2008 U.S. Presidential sElection Open Thread
November 5th, 2008I wasn’t planning to do this, but people want to talk about the sElection. Let it rip!
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cryptogon.com
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Hahaha. I found an old cover from The Nation magazine in my work desk last week. A picture from November 2000 that pictured George W. Bush as the Mad Magazine character wearing a Worry button. Should have had it on my refrigerator all along.
And the winner is… of course as “they” all hope – the biggest contributor.
But like Dan Furst wrote I think this election might boil down to this:
For Obama, though late 2008 and the top of next year do have their bright features, the burden of the presidency is likely to feel even heavier than he expected, from the moment he picks it up in January. That’s when he understands, much better than he did before, that the most fateful decision the American people will ever have made — to reaffirm constitutional liberty or to accept control by a military security state — will come during his watch.
http://www.hermes3.net/2008election2.htm
Well, I basically agree with you. The elite aren’t standing in the way of an Obama victory because having the young, fresh (not to mention African-American) face with the reasonably intelligent globalist running-mate in there at this time better serves their goals than having the bad-tempered old guy with a very intellectually dumb, very wingnutty running-mate.
My online liberal friends will doubtless be very happy the way I was very happy sixteen years ago when Bill Clinton won the 1992 sElection. But that honeymoon will soon be over. But that still won’t stop them from eagerly holding out their cups for more Blue Kool-Aid come 2010 and 2012.
I was glued to the CNN.com website four years ago at this time. Today, I paid some bills, did my laundry, and now I’m going to take my daily walk. After that, I’m going to watch the episode of “The Mentalist” I recorded, assuming it wasn’t pre-empted for sElection coverage.
Yay Obama! Middle 80% tax breaks instead of top 1% tax breaks. Job growth through forced domestic infrastructure labor instead of global war expansion. Subsidized corporate health care on the supply side instead of the demand side. Monopolized legislature instead of overt unitary executive policy. And the panopticon! Oh, the panopticon!
For what its worth, times like these I am still “glad” to have a TV.
The pictures of students taking over the streets in Pittsburgh, PA; a crowd of 1.3 MILLION or more people waiting for Obama to speak in Chicago for his acceptance speech!! My mind could not wrap itself around all of the people gathered together. I dunno that I can grok all those people together in a crowd without the usual accoutrements of bullets, tear gas or bombs. Haha.
I think for the first time in a long time, I am not afraid, very afraid. So were not afraid a lot of other people. Holy crap, 1.3 million people in a crowd and nobody felt it necessary to nuke em.
I wondered aloud to my sister tonight who was a poll worker in Tampa, FL in the last four elections- wonder where Cheney, Rove, and The rest of the Bush gang are tonight.
Methinks digging their fox holes, planning on moving to Paraguay.
Well, I was right. The crew at the liberal blog where I used to spend a great deal of my online time is having a round of spontaneous multiple orgasms. It probably only occurs to a very small few of them that if the “Main Street economy” weren’t having a heart attack necessitating the presence of a priest to give Last Rites, this year would have been a rerun of 2000 and 2004.
oh my goodness, i can think of so many more ‘related posts’… right near this one!
***
i could type 10k worth of words and say nothing most anyone here wouldn’t already know or likely agree with. we all know the score.
parsing the particulars of this sElection (that was a good’un) seems almost silly. myopic.
i almost can’t even say ‘well, at least mccain didn’t win.’ who knows? it may have been better if he had, for all the disaster he’d have been.
Ok
so: nationally, we have chosen to be placed into the pot of water with the ever increasing temperature instead of choosing seppuku.
in the end, what is the difference … are we not going to be just as dead ?
