BARACK OBAMA ELECTED 44TH US PRESIDENT!

Even though the polls and pundits suggested Barack Obama would win, I never really believed mainly because I was afraid to believe. I kept wondering what tricks the Republicans would have.I still remembered Gore's loss in 2000. Put simply the presidency had been stolen from Gore; the Republicans had caused many votes to be disregarded. The Republicans had even used the Supreme Court to their favor (a Supreme Court stacked with Republican-appointees).

These past eight years I've been feeling the United States is actually run by some kind of politburo, a bunch of people controlling the country with a front man. With Bush in power for eight years, everything seemed to be unraveling - the wars, military torture in Guantanamo, the housing bubble, the economic meltdown. I watched the dollar sink in value against foreign monies; I watched foreigners treat America with less and less respect. Sometimes, when foreigners talked about America's policies in a negative way, all I could say was, "I didn't vote for Bush."

In 2004, I too got caught up with the 9/11 matter, and didn't fully mourn Kerry's loss of the presidency. I understood that Bush was a wartime president and wartime presidents usually stay in power. There was talk that there was cheating during that election as well; but I suspect there are always complaints of cheating in any election. The feeling then was FEAR of Bin Laden and the Al Queda, so much so that our brains were muddled and we failed to question why America attacked Iraq as a reaction to Bin Laden.

That's one thing I learned about Bush - he likes to pressure the American people to get what he wants. Take the 700 billion dollar bailout that he proposed in September. Many people say the bailout was necessary; but the way I look at it, the economy had/has to run its course. The quick fix, Bush promised didn't happen. And meantime the housing bubble had burst, and people were losing their jobs and their pensions.

With all of this as backdrop the presidential campaign took place - like an epic play with characters strutting across the stage - the drama was something else! It was painful to see Hillary Clinton lose; it was insulting to see Sarah Palin introduced into the stage as "Hillary's replacement." It was mind boggling to see John McCain (the angry old man) stop his campaign to run off to Washington to "solve" the financial meltdown, which he didn't solve. It was nerve wracking to watch the presidential and vice-presidential debates. It was amusing to watch the Palin interviews with Katie Couric and Charles Gibson, and to watch Tina Fey in Saturday Night Live as Palin - and in some cases Fey just repeated Palin's inane words verbatim. And it boggled my mind to think Americans really liked Palin. I doubted the wisdom of all Americans. I thought about the political candidates I had supported and who lost (my mind, I had decided, is differently wired from the average American.) I worried that my rooting for Obama would jinx him. I had made the transition from Hillary to Obama, thanks in large part to my reading Obama's fine book, Dreams From My Father, which gave me a glimmer of the intelligence and goodness of this man.

Every day I found myself googling "political news, political polls" and spending hours reading about every political twist and turn. I was even watching YouTube political clips; I must have watched the Palin-Couric interview 6 times! (I wasn't alone; some other friends were just as obsessed as I was.) I watched when the McCain campaign brought up Obama's supposed association with Ayres; I watched how, within the day, the Obama campaign posted YouTube clips of McCain's involvement in the Keating scandal. I watched when the McCain campaign brought up the video reportedly showing Obama in the dinner for Palestinian Rashid Khalidi; and I watched how the Obama campaign quickly released information that McCain had headed a group that donated some 800 million dollars to Khalidi's group. It was remarkable how prepared Obama's campaign was to handle every dirt that the McCain campaign brought up. McCain's campaign members were the same people in Bush's campaign - Karl Rove, Steve Schmidt, Mike McDonald, Mike DuHaime and many more which I've listed in a blog entry "Who Are the People Running the McCain Campaign?" To me, they are part of the politburo that has been running the US for 8 years.

It was all a roller coaster ride.

And to my shock and delight, yesterday the American people spoke. In an orderly way a revolution occurred. Guns were not fired in this revolution, but in a loud way, people made it known that they want Obama to be their 44th president. Voter turnout was exceptionally large with voters waiting for hours. My husband and I waited 40 minutes, and I made sure the markings on my ballot were really there; I even held up my ballot and scrutinized it to make sure there were no smears, no strange markings. I didn't want any "hanging chad" to invalidate my vote. And the people roared; Obama did not win by a slim margin but by a landslide -349 electoral votes for Obama vs. 174 for McCain, with a couple more States to go. No need to quarrel over the results; no need to turn the matter over to a biased Supreme Court.

On TV last night I saw someone hold up a placard that said, "Bush You're Fired." And I saw a young African American woman, a student I surmised, on her knees, doubled-over, weeping for a long time. Many people wept; and while I grew teary, I had already wept the night before when I finally digested the notion that this man with the strange name, this son of a Kenyan student, had a good shot at being president of the United States.

The American people have spoken. The eight dark years of war and torture and fattening-up of Bush's cronies will be over. A new beginning is here for all Americans, and dare I say, for the rest of the world.

