Beat you to the punch. It was a good movie. I enjoyed it - and the most moving part was when his dad went to the border of N. Vietnam, looking north, knowing it was the closest he could get to his son.

Me, my wife, and one of our roommates went to a bar in Oakland to see Obama's speech, but there was almost nobody in there, they had the election results on the TV but on mute, and were listening to mariachi music. So we drove up the street and went to a bar in Berkeley, and it was packed with people watching Obama's speech projected onto a giant screen. Then when it was done, everybody stormed the streets and started marching everywhere and stopping traffic and climbing on cop cars and street lights and singing the national anthem and the pledge of allegiance everywhere, waving flags like fucking crazy, and there were cops everywhere, but they were just smiling and cheering and filming all the madness on their cell phones too. Young college students helped an elderly woman onto a traffic signal so she could take better pictures. We marched block to block and split into different marches. Cars would be stopped for an hour, and they'd just park and start high five-ing everybody that passed by. There was one guy stuck in his car who wouldn't give out high fives though, and just crossed his arms because he voted for McCain. Everybody laughed at him like he was the bratty sibling on a cartoon and we all marched and danced onward, into a sea of high fives, hugs, and cheers. On the way back to our car later, people had a full drumset in a crosswalk, and were drumming and dancing. Cars were stopping to high five everybody, and cars were honking everywhere. When we finally made it back to our car, there were still people stopping buses and cheering, and the buses would just honk and cheer back. Then I came home and drank a lot of vodka.

Anybody else have any fun tonight?

I wish I wasn't at work tonight...

Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job

(it's at The Onion of course)

Gaiz!  I have something important to tell you!

Obama is now the president of the U.S.!

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gMpTmr96V5hKIfyHT4Av4jsVQgrQD948RGCG0

Republican Norm Coleman leads Democrat Al Franken in one of Minnesota's tightest Senate elections ever by a margin that appears certain to trigger a recount.

With the unofficial vote tally complete, Coleman led Franken by 571 votes out of nearly 2.9 million cast. Coleman had 1,210,942 votes, or 42.03 percent, to Franken's 1,210,371 votes, or 42.01 percent.

Dean Barkley of the Independence Party was third with 15 percent, and exit poll data showed him pulling about equally from Coleman and Franken.

It's interesting today to think back several months ago when Hilary was dragging out the Democratic primary season. There were talks of her campaign tearing the party apart and digging up too much dirt and negative talking points for the Republicans to use against Obama in the general campaign.

Now today it is evident it did not tear apart the party. Hilary's all out attack campaign basically vetted Obama in front of the American people and inoculated him, to a great extent, against those smears when they were re-introduced in the general campaign. At least, that's my viewpoint. I said as much back then (and I was a Hilary supporter back then) and got some backlash for it.

I think my central thesis from way back then, that she was not tearing the party apart and that dragging it out would at worse be a non-factor (but probably a positive) have proven true. Not that I'm any political savant, I've just seen and followed a lot of primary and general election politics since I was very young.

One year ago I was certain that whoever the Democratic nominee for President would win. Also, one year ago, I was certain that Hilary would be that person. I also thought that because of her high negatives the race would be close. An EV win of less than 20 and a win in the popular vote of less than a million and probably less than 1/2 million.

Obama changed all that. I'm very thankful for that. When he became the nominee I supported him without reservation. As I said, I already knew that a Hilary presidency would probably be very divisive. I'm hopeful that the Obama presidency will be less divisive, and, less divisive than what we've had for the last 34 years.

Yep, that's right, 34 years, what we've had since 1972. 1972 really brought out the start of the culture wars, the branding of someone as "liberal" as a smear, the God and Country vs. the godless and un-American. 1972 was also the year that an African-American first became a major party candidate for President of the United States. Roe v. Wade was first argued in the Supreme Court in 1972. America was at war in what has generally become viewed as a pointless conflict and a terrible waste of the lives of 50,000 people in the U.S. military.

Back then the North East had a tradition of turning out staunch blue-blood Republican Senators and Congressmen who were fiscally conservative and socially right-leaning yet fairly moderate (for the times, of course). The South was a former Democratic stronghold that was fracturing. The Democrats had ceded the South with the Civil Rights Act. Now the map on the East Coast has flipped. There are no Republican Congressmen elect in the North East (Chris Shayes was the last). The South is a Republican stronghold, although that base seems to be deteriorating and the old "Solid South" appears to be fracturing. And a man named Barack Obama is President-Elect.

It's taken two generations for the effects of the backlash to the Civil Right Act, the bitter acrimony created by the Vietnam war and the passage of Roe v. Wade to BEGIN to recede. It's not over yet by any means. The Republicans that are left in congress are mainly the ones that could be considered fairly far to the right on social issues; most of the moderates have been run out. The Democrats are going to need strong leadership to get the right kind of legislation passed in this economically troubled time. There will have to be a lot of spending, but it needs to be concentrated and as pork-free as possible. There also needs to be some tough decisions made on spending cuts.

The Republicans, and to a large extent the free-market Libertarians, were given free reign for a period roughly marked at the beginning with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and marked at the end by the passage of Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. Now it's cleanup time and it will be left to a Democratic controlled Congress and Presidency. Whichever side of the political spectrum you happen to be on and whatever your beliefs are for how best to handle the situation I sincerely hope that you are wishing those in power good luck in this endeavor.

Okay, I'll stop blogging now.

You know... I went to my local gamestore to buy some D10's today and they had fox news on... man Ann Coulters reaction was hilarious to the whole thing.

I find it weird that the owner of the gamestore apparently always watches fox news. It's always on when i'm in there.

This thread needs more Ann Coulter clips. Here is one where she shows off her anti-semitism:

I personally ascribe to the Boondocks Anne Coulter Theory.

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