Jack Kelly Sunday

There's not much for me to disagree with in this week's column. Jack Kelly even calls the results a "landslide in the Electoral College" and as we all know, when Jack says something, it's gotta be true.

Right?

So Electoral College landslide it is. Thanks, Jack!

At one point, Jack writes:

I give the McCain campaign a C- at best. It often seemed a pudding without a theme. On the paramount issue, Mr. McCain didn't have a message that resonated until Joe the Plumber found one for him. And the way the McCain campaign mishandled its prize asset -- Gov. Sarah Palin -- was appalling.

All this may be true, but Governor Palin's own performance was no less appalling. National Review columnist Kathleen Parker way back in late September called for Palin to withdraw from the ticket. Parker wrote:

Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.

Then Jack writes this:

There apparently was more fraud in this election than in any other in the recent past. But because Mr. Obama's margins in key states were large, the votes of the ineligible and the dead didn't affect the outcome. Republicans weren't robbed. They were beaten, fair and square.

Of course Jack doesn't say where there was "apparently was more fraud in this election than in any other in the recent past" so we're left to fill in the blanks.

Ohio? Smooth.
Pennsylvania? Also smooth.
Florida? "Almost eerily quiet."

So where was this "more" fraud? Any reports of widespread voter fraud in any of the non-partisan organizations set up to watch for it? I couldn't find any.

But I wholeheartedly agree that the GOP was beaten (in Jack's own words) "fair and square." But then Jack immediately contradicts himself with the next paragraph:

Because Republicans cannot reasonably blame defeat on tactical mistakes by the McCain campaign...

Didn't he just give the McCain campaign a C- on its "pudding without a theme" (whatever that means)? So it's now unreasonable to blame the (Electoral College landslide) defeat on the campaign's mistakes? I don't get it.

Jack follows a few paragraphs later with that desperate last-ditch meme of the rightwing noise machine. Here's how Jack puts it:

Despite Mr. Obama's victory, I think America remains a center-right country. But the right cannot prevail if it alienates the center.

Uh, no. Tell me how, when more than 52% of the electorate votes for the guy the GOP branded as "a socialist" we live in a "center-right" nation. Mediamatters.org reports that Democracy Corp released poll numbers showing strong support for the policies outlined by now-President-Elect Obama. How then can we be in a "center-right" country? Michael Grunwald of Time, writing the night of the election, puts it this way:

The pundits are already warning that Obama could overreach, that Democratic congressional leaders are still unpopular, that this is still a center-right country. But it wasn't tonight. Obama will have the luxury of taking office at a time when the GOP is the AIG of electoral politics, when his predecessor has set the lowest bar since James Buchanan, when a supposedly conservative Administration just started nationalizing the banking system, when the public is desperate for change. What is it about tonight's results that suggests Obama should be afraid of progressive action on the cusp of a depression?

And reminds us of the national nightmare we're leaving:

Remember what eight years of Republican rule has wrought: missing weapons of mass destruction, the promises we'd be greeted as liberators, Jessica Lynch, torture, the disintegration of Afghanistan. Also: Enron, WorldCom, Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie and Freddie, GM, Chrysler, Social Security privatization, the $700 billion bailout. Also: Brownie, John Ashcroft covering up that bare-breasted statue at the Justice Department, Alberto Gonzales politicizing the Justice Department, Harriet Miers, the oil lobbyist who edited those global warming reports. Also: Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, Tom DeLay, Ted Stevens. Also: the Vice President shot a guy, and the President almost choked to death on a pretzel.

The election was a mandate for change, an electoral college landslide and a clear repudiation of both conservative policies in general and the last eight disastrous years specifically.

Something To Think About

From Sandy (via Crooksandliars):

How BIG was Obama's victory? As it now stands, with North Carolina upping his total to 364, he could've spotted McCain New York and California and still won with 8 to spare. Let that sink in for a minute; a suntanned big city liberal Democrat named Barack Hussein Obama has won the presidency and did not need the New York and California electoral votes to do it.

Can you say wow?

Wow.

Apolitical Saturday Morning Animation

I thought I might try something completely apolitical for a Saturday morning.


I knew Allenmez from waaay back when we both attended the same performing arts High School. He was an amazingly talented alto sax player who sounded a lot like Jackie McLean (if I remember correctly) and I was doing my best (though failing miserably) to sound like Chet Baker.

For the person

...who asked in Comments what I (the blog) was going to do now that the election was over:


Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are
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Oh Really?

Ok, so one story the now-beaten conservatives are trying to push is this. Now that the election is over and Barack Obama won, there's no more excuses for the African-American community.

I heard it yesterday on KDKA. And Bill Bennett's even said it to Anderson Cooper before the election (on CNN via crooks and liars):

Anderson Cooper: I mean, if he does become president, and it still is an if, does anyone know what this means in terms of change of race relations in the United States, or perception of?

Bennett: Well, I'll tell you one thing it means, as a former Secretary of Education: You don't take any excuses anymore from anybody who says, 'The deck is stacked, I can't do anything, there's so much in-built this and that.'

Woo-hoo! No more racism!

Except when this happens:

A family who had supported Barack Obama's presidential campaign emerged from their home in the northwestern New Jersey town of Hardwick Thursday morning to find the charred remnants of a 6-foot wooden cross on their front lawn.

