Thread of US election discussion for Britishes

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/images/2007/05/07/sany0081.gif

Most misguided sense of optimism and excitement ever.

man, I don't remember that video being so bad.

LOL, Dr. Brian Cox, LOL LOL LOL.

Brian Cox from Dixville Notch amirite

http://twigg4westderby.com/uploads/361e3df3-12f5-a6d4-25f3-9c831a5a9b55.jpg

Okay, I recognise Stephen Twigg but I can't quite place the guy on the right. Is it his boyfriend?

Madame Tussauds did a really good job there

^^^ Saw that shit live. Took me 3 weeks to uncurl my toes from embarrassment.

really thing the Illinois Democratmasters are gonna sock it to the Panama Canal Zone, Panama Republicaneers at this year's Electionbowl

think

Marcus Hahnemann is apparently voting McCain, while Maurice Adu is for Obama. That's all I know.

Would be nice to learn how Clint Dempsey is planning on changing the direction of America.

http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00001/jay130407_1341t.jpg

Good luck Usa

with his next rap album xp

I also saw it live. You'd think that it'd be difficult to pick a standout moment of Jeremy Vine Election Night Horror, but even when put up against Ming's Bling and that thing whereby Gordon Brown was Mr Bean if he was a failure and Stalin if he was a success, Cleggy Boyee really is an entirely different level of wrong.

I am kind of hoping for more of the same tonight, really. Frank Lutz's Virtual 3D Ohio Monster Truck Derby, perhaps.

you don't hear that much about Sarah Palin anymore.

I hate Frank Lutz so much.

Is that a wig?

He's no Jeremy Vine in a cowboy hat.

... polling suggest it is

http://www.washingtonlife.com/directories/photos/watermark.php?path=issues/march-2007//atlantic-media/images/atlantic-media01.jpg

Good luck Usa

Current is offering a user-contributed party. Instead talking heads blabbing away, it will instead a provide a pulsating map set to a live DJ set by Diplo. Contributions will pop up from users on Digg, Twitter and 12seconds.tv.

^^^well that's my viewing for the evening sorted out.

going to all-night election party, taking bottle of moet in ANTICIPATION

figure this is a safe place to post...

why the fuck did those dumb fucks pick red for right-wing and blue for left-wing?

THE EAST IS RED!

^^^^question that needs answering

Dimbleby looks bored as fuck

Why is every American pronouncing "pundit" as "pundent"?

Murdoch airing his views was pretty skin-crawling.

yup, horrid old rubber faced throwback decrying "protectionism"

While declaring that he "likes Obama personally" yeah right

8 American soccerball goals to 3 already. Go USA!

Weirdly enough Obama's team, the Hawaiborough Ampersands beat East Utah Barrelmen 8-3 in the Soccerbarn Carter Cup earlier this year. An omen?

I cannot believe the beauty of Maureen Dowd !!

Oh my - Ricky Greavsie is on BBC

These are truly exciting times

Gervais can fuck off x-post

Looking a little like the world's fattest Don Draper

BREAKING NEWS DAVID BRENT WOULD VOTE FOR OBAMA

omg Hitchens alert!

cut off mid flow, sadly.

Dude could do with some cardio

GOOD LUCK USA

he's drunker than usual

Who the fuck is this corpse they've dragged on now?

Is this thing any more exciting on Five Live?

Hitchens was very good

better than Brent

while it is right for the ilx americans to celebrate, i feel they are laying themselves vulnerable to cold hard comedown

maybe everything will be ok now though

as ned put it eloquently on his blog:

It is noteworthy to watch so many on the right assume that they think those who voted for Obama did so assuming he would fix everything with a wave of the hand, when so many on the left speak clearly about how they assume nothing of the sort. It is noteworthy too that in his acceptance speech Obama stressed challenges and not only the possibilities of mistakes but the inevitability of them. I’ll take that level-headedness and awareness, thanks, and here’s to it being put in place to the full.

I've been considering putting money now on the first non-white PM being a Tory.

