Swords Against Boredom

On my TV last night, I watched black people kneel and cry and shake with joy as the realization sunk in that a black man had just been elected president of the United States.

A woman quoted in the newspaper I work for had summed it up beautifully earlier in the day:

“All our kids have ever seen is a white man as president,” the 22-year-old said of the possibility of Obama becoming the nation’s first black president. “Now, if a black man makes it, they will be able to see that it’s capable for them to be president. They will know that anything is possible.”

Indeed, anything is possible.

The challenge now, of course, is for Obama and the Democrats who hold a majority in D.C. to prove they can govern. These are not easy times for any of us, and I doubt we’ll get through the next several years unscathed. Obama has just taken on the most difficult job on Earth.

Will he succeeed? I don’t know. It strikes me that many people voted not necessarily for Obama, but against McCain and the Bush/Cheney legacy. I don’t base that on anything scientific, but on conversations I’ve had with people. More than a few have said they might have voted for McCain if Gov. Sarah Palin had not been on the ticket. She is plainly not presidential material, and she talks an awful lot like the W. people — you know, the supporters of a president who remained gagged and tied up during the election campaign so as to not taint the McCain effort with the neo-con stench. I think this race would have been neck-and-neck if not for the Palin Gambit.

But Obama is president-elect, and we are on the cusp of history, and those smiling, crying, joyful faces on my TV left me with one resounding thought: How terrible, how horrible would it be for Obama to let his supporters down?

I don’t think he will fail. I do not agree with Obama on everything, but I believe he is sincere, I believe he is intelligent, I believe he is decisive, I believe he can pull people together. I believe the United States made the right choice Tuesday — and I believe that a failed Obama presidency could easily, easily erase the giant step forward this country just took.

I hope Barack Obama will lead from his heart, and from his mind. And I hope he never forgets all those smiling, crying, joyful faces.

– Steve

Take a gander at wet beauties from the Red Planet.

Dead leaves like paper bones
rattle on October winds
a dozen dancing coven crones
weave and waddle widdershins
Beneath a moon as mottled
as a corpse’s ever-watchful eye
while ghosts galore in spectral gore
wail into a Samhain sky

P.S. — I altered the above poem after reading the comments below, so if some comments don’t make sense, now you know why.

– Steve

If Ann Coulter refers to Gov. Palin as “our beauteous Sarah …” one more time, I’m going to spew on the floor.

Oh, and all those who whine about the “rock star adoration” lavished on Sen. Barack Obama? Thanks to “our beauteous Sarah …” you’ve officially lost the moral high ground on that one …

– Steve

OK, I’m no fan of Sarah Palin’s politics on most issues, and I don’t think she’s shown herself to be a genius so far in this campaign. But she’s been the target of pretty unfair crap, and this might be the worst:

BOSTON (AP) — A women’s shelter on Wednesday cut headliner Sandra Bernhard from its annual benefit after she said Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin would be gang-raped if she ever visited New York.

Bernhard made the remarks last month during her one-woman show in Washington before Palin visited New York to campaign. Bernhard said Palin would be “gang-raped by my big black brothers” during a diatribe in which she also criticized Palin for opposing abortion rights.

This is just as dumb as any damned thing Ann Coulter has ever said. Jeez, gimme a break.

– Steve

I appreciate Gov. Sarah Palin doing a TV interview with Katie Couric. Now I know why the McCain campaign kept shielding her from reporters. Before, I just suspected. Now, I know.

Can anyone who watched Palin’s painful efforts to answer simple questions honestly say she’s ready to sit in the Oval Office? Anyone? Hello?

A vice president needs to be ready to be president right now, not sometime down the road. Seriously, even if you think Sen. John McCain walks on water … do you trust his choice of Palin as a running mate? And if he screws up something like choosing a vice president this badly, how can you trust him to pick Supreme Court justices, or federal judges, or Cabinet members, or … or … or … hell, decent silverware for the White House?

Before the choice of Palin, this race was interesting. Now it’s scary. The Wall Street problems just make it more scary. Prior to Palin, I decided to vote for Sen. Barack Obama because, while I think McCain a decent man and I thought him the best of the lot who ran through the Republican primaries, I just didn’t want him picking Supreme Court justices. I worried that he’d pick ultra-right wing judges who define our Constitutional separation of powers the way the Cheney/Bush administration defines it — by basically ignoring it. Even with that fear in mind, I thought we’d be better off as a nation under either McCain or Obama than we are under The Worst President Of My Adult Lifetime, Period.

Now, I am not so sure.

The choice of Palin was not a saavy gamble, a shoot-from-the-hip maverick move made by a man who looked this woman in the eyes and decided she can lead our country. It was an idiot move, made by a desperate man, selling out to the James Dobsons of the world in an effort to win votes from cultural conservatives who feared McCain wasn’t really one of them.

Don’t call him McSame anymore. He’s McWorse.

Obama/Biden ‘08.

– Steve