Guys I disagree. Kevin I think you are right and wrong about the selection aspect of this election. What I see when I look at America and the Obama victory is lots and lots of positive energy…
Yes the fundamental dysfunctionality is still in place but I think we’ll be amazed at the effects a wave of hope and positive feeling can have. See Ran Prieur’s thoughtful Obama essay for more on this: http://ranprieur.com/essays/obama.html
Also I have to say I like the guy – he is good looking, smart and somehow a lot less how shall we say it – “reptilian” than most politicians in recent memory.
I think the control of the so called Powers That BE is a lot less total than many consipracy sites seem to believe. I realise they exist and I think they do have their hands on many hidden levers but I certainly don’t think they get their way all or even most of the time.
Kevin – I love Cryptogon and think your writing and analysis is awesome but I find myself more and more taking week long breaks now and then to refresh myself with more positive viewpoints and attitudes.
I put my comment under “Pentagon Ready to Brief Incoming Administration Immediately”, it was most pertinent to that story, I thought.
Love the new site banner, btw.
Okay, one last thing, then I’m done with this thread unless someone wants me to respond to something: It may be just a coincidence, but I can’t help but laugh at the stock market resuming its plunge on the very day following the sElection. 😀
WTF is that new logo Kevin? Soe knd of crazy pink teapot? Some cultural icons just (mercifully) don’t translate very well. (Unless you’re going to tell me that it actually is supposed to be a jolly pink teapot).
Well, I’ve been reading too much about good old JFK and RFK recently and so naturally I am rather worried for the safety of the president-in-waiting. Good old Dubya still has time to get assassinated while in office (weren’t all the assassinated presidents elected in a year ending in a zero? And Reagan the one who bucked the trend, getting elected in ’80 and shot but surviving?) but for some reason I just can’t quite fit into less than 10,000 words, the fate of Barack peturbs me far more than the fate of George Jr.
For some reason it really has brought out the doomsayer fatalist in me. I don’t just worry about Obama being assassinated, I actually feel that it is inevitable. And I will be terrified and heartbroken when it happens. And it will happen at a height of tensions between superpowers. How strange that I feel trapped in a replay of my readings and viewings of the Kennedy eras. Like a psy-op entering the Twilight Zone. ‘What Paul does not realise is that he is doomed to replay this heightened emotional scenario over and over again, every night, for the rest of eternity….’ (cue jangly Twilight Zone tune).
🙂
Well Kev, you did say that it was an open thread. I am still a bit shocked at what I have written, but it nails how I am feeling right on the nose. Analysis please, Mr Spock?
I think they were saving up for that stock plunge, to make a statement.
Anyway, I heard that Paul Volcker could be Treasury Sec. Does anyone here with any understanding have an opinion on his style? Some people like an emphasis on antiinflation. I sometimes read the Left Business Observer discussion, and they dislike gold ownership, and view the economy as a thing to tweak to optimize the rate at which everyone works and trades goods and services- absolute value of currency ranks low.
I heard Rahn Emmanuel was really into NAFTA?
Hey Somontzu:
I think tonight’s new banner – about drinking the “Obama kool-aid” – was targeted at you.
After reading the facts about what a throroughly bought and paid for corporate shill Obama is that has been well documented at this site, and you are STILL hopelessly smitten with him, well, then I just have to conclude you’re another hopelessly deluded voter. You are like the poor, pathetic teenage girl with no self-esteem who lets her bad boy b/f repeatedly abuse and humiliate here, but who happily continues to debase herself for his pleasure because “he loves me”.
Cheeze. I wish one of y’all (that is politically correct speech now) would have corrected me re my 1.3 million crowd thing. You guys are just being nice to me.
That a half black man was elected President of the USa was/is a big deal to me. My sister was an outrage in her own right and went to Kingstree, SC in I think 1965 to register black people to vote. She died at age 23 in a car accident when I was 13. This was a life changing event for me, but for what’s its worth, that is why I celebrated last night. What she felt was very important in her short life had come to fruition. Hope is something very personal.
