Friday, November 07, 2008

Awesomeness from RedSate

Now that they have been taken down a peg or two, I can once again stand to read them. Which is good, otherwise I would have missed this wonderful piece of awesomeness:

Suicide at the Council of Elrond

Of course, it's better in the orginal elvish.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

My thoughts exactly

The Cunning Realist:

Conservatism's chastened, soul-searching morning after: bombs, cancer jokes, and some typically incisive commentary on foreign affairs.The wilderness is thickly forested, and the trail maps suck...

All you who believed in WMDs, that compassionate conservatism was something other than ages old religious arguments about who's invisible friend is bigger, and called folks "socialists" who didn't want to give $700,000,000,000 in welfare to banks, I say, enjoy your time in the wilderness! Don't feel a need to hurry back, we'll take care of things while you're gone. When you decide to run someone for public office who knows that Africa isn't a country, let us know, we'll be waiting.

Grace Notes

I watched Sen. McCain's consession speech last night and was highly impressed. He gave a respectful, well-intentioned and completely graceful speech marred only slightly by the booing of his crowd. And, given that Democrats have excelled at these kinds of speechs in the last 20 years, it's nice to see the republicans can summon up the needed class for this.

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Crushed!

As Ohio falls, so goes McCain. When he didn't flip Pennsylvania (thanks Becky!), he had to run the table. When Ohio fell, so did McCain. MSNBC is refusing to call Florida and North Carolina, but that's just to keep people from tuning out.

For the first time in my adult life, I got the election results I wanted. (Well... we'll see about ballot initiatives in CA in WA, but largely I got what I wanted.)

Theme's to look for in the GOP Post Mortem:

Center-Right Nation
Blame Bush
McCain wasn't mean enough.
Palin should have been allowed to be Palin
etc.

Anything except their intellectually bankrupt ideas. If your conservative friends say it's not a repudiation of their ideas, ask why they lost so many ballot initiatives, e.g. SD abortion and Colorado's attempt to outlaw contraception.

The world tomorrow will be measurably better than the world yesterday.

and I am going to go drinking!

Monday, November 03, 2008

Call

In poker, after the last check-raise, the opponent can call, bringing an end to the games and winning or losing based on the cards. We've reached that point in the election. My final Intrade bets are in, the final attack ads are out as McCain throws the very last of his dignity at the wall hoping against hope that folks take pity and elevate him to national office.

As a long time independent, I have watched the democrats throw victory away time after time with candidates one would, at the best of times, still have to hold one's nose to vote for, Gore, Kerry, Mondale, Dukakis and Slick Willie. I voted for them (sometimes) largely because the alternative was even worse.

Obama has been different. When I saw his speech in Boston in 2004 (and btw started one of the first posting on this blog), I thought to myself, "wow, the nominated the wrong guy". Smart, articulate and, above all, reasonable. Open to non-ideological thoughts, new ideas and the idea that maybe a hip-shot isn't always the best way to go. In 2004 I assumed there was no chance at all anyone in any party would let him within a mile of the presidency.

So here we are on Election Eve 2008, and I got everything I wanted from the Dems. The campaign ran the way I would have wanted (even though I was ready to put a Clinton on the ticket for unity), with the candidates showing the maturity and leadership I would want to see (well.... Biden.... but he's funny, so it's okay), and Obama, for the most part, taking the high road.

McCain ran a good campaign as well, although he always seemed torn between his desire to do the right thing, his ambition to be president, and the needs of his base (having subsisted on an Atkins-like diet of pure red meat for the past 18 years). If McCain2000 had shown up, and not picked the odious Palin as a running mate, he could easily have taken my vote despite our disagreement on the war. He didn't, but I think he wishes he had returned to that framework instead of the one his campaign built for him. If there was a moment when I thought he lost my vote (apart from Palin) it was when the McCain campaign said, "John McCain does not speak for the McCain campaign". Really? Then who does?

As I have said many times here, if I have learned one thing in my life, it's that regrets occur when you don't try your hardest. I doubt the Obama campaign will have regrets, even if they lose tomorrow.

The bets are in, the candidates are about finished, it's time to show the cards.