Take cover it's an Obama landslide: head for the Hill—Capitol that is!
It was two years in the making. Election 2008 is over, but nothing will ever be the same after January 20, 2009 when Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th POTUS. There was only one person I wanted to share this Obama moment with: my daughter, who gave me the first sip of the “Obama Kool-aid.”…
Article comments
26 - Jordan Richardson
Why did Obama hide his middle name among other things?
What is John McCain's middle name? Or Sarah Palin's? Why were those middle names not campaign issues? They fucking should have been, I tell you!
And Sam, did it ever occur to you that people voted for Barack Obama not because they were duped, not because they were stupid, and not because Obama is a fucking terrorist hiding in America but because they AGREED WITH HIM? Or that a good majority of the world wanted Obama as president because we're tired of the same shit? Did it ever occur to you that maybe YOU are wrong and that you haven't stumbled on some grand secret or conspiracy? Did you ever consider that Barack Obama might just be a damn fine president and might just be good for the country, for the world?
Nah, couldn't be. You're the smart one. You saw through it all. You and FOX News and Karl Rove. The rest of us, we're all fuck-ups.
27 - Jet
With right wingnuts screaming it from the rooftops and articles like this, it wasn't really necessary.
I found it especially amusing that they kept trying to say he was a muslim, all the while critisizing him for his strong 20-year-old ties to his radical mentor... a christian minister.
28 - Cannonshop
Um, Jet? WHO??? (#27) the whole "obama is a muslim" rap is a straw-man generated by the Democrats during the Primaries-that meme died EARLY on the right, and was never taken all that seriously outside of some pretty loopy tinfoil-hat sectors even Neocons won't willingly hang out with.
Obama the European Surrender-Monkey is much, much more popular *(and I daresay accurate) than Obama-the-Jihadi.
29 - Jordan Richardson
Obama the European Surrender-Monkey
The connotations here, some of which are most assuredly unintentionally hideous, are hilarious. Thank you for the laugh, Ye Olde Shoppe of Cannons.
30 - Jet
You apparently haven't been reading all the recent postings, or even the very title of this piece (which includes the prerequesit (sic) Hussein) which was written when?
31 - Jet
I put the word Obama and Muslim in the search engine to the left and it came up with 151 references on just this website alone
32 - Jordan Richardson
I put the word Obama and Muslim in the search engine to the left
There's your problem right there, Jet. I DEMAND A RE-SEARCH!
33 - Jet
And people can't figure out why I get so frustrated around here
34 - Jordan Richardson
I recalibrated my screen, put the search engine on the right, and couldn't find any instances of Obama being connected with Islam. I did find an interesting preponderance of Obama's Naylin' Paylin in the search results, but that probably had a lot to do with my search terms being "Obama," "hot lady," and "centrist politics." Oh, and "reacharound."
35 - Jet
The fact that you can read/understand results only if they come from the right is telling indeed... if only on your monitor.
I once warned Dave a couple of years back that as far as it had been leaning, his monitor was in danger of falling off the right side of his desk... I'll extend the same warning to you...
...knowing how expensive replacement monitors are.
...fortunately you're not too far gone. I once deduced (rightly) that Arch wore an eyepatch and ear plug so he could only see with his right eye and ear.
36 - Jordan Richardson
Thanks for the warning, but I have a selection of fluffy kitties that will cushion my monitor's fall should the unthinkable happen.
37 - Jet
You're not that guy in the credit card commercial that demanded pictures of kittens on his card are you?
38 - Cannonshop
#29 the joke wasn't unintentional, it was mean-spirited, Jordan. (Gotta keep up that whole stereotype, don'cha know- Mean Spirited Right Wingers and all that.) My "Point" is that the odds are strongest that Obama's going to undo the last six years' worth of (hard won and fragile) progress toward Democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, thus undoing what a lot of the guys who've chosen multiple tours in those places sacrificed a LOT to accomplish, thus rendering both conflicts the waste that the anti-war people already think they are, with results that we've all seen before (1974 and the utter destruction of the Republic of Vietnam by Soviet and Chinese backed PRVN forces violating the Paris accords. That time, the world learned the U.S. will abandon a weak ally if the conflict is merely inconvenient. one of many fallouts from that was the Khmer Rouge conquest of Cambodia and "Year Zero".)
