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Barack Obama Wins US Presidency
Last night, around 11pm, all the major networks announced that Senator Barack Obama had won the election. Soon after, Senator McCain conceded. There were no crazy partisan court hearings, just a simple election. This is your chance to talk about it and what it means for the future of our nation.
Well done, America. You've taken your first step toward re-establishing your international credibility by voting out the Republicans, who have played a large part in engineering the current state of international affairs. We recognize that your country is in a pretty deep hole left by the last administration, but we trust you'll do your best.
I'm sure I'll be modded out, but as an Australian... can I just say, THANK YOU America for making the right decision.
Your country has a huge influence on us and I am so glad you are taking a positive step forward into what I hope will be a new era for us all.
Watching on CNN the sea of people in Chicago cheering for President Elect Obama and his victory speech convinced me that this was one of those unique moments, the kind that people decades from now will remember and ask each other "Do you remember where you were when Obama was elected?" Truly a great moment.
I wish I could mod that up, because that's exactly why I voted the way I did this election. I voted D straight down the list for the first time ever. No mix and match, no attempt at balance. Straight Democrat. I feel a little dirty, but it needed to be done, and for the first time since I've been able to vote, I actually have hope that maybe this time it will be different. I was well on my way to becoming disillusioned and apathetic, but this time I care, and I'm hopeful.
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
Obama's win was widely predicted, although most people underestimated his support (right now, it looks like he will take 364 electoral votes).
The biggest surprise of the night is in Alaska, where against all odds, they elected a convicted criminal to the US senate.
I came here for a good argument
Because if the rest of the world likes you, they might stop thinking up ways to blow you up. When you say please don't build any Nuclear missiles they might actually listen. Hell there's a chance that people won't take the whole 'giving people democracy thing' as such a bad joke if you actually came across as well meaning and decent. It's not just the Europeans you need to consider, but if you did, then next time you decide to start a war you might get help from someone other than the Brits.
And if you're going to throw out insults (the OP never mentioned by whom or where that reputation might be held btw.) they could at least be real insults. That said kudos for coming up with a word that isn't in the urban dictionary.
...is the international reaction to Obama's win. I knew that the reputation of America and Americans had been battered over the past few years, but I never suspected that it was as bad as it was. I watched the results last night, said a little "huzzah!" when Obama was declared, listened as McCain gave a warm, dignified, and gentlemanly concession speech, and then went to bed thinking I'd seen it all. I woke up at about 4:45 this morning and I've been flipping between news stations ever since. I got a little emotional last night during the speeches, but I'm absolutely devastated by the number of non-Americans who are dancing in the streets over Obama's win. I never thought I'd see video of a few hundred Chinese people jumping around and chanting "Obama! Obama!" A reporter in France walked up to a woman and simply said "Obama?" Her face lit up and she simply said "C'est formidable!" Kenyans are throwing feasts in his honor. Arab and Persian states are happy. Israel is happy. Pakistan is happy. Australians are losing their damned minds over it. Russia is... well, they're kinda grumpy, but they're not having a good year. And all morning I've been hitting my usual haunts (/., Fark, CNN, BBC, & more) and I keep seeing messages posted by people from a zillion different countries congratulating us and thanking us for "making the right choice." Before you ask, yes I voted for him, no, I don't think he's the messiah, and yes, I'm still pissed at him for breaking his promise over campaign financing. But even with all that, I still can't shake the feeling that something *seriously* important happened last night. I'm almost 40, so I've seen a few elections, but never in my life have I seen or felt the kind of excitement that's in the air right now. It seems like all sorts of barriers have just... vanished. Racial, political, international, interpersonal, it just all seems different now. I know that part of it is just the morning-after buzz of having your candidate win, but there's something special about having a friend email you and tell you how they got hugged twice in Germany while wearing an Obama t-shirt and walking to the bakery on the corner, then reading a post that says "The Netherlands are happy for you!" The world stood up and took notice of us this morning. I hope he doesn't let us down.