@dagobaz. Yep, I think fear of “death” is driving this “thing.” Surely, facing death of anything while stewing in a pot of hot boiling water might “feel better” than facing the unknown of death with sudden impact. We I think as humans hope while stewing in the pot (that is our fate) imagine we retain some control over the temperature. Yup. We imagine sudden death syndrome to be less preferable than a long, slow, agonizing and painful decline. Sheez, my doctor died last month in a rock climbing fall. That life was over before consciousness could comprehend what had happened. I don’t know what I would prefer truth be told. The same with our “destiny” as a nation.
It has taken most of my lifetime to plow through my concepts of exactly who God is. But in my middle years now, I don’t think the U.S. of A is a place that is “under” who I imagine that entity would represent AT ALL. Imagine blessing a nation that has driven its indigenous people off to live on rank reservations, enslaved millions of people for the color of their skin and because they fit the bill as strong laborers, etc, etc, etc.
I think the US has been fighting the spirit of God for its entire lifetime. And the prize fighters in this fight are those that HOLD (or at least believe)that they CONTROL THE MONEY.
If there is a God, I believe it exists in Karma and Evolutional Astrology. Those who believe that they control the money are in their death throes right now methinks. The WATER IS REALLY HOT.
Chertoff of the DHS actually showed his face on national television tonight saying how this “transition to a new administration” is a very dangerous time(shock and awe), or otherwise gibberous phrase. Shit. Look at me, I am SO IMPORTANT and I’m about to LOSE MY JOB FREAKING ALL OF YOU OUT! Code Orange. GIVE ME AN EFFIN BREAK. That this man had the GALL to hold a press conference after what he didn’t do after Katrina chaps my ass to no end. This man is just an example of everything this administration has given money to, SECURITY. Trying and often succeeding with a straight face to SCARE PEOPLE INTO LETTING THEM KEEP THE MONEY. And OH YES, Prez Obama must know forthwith IMMEDIATELY the IMPORTANCE of the PENTAGON budget needs.
The black man needs to know immediately about the big black hole of where our life force must flow. What a JOKE!
Ah well, my HOPE is that Obama IS the reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln. Perhaps in this incarnation he won’t be shot and killed anywhere or at any time and will live as long as he needs to in order to fulfill his soul’s purpose.
But the rest of these guys who think they are in control, hah, I’m going to like watching them squirm while the water of their karmic “bath” gets hotter, and hotter and hotter.
I know I ramble on so.
@tm so did you read the essay I linked to?
@ Eileen “Ah well, my HOPE is that Obama IS the reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln.”
Be careful what you hope for.
“Who Was this ‘Great Liberator’?”
http://mises.org/story/2621
@Pookie
Holy crap where do you find these things?
Cheez oh man.
I guess Lincoln was a NEOCON?
Wow Pookie.
I’ve admired Lincoln re his “all men are created equal statments.”
Sounds like my education has been lacking in lots of Lincoln’s ways.
And so, I must say, sure hope the O is NOT the reincarnation of Lincoln!
Thank you Pookie.
Are you an expat historian, economist or what?
I’ve learned a lot through your posts. Kevin posted a link to you a long time ago – but I never went and looked at it.
Wish I had.
Somewhere there is a long article I think on the Atlantic where everyone went weeping and wailing into the night because it discussed the theory that Linclon was into an alternative sexual universe.
I’m not bashing anyone for their preferences. Just trying in my really awful way to say that I don’t believe Lincoln was a goddess.
Thanks (I guess)for pointing out to me that Lincoln is NOT what I want Obama to be.
@ Eileen
Trust me, I’m nobody. My graduate degree is in English lit (there are gazillions of us), and I’m currently unemployed, although busy enough making comical attempts at growing a veggie garden for the first time in my life.
I’m libertarian and take an interest in the Austrian School of Economics, hence my frequent links to http://www.mises.org and http://www.lewrockwell.com — sites where one can get a fabulous, free education in history, political science, and economics. Gawd bless the intertubes.