When Bush was inaugurated in 2000, the Onion headline was, "Bush: 'Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over'"

There was an extremely depressing website linked to a while back which took this article and added links to all the items in it which had come true. Practically everything but the photo caption was underlined blue.

That's not cautiously optimistic. That is extraordinarily optimistic.

I wrote that post poorly. I meant I was cautiously optimistic about Obama-Biden winning.

He may be smarter than Bush, but is apparently just as ignorant and even more stubborn and crazy. Plus in the event that he became President, odds are that he'd die or become unable to continue the Presidency and leave Palin in charge. Also Bush took a booming economy at peace and turned it into a depression and war. McCain would start with a depression and two wars. I worry about where downhill from there leads.

Yeah, true, but Bush has set an amazingly low bar.

I am cautious because a lot of key states are close. I figure McCain will get Missouri, North Carolina, and Virgina. Colorado and Nevada could easily go for McCain as well. If that is the case, then if Florida and Ohio go for McCain, he'll eek out a victory.

That's a lot of ifs, but I think it is plausible.

Just to clarify my earlier post about my dad: the thing that interested/amused me about it wasn't any assumptions about capital gains taxes one way or the other, just that he and all his financial advisers, fiscally conservative but otherwise mostly apolitical people, are all making plans predicated on an Obama win as a foregone conclusion.

At this point, I see Virginia as a more likely Obama state than either Ohio or Florida.

eta: [link]

Obama has this Ohioan's vote!

(This is the very first time I'm ever going to vote! I feel so cool!)

(This is the very first time I'm ever going to vote! I feel so cool!)

This right here? AMAZINGLY AWESOME. It's the best part.

Yeah, let's ignore all the elections I was old enough to vote in and didn't...

Yeah, let's ignore all the elections I was old enough to vote in and didn't...

Hells, no, I won't. And not in a personal or guilt-making or you-should-always-vote way, either. One of the things that's had me very (not cautiously) optimistic for some months now is the way the Obama campaign has really energized a lot of people who weren't coming out for whatever reason, and a lot of places that weren't getting the message that they even mattered to the process. New voter registrations have been massive, turnout is projected to be the highest in ages, and you're one piece of that. People who aren't voting (but are eligible) all have their reasons; a lot of those people have found reasons to vote this time around. AMAZINGLY AWESOME.

News from Georgia: More on an Obama surge: Black Georgians nearly match whites in new voter registration

Newly released figures from her office show that 406,379 new voters registered between Jan. 1 to Sept. 30. Four years ago, the number was 371,932.

Overall, that’s a 9 percent increase from ’04 to ’08 — hardly surprising in a presidential race with no incumbent. Barack Obama or no Barack Obama.

But this is far from the whole story. Those same numbers show that 164,859 of those new voters are African-American. And 176,570 of those new voters are white.

That’s a 27 percent increase in new voter registration for African-Americans over ’04, and a 13.7 percent decrease in new voter registration for whites over ’04.

This is significant given that, overall, blacks make up 29 percent of Georgia’s 5.5 million voters. And it fits with the fact that, in the first days of early voting in Georgia, African-Americans have cast nearly 40 percent of the ballots.