Thus endeth my waxing philosophical.
As long as the senate can still filibuster, nothing too crazy will get through. If a party ever got 60 senators though, God help us!
Normally, I might agree with you, but a lot of those Republicans are coming up for election in 2010, and most of them are actually smart enough to read the writing on the wall. Filibustering every issue will not bode well for their chances for re-election, and they know it. I think Obama is going to be able to get a lot more done than some people think.
Thank you for your thoughtful, and non-insulting reply. I agree that the blame mostly lies with Bush, but McCain's campaign clearly illustrated to me that the neocons who brought us Bush were still in charge of the Republican party. Until those idiots are no longer running that party, I will not vote for them. That sucks for the good Republicans, but they've got a lot of cleaning up to do. I wish them well.
I have hope that McCain will leave that crowd behind and do some good for what remains of his political career. His concession speech was nothing short of beautiful. His audience's reaction was atrocious, but I don't fault McCain for that.
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
For me, as a person born in the Southern US in the 1960s, this event is a very, very big deal. I've seen people do things that should never be done, and get away with it, and I never though that a black man could ever be president.
I'm very cynical about politics, but not about people. And for the first time in my life, I am truly proud to be an American.
No one expects miracles, but it feels good to put that chapter in our history at least partially to rest.
I used to think that way, and helped with the Nader campaign in 2000. When Bush won, my thought was "This guy is going to be just like Clinton, or pretty close anyway."
Damn was I wrong. Apparently the Republican administration viewed every international issue as a problem to be solved by bomb-bomb-bombing. Clinton generally avoided international confligrations. I was furious when Clinton compromised down to Don't Ask - Don't Tell, but Bush's push for a homophobic constitution has that beat. Don't get me started on relative deficit levels, the Axis-of-evil and amazing bungling of international relations, and two major crisis which he had been warned about and failed to act upon. Also, having to jam shampoo into 3oz containers to get onto a plane is weak and pointless.
To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure any 3rd party candidate is right for now. A Libertarian "hands off" approach would simply facilitate the economy imploding further. A Green Party candidate would never be able to stomach the smoke stacks required to get us moving again. And things aren't yet bad enough to start setting fire to buildings.
The ______ Agenda
BBC?
(This is where someone says they don't like the BBC because they have a British slant.)
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
I think you over-estimate the naivity of the banks and mortgage salesmen in relation to the credit crisis. It was nothing but greedy profiteering and has very little to do with encouragement from any recent adminsistration.
Here are some of the key points to remember:
1) Mortgage salesmen got a commision for each mortgage sold, regardless of whether it was stable or would be paid to completion.
2) Alarm bells should have been ringing down at the local bank branch but they weren't. Why? Because they were selling the loans (and inherent risk) on to larger invesment banks who repacked them.
3) The investment banks repackaged these loans together with the flawed reasoning that only a certain percentage would default based on projected market conditions. Those conditions turned out to be wrong.
4) The producers and packagers of asset backed swaps were further laying off and reselling the risk to hedge funds and banks that didn't necessarily have the capital behind them to pay up in the event of a default. It's illegal for insurance companies to take on obligations that they can't pay for but not for banks to jiggle risk around like this. This is criminal negligence in my view and people should have been in court by now.
5) No one really knows who is exposed to what risk because these leveraged products have been resold and unwound between multiple counterparties. The banks don't know how badly affected their peers are so they've stopped lending to others in case they disappear (like Lehman) or they need the cash themselves for their own write-downs which they don't really know the scale of for the reasons mentioned. This is the real credit crisis, not the mortgages themselves. That was just the catalyst.
Put it this way, you won't find anyone in the finance industry saying that they sold all those dodgy mortgages "because the government made us do it". It was greed, pure and simple.
DISCLAIMER: I worked in credit derivitives many years ago.
This nation wasn't founded on partisanship at all. Everyone knows that out founding fathers didn't initially plan a partisan system, but partisanship is a result of how our government and our psychology works.