Hey, thanks Grimly. Just trying to sum it up.

Why not, they had the first Jewish, the first woman and the first gay PM after all (xp)

yeh, i was very taken with that, ned. check my facebook/tumblr, too.

Sorry about that, Ned puts it far better than I. Just don't want ppl to be carried away with euphoria and then see things fuck up out of nowhere, although that is probably in itself a heat-of-the-moment sentiment.

http://thisfuckingelection.com

It would be quite difficult for Obama to fuck up more than the Bush administration has managed, frankly.

Yes, what I think we can reasonably expect is a return to competence and legality--too things that would be a HUGE improvement over the past administration. All else, well, who knows? You can't predict much about any new president; there are just too many factors.

THE ELOQUENCE OF NED RAGGETT

Well, I'll only be overjoyed and euphoric if the changes for good Obama is clearly capable of are implemented and new attitudes are ingrained. As for now, I am not overjoyed at the election result, because it was the only conscionable decision the U.S. could have come to. McCain was never going to win, and this was a necessary, almost processional precursor to the possibility of change.

Collect yer wet blankets on the way out

NEW ATTITUDES INGRAINED - P.A., 16:32 EST

You've missed the best bit of the Dizzee/Paxman Communication Challenge. Paxman rendered speechless by a well-deployed 'innit'.

I've been considering putting money now on the first non-white PM being a Tory.

I always thought this would be the way it would happen in the US, too - i.e. via the back door. RONG.

Me too, Hand. I feel good that it wasn't that way. Well, I want a Democrat in the White House!

"Yeah cos he could be a black man, a purple man, a martian man doesn't matter innit?"

Systems thinking will win the next general election.

Well, I'll only be overjoyed and euphoric if the changes for good Obama is clearly capable of are implemented and new attitudes are ingrained. As for now, I am not overjoyed at the election result, because it was the only conscionable decision the U.S. could have come to. McCain was never going to win, and this was a necessary, almost processional precursor to the possibility of change

you might be interested in what my libertarian friend kevin has to say in response to the ned quotation on my blog, here. i'd say more if i didn't have to dash off to a lecture; i think it suffices for now to say that it's all about hope. especially after that fucker and his fucking fucker pals for the last eight years.

Bringing up the bogeymen of Ayers and Wright = not worth engaging in argument.

Nothing wrong Kevin Ayers and Rick Wright

And what are we to make of the fact that he's spent all his adult life hanging out with people who hate America - like Ayers and Wright - and crooks like Tony Rezko?

This is factually wrong in many many ways.

KMcC sure likes his GOP talking points.

At least he said "hanging out" instead of "palling around" so we wouldn't think he lifted it verbatim from Palin's Politics 101.

Hey grimly, can you pass on this old post of mine to your friend? And please let him know I mean it from the bottom of my heart.

dude's too wilfully misanthropic and joy hating even for ilxors

he used to work at our place. and now he works at stacey's old place. what do you expect? ;)

also, in fairness to him: he says he views his libertarianism as something that transcends party politics, and seems to hold pretty much every party in equal disrespect. trouble is, of course, that the argument (small government good; individual freedom good) does tend to look a little, well, right-wing written down.

libertarianism can fuck off with anarchism

yeah these people: all for small government until they need to use the courts or find the NIMBY cause of their choice or be equal to anyone else under the law. I think they're just kind of 'small' people who can't handle 'big' ideas.

libertarianism can fuck off with anarchism

dude, i agree. i'm just pointing it out, that's all.

anyway. i've posted my own reply, too. thanks, tracer and den (not sure who den is, actually), for commenting.

i think i might start using capital letters in my posts here, too. it's the last place i've stuck to my rigid old no-caps-on-the-internet bollocks (i think i tried to explain the feeble reasoning behind it here once). Hmm. This feels odd.

not sure who den is, actually

ho, gnah no. which one, though?

(sey, i ma a kcid.)

Your friend may be a fine fellow but if he doesn't realize how easily he got played into being a relay for buzzwords and complaints, then it's time for him to step back and think a bit.

