i am so happy for america. i never thought i’d see this. what beauty and what leadership…..and what a people.
A great day.
As usual the day was made better by posters such as Eccy, Spammy, Possum and the incomparable Kirri (Expanding ops from Sydney to Washington).
yes we did
The Kid showed us a bit of steely resolve in his victory speech as he seamlessly slipped into numero uno executive mode. He’s clearly not going to take any crap from uncooperative lawmakers of whichever persuasion.
Tonight’s speech was a corker although less complex than the Philly Address in which Obi dealt with race in modern America by treating the audience/voters as adults who have actually knocked around a bit.
New Dawn sounds good to me. Especially if legacies like that of Mr. Maddox are furthur diluted.
Upon the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., he denied the slain civil rights leader the honor of lying in state in the Georgia state capitol after being provided reports from undercover agents in the Atlanta Police Department that there was a planned storming of the state capitol by participants in the crowd of mourners. As a precaution, Maddox stationed 64 officers in riot gear stationed in groups of eight at each of the entrances to the capitol.
Catrina, we are all in your debt. You have done an excellent job here. Thank you.
blindoptimist at 5
Our debt is to the American people.
C’mon we’re all bloomin’ brilliant around here, Cardster, let’s face it!
Tonight We The People fear tyranny no more and they shall sleep the sleep of the just.
Thought the Americans did us and the planet proud.
Well done you lot!
Snapperooney, Cat.
🙂
🙂
FFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFF
UCK YEAH
😆
Way too cool for blog school.
Time for sleep.
A great day everyone!
We did good.
Greetings comrades, fellow travellers, lurkers and anyone else out there.
It is truly a wonderful experience to share a historic moment with friends. Having now met a good cross-section of Ticsters – we really are a decent bunch of people. In fact, I’d be hard pressd to find a more decent bunch of people.
Thanks for sharing the journey – and today – with me.
And now….let’s watch the civil war about to engulf the GOP. If some pundits are right and Palin is the future of the Grand Old Party, then we will know that they have not learned one thing. Bring on 2012 and Obama v Palin – and expect a seriously spanked GOP bum.
Just in case anyone missed it we maybe still in the running for 60 senate seats. At least I may have got one part of the bet.
Something was screwed up in Georgia. It has been suggested the didn’t count the early vote. Plus more. http://www.fivethirtyeight.com
Wow, fell asleep pissed and woke up with a headache, but it turns out it wasn’t a dream 🙂
Yes we DID!
Brilliant, absolutely brilliant
To all of you, thank you, a truly amazing few months. Now I gotta go back to bed 🙂
Grand day indeed, Ferny, delighted to share it with you and all. Cheers Flaneur!
So,,, and so to the grizzly (Yup-Yup’s from Alaska) bits.
Let the GOPper self-disembowellment begin!
“Robinson’s Major League debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers(in 1947) ended approximately sixty years of baseball segregation, also known as the baseball color line, or color barrier. In the United States at this time, many white people believed that blacks and whites should be segregated or kept apart in many aspects of life, including sports”.
In the county of Multnomah, Oregon, the Associated Press have stated that all of the precincts in the Senate race are in, while the Presidential race has only 32% of the precincts in but a near identical amount of votes. Checking the results from 2004 shows that it is definitely a error by AP and Merkley (D) can expect to triple his current vote total in Multnomah County. This will give him a net gain of about 100,000 votes, easily overcoming the 14,500 vote deficit as currently reported. The Democrats will therefore win the Oregon Senate seat as expected.
The beacon is once again lit, and it’s shining across the world. America had truly lost its way, but once more its better spirits have been awakened and its people have spoken.
Thank you America, thank you. You have elected a man of outstanding quality, the most unlikely of candidates as he said, and beaten the odds, beaten the prejudices, beaten the narrow minded pettiness and fear mongering that politics has descended to. You have overcome your failures of the last eight years and decided its time to take another path. You’ve restored your own hope, and that of the world.
Thank you America, thank you.
It’s not often that Jon Stewart is left speechless, but the concluding minutes of his election coverage with Stephen Colbert, where he announces that Barack Obama is the newly elected President is one of them. For a few moments Stewart looked like he was ready to weep with joy.
We know how he felt!
Catrina
An on going tribute to your absolute leadership on this site.
Sit back, up the volume butten, and light up a big bong.
enjoy the new dawn!
We all did in the sixties.
Maybe the Rude Pundit has just won the best essay prize for the aftermath! LOL
Gaffy, it’s only right, just and fair, to see the Rudester gloat like there’s no tomorrow!
Ain’t it?
Man, he’s a dude that knows how to gloat.
Kirri has said it well, as he has done throughout this campaign.
I think it is time I paused to say thank you and well done to America. At the last dawning of new hope (JFK 1960), I was young and missed the bus somewhat. I resented US cultural dominance and perhaps Australia’s obsequiousness to it. Even the assassination did not move me as much as it should have.
Yet Kennedy’s was a significant presidency, even though LBJ was much more practical and achieved more. Kennedy offered hope and inspiration. If it led to man landing on the moon, who knows what could be achieved if we were to try.
I am a lot older now, and after a career as a leftist critical of American imperialism, I am seeing the light. The Marshall Plan and the reconstruction of Germany and Japan into democracies were great achievements, as were Bretton Woods, the UN (despite its flaws) and the encouragement of liberal democracies.
The handling of the Middle East has been a nightmare, and the less said about Central and South America (albeit things seem to have improved there as a reaction to Bush) the better.
This result starts the process of overcoming one of America’s biggest hurdles: institutionalised racism. It was slowly being beaten back anyway, but this should accelerate it.