I think it would be much better to have a non-partisan system, where there aren't only two opinions to choose from. Wouldn't it make much more sense if one could select from, say, 10 candidates with different ideas on things, rather than choosing either Democrat or Republican?
If we have a more limited number of options, the race becomes much more about choosing "the lesser of two evils" than choosing the best person possible to become the president.
Most people who think Fox News is an arm of the GOP, are comfortable getting their news from multiple sources, CNN, BBC, CBS, NBC, etcetera, EXCEPT for Fox News.
while most people who think Fox News is Fair and Balanced(tm) are of the opinion that all other mainstream media are "in the tank" for whomever they are hating that week, and are NOT to be trusted. this magnifies the echo chamber effect, since they are unable or unwilling to consider opposing viewpoints.
What's worse, is they incorrectly assume that everyone else must think like they do, and all other news outlets are as shrill and partisan as Fox is, because they have nothing to compare to.
...after reading through all three thousand plus posts on this topic, admittedly with a filter of +2, I feel compelled to come in and toss away all my mod points to say "thanks" to the /.'ers here and abroad for having actual, real, intelligent discourse about this. The signal to noise ratio was one of the best I've seen on a thread here in years.
I'd been firmly in the Obama camp since he came out against lobbyists in an incredibly direct zero-tolerance fashion (for Washington, at least). None in my ground crew, none in my cabinet, not a dime from them. So, that made the sale for me personally very early in the primary season. Voting for someone who's been a civil rights lawyer, and is incredibly well-spoken... well, that's just a bonus. How cool would it be to have a quotable president in your lifetime? All those speeches you memorize in school? What if you were there for a speech your kids memorize?
I'm not at all proud of what my government, and by association, my country has turned into in the last decade. And as cheesy as it might sound to some people, I really do think we need constructive, positive dialog to move forward. Race, international relations, financial markets... everything. We've gotten in the habit of painting the world in stark shades of idealogical black and white -- on both sides.
Growing up in the US, we're taught to believe in a very idealized, edited version of American history, and America as a symbol -- it's the history that we really wished could be. Down to the specifics of the Lincoln presidency and on, very complex issues are taught to us in a very binary, black and white fashion that loses nuance completely. But it's part of who we are. And for the most part, it's who we want to be. It might be borderline fiction, but it's a noble aspiration.
Something struck me during one of the debates. Obama said "We need to learn how to disagree without being disagreeable." -- which sounds juvenile on the surface, but is a consummate truth at its core and sums up a major issue with the "you're either with me or against me" macho cowboy politic crap we've had to endure.
We've been stuck in gridlock, incapable of positive change for so long that I think we've forgotten how to affect it.
I must say that if the John McCain who made the incredibly eloquent, heartfelt concession speech last night had been the same man who had been campaigning, I think things would have been a lot closer. Well, and ditched his trainwreck running mate, but I didn't log in to burn the neocons in effigy.
If Obama can achieve even a fraction of what he's set about, it'll be positive change for this country and world in my very honest opinion. It's arrogant as an American to believe that my vote affects the entire world, but looking over the last eight years in particular, it's incredibly naïve to believe it doesn't. We're a conflicted people.
McCain may very well have been capable of leading us out of this incredibly dark, deep hole that we're in, but the Republican party as a whole (down to my state and local levels -- I'm in North Florida) has lost any shred of credibility in regard to the term "conservative" where it applies to fiscal and legislative issues, and has taken the moral "conservative" tack -- ie, let's roll back the clock and stand in the way of social progress to regard to people who aren't just like us. You want polarization? Base your politics about making people scared of folks who aren't just like you, and spend your time telling other adults how to live their lives.
The world isn't like that, the country isn't like that... shit, my block isn't like that. So how did we get in this place?
The core of my personal moral compass is that there's nothing on this planet more offensive than a closed mind.
The more we talk, the more we begin to understand each other. And that's a start, isn't it?