Barack Obama Elected President

Remarkable, really. And not even close. John McCain during his concession speech had a look of relieved resignation on his face that this election didn't even offer any real suspense. Once Ohio and Pennsylvania were out, I think he had that sudden realization, like a Super Bowl team getting blown out in the 1st half, it was just over.

And if you're McCain, perhaps it's a chance to breathe a sigh of relief. Maybe inheriting the country's problems, the possibility of getting the chance to retire in 2010...maybe there is a bright side to losing this election.

Whatever the case may be, it's a different world tonight. All of those things that describe this election, the key word being historic, are true. Now it's time to put the differences aside and hope that Barack Obama can be the best President he can possibly be, and steer the country in the right direction. I'm sure our voices will be loud and clear if he doesn't.

Rolling Stone's McCain Article

Rolling Stone is a highly liberal publication, if you didn't know. However, few articles and news reports are as well-researched as this damning insight into John McCain. This article takes a couple of subtle and not-so-subtle jabs here and there where it should have been trimmed a little bit more closely. It could have done without, and would have still been just as compelling. But those are very minor blips in the overall accomplishment. If anything, this is the equal to the intensified attacks on Obama's shady associations that we will be hearing ad nauseum over the next month.

If you hate Barack Obama, I don't think you'll be running to vote for him after reading this. You'll just probably realize, once again, you have to pick between two people who probably shouldn't be running for President. Or not vote at all, which is probably what I'm going to do for the first time since I was extended the privelege.

Funny, just a month or so ago I liked both of these candidates. So much has changed.

Addicted to Election Coverage

I'm not saying this in an enthused manner at all. Everything I can get my hands on concerning the election I'm scoping it out. It's wearying beyond belief, especially the closed-mindedness and petty attacks I keep running across. I warn you, this is a long post.

CNN loves putting on two opposing views, sometimes 4 people (2 lefty, 2 righty). The arguments are a waste of time, and yet I sit there giving it my full attention like I'm going to glean anything from them.

Well, I do glean things from them in my own particular way. I'm a student of human nature, and more of a misanthrope than I would ever hope for myself to be. And when these various lefties and righties speak, and I realize that I cannot take anything they say seriously because they are party apologists and nothing their candidates do are wrong, then I start focusing on reactions and demeanor.

One person I've become obsessed with watching is Nancy Pfotenhauer, who has a small role in a Daily Show clip I posted down below. She's a McCain campaign adviser and she shows up on all the networks pounding the McCain message. She is, like all of the various leaners who are invited on these shows, there to keep the agenda flowing, cleaning up all the doubts you may have about the candidate, attacking and counter-attacking, giving not one decimal of a centimeter to the people she faces off against.

Pfotenhauer does this thing that she had to have been coached on a long time ago and in which she has become extremely talented. It's just plain scary, and at the same time, amusing, to watch. Find any clip of her on YouTube and watch what she does when the other (and equally dubious) talking head says anything against McCain. She smiles really, really big, then shakes her head, keeping that smile going and then her expression always turns to that of "I'm listening to what you're saying, and you're going to look foolish saying it, but I'll give you the chance to air it out."

Behind this smile and taking things in stride and, well, doing what she's paid to do, I imagine a lethal serpent ready to strike. Like when she goes home she peels off her skin and slithers into a crawlspace to rest. And after I come to that conclusion, I am then led to the idea that there may not be anything living there at all. I sometimes wonder what would happen if her opponents, keeping the same tone of voice, started spouting pro-McCain talking points, would Pfotenhauer pick up on it? Kind of like the old "Bugs Bunny" cartoons where Bugs and Elmer Fudd would get in argument, "Am not, are too!" and then Bugs switches it around so that Elmer would go to the other position. The subtext of which is, that in an argument, the life of an argument (and those who are paid, or just merely want, to argue) depends on you disagreeing on everything, even if you turn around to the other person's side.

I watched an argument last night where the lefty didn't have anything meaningful to say, so she brought up the, "McCain doesn't know how many houses he owns!" nonsense, as if this has anything to do with his ability to lead.

As for the facts surrounding the campaign, I've begun to look at factcheck.org to see research into claims made by the candidates. There is misleading info on both sides, true...but the McCain campaign has made this an art form this year. Still, there is an excellent look into lies told about Sarah Palin on this site, but is also quick to note the lies she tells as well.

After doing the research, hearing the advisers square off becomes an even more hateful task. There's one guy I saw on Fox News swearing up and down that Obama voted for a measure that would have taught sex education to kindergartners. And he didn't know all of the facts, but yet he was the strongest talker in the room, and no one was able to talk him down from it. And thus, everyone watching the program who don't know the facts come out thinking a certain way that is false. And it continues my souring of human nature.

Further detriment to my health was when I read this article by Ann Coulter. It must be said that I'm impatient with anyone who doesn't merely lean on a side, they are 100% that side. Extreme. And then you also can't help but think that, like Ron Perlman's character in The Last Supper, Coulter often takes extreme views to not only satisfy the choir but incite the ones who will always disagree (It's the ratings thing man). I read the article, then I read the comments. The lack of open-minded, problem-solving, reasonable people is downright frightening. I would not want to ever meet these people.

I am one who disagrees that just because America has been in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting wars that this is the reason why terrorists have not attacked us in 7 years. Remember, Clinton did nothing and he definitely should have, (and in fact had Bin Laden in his sights and didn't act) and we had the same result: 7 years of nothing. But remember, the outcry for vengeance was not as it was in 2001. Remember, after the first WTC bombing, we heard of the guy who rented the van implicated in the bombing and wanted to get his deposit back because he reported the van stolen...and we in America laughed at the man's stupidity and went on with our lives.

