The Night the Lights Went On in Georgia?

I thought about blogging the presidential results tonight, but that would be pointless. With the way the 'pun-dents' are talking about it, this thing might rage on into the holidays. Well, maybe not. But tonight is going to be a LOOOOOOONG night, even if Obama has it wrapped up early. For anyone who even vaguely remember 2004 (or 2000), Ohio will drag its ass on counting and we won't find out until tomorrow morning who the president is.

This is barring the possibility that Barack Obama - a black dude - might take my home state. GEORGIA. Yeah, right, you might be saying. Sitting in your ivory tower. Well, to quote my favorite mummy Lee Corso, not so fast my friend.

Earlier last week, Real Clear Politics - one of the throngs of polling sites on the internet - showed a race within the margin of error in Georgia. McCain 49.5. Obama 45. That is ASTOUNDING, especially for a state that went, I don't know 70-30 in 2004 (with John Kerry winning only 22 percent of the white vote).

One of the other indicators of a squeaker here is the fact that nearly two million early votes were cast in this election, which is nearly 60% of the total votes cast in 2004. And the 2 million early votes is a record for the state. That benefits Obama, who, by all appearances, has been leading by a margin of nearly ten points in early ballots.

All of this is obviously early, and I have no idea if the race will be even remotely close down here, but it would be nice to see that Georgia isn't the absolute most backwards state in the Union (I'm looking at YOU, Mississippi). So far no exit polls have been released, so there is no data to support any of the claims I have made. Basically, I've just participated in the echo chamber that plagues modern media. Sorry.

GObama. GO Biden.

On 'Spreading the Wealth' and Adam Smith

In an article on The New Yorker Web Site - I know - the author, Steve Coll, points to a paragraph in Adam Smith's writings to back up Barack Obama's Socialist new tax policy:

The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. . . . The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. . . . It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

John McCain's campaign is just desperate to paint Obama as The Other. Well, I guess the campaign is just desperate in general. But there are only a few epithets left, man. The Klan members who make up the audiences at Palin rallies have begun calling Obama a nigger, as opposed to terrorist or socialist or Muslim or whatever backhanded racist term they can come up with.

Small town values, eh?

N-Word At Palin Rally

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...And even MORE racism!

FAIL

Apparently, she just made all this shit up.

My Favorite Three Seconds. Ever.

I Can't Imagine A President Being Named Obama

And as names, Grover, Teddy, Ulysses, Rutherford, and Millard are all okay?

The gist of this woman's argument is that, being lower-middle class, she's afraid that the Obama economic plan would raise taxes and not give some relief on capital gains for her investments, and overall would devalue the dollar in the country and around the world, resulting in a stagnant economy that might take a decade to repair with Public Works project she herself wouldn't support.

Nah, she's a xenophobic racist evangelical. NJoy.

It's Almost Getting Sad

Now, I know that there are ignorant Obama/Biden supporters, but apparently Republicans don't have video cameras.

I only posted this video because of the redneck asshole who put an Obama sticker on a stuffed Curious George doll.

Nothing in the video is anything you haven't seen before, but it makes comments on the subject almost unnecessary. The video says it all.

AND, to put a finer point on it, Southerners don't account for all the ignorance in this country. There are plenty of idiots in the US, even ones above the Mason-Dixon line. But, it's like the Drive-By Truckers say, "because of George Wallace, it's easier to play it with a southern twang."

Thank You, Colin Powell

Just for the record, I've always respected this man. This just amplifies the amount of respect I have for him.

Lewish Black Lashing Out - Big Surprise!

More on Those Good Ole Small-Town Values...

For those who can't watch the video, here are the highlights:
[Note: even though the syntax doesn't make sense in some of them, I tried to keep the quotes as similar as possible]

...I don't like he thinks we white people is trash...because we're not.

...When you got a [negra] running for president, you got to have a first-stringer. He's a second-stringer.

...The whole Muslim thing. Lot a people's forgot about 9/11.

...Obama and his wife, I'm concerned they may be anti-white.



Do these people not realize cameras can be hooked up to computers [and then the internet]?

To go a little bit farther, I would like to quote an article that was in the New York Times (Boo! Boo! Boo!) the other day. Or yesterday. Sorry.

Oh, New York Times, trying to maintain a modicum of professionalism with the content of this article. I actually feel sorry for the Rube who had to go to Alabama and get these quotes.

“I would think of him as I would of another of mixed race,” said Glenn Reynolds, 74, a retired textile worker in Martinsville, Va., and a former supervisor at a Goodyear plant. “God taught the children of Israel not to intermarry. You should be proud of what you are, and not intermarry.”

Now, honestly, these people are making the South look even worse than it already does. Not everyone in the South believes this 1950s Jim Crow-ish racist nonsense, but I can't really say that's not true, since we don't get another perspective. The 'trailer park after a tornado has come through' contingent of the Southern population is much more fun to interview than the one with brains.

“I’ve always been against the blacks,” said Mr. Rowell, who is in his 70s, recalling how he was arrested for throwing firecrackers in the black section of town. But now that he has three biracial grandchildren — “it was really rough on me” — he said he had “found out they were human beings, too.”

John Cleese on Sarah Palin

To paraphrase, basically he says that she's a pretty parrot, without any inkling of what she's saying.

Now That's More Like It

The sorts of attacks leveled on Barack Obama over the last week pushed the wrong kinds of buttons in the American people. Political attacks are by nature nasty, but these are fucking ridiculous. All the GOP needed to do last week was hand out pitchforks and tree branches wrapped in gasoline-doused toilet paper and then point to Barack Obama's headquarters. Everyone there would be dead today. Oh, I betch ya [wink].



John McCain finally showed some reticence at this nonsense yesterday. When some backwoods granny called Senator Obama an Arab - kudos for being wrong on even that front, woman - even McCain had to step in and say "no. No, he's a decent man. A family man."

Is it too late? The fucking mouth-breathers at that rally booed him, and I'm not so sure that the attacks will stop. By painting Obama as a terrorist-dating Other, the McCain campaign has stirred up a very distinct and unsavory kind of vitriol in the minds of Americans.

Sure, most people know the difference between political theater and real fear. If John McCain thought Barack Obama really wanted to turn American into Islamastan (or some kind of other nonsense), then he probably wouldn't get on stage with the man.

But some people don't. And it's the ones who still call African-Americans 'colored' and 'boy' who don't realize the distinction between political positioning and real, honest racism.

So that's why I was absolutely delighted to see that, today, the McCain campaign is going to start its line of attacks on Barack Obama's position on abortion. And spending.

After a week of increasingly nasty rallies in which John McCain and Sarah Palin hammered Democratic rival Barack Obama over his "association" with a 1960s-era radical, the Republican candidates changed tactics Saturday during campaign swings through two presidential battleground states. Palin launched a new front in the culture wars here, attacking Obama on abortion, while in Iowa, McCain concentrated on a critique of Obama's spending proposals.

YAY! Now that's more like it.

Here Are Those Small-Town Values I've Been Hearing So Much About

...and I really hope we got some of that in the White House.

Regarding The Negative Attacks...

The Best Palin Headline Yet

I think that this writer unintentionally made the most unfortunate headline yet. Click on the link and think about it.