DigitusImpudicus

Don't forget to Vote!

Don't forget to Vote!

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Just one more reminder to get out and vote Tuesday.  Support your candidates or at least vote against the persons you DON'T want to win!  It can be discouraging when you hear about voter fraud and long lines at the polls, but remember that many people gave their lives so we can have a voice in electing our leaders.

A few years back my wife and I stayed at "The Balsams" in Dixville Notch, NH.  It's WAAAY up there, even parts of Canada are south!  It's famous for being the first place in the USA to cast ballots on eelction day.  They open at midnight on election day.  "The Ballot Room" drips with history; its walls covered with pics of leaders and dignitaries who've visited (shilled? campaigned?) there.  Now I always think of that place when it's time to vote.

 

VOTE!  It's your civic duty!  It'll make you feel good.

81,552 views 49 replies
Reply #26 Top

No, but his campaign staff sure the frak are 2004 redux. Idiots. If I were a McCain supporter that "idiots" would be prefaced with a long string of profanity.

 

More OMFG stupid than 2004 redux.  Bush ran an outstanding campaign.  McStupid ran a "how can I best lose this election by shitting on my party at the last minute" campaign.  Pork filled bailout bill?  Check.  Drop hints of using tax dollars to buy mortgages and give shit away to people that can't afford it?  Check.  Fucking tard...

 

May he not run in 2012 and stick to being the war hero senator half of us want to kill half the time but don't because he's the only fucking senator that doesn't add earmarks into bills.

Reply #27 Top

Quoting psychoak, reply 1

  Drop hints of using tax dollars to buy mortgages and give shit away to people that can't afford it?  Check.  Fucking tard...

  

 

The way you put it is not the way I would have said it but this is essentially the issue that put me on the fence as someone who would otherwise be a solid McCain supporter. McCain has traditionally been a good supporter of free trade so I had assumed he understood why. The idea of using government money to keep an asset bubble inflated was totally absurd. Even more damaging in my opinion that the protectionist ideas Obama flirted with his primary. 

 

While McCain gave a great acceptance speech, his airings on economic matters during the debates was rather worrying to say the least. 

 

Not that I had a vote but that alone would have been extremely close to losing it for me. 

Reply #28 Top

It looks like America is dead, Obama won.  I'm still keeping my guns, no matter what he says though.(I wish I was a few years older)

Reply #30 Top

I'm with ya and ready to take back the colonies, mate!

You might want to reconsider that.  With our deficit as it is, you wouldn't be getting a very good deal.  ;)

Reply #31 Top

So why is it the only good speech mccnain has done this entire election was after our country voted in obama? 

Reply #32 Top

I know that was his best speech ever during the campaign.

 

Ok dose any one else on the west coast get upset that they don’t even wait for our vote to get counted before they decide who won???

Reply #33 Top

Ok dose any one else on the west coast get upset that they don’t even wait for our vote to get counted before they decide who won???

I'm a Florida boy who finds that bothersome, but I'm a lapsed civics teacher and support the idea of changing over to a 5-member executive council instead of this king-for-a-while crap. We only need a solitary exec if *Congress* declares war. Y'all should have your own regional rep on the council, no questions about New Yorkers or Texans moving your cheese, or mine.

Reply #34 Top

Quoting EmperorThrawn, reply 7


I know that was his best speech ever during the campaign.

 

Ok dose any one else on the west coast get upset that they don’t even wait for our vote to get counted before they decide who won???

It's called projecting, and they've gotten -fairly- good at it (as well as managing to figure out how not to make the mistakes they made in '00).  But yes, seeing them call states where only 1-5% of the precincts were reporting was somewhat comical.

Reply #35 Top

It was taken from the 'exit polls', probably.

As it turns out, California had a ~2/3 majority for Obama. And with 55 EV (is any state higher?), that pretty much gave it to Obama. Hawaii was even higher, at 75%.

(I find it rather funny that a few 'key' states are mentioned, but CA is left out - even though CA has the most EV.)

 

If the actual count refutes the projected count, you can be sure that it will be noticed.

But, ya, I know what you mean. I live in CA. It was a couple seconds before 8PM here (poll closing time) when the banners went up for Obama.

 

Personally, I think it was a setup from the beginning. McCain's concession speech was his best moment of his entire campaign. It seems like he was just itching to lose, from beginning to end. He seemed dumb and stupid, until that eloquent moment.

 

Obama is the 'pretty boy'. And, he took it as such. Let's see what he does with it, now that he has it.

And personally, I consider him as the single most greatest danger in this world. By comparison, I would put him (with world leaders) as to Creflo Dollar or T.D. Jakes (is with Christianity).

Reply #36 Top

Quoting Moosetek13, reply 10


(I find it rather funny that a few 'key' states are mentioned, but CA is left out - even though CA has the most EV.)
  

 

For the same reason Texas is left out. I could have told you how they would vote a year ago.

 

Florida is the arch-key state. Both large in terms of EV and very likely to swing either way. 

Reply #37 Top

Agreed-battleground states are the only states anyone really cares about.

Reply #38 Top

Interesting is'nt it how Obama only got 4% more votes than Kerry or 2% more tha Bush and yet won a substial victory. Still dispite the differences Obama and McCain agree on far more than they disagree. Their differneces on how a country should operate are so marginal as to appear non-existant to anyone not living in the modern western world. 

