We are finally here. It was a long and amusing process. There have been a lot of exciting moments and probably an equal amount of screaming-at-the-TV moments. All of those moments are inconsequential compared to the small moment you will have when you step inside that voting booth.
Now go. Vote. This post will still be here when you come back from doing your duty as a citizen of this great nation.

Back? Voted? Got your sticker and your free coffee from Starbucks?
Good.

Before I start spitting my anger and sarcasm I would like to take a moment out to thank Madelyn Payne Dunham, the grandmother of Barack Obama. Thank you for helping to shape Senator Obama into the man that will hopefully be our next president. She got the chance to vote for her grandson in the presidential election but she sadly will not have the chance to see him lead. My heart and wll wishes go out to her entire family. Madelyn Payne Dunham was 86.

I’m going to be kind of sad once this is all over. I’ve never yelled at my television this much when I wasn’t watching hockey. This has been an exciting time for me. Nerve wracking, but exciting. I really enjoyed watching the McCain campaign venture into the inane with their bullshit attacks and fear mongering. For all the shit they threw at Obama, after all the times they tried to link him to terrorists, extremists, socialism, after all that the make an ad that ended with saying Obama wasn’t ready to be president… yet.
Yet.
The yet implies he will be ready eventually. But at the same time they want you to believe he is evil. How the hell are we supposed to take these fucksticks seriously if they refute themselves?
All the slander, all the lies, the fear mongering, the bullshit, the general douchebaggery coming out of the Republican mouthpieces to me feels frantic. And judging by the current numbers over at Pollster the American populace is ignoring it. Pollster has Obama at 291 electoral votes (273 strong, 18 lean), McCain at 142 (129 strong, 13 lean). 105 in the tossup. With that math McCain could take all of his strong states, all of his lean states, all of the toss up and, get this, all of the Obama lean states and would still lose. It would be close but he would still lose.
All that and I am still nervous. I think after the last two elections no democratic voter should feel comfortable.

One thing that does make me smile is the final Senate Score Card from fivethirtyeight.com:

That looks like good news doesn’t it?

I hope when this is over we can finally tell the Republican party what they deserve to hear:

Get the fuck out.

It was seven years ago today that George W. Bush received a memo entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”. This memo would be ignored. Bush was content to dick around his ranch and discuss golf. I don’t think there is one moment that highlights the gross incompetence of this administration better.

On Monday Congress decided to ban phthalates from children’s toys and other products. Why? Well, phthalates have been linked to health issues including asthma, allergies, reduced sperm count and genital abnormalities in boys. This legislation would remove three types of phthalates from consumer products permanently and another three types pending further study. On top of that this legislation would ban lead from children’s toys and open up a consumer database of complaints or accident reports for goods.
Toys R Us/Babies R Us and Walmart have stated that they would stop selling toys containing phthalates starting January 2009. I want you to ask yourself something: How bad does a chemical have to be for Walmart to voluntarily ban them? This is Walmart for fucks sake.

As you may have guessed by the title of the post the Bush administration, voiced by spokesman Tony Fratto, responded by saying Bush opposes the ban.
Nice.

Exxon Mobil, who manufactures a large chuck of this shit, responded by claiming that this legislation would put children at even greater risk because manufacturers would have to replace the phthalates with something that could be worse.

Read that last bit again. That right there explains exactly what it wrong with our system. We don’t require chemical additives to be fully tested to see if there are any health concerns before releasing them into the wild. In Europe the safety of a chemical must be proven before it is allowed on the market, here it must be proven unsafe before it is removed.

Widely ignored was the fact that Pennsylvania has two primaries. The Democratic one that everyone paid attention to and the fully ignored Republican one. Honestly the Republican primary shouldn’t even be news worthy because they have their nominee in John McCain but something strange is happening here.

Out of 791,205 Republican votes McCain only picked up 72.7%. Crazy assed Ron Paul picked up 15.9 and Mike “Change The Constitution for Jesus” Huckabee got 11.4. Huckabee dropped out a while ago and he still got double digits. I guess when your main selling point is being a term extension for the extraordinarily shitty Bush policies not everyone can get behind you. Not even your own party. Losing over a quarter of your vote when you are the nominee has to be embarrassing.

