191 replies to this topic

[DrBubb]

OBAMA will be the next President !



"Change has Come to America !"

Victory speech: http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/pop...16&src=news

The popular vote was close — 51.7 percent to 47 percent with 84 percent of all U.S. precincts tallied — but not the count in the Electoral College, where it mattered most.

Interviews with voters suggested that almost six in 10 women were backing Obama nationwide, while men leaned his way by a narrow margin. Just over half of whites supported McCain, giving him a slim advantage in a group that Bush carried overwhelmingly in 2004.

An estimated 187 million voters were registered, and in an indication of interest in the battle for the White House, 40 million or so had already voted as Election Day dawned.

Obama sought election as one of the youngest presidents, and one of the least experienced in national political affairs.

That wasn't what set the Illinois senator apart, though — neither from his rivals nor from the other men who had served as president since the nation's founding more than two centuries ago. A black man, he confronted a previously unbreakable barrier as he campaigned on twin themes of change and hope in uncertain times.

= = = =

The Inaugural Address: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/audio/2009...augural-address

[Steve Netwriter]

AP Top News at 10:13 p.m. EST

1 hour ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama seized command of the race for the White House Tuesday night, defeating John McCain in Ohio and Iowa and building a near insurmountable Electoral College advantage in his historic bid to become the first black president. Fellow Democrats gained strength in both houses of Congress. Obama's Ohio victory denied McCain particularly precious territory. No Republican has ever won the presidency without the state.

[the bugler]

The question is not ..Who is the President?.. but.. Who is the Patsy?......McCain for fighting an election he could never win ...or Obama for winning the Presidency of a country on the brink of economic failure.

[Andrew McP]

The poor guy and his administration may be doomed, but listening to the coverage overnight I couldn't help but allow myself to be hopeful. Inspirational figures *can* change the world for the better, just as they can change it for the worse... as the last 8 years have proved.

I am hopeful that Obama is exactly the kind of catalyst America, and indeed the world needs at a very difficult time. He will be able to earn respect in ways GWB never could, and that in itself will ease tensions between nations and contribute to greater cooperation when it's really needed.

I just hope -- a bit like Peter Schiff's clients -- that the wider American people realise he's only human. I fear many of those important swing voters will all too soon think they made a mistake, making a second term highly unlikely.

Andrew McP

[DrBubb]

I am hopeful that Obama is exactly the kind of catalyst America, and indeed the world needs at a very difficult time. He will be able to earn respect in ways GWB never could, and that in itself will ease tensions between nations and contribute to greater cooperation when it's really needed.

I heard the Victory speech, and while listening, and for a while afterwards, I was proud to be American.

Obama has shown that the ideals can still be made to work.  Surely, when he started out, people told him:

"YOU CANNOT BE PRESIDENT because..."

+ You are too young
+ You are inexperienced
+ You are black
+ You are not a Washington Insider

His reaction to all these objections was:  YES I (WE) CAN !!

Good for him.  It took unflagging self-belief, huge energy, management of many other people.

I recommend people listen to the speech.  It has the hallmarks of greatness.
And the vision it upholds, may begin to revive the world's respect for America

[romans holiday]

His reaction to all these objections was:  YES I (WE) CAN !!

Good for him.  It took unflagging self-believe, huge energy, management of many other people.

I recommend people listen to the speech.  It has the hallmarks of greatness.
And the vision it upholds, may begin to revive the world's respect for America

Yes, I saw the speech also, quite inspirational. I have to admit it was a little scary when the camera panned around to show such rapturous and adoring expressions on the faces of his followers.  I hope people do not expect too much from him, he is not the Messiah just a politician.

"Yes, we can"... is now "Yes, we will". The ideology of the new right laissez faire is now totally discredited... what will take its place? A revolutionary/ reactionary movement?

Will they bring back Volker?