The other perception, which was not diminished during the Clinton years, was that political success in the US could only be achieved in connivance with the powerful lobbies of Big Money. One of the most amazing paradoxes was that this, the biggest-spending of all campaigns was achieved by-and-large through the rank-and-file donations of individuals determined to make a difference.
The biggest challenge now is harnessing all that enthusiasm without disaffecting those supporters. It is a train wreck of an economy after all. Iraq and other hot spots continue to cost. But FDR did it when hope was very thin on the ground.
The current regime should be put in jail. The only upside of their reign is that they helped (by the reaction) to create a grass roots political movement which would have otherwise have seemed inconceivable.
We should never underestimate America’s capacity for renewal.
Indeed Don, it’s been a long, dark tunnel we’ve been in and the campaign tone of McCain/Palin and even of Hillary only promised more darkness, more division, more hate, more fear, more pettiness and ignorance.
I spend my professional life having to justify virtue while selfishness and greed are self-evident and smugly affirmed as if any contrary view is idealistic nonsense. Imagine that – having to justify doing what is right and honest and true and good for humanity? That’s what the last 8 years – and let’s not forget Clinton and Hawke who paved the way for the neocons that followed – have wrought on our souls.
Obama has affirmed the place of truth and courage, freedom and unity, diversity and tolerance, intelligence and reflection, hope and aspiration. In affirming these virtues he has called an end to the long dark night of our soul.
It is a powerful message that has resonated forcefully. But it will all be empty words if we, the critical mass of dreamers and fools, fail to walk the path with him. One of the biggest challenges to success is success. Having fought so hard to keep the light burning, what do we now do? Have we won?
We kept the light burning in the dark times; we can’t rest now that a fellow dreamer is President. The fight for virtue never ends. Power doesn’t flow from the top down. It flows from the bottom up. If darkness rules, it’s because we the people, allow it.
The people have now prized open the window just a crack. A thin stream of light is streaming in and it feels so good. But the window needs opening all the way – and then we have to keep it open.
The fight goes on.
I’m lost, I don’t know what to do with myself this morning 🙂
Hello all. Geez, I’m hungover.
Thanks to everyone for a great day at the Jubilee yesterday. It was fantastic to share this moment with a group of decent, interesting and fun people . I’ve got me a copy of the NY Times and Washington Post, and intend to immerse myself in post mortems, while drinking copious amounts of water.
There’s much eloquence in the posts above – I am incapable of anything approaching deep and meaningful at the moment. I saw an interview of the great Maya Angelou on BBC. She recited one of her poems, which again brought me to tears. Here it is.
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
But as Angelou pointed out, from the historic Obama win of yesterday, we all rise.
Very well put, Ferny. I liked
“I spend my professional life having to justify virtue while selfishness and greed are self-evident and smugly affirmed as if any contrary view is idealistic nonsense.”
That is indeed a painful reality. And for all the ‘feel good’ we shouldn’t underestimate that personal fear/anxiety of some sort concerning savings and economic security played a large part.
I agree with your central premise. Oddly enough, despite my having regarded much of what they said as jingoism, the RSL got it right with their slogan,
“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”
Even if they might have had different things in mind from you and me. I was also reminded of what I thought was the real meaning of Catch-22, which paraphrased was, “they’ll do to you whatever you let them get away with.”
Eventually, we need to address certain issues in western society such as the mystique placed on MBAs. I remember reading somebody’s questioning of a bunch of graduands on what they saw as their role as executives.
Over 90% saw their primary function as boosting the company stock or share price. There was no reference to the importance of providing a needed product or service, and only passing respect to share dividend. And I suppose the way corporate executive packages are worked these days, it’s understandable. But it is a huge void – not just in ethics or morality but in the long-term future of their company.
Congrats again to Cat and all those here for terrific election coverage and discussion.
Loved Obama’s victory speech and also have to say McCains speech was excellent- very gracious, and I wondered, where was THIS guy during the campaign?? Interesting how McCain let his appeal ie. the idea of being a maverick who stood up to the repugs on occasions, get swamped by the usual Repug attack strategy…
It is really disappointing that many in McCain’s crowd booed loudly when he congratulated Obama and spoke of the significance of the win. The Repugs are going to have to do some soul-searching, but if the conservatives here in Oz are anything to go by, I wont hold my breath…
And, I really really hope Palin 12 becomes a reality- thats two Obama terms locked in!!
G’day all!
Sorry I didn’t post yesterday, I was too excited watching the results, and I had a few too many drinks too which tends to cloud the mind somewhat LOL
The moment I knew Obama had it won, when CNN called Ohio for him – at that moment, I started crying with happiness!
Second time I cried: when Obama and Biden were out on the stage with their wives, all the children, and Biden’s mother – wonderful stuff!
Great speech from Barrack! Congrats to him and all who worked their arses off to achieve this milestone in history.
Has anyone been over to the other place? I hope Adam Carr is eating a huge dose of humble pie!
Final word on the results:
Obama winning Indiana, a state Bush carried by 20 points in 2004, was nothing short of amazing!
I think he’s probably got North Carolina too, but has fallen short in Missouri.
And, how satisfying that Kay Hagen knocked off the horrible Elizabeth Dole in the North Carolina Senate Race!
Mark Warner winning in Virginia – future presidential material in 2016.
And, Georgia is probably going to a runoff Senate election, after all the early votes are counted.
If so, you can bet Obama will put all his resources into campaigning and getting a Democrat victory in December.
33
Credit where it’s due, he did
Adam in Canberra
Posted Thursday, November 6, 2008 at 9:26 am
Good morning bludgers, and congratulations Obamanauts. You were right and I was wrong. As Al Gore said through gritted teeth: “for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.
34
Have to say, the ending of E Dole was one of the highlights for me yesterday
For a qualified political scientist/psephologist, Dr Carr made a complete arse of himself, and I don’t believe he has all these Labor insider mates in Canberra either, that’s a crock!
