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Post by jody on Nov 7, 2012 14:39:47 GMT 10
just heard he won !!  |
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Post by Salem on Nov 7, 2012 15:21:05 GMT 10
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Post by spindrift on Nov 7, 2012 15:33:51 GMT 10
There we go....doesn't bode well for Abbott's...people do not like the dumb far right.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2012 15:53:40 GMT 10
  From SFGate.comThe Great Obamagasm of 2012By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | 8:49PM - Tuesday, November 06, 2012 Oh sweet Jesus, yes!I THINK I can speak perhaps for quite a large percentage of us when I say: Oh, thank God.
I mean, truly. Knees down, palms together, offering a massive wave and slab and magnum champagne bottle full of deep, ferocious gratitude to whatever god, deity or divinely-shaped ball of progressive-soaked energy you choose to offer it up to, we say: thank you, thank you, oh sweet Jesus, thank you.
This just in: The pro-choice, pro-women, pro-environment, pro gay-marriage, pro-education, pro-health care-reform black guy who seems to genuinely care about the state of the world and helping as many people as possible even though he’s imperfect and can’t get it right every time, he beat out the hollow, wildly dishonest, anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-environment, anti-everything rich guy no one really liked and everyone knew would slam us back a couple generations and a Mormon half.
And lo, it is a good day indeed.
At last, all these weeks and months of liberal hand-wringing can finally cease. The hot bubble of shock and awe that Mitt Romney managed to lie, fake, and bulls–t his way that close to the White House can finally burst and recede into giddy pools of nervous laughter and multiple double shots of whisky. Join me? Hell yes.
But wait, there’s more. Turn your thoughts for a precious, relieved moment to the Supreme Court, to how it will doubtlessly be reshaped in the coming few years by Obama in positive, progressive, intelligent ways that will make Scalia scream, Alito whine and Clarence Thomas look around in numb confusion, same as always.
Glimpse if you will toward the future bogus wars, macho threats, military build-ups and various sabre-rattlings we will now not engage in, thanks to the lack of a hawkish, antagonistic, Bush-like Romney presidency.
Think of the survival of health care reform, the survival of Planned Parenthood funding, the survival of the first president in history to support gay marriage, the survival of any of the 200 campaign promises Obama actually did manage to keep and which will now not be rolled back and trampled to death by old white men who think women can’t be trusted, gays are un-American and rapist babies are just God’s will.
This is the feeling. It’s such a sweet sigh of relief that it’s almost too much to bear. The apocalypse may be nigh, we might very well be racing toward our doom, but at least we are in capable hands for a little while longer.
Perhaps you are not so sure. Perhaps your cynical side is kicking in right now, saying now it will just be a return to ugly business as usual; sure it’s been a year and a half of exhausting, brutal, expensive, absurd campaigning, but now we just go straight back to acidic infighting, congressional stalemates and Wall Street not-so-secretly controlling the whole rigged machine anyway.
Is this you? Are you are one of those who takes the broad, cynical, hyper-fatalist view that it doesn’t matter who’s in the Big Chair, that it’s all the same meta-corruption anyway, that capitalism is the end of humanity and it’s all just suffering and pain and eating the poor for a snack? Fine. You are welcome to that view. And I am more than a little bit sorry for you.
Me, I’m going for the gleam in the eye of the hurricane. Me, I’m aiming toward something like awakened evolution. Me, I take the tone and energy of progress, of intelligence, of shimmering humanity wherever I can find it, and then try to celebrate and cherish the living hell out of it so it can grow and flourish and spread like a disease made of sex and trees and love. Hell, what else you gonna do, whine all day?
Say what you will, but it’s the president who sets the tone for the country, who gives it its complexion and general stance on the world stage. And Obama sets a tone of progressive, thoughtful aptitude and intelligent calm. He’s not always right. He’s been pushed around far too easily by the sneering hatemongers of the right as he seeks consensus when all they want to do is stab him in the halway. But, oh my God, the alternative.
I am right now recalling the bleakness of the Bush years, this lethal pallor that hung over the country like a fog for eight solid years. I am remembering waking up nearly every day and wincing in pain at some appalling headline, Bush rolling back this or that enviro legislation, approving this or that awful new law, launching useless and costly wars, embarrassing us on the world stage at some UN conference. And then leaving us with the thrill of the housing/Wall Street meltdown, a modern Great Depression, selling the country’s debt for scrap to Japan and China for pennies on the dollar before sulking off to a bunker in Texas, too embarrassed and humiliated to show his face again.
Bush hated being president. He was miserable, lost, endlessly confused, in way over his head from the start. And Romney would be much the same, only smarter, savvier, a bit nastier when it comes to how best to pillage the Treasury and hasten the fall of the empire.
Barack Obama is none of those things. The only headlines about Obama that ever make me cringe are when he missed an opportunity to do more, or not go far enough. It’s dead right to hold his feet to the fire, criticize obvious mistakes, wish he were less goddamn moderate and conciliatory, and lots more fiery and just a little bit ruthless. But it’s dead wrong to think there’s someone better or more capable right now.
But wait! There’s so much more. Todd “legitimate rape” Aikin and Richard “rapist babies” Mourdock both lost, and perfectly so. Somewhere, Ted Kennedy is smiling now that the amazing Elizabeth Warren beat cocky hotshot Scott Brown to lead MA and maybe position herself for a run at 2016, should Hillary decide she prefers hammocks and writing books to running for president.
