Obama’s a quick study of America’s greatest Presidents.  Like Abraham Lincoln who, when elected President, appointed previous adversaries onto his cabinet (kinda like how Obama’s considering Clinton?).  Also Franklin D. Roosevelt who lifted the spirits of a depression era America with his weekly fireside chats broadcasted on radios across the nation.

Obama’s a damn good study of those men.  And rightly so.

I present to you, President-elect Obama’s first “fireside chat”:

While Obama’s weekly chat series doesn’t actually give any real answers, it does show confidence and leadership.  And right now the one thing America needs is confidence and leadership. 

These weekly chats are gonna be a hit.  Mark my words.  Not only because he’s continuing to see the importance of utilizing the internet as a tool, but also because America simply needs someone to tell them “it’s all right/we’re gonna make it” every once in a while.  Not to mention, we’ve all sorta missed hearing his sultry voice after listening it for the last two years on auto loop during his candidacy.

P.S.  Does Obama’s hair look a LOT grayer than before or is it just me?

I’ve been watching the responses of various friends and acquaintances in regards to the news of the Election outcome, and it’s brought me to one conclusion. There’s something I need to say to all of you…

CHILL THE FUCK OUT!!!

Obama won, if you love it- great. If you hate it- fine. But everyone needs to chill the fuck out some.

McCain supporters, sucks for you that your guy lost, but he did. Crying racism, anti-christ, liberal media, and flat out End of the World isn’t going to suddenly make him President. He lost for many reasons, many of them his own, now is the time to accept it, deal with it, and get back to focusing on the big problems our country faces (and I swear to god if I hear one of you say “having an a-rab in office is the big problem our country faces” I will kick the shit out of your face, ok?) now we need to all buckle down and work on- the economy, lack of U.S. businesses, energy reform, foreign policy, etc… We all need to do it together. Continuing to hold on to negative bipartisan feelings will not do the country any favors.

Obama supporters, you have to understand that some of McCain’s die-hards are going to completely fucking hate you for a while. There was a whole lot of emotion invested by both sides, a borderline religious fervor, and so those feelings are going to have to cool with time, patience, and understanding. Of course, when most of you tout Obama as pretty much the second coming, of course there will be those who see him in the opposite light. He’s a man. Our country has come a long way in electing a minority into head office, in a race that has also prominently featured females, so it’s been a great day for progress, but in the end we still elected a human being. He’s not a god people, you can relax. And just because the color of the skin of the man in office has changed, doesn’t mean anything else has… yet. Just like I told McCain’s supporters above, we’ve not even STARTED fixing the country yet. Tighten your belts, buckle down, and get ready for the hard part. Casting your vote was easy, what comes next won’t be, but we still all need to work to make the changes needed to bring this country to an even higher plateau than it’s known before. So don’t get all cocky cuz your guy won. We’re not out of the woods yet.

Again, please, I beg of you. For the good of the country, everyone calm the fuck down. There’s a great potential future for our country but blind hate or blind adoration will not get us there. Hard work, and working together, will.

CNN is reporting that we have a new President Elect, and it is…

*drum roll*

Barack Obama.

So, there you have it. Not nearly as close as many people suspected it would be, ended pretty cleanly and quickly, and now I guess we just wait to see what the future will bring under the leadership of our next Commander in Chief.

…umm… Ms. Missive? What are we going to write about now?

7-11 convenience stores have started their 3rd quadrennial horribly unofficial election cup polling.
Anyone who buys a 20oz cup of… whatever, get’s to pick a cup of their choice, red for McCain or blue for Obama and each cup scanned registers as a “vote” for the candidate of your choice.  The polling will end on election day.

Now, here’s the craziest part of it, in the past 2 elections, they’ve been really accurate.

In 2004, President George Bush out-cupped Senator John Kerry 51 to 49 percent. Back in 2000, 2 percentage points separated President George Bush and Senator Al Gore.

Will it play out accurately this time around?  Does anyone really care?

Perhaps you recall the big to-do over McCain’s ad proclaiming Obama to be a celeb in the same vein as Britney and Paris, followed by Paris striking back with an add of her own?

Well, she’s back continuing her run for “fake President”, seeking the advise of one of the nation’s “greatest fake Presidents” Martin Sheen from The West Wing.

What’s kind’ve sad about this whole thing is that the few actual talking points she mentions are well thought out and make sense.  It’s the very things that many experts advise.

Yet somehow our actual Real Presidential Candidates find ways to either stand against these points, or be completely unable to sound them out in easy to understand sentences. Go figure.

yar!!!

Here’s a link depot in honor of “International Talk Like a Pirate Day”:

• Russia’s continuing effort to alienate themselves from the west and align themselves with Arab countries was perpetuated by yesterdays announcement of $10 million in aid to the terrorist run Palestinian Authority.
• The all important Jewish vote:  Florida Jews report “push polling” via telephone this week.
• U.S. officials announce that Al-Qaida is unpopular and imploding.  Tell that to the next suicide bomber victim.
• Who would you prefer as President?  Palin or Biden?  A make-believe poll shows the people would prefer Sarah Palin as President.
• Biden is famous for his daily commute from his home in Delaware to work in D.C. for the last 35 years.  Now that he’s a VP candidate, how’s his commute faring?
• Damning Bush Administration books are being published faster than you can say impeachment!  Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey confirms Cheney gave misleading information to win support of Iraq invasion.

Arrrrr, mateys!!!

Now I can clear out my “interesting links” folder and start again with a fresh new week!

