One of the commentators noted that it's seemed for some time that McCain was aware this election was full of issues bigger than he could encompass, that Obama is the right man at the right time--and although he couldn't admit that aloud, his concession speech hints in that direction.
It puts his campaign actions in a different light--someone had mentioned that his first debate with Obama looked like basic fear: that McCain looked like a man who knew he'd lost, and was trying not to flub his lines too badly on his way out.
Palin, however, seems to have convinced herself that they really were going to win. She surrounded herself with supporters, avoided (or was kept away from) all contact with questions that would indicate doubts, and rode the wave of excitement at her own rallies, while ignoring that Obama's rallies were just as emotional... and larger.
@57: Marriage has always been a civil issue; that's why ship's captains could perform them at sea, why mayors can perform them. Nations that have religious -based laws have marriage laws that match the dominant religion's preferences; nations that don't, have marriage laws that are broader than any one religion's. (The US will allow and acknowledge your marriage even if the Catholic Church won't.)
Am seriously considering getting divorced--husband & I don't want to take part in a discriminatory, religiously-biased institution. And domestic partnership comes with the same legal rights, anyway--isn't that what the anti-marriage crowd says?
In a true no-holds-barred capitalism, there are no police--only private security guards. And no health care for the poor... which means epidemics sweep across the country. No worker's comp, no unions, no civil rights unless you pay for the protection thereof.
I'm annoyed at how blatantly the republican party wants to bring back the age of the robber-barons.
Would love to see some CA counties stop issuing marriage licenses altogether, insisting that they're forbidden by law to discriminate by sex, and they can't offer licenses to couples of some genders and not others.
California state proposition results: as of 10:40 PST (that's oh-gods-thirty for you easterners), Prop 8 is passing 53-47, with 32% precincts reporting. :: as of 10:40 PST (that's oh-gods-thirty for you easterners), Prop 8 is passing 53-47, with 32% precincts reporting. :<(
But it started at 57-43 with 8%, so I'm hopeful that all the conservative precincts get counted first.
And pinning my *real* hopes on the CA Supreme Court being ready to announce, "no, you can't take away basic civil rights with a simple majority; you need a constitutional revision to cut a person's potential spouse pool in half."
Arachne @131: One drinks when a newscast uses an election-day buzzword.
Drink for the phrase "exit poll."
Drink for any mention of voter fraud or disenfranchisement.
Sip for announcement of voting hours; drink for announcement that the polls are closed.
Sip for the phrase "Ahead/behind by ## points;" drink for the phrase "too close to call."
Drink for any candidate announced as winning anything.
The idea is to get too drunk to care about which of your issues/candidates didn't go the way you wanted.
John L @94: Have a friend who lives in Georgia; she says several of Palin's supposed Repub appeal-points flopped badly:So McCain may have been assuming that television soundbites would carry the traditionally republican majority of the deep south for him, when he'd picked a running-mate that drove them to look at the other side.
- The bible belt is not fond of "Joe Six-Pack"; drinking is a vice they don't approve of;
- Environmentalism is important because "God gave us stewardship over the earth;"
- "Hockey mom?" What's hockey? Isn't that a foreign sport?
- Why is this woman with a small baby playing at politics, anyway?
Brooks @ 68 - I suspect that, regardless of today's vote, it'll eventually have to go before the US Supreme Court, which will have to overturn DOMA as discriminatory.
Fortunately, there's a template... you can almost grab the anti-miscegenation law arguments and rulings and replace the word "race" with "sex" and hand them back in. It's downright frightening how near-identical the rhetoric is. (About the only notable difference is in the phrasing about children. Not the issue--the anti-marriage crowd claims to be "concerned for the children" in both cases. But the phrasing is perforce a bit different.)
I am greatly hopeful, after reading some of the background on CA law, that even if 8 passes, it'll be shot down by the CA Supreme Court. Constitutional amendments need a basic majority--constitutional revisions need much more.
And the claim that this is an amendment, not a revision, is easy to debunk: if it said "California only recognizes marriages between a white person and a white person" instead of "a [male person] and a [female person]," nobody would think that was a minor change. Not even if they said that non-white people were welcome to have "civil unions" with "all the benefits of marriage."
But I hope it doesn't get to that, and that all the unlikely voters heading to the polls for Obama, and all the ultra-liberals and freaks who don't normally vote, and the thousands of newlyweds, are enough to vote down discrimination.
I've been watching PunditKitchen pics, and noting that it seems to laugh *at* McCain and *with* Obama.
I would love a nice long stretch where the political jokes don't have an edge of hysteric fear behind them.
Handed in absentee ballot this morning.
