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Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Saddened

I am deeply saddened right now. Our country has gone in a very wrong direction tonight and I just don't know what to say. Shocked. Saddened. Horrified. I recognize the choice of the majority in this country, but still... wow. I hope my worst fears are not realized. I hope in four years we will be better off. I am proud to some extent of the historic choice the country has made, but I feel that this particular candidate was not the right one for this time in our history.

I believe this country can be a great one. However, I think that can only be done by not looking to the solutions of the past, which I felt Obama represented, but by look for the solutions of the future. I believe that the presidency is not a popularity contest. I believe the presidency requires the culmination of a lifetime of political and lifetime experience.

A few things I will be doing is reading up on the 1917 Russian Revolution so I will know what to do. Probably go back to burying myself in work I guess.

I guess what that means is no more politics here. Sorry, I just needed to get a few things off my chest. This is just such a tragic day.

6 comments:

  1. Chin up my friend. We survived Carter, we'll get through Obama.

    In the meantime we just have to keep getting the message out there that with great power comes great responsibility. It will be of utmost importance that we keep reminding the latest version of "socialist-lite" that there is a reason the US was the first to step foot outside of our planet. And it wasn't because we "spread the wealth".

    I found you via your comments @Phil Plait's house, and I agree with you. But don't worry, we'll be alright.

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  2. It's rude for someone who doesn't share your political views at all to stick his nose in here -- but I really think that, at least, you should stop fearing the Apocalypse because of Obama's election. His economic policies amount to providing a modest income boost to the middle class and the working poor after a period in which the median American's income had actually stalled out, with virtually all the country's gains going to the wealthy. And there are a lot of high-reputation economists who think his health-care plan will actually be more efficient than our current Rube Goldbergian public/private mix. (As Nobel Prize winner Kenneth Arrow pointed out back in 1963, health care is one of those unusual kinds of human interaction that the market doesn't handle very well for a number of reasons, some of them moral).

    As for Iraq: its assistant defense minister announced today that its government agrees completely with Obama's plan to pull the troops out by mid-2010, and that they'll therefore probably stop trying to negotiate a similar deal with Bush. The REAL Apocalypses we have to worry about, as far as I'm concerned, are (1) nuclear proliferation and resulting possible nuclear terrorism; and (2) the need to find alternative energy sources, both because of the shrinking world oil supply and the destructive effect of global warming (which now looks highly probable). To deal with those real nightmares, we'll need a President with imagination, and I think Obama has at least as much of that as McCain.

    So -- although for a different reason than TMan -- let me agree that you should at least come out of shock. He may turn out to be the wrong choice -- there are certainly some dark blots on his record as far as I'm concerned -- but for Heaven's sake stop seeing a Commie Revolution around the corner. That, at least, is one thing we don't have to worry about at all.

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  3. You're overreacting. USA turning into commie country is as probable as Russia becoming a truly democratic one.

    And with all due respect - I have a feeling You know nothing about life under communism.

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  4. Yeah, I was overreacting a bit there at the end. I wrote that after seeing that celebration outside the White House and my first thoughts ran to all those videos of the storming of the Winter Palace. Obviously, that wasn't the right analogy.

    Quite frankly, I've calmed down now. We've gotten though a democratic president before and we will get through one again.

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  5. i feel exactly the opposite. i was a mccain supporter for about 6 years. i loved him in and after 2000. but he was about 80% wrong all throughout the 2008 election, and that is not even considering iraq.

    i think the republican party you wish for no longer exists. a democratic win was imperative for both the country and the republican party to get back to its reagan/goldwater roots. barry goldwater was working on a book at the time of his passing about just how wrong the republicans have gone in the last 8 years.

    so there is no way the current republican party would have been able to do a better job than any democratic party. if the democrats cannot lead right now, then i suppose nobody can. which is a problem we are all responsible for as it took 8 years of bad governance under bush to wake up america enough to pay attention to politics.

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  6. I believe the presidency requires the culmination of a lifetime of political and lifetime experience.


    And George W Bush was...... a guy who couldn't run a baseball team and became president. Daddy's money and influence pushing him through, and brother jigging the election to make it happen when even all that failed.

    Er, I guess it's OK to be that way and president if you are a Republican.

    Just a few closing points:

    -The US space program is in tatters
    -"MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!". 100,000 Iraqi dead,as a war predicated on manufactured lies.
    - "Nucular"
    -Less than half of the world's opinion of the United States is now favorable
    - 1 in 4 American children live in poverty

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