David Brooks hearts Obama

Wow, has David Brooks turned around in the last few years. From his latest Op-Ed piece regarding the Cheney/Obama brouhaha (which I hope will continue until the next election):

"But the bottom line is that Obama has taken a series of moderate and time-tested policy compromises. He has preserved and reformed them intelligently. He has fit them into a persuasive framework. By doing that, he has not made us less safe. He has made us more secure."

Here, here.

Manhattan went 85% for Obama

Yes we did (via cnn.com):

By the way Missouri and North Carolina...

Hai! Totes hope you figure out who you voted for. Don't really give a shit either way!

Still in (joyful) tears...

YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!! YES WE DID!!!!!

In Tears....

Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can!

Fivethirtyeight.com: Final Election Projection

Today's Polls and Final Election Projection: Obama 349, McCain 189

Definitive, concise election watching advice from Nate Silver

Nate Silver is the smartest person in the world right now. He has run his election polling aggregate site fivethirtyeight.com for months now and has developed some seriously pointy-headed algorithms for averaging dozens of polls to produce overall numbers for the presidential contest as well as congressional races.

I don't understand half the stuff on his site, but here's his easily digestible take on how it goes down tonight (via fivethirtyeight.com):

It appears almost certain that Obama will capture all of the states won by John Kerry in 2008. Pennsylvania, while certainly having tightened somewhat over the course of the past two weeks, appears to be holding at a margin of about +8 for Obama, with very few remaining undecideds. Obama also appears almost certain to capture Iowa and New Mexico, which were won by Al Gore in 2000. Collectively, these states total 264 electoral votes, leaving Obama just 5 votes shy of a tie and 6 of a win.

Obama has any number of states to collect those 5 or 6 votes. In inverse order of difficulty, these include Colorado, Virginia, Nevada, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Missouri and Indiana. Obama is the signficant favorite in several of these states; winning any one of them may be fairly difficult for John McCain, but winning all of them at once, as John McCain probably must do, is nearly impossible.

There you have it folks. Get your tequila ready. It's gonna be a hell of a night...

Wiccans Support Obama

In a "big tent" party you get support from all over the place. The question is, can't the Wiccans just cast a spell on McCain? Why do they bother with putting Obama links on their websites?

The Wiccan Pagain Times

More racist Obama opponents

I really want to publicize these incidents of overtly racist Obama opposition we are starting to see around the country. Unlike the relatively mild sexism directed at Hillary during the primary , there are almost daily acts of outright racism occurring as the McCain wackos get more and more desperate. Today we feature a Florida teacher:

"MARIANNA, Fla. -- A Florida middle school teacher has been suspended for writing a racial comment about Barack Obama on the chalk board at school.Greg Howard is a seventh-grade teacher at Marianna Middle School, about 60 miles west of Tallahassee. Howard reportedly wrote the word "change" as an acronym and wrote a derogatory word with the letter n.The teacher will be transferred to an adult education program. "

Hmm...a derogatory word with the letter n. Way to go Republicans! You're so gonna lose.

Obama: Muslin?

So this is what the Obama opposition has come to? At least this dipshit in Florida has the guts to put his ignorance on a sign and post it in his front yard. When I hear people say things like, "I'm just not ready to vote for Obama," and "I just don't know him," make no mistake, this is what they are trying to say.

Perhaps worse, though, are the people who say things like, "I'm leaning toward Obama," or "I just haven't heard anything specific," or whatever. For chrissake people, we've had 17 months of non-stop coverage of this friggin election! Should we just have a full four year election cycle, and require every candidate to sit down with you in person and explain their positions?

If only there were some way for people to access information about the candidates in their own homes at their convenience, some sort of communication system where they could do research and interact with other voters and learn about the candidates in depth. Well, we can dream...

The McCain-Palin Gossip Challenge

Okay, so we are learning (again) that "facts" and "issues" don't really resonate with a great number of American voters. If you look at the last two presidential elections, they resemble this one in that the facts and issues were clearly on the Democrats' side, but the Republicans successfully diverted voters' attention to mischaracterizations of the candidates' personalities.

In 2000, it devolved into which candidate we would most like to have a beer with (or in Bush's case a Shirley Temple, I suppose). In 2004 it was framing Kerry as a French, flip-flopping windsurfer.

These tactics are highly effective in swaying American voters because in general the electorate is woefully uninformed and is trained to consume media based on an Us Weekly type personality profile format. This format has two modes: poignant, regular-person fawning and gossipy freak mongering.

So far the Republicans have been very effective at propping Sarah Palin up as a "just like us" angry small town mom and deriding Barack and Michelle Obama as sly, deceptive political insiders.

Our challenge as liberals is to forget about the issues and go for the gossip. The people who vote on issues and facts made up their minds months ago and are voting Democrat. The hardcore Republicans were never going to vote rationally anyway. It's the uninformed/undecided/independent voters that are up for grabs. These people really don't hear issues or facts. That stuff is, like, really boring. Independents liked the People Magazine profile of the Palin family with its whiskey-tango-friendly, messy baby drama. This helped Sarah Palin gain a 90% name recognition within like a week.

We can't win this election relying on Americans' sober analysis of the issues, obviously. So the challenge is, liberal bloggers, go out and find the freaky dirt about McCain and Palin and repeat it over and over.

The following have been tried and not worked:

• Cindy McCain was a drug addict
• The McCains are really rich (only Democrats aren't allowed to be rich because that makes them - gasp - hypocrits)
• Sarah Palin is a scary Jesus freak (that's a plus in the United States)

New and new-ish stories the outcome of which is unclear:

• Track Palin was a drug addict
  
• Bristol Palin smoked pot
• Sarah Palin used a (now hacked) personal email account to conduct state business to cirumvent public disclosure laws
  

But we need something really, really freaky. Did Sarah Palin have sex with her teenage daughter's baby daddy? Did John McCain, Larry Craig, and Ted Haggard have a meth and Viagra-fueled threesome? Did Cindy McCain let her dog die due to neglect?

Come on liberals, you do gossip better than anyone. Take your sights off of Britney and Mylie for a minute and set them squarely on McCain-Palin.

UPDATE:

• Sarah Palin's Other Man
  

Just What Is This "Community Organizer" You Speak Of?

So all day I've been hearing Republicans, including Laura Bush, say they just don't know what a community organizer is. One guy on NPR actually said, "No one's told me what a community organizer is."

You see Barack Obama was a community organizer before he was an Illinois State Senator and United States Senator, and Republicans say he's really unqualified to be President because they are baffled by the term "community organizer".

What could this community organizer possibly be? Is that even English? I think I've heard of "community": it's like this thing where people live among one another, not separated by vast amounts of land or gates and they somehow manage to coexist, generally without killing each other. Okay, check.

Now, "organizer": let's see, we used to have these books that we would put calendar and address entries into called organizers. So if a person is an organizer, maybe he or she would sort of set up dates and places for people (or the "community") to meet and put their concerns into some sort of order.

Come on Republicans, stop playing dumb. Or are you not playing?

Donate to Barack Obama

Okay rather than just get pissy, here's the link to donate to the Obama campaign:

https://donate.barackobama.com/donateinvite