HorsesAss.Org

Get used to it.

Brian Baird BFF Chris Shays loses to new and better Democrat Jim Himes.

No more “bi-partisan” trips to Iraq.

Sad.

“George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

Kanye West, Sept. 2005

It’s over.  CA, OR and WA alone take Obama to 277.

“President Barack Obama.” Get used to it, righties.

Obama is leading McCain 175 electoral votes to 70.  And McCain’s home state of Arizona is “too close to call.”  Kick ass.

I know it’s early, but so far McCain is kicking Obama’s ass, 16 electoral votes to 3.  It’s a landslide.

UPDATE:
Oops.. spoke too soon.  A bunch of polls just closed, and now Obama leads 77 to 34.  What a relief.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
We’re watching CNN, but MSNBC has called Pennsylvania for Obama, which really puts a knife through McCain’s electoral strategy.

Bill Bennett says Howard Dean was correct about the 50 state strategy.

Hey.

That said, the early exit polls that seem to be making the rounds have Obama up 4 in PA, up 2 in Virginia, up 1 in Florida and Ohio, and down 2 in North Carolina.  It’s pretty meaningless, yes, but there’s really not much else to report right now, so what the hell.

FYI, I’ll start blogging live from the Montlake Ale House at around 4PM.

Looks like turnout is heavy in Clark County. Which was already known because of mail in voting, but it sounds like people are coming out in large numbers to do things like get ballots because they have moved. From The Columbian:

“There were people showing up before 7,” said Elinor Perlich, an election worker manning a drop-box at Image Elementary School in northeast Vancouver.

Many of the 33 drop-box locations reported having to empty ballot boxes into plastic totes, filled with hundreds of ballots coming in on Election Day. Many voters who have moved since the last election headed to the Elections Office at 1408 Franklin St. to pick up fresh ballots.

“Our line’s getting longer and longer here,” county elections Supervisor Tim Likness said shortly before noon.

Not quite the same as standing in line to vote, but clearly the enthusiasm is there. The weather down here has been chilly but while doing errands for part of the day I never got rained on.

An anti-Gregoire email has been making the rounds since the weekend, and has apparently gone viral in the agricultural community.  The email falsely characterizes the governor’s record on water issues, and touts an anti-Gregoire rally that never happened.

Farmers Rally in Yakima Against Governor Christine Gregoire

YAKIMA, WA – Over 100 Farm Bureau members braved strong winds and heavy rains to hold a rally in Yakima on November 1st to protest against Governor Christine Gregoire and her lack of support and action in building water reservoirs in Eastern Washington during her first term in office.

In particular, the Farm Bureau members at the rally expressed strong dissatisfaction at Governor Gregoire for her lack of leadership on several issues…

[…] During the rally, the Farm Bureau members chanted “Jay Manning must go!” in reference to Department of Ecology Director Jay Manning.

Nearly all of the farmers at the rally indicated that they would now be supporting Gubernatorial Candidate Dino Rossi because of the lack of action that Governor Gregoire and Ecology Director Jay Manning have shown in regards to building water reservoirs in Eastern Washington.

The email even includes pictures, presumably taken at the rally:

Only problem is, the rally never happened.  The image on the right is cropped from a farm rally in New Jersey, while the image on the left is cropped from a milk protest in Germany.

Dino Rossi couldn’t actually generate much support from farmers in central Washington, so he had to fabricate it.  Pathetic.

Sandeep Kaushik, Darcy Burner’s communications director, was rushed to the emergency room this morning with what turned out to be a sizeable kidney stone… a non-life threatening, yet extremely painful condition.  His primary responsibility being interacting with our local media, Sandeep has perhaps the most stressful job in the Burner campaign, and I suppose this is what comes from a steady diet of cigarettes and Maker’s Mark.

Of course, as far as the ill health effects of stressful campaign work goes, I suppose it could be worse.

Get well soon, Sandeep, and remember, like the election, this too shall pass.

1. Following his sure-to-be historic Mideast Peace Talks.

and

2. We can finally start to criticize the guy.

I always vote at the polls around 9AM, so I have a sense of relative turnout, and this was the busiest I have ever seen my polling place.

In 1969, when I was in fifth grade, my parents moved from the West Coast to Columbia, South Carolina. In their infinite wisdom, my parents decided that Columbia’s freshly desegregated public schools were no place for a nice white boy. Instead, they put me in one of the new white-only “Christian” private schools that had sprung up to cater to alarmed white parents.

My first week in class, I made an offhand remark to one of my new classmates that I didn’t understand what the difference was supposed to be between white people and black people — they were all just people. He immediately went to the teacher, who promptly had me stand before the entire class and repeat the comment – not to educate them, but to publicly humiliate me for my profound ignorance concerning the inferiority of n****rs.

We’re about to elect an African-American to become President of the United States.

In 1982, my new wife and I moved to Houston, Texas, where she wanted to go to graduate school. I was white, and she was not, a marital arrangement that until fairly recently had not been legal in Texas (or most other Southern states). In Houston, fourth largest city in the country, there were (and probably still are) places that would not serve us.

We’re about to elect an African-American to become President of the United States.

Seattle is different. But not very. In the late ’90s there was a rash of killings of unarmed black men by SPD, and the African-American community was in an uproar. The NAACP, Urban League, and other black moderates joined in the call for meaningful civilian review of police actions. I wrote columns for Seattle Weekly echoing that call. The explicitly racist letters that came in response should not have been surprising.

We’re about to elect an African-American to become President of the United States.

My memories are not remarkable; they’re snapshots of a reality tens of millions of people continue to experience in America each day. A colorblind society would be great. We’re not there yet. Like most of my African-American friends, I have a hard time believing this is happening; but I’m sure glad it is. Whatever one thinks of Obama’s policies — and as I noted yesterday, I’m not thrilled by them — this election will go a long way toward reestablishing America’s moral credibility in the eyes of the world. Race does matter, here and elsewhere. So does class. And Obama is correct to note that his inspiring, improbable story is only possible in America.

Unlike 2000 or 2004, this year I’m proud of the American electorate — and it has nothing to do with ideology.

Tonight, regardless of what’s going on in the other races you care about, take a moment to witness history. This is an election that will be taught in civics textbooks for a long, long time.

Remember early on in the campaign, when white pundits were fretting that Obama might not be “black enough” to attract the black vote? Non-white pundits knew better. Beyond being secure in the knowledge that Obama’s white opponents would make damned sure everyone was aware that Obama was The Other (as John McCain and Sarah Palin have predictably done), they also knew that if he got this far, his African-American support would be near-universal. Not because of his policies or the tactics of the McCains of the world, or even solidarity with Obama’s skin color, so much as the future possibilities for those voters’ children, and their skin color.

In the comment thread of another blog a couple of weeks ago, a commenter offered what I think captures the phenomenon of Obama’s (probable) triumph nicely:

Rosa sat, so Martin could march.
Martin marched, so Barack could run.
Barack ran, so our children could fly.