president-elect ..... barack hussein obama!

celebrating at grant park in chicago last night - the future first family. hurrah, we won! what we have won, we now shall have to wait and see.

why a llama?

why not?

some choices are arbitrary, and ultimately irrelevant. others may determine the future. there is an air of excitement today around this election that i have not felt before in my voting life. ok, i first became aware of us politics when nixon resigned in the face of impeachment for his dirty tricks. that destroyed my innocence with regard to political leaders. i then lived through the thatcher years in london. my first vote was cast by absentee ballot for mondale/ferraro, and they lost 49 out of the 50 states (with mondale barely holding his home state of minnesota). there were the reagan years, and the blip of bill clinton between the bushes. not the most optimistic of times. but today, well something could happen today. if you live on the west coast and haven't voted yet, you have just over half an hour to get to the polls! i am thrilled to be part of this ... and hope i shall feel the same when i awake in the morning.

the final furlong

these last few days before the election are becoming terribly tense. does it really look like a victory for obama? can the republicans make a dramatic comeback in such a short time? what if mccain's heart stops beating? what if some aryan nut assassinates obama? for the first time, people i know well are going to be out there stumping for their candidate this weekend. meanwhile, i present another gem from the london times' cartoonist peter brooke. whether one agrees or not, i still think it is a fine cartoon.

ps re 'all mouth and no trousers', see here. o i do love that phrase :-)

opie and richie for obama?

not to mention the fonz! ron howard dons toupees and a t-shirt to stump for barack obama. my favourite moments have to be the two when he removes the toupees to talk to us as 'himself'.

vote no on prop 8

"IF SAME-SEX COUPLES ARE NOT HURTING OUR FAMILIES, WHY ARE WE TRYING TO HURT THEIRS?"

keeping up with the news

having been in berlin for a few days and thus without access to television or e-mail - although we did look at german newspapers in the hotel and found a lovely article on how the candidates have to be careful where they eat because of how it reflects on their characters - ultimately we fell behind with regard to coverage of the election in the usa. luckily i was able to find this clip to help update me.

er, um, i dunno ... sarah palin on foreign policy

Watch CBS Videos Online
that well-known hard-nosed reporter, katie couric, asks sarah palin a couple of simple questions. and there are seriously people out there who seriously think that this woman is a serious contender for public office? and qpr will be in the premiership next year! wait a minute, that could actually happen. help!!!!!!!!!

sarah and hillary, together at last

the moment so many have waited for - tina fey dons her sarah specs

palin for president!

a fine campaign video that makes a strong case for palin ... michael palin that is.

btw, life in london has been such fun that i am a wee bit behind in posting. hoping to catch up soon :-)

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

people around me are panicking. not because england won a world cup match in croatia and now the tabloids don't know who to pick on. neither was it because the large hadron collider has been turned on and the end of the world has not yet happened. it is not even because of the knowledge that angry goats who were wrongly imprisoned in the congo have now been freed to wreak their revenge.

why are we all so anxious? two simple words: sarah palin.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

all of a sudden people are quoting opinion polls and reading about sp dolls selling out and claiming that obama was referring to her as the pig wearing lipstick (i don't think he is bald-faced enough to do something like that, er, i mean there are ethics and values and all that stuff) and that this slight will cause all white women to vote republican.

it's going to be ok, though, don't worry. there is a simple cure for all this. in two words: tina fey. as a separated at birth looky-likey of the vp candidate, we just need her to go on 'saturday night live' a few times and shape the conscience of our nation with a few well-designed sketches.


or, you can join me in europe for the next month or so.

the rest of the world prefers obama

the bbc online news page has announced:

"All 22 countries in a BBC World Service poll would prefer Democratic nominee Barack Obama to be US president, ahead of his Republican rival John McCain. Mr Obama was favoured by a four-to-one margin across the 22,500 people polled. In 17 of the 22 countries surveyed the most common view was that America's relations with the rest of the world would improve under a President Obama. If Mr McCain were elected, the most common view in 19 countries was that relations would remain about the same. The poll was conducted before the Democratic and Republican parties held their conventions and before the headline-grabbing nomination of Sarah Palin as Mr McCain's running mate. BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says the results could therefore be a reflection of the greater media focus on Mr Obama as he competed for the presidential candidacy against Hillary Clinton."

more detailed numbers may be found here.

o dear, better not tell anyone. i have a funny feeling that if americans learned how the rest of the world wished they would behave, they would automatically do the opposite, just because they could.

flip-flopping republicans? no way!

ok you can probably do this to some extent with the democrats as well. you can probably do it with an awful lot of politicians all over the place. however, it was not the democrats who were in jon stewart's line of fire yesterday. watch the hypocrisy. and tell your friends!

why i cannot support sarah palin

palin poses with a caribou shot by her good self
it would be the ultimate irony if the republican candidate for vice-president of the usa ended up being the first woman elected to one of the top two political positions in the country. the euphoria of many after the attack-dog speech sarah palin gave in minnesota last night had me reaching for indigestion tablets. here are some reasons why i felt sick:

* she is an evangelical xian
* who is a member of feminists for life
* and enjoys hunting as a lifelong member of the national rifle association
* she is a big supporter of oil drilling in the arctic national wildlife refuge
* as the daughter of a science teacher, she is open to teaching creationism in public schools

as the l.a.times said:

"she is against abortion even in cases of rape and incest, sued the federal government to take polar bears off the endangered species list, has said creationism should be taught in schools and advocated a constitutional ban on providing healthcare benefits to same-sex partners"

or as gloria steinem wrote:

"Palin ... opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger."

how anyone who was a hillary supporter could possibly be angry enough to vote for a person, whatever their gender, with these particular values, i just do not know.

nb i have no problems with anyone having a religious belief (re evangelical xian note), i am just a firm believer in the separation of church and state, do not believe that ms palin is able to make that division, and thus am dismayed that she is running for national office

mccain has trouble counting

thanks to the editrix blog for showing me this short film in which republican presidential candidate john mccain attempts to be non-committal, i.e., to not use directly the word 'gay'; and pro 'family values' at the same time. apparently gay couples who wish to adopt are not "two-parent families".