points up at What Burrell Said

From guess where? Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress

Carrying a majority of the popular vote, Obama did especially well among women and young voters, who polls showed were particularly sensitive to the current climate of everything being fucked. Another contributing factor to Obama's victory, political experts said, may have been the growing number of Americans who, faced with the complete collapse of their country, were at last able to abandon their preconceptions and cast their vote for a progressive African-American.

Citizens with eyes, ears, and the ability to wake up and realize what truly matters in the end are also believed to have played a crucial role in Tuesday's election.

I am really shocked that it is going to pass in California. I thought I lived in the liberalist, bluest of states! Sure, we all know Orange County wasn't going to go for it, but WTH happened to the rest of my damned state?

I was talking to an insider the other night, and he said the organized opposition to 8 really didn't get together until about a month ago. It was basically operating out of somebody's living room, until some rich supporters saw it was losing and turned it around. But it was too late. They hadn't anticipated the Mormon church pouring so much money into the Yes on 8 campaign, and that campaign was successful in spreading a lot of fear and distortion.

I suspect people were still basking in the afterglow of the State supreme court decision and were caught offguard.

So last night I was just exhausted, and went to bed before the mainstream media called it. This morning, as I stepped outside I wondered, would I be able to sense the change, the hope in the air? As I walked down my deserted block and turned onto Wilson Ave., I saw another person - a well-dressed young-ish white woman. We didn't say anything or make eye contact. Then I saw a fairly young, well-dressed black man walking towards us. He had a big grin on his face. He said "Hello" enthusiastically to us, and the woman and I said "Hello" back. Then he said, "Obama kicked ass!", to which the woman and I enthusiastically agreed. The man and woman engaged in an animated conversation, as I hurried on to get breakfast, a big grin on my face too....

Huffington post slideshow of reactions to the election from around the world.

The misconception that Domestic Partnerships provide the same rights as Marriage is a big problem all over the country.

Just as I think the pro-choice supporters should frame their arguement in terms of what a country will look like when every women who becomes pregnant is forced by law to carry a child to term, supporters of equal marriage rights need to show the gaps in Domestic Partnership law.

Tommy, that is great to read. I was all smiles this morning and a bit let down that no one on the street seemed to be envigorated like me. I was bouncy on the subway and wanted to give people hi-fives and say "We did It!", but everyone looked the same as every other day: tired, stonefaced, emotionless.

Andrew Sullivan said that African Americans in CA, as a group, voted overwhelmingly for Prop 8, the only group to do so. Occasionally he brings up homophobia in the Black community, which is basically religiously motivated.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, who is black:

Still on a gut, emotional level, this makes me sick. If someone wants to give me a reason why gay people shouldn't be able to marry that doesn't, at its root, boil down to "yuck," I guess I'd love to hear it. But really that isn't the point. I've always maintained that you don't have to like black people to do the right thing. Same thing here. I'm not very interested in folks's homophobia. I'm interested in why they think they should be in the business of dictating terms of love to two consenting adults. It's disgusting. And we need to let this shit go. There may be great, sound reasons beyond--the blacks are pathological!!--to explain this. But there are no great, sound reasons that excuse it. Cut this shit out. We know better. Even if other people didn't.

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I was bouncy on the subway and wanted to give people hi-fives and say "We did It!", but everyone looked the same as every other day: tired, stonefaced, emotionless.

I'd say maybe 1/4th of the people on my train looked more enthusiastic and happy than normal. I was tempted to try to start up an Obama cheer, to see how many responded....