Category: politics

You may have already won!

To: United States of America
Northern Hemisphere, Planet Earth
#3 Solar System Way

From: President’s Clearing House, Awards Division

Dear Occupant,

CONGRATULATIONS!! You are a winner! You may have ALREADY WON these fabulous VALUABLE PRIZES:

* Front-row TICKETS to a history-changing event!
* The keys to a SHINY NEW optimism!
* A SPACIOUS and expansive outlook!
* Restored dignity and respect from EXCITING destinations around the globe!

In addition, you may soon qualify for GRAND PRIZES including:
* Improved access to health care and education for you and your family and many more!
* Exciting new alternative energy resources!
* Diminution of poverty!
* Diplomacy!
* And much, much MORE!

In order to CASH IN on these amazing prizes, you must ACT NOW, or the opportunity will pass you by. In order to redeem yourselves, you must continue the momentum for change.

Sincerely,
The Awards Division

Disclaimer: You need not subscribe to this idealism in order to benefit.

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This post was brought to you by this week’s Monday Mission, hosted by Painted Maypole, which offers FABULOUS PRIZES for posts written in the style of a “congratulations, you’ve just won” letter.

Seriously, though, this election has had me so excited that I feel like I’ve won the lottery. I have been alternately giddy and moved to tears. At the same time, I know that Obama’s election is a step in the right direction, not the final destination. (A breathtakingly huge step, mind you.) I am eager to see what’s going to happen. And I want to figure out what I can do to help bring about the changes that I believe are possible.

euphoria

We did it, we did it, we did it!

Less than 12 hours ago, John and I went to vote at one of the local schools. We waited till after picking up Phoebe from daycare so that we could bring her with us. Of course we brought Theo, too. One day, we will be able to tell them that they were there when we voted for Barack Obama.

And as you all know, at 11:00 p.m., the election was called for Obama.

I felt like dancing in the street. (But I don’t live in that kind of town.)

making history

There are events that affect us collectively more than others. All too often these momentous events are tragedies. Natural disasters. Attacks. Assassinations. Calamities. These events leave marks in our collective memory, as well as in our history books.

What were you doing when …?

In my lifetime, I can remember quite a few such events. Where I was when I heard the news, saw the footage. How I felt, what I was doing.

Tomorrow, I feel like I’m going to have the chance to witness something monumentally positive. I feel like I’m marching for women’s suffrage. Like I’m marching on Washington for civil rights. I feel like I’m helping to tear down the Berlin Wall.

I feel like I’ll get to see us landing on the moon.

One small step. One giant leap forward.

Progress in this country has moved slowly. But this election shows that we’ve still been, as a society, making small steps forward. I am excited that we may see improvements in areas and issues that I care deeply about. Education. Dipolmacy. Fighting poverty. Making healthcare available to all.

Not least of all, though, I am excited that we will get to see a Black man elected to the highest office in this country. I am thrilled that I get to see this event in my lifetime. That I get to have a vote in this. That my vote will be counted.

And I am even more thrilled that kids in this country will grow up accepting this as normal. That my own children will grow up accepting this as normal. It will be just a fact of history.

Obama 2008

vote

obama-kid

obama_baby1

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Images: The top one is one that I’d seen in an email making the rounds, and sent to me by mother. I looked for it online, and found it at Yes We Can Hold Babies, where you can see lots more photos of Obama and babies.

I’d also like to direct you to some more photos that have moved me. First, Girls 4 Obama, found via Bitch, PhD. And second, a collection of photos by Callie Shell, a photojournalist. (Sent to me by John.) I was particularly impressed by the one showing the worn soles of Obama’s shoes.

The other photos above are of Phoebe and Theo. My friend Erica, who has been working her tail off volunteering for the Obama campaign, got us the buttons. Thank you, Erica!

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Oh, and for my word of the day, let’s say enfranchisement.

pants blogger slacks off

I haven’t really been slacking off, but I really wanted to use that title.

Anyhow, it’s been a busy week. We had our Halloween party last night, and I spent a lot of time the past few days cleaning, organizing, running errands and generally running around like a chicken with its head cut off. (That was not my costume by the way.) Maybe I’ll have a chance to write about the party (and our real costumes) a bit later. Right now we are running out the door to Ikea, resuming our quest to get Phoebe a big girl bed.

