olbermann is kind of a freak, but this is well spoken, nonetheless

…and that’s all i have to say on that.

in 2000, i couldn’t believe that anyone would possibly vote for an idiot like g.w.  determined that my vote wouldn’t make a difference in the election anyway, since there was no chance gore would lose, i gave my vote to the green party in an attempt to help them get 3% of the vote and a real shot at the presidential election in 2004.  both plans failed.

in 2004, it was so glaringly obvious that kerry was the better choice, and i felt like people obviously wanted a change, i didn’t think it was possible that the country would vote w. in for a second term.

this year, i was afraid that even though obama was the best candidate — and not just the lesser of two evils, but a man who would stand as a president for the people rather than in spite of the people — some unknown factor would cause the vote to go wildly in the other direction.  even the “maverick” (read: insane) tactics mccain used in selecting an inexperienced hockey mom from alaska as his running mate — so obviously a desperate cry for help — could have swayed the impetus toward him.

i watched the blogosphere and the twittersphere refreshing msnbc.com and cnn.com for updates on the polls obsessively, refusing to get my hopes up in case something went horribly wrong.

today, i wake up, and i can breathe easy — like a weight has been lifted.  for the first time in my life, i can be proud to be an american.  and i’m proud to live in the age of the first black president.  the age of change.

history starts now.

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thank god for amy poehler on snl…

found evidence that democrats kick tech arse this year on gizmodo:

Democrats Still Most Tech Savvy, Rent Digital Billboard to Text Message Sarah Palin at Rally

after news of gov. palin’s teen daughter’s pregnancy broke, i thought to myself (and to erin), i hope obama doesn’t use this. it’s typical to go for the groin shot in politics, use an advantage like a teenage pregnancy in the family (or a wife’s alchoholism, or whatever) to drag your opponent’s name in the mud.  if barack is everything he says he is, he wouldn’t stoop to those tactics.  well, fox news (!!) reports that obama says palin’s family is off limits, citing his own mom’s 18 years when she had him.

thank god.  this just goes to confirm my beliefs that obama is, in fact, awesome.

watched obama’s speech yesterday.  here it is, if you haven’t seen it yet:

watching this not only makes me an obsessed obama groupie (he does seem to have that effect), and go out and buy some obama stuff on his website, but also makes me realize that this election is huge.  it’s not even about the issues.  it’s about the future vs. the past.  obama is a politician who i believe can really lead this country into the 21st century, and as a techno-geek, i’ve seen lots of pie-in-the-sky solutions for a variety of environmental and economic problems.  but what all of those plans need is someone who is willing to take a risk and shake things up.

d00d.  mccain is not that person.

i think obama could be.

i was just reading a wired article about electric cars — yes they’re back.  and the program is being developed by someone with a realistic plan to get us off oil.  meanwhile, i’m watching obama talk about getting america off our oil addiction and i’m thinking, this could be the guy that gets the ball rolling.  and i want, want, want a f’ing electric car!

and i thought it was a key moment when he brought up all the hot topics that everyone debates about, abortion, gay marriage, and says, look, we might not agree on these things, but we can at least come to some middle ground – downplaying those issues because that’s not what this election is going to be about.  it’s not.  it’s about the future, and someone who can lead us there, and the past, and someone who will continue what reagan, bush #1 and bush #2 left off.  personally, i’m ready for the economy to not suck anymore.  i’m ready for new renewable energy.  i’m ready to live in a country that i am proud to live in, and not feel embarrassed about if and when i’m abroad.  (”yes, i’m american, but i think our president is a douche, too”)  a lot of politicians talk the talk, but few actually make me believe.

Mike Doughty talked in his blog about this being the first time he’s been politically excited about something rather than against something.  seriously, obama has the commanding presence of malcom x, he’s just, you know, not as angry.  and i was really digging kucinich, even though i knew he had no chance.  with obama, it’s like, the little issues don’t matter as much, because that’s not what he’s going for.  and since high school (when i declared myself an anarchist), i have been firm that the only way to fix the system is massive, radical change.  hell, that was why i voted green instead of gore.  it wasn’t that i didn’t want gore in the white house — i did, and i honestly thought dubbya had no chance of winning…which, you know, he didn’t.  it was that i wanted there to be a third option.  it was that democrats and republicans were two sides of the same worn out coin and neither represented me.  that’s what has made the myspace generation apathetic about politics.  how can you get excited about anything when it’s the same old stuff?  repetition isn’t exciting, not even when it’s techno — what’s exciting is when something gets thrown into the mix that’s different (this applies to the techno metaphor, too, and gee i’m just throwing around metaphors today, aren’t i?).

