and revived a spirit of optimism and belief that real change can happen in America. His message is simple: "Yes, we can." We can change politics from the bottom up. We can recover from the disasters of the Bush regime. We can rebuild America and get the economy moving again. We can regain our standing in the world.
Obama's historic candidacy represents the best of America. I'm proud to have voted for this extraordinary candidate, not just because he'll make history as the first African-American president, but because I see him as perhaps the next Kennedy or FDR, someone who unites the country around something bigger than the petty politics of the individual. I see Obama as someone who can take this great, positive energy that his campaign has generated across the nation and translate it to change profoundly the way America works, and make it a more cooperative, democratic, and free country.
Yes we can.
Something happened to me between 2000 and 2004. I saw Bush do some really, really awful things to the country. I saw him fail to prevent the worst terrorist attack on America's soil. I saw him react to that disaster by attacking a country that had nothing to do with it. I saw him give tax breaks to the rich, gut social programs, and begin to create a surveillance society that started to break down constitutional barriers of privacy. I saw him take a hammer to the wall between church and state.
But I still had very little confidence that the Democrats would have been much better. I worked for a Democratic candidate for Congress in 2002, because I thought that I wanted to become a campaign worker and try to move the Democratic Party to the left.
In that campaign, I saw that the Democratic Party really did have different ideas from the Republican Party, and while in no way did the Democrats go as far as I would have liked, they would at least put a stop to the horrible things the Bush regime was inflicting on the country.
In 2004, I finally found myself inspired by a Democrat. Howard Dean had the kind of message that I was looking for. "You have the power," he said, and I believed him. His campaign was grassroots and real, and it was a movement of people who really cared about change. I worked my heart out for Dean's campaign, and I was crushed when he was destroyed by the media. I voted for Kerry, even though he ran a miserable campaign, and I was again crushed when Kerry conceded.
The 2008 primary campaign was a giant mess, and I didn't know who the hell to support. I saw Obama's campaign as inspiring but empty, and I hated Hillary. I vacillated between Edwards and Kucinich. By the time Oklahoma's primary came around, it was between Hillary and Obama, and I voted for Hillary. I still didn't see enough out of Obama to vote for him.
But then I saw Hillary's campaign take a nose dive into the toilet, and I saw Obama rise above the fray. I saw Obama's campaign finally go into substantive detail without losing the inspirational message that defined it. I shook off my shell of cynicism and began to believe again.
Obama has run an exemplary campaign, one that not only inspires passion among his followers but also has a coherent, defined policy message. He may not be as progressive as some of us might want, but he's at least honest and genuine about his positions. His positions in favor of "clean coal" bother me, but I can see myself agreeing with almost every one of his other policies. More importantly than that, however, Obama is fiercely intelligent, which will perhaps be the most dramatic change from the last eight years.
But it's not just about policies, as we all know. It's about hope. Obama's campaign has created a real grassroots movement and revived a spirit of optimism and belief that real change can happen in America. His message is simple: "Yes, we can." We can change politics from the bottom up. We can recover from the disasters of the Bush regime. We can rebuild America and get the economy moving again. We can regain our standing in the world.
Obama's historic candidacy represents the best of America. I'm proud to have voted for this extraordinary candidate, not just because he'll make history as the first African-American president, but because I see him as perhaps the next Kennedy or FDR, someone who unites the country around something bigger than the petty politics of the individual. I see Obama as someone who can take this great, positive energy that his campaign has generated across the nation and translate it to change profoundly the way America works, and make it a more cooperative, democratic, and free country.
Yes we can.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Something happened in the last few hours...
fivethirtyeight.com's electoral predictor has jumped down to a 1.9% McCain win percentage. That's down from more than 3% earlier today. There's just a thing that says "developing" with a Drudge-like siren on it right now, but I'm keeping an eye on it. Maybe something just broke?
Update: Here's the latest polling post. Looks good for tomorrow.
Update: Here's the latest polling post. Looks good for tomorrow.
Sad news- Obama's grandmother dies a day before the election
That's sad. The woman who was instrumental in Barack's upbringing has died - one day before her grandson is to be (hopefully) elected President. My heart goes out to Senator Obama and his family on this tragic loss.
