Racism now dead! (According to racists.)

There's one thing about the media coverage of Obama's victory that's been really getting on my nerves. It started basically as soon as his victory was announced and hasn't stopped since. It's the excessive focus on the fact that a black man is the President Elect.

Yes, it's historic. Yes, it represents a milestone. Yes, it's deeply meaningful, especially to those who lived through segregation. It's fine to recognize those things.

What's not so good is to pretend like this represents the end of racism. Obama is not the first black man to achieve great things, he's just the first black man to be elected President. Racism hasn't gone away.

Even more annoying is when the people claiming that Obama's victory represents the end of racism are blatantly racist themselves.

Let's go to my new favorite source of crazy idiots and swipe some comments from the S&E's commenting forums!

Here's a lovely one to start off with!

i better never again hear j.jackson ,al sharpton or the commie press say america is a racist nation or ill take my mc cain signs and put them where the sun dont shine.

Yeah, clearly it's not a racist nation. It's just one where some impotent jackass threatens to sodomize black leaders with campaign signs for saying things he doesn't like.

Surely that's just one nutjob, right? He probably got condemned by all the other posters in our new non-racist America!

Or not:

I hear you, what will Black people say now we have a Black president??. No more Moaning, no more Whitey is holding me back.

I wont hold my breath though!!

Yeah, stupid whiny black people!

Wait, I've never actually heard a black person say that (except perhaps ironically). Have these idiotic commenters ever actually talked to a black person? My bet is no.

And there's yet more support for our initial comment. Here's someone else who's creepily eager to sodomize black leaders with yard signs.

Let me know when you do I'll take some of those signs! and help you place them.

From the same author of that comment (someone who goes by "QEII" and claims to have voted for Obama, while also predicting the Illuminati will kill him in six months. Seriously.), we get this gem:

I am hearing a lot of feedback that the blacks are making this racist.

Damn those blacks for causing racism! Don't they realize that if they'd just be white there would be no racism at all? It's all their fault!

It gets much worse. Here's some poor discriminated-against white dude whining about how much black people suck:

well, I've been discriminated against since i was a teenager and the funny thing is I'm white! The people to blame for the bad habits of the black people is their parents, parents parents, and so on. Older black people will tell their children "See that white kid? Knock them down cause your grandmother was knocked down."
Give me a break blacks! I never did anything to you and all of you are living the past.....already this morning; there is discriminating going on. Whoopy that a 102 year old black woman got to vote! Why didn't she vote for the Presidents before? Take advantage of your rights when the white presidents got them for you instead of waiting for a black President is in office.....so, who is the stupid race? Gosh! Stupid, dumbest dang people ever....oh! And you are not African American unless you moved here from Africa! And on top of that; i wouldn't be advertising that your African American just to the fact that the place is a disease for all and rapes happen along with Aids. Yeah right! Whey would I want to state I came from Africa!??!!? That's embarrassing! Get a life and get out there and pick cotton like your should be doing!

There's nothing I can even add to that. I'll just move on, while hoping this individual lives a long and profoundly miserable life.

Want some more nonsense? Sure!

Bill Bennet on CNN said it BEST

This is a great Country......Lets "hope" he is at "least" a good president.

I totally agree,....I didn't vote for the big-O, but I am glad he has one cause now "we are no longer a Racist-country!"

time to get rid of Quota's, Equal-Oppurtunity, and all the other special programs......Obama either showed us that Hard-work and perserverance got him there..........or he got there by not having to be the best, just very tan.

Yeah, most of that is gibberish, and I'm not even entirely sure what he was trying to say. Still, it's another racist douchewad saying America isn't racist. Better yet, he's trying to use Obama's victory as an excuse to do away with "Equal-Oppurtunity" [Sic]!

Listen, morons. If anything, Obama won despite being black.

Did some people vote for him because he's black? Yes. Just like some people voted for McCain because he's white. Or more significantly, just like some people voted for McCain because Obama is black.

I can't say I know just how many people fit into each category. I do strongly suspect that far fewer people voted for Obama because he's black than voted for McCain because Obama is black. But really, race isn't a significant deciding factor for anyone but a small group of people.