He’s no more credible than the average Republican troll!
From Possums place
Newsweek had a Special Election Project running where their reporters were travelling with both campaigns, but had an embargo on publishing their wares until the day after the election
A few interesting things in it, this one in particular struck me
The computer systems of both the Obama and McCain campaigns were victims of a sophisticated cyberattack by an unknown “foreign entity,” prompting a federal investigation,
Such a treat to read your thoughtful analyses and heartfelt feelings. Just had a surf by the usual online suspects and nothing comes close.
Well…. the piccies on the home page of HuffPo are pretty good.
Georgia’s U.S. Senate race may be headed for runoff
Well-polished political celebs and teams of scraggly ground troops from both major parties could invade Georgia over the next few weeks if the U.S. Senate race between Republican Saxby Chambliss and Democrat Jim Martin ends up in a full-blown runoff.
Thousands of votes — including many paper ballots from Fulton County — were still being counted late Wednesday, and neither Chambliss nor Martin had broken the magical 50-percent market required by state law to declare a winner.
Update on Oregon Senate race:
Democrat Jeff Merkley has just taken the lead, and the votes left to be counted are from strong Democrat areas of the state.
So hopefully the Democrat senate tally can soon be bumped up to 57 seats, and maybe 58 if Jim Martin can win the runoff in Georgia!
Who is going to be the minister for fixing the voting system?
I think Minnesotta is probably a loss for the Democrats, although Al Franken hasn’t conceded yet, so we’ll see!
The best thing about getting to 60 seats – not having to negotiate with that turncoat piece of slime Joe Lieberman!
Alaska looks like it’s gone. Maybe 59 seats in the senate.
It will be easy to get one or two senators to come over to our side.
Update:
CNN has officially declared an Obama victory in North Carolina
WOOHOO!
Chris at #57:
I bet Obama will appoint one or two Republican senators to his cabinet, eg. Olympia Snow, Susan Collins
It looks like Jeff Merkley has won the Oregon Senate seat for the Democrats – that’s 57 seats!
59 Progressive Yes, and there must be other moderates he can sway. If the fundies move in for the kill, some will be very easily persuaded to come over. If they take over the Republican Party, it will be very good long term for Obama. 😈
Yes, Spammy, John Sheffius is a caliph of a cartonist.
Prog, 60 Senate seats seems out of reach at this stage. Was reading somewhere where Obi, The Great Includer, will reach out across the Senate aisle to RINOs(Republicans In Name Only) to get his crucial Bills through. There’s some other manoeuvre where a couple of GOPper Senators could be promoted sideways or even brought into Cabinet so that their replacements would be Dems. Legit but borderline dodgy apparently.
There’s talk too of Joey “The Rat” Lieberman getting the flick from a couple of his plum Senate C’tee Chairs.
Nobody likes a turncoat who pisses down your leg and then tries to tell you it’s raining. Especially newly emboldened Dem lawmakers.
62 Enemy Combatant Having the added pressure of another election in two years and some Repug senators looking to shore up their bi partisan position.
Yes, Lieberman was hanging round McCain like a bad smell the last few days of the campaign.
Looking at the House results, I notice that the Republicans are becoming an endangered species in the North East.
There isn’t a single Republican member left in Conneticut, quite a few lost their seats in New York state also.
Hello everyone, let me just say this – Sarah Who? ROFLMAO
The neocon experiment is over, for a time, and the evangelist base is wedded to a moose shootin’ bigot who’s electoral poison. The repubs are fucked.
In the mean time, Obama is stacking his administration with Clinton hacks and i’ve even heard Colon freakin’ Powell get a mention in despatches. This is not a good start.
Having liberal Democrats elected in the south as opposed to conservative Democrats, as they have done in the past, make their job easier.
66 HusseinWorm Sarah Pailin being around makes the Democrats job easier. 😈
The more obnoxious morons the better.
Oh the irony of taking down George Bush’s picture everywhere, and hanging Obama’s picture in its place. Especially in the south.
G’day all,
Just bloomin’ marvellous to logon and find such eloquence while I’m still strugglin for words.
One of the great pleasures of this site is the quality of the writing, and never more appreciated than when immersed in non-anglo lingua.
My overriding feeling is not dissimilar to when Mandela walked free and was elected….the dignity, the integrity ,the inspiration. Different people and circumstances ofcourse, but they share an essence of decency and humanity .
Glad the Brissie-bash was such a success and it’s a real credit to you, Ecky.
Am still trying to guess who is who in Poss’s photos!
Like Eccles in the Goon Show..”ït’s good to be alive!”
Thank you to Catrina, and to all the bloggers for a great run thru of the electioncampaign.
A special thanks to DG, our resident pessimist, a useful antidote to what could become GroupThink on blogs like this. I’m glad you were wrong,DG, as I suspect you are too.,
ChrisB, you were the opposite end of the optimist/pessimist spectrum, & sometimes reminded me of a song in South Pacific. Still, you were pretty close to correct in the end. & you certainly have Senator Conroy pegged right!
To all you “ïgnorant loathing lefties”.. keep up the good fight! No one can blame YOU for helping Fielding become a Senator.
i watched the count in solitary squalor, shivering as the early Virginia results came in, but was comforted by the CNN analysts pointing out which precints were reporting. On the whole (not the hologram) Cnn did a fair job.. if only they’d had more analysis, and less talking heads and gimmicks!
As the day wore on I slipped comfortably into the arms of Bacchus, and have only now arisen to wish you all a Nellie Melba farewell.
