In a radical upset of the smart money, lanky upstart Obama buries wasted husk McCain in the polls.
The Latewire odds had been shortening from 45:1 (in favor of McCain) since the debate season started and McSlain started to act crazy and erratic, finally slipping to 10:1 in his favor on Election Day. These odds were based on three major trends that have consistently shown up in American politics :
1) Those with lower levels of income and education tend to vote Republican because they are ruled by fear. Fear is used very adoitly by Republican marketers to manipulate public opinion.
2) The old and the rich, who typically turn out in force, tend to vote Republican because they are ruled by greed; the young, who are typically ruled by hormones and reactionism, tend to get drunk instead of voting
3) Obama is black, and white Americans tend to fear black people
The powerful victory of Obama tells us that at least some of these trends did not hold. My analysis is :
-The disadvantaged saw through McCain's tax cut rhetoric to his fundamental affinity for debt spending on the one hand, and were duped by Obama's promise to rob the richest 5% for the benefit of the remaining 95% on the other. Also, people quaked at the thought of the weird Palin stepping in when McCain keeled over from exhaustion on the second day of office.
-The rich and old failed to mobilize, probably due to complacency OR defeatism
-America at large has finally come to grips with the reality that black people are perfectly viable citizens.
It's this last factor that is most staggering. Based on the amount of racist horse feathers I hear on the street, I have been saying that it'd be another 10 to 15 years before there would be a chance for a black president. It is the case that the destructive blight of race antipathy still lurks in the hearts of many Americans. The election results, however, demonstrate that a good chunk of folks are, in plain fact, getting over it.
This is a landmark day. Obama may not represent policies that are tolerable. But he surely represents the political victory of tolerance. Who can deny that it's a triumph?
George Clinton must be happy on this day. Obama is Ali, and maybe we shouldn't be surprised that he is in the White House. Richard Pryor didn't live long enough to claim his post as Minister of Education, but he must be grinning with satisfaction that all those chants of "Gainin' on ya!" were more than just some jive talk. (39,552)
Well, if anything is to be said about Barack Obama, let it be that he really knows how to squander an opportunity.
This guy, this &^%##* guy, just went one-on-one with the frayed, decrepit, ibogaine-addled 'Penguin' stand-in known as John McCain, and managed to get his individual ass handed to him by sheer virtue of his lack of focus.
Obama is widely mocked in the press for being 'professorial' in tone and prone to digression, but this wasn't professorial. This was more like second-year-grad-student TA. He forgot th' questions before he even started to answer them, and instead repeated vague anti-"last eight years" saws that were tangential at best.
The classic moment was when some goateed ex-Navy guy asked plainly whether, if Iran attacked Israel, we'd wait for UN approval or just blow them I-ranains up real good tout de suite. McCain emerged from his 3rd plateau drug haze long enough to say "we won't wait" before spiralling into a whirlpool of his own jabber. Obama, on th' other hand, completely ignored the question and started to talk about whether or not Iran should have nukes. Wha-wha-whaaat? It's a truism that Democrats are weak on foreign policy questions, but this guy wasn't even trying. He droned on until the heads on the audience very literally started to droop.
Now, McCain was barely able to stop waddling around the stage and forgetting whether his hero is Ronald Reagan or Teddy Roosevelt for long enough to utter any statement of substance, and when he did, it was likely to be the stuff of fantasy such as his assertion that we can tackle health care, entitlements, and some other huge issue simultaneously (the question was 'prioritize these please"). But for McCain, showing that he can communicate in English rather than lecherous quacks can be counted as a victory, whereas Obama came into the ring with a clear public opinion advantage (on paper at least) and tossed it out th' window by digging his own rhetorical grave in exactly the same manner that his detractors say he tends to do. Obama can put together an English sentence, McCain can't. But when Obama puts them together, his credibility falls apart.
Obama : didn't even try in '08
{ gotta love how McCain dated himself with that repeated 'hand on the tiller' metaphor though! This guy is ready to go full sail ahead; I like th' cut of his jib.... WHAT TH' &^%$ } (40,736)
McCain selected Palin?
Fuck. I need a drink or something, pronto.
Just what in the hell is wrong with that mans brain?
Too much Abba? Is that a viable excuse? Will that work for you? It doesn't satisfy me...
What would perhaps pass off as a somewhat viable vapid whore for hire in interracial-milf-wearing-glasses fetish porn is now not only a governor (albiet of a frigid, sparsely populated and completely remote shithole of a state no one gives a fuck about) but a potential candidate for Vice President of the United States?
Fuck.
FUCK.
I'm not the only one in need of a drink, I can hear the corpses of our previous leaders doing barrel rolls in their caskets. Even Dick Fucking Nixon has shat his mouldering drawers over this one.
Never been one much given to prayer, never even really considered aliens made it any farther than we have... but at this point in time I am praying for an extraterrestrial Shiva to shake down from the heavens and level life on earth back to the state of blissful foragers and inept predatory scavengers. Consciousness it seems has been completely and utterly wasted on the great hairless apes.
To make matters worse, it seems David Duchovny has entered rehab... for sex addiction. This means that all the x-Files monsters who frightened my adolescent pre-teen mind were most likely violently and mercilessly sodomized at the hands of old monotone-mumbler Duchovny when that redheaded slut on the show was on her period and too fussy to put out.
Palin is a contender and the wolfman is a nancy boy with an eight gauge butthole.
Only drink and sleep can save me now. Fuck you reality, fuck you. (34,887)
Presidential candidatin' time once again, and for some people, it's time to ignore what actually matters and pick the dumbest issue possible to vote on.
In 2000, it was re-introduction of Pogs as a national trend. In 2004, it was gay marriage.
Now, it seems to be the economy. Except not. No it's about Change... no wait, it's about Hope!
That's it, hope!
Can you tactilely feel hope? Can you unfold some hope from your wallet and buy bread when it costs $40 a loaf?
As we're seeing, people chosen to head government agencies like "The Fed" have a bigger impact on your life than your perception of the president.
Unfortunately, that will have no bearing WHATSOEVER on who is elected in November.
Let's do a summary of economic policy from the 2 (3? No) frontrunners:
Obama's economic policy (at least, from his website) is an unending litany of nonsensical and mostly nonspecific populist cliches and exploitation of common economic misconceptions. It's kind of like a checklist of stereotypical democratic voting blocks.
I'm not going to go through all of it. Just bring it to any econ professor who's a fan of monetarism (PS, Alan Greenspan's a monetarist). Bring tissues, it'll be emotional.
Meanwhile, you have McCain who will probably soil his adult diapers and have a stroke in an inhuman surge of glee and vomit if he ever gets elected. Mainly I see him as retaining the Bush policy for the most part but I don't see the budget expanding by as much. This would mean four more years of stupidity and keyensian tomfoolery.
Hillary's out so I'm not going to bother looking up her stated views on the subject. Not like it'd matter anyway, as it's probably a lot of BS.
Neither candidate will balance the budget. Neither will fix the Fed.
What matters more than the president is going to be the people he puts in his cabinet, especially in the treasury and federal reserve. The current people (Bernanke, Paulson) are like a couple of 10 year olds trying to salvage a pot of spaghetti sauce they just drowned a cat in. Since it's pretty much a crap shoot, and hard for either of these idiots to be worse than it already is, I simply don't care.
If you need me November 4th, I'll be at the bar. (41,414)
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