I appears that the election could perhaps be going smoother

[Alelou]

I think everyone in my family was hugging and crying last night -- especially my parents, down in Florida. Obama's politics aside, this is a truly remarkable step for this country. I know it's the economy that created the environment for this, but I'm so proud that states like Florida and North Carolina and Virginia and Indiana and Ohio actually went for him. Even South Carolina, which was so decidedly for McCain -- if you look county by county there were a lot of counties that went blue. I'm also really relieved that the disgusting "There is no God" commercial didn't do a thing for Elizabeth Dole.

Now I just hope people realize that Obama cannot in fact walk on water. And I hope he survives all the nut jobs who must be out there gunning for him.

[Lady Rainbow]

I'm also really relieved that the disgusting "There is no God" commercial didn't do a thing for Elizabeth Dole.

Yeah, that kinda backfired on her. A lot of undecided voters here in NC saw the ad and voted for Kay Hagan instead. The Hagan/Dole race was really nasty. Talk about mudslinging. Didn't help that Dole spent only 16 DAYS in NC last year, and the rest of the time in DC. There was no line when I voted yesterday, and hubby and I watched the coverage.

[blacknblue]

Elessar, you may not be ascribing an alarmist point of view to me. But I am in fact alarmed. In fact, I am scared as hell. I hope and pray while I cling to my guns and bible that we the people haven't just shot ourselves in the ass. But only time will tell.

I am thoroughly pissed off that the press saw fit to declare Obama the winner before the polls had even closed in the mountain states. You think that didn't have a direct effect on the outcome of the election? It only supports the Pew reports, which proved that the media was heavily biased in favor of Obama. No doubt they really are celebrating the election of their Chosen One. For now. May God Almighty have mercy on all our souls. I am not joking. I fear for our country. Have you read that man's books? Have you read the writings of the man that he calls his "spiritual mentor"?

I am honestly frightened. I am not being alarmist. I am afraid.

[Eian Flannagan]

Clinging to guns and Bibles. Aye, that's progressive.

*shuffles around looking for misplaced starchart to Utopia*

[blacknblue]

Clinging to guns and Bibles. Aye, that's progressive.

*shuffles around looking for misplaced starchart to Utopia*

Progressive does not interest me. I am a reactionary caveman, remember? In any case, I was paraphrasing something the Chosen One said when he talked about we redneck peasants clinging to our guns and our religion.

I do not wish to provoke anyone with my remarks. This is not the time nor the place for me to start complaining. the election is over, and the opposition has won. All I can do now is take as many precautions and possible and pray for the best. The liberals have every right to celebrate their victory without my complaints. I wish the well meaning ones the best - especially the young ones who honestly didn't know any better.

[Alelou]

I think we encompass the full range of belief and expression here. (Well, almost. I haven't seen any outright hatred.)

It will be very interesting to see how the next four years play out. Do you ever find it kind of alarming how much history we're experiencing in so short a time -- the world seemed so dull when I was a kid in school reading the textbooks that made all the American crises of the past seem so long ago and far away, even Vietnam ... and here we are, with 9/11 and two wars ... an economic crisis that can be compared to the Great Depression (although thankfully still not considered that bad) ... rising sea levels and weird weather ... diseases becoming resistant ... more countries with their hands on nuclear weaponry ... sometimes I think all we need now is that meteor JustTripn is worried about.

I really won't mind if we can successfully tackle some of this stuff and then lapse back into boredom and routine.

[Asso]

Indubitably this is a great thing. Now the whole world expects much from him.

[Elessar]

Elessar, you may not be ascribing an alarmist point of view to me. But I am in fact alarmed. In fact, I am scared as hell. I hope and pray while I cling to my guns and bible that we the people haven't just shot ourselves in the ass. But only time will tell.

I am thoroughly pissed off that the press saw fit to declare Obama the winner before the polls had even closed in the mountain states. You think that didn't have a direct effect on the outcome of the election? It only supports the Pew reports, which proved that the media was heavily biased in favor of Obama. No doubt they really are celebrating the election of their Chosen One. For now. May God Almighty have mercy on all our souls. I am not joking. I fear for our country. Have you read that man's books? Have you read the writings of the man that he calls his "spiritual mentor"?

I am honestly frightened. I am not being alarmist. I am afraid.

It's just that this has happened so many times before. I see it as historical myopia to panic, because we've had liberal presidents before, and the scales always tip back. It might be a pain to be a gun owner for a few years, and if that's all you're afraid of, then perhaps you have good reason to be and I wouldn't criticize. But if you're afraid that this is going to turn into a long term police state where you can't own guns for EVER, that's what I think is alarmist. Gun nuts said the same thing about Clinton. Far left liberals felt the same in the opposite way about Bush, that we were entering a libertyless police state where our constitutional rights were disappearing. I'm NOT making a political argument so NOBODY respond to that accusation, what I'm doing is saying that the beauty of this system is that it cannot be taken over by one ideological organ for any lengthy period of time very easily. At the worst, in 8 years, a Republican will get elected -- quite possibly Sarah Palin -- and she'll repeal all these anti-gun laws Obama & Co. may write. But nothing's going to change eternally, that's just not how this country works. Not referring to YOU BnB, but b/c I frequent gun sites I see this a lot, I'm amazed that people way older than me sometimes think this way, people who have seen 15 elections and should know way better than ME that things oscillate.

