one for the ages

i've been in a few crowds in my day. football games at the swamp tend to have more than a few die hards among the faithful. rush hour traffic on the beltway. fire drills at school. the only difference is that all of the above happen week in, week out; day in, day out; or month after brake-gas-brake-gas month.

an inauguration of a new president occurs only quadrennially. people can't get used to it because their memories fade, and rarely was it so highly attended as yesterday's hullaballoo surrounding our new 44th president. the peaceful transfer of power between two diametrically opposite leaders is rarely, if ever, accomplished in all but a few of the countries on earth.

for a large portion of the crowd, this meant more to them than just a new president. this was more than a young, charismatic new president replacing a curmudgeonly, reclusive, widely reviled old president. this was a sense of triumph. a sense of satisfaction. the highest office in the land finally attained, now the rest of the gaps in our country's history of exclusion and segregation and discrimination can finally begin to be filled in. it was really moving to see women in their 60s, braving the cold with us young folks, for the chance to see something that they'd never have dreamt of as children. to see the chests of old black men swell with pride at seeing barack put his hand on lincoln's bible and take the oath of office.

hearing the chatter around me afterwards, it really hit home how inclusive his administration can be and the sense of pride, regardless of race, that all felt walking around the district yesterday.

"i really liked that he included nonbelievers."
"he wants to bring science back into government."
"he wants to end sectarian politics."

jaded and cynical as i am about politics in general, i can't help but think that a lot of the soaring rhetoric and ideals embodied in his speech yesterday were jabs at the past administration. with bush sitting nearby, the camera panned to him at each of those talking points; he sat emotionless and silent. just as i suspect he'll be from here on out.

tomorrow, tomorrow

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu. Adieu, adieu, to you and you and you.
So long, farewell, au revoir, auf wiedersehen. I'd like to stay and taste my first champagne.
So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye. I leave and heave a sigh and say goodbye -- Goodbye!
I'm glad to go, I cannot tell a lie.
I flit, I float, I fleetly flee, I fly.
The sun has gone to bed and so must I.
So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!

who throws a shoe? honestly...

so, in case you missed it yesterday, an iraqi journalist threw his shoes at dubya yesterday when he made a surprise visit to baghdad.



bush brushed it off, "i don't know what his beef is." this appalling lack of knoweledge of arab culture astounds me. now, i didn't know that it was such an insult until baghdad fell in 2003. i remember videos of iraqis smacking statues and posters of hussein with their shoes and learning about the insult.

i was going to get into it more, but the BBC beat me to the punch. read it here.

the discussion below the article on al-jazeera is a little bit more telling about how insulated he is from the realities of his international disrepute.

36 days until this cyst is out of office...

closed minded people

some friends of mine had joked, some quipped seriously, about moving to canada if mccain was elected for another four years of republicans. hell, slate magazine posted a parody video about it! if you missed it, see below. it hasn't even been 12 hours since barack obama has become our first african/american president elect. oh, how the tide has turned!

aside from the elation many feel over this historic election, the anger others feel confounds me. in the short amount of time since it was called, i have heard no less than 5 people within my seven degrees of separation call for moving to canada, costa rica, et al, all because of barack's election.

aren't we all americans first? last time i checked, this wasn't republicanistan, nor is it democratia. i've not traveled outside of our borders too often (four whole days in america lite), but i know by osmosis that beyond isn't as comfortable and easy as these threateners-to-leave make it seem. the only reason it's nice in those countries for you is because you're a prosperous american. you have money. you can afford to make it nice and insulate yourself from the day-to-day realities of many of the people in the world. except of course for canada. it's just effin' cold up there.

so if you're mad, shut your mouth, and act like an adult. a country full of eric cartmans we are not.

"screw you guys, i'm going home." this is america, not trey parker and matt stone's south park, colorado. grow up.

new age exit polls

this is my third presidential election. i've never been exit polled. the cnn and foxnews folks should look to facebook status updates for their exit polls from now on. well, at least for the young folks. if my friends are any indication, obama wins by about 80 points...

i got up at 6:30, was out the door about five minutes later, at the polls by 6:40 i'd estimate. the line was down the block and almost around the corner. i'd say close to 200 deep. i read my magazine cover to cover, shivered a little, and cast my vote. 7:30 i was walking back to my apartment to eat breakfast and get ready for the day. thank GOD it's all over.