That hologram stuff was way out, I’m in two minds about it. On one hand, it did make it easier to focus on whoever was being interviewed at the time, on the other, it did make it easier to focus on whoever was being interviewed at the time 😆
73 Paddy, that was excellent – I am still rolling around laughing!
OK, forget the lofty rhetoric, the soaring metaphors, the exultation, the joy, and the sheer relief to see Obama home, why not spend a few moments gloating at the silly rightwing prognostications about how Obama could not win?
…and have a little snicker, go on, you know you want to! LOL
I’m still reading this……and it’s bloody good!
This is part one of a seven-part in-depth look behind the scenes of the campaign, consisting of exclusive behind-the-scenes reporting from the McCain and Obama camps assembled by a special team of reporters who were granted year-long access on the condition that none of their findings appear until after Election Day.
Had to laugh. The winner of the ECV election prediction at the other place is……………………………RON!! LOL. He who told us mercilessly how awful Obama was and how he couldnt win (correctly) predicted a massive victory!!!!
Yeah Paddy it’s great eh, I was reading it before as I feel I haven’t had enough US politics in my life lately.
72 Gippslander Thanks Gippslander, Conroy can’t succeed now no matter what. There is no way Obama would introduce the same after how the Internet helped make him. He would be shooting himself in the foot. Then the big three Google, Yahoo and MSN signing their pact sort of brings him undone. 😆
81 Andrew I hope that woman takes control of the Republican Party.
She will destroy it single handedly.
Sarah Palin not knowing Africa was a continent, probably couldn’t find the Pacific Ocean on a map either.
The Kid has as a surge of goodwill behind him similar in intensity yet noble in motive when viewed alongside the surge of negativity BushCo fostered and harnessed after 9/11. With just a little bit of bloomin’ luck, by 2016 Obi will have delivered on enough “yes we cans” to become an eminence grise in more than appearance alone.
Delicious fare paddy, The Onion caramelises our kind……….again!
Ah, Kirri, the neocon brains-trust got it SO abysmally wrong. If they weren’t such mean-spirited sods perhaps we could be more charitable, but the vicious swine deserve every dollop of ridicule with which we can garnish upon them. Or fling upon them might be more correct usage. (as an elitist, one reserves the right to agonise without angst about book-learnin’ stuff like that).
By believing their own bullshit about Rove’s mystical and deadly Swift Boats and about the all-reaching persuasive power of the MSM, the “enemy” were able to organise unencumbered like a web-connected hive mind, and by instantaneously pinging their propaganda for the crap it was using You-Tube, On-zines, blogs, and texting etc., they played the bastards off a break. Tactically the McCain War-Room played jailbird chess and deserved the flogging they got from the black guy and his Team.
In McLuhan-speak, they lost control of The Message because the schmucks didn’t understand and therefore couldn’t exploit New Media.
But the kids in America sure knew wassup. So did ethnically Non-European Americans. Whole lotta righteous white folk too.
Onya Gippslander, see you when your keyboard fingers get as itchy as Dame Nellie’s professionally recidivist tonsils did.
🙂
Obama Unveils Presidential Transition Team.
President-elect Barack Obama today announced that his presidential transition team will be led by John Podesta, who served as chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, campaign advisor Valerie Jarrett, and Pete Rouse, who has been Obama’s chief of staff in the Senate.
Though informal transition planning has been going on for months, the creation of the Obama-Biden Transition Project gives Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden a formal structure through which to undertake the tasks necessary in transferring power, chief among them helping to select Cabinet members and White House staffers in the new administration.
Late to the party, but still good value.
Bill Maher closed Friday night’s “New Rules” with a great recap of the 2008 election and why it’s been the best, most unpredictable race in history.
Hi all –
just arrived home after epic election trip. Thanks to all you gorgeous Obamabots- it was so great topactually meet you all and to be there for such a historic moment. It was actually too big to take in – I thought I would want to dance and party on but i actually fely quite overwhelmed. thanks KatieLou fro the pizza and wine – slept very well!!
And woke to this incredible new reality. In one way nothing changes, but in another everything has. Still trying to come to grips, like no doubt the rest of the world.
I haven’t had time to read all the posts but to all of you who weren’t there- we thought of you !!
And I did get to put my hand up Possum’s backside , so that was a plus 😉
92
PADDY Thats a ripper!
“we know they’re building the fence in the wrong place” LOL
The reader against the breeder Et al.
81
Andrew Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Palin didnt know Africa was a continent.
I bet she knew McCain was incontinent.. but stop! that’s unkind!!
There was a time when i thought reasonably highly of Ralph Nader.
I guess everything degenerates with time.
And Not very often you can agree with the Fuckers at Fox!
Nice little bit of to and fro!
Just want to say that even when the Fox commentators are morally right (as in this case), their condescending attitude still grates on me like fingernails on a chalkboard.
This is one of the main reasons i wanted to see thw warmongering bastards shot out on their arses.
I was hoping BO may be able to get in there and put a stop to shit like this.
There is no fucken excuses for this shit!
Dozens of Afghan civilians are dead and dozens more are wounded after a series of air strikes aimed at Taliban fighters fell short of their target and exploded in the middle of a wedding party in a mountainous region north of Kandahar city, tribal elders and wedding guests told The Globe and Mail on Tuesday.
The right stuff
Garrison gets it right again.
(except about the dog)
A toast to the Obamas as they enjoy a brief, golden moment before beginning the grueling business of disappointing their followers, astonishing their enemies and doing what is right for our country.
651 replies on “A New Dawn”
i am so happy for america. i never thought i’d see this. what beauty and what leadership…..and what a people.
A great day.
As usual the day was made better by posters such as Eccy, Spammy, Possum and the incomparable Kirri (Expanding ops from Sydney to Washington).
yes we did
The Kid showed us a bit of steely resolve in his victory speech as he seamlessly slipped into numero uno executive mode. He’s clearly not going to take any crap from uncooperative lawmakers of whichever persuasion.
