Life in the 21st century
Nov 05 2008
For those of you who missed last night’s concession speech by Senator John McCain, you missed something special.
I love the way our system works. We divide over the issues then unite behind the winner. Good luck Senator and may you still have a hand in the promise of change.
Nov 04 2008
Congratulations to Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States and the first African-American to hold the title, Leader of the Free World.
This is a day of pride for all Americans. We can finally look past race and see the measure of the person running for office.
Nov 04 2008
I just saw this one for the first time. Super Barack Obama takes on the forces of evil.
Too funny.
Nov 04 2008
Check out these headlines and claims of possible election irregularities or general Election Day weirdness.
What a mess.
Nov 04 2008
If you have a chance, go to CNN and watch the candidates vote live. I know it’s just a gimmick, but it’s cool to see them at the machines.
By the way, Obama took way to long to be voting the straight party ticket. Good for him!
Nov 04 2008
Dixville Notch has the distinction of recording the first voting returns in the country:
Voting polls weren’t even open when Dixville Notch and Hart’s Location announced their results. For 60 years, the two small villages in New Hampshire have been observing a tradition of having the first Election Day ballots.
The Dixville Notch results are in:
Dixville Notch, NH (AHN) – The town of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, with a population of around 75 people and only 21 registered voters, has picked Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) to be the next president of the United States. Obama defeated Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) by a margin of 15 votes to 6.
Looks like good news for Obama but, does this spell doom for McCain?
In a word: No. There’s no historical relationship between the performances of the two major-party candidates In Dixville Notch and their performances in the rest of New Hampshire — never mind the rest of the country
Looks like we are going to have to turn to the networks tonight and see what the rest of the country has to say about the candidates.
Nov 04 2008
It’s taken awhile, but we have finally reached the end of the record-setting 2008 presidential campaign.
After the longest, most expensive, most-watched presidential election, the epic battle between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain shifts Tuesday to the nation’s true deciders – the voters.
The candidates battled to the finish, the end of a sales job that spanned some 670 days, 45 debates, $2.5 billion spent and untold millions of YouTube video hits, all of them record-setters.
$2.5 billion. Let’s try that differently. $2,500,000,000. That is a lot of zeros. It would take someone making $50,000 a year 5,000 years to make that kind of money. Why was this one so different? Our current President, George W. Bush, was prevented from running again by the Constitution and the current Vice President, Dick Chaney, was not interested. This was the first “open” race in since 1952 when Dwight Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson.
The 2008 campaign began like this:
Jan 20, 2007 – Senator Hillary Clinton, 59, the former first lady, announces a widely-favored bid for the Democratic nomination.
February 10 – Barack Obama, 45, the young Democratic black senator from Illinois, declares his candidacy before 18,000 supporters in the historic state capital of Springfield, Illinois.
April – Republican war hero and senator John McCain, 70, declares his bid, but is seen as an outsider with few chances after he lost his 2000 bid against current president, George W. Bush. Later in the year, there are reports he must lay off staff due to money problems.
Now, here we are on Election Day and the finish line is in sight. I, for one, am glad we are finally here. I feel like we have been living on a reality game show for the past two years and the contestants are everywhere. Call it, “Political Survivor” or “Extreme Makeover White House Edition” or “So You Think You Can Lead” or “Are You Smarter that a George Bush?” I’m just glad we are finally at the end of this one and ready to get someone in the oval office who can get the country running again.
Tonight, I’m looking forward to a late night of watching returns and the beginning of all the post-election legal maneuvering. Here comes the next round of fun, but at least the political ads will stop running.
Nov 03 2008
The news came out of Hawaii today that Barack Obama’s grandmother passed-away this morning:
HONOLULU (AP) — Barack Obama’s grandmother, whose personality and bearing shaped much of the life of the Democratic presidential contender, has died, Obama announced Monday, one day before the election. Madelyn Payne Dunham was 86.
Obama announced the news from the campaign trail in Charlotte, N.C. The joint statement with his sister Maya Soetoro-Ng said Dunham died peacefully late Sunday night after a battle with cancer.
They said: “She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength, and humility. She was the person who encouraged and allowed us to take chances.”
Obama learned of her death Monday morning while he was campaigning in Jacksonville, Fla. He planned to go ahead with campaign appearances. The family said a private ceremony would be held later.
My deepest sympathies to Senator Obama and his family on their loss. It is a shame she came so close to seeing her grandson make history.
Nov 03 2008
During a radio interview with Ann Compton today, Barack Obama had this to say:
COMPTON: If you are elected, you’ve made a lot of campaign promises; you can’t keep most of those. Maybe not even if you had a rubber stamp Democratic Congress. Can you?
OBAMA: Well, I think that we are not going to get everything done all at once, because of this financial crisis that’s going to require a lot of attention, a lot of resources.
Not just money, but staff time thinking about how do we right the ship. And so, it means that some priorities may get deferred, but the core commitments that I’ve made in this campaign — changing the tax code so that middle-class families are getting more of a break, initiating the kind of investment in clean energy that we have to have to deal not only with the economy and climate change and our national security, making sure that our health care system is controlling costs and providing better care for people, improving our education system — those four domestic items will get done.
Of course, he is not going to get everything done right away, but I don’t like the sound of this. It sounds like the building of excuses even before he is elected. He is saying that there is such a mess it, you can’t expect it to be fixed. That already sounds like Washington spin to me. Why not set targets, goals, or time lines? Why not say what he will accomplish in the first months. Why not raise expectations?
I though we are going to have change with Obama, not more political rhetoric. I thought we were going to see a new way of doing business in Washington. I thought we could expect:
Here’s to hoping for better in 2012!
Nov 03 2008
This video of Barack Obama discussing his approach to coal power has created quite a stir in the news today. Here is the video:
How is the coal industry reacting to this news on the eve of the election? Not well:
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 3 /PRNewswire–USNewswire/ — Mike Carey, president of the Ohio Coal Association (OCA), today issued the following statement in response to just-released remarks from Senator Barack Obama about the nation’s coal industry.
“Regardless of the timing or method of the release of these remarks, the message from the Democratic candidate for President could not be clearer: the Obama-Biden ticket spells disaster for America’s coal industry and the tens of thousands of Americans who work in it.
“These undisputed, audio-taped remarks, which include comments from Senator Obama like ‘I haven’t been some coal booster’ and ‘if they want to build [coal plants], they can, but it will bankrupt them’ are extraordinarily misguided.
“It’s evident that this campaign has been pandering in states like Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana and Pennsylvania to attempt to generate votes from coal supporters, while keeping his true agenda hidden from the state’s voters.
“Senator Obama has revealed himself to be nothing more than a short- sighted, inexperienced politician willing to say anything to get a vote. But today, the nation’s coal industry and those who support it have a better understanding of his true mission, to ‘bankrupt’ our industry, put tens of thousands out of work and cause unprecedented increases in electricity prices.
I’m not sure if “bankrupting” is the correct way to go here. I like the idea of a reducing our dependence on greenhouse emissions but, bankrupt the coal industry? Yikes.
