Heartland

Yeah, but that has been so obvious for a long time now, of course he can't fulfill the expectations. But a small change is better than no change.

More worrying is maybe *which* people have so high hopes about him. Prime ministers in Europe, all kinds of intellectuals, and even our .

Wonder when it will occur to, for example, the European left that he is pro-death penalty and pro-Israel, just to name two issues.

I'm willing to assume that at least some of his positions have been of the same status as 'campaign promises' and in some ways I'm hoping that the right's fears of him being some kind of crypto-socialist are actually true.

Pro-Israel: he's had enough problems with the Obama is a Muslin nuts, why the hell would he come out against Israel?

Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job

Obama looks, to be frank, very much like to be one of your ordinary run-of-the-mill bribed zionist-supporters.

Like i said elsewhere, i hope i'm wrong but looks to me like he's not afraid of going to war with Iran and he's not gonna pull troops out of Iraq and he's gonna add troops in Afghanistan. All in favour of israel. And let's see if funding israel is gonna stop....

As for him being black, i don't know what's great about that. It shouldn't be an issue - so why are some people happy that the president is black? Doesn't make him anymore honest or decent by default.

Good news is, he can't be worse than Bush. And maybe some minor improvements inside the US can be expected over the republican rule.

itnAklipse wrote:As for him being black, i don't know what's great about that. It shouldn't be an issue - so why are some people happy that the president is black?

Pardon me, but your ignorance is showing.

Oh yes, forgot to say:
Congratulations to our American cousins at any case!

Whilst i'm not a fan of Obama, McCain would most likely been far worse, and since the minor candidates would not have a chance in hell whatever happened (were i american i would've voted for one of them just as an objexion), i guess the best happened, no matter how little better it is than the alternative.

I don't think he's against Israel. I do think, however, that he is not as big a supporter as previous presidents. Incidentally, that's why I tend to think that if they're going to hit Iran's nuclear program, they'd do it between now and the 20th of January--they don't expect any support from O, while W can provide a certain degree of diplomatic cover. I don't think Israel see the Democratic party as an ally.

markfiend wrote:I'm willing to assume that at least some of his positions have been of the same status as 'campaign promises' and in some ways I'm hoping that the right's fears of him being some kind of crypto-socialist are actually true.

Pro-Israel: he's had enough problems with the Obama is a Muslin nuts, why the hell would he come out against Israel?

Haha, yeah would be fun to watch all reactions at least "Tomorrow we start with nationalizing Microsoft &co, further measures to be announced"

Regarding Israel: I didn't mean Pro-Israel in an Arab way (ie allow the country to exist at all), but in an American way (continue sending billions of dollars each year as an immense military support).

Regarding expectations: He doesn't have much space of action either, sadly enough, because George W seems to have done nothing but increase the flow of money out of the US, and I wonder if there's anything at all left for Obama to invest.

Yeah, one of my favourite bloggers just put up a post: The Glass is Half Empty

I think we should have a little breathing room before getting too p*ssed off

*edit. 'kinell, I seem to have lost the ability to type.

You know what? I really don't like the sort of "anyone who disagrees with me is morally bad" tone that Myers is adopting. That is not exactly conducive to civil discourse. One the things I like about the discussions here is that with one notable exception, people disagree nicely and with good humor.

In fact, he reminds me of the man with the one giant ear in Nietzsche's Zarathustra*: as a specialist, he looks at the world in terms of the physical sciences, and it never occurs to him that "the curse of religiosity" might not be such a curse after all, even if it isn't true. Granted, what I'm suggesting is not exactly a popular view in these quarters




* based on reading one whole post. Not exactly a considered judgment, is it?

The numbers are interesting. If I'm remembering correctly, Bush beat John Kerry by winning about 62 million votes. Obama won... just about 62 and a half million, which is not a big gain--especially considering that Kerry had (I think) 59 million and McCain only got 55 million+ votes. Thus, there were actually less votes cast than last time.

That means that we can't credit the big O's victory to the youth vote or to new voters, at least not easily, without having to remove a bigger chunk of the electorate (which, though not impossible, does seem unlikely). Who stayed home, then? Based on the initial numbers and fuzzy memory, I'm guessing that Republicans and conservative/libertarian independents stayed home, since many of them viewed McCain as far too much of a proponent of big government control of various things. The bailout deal was probably the last nail in the coffin, but the coffin was built in part by W himself, who became a lead anchor on the McCain ticket--and basically started to set himself up to be such after the last election, since in the last four years he has not bothered to justify or defend his policies to the American people. That actually makes the relative closeness of the election rather remarkable.

I don't give PZ a free pass on everything he posts by any means. I view him a bit like the Jeremy Clarkson of the atheist world (which is a reference I suppose will fly straight over your head )

He pushes things to the extreme in order to provoke a reaction sometimes, a strategy which, like you say, is not exactly conducive to civil discourse. It can downright backfire at times, particularly the 'crackergate' fiasco.

