Motley Moose – Archive

During the primaries, I was disappointed that Hillary did so poorly among African-Americans, but I understood the desire among African-Americans to see a member of their own community in the White House. African-Americans are basically invisible in the media and in politics. To finally have a public figure of this stature is an important achievement, not just for African-Americans, but the entire world.

The reaction in the African-America community has been a beautiful thing to witness. This picture of Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. while watching Senator Obama’s speech speaks a thousand words.

(Proudly cross-posted at C4O)

This week has been nothing short of amazing! Barack Obama will be our next President. More and better Democrats will be going to Congress. The electoral map has undergone a major blue shift.

So why has this whole experience been bittersweet at best for me? Well, all is not well in my own home state. So what can we celebrate and what must we fix? Let me share with you the story of this election from behind the scenes.

It’s time to rebuild our infrastructure, which will provide training in the trades for a new generation and bring the green revolution into the trades too.  

But, universal health care, preferably single payer, would do more to help businesses compete in the world market than any tax break some pug administration might have given them.

Why:

Missed work hours and reduced production because people go to work sick and then get sicker when they don’t have access to doctors and medicine.

Mobility, workers need the option of relocating where the new jobs are.

Businesses ability to forecast future expenses can then ‘set aside’ the growing cost of health care.  And it won’t grow as steeply once everyone is covered and there are checks on the medical ‘industry,’ so there won’t be the same opportunities to ‘make a killing’ on illness.

I’ve probably missed a lot of points too?

It’s emotionally healing for those who have health care to trust that everyone has it, it’s not a privilege, it’s a right.  

I am very please to see President-elect Obama choose Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff. Republicans are already squealing their fear and protestation, but this only solidifies my respect for President-e Obama. He needs a savvy, scrappy, bare knuckle kind off COS to play bad cop to President-e Obama’s good cop.

Rahm served under Clinton and has been an Advisor and now a Congressman for almost twenty years. I really am for bipartisanship, but the Reagan era is over. I want to see true cooperation for the benefit of the country and her citizens, not the corporations and the wealthy elite.

This choice gives me more assurance that President-e Obama understands the extreme nature of politics in Washington, DC. and that he is ready to stand toe to toe with the forces against him.

We’ve got a lot of work to do, Moosekateers!

My hope is to use this working thread for all of us to comment and get ideas for moving forward.  I have no answers or opinions, only questions and thoughts at this point.  Thanks to Louisprandtl for jump starting the conversation!

We’ve talked about the issues throughout this extremely long and emotionally and financially costly presidential election, but before permanent exhaustion sets in, let’s begin our progress through politics.

Blasky has a great thread going on promoting Gay Rights, so be sure to leave your thoughts there.

But what other issues are you keeping your eye on?  What are your predictions for the first 100 days of the Obama administration?

Hi folks,

This is not a statement diary.  I am not at this point claiming to have any bright ideas whatsoever, neither on the real roots of the problem or the shape any solutions might take.  Rather, I want to have some place to jot down some thoughts I have on the topic and gather other peoples’ thoughts as well.

The topic of discussion is:

“What are the components of the resistance to same-sex marriage in the United States?”

Only by getting deep into the soil of this issue do we stand a chance of understanding it and therefore killing it off entirely.  My concern is that the bulk of energy expended at addressing the issue will be based on indignation and emotion which – no matter how righteous – will be ineffective.  So, inasmuch as possible, I would like to engage with you all in an attempt to verbalize as many of the pieces and parts of the issue here, in as dispassionate a way as possible.

Let’s see if we can take this broken machine apart and start finding out how to fix it.

I thought I’d share a few of the pictures I took in Grant Park on Tuesday night. I didn’t have tickets to see the actual speech, and the photos are kind of embarrassingly poor but it was exciting nonetheless. The level of energy present was amazing. It was a fantastic celebration well worth attending, even if we were more than a block from the speech itself 🙁

Images below the jump.

And don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.

When I first saw this I said “I hate giving kudos to FOX” – but that isn’t true.  It’s nice to see that their folks have some common decency.

Ralph?  Don’t ever cross my path again.

So what are you doing tonight? Are you feeling post election blues? From the election results it is clear that more work needed to achieve Equality for All Americans….

A spontaneous celebration formed around the White House last night after the election was called for President Elect Obama. Fox had an interesting response to the event.

Celebrations like this occurred all over the country. Many of them simply happened without any planning.