"There was that moment of transcendence that came in my own living room"

"Welcome back to the land of hope and dreams."

In my living room at that moment, I turned and saw my wife, with tears streaming down, reaching for the tissue box on the coffee table. When I looked back at the television, and saw Jesse Jackson, I felt the urge to reach for that tissue box myself, but managed to resist because my wife would have pointed at me in delight and said "I knew it." Her father did not survive the Iranian revolution. He was literally snatched away from her embrace during the ensuing upheaval, never to return. She rightfully saw that unforgetable moment in her life as the result of America's foreign policies. She believes that America will now change, and be less intrusive in world affairs, so that other daughters might not have to grow up without fathers.

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Originally posted by Slumberjack:
For them, it was about matters closer to home, they both work in the US defence industry and are concerned for their own families and jobs. This industry, with it's long reach into the every corner of American society and the corridors of money and power, combined with the existing ignorance, will live on, and in all probability, will continue to influence America's decision makers. Obama acknowledged them during his speech last night when he spoke of defeating enemies and restoring America's dominance in the world.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:

Jesse Jackson got it right after all. The only rational response is to weep.[/QB]

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Oh good, we can plumb the depths of cynicism for political points. I'm sooo left a pure that I can rise above the superficial masses who are too stupid to realize just how electing this black dude is going to bite them in the butt.

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Originally posted by ElizaQ:

Oh good, we can plumb the depths of cynicism for political points. I'm sooo left a pure that I can rise above the superficial masses who are too stupid to realize just how electing this black dude is going to bite them in the butt.

You know I really don't care so much about 'well Obama is bad on this policy, or ridicule about his celebrity' that's par for the course and valid especially here but maybe, just maybe this time around we could have some respect for the significance, just in it's most purest sense for people like Rev. Jackson and every single other AA that weeped last night and not take his and their genuine and imo well earned emotion about this election and play lefty intellectual and cynical games with it.

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Thanks for putting my column up and hey, that was a great post.

I was up until 1 a.m., actually putting the finishing touches on that column and waiting for NC, Missouri and Indiana.

I only wish I could have given more of a feeling of what was going on in Grant Park and Times Square and Castro Street - but the images on TV did a pretty good job I think.

I live in a very red county and I've been thinking maybe of closing the store early and just walking around with a very big evil grin on my face. This town woke up with a hangover this morning

All I hope is that it all lasts at least a hundred years or so. . .

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Originally posted by babblerwannabe:

some people, on the other hand, will also weep that their rights to marry and their legal marriages are now revoked because while most people decided that Obama should win in California, more of them also supported bigotry against same sex couples.

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Originally posted by ElizaQ:

Yes and I have seen much nashing of teeth and weeping about that on more liberal sites. It's a definite dark spot of this election, including the results in Florida and Arkansas. It makes me personally sick. Obama's win doesn't mean that magically all bigotry, or racism or hatred or fear has just disappeared but that doesn't mean that we can't have respect for the step that was taken and it's emotional significance for a large number of people or the individuals that were caught on camera expressing that emotion.

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Yes these results really hurt and I understand that. I'm waiting to see what Michalangelo Signorile says about it on Out Q radio (Sirius if you have it) this afternoon.

But I do see the anti-marriage people now on the eventual losing side of history. These may be the last hurrahs for this kind of intolerance.

This may sound kind of corny and some of you might think I've drank a lot of sunshine kool aid this morning but last night in Grant Park, President-elect Barack Obama very clearly and strongly said:

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"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

Its the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.

Its the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, GAY, STRAIGHT (emphasis mine), disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America."

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Originally posted by Américain Égalitaire:
This may sound kind of corny and some of you might think I've drank a lot of sunshine kool aid this morning but last night in Grant Park, President-elect Barack Obama very clearly and strongly said:

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No need to disclaim your corniness with me. Corny is good sometimes and good thing to revel in and I think this moment is a justifiable one.

That part of his speech did stand out for me and I did notice the inclusion. It was the one word that did stand out for me especially in reference to what I knew was happening in California.
I thought "yeah, go, go you tell em, everyone means EVERYONE." I am always cynical about political speeches but in this case I can't help but feel at least a little optimistic that this guy actually means what he said here.

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ya, to be honest, watching Rev. Jesse Jackson cry was powerful.

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It was powerful because, to me, Rev. Jesse Jackson is a man who knows a lot about image and optics, so to have his image (him crying) projected world-wide via CNN was a powerful thing. And no, I don't think he was forcing himself to cry cuz he knew the camera was on him at that moment.

There ain't nothing wrong with crying in public, by the way (regardless of how machismo you are), whether it reflects joy or exhaustion.

[ed to add - And yes yes, whomever you vote for, the gov't wins. But let people have their peace and be human and not act all stoic and scripted for a moment. Let people have their moment, and let them absorb this historic (in the literal sense of the term) moment how they want to.