Nations without Democratic traditions don't magically 'stabilize' into Democracies when you take out the Dictator that's been terrorizing them for decades. Right or wrong, we took out Saddam and destroyed the Ba'athist party machinery. Without U.S. forces to keep things some-kind-of-stable in '05, there would have been a mutual Genocide, not a Sunni Awakening. Without U.S. forces to advise the newly formed army, you would have brutal militias that do things of the sort that make Abu Ghraib look like kindergartners singing "Kum Ba Ya", without U.S. assistance NOW, the struggling Iraqi government is going to become the same kind of brutal dictatorship we just removed, or it will become an Iranian/Russian client-state with a Taliban-style regime.
In five years, maybe ten, enough of the habits will be ingrained (as they were in Japan after WWII) that maybe the country can stand on its own without being gutted from within or overrun from without. Given Obama's supporters and record, I figure they'll last maybe a year once he's in office, and the U.S. consulate will be evacuating like Saigon...assuming the Iranians or their puppet-allies don't nail the choppers with shoulder-launched SAMs.
All the guys that died, there, all the wounded, will have truly been for nothing, because the aftermath will be worse than the war itself.
39 - Jet
Cannon, you've deluded yourself into thinking Bush actually set up something resembling a democracy in Iraq or Afghanistan?????
Dear lord, see a doctor.... PLEASE!
40 - Jet
All those guys died because Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq as an excuse to justify his father's failure.
41 - Cannonshop
Jet, Bush didn't "Set up" anything. He doesn't know how. The guys who are OVER THERE are working their asses off trying to 'Set up' a system that includes things like free elections (free of carbombings, for instance, or thugs at the polling points), human rights, you know, those things you claim to value, rule of law, anyone??
Spend some time with guys that have been there and not in the green-zone...wait, that's pointless, you wouldn't listen to 'em if they were in your house, you made your decision before it even started.
42 - Jordan Richardson
I know, I know. Iraq and the rest of America's heroics is about spreading a quality of life and a political system that Americans themselves do not enjoy. Democracy for Iraq! Constitutional Republic Whatnot for America!
Sounds 'bout right.
In reality, the only thing "democracy" means in Iraq is "opportunity" for American companies and businesses. The United States has a vested interest and has pursued it throughout its history without fail, picking off small and convenient countries whenever things got a little too unAmerican, and getting involved in major conflicts only when it concerned them. To infer that the United States stands for the spread of democracy is akin to telling a bad party joke, so the entire notion of Obama "surrendering" to insurgents is hilarious because it's no longer a War, it's not longer a conflict that can be won, and democracy cannot and will not be spread amongst people who don't want it, regardless of how badly McCain and his ilk want to force-feed it.
I'm not suggesting that the United States shouldn't pursue its interests or knock over small nations to get what it wants like corner store hoods. But call it what it is and don't imagine to spread this ideology around the world that America itself isn't built on. Perhaps then we can all oppose these notions together as a global community and force the bully back where it belongs, down a dark hallway where it finally has to face the problems of its own people.
43 - Jet
THEY SHOULD NEVER HAVE GONE THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE. If we'd stayed in Afghanistan where the threat was, the damned war would have been over.
The Iraq war wouldn't have been necessary if Bush 1 hadn't pulled out (coitus interuptus?) before he took Hussein out when he had the chance.
bin laden wouldn't be so damned well funded if Bush had ordered the heroine fields destroyed FIVE YEARS RUNNING-putting billions annually into their pockets, because he was afraid of being blamed for the Afghan unemployment rate in those same farm fields.
