The latest political thread

when i found out my dad supports obama over mccain.

if a 52 year old redneck white guy can support a black candidate for president, anything can happen.

Do you think the exit polls are going to be all wrong again?

how fox news and drudge are REALLY pushing this bogus coal story. trying REAL HARD to make sure mccain wins ohio eh?

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FgEGtYWonds

Who will lead the Republican Party since they look like they are going to lose. I believe they can form in to two wings the know-nothing wing= Sarah Palin or a moderate Rockefeller type wing consisting of Christine Todd Whittman and Colin Powell. Bobbye Jindal is a joke and all the Republicans believe Bobbye is their form of Obama (young dynamic politican). Truth is Bobbye is boring and not a great speaker. Jindal is just like Bush a religious nut and a very far right politican.

to drive about an hour or so from UNT back to my precinct to vote tomorrow?

still undecided?

Palin is in Reno right now.

The night before the election and the city they choose to put the VP nominee in was Reno, fucking NV? Was Billings, MT booked?

My uneducated self is thinking an Obama win. Swing state predictions: NC to Obama, Florida to McCain and Ohio to McCain.

Thought it was funny I know a lot of us on here fit in this dem.

Of all the stupid s*** the Baby Boomers ever foisted upon an unwilling and unappreciative world—and mind you there has been a h*** of a lot of it—I have to say that siring and raising the so-called “Millennials” (or Echo Boomers or Generation Y) to ersatz maturity is turning out to be one of their biggest doozies.

While these erstwhile Deciders-in-Chief sail happily off to Boca to enjoy their swollen retirement packages, golden parachutes, and depreciated vacation homes, the rest of us are expected to clean up the messes they have left behind: an economy spiraling into deep recession, a financial system shorn of all credibility and held together with paper clips and baling wire, and a country that no-one else in the world even fears anymore, much less respects.

Of course, most of this is not the Millennials’ fault. It’s the fault of their dastardly parents, many of whom saddled these kids with this baggage largely in pursuit of their own social status and entitlement. But the kids are the ones who will have to adjust, and learn to deal with what will soon seem a much colder and less friendly world than Sesame Street and Barney led them to believe it would be.

Interestingly enough, investment banking has traditionally been an industry which has been particularly good at taking in lots of talented but jejune youngsters and hammering them into more or less useful corporate citizens. Up until the recent dislocations, investment banking could dangle the three carrots of supersized pay, undeserved social prestige, and premature involvement in the headline-making events of our time, so it tended to attract ambitious, intelligent, and driven college and business school grads who burned to become the next Lloyd Blankfein before the age of 30.

Once they entered the door, however, they found that glamour, prestige, and responsibility were not just lying on the floor waiting to be picked up. They had to be earned with grinding, unrelenting, and mostly unpleasant hard work. No-one coddled the junior investment banker or cocooned him or her in a warm, fuzzy blanket of uncritical esteem and praise. Instead, they beat the s*** out of you, and they were nasty about it, too.

Many wannabe Masters of the Universe found they could not carry the freight. Eighty- to 100-hour work weeks, all-night and all-weekend fire drills, and senior bankers who would as soon spit on you as thank you for a job well done convinced many that they did not have either the aptitude or the desire for a life in investment banking. But for those who survived and even thrived under these conditions, the winnowing took the form of—dare I say it in these inhospitable times?—a defining test of character. They went through the crucible, and they were changed.

Now I will not claim that all those who passed this test and became full-fledged investment bankers were or became good or even pleasant people. Far from it. (How many Green Berets or Navy Seals would you welcome to your cocktail party or nominate for your local PTA? None, I posit.) Instead, they became competent and self-reliant, which at least in ages past signified a level of social maturity devoutly to be wished for.

This, as I see it, is exactly the sort of trial by fire that so many of today’s Millennials desperately need, if only to help them cut the parental apron strings and learn to achieve something admirable which is wholly their own. Unfortunately, investment banking is no longer the sort of industry with the draw and demand to deliver this to more than a select few of them.

So I guess we can expect a lot of twenty-somethings to slosh over into the entrepreneurial bucket, while they’re waiting for the economy to turn and Goldman Sachs to come begging at their doorstep again. We’ll see how well that works out for them. I, for one, am less than sanguine that 70 million of them can earn a living from marketing Web 2.0 freeware, but what do I know? Maybe there is an Incrediboy in the bunch who can invent a way to make everyone rank in the 99th percentile. Let’s just hope he doesn’t have to cut us all off at the knees to make us giants.

My guess is that most of these Millennials will have to sponge off Mom and Dad for several years until the recession ends and they can find a real job. This will have the simultaneously salutary effect of reminding Junior that Mom and Dad do not have all the answers and forcing Mom and Dad to burn through more of their ill-gotten wealth transfer gains to support their indigent progeny. One can hang a tenuous hope that there is justice in this world on much flimsier nails.

In the meantime, let me offer a piece of advice to any Millennials who might be looking to interview at Dealmaker LLC. If you “want to be treated like colleagues rather than subordinates and expect ready access to senior executives,” take a job at the local Starbucks. We do command and control here, buddy, and you’re at the bottom of the food chain.

Obama winning the popular vote 15-6.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/04/dixville.notch/index.html

The 12th person to vote in my precinct. I feel so damn patriotic.

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/11/04/1104dunbar.html

State Board of Education Member Cynthia Dunbar isn’t backing down from her claim that Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama is sympathetic to terrorists plotting to attack the U.S.
…

“I don’t have anything in there that would be retractable,” said Dunbar, R-Richmond. “Those are my personal opinions, and I don’t think the language is questionable.”

In a column posted on the Christian Worldview Network Web site, Dunbar wrote that a terrorist attack on America during the first six months of an Obama administration “will be a planned effort by those with whom Obama truly sympathizes to take down the America that is threat to tyranny.”

She also suggests Obama would seek to expand his power by declaring martial law throughout the country.

Figured I’d post this for anyone who doesn’t visit FiveThirtyEight.

Looks like MN will be the state to keep an eye on today. Nate also says Dems holding 60 seats in the Senate looks like a longshot (15% chance).

of seeing people on here saying that those who want Intelligent Design taught in public schools “believe in fairytales”.

I think these atheists believe in fairytales even more if they think the world came from nothing. good luck with that.

No one will be able to convince anyone of anything. At least in politics you have a way to keep score. I look forward to Ben being proved wrong after an Obama landslide. :)