AP calls Indiana for Obama

post from Daily Kos on 05 November 2008 02:14:17 AM. © Daily Kos

I wanted this one pretty bad.

Obama is up to 349 electoral votes.

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Obama, A Dream Realized

post from Michael Alan Leon: MAL Contends . . . on 05 November 2008 02:09:00 AM. © Michael Alan Leon: MAL Contends . . .

Even as the Republican Party waged its voter suppression battles until the very last minute, nothing could stop the voice of the people.

video details and more

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US Papers Wed: Another Official Escapes Bombing

post from IraqSlogger.com on 05 November 2008 02:01:37 AM. © IraqSlogger.com

There doesn't seem to be much U.S.

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Ballot Issues

post from DemConWatch on 05 November 2008 02:00:00 AM. © DemConWatch

The income tax repeal in Massachusetts failed 70%/30%.

In California, with 87% of the vote in, it looks like the ban on gay marriage will be enacted 52%/48%. This will be the first time in American history that civil rights, already enacted, will be taken from a group of Americans. That is, the legislature enacted, and the courts approved, gay marriage in California. That then became a right. And now, it appears that the voters will rescind that right. The ramifications are interesting, and we'll have more on this as it evolves. (Give it about a month for the court action headed towards the Supremes.)

In South Dakota, what would have been the most restrictive anti-choice law on any state books was soundly defeated, 55%/45%. It had been put on the ballot to force a challenge that would have aimed at the Supremes in an attempt to reassess Roe v. Wade.

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Third Presidential Results Thread

post from Open Left - Front Page on 05 November 2008 01:58:08 AM. © Open Left - Front Page

National Popular Vote (108M votes in): Obama 52%-47% McCainElectoral CollegeObama 364--160[...]

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More Down Ballot Blogging

post from Talking Points Memo on 05 November 2008 01:56:00 AM. © Talking Points Memo

1:57 AM ... Our in-house number cruncher, Eric Kleefeld, says it's looking better and better for Franken. At this moment, our results map has Franken down by less than 2k votes. But Eric says the areas yet to fully report tend to be the more Democratic[...]

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Nomination for Image of the Night

post from Open Left - Front Page on 05 November 2008 01:55:14 AM. © Open Left - Front Page

For best image of the night, I nominate this image juxtaposing Newsweek's recent cover entitled[...]

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Celebrating, Chicago Style

post from Daily Kos on 05 November 2008 01:53:36 AM. © Daily Kos

People are literally dancing in the streets.

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And The Beat Goes On Rahm as Chief of Staff

1:43 -- Howard Fineman on MSNBC just reported that Josh Marshall just emailed him and told him Rahm Emanuel has accepted the job of White House Chief of Staff. 1:38 -- 37% reporting -- Stevens 49%, Begich 46%. Will those crazy fuckers who voted for[...]

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I Remember a Time that Felt a Bit Like This
Morning

It was a Friday in August 1974. Richard Nixon had boarded a helicopter on the White House lawn, flashed a "victory" sign and fled to avoid conviction on impeachment charges in the Senate.

At the local Liquor Mart, a warehouse-sized booze outlet, the aisles became so crowded by 9:30 a.m. that city police had to be called to monitor the line, which snaked out the door, around the building and down the block. They allowed more people into the store only as equal numbers came out, their arms or carts loaded with cases or kegs of beer and all other manner of alcohol. The aroma of cannabis wafted about here and there but did not spur the cops to arrest anyone as joints were passed along the line.

By 10:30 a.m., the shelves were going bare, and only the more expensive stuff was left, which seemed not to deter anyone.

After that, it was an all-weekend party. "Wasted" scarcely describes our drunkenness. Our partying was replicated around the country. In a way, that weekend marked the end of the '60s, the era, not the decade.

Afterward came the letdown. Gerald Ford assumed the Presidency, and within a month, he had pardoned Nixon.

The key sentences in the speech Ford gave:

After years of bitter controversy and divisive national debate, I have been advised, and I am compelled to conclude that many months and perhaps more years will have to pass before Richard Nixon could obtain a fair trial by jury in any jurisdiction of the United States under governing decisions of the Supreme Court.

I deeply believe in equal justice for all Americans, whatever their station or former station. The law, whether human or divine, is no respecter of persons; but the law is a respecter of reality.

The facts, as I see them, are that a former President of the United States, instead of enjoying equal treatment with any other citizen accused of violating the law, would be cruelly and excessively penalized either in preserving the presumption of his innocence or in obtaining a speedy determination of his guilt in order to repay a legal debt to society.

That speech was meant to heal, to let the nation forgive and forget, but it did nothing of the sort because no strong mechanisms were put into place to ensure that domestic and international crimes would never again issue from the Oval Office and its delegates. In a few years, another administration came to power, new crimes were committed and exposed. No machinery was remade to curb future crimes. Eight years ago, yet another administration arrived, and soon, assisted by the most terrible assault on American soil in 60 years, in the name of patriotism and security, it empowered the executive branch in exactly the ways the Founders 200 years before had tried to obstruct.

These leaders have tortured the spirit and letter of the law to justify their torture of people, spread their bloody war doctrine in the name of vengeance, trashing the economy and generating fear and hatred more effectively than al Qaeda could ever dream of. They rode roughshod over the Constitution, concocted lies to underpin invasion, filled the federal justice system with partisan cronies and transformed the military-industrial-congressional complex into a more corrupt private-public partnership than ever before.

This morning, November 5, 2008, President-Elect Barack Obama marked the stunning victory of a seemingly impossible campaign with a short but characteristically inspiring speech. A pep rally for a nation in sore need of one. A nation, as he said, facing multiple perils. Unlike 34 years ago when Nixon left town, the joy of the crowds - who gathered to hear Obama in Grant Park in Chicago, in Times Square, at the White House, and in other public places and private homes - comes both because we can see the end of a reign of terrible leadership and because we will soon have a leader who has vowed, with our help, to lay the groundwork for a new day in America. We were happy with Nixon gone. But our happiness was momentary because we had nobody encouraging us to press forward with a "bottom-up politics" to transform our communities, our nation and our nation's relationship with other nations.

Now we do. As he said this morning, and has said before, there will be setbacks, false starts, and disagreements. But, if we pull together, as one people, "young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled," we can do what America has always done when it's at its very best, live up to its ideals.

Barack Obama's promises of a broad bipartisan focus on solving our country's problems may prove as wise as the similar message of the Civil War president whose words echoed in the Grant Park speech. But that healing cannot occur, not wholly, unless the crimes that have brought our nation to such a ruinous condition - morally, economically and politically - are investigated thoroughly and a proper penalty imposed. Most importantly, the bent machinery that allowed, nay encouraged, those crimes must be rebuilt with safeguards so that they never occur again. That's not vengeance. It's justice. And true healing and progress cannot come about without it.