Yes, Obama got the overwhelming majority of the black vote. So did Kerry. So did Gore. So has every Democrat for the last few decades. That matters a whole hell of a lot more than race. So does political skill. There are reasons that Alan Keyes, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton never became serious contenders. If people really voted for Obama based on race, wouldn't they have done better?

I could pull more quotes from that forum, but I'm sure you get the idea.

Obama being elected President doesn't mean racism isn't still a problem in this country. Hell, there were white supremacists who supported him.

In fact, many white supremacists are hoping that Obama's election will set off a "white backlash".

PEARL, Miss. — They're not exactly rooting for Barack Obama, but prominent white supremacists anticipate a boost to their cause if he becomes the first black president. His election, they say, would trigger a backlash -- whites rising up, a revolution of sorts -- that they think is long overdue.

He'd be a "visual aid," says former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, in trying to bring others around to their view that whites have lost control of America. Obama's election, says another, would jar whites into action, writing letters, handing out pamphlets rather than sitting around complaining.

Yeah, racism isn't dead. It's alive and well.

Obama's victory may mark a milestone in race relations, but it sure as hell hasn't ended racism. There's a lot of work left to be done, and a lot of bigots standing in the way. Hopefully we'll get there one day, but it's going to take awhile. Pretending things are better than they actually are doesn't benefit anyone.

Focus on the Family's Gay Obama Fanfiction

Lately I've been taking a perverse pleasure in listening to conservative talk radio and skimming through conservative websites. Virtually everyone at this point realizes that McCain is about to go down in flames, and all the conservative nuts are going apoplectic over it.

Some approach it in a relatively sensible way, talking about what needs to be done to rebuild the conservative movement into something that isn't quite so ridiculously inept. Lucky for liberals like me, they're clueless about how to actually do it. Still, at least they're trying, bless their tiny lizard brains.

Others can't quite get to that level of acceptance and just spend their time ranting about how an Obama presidency will mean the end of the world. It's like talking to someone who's really drunk while you're perfectly sober. Entertaining for a little while, then mostly just sad and annoying.

Then there are yet others. Those who take it even beyond the ranting. Those like Focus on the Family, who actually write an hilarious sixteen-page pseudo-science fictiony letter from the future!

Specifically, it's from "A Christian from 2012." That scary future dystopia after one term of an Obama presidency!

It's totally obsessed with gayness, which is what makes it quite entertaining to me. There's a little bit in there about wars and guns and shit too, but it's about 60% about how scary the world will be when future Christian might not be allowed to discriminate against gay people.

Allow me to sum it up for you.

Obama will put liberals on the Supreme Court. They will say you're not allowed to discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation. This will eliminate our precious freedom of being assholes to gay people. Also, the Boy Scouts are disbanded and Iran nukes Israel! Exciting!

Some choice quotes:

Suddenly, homosexual “marriage” was the law of the land in all 50 states, and no state legislature, no state Supreme Court, no state Constitutional amendment, not even Congress, had any power to change it. The Supreme Court had ruled, and the discussion was over. This was a blatant example of creating law by the court, for homosexual “marriage” was mentioned nowhere in the Constitution, nor would any of the authors have imagined that same-sex “marriage” could be derived from their words.

Physicians who refuse to provide artificial insemination for lesbian couples now face significant fines or loss of their license to practice medicine... As a result, many Christian physicians have retired or left the practices of family medicine and obstetrics & gynecology. Lawyers who refuse to handle adoption cases for same-sex couples similarly now lose their licenses to practice law.

Church buildings are now considered a “public accommodation” by the Supreme Court, and churches have no freedom to refuse to allow their buildings to be used for wedding ceremonies for homosexual couples. If they refuse, they lose their tax-exempt status, and they are increasingly becoming subject to fines and antidiscrimination lawsuits.

A cruel vision of the future indeed! Nothing is more horrifying to your average American than the thought of a church losing its tax-exempt status!

