What He Said

Derb is feeling sour.

I’m sour about the GOP too. What did it all get us, those 8 years of pandering and spending? If GWB had turned his face against from new entitlements, closed the borders, deported the illegals, held the line on calls to loosen mortgage-lending standards, starved the Department of Education, and declined those invitations to mosque functions, would the GOP be in any worse shape now?

Yes. Let’s remember that the GOP lost this election. And Bush, while he got us one tax break and eventually got the right guys in charge of the war, was a pretty poor president. I’m still convinced he’s a decent man – and suspect that part of him will be missed greatly these next four years – but he wasn’t much of a president. He ended up being the lefty squish I pegged him for in the runup to 2000.

Meanwhile, Perry de Havilland sees a silver lining.

Many will find the glee of the statist left over the next few days and weeks hard to endure, but to be honest I have been walking around with a grin all day. Finally the era of gradualism is over and the masks are going to come off. The USA has voted for statism and it is going to get exactly what it voted for at a juncture in history where it will very quickly be impossible to hide the cost of those votes.

Obama is not the start of a new era, he is the death knell for the old one.

I hope he’s right. H.L. Mencken certainly was:

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”

We Have Overcome

Jim Manzi is right.

There are about 1,460 days until the next Presidential election, and I assume that I will spend approximately the next 1,459 of them opposing Barack Obama. But I’m spending today proud abut what my country has overcome.

It’s a shame our first black President is this one, the callow Marxist. But Manzi has seen the historical silver lining.

As much as this is a step forward (and hey, Democrats, I voted for a black presidential candidate before you did) I really worry about the step leftward, thus downward,  the country has taken.

“You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down –up to man’s age-old dream–the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.” — Ronald Reagan

I hope we can also overcome an Obama presidency.

And please – count how many riots we get tomorrow.

Hatred

Some folks apparently want to go back to the days of tar and feathers. This ad is so over the top hateful it’s actually funny. Especially when you realize these “missionaries” are too old, have no name tags, and need haircuts.

Care to place bets on the average IQ of anybody actually convinced to vote no on 8 by this? My money is somewhere around room temperature.

Update:

I should have mentioned that neither “lesbian” looks the part. I live near Berkeley, and I know. They’re way too good looking, and at least one of them needs cropped hair and tattoos.

Election Day

Note: I’m going to use this post, updating it during the day, for random observations on the election.

This update gets stuck in at the top. It’s a live map of the results from Google. You can do all the usual Google Map things with it. For example, double click on Kentucky and you can see it county by county.

There were lines at my polling place this morning. That’s unusual. And there were goons from “No on 8” surrounding my polling place and another one in town that I passed. I complained to one of the poll workers. I some how doubt they’ll get shooed away. Later in the day I found more No on 8 goons outside an Emeryville polling place. But, then, being slippery about voting laws is what the Left is all about. Hey, at least they weren’t the Black Panthers.

Meanwhile, if you own a gun or can read simple English (and thus know that the “right to keep and bear arms” means “the right to own and carry weapons”) you should listen to this before heading to the polls.

And remember: EXIT POLLS ARE ALWAYS WRONG.

BTW, I have to thank Obama for starting my day off with a laugh. I heard him on the radio saying that he was “deeply humbled”. I laughed so hard I nearly drove up the sidewalk. The only thing funnier would be Joe Biden saying “I’m speechless.”

Check this out:

CNN says “I think that’s against the law, but it’s OK.” OK with CNN, for sure.

And here’s the cartoon that convinced John Derbyshire to vote McCain.