Tonight’s speech was a corker although less complex than the Philly Address in which Obi dealt with race in modern America by treating the audience/voters as adults who have actually knocked around a bit.
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/62280
New Dawn sounds good to me. Especially if legacies like that of Mr. Maddox are furthur diluted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_Maddox
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=2nGw_vAnqPI
Catrina, we are all in your debt. You have done an excellent job here. Thank you.
blindoptimist at 5
Our debt is to the American people.
C’mon we’re all bloomin’ brilliant around here, Cardster, let’s face it!
Tonight We The People fear tyranny no more and they shall sleep the sleep of the just.
Thought the Americans did us and the planet proud.
Well done you lot!
Snapperooney, Cat.
🙂
🙂
FFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFF
UCK YEAH
😆
Way too cool for blog school.
Time for sleep.
A great day everyone!
We did good.
Greetings comrades, fellow travellers, lurkers and anyone else out there.
It is truly a wonderful experience to share a historic moment with friends. Having now met a good cross-section of Ticsters – we really are a decent bunch of people. In fact, I’d be hard pressd to find a more decent bunch of people.
Thanks for sharing the journey – and today – with me.
And now….let’s watch the civil war about to engulf the GOP. If some pundits are right and Palin is the future of the Grand Old Party, then we will know that they have not learned one thing. Bring on 2012 and Obama v Palin – and expect a seriously spanked GOP bum.
Just in case anyone missed it we maybe still in the running for 60 senate seats. At least I may have got one part of the bet.
Something was screwed up in Georgia. It has been suggested the didn’t count the early vote. Plus more.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com
Wow, fell asleep pissed and woke up with a headache, but it turns out it wasn’t a dream 🙂
Yes we DID!
Brilliant, absolutely brilliant
To all of you, thank you, a truly amazing few months. Now I gotta go back to bed 🙂
Grand day indeed, Ferny, delighted to share it with you and all. Cheers Flaneur!
So,,, and so to the grizzly (Yup-Yup’s from Alaska) bits.
Let the GOPper self-disembowellment begin!
Sarrrrrah……..Oh Sarah…………..
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/62279
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/62281
Does Jesse Jackson have the nuts for this job? (He was beautiful today)
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/62287
“Robinson’s Major League debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers(in 1947) ended approximately sixty years of baseball segregation, also known as the baseball color line, or color barrier. In the United States at this time, many white people believed that blacks and whites should be segregated or kept apart in many aspects of life, including sports”.
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/62296
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Robinson
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/62299
Incorrect Numbers In Oregon Senate Race
In the county of Multnomah, Oregon, the Associated Press have stated that all of the precincts in the Senate race are in, while the Presidential race has only 32% of the precincts in but a near identical amount of votes. Checking the results from 2004 shows that it is definitely a error by AP and Merkley (D) can expect to triple his current vote total in Multnomah County. This will give him a net gain of about 100,000 votes, easily overcoming the 14,500 vote deficit as currently reported. The Democrats will therefore win the Oregon Senate seat as expected.
The beacon is once again lit, and it’s shining across the world. America had truly lost its way, but once more its better spirits have been awakened and its people have spoken.
Thank you America, thank you. You have elected a man of outstanding quality, the most unlikely of candidates as he said, and beaten the odds, beaten the prejudices, beaten the narrow minded pettiness and fear mongering that politics has descended to. You have overcome your failures of the last eight years and decided its time to take another path. You’ve restored your own hope, and that of the world.
Thank you America, thank you.
It’s not often that Jon Stewart is left speechless, but the concluding minutes of his election coverage with Stephen Colbert, where he announces that Barack Obama is the newly elected President is one of them. For a few moments Stewart looked like he was ready to weep with joy.
We know how he felt!
Catrina
An on going tribute to your absolute leadership on this site.
Sit back, up the volume butten, and light up a big bong.
enjoy the new dawn!
We all did in the sixties.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=EhbxI5eVnM4
That would be button.
Ferny
Maybe the Rude Pundit has just won the best essay prize for the aftermath! LOL
Gaffy, it’s only right, just and fair, to see the Rudester gloat like there’s no tomorrow!
Ain’t it?
Man, he’s a dude that knows how to gloat.
Kirri has said it well, as he has done throughout this campaign.
I think it is time I paused to say thank you and well done to America. At the last dawning of new hope (JFK 1960), I was young and missed the bus somewhat. I resented US cultural dominance and perhaps Australia’s obsequiousness to it. Even the assassination did not move me as much as it should have.
Yet Kennedy’s was a significant presidency, even though LBJ was much more practical and achieved more. Kennedy offered hope and inspiration. If it led to man landing on the moon, who knows what could be achieved if we were to try.
I am a lot older now, and after a career as a leftist critical of American imperialism, I am seeing the light. The Marshall Plan and the reconstruction of Germany and Japan into democracies were great achievements, as were Bretton Woods, the UN (despite its flaws) and the encouragement of liberal democracies.
The handling of the Middle East has been a nightmare, and the less said about Central and South America (albeit things seem to have improved there as a reaction to Bush) the better.
This result starts the process of overcoming one of America’s biggest hurdles: institutionalised racism. It was slowly being beaten back anyway, but this should accelerate it.
The other perception, which was not diminished during the Clinton years, was that political success in the US could only be achieved in connivance with the powerful lobbies of Big Money. One of the most amazing paradoxes was that this, the biggest-spending of all campaigns was achieved by-and-large through the rank-and-file donations of individuals determined to make a difference.
The biggest challenge now is harnessing all that enthusiasm without disaffecting those supporters. It is a train wreck of an economy after all. Iraq and other hot spots continue to cost. But FDR did it when hope was very thin on the ground.