(This is a "breaking" news banner on CNN right now - no link available yet.)
(This is a "breaking" news banner on CNN right now - no link available yet.)
Good stuff from internal poll data
NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll shows Obama with a significant 8% lead nationally. To put this in perspective, the final poll before the '04 election showed Bush ahead by 1%.
But here's what is really interesting:
This is not good news for McCain. Despite how loud and obnoxious they tend to be, evangelicals are not a huge portion of the electorate, and that lead isn't going to be able to overcome Obama's advantage in the other groups. Plus, evangelicals tend to concentrate themselves in states where McCain is already strong, and that's not going to help him in the purple states either. If McCain gets 100% of the evangelical vote in (for example) Utah, Oklahoma, and Idaho, it won't help him get to 270. Now, I will say that the evangelical vote might help him in certain purple states like Missouri, Virginia, and Colorado, but we'll just have to see where the chips fall.
McCain's leads with other groups are close enough that they're really not going to give McCain any kind of an advantage. Add to these statistics the massive number of early voters and the huge surge in vote from those groups who are supporting Obama in large numbers and you paint a pretty bleak picture for McCain.
But here's what is really interesting:
Looking inside the numbers, Obama leads McCain among African Americans (90 percent to 3 percent), Latinos (68 to 27), 18- to 34-year-olds (59 to 38), independents (48 to 38), blue-collar voters (51 to 44), suburban voters (49 to 44) and Catholics (49 to 46).
McCain, meanwhile, has the advantage among evangelicals (78 percent to 19 percent), those 65 years old and older (53 to 40), white men (54 to 42) and white women (48 to 47).
This is not good news for McCain. Despite how loud and obnoxious they tend to be, evangelicals are not a huge portion of the electorate, and that lead isn't going to be able to overcome Obama's advantage in the other groups. Plus, evangelicals tend to concentrate themselves in states where McCain is already strong, and that's not going to help him in the purple states either. If McCain gets 100% of the evangelical vote in (for example) Utah, Oklahoma, and Idaho, it won't help him get to 270. Now, I will say that the evangelical vote might help him in certain purple states like Missouri, Virginia, and Colorado, but we'll just have to see where the chips fall.
McCain's leads with other groups are close enough that they're really not going to give McCain any kind of an advantage. Add to these statistics the massive number of early voters and the huge surge in vote from those groups who are supporting Obama in large numbers and you paint a pretty bleak picture for McCain.
Can someone please translate this Palin quote into English?
She continued: “And there must be something about San Francisco and he because it’s like I heard on Fox News today, it’s like a truth serum where when he’s there, he seems to be more candid, and remember it was there that he talked about, there you go, the bitter clingers, the cling-ons, all of us, I guess, you know holding on to religion and guns and, um, so something about he being there in San Francisco.”
*blink* - did she just call her supporters Klingons?
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Two Obama supporters nearly lynched by a violent mob after a McCain rally
After the rally, we witnessed a near-street riot involving the exiting McCain crowd and two Cuban-American Obama supporters. Tony Garcia, 63, and Raul Sorando, 31, were suddenly surrounded by an angry mob. There is a moment in a crowd when something goes from mere yelling to a feeling of danger, and that's what we witnessed. As photographers and police raced to the scene, the crowd elevated from stable to fast-moving scrum, and the two men were surrounded on all sides as we raced to the circle.
The event maybe lasted a minute, two at the most, before police competently managed to hustle the two away from the scene and out of the danger zone. Only FiveThirtyEight tracked the two men down for comment, a quarter mile down the street.
"People were screaming 'Terrorist!' 'Communist!' 'Socialist!'" Sorando said when we caught up with him. "I had a guy tell me he was gonna kill me."
Asked what had precipitated the event, "We were just chanting 'Obama!' and holding our signs. That was it. And the crowd suddenly got crazy."
Could we get this election over with, please?
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
lol - Brian Moore of the SP-USA on Colbert
That was funny - Stephen Colbert just interviewed Brian Moore, the Socialist Party's presidential candidate.
Eight years ago, I volunteered for and was quite active with the campaign of David McReynolds, who was then the Presidential nominee of the same party.
