So Bronco's team pulled it off....

Was up from two a.m. watching live feed on the internets, and at 7 a.m. our time, the live stream on the front page of the NY Times had Mittens' concession speech.  So no rancorous recounts.  Good. 

The once and future President just spoke on the live feed from NY Times.  Uplifting, accomplished, moving.

But I predict:  there will be days of the media playing the blame game, there will be jockeying for position and attempts to block anything good that will be proposed, and the bloviators will be either elated or have their heads explode live and in color in the national media. 

From a vantage point far removed from the continental US, am relieved, in that there will be no neo-con cabal surrounding a lame president champing at the bit to send people to die in Iran.  And anticipate a leadership which might restore some of the respect for America that had been lost over a decades' worth of those same people being bullies.

What I hope?  That the once and future president grows a pair and doesn't let himself be railroaded into buckling to the throwback neanderthalers who would restrict progress at the cost of hurting the people they purport to serve, but in actuality are serving global enterprises. 

Am not so certain that will happen as thoroughly as I wish, but am certain that there will at least be an effort to hinder it.

I'm not an optimist.  But one thing is certain.  The health care system that was achieved in the first term will become a fixed reality for a majority of the people there, and that is a very good thing indeed. 

The president's re-election will later be considered historic, I believe.  And that is a very good thing indeed.

And for the oligarchy who threw six billion dollars into ads...  well how many jobs could they have created with that amount of money, I ask you.  Just goes to show that spending so profigately on negative ads didn't get them the bang for the buck that they thought it would.  I will wipe away a crocodile tear for them, and suspect they will be able to write it off anyway.

The other point I would make is that a campaign lasting two years is intolerable, and stupid, and wastes time.  Someone ought to grapple with that problem as well.

If you don't vote...

Chris Mathhews will never talk to you again, and boy does he need his insulin....  wow.  To be seen here.  Tweety has his spleen out.

When a country becomes a banana republic...it

preaches that they and only they have the recipe for true democracy in the world and want to cram their version of it down everyone's throat.....

has a governorship in swing states to repress the opportunity for minorities and the poor, and the afflicted to cast a ballot by creating less polling places and eight hour waiting lines...

When a country has the audacity to preach democracy and call up a non-existent problem about voter fraud and make an identitiy card so difficult to get, especially among the poor, the afflicted and minorities.....

When a part of the country closes voting place doors before hundreds wanting to cast their ballots so that they have to supplicate and shout 'Let us vote' as happened in Miami Dade county Fla. yesterday ....

And those people are mostly minority, and in a more liberal county and aren't getting to what should be a 'walk in, cross your circles and drop it in the box'  sort of thing...  without all the electronic rigamarole, and funnily labeled levers to pull on a machine made for monkeys...   but people who have made decisions in making up their minds for how they want their country to advance for the next legislative period.....

And when the ruling class puts up billboards to scare the poor, the minorities and the afflicted from voting, as seen in the central states of the US...  always in the poorest... speak minority centers of cities.

One can only come to the conclusion that that country is a plutocracy, and if it were in the southern hemisphere....  it would be known as a banana republic. 

An agressive one, which wants to say to the rest of the world...  'our way is the only way'. 

Well their way is instructive...  but I don't think I would want to follow it.  Money isn't everything.

Having followed presidential campaigns for over forty years...  this was the most corrupt and disgusting, and was due to a pour-in of corporate money. 

Obama didn't dirty his hands.  Romey lied from morning to night, and the media, they astonish me.

'He misspoke.
 
It was a gaffe,

He didn't understand the question,' 

Instead of just saying it outright:  'he LIED'.

Why is the word tabu of a sudden?

Romney lies all the time.  It's probably why I like Lawrence O 'Donnell'  He'll tell the truth or if you call him out on it, invite you to box and duke it out.  But am old, and understand his concept of 'honour'. 

In the end, what the country has is a choice between going on a sorta journey where the destination isn't exactly clear but sort of heads to a rosy sky, or a vision where you are in England and would never think of going out without an umbrella...  or being lucky in having someone to wheel you out to vote if you were infirm, or old, or disabled....

today is the day, duckies.-....  gird yourselves, pack up the folding chair for the wait to ...  oh lurd,... cast your vote, and exercise a right that should have actually taken up ten minutes of your time, not eight hours.  

And take a folding chair, sit in it in line, and reflect on, if you were to be questioned by the ever circling press of journamalists, why you would think that your case represented the best system in the world, and why you would recommend it be force-fed to the rest of it as the  main course. 

Others never subject themselves to the process.  So much the sadder.

But rest assured, you HAVE reached the status of a banana republic, and have no reason to contend you are of another status. 

Unless everyone actually votes.

Have fun today. 

In my country, I only need ten minutes.

That's the different, as Peter would say, would love to speak with him, but my telephone isn't back on, which means... if it doesn't happen tomorrow, I have to run about town.  Which I hate.

We all have our distractions.

But will not retract.  Banana Republic.
 

Gay icons trash talk...

Sadly, they're right.

Oh my, potty- mouthed seniors.....

I saw this on Joe.My.God and choked on my daily rice ration.    It's not safe for work or to be played with children present.

You go, seniors!  and yeah, I thought if was funny.

A nice gay feelgood movie

What with the horriday season coming up, was rummaging around in YouTube this morning and found a film called 'Breakfast With Scot'.  It's well worth looking at, a canadian production about a gay couple who get unwanted custody of one of the men's nephews after his sister in law dies.  And the little boy is a flamer. 

I really enjoyed it, as there was no heavy-handedness in handling the various themes, and it was very funny at times, but also moving.  It's well worth a watch.

And sort of gets you into a horriday mood.  All you need do is type in the movie title in the YouTube search box.

Having seen and heard the onslaught of tee-vee and radio punditry this season

And having grown up in a state where the first presidential primaries were held, I can sympathise with how overwhelming the media can get.  But This year, in swing states, of which my former home is one, it's obviously become unbearable. 

We didn't have robocalls, or 22 minute blocks of ads assaulting our sensibilities every two minutes with trash and mostly lies.

Having followed the campaign, which has lasted two lonnnng years, I can really empathise with little Abigail.  Oh, I liked watching all the twists and turns of it, but really, two years?  Our election shit lasts about six weeks, and even that is more than enough.

I see the US mode as a new sort of art form, and when the Citizens United judgement was handed down...  which freaked me out, the idea that corporations are people was amazing to me.

And was insulted, as I assume many people must be.  Because it assumes that people are sheep, and if you hammer lies at them day in and out, well, they'll believe them.  The average citizen is smarter than that, and in swing states, they develop strategies to avoid being harassed out of their minds.

Like leaving all calls go to the answering machine and screening them.  If they don't recognise the number, they don't pick up.  It doesn't eliminate the 22 minute blocks of ads they get on the tee-vee, but some things can be seen on the internets, and thus avoided.

I feel confident that after this extravaganza of profligate spending, they will find that their efforts won't have made much difference in how people voted, and 2 billion dollars which could have effected much help elsewhere will have gone down the proverbial toilet.

But at this point, just days before the election, I have the sneaking suspicion that the people in the swing states are feeling like little 4 year old Abigail in the video.  'Make it stoooooppppppp.'   

So my heart goes out to those who live in the swing states, with the cheer-leading sentence:  'hang in there, it's only a couple of days now...'

That the little girl thinks the president's name is Bronco Bama is priceless.

Just vote.  It's your civic duty.