The current regime should be put in jail. The only upside of their reign is that they helped (by the reaction) to create a grass roots political movement which would have otherwise have seemed inconceivable.
We should never underestimate America’s capacity for renewal.
Indeed Don, it’s been a long, dark tunnel we’ve been in and the campaign tone of McCain/Palin and even of Hillary only promised more darkness, more division, more hate, more fear, more pettiness and ignorance.
I spend my professional life having to justify virtue while selfishness and greed are self-evident and smugly affirmed as if any contrary view is idealistic nonsense. Imagine that – having to justify doing what is right and honest and true and good for humanity? That’s what the last 8 years – and let’s not forget Clinton and Hawke who paved the way for the neocons that followed – have wrought on our souls.
Obama has affirmed the place of truth and courage, freedom and unity, diversity and tolerance, intelligence and reflection, hope and aspiration. In affirming these virtues he has called an end to the long dark night of our soul.
It is a powerful message that has resonated forcefully. But it will all be empty words if we, the critical mass of dreamers and fools, fail to walk the path with him. One of the biggest challenges to success is success. Having fought so hard to keep the light burning, what do we now do? Have we won?
We kept the light burning in the dark times; we can’t rest now that a fellow dreamer is President. The fight for virtue never ends. Power doesn’t flow from the top down. It flows from the bottom up. If darkness rules, it’s because we the people, allow it.
The people have now prized open the window just a crack. A thin stream of light is streaming in and it feels so good. But the window needs opening all the way – and then we have to keep it open.
The fight goes on.
I’m lost, I don’t know what to do with myself this morning 🙂
Hello all. Geez, I’m hungover.
Thanks to everyone for a great day at the Jubilee yesterday. It was fantastic to share this moment with a group of decent, interesting and fun people . I’ve got me a copy of the NY Times and Washington Post, and intend to immerse myself in post mortems, while drinking copious amounts of water.
There’s much eloquence in the posts above – I am incapable of anything approaching deep and meaningful at the moment. I saw an interview of the great Maya Angelou on BBC. She recited one of her poems, which again brought me to tears. Here it is.
But as Angelou pointed out, from the historic Obama win of yesterday, we all rise.
Very well put, Ferny. I liked
“I spend my professional life having to justify virtue while selfishness and greed are self-evident and smugly affirmed as if any contrary view is idealistic nonsense.”
That is indeed a painful reality. And for all the ‘feel good’ we shouldn’t underestimate that personal fear/anxiety of some sort concerning savings and economic security played a large part.
I agree with your central premise. Oddly enough, despite my having regarded much of what they said as jingoism, the RSL got it right with their slogan,
“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”
Even if they might have had different things in mind from you and me. I was also reminded of what I thought was the real meaning of Catch-22, which paraphrased was, “they’ll do to you whatever you let them get away with.”
Eventually, we need to address certain issues in western society such as the mystique placed on MBAs. I remember reading somebody’s questioning of a bunch of graduands on what they saw as their role as executives.
Over 90% saw their primary function as boosting the company stock or share price. There was no reference to the importance of providing a needed product or service, and only passing respect to share dividend. And I suppose the way corporate executive packages are worked these days, it’s understandable. But it is a huge void – not just in ethics or morality but in the long-term future of their company.
Yeah, there’s a lot of work to be done.
22%
No, that’s not President Bush’s approval rating. It’s the number of counties that voted more Republican than in 2004.
Republican Map
If that 22% map doesn’t send shivers down the spine of every Republican, this should:
Overall Map
Congrats again to Cat and all those here for terrific election coverage and discussion.
Loved Obama’s victory speech and also have to say McCains speech was excellent- very gracious, and I wondered, where was THIS guy during the campaign?? Interesting how McCain let his appeal ie. the idea of being a maverick who stood up to the repugs on occasions, get swamped by the usual Repug attack strategy…
It is really disappointing that many in McCain’s crowd booed loudly when he congratulated Obama and spoke of the significance of the win. The Repugs are going to have to do some soul-searching, but if the conservatives here in Oz are anything to go by, I wont hold my breath…
And, I really really hope Palin 12 becomes a reality- thats two Obama terms locked in!!
G’day all!
Sorry I didn’t post yesterday, I was too excited watching the results, and I had a few too many drinks too which tends to cloud the mind somewhat LOL
The moment I knew Obama had it won, when CNN called Ohio for him – at that moment, I started crying with happiness!
Second time I cried: when Obama and Biden were out on the stage with their wives, all the children, and Biden’s mother – wonderful stuff!
Great speech from Barrack! Congrats to him and all who worked their arses off to achieve this milestone in history.
Has anyone been over to the other place? I hope Adam Carr is eating a huge dose of humble pie!
Final word on the results:
Obama winning Indiana, a state Bush carried by 20 points in 2004, was nothing short of amazing!
I think he’s probably got North Carolina too, but has fallen short in Missouri.
And, how satisfying that Kay Hagen knocked off the horrible Elizabeth Dole in the North Carolina Senate Race!
Mark Warner winning in Virginia – future presidential material in 2016.
And, Georgia is probably going to a runoff Senate election, after all the early votes are counted.
If so, you can bet Obama will put all his resources into campaigning and getting a Democrat victory in December.
33
Credit where it’s due, he did
Adam in Canberra
Posted Thursday, November 6, 2008 at 9:26 am
34
Have to say, the ending of E Dole was one of the highlights for me yesterday
For a qualified political scientist/psephologist, Dr Carr made a complete arse of himself, and I don’t believe he has all these Labor insider mates in Canberra either, that’s a crock!
He’s no more credible than the average Republican troll!