Even before McCain was the nominee voter turnout for the Republican primaries has been startlingly low while the Democratic side has been pulling in record numbers. A very bad sign for anyone with a hope for McCain.

Keep on yelling you old coot, nobody is really listening to you anymore. After the shit this country was put through by Bush we can not afford to have you at our helm.

It is really no secret that I support one Democrat over the other but if my pick doesn’t make it through to the general election you better damn well believe I will still step into that voting booth and pull the lever for Democrat. I know most of the Democratic supporters will do the same thing. Can you say the same for your team? Not currently.

The only tool he has that can pull his party together is the same tool Bush has been using to abuse his power. Fear. Lucky for America it seems that we have stopped falling for that bogyman. Don’t believe me? Check his ratings. 69% disapproval as of this month. That is lower then his father. Lower then Nixon. It is officially the lowest approval rating in recorded history beating out Truman’s 67% disapproval in January 1952.

Congratulations on that shit-stained landmark Mr. Bush! Now hurry the fuck off the stage, the grownups need to run the county now.

Part 1: Tour of Duty Changes
Bush made a big fucking deal about changing the tour of duty from 15 months to 12 months. While it was recommended to be 12 months deployed and 24 months home to keep troop moral and mental health high they decided that 12 on and 12 off was good enough. Well, at least it is a step in the right direction, right?
As with everything else with this administration there is small print: This offer only valid to troops starting their tours after August 1st. Now I bet we will see the rapid redefining of the term “tour of duty”.

Part 2: Voting Rights
VA secretary James Peake, in response to a letter from Senators Kerry and Feinstein, say they will not reverse their ban on either allowing injured veterans to register to vote or even helping an injured vet get somewhere where they could register to vote. The reasoning?
They consider registering to vote a “partisan political activity”. So if you are injured fighting for this administration and are laid up in a VA hospital somewhere your right to vote gets essentially revoked.

This administration makes the charge that people who are against the war are not supporting the troops. Here they are, yet again proving that they are truly the ones that are against the troops.
It is easy to get the masses worked into a frenzy powered by fear. Fear of terrorism. Fear of extremists. Fear of people who are different. Fear of who and what they want you to fear. Fear is what got us here and fear is what is keeping us here. I, for one, say fuck you. I will not fear what and when it is convenient for this administration. I will not have a Pavlovian-like fear on command response to the words “Muslim” or “terrorist”. I will not ignore your misdeeds in the name of your redefinition for freedom out of fear.
I will not fear you.
I don’t understand how you could continue to put our soldiers in harms way without the proper armor. Without the proper gear. Without the proper care. How you could continue this and still pretend to have the best interests of the troops in mind. You, Mr. Bush, you and all those working with you are traitors to this country and should be dealt with as such.

If you missed it Keith Olbermann has a special comment last night. It may be one of the best things I have ever heard him say. This should be mandatory viewing.

What?
No, seriously, what?
What union is this fucking moron referring to? The one where unicorns roam free and candy is the main form of currency?
The useless fuckstain even had the balls to make reference to, and take credit for, the foiling of two “terror” plots. One of which entailed a plane being flown into “the largest building in L.A.” has pretty much been proven as false. The other of which was crashing planes on the way to the U.S. into the Atlantic. You know what the deal was there? The “masterminds” behind it had neither the tickets nor the passports to board those flights.
So guess where that leaves those claims he is making about being a terror fighting superhero?
Same place the gas prices are at.
Same place the economy is at.
Same place the war, housing market, the job market, health care, the U.S. dollar, unemployment, our education system, the environment, foreign relations, the city of New Orleans, and every other goddamned thing this administration has touched, or in the case of New Orleans, forgotten to touch.
That place my friends, is the shitter.

Never has such incompetence been so rewarded. I hope, for the sake of future generations, at home and abroad, that, instead of revising and retelling, the history books shed light on your deeds, misdeeds and idiotic fuckups so that the children of the world will know. So they will never forget. So that history will not repeat itself. So that the state of the Union, and for that matter the state of the world, are never impacted like this again.