Pieces of a homemade bedsheet banner reading "President Obama , Victory '08," which had been stolen from the yard the night before, also were found, leading investigators to believe the banner had been wrapped around the cross before it was set afire.

Lt. Gerald Lewis of the New Jersey State Police said his agency is treating the incident as a bias crime.

But hey, no excuses, right? Bill Bennett and the conservatives say so.

Quinn, Today

Un-be-lievable.

Jim Quinn, obvious expert on slavery, said this today on the air:

You know, if you were a slave in the old South, what did you get as a slave? You got free room and board, you got free money, and you got rewarded for having children because that was just, you know, tomorrow's slave. So, you got a free house, you got free money, and you got rewarded for having children. Can I ask a question? How's that different from welfare? You get a free house, you get free food, and you get rewarded for having children. Oh, wait a minute, hold on a second. There is a difference: The slave had to work for it.

Yea, wasn't slavery GREAT? All that free stuff!

Found Object

I found a very interesting clip at the DailyKos. Sometime after Senator Obama was declared winner (and became President-Elect Obama) this "mob" staged this scene outside of the White House:


Dirty Lib'ruls. Don't they have any respect??

Can We Get A Comment From Jack Kelly?

About this:


Please note which news source this is. Carl Cameron reports that the McCain folks told him that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent (she thought it was a country) and didn't know which countries were signatories to NAFTA (namely these THREE: USA, Canada and Mexico).

Given that Jack Kelly was Sarah Palin's biggest fan at the P-G, I wonder if he has a comment now about Governor Palin's obvious (and this is from Fox, remember) lack of general political knowledge.

Anything Jack?

True Blue

OK, it's been TWENTY FREAKIN' YEARS since Pennsylvania went Republican Red in a presidential election.

Can we finally stop calling it a swing state?

Obama won PA by double digits, OK?

PA is True Blue. (Give up the ghost, Red Team.)

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And, in other myth-busting news: You can also forget the Bradley Effect.
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Wise Words

Paul Krugman on the election:

Last night wasn’t just a victory for tolerance; it wasn’t just a mandate for progressive change; it was also, I hope, the end of the monster years.

What I mean by that is that for the past 14 years America’s political life has been largely dominated by, well, monsters. Monsters like Tom DeLay, who suggested that the shootings at Columbine happened because schools teach students the theory of evolution. Monsters like Karl Rove, who declared that liberals wanted to offer “therapy and understanding” to terrorists. Monsters like Dick Cheney, who saw 9/11 as an opportunity to start torturing people.

And in our national discourse, we pretended that these monsters were reasonable, respectable people. To point out that the monsters were, in fact, monsters, was “shrill.”

Four years ago it seemed as if the monsters would dominate American politics for a long time to come. But for now, at least, they’ve been banished to the wilderness.

End of the monster years.

ch-ch-ch-changes

by Patrick Moberg

(next time, a woman...)
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Reactions

Worldwide newspaper front pages here.




Photos from around the world here.


Juan Williams Gets Teary on FOX.


Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) is overcome.


UPDATE:



Thousands Gather In Pittsburgh's
Oakland Neighborhood Following Obama Victory
WPXI raw video here.


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The Numbers (So Far)

Electoral Votes (as of this writing - Missouri and North Carolina have yet to be decided.):

Obama - 349
McCain - 162

Popular Vote (with 95% of precincts reporting):

Obama - 62,239,016 (52%)
McCain - 55,229,186 (48%)

From Politico:

More than 130 million people turned out to vote Tuesday, the most ever to vote in a presidential election.

With ballots still being counted in some precincts into Wednesday morning, an estimated 64 percent of the electorate turned out, making 2008 the highest percentage turnout in generations.

So as of this writing President-Elect Barack Obama has more than twice as many electoral votes as Senator McCain and a majority of the popular vote. And even with only 95% of the precincts, more people voted for Barack Obama for president than voted for anyone else for president.

This was a solid win - a solid solid win. It was also a firm repudiation of:

• Neoconservative politics - especially on foreign policy
  
• The republican "brand" - and all the ugly that it stands for
  
• The Bush Administration - unpopular war, unpopular president, unpopular policies
  
• Republican campaign policies - the 50-state strategy worked, smear campaiging didn't
  
• The right-wing noise machine - that includes Fox "News" and (of course) local blowhards Quinn, Miller, Kelly, and Honsberger
  
• Wingnuts everywhere - their blogs, trolls, and everything else.
  

They lost.

We won.

Change has come to America.

It's a beautiful day!

Our Long National Nightmare Is Finally Over

Thank you, America.

President-elect Obama!

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More News

CNN projects Altmire over Hart AND Murtha over Russell.

OBAMA WINS PENNSYLVANIA!!!!

So says the PA exit polls.

HA!

We did it!

Pittsburgh Republicans trying to stop a veteran and some pregnant women from voting

See Bob Mayo's post here.

I heard that there are two judges hearing election cases in Pittsburgh and one of them is a Republican...

Whaaah??

From KDKA 10 minutes ago:

Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum's right to vote in Penn Hills has been challenged -- and election officials will not count his absentee ballot (or that of his wife) until the matter is resolved, Allegheny County Elections Department director Mark Wolosik confirmed.

Erin Vecchio, chairman of the Penn Hills School Board and chair of the Penn Hills Democratic Party, says she challenged the Santorums' right to vote in Pennsylvania this morning because they really live in Virginia.

Well, don't they?