Ok, now, back to work!!!! (as every activist knows)

I have to respect that this means a lot to a lot of people, I'd be an asshole if I tried to devalue or dismiss their life experience.

[ 05 November 2008: Message edited by: statica ]

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Originally posted by zazzo:
...maybe this could happen in Canada, too.

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Electing a black Prime Minister?

Getting 3% of the voters to switch sides?

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It took a lot of work organizing at the grassroots level, community organizing, but it is possible.

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Originally posted by wage zombie:
I don't think you've been paying much attention to the campaign down there. Where do you get the 3% figure from?

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That's not even taking into consideration that Obama got a lot of support from black voters and others who had not been registered to vote in previous elections, so their support didn't represent a swing from the Republicans.

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Originally posted by ElizaQ:

Oh good, we can plumb the depths of cynicism for political points. I'm sooo left a pure that I can rise above the superficial masses who are too stupid to realize just how electing this black dude is going to bite them in the butt.

You know I really don't care so much about 'well Obama is bad on this policy, or ridicule about his celebrity' that's par for the course and valid especially here but maybe, just maybe this time around we could have some respect for the significance, just in it's most purest sense for people like Rev. Jackson and every single other AA that weeped last night and not take his and their genuine and imo well earned emotion about this election and play lefty intellectual and cynical games with it.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
The margin of victory in the popular vote, last I saw, was 6%. If half of those 6% of voters (3% of the total) had voted the other way, the result would have been a tie in the pop. vote.

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That's not even taking into consideration that Obama got a lot of support from black voters and others who had not been registered to vote in previous elections, so their support didn't represent a swing from the Republicans.

So the actual swing vote is probably no more than 3%.

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[ 05 November 2008: Message edited by: remind ]

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Originally posted by remind:
but that was not the case, and there is an actual 6% difference, so I am not getting the point you are trying to make by saying "if" and cutting it to 3%.

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Compared to the 2000 election, where the popular vote was essentially tied, a 6% difference this time in favour of the Democrats represents at most 3% of the voters switching over – because you would deduct 3% from the Republicans and add 3% to the Democrats, resulting in a 6% difference. It’s simple math.

By community organizing, I meant that people can get together and start talking about what they want for this country. And not just talking, but getting involved in the work that will make it happen.

M. Spector, I don’t believe that the organizing that happened in the States was just in getting people registered to vote. One has to encourage them to actually get out and vote. I don’t know how this was done in the US, but their strategies were brilliantly successful. In Canada, the last election saw one of the lowest voter turnouts on record.

If we use your analysis, (and I am not sure I really understand it) a 3% change in the vote resulted in an overwhelming victory for Obama, so can you imagine what a 6% or a 10% change would do? There were also significant victories for the Democrats in the House and in the Senate.

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Originally posted by zazzo:
If we use your analysis, (and I am not sure I really understand it) a 3% change in the vote resulted in an overwhelming victory for Obama, so can you imagine what a 6% or a 10% change would do?

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There is no doubt that history has been made, "for reasons that go beyond the obvious ‘first Black' aspect of race." 2008 was the first year in modern history that Blacks made no demands on the Democratic candidate - and consequently, were promised nothing. This was the election cycle in which the Black who began as a supposed "underdog" became the most heavily-funded candidate of all time. There are many lessons to be learned - but few of them palatable to folks still drunk on ObamaL'aid.

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Originally posted by Slumberjack:
Interesting analogy, but I'm not sure it applies when we're talking about new voters casting ballots by the millions. It'd be like coming across shiny new pennies and adding them to your existing tally. But that's just my two cents worth.

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That's not even taking into consideration that Obama got a lot of support from black voters and others who had not been registered to vote in previous elections, so their support didn't represent a swing from the Republicans.

So the actual swing vote is probably no more than 3%.

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[ 05 November 2008: Message edited by: Left Turn ]

1. Obama may not have African American lineage, but his lineage is African. As far as I know, he married an African-American woman, and his children are African-American.

2. Ford does not name those people “dear to him” that he says Obama has repudiated.

3. The link for ‘fried chicken breakfast” shows clearly that Ford’s use of what Obama said (to support his statement that Obama has disdain for blacks as a group) has been taken out of context, and is therefore misleading. The rest of these links shows the same misleading of what Obama said. (I did read all these links.) Obama appears to say much more about different subjects that are linked in this short list that Ford is using to defend his opinions. I think it is really rather pathetic.

4. Take another poll in six months on the subject of whether blacks and whites have an equal chance of getting ahead, and the results might be different.

5. Ford may think that it was just electioneering, but what happens next will tell the story of whether this is a social movement or not. The people have spoken once by voting, and they can surely speak again on any number of issues, and not just the black people, but all of the people.

