Today's Mighty Oak

Mike’s 2008 Election Wrap-up



Ok, so I know it has been over two weeks, but I’m just getting to this now.  NaNoWriMo has that affect…

Anyway, after the break is a huge update.  I’m talking video clips, pictures, stuff from punditkitchen and graph jam!  All kinds of me ranting, calming down, getting excited, and generally telling America to settle down.  Also, some talk of advertising and the holiday spirit.  So grab a drink (your pick) and head past the break for my election wrap up!

Also, watch me as I try to use the new page break feature in the new Joomla!  Don’t let this explode…(it might have taken me a few tries to get it right…don’t judge, hehehe)

 Anyway, so obviously, I’m rather excited about Obama winning.  To top if all off, his acceptance speech was spectacular.  In terms of speechwriting, content, delivery and message, it completely blew me out of the water.  I’ll post it below so everyone can take a look.

On that same note, McCain’s concession speech was wonderful as well.  He was graceful and humble, and even if some of his audience was booing (although that was not unexpected), he took it in stride and delivered a fantastic speech, honestly, it was much more than I was expecting.

I watched the results on MSNBC, then switching over to see the live coverage on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.  Watching Jon Stewart announce Obama winning was great, and watching Colbert trying to stay in character was a bit gut wrenching.  Also, the last time they did a live show was for the mid-term elections, and the flag hanging in Colbert’s studio was backwards, so I’m hoping it has been fixed, I didn’t see any flags (aside from digital ones flying on the screens) so I can’t comment on Stewart’s studio.  Also, there was this fantastically awkward moment where they had a guest but didn’t know how to get him off the stage (he was sitting between the two of them) so they could continue their reporting.

We also kept switching back to FOX news.  I figured that if they announced Obama had won, it really would be official.

And speaking of other networks, CNN needs to put that hologram away and never use it again.  I was very excited and then got nothing!  Princess Leia would be very angry that you were trying to use her favored means of communication like that!

So moving forward, I made the mistake of opening Facebook.  Forgetting a good majority of my friends are very conservative, I was honestly surprised to see the amount of hate messages on their statuses.  And I’m not saying to not disagree with me, and I’m very excited that our generation is getting involved and active in the political process, however, the messages of hate need to stop (and for the most part they have).

And while I am always happy that people are involved in the political process, there is a responsibility that comes with that.  That means looking into issues and  educating yourself about the candidates.  Pushing “straight party,” on either side, doesn’t count unless you learned about the candidates.  I voted for Democrats, Republicans, even a Green party candidate. But when you carelessly declare that you’ll “never vote for a [insert party name here]” I lose a lot of respect for your opinion.

And furthermore, since when does it make it ok to hate someone based on if they are of Arab descent?  Not that Obama is (and for the record, he is in fact a US Citizen, so he can be President, if it was an issue do you think he would have been a senator?), but apparently that is reason enough for a lot of people to hate him.  I’m Lebanese, guess you have to hate me now too.  Sigh.

The same goes for religious intolerance.  This is one thing that just sends me flying off the handle.  And it probably is due so much to not being Catholic and going to a Catholic school.  But really, I can’t fathom why it bothered so many people to think Obama was Muslim (again, he isn’t, just more ways to scare people, see the the previous paragraph).  And again, if this influenced your vote in a significant way, it’s between you and God, it’s not my deal.  But I thought we lived in a country that guaranteed every one of us freedom of religion.  And I honestly believe that fundamentalist Christians are more dangerous than fundamentalist Muslims.

And as happy as I am with the election: California, WTF?!  Bad California.  Bad.

It really is a shame that Prop 8 passed, but hopefully something can (and probably will, the country may call itself conservative, but I think it tends to be progressive) be done.  We’ll have to see.  Here’s a great clip (somewhat) about it from the daily show (and have I mentioned how much I love GraphJam.com, and punditkitchen.com, all a part of the icanhascheezburger lol-cats network):

So I guess for now we’ll continue to live in a country that withholds basic human rights to parts of the population. But that’s what we get for being human I guess, a country to live in, flaws and all.