44 - Jordan Richardson
Spend some time with guys that have been there and not in the green-zone...wait, that's pointless, you wouldn't listen to 'em if they were in your house, you made your decision before it even started.
As have you, Cannonshop.
Face reality: there are soldiers that have returned from Iraq and there are soldiers that are in Iraq that do not believe they are spreading democracy. They did not believe they were spreading democracy when they allowed Iraqi museums and art galleries to be trashed and looted of all of the country's historical value and they did not believe they were spreading democracy when they chased women and children from their homes. They were following orders, plain and simple.
I am not so naive as to believe that everyone over there is on the same page or that you couldn't talk to a dozen different soldiers and come up with a dozen different answers about why they think they're there.
45 - Jet
I think I figured out why no one pays attention to me, my comments are all under 2000 words!!
I'm going to drink some Milk of Magnesia, do three push-ups and go to bed...
46 - Jordan Richardson
Yeah Jet, but if you add up all of your posts in a row and the times you repeat yourself, you come pretty close to 2000. Keep reaching for the stars, buddy!
47 - Cannonshop
Jet, yeah, you get a dozen different answers. Guess what? if you went back to 1946, you'd find the same set of dozens of answers in Berlin or Tokyo.
If you went back further, to 1866, you'd get another dozen set of answers in Atlanta, New Orleans, or Richmond.
Ya wanna know how Obama could actually Impress me into thinking he's really something other than a Chicago machine politician with delusions of being Chavez El Norte? (Chavez of the North for those not versed in tex-mex)
Burn the poppy fields in AfStan, Stick it out in Iraq and actually PUSH for Democracy for REAL, make sure it's stable there and the damn locals can handle their neighbours. Obama's not going to do that, so all those promises made in the last few years, all those guys dead because of those promises, they're going to mean just about as much as Johnson's and Kennedy's promises to the people in S. Vietnam who didn't want to be ruled by Hanoi.
We went in, it doesn't matter whether Jet thinks we should have or not, we did-things are now fucked up. We did it, we have to fix it.
48 - Jordan Richardson
But don't those "dead guys" owe a lot more in that sense to the individual who got them there under false pretenses and/or delusions of grandeur than the guy who wants to bring them home faster? I mean, isn't your preemptive finger of blame pointed squarely at the wrong parties to this catastrophe?
Wouldn't a global coalition of countries with aims to rebuild Iraq fairly and equitably be a better solution to the problem than that of America once again going it alone into a conflict nobody agreed with in the first place?
It seems to me that your issue isn't with democracy or the honour of dead soldiers. Rather, it's with Obama leaving before a false sense of honour and an unattainable sense of victory can be granted to these men and women. The adage "Bush lied, they died" is more fitting than "Obama pulled the troops out, therefore we lose."
America is better suited by appealing to the international community and playing a role of leadership properly instead of playing the role of rogue cowboy heading into a region it knows nothing about to bring "democracy" in as one of many afterthoughts to the securing of resources and influence.
That would be what would impress me here.
49 - Cannonshop
Well, Jordan, I understand. You canadians still haven't recovered from the Third Para scandal, even though the same people who condemned them are making excuses for Mugabe.
The "International Community" is stocked with the psychotic dictatorships both sides helped create during the cold war, and the psychotic dictatorships that came out of the Colonialism period of France and Britain, fuelled by cold-war soviet money and useful idiots in the West.
Consulting them is like consulting with Idi Amin, but without the honesty.
They are WORTHLESS, and they are, largely, composed of the kind of people you don't consult for any reason-Sudan on the Human Rights Committee?
no.
I do not think so. People who execute Genocide on their own are not people you consult before taking military action against their peers.
50 - Jordan Richardson
The United States has perhaps more genocidal blood on their hands than any other nation on earth. I fail to see how America can claim any moral authority at this point, but I grant that they have and I grant that they demand that they set the "terms" the rest of us must abide by.