Have a good weekend everyone.

UPDATE: 

I couldn’t help myself with this final link to TechCrunch.  Social networking sites makes a few “adjustments” for Talk Like a Pirate Day.

….because if Obama is elected president, it’ll boost membership.  This may possibly be the most backward logic I’ve ever read.  Then again, we are dealing with supremacists here.

Senator Barack Obama became the first African-American to accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for president Thursday.

The historic event prompted a Montgomery, Alabama, Civil Rights organization to gauge how white supremacists might react to an Obama presidency.

A Southern Poverty Law Center investigation shows most white supremacist groups support Obama’s candidacy. It’s not the result they expected.

“What was really unexpected was that a very large number of white supremacists, including some of their intellectual leaders, like David Duke, were saying actually, this could be a good thing for us,” explained the SPLC’s Mark Potok.

Potok heads the Intelligence Project, which monitors hate groups nationwide.

An article in the project’s newly released magazine, The Intelligence Report, indicates white supremacists feel an Obama administration would boost their membership rolls.

In a recent poll done by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, roughly half of Americans polled said they’ve had about enough coverage of Prez hopeful Barack Obama, and most everyone said they’d like to know more about McCain.

Well hey, that’s cool America, you want McCain, you’ve got him.  Here’s what McCain’s latest campaign ad has to say-

hmm… It seems McCain likes talking about Obama as much as “the media” does.  Oh, and he also infuriated one of his campaign contributors by including their daughter in that last video.  You might’ve heard of her, her last name is Hilton?  Anyway, the daughter in question has her own campaign ad in response to the attention. 

Something else I wanted to add.  Since when would it be a bad thing for our President to be a bigger, more recognizable figure than our pop-stars?  I think that having such a high profile would actually be a very good thing, meaning people were at least paying a little more attention to politics than they are to the gossip rags about which superstar celeb got what body part altered when.  The president should be a celebrity, or at least get the same amount of news coverage. 

And if people want to hear more about McCain, tell McCain to talk more about McCain, and less about “he who we’ve heard enough about”.  That’d be a good start.

Barack Obama, a candidate widely recognized for his bi-racial background, beat out white men and a white woman to earn the Dem nomination.  A large step in racial equality some would think (no comment on what it may say about gender equality- I’ll leave that commentary for Nancy Pelosi) but how does the average white American feel about voting for a non-white candidate?

Over half of white Americans still think he is a risky choice. A Washington Post and ABC News survey has reportedly termed Republican John McCain as a safe pick.

Over 40 per cent of white Americans believe Obama has the experience to make a good president but they raise concerns over him over-representing the interests of African-Americans.

However, the good news for him is that nine out of ten people are open to the idea of electing an African-American president.

But the criticisms don’t stop with worries that he’ll be too focused on issues that face African-Americans.  Actually, now there are criticisms being put forth that worry he’s not focusing enough on those issues in a bid to play it safe in order to appeal to white America.  And they’re coming from an unlikely source…

“There’s only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He’s half African-American,” (Presidential Candidate Ralph) Nader said. “Whether that will make any difference, I don’t know. I haven’t heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What’s keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn’t want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We’ll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards.”

Seems like a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario.  Of course, I could make a comment about Nader’s history of “taking votes away from Democrats” but really by this point… there is no point.  I am disgusted with the 2 party system, but we’ve really yet to have any reasonable 3rd party candidates, so… what can you do?

Or if not them, the folks they surround themselves with. 

Hillary Clinton (who’s resignation I missed due to being away for a 3 week military engagement, but I still delighted in the knowledge once I received it) is obviously no longer in the race- but staying in as long as she did, she destroyed herself financially to the tune of nearly $10 million in debt.  So now she’s asking all her supporters that gave up their money for her failed campaign bid to pony up some more dough, because she’s now drowning in her own over-spending.  Well Hill, on behalf of the American public, welcome to how the rest of us are feeling in the current financial state of the union: debt as a way of life.

Barack Obama has made his own minor political gaffe in the past few days by using a mock-up of the Presidential Seal as an emblem on his lecternduring a meeting between himself and Dem. state Governors which drew some criticisms over the weekend.  The Obama campaign has said it was a one time only appearance for the emblem, with some members saying Obama himself felt a little embarrassed by the whole thing.  The emblem was comprised of the same eagle holding arrows and olive branch that denote war and piece as seen on the Presidential Seal, and also carried the words “Vero possumus” or loosely translated from latin: “Yes, we can”.  Presumptuous?  Perhaps, but really a very minor snafu in the great context of things. 

The Republicans are not off the hook in terms of embarrassment, as one of John McCain’s aides made a statement that McCain has found himself apologizing for, and that his opponent Obama’s campaign has already jumped on.  The statement in question being made by Charlie Black, a top advisor to McCain, said that the McCain campaign would benefit greatly from another terror attack taking place on American soil.  McCain went into damage control, telling reporters “I cannot imagine why he would say it. It’s not true. I’ve worked tirelessly since 9/11 to prevent another attack on the United States of America. My record is very clear.”  However, one has to look at the validity of the statement, with McCain’s major platform being his aggressive stance against “global terror”, he’d probably do well to have some of that terror brought back to the front of people’s minds, leading to the same style of voting that saw George W. Bush re-elected (or just plain elected depending on who you ask) in ‘04, thinking only a “War President” could carry us through the strife of a continued war against “threats to our way of life”. 

But that’s just me riffing…