[DrBubb]

Yes, I saw the speech also, quite inspirational. I have to admit it was a little scary when the camera panned around to show such rapturous and adoring expressions on the faces of his followers.  I hope people do not expect to much from him, he is not the Messiah just a politician.

Indeed.

But the speech was not full of impossible promises.

In fact ( a vital item ) : It included a call to sacrifice.  That was an essential thing I was waiting for.

LISTEN here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/election_rdp

[FWIW]

I for one am extremely pleased with the result.
He made references to the founding fathers and their ideals.  He will put the USA back on the more difficult but righteous path.  He may not give me everything I want, but this is a great stride and vote for peace.

[romans holiday]

Indeed.

But the speech was not full of impossible promises.

In fact ( a vital item ) : It included a call to sacrifice.  That was an essential thing I was waiting for.

LISTEN here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/election_rdp

Yes, it is progress... anything was after Bush.

Yet, I do have my reservations about his call to sacrifice. I wonder if we will see a pendulum swing completely away from the individual to the collective. I would be most happy to see it stop half way between with a rebalancing of the public sphere with the private. But sadly, the way complex societies usually work is it has to be one or the other extreme.

[DrBubb]

"A New Dawn of American Leadership is at hand!"

(or as David Brooks put it):  "A Date with Scarcity"
=================================

Barack Obama is a child of a child of the 1960s. His mother was born only five years earlier than Hillary Clinton. For people in Obama’s generation, the great disruption had already occurred by the time they hit adulthood. Theirs is a generation of consolidation and neo-traditionalism — a generation of sunscreen and bicycle helmets, more anxious about parenthood than anything else.

Obama is not only a member of this temperate generation, but of its most educated segment. He has lived nearly his entire adult life within a few miles of one or another of the country’s top 10 universities.

His upscale, post-boomer cohort has rallied behind him with unalloyed fervor. Major college newspapers have endorsed him at a rate of 63 to 1. The upscale educated class — from the universities, the media, the law and the financial centers — has financed his $600 million campaign (which relied on big-dollar donations even more heavily than George W. Bush’s 2004 effort). This cohort will soon become the ruling class.

And the irony is that they will be confronted by the problem for which they have the least experience and for which they are the least prepared: the problem of scarcity.

Raised in prosperity, favored by genetics, these young meritocrats will have to govern in a period when the demands on the nation’s wealth outstrip the supply. They will grapple with the growing burdens of an aging society, rising health care costs and high energy prices. They will have to make up for the trillion-plus dollars the government will spend to avoid a deep recession. They will have to struggle to keep their promises to cut taxes, create an energy revolution, pass an expensive health care plan and all the rest.

/see: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/opinion/04brooks.html?em

[gwizzie]

Obama has a year, maybe 18 months to grab America by the scruff. He must act in a whirlwhind of major reforms to ride the euphoria of his victory. If he acts sheepish or indecisive, he may not get a second term.
With a partisan congress he has the opportunity, i think he may just have the backbone

[G0ldfinger]

Obama will print as much money as McCain.

The only difference is that under Obama some of the poorer people might get it first, and not the banksters or military/industrial complex.

[riggerbeautz]

I heard the Victory speech, and while listening, and for a while afterwards, I was proud to be American.

Obama has shown that the ideals can still be made to work.  Surely, when he started out, people told him:

"YOU CANNOT BE PRESIDENT because..."

+ You are too young
+ You are inexperienced
+ You are black
+ You are not a Washington Insider

His reaction to all these objections was:  YES I (WE) CAN !!

Good for him.  It took unflagging self-belief, huge energy, management of many other people.

I recommend people listen to the speech.  It has the hallmarks of greatness.
And the vision it upholds, may begin to revive the world's respect for America

You should be proud as he seemed as sincere as any politician could be!

More inspirational than our "gord's" inaugural election victory speech  

For American's to vote this guy is a G.B equivalent of a black muslim leader in my mind.

[azazel]

People were euphoric when Blair won and that came to tears. I don't think Obama will make much difference.