I believe in the same standards being applied across the board. If the United States defies international law, it should be punished if it expects international law to apply to other countries it doesn't like that much. Unfortunately, the U.S. has a long history of wanting to have its cake and eat it too. And the credibility of America is so wounded right now on the world stage that it becomes difficult to take it as the "beacon of freedom" it keeps touting itself as.
On another note entirely, somewhat, I find it extremely insulting and irritating that this wonderful election news is always predicated with the "only in America" bullshit that implies that the rest of us out here are backwards buffoons.
51 - The Victa
You find that last bit a bit frustrating too, eh Jordan??
Mate, don't hold your breath hoping it'll change :)
Better folks than you and I have had to retire defeated on that one.
52 - Lisa Solod Warren
Good luck getting through, Jordan!
53 - Cindy D
North Carolina: Blue
54 - bliffle
Cannon demonstrates in #38 that he's gone delusional.
#29 the joke wasn't intentional, it was mean-spirited, Jordan. (Gotta keep up that whole stereotype, don'cha know- Mean Spirited Right Wingers and all that.)
OK, then just stop doing it. Real conservatives already have enough problems without you misanthropic types creating MORE.
My "Point" is that the odds are strongest that Obama's going to undo the last six years' worth of (hard won and fragile) progress toward Democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan,...
So, we weren't welcomed as 'liberators'?
If it's so frail how the hell could it EVER last?
... thus undoing what a lot of the guys who've chosen multiple tours in those places sacrificed a LOT to accomplish,...
'chosen'? You must be joking. they were "stoplossed". Ask any Iraq vet, or his family, how much 'choice' they had.
... thus rendering both conflicts the waste that the anti-war people already think they are,...
So, you agree that it's a waste?
... with results that we've all seen before (1974 and the utter destruction of the Republic of Vietnam by Soviet and Chinese backed PRVN forces violating the Paris accords.
Yeah, yeah. If we'd just stayed another 3 months we would have won.
... That time, the world learned the U.S. will abandon a weak ally if the conflict is merely inconvenient.
So? If that is a consideration of our involvement in a war, then why the hell do politicians always lie to us about how 'easy' any war will be? Why do they always say "a few surgical air strikes will end the resistance"?
If the warrior politicians want to start a war, then they better lay out all these facts to the USA public. But they don't because they know that the public would never approve. So they LIE, like the cowards they are. Figuring that once they get the public involved they won't be able to pull out.
It's cynical manipulation of public opinion.
... one of many fallouts from that was the Khmer Rouge conquest of Cambodia and "Year Zero".)
The result of the LIES told to the US public by war hungry political warriors.
Nations without Democratic traditions don't magically 'stabilize' into Democracies when you take out the Dictator that's been terrorizing them for decades.
Yet the war-politicians LIE and say it will be so.
Right or wrong, we took out Saddam and destroyed the Ba'athist party machinery.
If true, then we should have left THEN; 4 years ago!
Without U.S. forces to keep things some-kind-of-stable in '05, there would have been a mutual Genocide, not a Sunni Awakening. Without U.S. forces to advise the newly formed army, you would have brutal militias that do things of the sort that make Abu Ghraib look like kindergartners singing "Kum Ba Ya", without U.S. assistance NOW, the struggling Iraqi government is going to become the same kind of brutal dictatorship we just removed, or it will become an Iranian/Russian client-state with a Taliban-style regime.
THIS is the bitter fruit of our invasion of a sovereign foreign country.
In five years, maybe ten, enough of the habits will be ingrained (as they were in Japan after WWII) that maybe the country can stand on its own without being gutted from within or overrun from without.
BS. You're just guessing.
Given Obama's supporters and record, I figure they'll last maybe a year once he's in office, and the U.S. consulate will be evacuating like Saigon...assuming the Iranians or their puppet-allies don't nail the choppers with shoulder-launched SAMs.
If you're so smart, then how come you weren't warning everyone that THIS would be the consequences of invasion 5 years ago?
What happened to make you so smart now?