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Rahm Emanuel was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1959, the son of Benjamin Emanuel, a pediatrician who helped smuggle weapons to the Irgun, the Zionist militia of former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, in the 1940s. The Irgun carried out numerous terrorist attacks on Palestinian civilians including the bombing of Jerusalem's King David Hotel in 1946.

Emanuel continued his father's tradition of active support for Israel; during the 1991 Gulf War he volunteered to help maintain Israeli army vehicles near the Lebanon border when southern Lebanon was still occupied by Israeli forces.

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Originally posted by Slumberjack:
Interesting analogy, but I'm not sure it applies when we're talking about new voters casting ballots by the millions.

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Originally posted by jrootham:
Obama is not repudiating US foreign policy, and therefor will be doing many objectionable things, I hadn't heard the claim that he is currently a terrorist.

Could counsel for the prosecution lay out Obama's actions that lead to this charge? Just for clarity in the record.

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You don't have to actually personally kill anyone to be a terrorist nowadays. Ask the remaining 11 of the "Toronto 18" - or Momin Khawaja.

[ 05 November 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

As for what an Obama win means, check out this map:

http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/map.html

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Originally posted by wage zombie:
How much does someone need to support USian foreign policy to be considered a terrorist?

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Election of Obama unlikely to help Khadr: defence lawyer

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While the election of Barack Obama to the White House may herald the closure of the U.S. military prison in Cuba's Guantanamo Bay, the lawyer for Canadian detainee Omar Khadr says it's unlikely to help his client.

"No one, particularly an Obama administration, wants to be perceived as giving rights to terrorists as their first act in office," Cmdr. Bill Kuebler, Khadr's defence lawyer, told CBC News Tuesday.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
We don't need to debate that threshold. Suffice it to say that Obama far surpasses it. He's as much a terrorist as George W. Bush.

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Why don't we need to debate that threshold?

Are you the babble arbiter on who's over and who's not?

What standards do you apply to the question?

Is it all about electoral sound bites?

For all the self-congratulatory hoohah going on down there, you'd think Obama won a landslide. The reality is that even a pathetic creature like McCain managed just under 50% of the popular vote.

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"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

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Originally posted by Jingles:
For all the self-congratulatory hoohah going on down there, you'd think Obama won a landslide. The reality is that even a pathetic creature like McCain managed just under 50% of the popular vote.

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Not quite:

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Even as they drown in the anger of platoons of pissed-off voters, Republican operatives are swiping ballots with both hands.

Ground zero is Georgia. It's here where the sick little vulture named Saxby Chambliss won the US Senate seat six years ago by calling his Democratic opponent, a guy who'd lost three limbs in Vietnam, a friend of Osama bin Laden.

There's no way in hell that Chambliss can slime his way back into the Senate in the face of over half a million newly registered voters (Black and young - 69% for Obama) without jacking them out of their votes. That's what the Republicans are up to. Right now. As we speak.

Over 50,000 the new voters in Georgia have been blocked from voting by using a nasty little new law, the Help America Vote Act signed by George Bush. (Bush is helping us vote - look out!)

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Originally posted by Jingles:
If George Bush was allowed to run for a third term, he would have won against Obama.

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Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse the president on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.

A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition.

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The list of executive orders targeted by Obama's team could well get longer in the coming days, as Bush's appointees are rushing to enact a number of last-minute policies in an effort to extend his legacy.
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Obama himself has signaled, for example, that he intends to reverse Bush's controversial limit on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, a decision that scientists say has restrained research into some of the most promising avenues for defeating a wide array of diseases such as Parkinson's. Bush's August 2001 decision pleased religious conservatives who have moral objections to the use of cells from days-old human embryos, which are destroyed in the process.
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The new president is also expected to lift a so-called global gag rule barring international family planning groups that receive U.S. aid from counseling women about the availability of abortion, even in countries where the procedure is legal, said Cecile Richards, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, he rescinded the Reagan-era regulation, known as the Mexico City Policy, but Bush reimposed it.
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The president-elect has said, for example, that he intends to quickly reverse the Bush administration's decision last December to deny California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles. "Effectively tackling global warming demands bold and innovative solutions, and given the failure of this administration to act, California should be allowed to pioneer," Obama said last January.

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Before the election, Obama told others that he favors declaring that carbon dioxide emissions are endangering human welfare, following an EPA task force recommendation last December that Bush and his aides shunned in order to protect the utility and auto industries.
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Some related reforms embraced by Obama's transition advisers would alter procedures for decision-making on climate issues. A book titled "Change for America," being published next week by the Center for American Progress, an influential liberal think tank, will recommend, for example, that Obama rapidly create a National Energy Council to coordinate all policymaking related to global climate change.

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Originally posted by Jingles:
If George Bush was allowed to run for a third term, he would have won against Obama.

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