Post Election Erata....blah, blah, blah

Down in the mouth and not half right
but I can feel the changes comin on
bloom like flowers in bluest night
bloom like the sunlight in my song*


Sooooo... I started writing a little on election night and other then responding to some Facebook posts... I didn’t have anything I thought was meaningful to say. I mean everyone said everything and in a 24 hour news cycle they said it about180,000 times already. So I waited... I watched.... I listened. I learned nothing.
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Lutheran kids are by a large part angry and somewhat hate filled about the election. That propbably is not fair, I am sure it is just a vocal minority to full of hate but wow. What have these kids got to be so angry about? And why hate Obama? Do their parents hate him that bad? Even if they do shouldn’t the kids be rebelling against that? And what does it say about how we are raising them up as Christians that they have so much angry bile that they are willing to lay out on the web for everyone to see.
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Mc Cain’s speech was an excellent piece of work. Grace filled. Generous. Funny and serious. It was everything that made me and a lot of other Americans like and admire him for years. It is too bad that such a quality person had to lose. I was worried that they would allow Sarah Palin to break tradition and give her own concession speech. I would not have cared for that.
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The post election attacks on Palin are embarrassing and unforgivable. And not on her part. I do not think she was ready to be VP much less President but there is no reason to think that she is not spenty intelligent. I have no idea what the agenda is of the poeple who are stabbing at her anonymously but they should be outed, fired and banned from election politics. really unforgivable.
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all of the words you can't say right
burn my ass with anger to no end
I love my country so much man
like an exasperating friend *


I do not know what Obama is going to do or what he realistically can get done. Picking Rahm Emmanuel is not exactly a reaching acroiss the aisles type move. He sounds like a meticulous, dangerous guy but perhaps he is the guy who can get a job done. We are counting on Obama to surround himself with quality people. Lets hope he is one and that he turns out to be the first of many. I put a number of things on Facebook as a dream for this administration:
I have a dream that Obama gets elected and immediately does the following:
1. Offers Secretary of Defense job to John Mc Cain
2. Makes Petraus head of joint Chiefs of Staff
3. Offers Secretary of Treasury or Fed job to Warren Buffet and urges him to take it as a matter of public service.
4. Announces Hillary will fill next Supreme Court opening.
5. Shuts down our stock market for a week to retool the rules regarding program trading, hedge funds and over night trading and perhaps selling “futures” of things that are not actual commodities.
6. Consider closing the banks for a brief period to review them and open them again so that people have confidence in them.
7. Set aside 700 billion plan and start over. Do not allow the banks to have any money for mergers unless they are mergers directed by the FDIC. Use the money in a way that actually gets banks to lend.
8. Give the first great speech of this Millenium. remind the country that we are the greatest country in the world but help the country to redefine that greatness.
9. Ask Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reed to step down from their leadership positions in order to elect new leadership for our new challenges.
That is a lot.

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I liked Obama’s speech but it was not transcendant. perhaps it did not mean to be. I was moved and not put off by Jesse Jackson’s tears.

yeah, i believe the war is wrong
don't believe that nations can be steered
lead the world by smarts and compassion
by example, not coercion, force and fear*

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How great is it that Proposition 1 to provide mental health services to youth passed? A tax increase in a time of tremendous economic upset. That is a nice sign about people in St. Louis County and I did not expect it at all.

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So.... where was i when Barack Obama made history? I was in my shower I believe when they called the elction for him. Granted it was a foregone conclusion before then. We sat at home all night and watched returns come in. I was looking for Indiana, Ohio or Florida to tip for Obama and that would seel it. the fact that they called Pennsylvania so quickly was a sign and the close races in Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana and Missouri which all were supposed to be Red states also boded well. When they called Florida and ohio it was over. The west coast was just gravy.
Looking at the map was a little depressing. It looked almost like a civil war map. Creepy.

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There is of course the inevitable talk of a new alignment of politics in our country and it just seems so absurd to me. Obama won for among other reasons that the republicans have had the White House for the last eight years. He also was a tremendous campaigner, an unbelievable speaker and someone who catalyzed something in the American populace. The idea that in four years or eight years that this Democratic mandate will continue is delusional. This was a case of people being sick of the administration and having a bright young star to chose to put their hopes in. This honeymoon will likely be over even faster then prior ones, especially if the Democrats in the House have their own agenda.

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One of the problems with the expectations and hopes people have for Obama is the obvious thing that he cannot change anything. Only we can change things by changing what we do every day. We do not want to change. We do not want to conserve. We do not want to pay more taxes. We want to elect someone to do all the hard things for us but this is America. It comes down to us. That is really annoying.

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In any case... this is still the greatest country in the world to live and we are all blest. Pray for our leaders. They are going to need it.

*Lyrics of "Move On" by Mike Doughty