From Possums place
Newsweek had a Special Election Project running where their reporters were travelling with both campaigns, but had an embargo on publishing their wares until the day after the election
A few interesting things in it, this one in particular struck me
http://www.newsweek.com/id/167581/page/1
Ruby red Republican North Carolina had four races yesterday and elected:
A Black Democrat for President
A Woman Democrat for Senator
A Woman Democrat for Governor
A White Democrat for the House
North Carolina was politically dominated not so long ago by Jesse Helms.
Congrats to the Howard Dean and Barack Obama for opening up more and more of America to political choice.
Morning? all.
My goodness what a hangover!
Still it’s great to wake up and find it wasn’t just a dream.
While it’s a day late, I stumbled upon this link to a PPS file
designed to GOTV.
Just when I thought every tear of joy had been shed….
Well worth the d/l and somehow, even more powerful now that the great deed has been done.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/1td0fg
Mornin’ All,
Such a treat to read your thoughtful analyses and heartfelt feelings. Just had a surf by the usual online suspects and nothing comes close.
Well…. the piccies on the home page of HuffPo are pretty good.
“This Is Our Moment, This Is Our Time”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/62332
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/62351
EC, that second cartoon is brilliant
Good afternoon all. What a wonderful day!
The New Millennium has begun.
Georgia’s U.S. Senate race may be headed for runoff
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2008/11/04/georgia_us_senate_election.html
Update on Oregon Senate race:
Democrat Jeff Merkley has just taken the lead, and the votes left to be counted are from strong Democrat areas of the state.
So hopefully the Democrat senate tally can soon be bumped up to 57 seats, and maybe 58 if Jim Martin can win the runoff in Georgia!
Washington Post Sells Out.
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/11/05/washington_post_sells_out.html
Chris:
Still on Cloud 9, and loving it!
WOOHOO!
And, as more votes are counted, Obama’s vote grows and grows, up to 53% of the total, a 7% lead!
Obama won California with 61% of the vote!
47 Progressive 60 senate seats is still on the cards.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com
49 Progressive Me too.
Who is going to be the minister for fixing the voting system?
I think Minnesotta is probably a loss for the Democrats, although Al Franken hasn’t conceded yet, so we’ll see!
The best thing about getting to 60 seats – not having to negotiate with that turncoat piece of slime Joe Lieberman!
Dejected McCain supporters. He he he.
http://edition.cnn.com/POLITICS/
Alaska looks like it’s gone. Maybe 59 seats in the senate.
It will be easy to get one or two senators to come over to our side.
Update:
CNN has officially declared an Obama victory in North Carolina
WOOHOO!
Chris at #57:
I bet Obama will appoint one or two Republican senators to his cabinet, eg. Olympia Snow, Susan Collins
It looks like Jeff Merkley has won the Oregon Senate seat for the Democrats – that’s 57 seats!
59 Progressive Yes, and there must be other moderates he can sway. If the fundies move in for the kill, some will be very easily persuaded to come over. If they take over the Republican Party, it will be very good long term for Obama. 😈
Yes, Spammy, John Sheffius is a caliph of a cartonist.
Prog, 60 Senate seats seems out of reach at this stage. Was reading somewhere where Obi, The Great Includer, will reach out across the Senate aisle to RINOs(Republicans In Name Only) to get his crucial Bills through. There’s some other manoeuvre where a couple of GOPper Senators could be promoted sideways or even brought into Cabinet so that their replacements would be Dems. Legit but borderline dodgy apparently.
There’s talk too of Joey “The Rat” Lieberman getting the flick from a couple of his plum Senate C’tee Chairs.
Nobody likes a turncoat who pisses down your leg and then tries to tell you it’s raining. Especially newly emboldened Dem lawmakers.
62 Enemy Combatant Having the added pressure of another election in two years and some Repug senators looking to shore up their bi partisan position.
Yes, Lieberman was hanging round McCain like a bad smell the last few days of the campaign.
Looking at the House results, I notice that the Republicans are becoming an endangered species in the North East.
There isn’t a single Republican member left in Conneticut, quite a few lost their seats in New York state also.
Hello everyone, let me just say this – Sarah Who? ROFLMAO
The neocon experiment is over, for a time, and the evangelist base is wedded to a moose shootin’ bigot who’s electoral poison. The repubs are fucked.
In the mean time, Obama is stacking his administration with Clinton hacks and i’ve even heard Colon freakin’ Powell get a mention in despatches. This is not a good start.
Having liberal Democrats elected in the south as opposed to conservative Democrats, as they have done in the past, make their job easier.
66 HusseinWorm Sarah Pailin being around makes the Democrats job easier. 😈
The more obnoxious morons the better.
Oh the irony of taking down George Bush’s picture everywhere, and hanging Obama’s picture in its place. Especially in the south.
G’day all,
Just bloomin’ marvellous to logon and find such eloquence while I’m still strugglin for words.
One of the great pleasures of this site is the quality of the writing, and never more appreciated than when immersed in non-anglo lingua.
My overriding feeling is not dissimilar to when Mandela walked free and was elected….the dignity, the integrity ,the inspiration. Different people and circumstances ofcourse, but they share an essence of decency and humanity .
Glad the Brissie-bash was such a success and it’s a real credit to you, Ecky.
Am still trying to guess who is who in Poss’s photos!
Like Eccles in the Goon Show..”ït’s good to be alive!”
Thank you to Catrina, and to all the bloggers for a great run thru of the electioncampaign.
A special thanks to DG, our resident pessimist, a useful antidote to what could become GroupThink on blogs like this. I’m glad you were wrong,DG, as I suspect you are too.,
ChrisB, you were the opposite end of the optimist/pessimist spectrum, & sometimes reminded me of a song in South Pacific. Still, you were pretty close to correct in the end. & you certainly have Senator Conroy pegged right!