[DrBubb]

People were euphoric when Blair won and that came to tears. I don't think Obama will make much difference.

Maybe.
But I reckon that Obama has much more sincereity, and will attract a very strong team to work with him.

Blair was stuck through out with ... Gordon Brown

[fantastic]

My email boxes are fully jammed this morning!
Nice to see so many positive thoughts this morning -
I also went long this morning(   )  .

Well done to Obama AND McCain:
- One for actually making history
- One for channelling his supporters potentially nefarious behaviours
toward positive thoughts. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GJvz6cf_G4g

Condoleances for his grandmother.

[Andrew McP]

I heard the Victory speech, and while listening, and for a while afterwards, I was proud to be American.

So was I... and I'm a Brit! :-) The US President is a big figure in all our lives though, and I think it's ok to feel like that, just as it was ok for much of the world to feel American in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. There was a massive wasted opportunity back then. This time I hope it'll be very different... though the financial crisis facing us is a far more of a threat than a few crazy (but, sadly, lucky) militants ever were.

Anyway, I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I'm fairly easily moved to tears (especially when gold & silver go down ;-) and I even got a bit moist when I heard Obama's nomination acceptance speech a few months back. Talk is often cheap, but he seemed like the Real Deal to me. And last night at work I listened to the radio all the way through. When it was clear he'd won, and later during his speech, I was having to chew my cheek to avoid embarrassment. It was truly moving to be able to see America turn -- en masse! -- back towards a saner future.

Whether Obama ultimately succeeds or fails in harnessing that goodwill productively, last night was -- I think -- a night when it was perfectly acceptable to look ahead with hope. We're all allowed a night off from the doom & gloom *once* in a while! :-)

Andrew McP

PS There are many good points being made in this thread. I agree with pretty much all of it.

[DrBubb]

Obama - where he stands on Energy / Is this feasible ?

Energy
Obama has said he wants to make long-term investments in clean energy and energy efficiency.

He proposes investing $150 billion in renewable energy over the next 10 years, and requiring that a tenth of the nation's energy come from renewable source by 2013. By 2020, he wants to reduce the nation's demand for electricity by 15%.

(how to cut electricity consumption, if electric casr come into usage)

To reduce greenhouse gases, Obama favors a cap-and-trade auction to limit companies' carbon emissions. He wants to use the money raised from companies buying carbon permits to help fund research and development in green energy and speed the commercialization of solar, wind and other green technologies.

Obama's stated goal: by 2050, carbon emissions should be down to a level that is 80% below where they were in 1990.

(80% below 1990?  Again, how is this possible?)


/more policies: http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/04/news/econo...s_for/index.htm

[bakachu]

People were euphoric when Blair won and that came to tears. I don't think Obama will make much difference.

I wasn't sure how much of a difference he could make as an individual initially, but as I saw more of him and his ability to inspire and rally people, I think he's the right person at the right time.

If he can keep it up, the combined power of himself and also an inspired nation standing behind him is immensely powerful and game-changing.

McCain couldn't command this sort of power, Obama's made for it.

[THEBIGMAN]

People were euphoric when Blair won and that came to tears.

True, but much of that was down to the public being extremely jaded with the incumbent (and generally quite loathsome, to be frank) Tories. History has proven Tony Blair to have been a halfwit nincompoop. A monumental Machiavellian failure. A superficial, vain, weak, corruptible and manipulable imbecile.  A political leader who was comprehensively politically outmaneuvered and intellectually outclassed by G. W. Bush into doing his bidding [now there's an epitaph fit for his tenure]. A man, if I can call him that, who was so stupid that he sabotaged any chance of successful tenure for his successor - despite being a member of the same political party.  Obama would have to work pretty darned hard to be such a catastrophic leader.

Obama is obviously much, much smarter than any of the UK new labour lightweights. As much as I like, respect and admire John McCain, the right man won in the end. I feel quite optimistic for America in the long-term.