Well, it’s a hukilau at the Casita de Zapatos. We have a full house: MJ & RJ, Star & the Number 3 Surrogate Daughter, and Yogi & BooBoo (the RLA and I are a given). The first howl of delight fantastic came not five minutes ago with the announcement that Florida Governor Charlie Christ had to return to Tallahassee on “urgent legal business” and could not stay with Twitchy McCancer Jowls and the FemBot Veep at their victory dance. Schnort. And now, Ohio has been called for Obama and Florida is tipping bluer and bluer. Bwahhahahahahaha. And now New Mexico, that boil on the ass of the high desert has also been called for Senator Obama. We’re looking at 200 electoral votes and it isn’t even 10.
ETA: it’s 10, and Iowa just went into the Obama column. Whee. Florida is still too close to call, but it’s still wobbling like it’s gonna tip to blue. North Carolina is now showing blue on MSMNBC’s map. And Arizona is too close to call.
ETA: It’s 11:04 and the talking heads at Fox are giving Obama 297 electoral votes, and slitting their wrists. Here at the Casita, I’m cracking the champagne. America, let’s light up a cigarette, and talk about how good it was.
This is it. This is my last pre-election post. The fate of the free world is in the hands of the American voting public, and the machinations of the Machievellian Republican party. I’m terrified that this election will be stolen, like the last two. My boss, the political wonk, assures me that this won’t happen. He’s predicting an electoral college vote of 350 for Obama. I’m predicting civil war if he loses.
Here’s the stump speech that Bruce Springsteen’s been giving for Barack Obama. I can’t say it better.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN’S COMMENTS FROM THE STAGE AT CLEVELAND’S VOTE FOR CHANGE RALLY
November 2, 2008
Hello Cleveland
It’s great to be here today among friends. I’d like to thank Senator Obama and his folks for inviting me. I’ve been here many times since 1973, but never on a day as glorious as this one. We are at the crossroads.
I’ve spent 35 years writing about America and its people. What does it mean to be an American? What are our duties, our responsibilities, our reasonable expectations when we live in a free society? I saw myself less as a partisan for any particular political party, than as an advocate for a set of ideas. Economic and social justice, America as a positive influence around the world. Truth, transparency and integrity in government. The right of every American to a job, a living wage, to be educated in a decent school, to a life filled with the dignity of work, promise, and the sanctity of home. These are the things that make a life, that build and define a society. These are the things we think of on the deepest level, when we refer to our freedoms. Today those freedoms have been damaged, and curtailed by eight years of a thoughtless, reckless, and morally adrift administration.
I spent most of my life as a musician measuring the distance between the American dream and American reality. For many Americans who are today losing their jobs, their homes, seeing their retirement funds disappear, who have no health care, or who have been abandoned in our inner cities, the distance between that dream and their reality has never been greater or more painful. I believe Senator Obama has taken the measure of that distance in his own life and work. I believe he understands in his heart the cost of that distance in blood and suffering in the lives of everyday Americans. I believe as president he would work to bring that dream back to life, and into the lives of many of our fellow Americans, who have justifiably lost faith in its meaning.
In my job, I travel around the world, and occasionally play in big stadiums, just like Senator Obama. I continue to find everywhere I go that America remains a repository for people’s hopes and desires. That despite the terrible erosion of our standing around the world, for many we remain a house of dreams. One thousand George Bushes and one thousand Dick Cheneys will never be able to tear that house down. That is something only we can do, and we’re not going to let that happen.
This administration will be leaving office, dumping in our laps the national tragedies of Katrina, Iraq, and our financial crisis. Our house of dreams has been abused, looted, and left in a terrible state of disrepair. It needs defending against those who would sell it down the river for power, influence or a quick buck. It needs strong arms, hearts and minds. It needs someone with Senator Obama’s understanding, temperateness, deliberativeness, maturity, pragmatism, toughness and faith. But most of all it needs us. You and me. All a nation has that keeps it from coming apart is the social contract between its’ citizens. Whatever grace God has deemed to impart to us resides in our connections with one another, in honoring the life, the hopes, the dreams, of the man or woman up the street, or across town. That’s where we make our small claim upon heaven. In recent years that contract has been shredded and as we look around today, it is shredding before our eyes. But today we are at the crossroads.
I’m honored to be here on the same stage as Senator Obama. From the beginning, there has been something in Senator Obama that has called upon our better angels, I suspect, because he has had a life where he has so often had to call upon his. We’re going to need all the angels we can get on the hard road ahead. Senator Obama helped us rebuild our house big enough for the dreams of all our citizens. For how well we accomplish this task will tell us what it means to be an American in the new century, what’s at stake, and what it means to live in a free society. So I don’t know about you, but I want my country back, I want my dream back, I want my America back. Now is the time to stand together with Barack Obama and Joe Biden and the millions of Americans that are hungry for a new day, roll up our sleeves and come on up for the rising.
Tonight, we’ll be watching and praying and drinking at the Casita de Zapatas. I’m too afraid to ice the champagne, so it’ll be vodka, at least for a while. Come on, America. Do the right thing.