The SP-USA is a good bunch of folks, if a little bit ideologically clueless, not to mention completely powerless to effect any change. I was an active member of that party for several years. They're not a crazy militant socialist revolutionary kind of party; they're more a kind of informal, relaxed and groovy coalition of democratic socialists. And there are about 700 of them nationwide.
Sad, really, that American socialism has been reduced to that level. If this election is to be compared to the Roosevelt-Hoover election of 1932, I probably would have voted for Norman Thomas. That was back when the Socialist Party actually had a shot at breaking into the mainstream. Then Roosevelt, saint of the progressive movement as he is, co-opted socialist ideas into a reformist agenda that allowed capitalism to survive its most precarious days. He was of course followed by that frothy witch hunter Joe McCarthy who is single-handedly responsible for destroying much of the American left. Long story short, today the American left is a pathetic, tiny little shell of itself, composed of a few absolutely inconsequential groups fighting amongst themselves over tiny ideological struggles. There are good people in the American left, and good groups, too, but none of them can break into the mainstream. The SP-USA is a sad little remnant of the grand old Socialist Party, and Brian Moore is its brave little Don Quixote. I wish him well. I will be voting for Obama.
I still believe on a very kind of visceral level that worker control of the means of production would not be a bad thing, but as a pragmatist, I just don't see how it could work. That's kind of why I call myself a social democrat now rather than a socialist. I think the best thing to do is to let the market do what the market does well, which is to distribute basic goods and services to society, and have the government oversee it to curb its excesses and level the playing field.
Eight years ago, I volunteered for and was quite active with the campaign of David McReynolds, who was then the Presidential nominee of the same party.
The SP-USA is a good bunch of folks, if a little bit ideologically clueless, not to mention completely powerless to effect any change. I was an active member of that party for several years. They're not a crazy militant socialist revolutionary kind of party; they're more a kind of informal, relaxed and groovy coalition of democratic socialists. And there are about 700 of them nationwide.
Sad, really, that American socialism has been reduced to that level. If this election is to be compared to the Roosevelt-Hoover election of 1932, I probably would have voted for Norman Thomas. That was back when the Socialist Party actually had a shot at breaking into the mainstream. Then Roosevelt, saint of the progressive movement as he is, co-opted socialist ideas into a reformist agenda that allowed capitalism to survive its most precarious days. He was of course followed by that frothy witch hunter Joe McCarthy who is single-handedly responsible for destroying much of the American left. Long story short, today the American left is a pathetic, tiny little shell of itself, composed of a few absolutely inconsequential groups fighting amongst themselves over tiny ideological struggles. There are good people in the American left, and good groups, too, but none of them can break into the mainstream. The SP-USA is a sad little remnant of the grand old Socialist Party, and Brian Moore is its brave little Don Quixote. I wish him well. I will be voting for Obama.
I still believe on a very kind of visceral level that worker control of the means of production would not be a bad thing, but as a pragmatist, I just don't see how it could work. That's kind of why I call myself a social democrat now rather than a socialist. I think the best thing to do is to let the market do what the market does well, which is to distribute basic goods and services to society, and have the government oversee it to curb its excesses and level the playing field.
Another story of someone hit by the Bush-McCain recession
More than houses or jobs, what George Bush's America cost me - and so many others like me - is our spirits, the sense of believing that what good you put out into the world will be returned to you in multiples. The sense of having a safety net, a cushion, a solid place in the daily world we could count on belonging. I've been robbed of my sense of humor and the hope that carried me through plenty of other lean times. There have been other tough times. Being a single mother, that was always to be expected. But there were never desperate times without hope. Now, for me and so many others, that's what's left.
America, we have one week.
Vote.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Now McCain Advisors are jumping ship and voting for Obama!
McCain advisor and prominent Reagan administration figure Charles Fried has now endorsed Obama, adding to a growing list of Republicans jumping ship and realizing their party is over (and other mixed metaphors).
McCain Staffer Admits Making Up Beating Story
A McCain staffer has admitted that she made up the story about an attacker at an ATM becoming enraged about her McCain sticker and carving a backwards "B" into her face.