i feel like i need to be a much more active supporter of obama, which is kind of weird to me.  i feel like i need to tell everyone i see about him and make them part of the obsession too.  i don’t want this to be like the 2k election again, where no one really believes the crappy candidate really has a chance of winning and then he does by stealing florida.  even when mccain’s running mate looks like a blatant grasp at straws, i feel like it’s too dangerous to feel comfortable, because the alternative is another 4-8 years of destroying the environment, drilling holes in alaska, pumping more CO2 into the air and making the cities unlivable.  more economic depression and cold war-era “trickle-down” theory.  as much as i agree with the sentiment, i don’t want the bumper stickers that say “dissent is patriotic” to define my political views and outlook on the country.  we need someone to shake up the system and lead us into the technological future because otherwise, we need to get moving on our martian colonization program because this planet isn’t going to hold up for another generation of pillaging.  i’m ready to move into the future, not the Terminator future, or the Battlestar Galactica or the Matrix dystopic future of creating artificial life that proves its’ superiority and attempts to wipe out humanity for being inefficient, but the future where, you know, we still have ozone.  where the water is still blue and falls from the sky.  where there’s still animals.

there’s an episode in BSG where they’re crashed on Kobol.  Chief Tyrol is sitting by one of his knuckledraggers’ side as he’s sputtering blood and probably isn’t going to make it, and Tyrol says “How’re you doing?”  “Just listening to the birds,” he says.  Tyrol looks up for a second and notices the sound.  and the look is like “wow, I never thought I’d see the day when…”  and it’s terrifying how realistic that alternate reality is — that we could live in a world that has been without animal life for so long we’ve completely taken it for granted.  where we don’t even know to miss the sound of birds in the trees.

i feel like there’s a real momentum toward real revolutionary change and it’s an exciting time.  but i feel like we need to hop on the bandwagon because if we miss the window, it might never happen.  so i’m voting for obama.  you should too.

(by the way, i’ve enabled a new subscriber feature which emails alerts when i write posts.  if it bugs you, you can modify your subsription from the Subscribe widget in the sidebar, or you can email me.)

quick camPAIN post:
here’s the banners i made for kucinich.

feel free to download and use them if you feel so inclined.

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it’s official. if you haven’t been checking my calendar (and really, who does?) after thanksgiving i will no longer be a supervalu employee. the concept scares the shit out of me. after 2 years of being a salaried employee making middle class wages with decent enough benefits, it feels like i’m jumping out into ice-cold, shark-infested waters and it’s sink or swim. we’ve done all the planning, conceptualizing, and preparing we can do, the only thing left is to just jump in and hope for the best.

i will go in that monday after thanksgiving to fill out paperwork stuff, wednesday and thursday do whole foods training and then go on the schedule. i have no idea what the future after that holds. i only hope the commute doesn’t suck too much and that i have time to do graphic design which is still the intended primary source of income. oh, and that i make enough between the two to keep our heads above the water. i’m training erin on photoshop now, with regards to building a site template. it’s time to truly prove our/my worth and put my money where my mouth is in terms of being creative for a living.

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after reading some more about dennis kucinich on his campaign site, i’ve decided to leap onto the support your candidate bandwagon. i’m not sure what that means yet, exactly, other than the fact that i want to make some iconified graphics to put link things on a web site (and i noticed there aren’t any, so i figured i could do that, put my skillz to work). little mini banner things is what i was thinking for blogs, sigs, myspace, whatever.

anyway, there’s a couple reasons i’m doing this. one is i agree with his politics. or actually his policies match up with my politics. i also think that it’s time to get behind a candidate. i usually am really slack in terms of researching my candidates. i did go to a talk on the spitfire tour with several people talking about ralph nader and the “if we just get 3% of the vote we will have real funding to launch an actual federally funded campaign” argument and for my part i really did believe in his politics. but i knew it was a lost cause. i also knew in my gut that bush had no chance of winning, and i was right — cuz he cheated. but that’s besides the point. anyway, i tend to just pick the lesser of the evils without really knowing about what they really stand for. if hilary ran and was the democratic candidate, for example, i would possibly vote for her just to make her the first female pres, even if i didn’t really agree with her political stance (and really hate how she’s jumped on the video-games-are-evil bandwagon). also, looking at his political history, this guy has major f’ing cajones. seriously. he’s not afraid to take a stand even when it’s an unpopular one when it’s the right decision to make, and he seems to really have his constituents’ best interests at heart and listen to their needs. it’s worth taking a look at his website to check out what i mean. so he’s someone i can get behind and feel good about it.

and probably he’ll lose anyway because i’m isolationist like that…

i always want to be more politically active and involved but then my laziness takes over and it’s bad. so this time i’m going to be at least somewhat informed. and active. so there may be buttons coming. also, i didn’t realize i was f’ing democrat. i swear i was green. but i guess the D’s have a better chance of, you know, winning elections…

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erin, being my source of all real news, has shared this with me:
http://www.wqad.com/Global/link.asp?L=259460

it’s a quiz on your views on the major hot topics and matches your answers with the republican/democratic presidential candidates who match best with your views.  kind of good for someone like me who hasn’t paid attention to such things.  apparently my (and erin’s) candidate is Dennis Kucinich.  good to know.

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