And I really enjoy the occasional bit of biology he posts.

I see you've added another post while I've been typing this, I'd guess the religious right stayed home (although of the ballot propositions, while things like Colorado Proposition 48* were heavily defeated, all of the anti-gay-marriage measures went through, so maybe not.)

*ham-fisted measure meant to provide an foundation for anti-abortion activism, but could be interpreted to ban hormonal contraceptives, as defining a pair of identical twins as one person, and other nonsense.

Re: "crackergate," all I can say is wow, that is wholly pathetic. It's nothing more than a puerile attempt to be as offensive as possible. It's juvenile, and honestly, it's the sort of asshattery that inclines me to not take anything else he has to say seriously.

sultan2075 wrote:The numbers are interesting. If I'm remembering correctly, Bush beat John Kerry by winning about 62 million votes. Obama won... just about 62 and a half million, which is not a big gain--especially considering that Kerry had (I think) 59 million and McCain only got 55 million+ votes. Thus, there were actually less votes cast than last time.

That means that we can't credit the big O's victory to the youth vote or to new voters, at least not easily, without having to remove a bigger chunk of the electorate (which, though not impossible, does seem unlikely). Who stayed home, then? Based on the initial numbers and fuzzy memory, I'm guessing that Republicans and conservative/libertarian independents stayed home, since many of them viewed McCain as far too much of a proponent of big government control of various things. The bailout deal was probably the last nail in the coffin, but the coffin was built in part by W himself, who became a lead anchor on the McCain ticket--and basically started to set himself up to be such after the last election, since in the last four years he has not bothered to justify or defend his policies to the American people. That actually makes the relative closeness of the election rather remarkable.

Nope, there were more votes cast this time around - 136.6 million, opposed to the 122.3 million last time around.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i34a ... QD948LJRG0

The popular vote numbers you mention don't take into account third party candidates (who, according to this, looks like they got about 1.5 million votes combined between all of them)
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/result ... andidates/

There's also quite a few state precincts that haven't reported their exact numbers yet - but they were able to call the election anyways, because enough had reported in and one candidate had a sizable enough lead that the electoral votes could be awarded and the state was called - the last precincts holding out don't really matter at this point. Results at the top of this page says 97% are in as of now - as I've been watching, Obama's lead over McCain just keeps getting bigger. Here in America, it really is considered a landslide victory, more so when you look at the electoral votes - especially when you look at the Bush/Kerry race of four years ago, where it was 286 to 252 as opposed to the whopping 349 to 173 of Obama's victory. Not to mention how many red states turned blue this year - my state has gone red every election since 1964 - and Obama won it. It's a huge deal - you can clearly see the difference between the two maps, pretty interesting.

2004: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/ ... president/

2008: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23887017

According to that link I posted up there, Republican states like Wyoming and South Dakota saw turnout drop too.

Re: "crackergate": I kind of see what PZ was trying to accomplish. I think it was intended as an act of solidarity with the student who stole a eucharist, and then had (among other things) death threats and accusations of hate crime levelled against him. I think PZ was trying to point out the ridiculousness behind threatening someone's life over what is, in effect, "just a cracker". But in retrospect it's hard to defend.

In other news, Rudy Giuliani is getting a head start for next time.

Oy - we just finished the longest campaign ever, at about 2 years, and they're already starting on the next? I'm exhausted - I think I need to lay off the newspapers, blogs, internet articles, etc for a bit.

And, on a side note markfiend - love the avatar. Can I join?

markfiend wrote:My main worry now is that, similarly to the upbeat feeling in the air when Blair won the '97 election here, expectations will be so high that Obama can't help but fail to live up to them.

It's harder to judge Blair fairly when you consider he was hamstrung by an effective joint Premiereship with Gordon Brown. A lot of Blair's plans for reform at home were blocked by him( Frank Field's welfare reforms for example). I suspect it was that which made Blair try and gain a reputation by his foreign policy, unfortunately disastrously.
If Obama is given a free hand, he might turn out to be what we all hoped Blair would be.

Quiff Boy wrote:Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job

Thats hilarious

As a little melancholic sidenote to the joyous celebration we should note that with (obligatory ) The O (obligatory ) now having rightfully ascended His throne comes the sad fact that we'll be seeing a lot less of the magnificent Miss Wasilla, the only funny person America has produced in the last 900 decades. A shame. Maybe Andrew can pick her up on his way home and make her pop up as background singer in the upcoming Sisters single video "Quantum Of Spite".

I hope we have seen the back of Bible Spice, but I wouldn't bet on it.

any what he's gonna do it'll be still better than Mr. B - it's hard to be stupider then he is.
woo-hoo

markfiend wrote:Bible Spice

I can't help but wonder if the states is the same space as we were in 1997.

Harvey Winston wrote:I can't help but wonder if the states is the same space as we were in 1997.

See DeWinter's post above.

DeWinter wrote:If Obama is given a free hand, he might turn out to be what we all hoped Blair would be.