As David Cross said in his stand-up routine that I saw with Jonathan at Exit/In, "Bush gets all this credit for going to war as if that was something no other President would have done." The 9/11 attacks were a different animal than the 1993 ones. Almost everyone wanted to go to war after that day. If Bush had not, there would have been an outcry. It's when the attention went from Afghanistan to Iraq that people got tired of war as a good idea. Even your typical leftists supported the Afghanistan invasion, because it made sense. Iraq made sense, too, for awhile, but that was an idea that capitalized on our fears and before we could get out of the 9/11 stupor that had taken hold to say it didn't make sense, we were already there.

But read what actual people have to say about all this and you realize people have views that cannot ever be shaken, because I think many people consider this a sign of weakness. I do not. I can be swayed with evidence that my opinions are wrong and I will then take that position. I want what's best. If we were deciding between two products this November (we are, in a metaphorical sense) then I would check their features. Which has the best features for me, which features are just marketing nonsense, what are downright weaknesses. It disturbs me that many people are making a decision based on, "Well, I have bought Microsoft products all my life, and Microsoft products are what I will always buy, even if the Apple product might have better features...I just don't trust Apple."

There are too many people who are just Republican or just Democrat. If John McCain came out tomorrow and started spouting the exact same stuff Barack Obama says, you would see people like Nancy Pfotenhauer finding a way to make this seem like he's always been this way and that the same stance by the opponent is not as strong or is outright different from her candidate's stance.

I guess what I'm saying is that I should stop watching election coverage.

Elections Would Make Great Horror Movies

Through the past couple of months, I've found myself impressed by both Barack Obama and John McCain, and this is rare to feel come election time. I didn't like either candidate in 2004, and during the first couple of elections I just considered myself a Republican and went for Bob Dole in 1996 and Bush in 2000, then gave the default vote for Bush in 2004. I was 19, 23, and 27 then. I'm 31 now, and I feel like something has changed enough to vote Democrat this election.

It's easy to be impressed by Barack Obama and for around two years now, he's been the guy for whom I've wanted to vote for a long time. Young guys full of ideas excite me, but much has been made of his experience. Experience, I feel, is important in some aspects but overrated in others. It seems like to me that no potential first-term President has meaningful experience in running a country, and while governors and mayors can at least tout running a smaller populace, I doubt being a governor or mayor truly prepares someone completely.

So that brings me to the horror movie aspect of elections. We have to weigh a lot of factors, but then one side will say, "That side is going to raise your taxes," and another will say, "They won't be tough on terrorists!" And you might as well be in a haunted house being taunted by ghosts with all the scare tactics you will hear in the next two months.

But what's even scarier for me are the lies or misinformation that can be proved as lies or misinformation, and the candidates still use these talking points as strengths. After Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin made her impressive speech at the RNC, I was already seeing rebuttals complete with proof. The one that stands out, and I'm certainly not saying it's the most important one, is the one where she says something like, "I told Congress [as Alaska governor] we don't need your Bridge to Nowhere. If we need a bridge, we'll build it ourselves."

And, of course, we find out that she supported the so-called Bridge to Nowhere until it became unpopular to do so.

So it brings me to another horrific aspect of elections: Sarah Palin is going to continue to make many points that sound strong and uplift her party, and despite the fact that there will be people who find out that her talking points are false, she can continue to get away with it because she knows that not enough people who will make a difference are going to research the claims. It sounds good and powerful, and that's all many people care about.

This also brings me to another point. I get the feeling that if we go for the Republican ticket, we're going for Sarah Palin rather than John McCain. I have never seen this much star wattage lent to a VP candidate. We usually don't give a crap about VPs. Anyone vote or not vote for a candidate because of their VP? Yet, this year, McCain, knowing that the power of his name wasn't all that great, went with a dynamic woman no one outside of Alaska had really heard of, and vaulted her to celebrity status. The buttons you saw worn at the RNC showed what much of Palin's appeal came from: being attractive. Not only that, but she has five kids, one's going to war, and another has Down syndrome. Her backstory is exactly the type of thing that guys would make up to impress girls.

Back to terrorism. One claim consistently bothers me about the Bush administration, and that's "there haven't been any attacks on American soil since 9/11." They throw this out there because it's this Republican resolve that continues to stymie attacks; if it weren't for them, who knows what kind of destruction we would be witnessing? I couldn't help but think, though, that after the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, that the Clinton administration could have made the same claim during their time in office. There were clearly no attacks (by foreigners, at least) on American soil for the remainder of their tenure. It's because the Bush administration has been fighting wars the entire time since 2001 that the illusion of being kept safe has been created. So what do I make of the relatively peaceful times between 1994-2000?

This brings me to another problem. The fact that the World Trade Center was hit a year after one election in 1992 (bringing in first-termer Clinton) and then another in 2000 (bringing in first-termer Bush) makes me wary of 2009. It's a very, very small sample size, to be sure, but it seems like terrorists wait until a new President is sworn in to say, "Welcome to this world, bitches." A fantasy is created that makes Americans feel safe, and then the boom is lowered. So if Barack Obama wins the election, and we have a big terrorist attack, guess who is getting blamed...and guess who takes the credit for all the lack of activity before it? It's pretty bothersome.

Right now, I'm still an Obama believer. I don't generally trust people who have been in Washington for a long time, because they seem too ingrained into the nonsense that comes out of the government. And with all the claims by McCain that don't ring true, with all the studies I've been reading about the candidates, trying to separate the fact from the fiction, Obama comes out as a better candidate for me. Of course, things could change I suppose. But I'm primed to make this vote, which will likely just be piling on considering New York is mostly Democrat.