All the guys that died, there, all the wounded, will have truly been for nothing, because the aftermath will be worse than the war itself.
And that will be the bottom line on the reckless, careless, result of YOUR advocacy of invading Iraq.
55 - Baronius
"Ask any Iraq vet, or his family, how much 'choice' they had."
Yes, Bliffle, ask them. You'll find a group of guys who voluntarily put their lives on hold for the opportunity to go back and do more good for the nation of Iraq.
56 - Heloise
Jet: is this your comment? "With right wingnuts screaming it from the rooftops and articles like this, it wasn't really necessary." or were you quoting someone else?
I was wondering what you meant exactly? That my article points up the idiocy that Obama can't have a Baptist minister preacher (radical/racist to boot) and have an Iman at the same time?
If so, how right you are. Like I said, thanks for the comments because I promised to ask how much sense does that make on Nov. 5th.
Now, Rush et al are going after guess what? How Obama stood on stage by his lonesome at Grant Park. He shooed his kids and wife back stage and was on stage alone. They said he was "watching the crowd watching him" Huh?
Then that he was some sort of WTF empty suit. I don't even get what they were trying to say it was so nefarious.
Odious is as odious does. Heloise
Chicago is a funny place because many blacks who are NOT muslim use muslim names for their kids. Why? Because they are often similar to AFRICAN names!! Duh!!!
Rush watch ROOTS, okay and you will see that Islam and Africa are intrinsically tied together. BTW Africa is a continent. So, most the countries in N. Africa and near the middle east and even some west african countries are very, very muslim.
Why Kunte Kinte would not eat pork...
White people (those bigots and racists--you know who you are) will have to unknot their own fucking racism. It's too knotty for me.
Heloise
57 - Jordan "Boss" Richardson
Better folks than you and I have had to retire defeated on that one.
Pretty much, eh?
Good luck getting through, Jordan!
It's like being on hold at the phone company only there's no music and I'm walking across glass with no shoes.
58 - Heloise
Looks like Obama got nine states he shouldn't hada oughta won! I created a line Letterman's comment inspired:
When does a landslide need a recount--only in America!
That's funny Heloise.
The right is really grasping at straws and coming up for air after being thrown under the bus by one of their own: John Sidney McPain!!
I was talking to the reborn RFK and we were laughing our butts off something I told him: McCain hates his own party and was deliberating trying to sabotage the whole shit by picking Palin after a hesitant right gave him the nod.
And BTW the stupid Guiliani who skipped Florida, and that old ass Fred who didn't have a prayer left the race just as I said...as quickly as he got in it.
Then there was Mitt: he was a long shot because of his religion. He would have had to chose Laura Bush as running mate to win.
Hooked on politics. What am I smoking: leaves of GOP!
Heloise
59 - Heloise
Breaking or old news: Camp said that Palin was burning money and shopping like there was no tomorrow...oops for her there wasn't.
They called them "Wasilla Hillbillies looting the stores." Too funny. These two are the funniest characters I've ever seen. Gramps and the hillbilly! LOL
Heloise
60 - Heloise
Did the young voters put him over the top? Actually according to Chuck Todd they did not. If not one person under 30 did not vote we would have lost two states but Obama would still have won. I contend that it was people like myself, college grads (the highly educated) and middle class (making over 250K not me) put him over the top.
Heloise
61 - Angellight
It is now 11/13/08 and Sarah Palin still has not conceded, not in her heart anyway. She is still trying to run for President as in her heart Barack Obama is illegitimate and only she is the rightful heir, but no one got it this time, may be next.
62 - Cannonshop
#61 I'll be very sad for her, if she drank the D.C. Kool-Aid that way. Really. Leave "National Scale" politics to the scumbags, crooks, and bootlickers. The best resistance to abuses from the Federal level is at the State level.
63 - Ms. Know
I think the middle name was used because it was the only way to show the ties to the terrorist, since the mainstream media illuminati called everyone who mentioned Ayers from the GOP racist.