Like Magpie, there are a lot of posts that I have been working on. Some are drafts, some are still lurking around in my head. I’ll filch¹ Magpie’s idea to post a list of posts I have been thinking about this past week:

  1. I have several ThThTh posts in progress, but couldn’t find the time to shine one up enough to post. (Those things take a long time to do when I use images.) You almost got to see my ass post on Thursday. Well, you almost got to see a list of donkeys…
  2. Phoebe has entered the “why” stage. It sort of sneaked up on us.
  3. All this talk about Palin “dropping her Gs” makes me want to write a phonetics/sociophonetics post. (I had great plans to write on for this past Tuesday’s “Talk Like Sarah Palin Day” business.)
  4. I can’t stop thinking/reading/talking about the election.
  5. I am feeling really exicted about the election and the (dare I say it?) likelihood that Obama will win.
  6. Did I mention that I am thinking a lot about the election? And I am feeling some powerful optimism. My Republican best friend and I can talk about politics without fighting for the first time in our 20-year friendship. Today John sent me this link to a very short post this morning and I got choked up. And then this line from Magpie’s post gave me chills:

    My Republican father – who told me the other day that he thought Obama had the chance to be one of the best presidents ever.

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¹ The word filch is also something that I filched from Magpie…²
² I am declaring today to be International Filch From Magpie Day.³
³ Which reminds me, I should update on the last idea I filched from Magpie, for Blog Action Day. I owe Unicef some money…

election news in the Republic of Pants

Election day in the Democratic Republic of Pants is rapidly approaching, and excitement is growing over the race between the two major candidates, Trousers McPants and Corduroy O’Bloomer.

Speeches by both candidates have been striking some cords with large sections of the Pants Republic, leaving many pants feeling divided over the issues.

McPants has long suggested that the opposition pants are cut more for style than substance, and of a fashion that has not been worn long enough to stand the test of time. Recently, the McPants campaign has appeared at times to attempt to stain the very fabric of O’Bloomer’s character, bringing up associations with outfits that are considered inappropriate for the pair of pants that will cover the biggest seat of the Pants government. O’Bloomer’s campaign has responded that such threadbare associations are not material to the election.

At a rally last week, McPants promised that he would “beat the pants off” O’Bloomer, an off the cuff remark that led to outcries from the O’Bloomer camp. In response, supporters of O’Bloomer have suggested that Trousers McPants is not only cut of the same cloth as the incumbent, Jodpur Britches, but even getting to be frayed around the edges.

It appears that more and more prominent Pants Republic citizens are coming out of the closet to declare their belief that O’Bloomer is overall the stronger pair of pants, leaving some McPants supporters feeling that they’ve been hung out to dry. Among O’Bloomer supporters, the feeling is strong that if McPants wins the election, the population of the Pants Republic will be taken to the cleaners.

After the recent economic downturn, with recession looming and fears that the Pants economy is coming apart at the seams, citizens of the Pants Republic are eager to learn how the candidates will address the issues. As the Pants treasury does not have infinitely deep pockets, many wonder if the Pants government will need to tighten its belt.

Come hell or highwaters, one pair of pants will be chosen in the coming weeks. And right now, it looks like the Republic is ready to change its pants.

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This post was written for this week’s Monday Mission, hosted by Painted Maypole, which solicits posts in the style of campaign coverage.

Obama: a little too awesome

Here’s Obama’s speech from the Alfred E. Smith Foundation dinner last night¹, in which we learn the truth about his name:

Many of you know I got my name, Barack, from my father. What you may not know is Barack is actually Swahali for ‘That One.’ And I got my middle name from somebody who obviously didn’t think I’d ever run for President.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Edits from 10/18:
For those of you wondering about the post title: we also learn about his hidden weakness:

If I had to name my greatest strength, I guess it would be my humility. My greatest weakness: it’s possible that I’m a little too awesome.

Edit from 10/21:
The clips I’d had up last appear to have been removed from YouTube. The clips I’m linking to above may not be up for long. Here’s the full dinner, with both Obama and McCain’s speeches and intros, can be found here. It will probably stay up, since it was put there by CSPAN. It)

There’s also a version up at crooks and liars that can be downloaded or viewed.
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Hat-tip to crooks and liars, via la loca.