Reply #39 Top

Quoting KingBingo, reply 13
Interesting is'nt it how Obama only got 4% more votes than Kerry or 2% more tha Bush and yet won a substial victory. Still dispite the differences Obama and McCain agree on far more than they disagree. Their differneces on how a country should operate are so marginal as to appear non-existant to anyone not living in the modern western world. 

The whole "landslide" question is slippery in our system because of the Electoral College; this was an electoral landslide, but a bit over 46% of folks voted for Mr. McCain, and that's unarguably serious support. Even looking at just the popular vote, the reason Mr. Obama's results are impressive is that, with the exception of the war-warped 2004 election, it's been a while since we had a president with a clear majority of the popular vote.

Me, I still want a party-based parliamentary system and a plural executive except during a real war, like we had back in the '40s.

Edit: I don't want my "real war" comment to be taken as any disrespect for those serving in uniform. It is about our decades-long practice of ignoring the Constitution and letting presidents unilaterally start wars that are, IMO, never truly legal because Congress has been abdicating its responsibility. This is also a bipartisan problem.

Reply #40 Top

Their differences on how a country should operate are so marginal as to appear non-existant to anyone not living in the modern western world

The platform is just the tip of the iceberg.  The people behind and below the candidate are where substantial differences and starkly non-populist ideology comes into play.  Look at the people a President appoints, the ones he surrounds himself with, the ones who control what information goes to and from the Oval office.  Look at the new heads of the DHS, the Treasury, the CIA, the EPA, the FCC. 

A president's decisions, if all goes according to plan, have very little influence on the way the country operates.  The people who he gives jobs to make the decisions that end up mattering.

Reply #41 Top

Quoting Josef086, reply 6
So why is it the only good speech mccnain has done this entire election was after our country voted in obama? 

It was because McCain was a doer, not a speaker.  Unfortunately the good talker won.X(

Reply #42 Top

The whole "landslide" question is slippery in our system because of the Electoral College; this was an electoral landslide, but a bit over 46% of folks voted for Mr. McCain, and that's unarguably serious support. Even looking at just the popular vote, the reason Mr. Obama's results are impressive is that, with the exception of the war-warped 2004 election, it's been a while since we had a president with a clear majority of the popular vote.

Me, I still want a party-based parliamentary system and a plural executive except during a real war, like we had back in the '40s.

Edit: I don't want my "real war" comment to be taken as any disrespect for those serving in uniform. It is about our decades-long practice of ignoring the Constitution and letting presidents unilaterally start wars that are, IMO, never truly legal because Congress has been abdicating its responsibility. This is also a bipartisan problem.

I can't speak for those that are serving, but I think they will can understand where you are coming from.

Reply #43 Top

D.C. was 93% for obma 

and i know the "why" for the calling, i just dont like it  

Reply #44 Top

Me, I still want a party-based parliamentary system and a plural executive except during a real war, like we had back in the '40s.

 

American government back in the FDR days was as fascist as it got, shame on you.

 

Reply #45 Top

American government back in the FDR days was as fascist as it got, shame on you.

I was talking specifically about the last time we had a constitutionally correct use of our warmaking powers. The proto-fascist aspects of the FDR administrations didn't come about *until* we were at war (the central theme of fascism is violent authoritarianism), which is part of why I believe wars should be extremely rare and desperately need active oversight by a legislature that knows it must retain as much of its share of power as it can during times when we need rapid, authoritative action from the executive.

If you want to start using what I think of as "the real f-word" seriously, we are closer now than we ever have been, and the road has been a bipartisan one, alas. IMO, the worst legacies of FDR are not "socialist" stuff, but the combination of an increasingly imperial presidency and the complete destruction of the US isolationists. I would have much preferred to see Truman emulate George Washington's humility by ending his administration with aggressive cutbacks to the powers that accrued to the White House under FDR. And, although I'm no isolationist, I wish they had been able to keep enough of their act together to prevent our long period of using our "peacetime" military as a political blunt instrument.

Reply #46 Top

Quoting EviliroN, reply 19

Me, I still want a party-based parliamentary system and a plural executive except during a real war, like we had back in the '40s.

 

American government back in the FDR days was as fascist as it got, shame on you.

 

Do people not know the definition of Fascism anymore?

Without indulging a debate in wikifactuality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

Various scholars attribute different characteristics to fascism, but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: nationalism (including collectivism and populism based on nationalist values); Third Position (including class collaboration, corporatism, economic planning, mixed economy, national socialism, national syndicalism, protectionism,); totalitarianism (including dictatorship, indoctrination, major social interventionism, and statism); and militarism.

Admittedly, yes, you can make arguments for aspects, but fascism is a whole package - by any standard definition we're a lot closer to fascism under 'W' than we were under FDR.

Jonnan

Reply #47 Top

So, who won?
*opens up the blinds on the window for the first time in a week*

Reply #48 Top

So you really live in Siberia o_O

Reply #49 Top

Quoting Luckmann, reply 22
So, who won?
*opens up the blinds on the window for the first time in a week*

It's sort of like The Game.

If you post, you lose.

Oh, DAMMIT.