I suspect this is just the first in a series. In the next installment, expect our intrepid future Christian to be trapped in a bathhouse by a roving gang of Obama-supporting sodomites. They'll force him to watch lavish Broadway musicals while tweezing his eyebrows, and maybe do some interior decorating.

Future Christian will struggle against this devious homosexual agenda as long as he can, until eventually even he has to give in and accept hot, hot gay sex the gay lifestyle. Which will be forced on him against his will, which he totally never spends time fantasizing about.

Never. Not once. Really.

This pretty much covers it...

(Many more along similar lines here.)

Presidential Debate Liveblog!

Hey, it's a presidential debate between John "McNasty" McCain and Barack Hussein Obama! With commentary from me for some reason!

Will liveblogging it be fun? Probably yes for like the first 15 minutes, then I'll likely get annoyed and sick of the whole deal, but will keep going because I'm a masochist.

Complicating matters, I will be totally sober during the debate, as my body has recently decided that alcohol == headaches. This will make the debate remarkably less enjoyable, and I don't recommend that anyone follow my lead. In fact, I recommend you take a drink every time you hear the word "maverick." It will help dull the pain.

I'm going to be watching the debate online via Hulu, who will be using this as their first ever live stream! So maybe we'll get some awesome technical difficulties along the way and I can call the whole thing off. That would be pretty sweet.

Incidentally, tonight's moderator will be Tom Brokaw, NBC's liaison to the McCain campaign. Damn that liberal bias!

Okay, here we go!

8:45 - Yeah, it's 15 minutes early. I wanted to be ready. Also, I started watching the Tina Fey thingy on Hulu here and just discovered that at the end she says "maverick" in case you're playing a drinking game! I did not know that when I wrote that shit up above!
8:51 - Now I'm just watching this:Way to be exciting, Hulu!
8:58 - Okay, timer's over and it's beginning and I'm treated to several terrible commercials. I think they're just streaming whatever dumb shit is on NBC right now.
9:00 - Yes, we will be having "undecided voters" asking the questions this evening. No mention if they're illiterate too or just regular morons.
9:03 - Brokaw is getting all down on the economy. "We don't know where the bottom is." Hee.
9:03 - Some bald guy sitting in the bald section asks about bailing out bald people. Obama: "It's the Republicans' fault you bald guys are suffering."
9:05 - Obama has steps: 1) Fire fat cats 2) Reform system.
9:06 - McCain thinks it's all about energy independence and "keeping taxes low." The question was about bailing out normal bald guys, dude!
9:07 - Oh, the actual plan is buying everyone's house. That makes perfect sense.
9:08 - McCain will not appoint Tom Brokaw to be Secretary of the Treasury or whatever. That passes for humor. He also thinks the CEO of eBay "inspires trust and confidence."
9:10 - Obama likes Warren Buffet, then makes fun of McCain for thinking the fundamentals of the economy are sound.
9:11 - Some guy asks a question I missed because my dog is being obnoxious. McCain talks about Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, blaming Obama for encouraging them?
9:14 - Obama "McCain's all about deregulation and is a big fat liar but I'm trying to look dignified so I won't actually say that. But his campaign chair's a lobbyist for Fannie Mae, so nyah."
9:16 - Brokaw: "Are you saying the economy is going to get worse before it gets better?" Obama: "No, blah blah blah." WRONG.
9:17 - Same question to McCain, same basic answer but stutters a lot and is still trying to make up for 3 weeks ago by calling American workers the "fundamentals" of the economy.
9:18 - Some southern woman: "How can we trust either of you when both parties are responsible for this big clusterfuck we're in?" THANK YOU STUPID WOMAN FOR YOUR DEEPLY PROBING QUESTION.
9:20 - Barry: "Yeah, we suck. Here's a bunch of empty gibberish meant to placate you since you didn't bother to ask a real question."
9:21 - McNasty: "I'm a reformer! I love Joe Lieberman!"
9:23 - Oh my god he won't shut up.
9:24 - Brokaw, "Health care, energy, or entitlement reform, put them in order of importance!" This is a question?
And yes, I think Brokaw is drunk.
9:25 - McCain won't put them in order, he just says they're all important. Obama's cool with prioritizing, energy #1, health care #2, education #3.
Wait, was education a choice?
9:28 - Some old lady with AOL wants to know which animals the candidates will sacrifice to Ba'al.
9:30 - McCain wants to sacrifice earmarks. So he's killing a pig. Probably Babe.
Also says "We're not rifle shots here, we're Americans." which makes no damn sense.
9:30 - Obama: Remember 9/11? We really should have sacrificed back then instead of shopping like idiots. YES, BUT WHAT ANIMAL?