Well? You folks in the states with early voting, have you done it? Are you going to? Let’s fill those ballot boxes, people. It’s just too important. For all of us.
And if you think this entry is a little short, here’s an op-ed from The Guardian UK, pulling no punches on how the rest of the world sees American politics these days.
I’m blogging while watching Barack Obama’s infomercial. So let’s start with the rant from The Skipper:
And ... one more thing, re mcSame’s whining about how, when he’s president, no one is going to delay a World Series game for an infomercial.
Rather than just ignoring his whine as more of the irrelevant verbal diarrhea we associate with this pitiable, befuddled, hapless, grumpy old man, it is really stunning. What he’s saying is this: The fact that millions of people have lost their jobs isn’t important. The fact that millions of people have lost/are losing their homes isn’t important. The fact that every family with ANY retirement savings has seen those savings decline by at least 40% isn’t important. The fact that we haven’t gotten bin Laden after 7 years isn’t important. The fact that we’re bogged down in Afghanistan with things slipping away isn’t important. The fact that the whole world hates us isn’t important. The fact that we are held hostage to imported oil isn’t important. The fact that our infrastructure is literally falling into the Mississippi River isn’t important. The fact our schools aren’t getting the job done isn’t important. The fact that our budget is entirely out of whack isn’t important. Because if those things (and much more) WERE important, then they certainly would be worth a half-hour of prime time TV time for thoughtful examination, regardless of who was speaking (Obama, Bill Clinton, Ralph Nader, John McCain, Sarah Palin, George W Bush, Ross Perot, T Boone Pickens, Stephen Harper, Bud Selig, Bill Maher, Christopher Buckley, Paris Hilton, Nicolas Sarkozy, Look-into-his-soul Putin, etc.). But, in mcSame’s world of entitlement for corrupt, adulteress, drunken, low-achieving war heroes, BASEBALL is more important than any serious discussion of the issues. He knows what’s best and will fix it. So you just sit in front of the TV, mindlessly watching the rain in Philadelphia and drink Cindy’s beers, and don’t trouble your tiny little brain. Thank you very much. You betcha.
Aaaand, another love song for Sarah Palin:
But wait, there’s more. Over at Flamingo Musings, RJ shares an idea for the run up to the election: wear blue, especially if you live in a “red” state. It’s subtle, it’s clever and it sends a message. Maybe not one that everyone can get without explanation, but a message none the less.
Finally, let’s go over to Rolling Stone, and see what those guys are saying about Maverick McCain and the scary FemBot Veep.
I’m going to kill myself or my boss. Or maybe just hurl… a brick through the always-on CNN television in his office, or my breakfast. If I have to listen to that high-pitched mosquito-like drone of John McCain and his verbal tic of “my friends” for one more fucking minute the odds are good that it may go down in this order: hurl breakfast, brick through the tv and boss through his window.
I voted yesterday morning. I am so disgusted by the McCain/Palin campaign, the depths to which it has sunk: the Anti-American states vs the Pro-American states… the them vs us, the fear-mongering. The nerve of that twitchy little Hitler, to bring up the specter of nukes and to imply that he had been tested during the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962?) because he’d been a fighter pilot off the coast of Cuba. Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but as a fighter pilot, he was just sitting there waiting for the orders that would have come from the Commander in Chief, President Kennedy. John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert were the ones being tested in that instance. And for him to claim that this somehow makes him, Twitchy McCancer Jowls ready to lead? Hah.
You want to talk tested in a time of crisis? Let’s look at his record on the USS Forrester.
One such case involves McCain’s experience in the devastating fire and explosions that killed 134 sailors on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal during the Vietnam War three months before he was shot down over North Vietnam. McCain has made claims about this accident that differ dramatically from parts of the official Navy report and accounts of reliable eyewitnesses…
...Whatever the circumstances of the fire’s origins, McCain did not stay on deck to help fight the blaze as the men around him did. With the firefighting crew virtually wiped out, men untrained in fighting fires had to pick up the fire hoses, rescue the wounded or frantically throw bombs and even planes over the ship’s side to prevent further tragedy. McCain left them behind and went down to the hangar-bay level, where he briefly helped crew members heave some bombs overboard. After that, he went to the pilot’s ready room and watched the fire on a television monitor hooked to a camera trained on the deck.
McCain has never been asked to explain why he claims that the Zuni rocket struck his plane. If a bomb or bombs subsequently fell from McCain’s plane as he has said, it seems to strongly suggests pilot error, and if a bomb or bombs did not fall from his plane, it suggests rash disregard for important facts in his accounts of the accident.
There is plenty more about this story that raises questions about McCain’s truthfulness and judgment. In the first hours after the fire, he apparently did not claim to have been injured. New York Times reporter R.W. Apple, who helicoptered out to the ship the day after the tragedy and sought out McCain as the “son and grandson of two noted admirals,” never mentioned him being wounded, although he reported on him more than on any other crew member. This would be an odd omission on Apple’s part if McCain indeed had been wounded, given that service wounds are usually highlighted in such reports during wartime.