The thing about calling it - why are you mad? Electorally, it was over. And they didn't actually "call" anything, they just said 'hey, in the final analysis, if voting goes the way polling did, there's no path to victory for McCain." I understand that you could argue there's barely daylight between that and "calling it", but like I said, the votes of the western states didn't matter at that point. The electoral numbers were there as long as you counted 2 or 3 HEAVILY Obama-favored Northwestern states. I mean these are states it wasn't even close in, these aren't states like Missouri where it came down to 5800 votes or VA where it came down to 12,000. The Pacific Northwest is an Obama STRONGHOLD, it's facetious to argue, even Republican strategists said so, that McCain had a chance in California, Oregon or Washington. You may argue it's the principle of the thing in which case I can't argue back, but in practice, no amount of electioneering from major media outlets between 8 and 9 EST in the final hour when they called Ohio was going to change the outcome in the West. I'm betting that ~90% of the electorate had already voted by the time they called Ohio and declared it pretty much over. And the media I was watching kept checking themselves. They kept saying hey, we need people in the west to get out there and vote still, this isn't over, etc, etc. I mean, maybe that's meaningless when they're saying there's no path to victory with the numbers, but analyzing where things can go from here is their job. All you can do in that situation is ask them not to do their jobs, because forecasting is their job.

May God Almighty have mercy on all our souls. I am not joking. I fear for our country. Have you read that man's books? Have you read the writings of the man that he calls his "spiritual mentor"?

There are equivalents on all sides. Palin's baptizing pastor prosecuted a woman as a witch and ran her outta town. McCain's pastor John Hagee called Hitler one of God's warriors and the Catholic church the Great Whore. Obama was vaguely associated with Bill Ayers, a domestic terrorist. John McCain's been more than vaguely associated with a dozen right wing southern baptist ministers that support everything from conversions of our gov't to a christian theocracy to blowing up abortion clinics and banning mixed relationships on college campuses (Bob Jones University just recently abolished this rule). The generous analysis of why these associations exist would be that politicians can't possibly hope to succeed in their parties while completely avoiding contact with some of the more radical elements of the far sides. If it is to be believed that John McCain's not an evangelical zealot by proxy of these associations, it should be equally believable that Obama is not an America-hating, something-else-Fox-News-has-been-circulating-in-emails-that-I'm-not-even-aware-of, secret Muslim, Hezbollah operative, Manchurian Candidate for the Sudanese Liberation Front, blah blah blah.

These things -- these associations, these peripherally expressed views -- are icing on a cake for someone who already likes the cake, they're not game changing realities. If you trust Obama, you say to yourself that everyone associates with someone they don't 100% mirror in opinion or disposition. Hell, I have some pretty radical viewpoints, things that would be considered political suicide, and all of you associate with me - does that mean you should be judged on the basis of knowing me? Someone I have known at some point in my life will probably run for public office, maybe even a close friend. And I will continue to be a commie pinko left-wing moral relativist that is surprised he actually successfully obtained a secret security clearance for OCS because he thought he was on a dozen watch lists.

And like I said, if a person trusts McCain, thinks about his service and the commitment of honor he made to the Navy and upheld as a POW, all of these accusations about the Keating 5 and John Hagee and campaign finance and all this, would just seem insignificant and you wouldn't even believe it. It wouldn't be pertinent. You'd assume they were misunderstandings and/or misrepresentations by his enemies, etc. Same with Sarah Palin and troopergate and her daughter and all that.

The liberals have every right to celebrate their victory without my complaints. I wish the well meaning ones the best - especially the young ones who honestly didn't know any better.

I'm sorry but this is something you can't actually say in accuracy. You can SAY it, of course, I can't stop you, but it wouldn't be true. "The liberals", on their own and without significant conversion from the right and help from the middle, cannot deliver a 79 electoral vote win with like... I don't know, a 10 or 12 million popular vote split. It's not possible. This election was not stolen by the liberals, it's inaccurate to say that everyone who votes for Obama wears Che shirts or goes to gay-straight alliance meetings or wears sandals made of hemp like Alelou . This election was broader than that, it really was. You can't just say that liberals came out in droves to support him. The truth is that moderates, independents, young educated whites, women, african americans, hispanics, working class whites and white collar whites, even Republicans, and yes liberals, all contributed to it. It's too big for it to have been predicated on the devotion and zealotry of one isolated corner of the political spectrum.

He could very well be a bad president, but I think for every reason he could be a bad president, there's at least one reason John McCain could have been a bad president. I have a feeling that former presidents would argue (in fact I've heard Clinton say it similarly) that being president is like becoming a father or falling in love -- nothing can prepare you for it no matter what anyone says.

PS: Very sorry about the long post, trying not to do this anymore

[Eian Flannagan]

Progressive does not interest me. I am a reactionary caveman, remember? In any case, I was paraphrasing something the Chosen One said when he talked about we redneck peasants clinging to our guns and our religion.

I do not wish to provoke anyone with my remarks. This is not the time nor the place for me to start complaining. the election is over, and the opposition has won. All I can do now is take as many precautions and possible and pray for the best. The liberals have every right to celebrate their victory without my complaints. I wish the well meaning ones the best - especially the young ones who honestly didn't know any better.

Nothing quite like slapping a label on folks, is there? Not provocative, at all. Should probably stock up on tar and feathers, while you're at it.

This lad thinks it might be time to lock this thread up.

[Alelou]

Hey! I DO NOT own and never have owned sandals made out of hemp. (And if I did, it'd be too freaking cold in upstate New York to wear them.) Not only that, I never have owned a Che poster. I have to admit I'm not even sure who the hell Che was other than an icon for disaffected teenagers (don't tell my husband, though, because he'll disown me).

I think all our feelings are running high -- this election was an emotional wringer on both sides. Probably we could all use an extra helping of patience with each other for the next few weeks.

It's natural to want to vent a bit, both the joys and the fears.

[dark_rain]

Locked to prevent the imminent fireball.