9:33 - Brokaw: "EVERYONE'S DRUNK!!!" This is somehow related to the economy.
9:34 - OMG Obama said some people are living "high on the hog." Why is he so sexist about Sarah Palin's lipstick?
9:35 - McCain's dementia kicks in: "Obama wants to nail Jello to the wall like Herbert Hoover... Protectionism... we'll get to that... he wants to increase taxes... small business are going to cut jobs... the economy is bad..." He moves his fist during the whole thing like his Jeopardy buzzer is broken.
9:37 - Brokaw won't let Obama respond to McCain's crazy, and starts making up questions. Brokaw asks about reforming Medicare and Social Security because the Greatest Generation is really concerned about them.
9:39 - Obama: "I'm going to ignore your dumbass question, Tom. Instead, here's all the ways McCain just lied to you."
9:40 - Man, McCain and Brokaw sure are chummy. McCain: "I'll answer your question." Then he doesn't.
9:42 - Someone assassinate Tom Brokaw now, please.
9:43 - Audience lady asks how we're going to move fast on environmental issues and "green jobs."
9:43 - McCain: "Seriously, I love Joe Lieberman. Also nuclear power!" Because environmentalists really love nuclear power.
9:45 - Obama sees the "green jobs" as being just like computers. Yes, we'll have a big bubble when everyone gets involved, which will then burst. Obama also likes nuclear power, but other stuff too.
9:47 - The splitscreen reveals the horror:
9:48 - Ooh, even better!
9:50 - Question: "Should healthcare be treated as a commodity?"
9:50 - Obama has mastered the "Yeah that sucks, here's another plan" response. "If you like what you have, keep it. If you don't have health insurance, you can have ours. Also, McCain's plan sucks." THIS IS TRUE.
9:53 - McCain thinks putting everything online will make healthcare fine. He wants you to go across state lines for health care. Like a common criminal fleeing the po-po's!
9:54 - McCain thinks people have health insurance that pays for hair transplants. "I might need one of those myself." Nobody laughs.
9:55 - Brokaw: "Health care: Privilege, right, or responsibility?" WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?
9:55 - McCain: "Responsibility, but we're not giving it to you. And Obama wants to fine you!!!"
9:56 - Obama says it should be a right and looks totally frustrated that everything McCain says about him is a lie. Then tries to correct the lies. Tough luck, Hopey, nobody cares about your dirty liberal facts!
9:57 - I hope you commenters are keeping up the cleverness. I can't read all your comments because this liveblogging is surprisingly difficult. You guys should take over.