Man, that's pathetic. That's so far beyond pathetic that to describe it as pathetic is an insult to the word pathetic.
Is that seriously all that the pitiful pile of rank sewage that has become the McCain campaign has left? That and accusing Obama of mounting a secret Mission: Impossible style effort to sneak into Hawaii and "change his birth certificate" under the guise of visiting his sick grandmother? Really, guys. When the monkeys who are throwing poo at each other look at you and think, "Man, those guys are disgusting," maybe it's time to stop.
Man, that's pathetic. That's so far beyond pathetic that to describe it as pathetic is an insult to the word pathetic.
Is that seriously all that the pitiful pile of rank sewage that has become the McCain campaign has left? That and accusing Obama of mounting a secret Mission: Impossible style effort to sneak into Hawaii and "change his birth certificate" under the guise of visiting his sick grandmother? Really, guys. When the monkeys who are throwing poo at each other look at you and think, "Man, those guys are disgusting," maybe it's time to stop.
Now those are numbers I like to see
Fivethirtyeight.com has McCain's win percentage down to 3.7%. New polls give Obama big leads all over the place, including in states like Montana and Indiana. This is like a (insert sports analogy here that depicts McCain as a big stinky loser).
Thursday, October 23, 2008
More more pollgasms
Virginia GOP is "outclassed" by the Dems, North Dakota is in play, Obama's playing hardball in West Virginia, and even McCain's home state of Arizona might be winnable for Obama.
Is this going to be a Clinton vs. Dole election, a Dukakis vs. Bush election, or a Reagan vs. Mondale election?
Is this going to be a Clinton vs. Dole election, a Dukakis vs. Bush election, or a Reagan vs. Mondale election?
Pollgasms
From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Carrie Dann
*** Swing states swinging to Obama: Most of the national polls -- including our NBC/WSJ survey -- are now showing Obama with a double-digit national lead. And here come a slew of brand-new state polls that also suggest Obama is in command of this presidential contest. The University of Wisconsin’s Big Ten Battleground polls have Obama up 10 points in Indiana (51%-41%), 13 points in Iowa (52%-39%), 22 in Michigan (58%-36%), 19 in Minnesota (57%-38%), 12 in Ohio (53%-41%), 11 in Pennsylvania (52%-41%), 13 in Wisconsin (53%-40%), and nearly 30 in Obama’s home state of Illinois (61%-32%). Meanwhile, there are new Quinnipiac surveys that show Obama up five points in Florida (49%-44%), 14 in Ohio (52%-38%), and 13 in Pennsylvania (53%-40%). And finally, new CNN/Time surveys find Obama ahead by five points among likely voters in Nevada (51%-46%), four points in North Carolina (51%-47%), four in Ohio (50%-46%), and 10 points in Virginia (54%-44%). The lone state survey that shows McCain ahead: CNN/Time’s West Virginia poll, where McCain’s nine (53%-44%
Boy I'm sure glad McCain is putting all his chips in that tight battleground state of Pennsylvania. That'll really help him. Lose.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Other conservatives who have endorsed Obama because of his race
Kossack Jimmy Crackcorn offers photographic proof that the Colin Powell endorsement is about race.
McCain giving up on Iowa, Colorado, and New Mexico
According to CNN's John King, McCain is giving up on Iowa, New Mexico, and Colorado. Put that together with Kerry's states, and Obama gets 273 electoral votes and wins the Presidency.
McCain's strategery is to focus all of his energy on turning blue Pennsylvania red, despite polling there that gives Obama a clear advantage. It's kind of a stupid strategy, if you ask me.
McCain's strategery is to focus all of his energy on turning blue Pennsylvania red, despite polling there that gives Obama a clear advantage. It's kind of a stupid strategy, if you ask me.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Socialism again
In response to all of these accusations of "socialism" floating around, I'll repeat what I said back in May.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Colin Powell endorses Obama!
"I think he is a transformational figure, he is a new generation coming onto the world stage, onto the American stage, and for that reason I'll be voting for Sen. Barack Obama," Powell said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Holy tapdancing Christ on a telephone pole!
Barack Obama's campaign rased over 150 million dollars in September!
Yowza!
Yowza!
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