¹ McCain also gave a speech, but I haven’t watced it yet.

an excuse note

Dear World,

Please forgive the recent behavior of our country, especially during this election season. Please understand that it has been a difficult 8 years for us, and that we have taken leave of our sanity. (See attached note from doctor.) We hope to recover from this ugliness soon, and will hopefully be able to make up for it come January. We hope that we will be given ample opportunity to earn extra credit in the areas of diplomacy, health care reform and intensive efforts to break ourselves of our debilitating fossil fuel addiction. Should we fall short in our efforts to make progress towards these goals, we will expect to receive detention and a very poor grade on our global report card.

Sincerely,
Some of US in the U.S.

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This post was written for this week’s Monday Mission, hosted by Painted Maypole, which called for posts in the form of an excuse letter.

Can we, or can’t we?

It’s been a great relief to me that the race for the Democratic presidential nomination has finally ended. I am thrilled that Barack Obama will be the Democratic candidate. (At the same time feel some pangs of sadness of what could have been. I still like Hillary Clinton, overall, frustrated as I was with her campaign and some of her positions.¹)

I am both excited and optimistic about the idea that Obama can be the next US President.

I am also, at least equally, frightened and a bit nauseated by the possibility that he will not be.

I know many of you have seen these videos. They came out in February. But it’s come to my attention recently that some of my friends have not yet. This seems as good a time as any to share them myself.

First, the “Yes we can” video by Will.i.am and others, which was distributed in February or so. It takes parts of Obama’s speech, and integrates them into a powerful song:

Next, the response videos, which came out only days after the Obama “Yes We Can” video. (If you haven’t seen the above video, or haven’t seen it in a while, you should at least watch a bit of it before seeing the responses.)

Here is john.he.is:

In looking up john.he.is, I also came across this other video that came out right around the last one, but which I hadn’t seen: “No, you can’t.”

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In somewhat related news, you have probaby realized that I’m a self-proclaimed bleeding-heart liberal. Magpie has put together a badge which she has encouraged others to steal and share. I thought I’d oblige:

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¹ I was going to put this bit as a footnote, rather than a parenthetical. But a friend has suggested that I am “headed down the wrong path” with all my recent footnotes. I don’t know what she means. I can stop any time I want.²

² Really, I can.

family outing

As those of you who have not recently been in a coma, had memories erased during an alien abduction, or who have other reasons for not being aware of it know, the political primaries are in full swing here in the US. (I realize that quite a few of you who tend to read this are not from the US, but I’m assuming that you have not managed to escape some of the US-centered news.) Today is Super Tuesday, a day when 24 states are holding primary elections. My state is one of them. And I’m happy to say that I voted.

John and I went together, and we brought Phoebe along. (She didn’t get to vote.) I’m not sure I’ve ever voted in a primary before. It seems not in this town, at least. I was a bit startled that they shout out your party affiliation as they cross off your name and give you your ballot. It was a bit disconcerting to hear the shouts of “name name, number blah street, Republican” for the 3 people in line ahead of us. I was afraid they were going to turn on us when they heard that we were (gasp) Democrats. I was heartened by hearing a couple of other shouts of “Democrat” while we were there, though. I suspect that we are not in the majority in this town.

It’s been a difficult process for me to choose a candidate. There were a number of candidates I could get behind. Just over a year ago, I mentioned that I was excited that Hillary Clinton had announced her candidacy. I was practically giddy from the thought that there were people who truly believed that she had a chance at the presidency, that people believed a woman could be US president not only in my lifetime, but now. But even though I wanted to support her for a number of reasons, I’ve continued to be unhappy with her position on the war in Iraq.

We can’t really know how Obama would have voted on the war had he been in the Senate in 2003. But we do know that at that time, he spoke out against what he considered to be an unneccessary war. (Thanks to TIV for posting his speech from that time.)

So I’ve been leaning more and more towards Obama. I was considering Edwards. Various quizzes I took told me that my views most closely matched Kucinich. (But of course those quizzes didn’t take into account views on UFOs. I think mine differ somewhat.) A couple of quizzes showed my views as overlapping roughly the same amount for Obama and Clinton. A quiz I found more recently, via pgoodness (and possibly some other places that I’m not recalling now) was the electoral compass. I like this one in that it showed how it placed the candidates on a map of social and economic issues, and gave links about how it calculated those positions. I was able to see how my views overlapped and diverged from theirs on particular issues. Looking at these questions really helped me to consider the candidates more objectively. (And holy crap, I’m frightened by what I saw in the Republican camp.)

If you haven’t voted already, vote when your time comes. (BipolarLawyerCook wrote a great call-to-polls post you should check out, too.)