9:59 - Foreign policy time. Some guy named Phil asks how economic stress will affect our nation's ability to be a peacemaker in the world. No $$$$ means no bullets!
10:00 - McCain: "we have gone to all four corners of the world and shed blood... so we are peacemakers." What?
10:01 - Obama goes off on how all our wars suck. McCain is scribbling something and looking grumpy that Obama doesn't love war as much as he does. Why do you hate war, Hopey?
10:03 - So the answer to Phil's question is "we're fucked!"
10:04 - Why is buttplug Brokaw asking questions? Stop breaking the rules, Tom!
Anyway, he asks when it's cool to go invade other countries. I think he's pissed that Hopey's down on war.
10:05 - Hopey says we'd stop Hitler. Smart move! Also, remarkably good ideas for Darfur.
10:06 - McNasty looks pissed and is saying "my friends" way too much. Stop raining on his war!
10:07 - Old white guy says we need "a cool hand" in charge. The most impulsive man on the planet, with a huge gambling problem, thinks he's a "cool hand"!
10:08 - To clarify, that was old white guy McCain, not old white guy Brokaw.
10:08 - "Should the US respect Pakistani sovereignity and not pursue Al Qaida there, or should we do them like we did Cambodia?" - some lady.
10:09 - Obama: "Yep, Bush sure fucked that one up pretty awful didn't he? Maybe if he wasn't such a dick we wouldn't have to even worry about that question!" Then, after a lot of talking, he says yeah we'll kill Bin Laden if the Pakistani government won't do it.
10:10 - McCain: "My hero is Teddy Roosevelt... talk softly, big stick.. Obama wants to talk to Pakistan before invading them..." I think he's developing a lisp.
10:12 - Finally, he ends with the exact same policy as Obama.
10:13 - Obama wants a followup and McCain gets pissy and wants his own. Obama's followup: "What the fuck, John McCain? Why do you keep lying about everything I say?"
10:14 - Oooh, Hopey brought up McNasty's "bomb-bomb-bomb Iran" song! This rebuttal right here is where Obama just won the debate.
10:15 - McCain's rebuttal to the rebuttal: "Not true." Then goes into a story about joking with a veteran that stops after "I was joking with a veteran."
10:17 - Brokaw asked some question about Afghanistan I wasn't paying attention to, and the responses are boring. Oh my god I'm going to murder everyone if this doesn't end soon.
10:18 - McCain is hung up on Obama not "admitting he's wrong about Iraq." Yeah, that's going to happen.
10:19 - Some dick on the internet wants to apply pressure to Russia on humanitarian issues without starting another Cold War. McCain takes this opportunity to say Putin is a big KGB apparatchik or whatever. This question is idiotic.
10:20 - Where are all the Code Pink protesters? There must be undecided Code Pink protesters, right?
10:21 - Obama talks about supporting Russia and ex-soviet republics to help keep from having problems in the first place. This is too nuanced! What about Putin's crazy KGB eyes?
10:23 - Brokaw: "Yes or No, is Russian under Putin an evil empire?"
10:24 - Obama: "it's nuanced, you ass!"
10:24 - McCain says "Maybe" and gets a laugh and then goes on for awhile saying nothing at all.
10:25 - Another bald dude asks if we'd wait for UN Security Council approval before defending Israel if Iran attacks Israel. He also wants to know if we would wait for approval from Papa Smurf before rescuing Brainy from Gargamel. He is clearly an undecided voter.
10:26 - McCain: "Hell yes! We'll bomb those fuckers all the time! I love these imaginary questions! Hey, did you see that episode of 24 where Jack Bauer tortured that guy?"
10:27 - Obama: "Maybe we should avoid that in the first place, dumbass. But yeah, if your totally imaginary scenario comes to pass we'll do what we need to do."
10:29 - Last question! From someone in New Hampshire:
"What don't you know and how will you learn it?"
THIS IS THE STUPIDEST QUESTION EVER. THANK YOU NEW HAMPSHIRE FOR SUCKING SO BAD.
10:30 - Obama "Whatever, dummy. Here's some stuff I do know." Then just stump speech for awhile. He does this stuff well. Change, hope, courage, sacrifice, new direction!
10:32 - McCain: "What I don't know is what's going to happen." Also where countries are on the map? Then to the stump speech.
10:33 - Fine, I'll say it for you guys: MAVERICK MAVERICK MAVERICK MAVERICK
10:34 - Oh thank god it's over. Hahaha they both just stood in front of Brokaw's teleprompter!

Okay, I have no clue what that debate was all about. Hey commenters, you rule!

I AM NEVER DOING THIS AGAIN.

So yeah, Obama...

Well, the nearly meaningless Iowa caucus was last night, and we're left with Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee as the winners. Whoopedy doo!

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Obama won. For that matter, I'm glad Edwards beat Clinton. But frankly, I'm not surprised by either of those outcomes.

Why not? Because the media are a bunch of fucking idiots. Hillary's entire "inevitable" status was created by them because they're stuck in an old way of thinking. We in Massachusetts, and especially in Fitchburg, should have already abandoned that way of thinking by now.