To all you “ïgnorant loathing lefties”.. keep up the good fight! No one can blame YOU for helping Fielding become a Senator.
i watched the count in solitary squalor, shivering as the early Virginia results came in, but was comforted by the CNN analysts pointing out which precints were reporting. On the whole (not the hologram) Cnn did a fair job.. if only they’d had more analysis, and less talking heads and gimmicks!
As the day wore on I slipped comfortably into the arms of Bacchus, and have only now arisen to wish you all a Nellie Melba farewell.
Oh I share the pain. 🙂
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/obama_win_causes_obsessive
That hologram stuff was way out, I’m in two minds about it. On one hand, it did make it easier to focus on whoever was being interviewed at the time, on the other, it did make it easier to focus on whoever was being interviewed at the time 😆
73 Paddy, that was excellent – I am still rolling around laughing!
OK, forget the lofty rhetoric, the soaring metaphors, the exultation, the joy, and the sheer relief to see Obama home, why not spend a few moments gloating at the silly rightwing prognostications about how Obama could not win?
Enjoy!
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/11/06/bad_prediction/
…and have a little snicker, go on, you know you want to! LOL
I’m still reading this……and it’s bloody good!
http://www.newsweek.com/id/167582/page/1
76
Kirri
Oh…..sod it, alright…………………. 😆
Had to laugh. The winner of the ECV election prediction at the other place is……………………………RON!! LOL. He who told us mercilessly how awful Obama was and how he couldnt win (correctly) predicted a massive victory!!!!
Dems officially win Oregon- Senate now 58
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/05/jeff-merkley-declared-win_n_141667.html
Palin didnt know Africa was a continent. Unsurpising that Fox reporter waited until AFTER the election to report this
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/05/palin-didnt-know-africa-i_n_141653.html
77,
Yeah Paddy it’s great eh, I was reading it before as I feel I haven’t had enough US politics in my life lately.
72 Gippslander Thanks Gippslander, Conroy can’t succeed now no matter what. There is no way Obama would introduce the same after how the Internet helped make him. He would be shooting himself in the foot. Then the big three Google, Yahoo and MSN signing their pact sort of brings him undone. 😆
73 paddy That was funny. I’ll send it to my kids.
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/obama_win_causes_obsessive
81 Andrew I hope that woman takes control of the Republican Party.
She will destroy it single handedly.
Sarah Palin not knowing Africa was a continent, probably couldn’t find the Pacific Ocean on a map either.
The Kid has as a surge of goodwill behind him similar in intensity yet noble in motive when viewed alongside the surge of negativity BushCo fostered and harnessed after 9/11. With just a little bit of bloomin’ luck, by 2016 Obi will have delivered on enough “yes we cans” to become an eminence grise in more than appearance alone.
Delicious fare paddy, The Onion caramelises our kind……….again!
Ah, Kirri, the neocon brains-trust got it SO abysmally wrong. If they weren’t such mean-spirited sods perhaps we could be more charitable, but the vicious swine deserve every dollop of ridicule with which we can garnish upon them. Or fling upon them might be more correct usage. (as an elitist, one reserves the right to agonise without angst about book-learnin’ stuff like that).
By believing their own bullshit about Rove’s mystical and deadly Swift Boats and about the all-reaching persuasive power of the MSM, the “enemy” were able to organise unencumbered like a web-connected hive mind, and by instantaneously pinging their propaganda for the crap it was using You-Tube, On-zines, blogs, and texting etc., they played the bastards off a break. Tactically the McCain War-Room played jailbird chess and deserved the flogging they got from the black guy and his Team.
In McLuhan-speak, they lost control of The Message because the schmucks didn’t understand and therefore couldn’t exploit New Media.
But the kids in America sure knew wassup. So did ethnically Non-European Americans. Whole lotta righteous white folk too.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=-hWZqllm3mQ
Onya Gippslander, see you when your keyboard fingers get as itchy as Dame Nellie’s professionally recidivist tonsils did.
🙂
Obama Unveils Presidential Transition Team.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/05/politics/main4575025.shtml
Thanks, Megan.
The people in the pics exept Possum all said that their name was Spartacus.
Al Franken is less than 500 votes behind Coleman.
http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/main.results/#S
http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/20081105_location_location_location/
Late to the party, but still good value.
Bill Maher closed Friday night’s “New Rules” with a great recap of the 2008 election and why it’s been the best, most unpredictable race in history.
http://crooksandliars.com/silentpatriot/real-time-best-election-ever-recap
Hi all –
just arrived home after epic election trip. Thanks to all you gorgeous Obamabots- it was so great topactually meet you all and to be there for such a historic moment. It was actually too big to take in – I thought I would want to dance and party on but i actually fely quite overwhelmed. thanks KatieLou fro the pizza and wine – slept very well!!
And woke to this incredible new reality. In one way nothing changes, but in another everything has. Still trying to come to grips, like no doubt the rest of the world.
I haven’t had time to read all the posts but to all of you who weren’t there- we thought of you !!
And I did get to put my hand up Possum’s backside , so that was a plus 😉
92
PADDY Thats a ripper!
“we know they’re building the fence in the wrong place” LOL
The reader against the breeder Et al.
81
Andrew Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Palin didnt know Africa was a continent.
I bet she knew McCain was incontinent.. but stop! that’s unkind!!
There was a time when i thought reasonably highly of Ralph Nader.
I guess everything degenerates with time.
And Not very often you can agree with the Fuckers at Fox!
Nice little bit of to and fro!
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=XkoB4r9FSzY
This is one of the main reasons i wanted to see thw warmongering bastards shot out on their arses.
I was hoping BO may be able to get in there and put a stop to shit like this.
There is no fucken excuses for this shit!
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081104.wafghan1105/BNStory/International/home
95
Gipper
ROTFLOL!
The right stuff
Garrison gets it right again.
(except about the dog)
whoops link.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2008/11/05/happy_couple/