We now have the first openly gay US senator in Tammy Baldwin, who beat Bush’s crusty old-boy Tommy Thompson with aplomb. Maine voted 59 percent (!) in support of gay marriage and replaced one of its Republicans with (gasp) an Independent. And we haven’t even touched California yet…
Oh, it’s a fine night indeed. What sort of champagne you got? Share?blog.sfgate.com/morford/2012/11/06/obamagasm |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2012 16:09:48 GMT 10
Looking at the results on the Los Angeles Times website, the Democrats have gained control of the Senate. And projections are showing they are likely to gain majority control of Congress too. Good riddance to rightie rubbish being able to chuck a spanner in the works.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2012 16:21:11 GMT 10
Congrats Obama!  |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2012 16:30:17 GMT 10
That is a load of codswallop/twaddle!
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2012 16:57:43 GMT 10
It's kind of weird.
Obama's victory speech is being broadcast on the television.
It's also being fed as live video on the Los Angeles Times website, but about five seconds behind what is being shown on the television in ENZED.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2012 17:00:32 GMT 10
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2012 17:07:28 GMT 10
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Post by matt on Nov 7, 2012 18:48:00 GMT 10
Thank heavens the Mormon lost!
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2012 18:50:26 GMT 10
Thank heavens the Mormon lost! Yeah, thank heavens the warmongerer who would have carried out warmongering on behalf of the despot nation of Israel lost the election. |
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Post by matt on Nov 7, 2012 18:52:16 GMT 10
Thank heavens the Mormon lost! Yeah, thank heavens the warmongerer who would have carried out warmongering on behalf of the despot nation of Israel lost the election. He would have been working towards the new Jerusalem being established in the United States. |
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Post by matt on Nov 7, 2012 18:55:41 GMT 10
Mormons also believe they'll save the United States from the brink of financial ruin.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2012 18:57:34 GMT 10
Mormons also believe they'll save the United States from the brink of financial ruin. The Americans are going to go down the tubes financially no matter what. It is only a matter of time before the Chinks pull-the-plug on the money supply, then it will all be over. America's power is on the wane and when they go down, they will take Israel with them. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2012 7:48:55 GMT 10
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2012 9:05:10 GMT 10
Interesting statistics. Whites might have their backs up against the wall. Hispanics are outnumbering them especially when added to Asians and blacks. The Republicans made a grave error in having a Mormon candidate - they would never appeal to the Hispanics who are predominantly Catholic. If they had a decent secular sort of person it would have been a lot closer, maybe even a different result.  |
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Post by slartibartfast on Nov 8, 2012 18:53:02 GMT 10
So what does that tell you?
Republicans are seen as racist and and sexist.
Tony Abbott anyone?
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Post by spindrift on Nov 9, 2012 7:06:39 GMT 10
Abbott is a shot duck....best hope the coalition has is to reinstate Turnitupbull, who would lessen the defeat..
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Post by pim on Nov 9, 2012 7:55:58 GMT 10
The old "never say never" principle applies of course, but I can't see Turnbull doing a Lazarus before the next election any more than I can see a Rudd resurrection.
Stellar's statistics are very interesting. Did you "enlarge" the graphic Stellar? I'm struggling without glasses right now (I tried reading glasses you can pick up at the chemist and they don't help) and won't get a new prescription before Wed of next week, so thank you if you made that pic bigger.
You're right, of course, that the Republicans might have done better among the "minorities" - who are on track to become the majority - if they'd had a candidate who was not so identified with white Christian privilege. I was tempted to include "Protestant" or "WASP" but I'm not so sure that the Mormons fit so easily into the Catholic/Protestant paradigm. I sometimes even wonder if you can call them "Christian". Anyway whatever. You're right that the Mormons aren't an outfit that blacks, Asians and Hispanics identify with.
But there's more, don't you think? The Republicans are identified a lot more than the Democrats with whitefella prejudice against illegal immigrants. The issues are different in the US from here, of course, with the vast majority of illegals being from south of the border and Spanish-speaking. It's complicated and full of paradoxes: you might have a Republican who is against illegal immigration who at the same time gets his house cleaned by a Hispanic cleaning lady with visa problems. Wasn't there the case of that French guy who'd headed up the World Bank who was arrested for raping the Hispanic cleaning lady who was detailing his room? And she'd been reluctant at first to file a complaint against him because she was scared she'd be deported since she didn't have a green card? What was a 5 star hotel in Manhattan (or was it 6 star?) doing hiring staff whose work status in the US was "irregular"?
So as far as Hispanics and illegal immigration goes it's riddled with hypocrisy - we want to use you (Hispanics) as a political football but at the same time we're happoy to hire you on the quiet to wait at tables, clean our houses and wash our cars - for starvation wages of course. Basically the Hispanics (and millions of them are in fact citizens who can vote) see the Republicans as rich Anglo whitefellas who like to insult Hispanics - and who then turn around and want the Hispanics to vote Republican?? I hasten to add that the Cubans in Florida are in a completely different category again.
America is a fascinating diverse country. In a way I don't blame them for being ignorant what goes on in the rest of the world outside America. There's so much going on there within America that it must crowd everything else out in the news.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 11, 2012 12:09:48 GMT 10
Nope, I didn't enlarge it ... just posted it direct from the Daily Mail.
Have you adjusted your zoom in level? I have mine at 100% but I just had a look at 200% ... that should be sufficient for you - or even 400% if you're struggling !!
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Post by pim on Nov 11, 2012 12:17:40 GMT 10
lol - I don't have to zoom it up to 400%. 125% does quite nicely. But thanks for the thought.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 11, 2012 12:20:07 GMT 10
That's good to hear! Be a bit worrying otherwise.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 12, 2012 18:42:44 GMT 10
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