We don't mail them anymore, after the one time one got returned. (Stupid post office picked the wrong side of the envelope to deliver to.) But dropping off an absentee ballot on Vote Day takes less than 5 minutes and gets me the nifty "I Voted" sticker.
To flame, or not to flame, that is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler that the forum suffer
The slurs and affronts of outrageous critics
Or to make words against the accusations,
And by replying swell them? To lurk; to wait;
No more; and by our silence let pass by
Annoyance and the thousand openings
For conversation, 'tis a situation
Desirable to some. To lurk, to wait;
To wait: perchance to leave: ay, there's the rub;
For if we wait and lurk, have we not left?
Have we not clickéd off this forum's page?
This ties into my thoughts on the Prop 8 in California polling. Prop 8 would eliminate same-sex marriage in CA; it's (of course) hotly contested. the "Yes on 8" numbers are growing in the polls... but I suspect that a great many "No on 8" voters are excluded from the polls. Cell phones vs landlines is one issue; "willingness to talk to pollster" is another--many same-sex marriage supporters are of varying "alternative" lifestyles, and avoid any contact with official statistics-gatherers. And, of course, many are new voters, or people who rarely vote, but this issue will bring them to the polls.
The yes-on-8 crowd tend to be regularly voters; they're over-represented in polls.
From DailyKos (and yeah, I know how reliable and unbiased that is): It would seem as if the magic figure of $700 billion, the 'bailout' needed for Lehman Brothers, is the same as the value of the securities held by the Fed...
Sam and Dean were fightin'
a Pennsylvania coven
An' provin' that Philadelphia is
The city of brotherly lovin'An’ it’s who’ll slash ye this timeCaptain Sparrow staggered in
Who’ll slash ye noo?
The lass who slashed ye last, lad,
She no will slash ye noo.
A-lookin' for someone to boff
For Captain Jack had been on the rum
and now he was jackin' off.An’ it’s who’ll slash ye this time
Who’ll slash ye noo?
The lass who slashed ye last, lad,
She no will slash ye noo.
#17
What, you question the fine genealogists who work for David Jenkins? Of course, the servants of the Dark One will have hidden the true history of McCain's family, and used anglicized names, rather than their proper ones. And perhaps this cover-up extends back through generations, and "Mihai" is the name his great-great grandfather should have had, if his great-great grandfather had carried his true father's name, rather than that of the man who married his mother when he was an infant.
Or something like that.
People who note that "Mihai" is probably a variant spelling of Michael, meaning "who resembles God?" are just trying to clutter the issue with facts. The important part is that it's Roman, and good biblical scholars have tied it to McCain.
There's plenty of crazy to go around.
McCain the Antichrist?: Jenkins said his teams suspicions were further heightened when genealogical research showed that McCain’s great-grandfather was actually not John McCain, but John Mihai. Mihai is an ancient Romanian name, and according to Bible-believing Christians, the Antichrist is likely to be a Romanian. “What clinched it for us was that the name Mihai means ‘who is like the Lord,’†said Jenkins. “As far as we’re concerned, that was enough. It means that McCain might easily pretend to be the Redeemer.â€
My department makes IT twitchy.
The rest of the company (or what I've seen of it) is built on the premise: one person, one computer. Set that person and computer's permissions according to what they should be, and it doesn't matter exactly which part is "person" and which part is "computer."
I work in digital image processing. We have a staff of about 8 (I forget how many the night crew are), and 11 computers in 7 workstations. (11 PCs, that is; 3 other computers with a proprietary weird OS for image database manipulation only. We export from that to our "normal" computers.) With slightly-to-greatly different software on each, for different processes.
IT wants us to be logged in as ourselves when we're on a computer. Which seems reasonable, I suppose. Except that sometimes, we swap around several times in an hour--and it would mean every computer would need every person's profile, because that's how Windows works. Oh, and then we'd need logins for the occasional temps.
A login arrangement like social networking sites would be wonderful; they manage to allow individuals varying access to software and files, and logging in and out is simple... but our IT dept isn't going to rewrite LiveJournal code to allow various people access to Photoshop, or the archive drive, just so they can keep track of who-renamed-which-tifs.
The IT crew has my sympathy. Apparently, having six people logged in as "scanning-employee" gives the servers fits.
Slashfic written. Sort of. I'm not used to writing worksafe slash; I'm never sure if it's still "slash" if there are no sexual organs. Or orgasms. But given the participants, orgasms are certainly not expected.
AP and RIAA tie the knot. Or at least, are fit to be tied.
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|---|---|
| 2008 | 22 |
| 2007 | 1 |
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