Thanks, Ned, you've just hatched the one-sentence rebuttal line that might SHUT MY MOM UP. She will probably accuse me of being patronizing when she recovers at which point I'll be all 'aww, booboo, how clever of you to notice..."

xps
haha - i just typed up a long screed of stuff that i was going to post on your blog but i rejected it because it had TOO MUCH STUFF IN CAPITALS.

Ha, I read that first as "it rejected it" and I thought, what? How the fuck does that work?

Anyway, fuck rejecting it. GET IT POSTED.

(This use of the shift key feels really bloody weird round these parts.)

Suzy: it's along the lines of what Mackro noticed the other day when family and friends were all bombarding him with that "Obama's going to destroy coal!" nonsense -- as either Mackro or someone else said, they were looking for an excuse to register their opposition, something to hang their hat on. For Grimly's friend it's the Ayers-Wright-Rezko OMG scary troika in part -- and if it hadn't've been them, other names would have been circulated and he would have parroted them as well.

It's very dull, it's very dumb, and I'm not impressed by dullardry.

Everything I've ever read from said dude has been straightforward contrarianism, so am not unsurprised.

xp
Well, you've pretty much said it in your reply (and what Ned just said) but I was going to offer a modicum of support in that he's right that when politicians talk off "change" and "hope" that CAN be meaningless crap, ffs Dave Cameron's thing is all that at the moment, but BO isn't the same as these fuckers and anyone who has actually read his book (for instance) will know that.

AHAHA 10 minutes in to Question Time and PC Gone Mad invoked by a guy in a naval blazer. Surely a record?

Question Time is RAWK tonight! Also an acquaintance is one of the panelists, DOUBLE RAWK.

I haven't read the link but my mom is not THAT 'out there'. She rooted for Obama in the primary because of what it would mean for the US at home and abroad but that went by the by when the Wright thing broke. For her, Ayers is a rich kid with good lawyers, Wright is a corrupt preacherman (tell her a minister is on TV and has a 1-800 for donations and she pretty much hates them regardless of what they say in their sermons), and Rezko is a non-issue because politicians are forever being courted by people like that in an intense groupie kind of way and can't be discouraged or accepted either way; that's all a Tony Rezko ever was. Her big issue in the closing days, replacing ACORN, was that anyone in Dem party in Chicago is part of The Machine and it comes to light eventually, dead voters, Chrismas turkeys, yada yada. What she didn't understand is that, like every other time Obama has had to work with an establishment (or against it) he's basically put judo moves on it to accomplish his goal.

ARGH David Cameron *is* a fucking undistinguished lightweight novice compared to Obama. Brown was right to put him in his place and I'm sure Dave 'please be my friend, supercool black guy' Cameron knows it.

n acquaintance is one of the panelists

Not Nigel Farage?

Wrong skin tone...

Also OH GOD net dyslexia made that into NIGEL FLANGE briefly.

it's the one dimbleby just called germaine, isn't it?

Haha, he's still tired from Tuesday. As am I.

LOL. And she called him Jonathan to get him back. He's done it before.

Wrong skin tone... Complete waste of space.

fixed.

Ned, this isn't personal, but whenever someone that I know to be accomplished is called a 'complete waste of space' I think their critic might be a 'complete waste of time'. Let me know when you get your invite to appear on Question Time, gangsta.

If it's any comfort.

Regarding my "Obama is out to bankrupt coal!" friends from Monday. (God, Monday was THAT LONG AGO. JESUS!)

* Two of them admitted to being duped, ultimately felt last-hour Palin fear which ultimately directed their votes to Obama
* Another two didn't like all four of the Prez/VPrez candidates AT ALL. They were just really hoping Hillary would win the nomination, and they never got over it. Neither of them voted.

Granted, the above friends are my age, roughly. The others are older. I never heard back from them.

I don't know about the rest, but it looks like, overall, if the election were ONLY decided by these anxious friends who contacted me Monday, Obama would STILL have won.

So good vibes, PLUR, and all that || ^_^ ||