yeah, that's not so realistic. here i sit in this bastion of american democracy, mid-atlantic fall descending upon us, foreboding mood outside. i ought to go watch the results roll in, but i'm a victim of inertia right now. she's ill, and most of my other area friends are going to watch the results at the hawk and dove, a capitol hill bar that is apparently THE place to be on election night. i'm not too keen on going into the district because of the weather and my recent bout of experiences with metro's punctuality.

anyone want to go to the arlington drafthouse with me? anyone?

d.c. politics saturation

the funny thing about this city and the surrounding 'burbs is how saturated with politics everything is. everyone has an opinion about this or that and feels the need to share it when a tiny opportunity presents itself. case in point, last night as i shopped for the contents of a care package for an old friend. he's a marine, deployed in afghanistan. it's his fourth tour overseas; the previous three were in iraq.

i asked romona the cashier to keep my two bags of stuff separate, as one was a care package for a marine. we got to talking about his duties and deployments when out of the blue, "well, he's got bush to thank for that!"

silence. crickets. i didn't know how to respond. many of you don't know brian. he's a character to say the least. as long as i've known him, all he wanted to do was serve our country. as i thought more about it, it became clear to me why i'm so conflicted about the war.

do i think we were misled into iraq? more than likely. do i think that guys like brian bemoan their multiple deployments? absolutely not. if it weren't iraq or afghanistan, it'd be some other theater and far more covert. he'd be bored as hell stuck behind a desk, and while special ops guys are an anomaly, it is what he signed up for. he wouldn't still be at it after 11 years if he weren't good at it, and sad as it is, there's plenty of work for him to do. we're in too deep in iraq to cut and run. i don't think there's an easy answer, but i'm glad that there's been more positive news lately. hopefully, we can help straighten things out and our next president gets all the credit.

elections don't matter

turns out this onion video has a bit of truth to it.


Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

the difference is, in the interest of satire, the onion says mccain will win because he was picked by the same people that pick all the presidents. can anyone say skull and bones?

anyhow, last night i went to an academic talk by uf professor dr. stephen craig. he's a wicked smart political scientist, and in a town like d.c., i'd think it'd be a little intimidating to speak to people who are all pretty knowledgeable about national politics. osmosis is interesting. his talk was about political campaigns and whether or not they actually matter. he laid out the conditions for this year's election. according to allan lichtman, there are 13 conditions that predict before the election that a given party will win. zero to five false, incumbent party wins. six to thirteen false, challenging party wins. they've retroactively applied these conditions to past elections, and it's been accurate in every single one back to 1860!

this year's gonna be close. if they're wrong, consider political science's name changed to "political hunchery" (dr. craig's wording) from here on out. go look at the list, and see what you think they're all predicting. lichtman used his list in november and came to the onion's conclusion, but the political landscape, ever shifting, isn't quite the same.

politwits

early this morning on good morning america, some political wonk was waxing poetic about how the campaigns are going for the dems and how the race might go against mccain in the fall. one thing that stuck in my mind was his analysis of obama's candidacy. he made the comparison between obama and that of two other groundbreaking african-american men, jackie robinson and tiger woods. he said that obama needs to put himself more in the mold of tiger and not jackie. to be the best candidate, not the best black candidate.

i take issue with this on many levels. first and foremost, he denigrated jackie robinson's contribution to athletics as we know them today where the best athlete is the best athlete. from the get go, he was a champion in the majors, winning the first ever rookie of the year award. all star game honors came his way six times in his career. he added to that one national league mvp award and helped the dodgers win six national league pennants and one world series ring. "the best black ballplayer"? au contraire!

the point he was trying to make, albeit with flawed logic, was that tiger woods began his career as the best african-american golfer. now, as he piles up trophies and green jackets and banks a lot of coin, everyone knows he's the best golfer in the game now, if not ever. that's the angle that this wonk wants the obama camp to take, that barack is the best candidate, not the best black candidate. that they should stop playing up his skin color and start playing the content of his character. the problem i had with his argument, as always, is that the media are the source of a lot of this spin. arent't the media the ones that are highlighting the fact that the democratic nod is going to the first female or the first african-american? aren't the media the ones that are asking poll questions like, "is he black enough?" aren't the media the ones that force him to take time out of his campaign to comment on the black experience in america when they lambasted him over his preacher's fiery sermons? this politwit needs to wake up and take a look at his own colleagues for how they're portraying all the candidates.