Today is the Day

I’ve been blogging here since about a year into Bush’s first term. During the run up to the invasion of Iraq, I began to see a dangerous trend in the direction our country was heading, and became increasingly political. I lobbied for change in the 2004 election season, and was appalled that Bush had been elected for a second term, thinking, “How could so many people be so stupid?’

Since then, our country has gone downhill. Our economy is in shambles, we are stuck in a war we had no business being in in the first place, and our constitutional rights have been trampled in the name of “national security”. Basically, we are reaping the consequences of handing our government to crooks, cronies, and power-hungry theocrats.


Today, that changes. The American people have finally woken up and realized that we cannot continue down that path and survive. No more giving preferential treatment to large corporations that send jobs overseas. No more ostracizing anyone who has a dissenting view of what the government should and should not do. No more waiting for opportunities to “trickle down” from those have no intention of, or interest in, sharing those opportunities.

It’s a new day, America. Let’s get it right this time. Our children depend on it.

Schadenfreude

[shahd-n-froi-duh] – noun: satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else's misfortune.

Origin: 1890–95; G, equiv. to Schaden = harm + Freude = joy
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

I'm not one given to pleasure at others' misfortune, but I've been waiting for this day for a long, long time. After 8 years of arrogance and showboating from this C student, George W. Bush cast his absentee ballot in the presidential election uncerimoniously from his desk today.

As you may recall, he cast his ballots amidst great fanfare in the last two presidential elections. This time: No bluster, no smirking, just quietly and humbly filling out his absentee ballot at his desk and putting it in the mail.

I will proudly cast my ballot at my local polling station, in constrast to this broken shell of a president, and I will enjoy it immensely. And chances are, I will actually cast my vote for the winning candidate this time.

Outside the campaign

To get away from the usual rhetoric, I would like to introduce to you the candidates, unadulterated and in their purest forms, from the Alfred E. Smith dinner, in which the honorees are encouraged to comment on themselves, their campaigns, and each other in a most irreverent manner.

Indeed, the occasion has evolved into something of an opportunity for speakers - particularly ones whose mien is typically quite serious - to show, through quips and slightly irreverent humor, that they can poke fun at a political issue, an opponent, or themselves.

Without further ado, I present to you Senator John McCain.



And then, Senator Barack Obama.

S & H on SNL

For those of you who missed Saturday Night Live last weekend, here’s a very funny faux announcement from “Sarah Palin” and “Hillary Clinton”. Just the thing to break the post-hurricane blues.



And just for giggles, here is Sarah’s baby name generator. What would Sarah have named you if you had been born into the Palin family? Sorry, Track, Trig, Bristol, Willow, and Piper have already been taken.

The question begs to be asked

Listing a host of issues on which he said McCain has the same position as President Bush, Obama said, "That's not change."

"That's just calling something that's the same thing something different," Obama continued. "You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper and call it change. It's still going to stink, after eight years.


"We've had enough of the same old thing."

Houston Chronicle

The question is, if Obama was referring to Palin as the pig, who was he referring to when he talked about the stinky old fish?

Who is the real elitist?

Obama was born poor, and used what opportunities he had to obtain a top-level education. He then used that education to help the poor in Chicago before he went into local politics.

McCain was born to wealthy parents. His father and grandfather were admirals in the Navy, so that’s where he went. He graduated near the bottom of his class, but was still made a pilot anyway. He crashed his planes repeatedly, and after one of his crashes was captured by the enemy and made a prisoner of war. I am not discounting his time spent as a POW – anyone who serves his country honorably has my utmost respect – but after he returned from that captivity, he dumped his wife for a younger, richer woman and became very wealthy indeed.

When asked, McCain was unsure how many houses he owned. Obama owns one house with his wife.

Obama was born in, and vacations in, Hawaii. McCain met and had an affair with his current wife in Hawaii.

Obama is marries to his first wife, and has two children. McCain divorced his first wife after she got fat and disabled and married a younger rich heiress to a company that pulls in more than $300 million per year. They have various children from both marriages, the most prominent one, Meghan, who is unemployed and blogs for her father’s cause.

Cindy MCain, John’s current wife, tells us that a private jet is the only way to get around Arizona, John’s home state.

I could go on, but just which of these families seems closer to what average Americans are familiar with, and which family seems more elite?

We're never leaving Iraq

It appears that the Bush administration wants to keep our troops in Iraq forever. Even the Iraqis want us out, but our side is insisting that we have a permanent presence there, along with immunity for our troops and contractors from any criminal acts they may commit. I'm not saying that our beloved troops would commit any crimes against the Iraqi people, but I wouldn't necessarily rule it out for the private mercenaries we have working there.

"The Americans are making demands that would lead to the colonization of Iraq," said Sami al-Askari, a senior Shiite politician on parliament's foreign relations committee who is close to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. "If we can't reach a fair agreement, many people think we should say, 'Goodbye, U.S. troops. We don't need you here anymore.'"

It's time to get our troops out of combat there, and the Bush administration seems to be hell bent on preventing that from happening in order to justify their endless war against a country that we had no business being in in the first place.