Allow me to explain...

Obama's victory was predictable if you watched the elections that gave us Deval Patrick and Lisa Wong, who both won by considerable margins. The commonalities are almost too numerous to mention, and I see no reason why the outcome should be any different.

I'm not talking about stuff like minority status here. It's insignificant as a factor in any of their victories. What I'm talking about is the two basic messages common to each of these candidates; "change" and "hope."

Most people aren't happy with the way the country (or the state, or the city) have been run of late. They want change, and they want intelligent change.

Kerry Healey didn't represent change, Tom Donnelly didn't represent change, and Hillary Clinton doesn't represent change. Patrick, Wong, and Obama did (or do). Whether that representation is accurate is an open question, but the perception is that they're at least agents of change. And not just any change, but a change that inspires people and engages them. That's perhaps the most important bit.

That's also the bit that involves "hope."

Now, hope is a tricky thing. Some (including myself) might say it's an empty word meaning nothing. You can't hope your way out of an unjust war, you can't hope your way to better healthcare, and you can't hope your way to a better government. But hope's still a powerful thing. If you don't have it, you don't get a lot done. You just sort of sit around being bummed out. So you sort of need hope.

And hope is what those three candidates give people. Which is no easy task with a populace as apathetic and jaded as ours. But it's pretty fucking powerful.

So here's what happens, and this is what the political pundits and media talking heads have yet to realize. All the elections in the coming year or so are going to have record turnout, and that turnout is going to push for the candidate who inspires hope and represents change.

Let's look at Obama vs Clinton for an example.

This is just anecdotal, but in my experience people who support Clinton are pretty lukewarm about her, and people who don't support her hate her fucking guts. So her supporters aren't necessarily passionate about going to support her, and those who don't support her are passionate about going to vote for someone else.

Obama has the opposite situation. People who support him are excited to do so. Those who don't support him don't seem to hate him, but sort of have a lukewarm (lukecold?) attitude towards him. There's not a lot of hate for Obama (unlike Clinton).

Anyway, Obama's motivated supporters definitely show up to vote for him. Clinton's haters show up to vote against her (and may well vote for Obama). Obama wins, Clinton loses.

This doesn't have a perfect analogue with the Patrick/Healey and Wong/Donnelly races, because I don't think people had the same hatred of Healey or Donnelly that they have for Clinton, they were just uninspired by them. Still, if you have one inspiring candidate and one boring milquetoast, the inspiring candidate is always going to win.

When it comes to Huckabee, it's sort of the same thing. Which is weird, but allow me to explain.

Willard "Mitt" Romney is the most boring piece of offal on the planet. Dull dull dull. He's the functional choice. The one with the nice hair and a lot of money. Seems like he'll win by the old-school thought.

But Huckabee excites people. Granted, the people he excites are batshit crazy. But it's the same deal as with the Democrats. He excites the crazy people while Willard just sort of appeals to the dullards. Hence, Huckabee won because the crazy idiots came out to vote in droves.

No idea if that win will carry over to other primaries (issues of money and so forth, plus Huck's general insanity do still matter a bit), but it should be a warning shot for Romney. Boring dudes don't win when the country wants change and vision!

Anyway, yeah. Vision is extremely important in a political leader. Hope and passion are very important to getting elected, and not so bad to have in a leader either.

And the media isn't going to get it yet again. What else is new?

I'll give my prediction, just in case you care. I've expressed this privately before the caucus, but might as well get it on the record in case I'm right...

For the Democrats, it comes down to Obama & Edwards, with Obama coming out on top. Hillary takes a couple of states, but that's it. Maybe an Obama/Edwards ticket in the general. Anyway, Obama wins president.

For the Republicans... well, I'm rooting for Huckabee just because he's so totally unelectable. It'll probably be Willard Romney though. Who will lose in the general election, just like he would have lost had he run for governor of Massachusetts again. McCain's the only Republican with a chance in hell of winning the presidency, but the guy doesn't have the money or support from the far-right base to get the nomination.

So there you have it. Feel free to make fun of me if I'm wrong.