Education - Political candidates

The following information is interesting. I knew Obama and Biden were highly educated but I didn't know that McCain was at the bottom of his Naval Academy class; and that Palin attended 4 colleges to get her BA Journalism; I'm actually surprised she has a degree at all; she can't say a complete sentence with subject-predicate-object.


Barack Obama: Columbia University 1983 - B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in International Relations; Harvard University 1991 - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

Joseph Biden: University of Delaware 1965 - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science. Syracuse University College of Law 1968 - Juris Doctor (J.D.) vs.

John McCain: United States Naval Academy 1958 - Class rank: 894 of 899

Sarah Palin: Hawaii Pacific University 1982 - 1 semester North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester University of Idaho - 3 semesters 1987 - B.A. in Journalism

WHO WON THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE?

Second presidential debate done in the Town Hall format, which did not appeal to me. The candidates (McCain and Obama)repeated what they had said in the first debate.

What did I think? Obama did fine; he was calm, presidential, composed, and he answered intelligently. He is an intelligent man, more of an intellectual than a politician, although he has good political instincts or has surrounded himself with people who know about these matters.

McCain looked like an angry old man, just simmering, simmering...he looked like he'd snap at any second. He IS an angry person; he jokes around, grins a lot, tries to be personable but you can feel his seething anger. He answered the questions fine, and repeated what he had said beforehand, and attacked Obama as he had done so in the first debate. Once, the camera caught him walking and apparently communicating with someone in the audience, and McCain was making a face and moved his right hand as if to indicate so-so. Further, McCain rudely referred to Obama as "that one."

The debate wasn't dramatic; in fact I became bored in the middle of the event. I don't know if the format was to blame, but it lacked energy, and the candidates didn't always answer the questions but took the time to attack the other. McCain was really doing this more, although Obama also pointed out McCain's weaknesses. They'd run out of time, and finally Brokaw had to chastise them to limit their talks.

Political analysts had indicated McCain needed to do something dramatic to turn the downward dive of his campaign. He didn't do this; he didn't excel. So, if what the analysts said is true, then the McCain campaign should continue it's descent. And factoring that aspect into the fact that he appeared like an angry old man - McCain lost to the cool, calm (albeit tired) Obama.

However, I am holding my breath because nothing's a given here. Republicans have a lot of tricks up their sleeve including cheating...and there's the race issue. There are people who simply will not vote for a black man even if their ship were sinking, which is happening right now - the US economy is in the worst state since the Great Depression.

But we shall see what happens. As mentioned, the American people will have to choose.

More Thoughts on Bush, McCain, Palin, Obama, Biden

I have watched some of our friends support and vote for Bush. Even when it became apparent that Bush had done a lousy job, they continued to find excuses for him. I have not seen them since the recent Bailout crisis, so I don't know if they remain Bush fans, but I suspect that they continue to support the Republicans and will vote for McCain.

This used to boggle my mind because from the start, I could see clearly how terrible Bush was, and it confused me when other people couldn't see what I saw. Right now, I see plain as day what a disaster McCain and Palin will be as president and vice president of the United States. McCain is another Bush; he has the same values, and operates on the same doctrines. He has the same Bush-people helping him (White House Adviser Karl Rove is running the McCain Campaign). I don't understand why Americans are buying McCain's line about being different from Bush. He will continue the Bush administration; the U.S. will continue to borrow money from Japan and China to sustain the 12 billion dollars per month cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The economy will plummet even more. A McCain administration will be a disaster.

And Sarah Palin? You know what she makes me think of? - Women like Imelda Marcos, Marie Antoinette, Eva Peron - yes, beautiful, charismatic, but not deep enough. These women were leaders when their countries were in turmoil - perhaps the people allowed them to be in power because they were a diversion - but ultimately they were not good for the people and in fact precipitated the political changes in the Philippines, France, and Argentina.

I hope that enough American voters will see through the politicking and tricks that Republicans have been pulling: there's the surprise nomination of Sarah Palin; there's limiting Palin's contact with the media; there's McCain's sudden abandonment of his campaign to "save" the bailout; there's the media buzz to lower expectations of Palin in the Vice presidential debate; there're plans to take advantage of media attention over the wedding of Palin's daughter and instant-beau - trick after trick to manipulate the media and the minds of the people.

Interestingly it's the dire economic situation that has made people favor Obama in recent polls. Well people need to keep in mind that voting for McCain will be more of Bush. Bush=McCain; McCain=Bush. And should McCain be president and die, the next president will be Palin, and that administration will be even worse than the Bush administration.

It does not take a rocket scientist to spell all of these out. You just have to look, observe, read, and think.
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For more, click below

Matt Damon talks about Sarah Palin in YouTube
Anne Kilkenny's letter about Sarah Palin
Part 2-Couric interviews Sarah Palin about foreign policy, in particular about Pakistan, Alaska and Russia
Sarah Palin * Katie Couric - Foreign Policy (Russia right next to Alaska)
Couric Stumps Palin with Supreme Court Question