I never liked Bush as our President, quite frankly, I think he’s an idiot.  However, for eight years (granted I couldn’t vote in 2000 and my vote in 2004 wasn’t necessarily for Kerry, but more a vote for anyone besides Bush), the Republican side has been beating into everyone that you have to at least respect the office.  And while I think that is a totally bogus concept, I would like to at least see it reciprocated by those who were jamming it down our throats for so long.

And no, voting for McCain does not make you racist.  I’m sure some votes out there were racially driven, but that’s your own deal, not mine.

Also, watching so many flip flop on women leaders was hysterical!  For so long, I heard how Hillary would be an awful leader and how women should not be in the White House, then suddenly, with the addition of Palin (a completely pandering move in my opinion), suddenly it’s empowering.  Either be a (good kind of) feminist or don’t.  Politics don’t matter.

And on that note, Palin really does scare me.  Not her intelligence (which was blown out of proportion with the whole Africa/country/NAFTA thing, although she does seem about at the same level as Bush), but the fact that she would have blown women’s rights back into the stone ages.

So I constantly hear how awful the next four years are going to be, and how all these people want to move to Canada.  Well, go ahead, it’s more socialist up there than we’ll ever be.  And besides, if you’re that concerned with making that much money, you could at least move to Detroit, it’s closer to Canada.  And to be fair, I like the idea of socialism.  It would never work, people are too greedy (see: current population), but it’s a cool idea.

And no, we won’t become socialist.  Let’s be realistic, as much as we can talk about change, we aren’t going to see as much as we like, so settle down.  And speaking of being honest: Do I think Obama will be perfect?  Absolutely not!  Far from it.  Do I think it will be a lot better?  I certainly hope so.  But we’ll have to see.  That’s the beauty of America, we get to put our trust in someone, and if it doesn’t work, we can give our hopes and dreams to someone else in four years.  I’m still a registered independent (and plan to stay that way), most of my views are very liberal (at least on social issues), but otherwise, I’m all over the map (mostly because I don’t care to know how each party stands on the mundane stuff like size of government), so my vote is once again up for grabs.

So now the talk returns to who will be in the Cabinet.  We’ll see.  The current co-chair of the transition of the FCC, or something like that, is a WoW player.  Which is amazing!  Someone who understands the internet working in a position that deals with it!  Now if only it was an URU player…

And I’ve been hearing a lot of negative comments about Hillary being Sec. of State.  I don’t really have an opinion either way, I think she’ll do well, I do, but am not really invested either way.  I do know that the closest the Middle East has ever seen to peace was when Bill was in office, and I know he worked his butt off for that (not that any of the straight-party republicans would ever admit that), so maybe he can help.

One very good thing to come out of this election though was the push back of the Christmas creep.  Due to all the political ads, we didn’t really see Christmas ads until about a week after the election.  Thank goodness!  Now if only we could get retailers to realize that Thanksgiving is still a holiday…

But in the meantime, check out change.gov, it’s still a bit bare bones, but cool to look over.  It’s great to have someone in office who is connected and using the internet to reach out to constituents.

Pittgirl had a great post-election recap, but her blog is gone, and there were a bunch of other things I want to post to, but alas, I can’t find them, and honestly, I’ve gone on for far too long.  So enjoy some media before the wrap up:

And as promised, a night of incredible speeches from both sides:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT7DZZ1iEnk

Ok, to recap: Take a deep breath.  Nothing is changing, thiese things take time (hopefully some less than others, my gosh, a pacifist glad we’re finally getting out of Iraq, SHOCK!), and let’s be honest, the common people like you and me aren’t going to see much for a while anyway.  So enjoy the lack of political ads (except for you Georgia, sorry about that!) and enjoy the holidays, be it Christmas, Boxing Day, Chaunakka, Kwanza, Festivus, the winter soltice or whatever, go be with friends and family!

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