WTF California?

Are you seriously kidding me?

California voters outlawed gay marriage yesterday, but approved a ballot measure giving egg-laying chickens more rights.

Are you seriously fucking kidding me? What the fuck is up with that state?

How the hell do you go into a voting booth and say "I think we need to be nicer to chickens and give them enough room to stand up, spread their wings and turn around, but screw those fags and dykes they don't deserve the chance to love someone and be happy."

Fucking morons.

You know, I've never in my life contributed to a political campaign (a little hangover from being a reporter, and I don't like any of them enough to give them my money), but this is a fight I'd donate a couple of bucks to.

Well, I do know one thing, I don't travel that much so saying I won't go to California isn't that big a deal. But I'm going to do my best in the future to avoid buying anything that comes from the state. Who's with me? Just thinking about it, there's a California-based company selling songs for a buck a shot. Wonder what Apple would do if it started losing huge sums of cash because people stopped buying songs from iTunes?

And damnit, I really wanted a new Mac. Sorry Steve, won't be buying anything from your company for a while.

Fuckers!

All Things are Possible

Is it me, or does it feel like a great weight has been lifted from our collective national shoulders?

I'm not talking about how President Bush will soon leave office. Rather, as a country, we overcome many of the barriers we the people put in our own way during the past half-century.

"Americans sent a message to the world," President-elect Barack Obama said late last night in Chicago's Grant Park. "We are and always will be the United States of America."

Obama was gracious in his compliments of John McCain, who I hope surprises us in the months ahead by working with his new president.

"We are better off for the service and sacrifice of this brave and selfless leader," Obama said of McCain. Can you imagine what they could do working together?

Now that we've elected a president who promises us change, we must now hold him and everyone else in our government accountable for that change. As Obama said, his victory Tuesday belongs to us.

"Our Union will be perfected," Obama promised. "America we have come so far, we have seen so much, but there's so much more we have to do."

Time to get to work.

Oh, any bets on what the new puppy's name will be?

Congratulations John McCain

It takes a strong, fine, honorable man to give the speech John McCain just gave conceding the election to Barack Obama. I think he summed it up well when he said, "Whatever our differences we are all Americans."

That is what this was all about.

He sounded a lot like the old John McCain in his concession. I think if he wasn't smeared in 2000, McCain might have made a good president, but that day passed.

He has served America his entire adult life, more than half a century, and deserves our respect. He will continue to have a voice in our government, so we haven't seen the last of the Maverick.

McCain closed with this statement to Obama, "I wish Godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and who will be my president."

Let us all wish that for our next president.

Memories of Elections Past

Today is my second national election in a row where I'll have nothing to do but watch the returns. Like an old, retired dog who sees everyone getting ready for the hunt, that's what today's like for me as a former reporter who only has voting to look forward to today.

Of course I spent a bunch of those elections in Texas where the results are about as preordained as those in the District, but it was exciting nonetheless.

Election Day is a day reporters look forward to in the same way my 4-year-old niece looks forward to Christmas and her birthday. Unlike Christmas though, we generally slept in on Election Day and headed into work around 2 p.m. so we'd be fresh when the tallies started rolling in after the polls closed. The time between coming in and the first returns was generally spent calling the candidates and making sure you had a good number for when you called them later on in the evening.

The losers' quotes were often the best, if they answered.

Your stories were already written, generally. This was done to get a jump on the game, but I'll never forget the time when the mayor's race in Vidor, Texas, (one of the towns I covered) ended up in a tie. Something like 437 votes for each guy. That wasn't nearly as weird as the fact that the town next to it, Pine Forest, also had a tied mayor's race (73 each or something like that).

Or something like that. It was late by the time we got the returns and time has fogged the memory.

Never let it be said small-town politics are boring. Those were the races we lived for: local and full of emotion.

There'll be a lot of emotion tonight, but on a much grander scale -- and a part of me wishes I could be part of the experience. For just one night, I could be back in that newsroom watching the clock tick down and then, as the polls closed, hit the phones and badger the county clerks until they gave me the numbers. Hammer the story out with my editor hovering over everyone's shoulders seemingly at once demanding more words.

Faster.

NOW!

Oh well, at least I'll get a good night's sleep tonight.

First Returns

For anyone interested but who didn't stay up to see the results, and I assume that's most of you, the tiny town of Dixville Notch, NH, voted at midnight. The first returns in the 2008 presidential election are as follows:

John McCain - 6

Barrack Obama - 15

By the by, this is the first time since Hubert Humphrey defeated Richard Nixon 8-4 in 1968 a Democrat has won in Dixville Notch.

Go Stillers!!

Turns out Michael Hayden, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is a homie and fellow Pittsburgh Steeler fan. (Or, as we say back home in the 'Burgh: "Stillers.")

Anyway, he did an interview with the Post, but here is one of the funnier parts. When talking about going to Pittsburgh for games:

"He won't reveal how many CIA security personnel accompany him to Heinz Field, where 'every seat is a good seat, unlike FedEx.' But he acknowledges Pittsburgh is a more popular trip for his personal detail than, say, Dubai.

'It seems as if they think Pittsburgh is a very threatening environment,' he said. 'Because it seems I have a larger footprint going to Steeler games than I do going to some hostile countries in the world.' "

Go Steelers! Beat them 'Skins!

The race to 270 begins...

After a long journey we’ve finally come to the penultimate day of the election. There’s nothing left for me to say that hasn’t been said by countless voices during the past two and a half years.

This election reminds me of Otto von Bismarck’s quote: “Laws are like sausage, it’s better not to see them being made.” The soon-to-be-completed campaign makes me think of sausage. Incredible sums of money have poured into the campaign grinder, nasty things have been said on both sides and yet, the end product will be a symbol we can hold up to the world’s huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

Come January 20, there’ll be a parade down Pennsylvania and Constitution avenues, a celebration led by the American military. But none of the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in those formations will have had anything more to do with the selection of our new president than you or I.

And to me that’s the greatest beauty of America.

What do I mean by that? We’ve had 43 presidents in the last 232 years, but our government hasn’t changed. Every four years since 1786 when our fledgling republic chose George Washington as its first president, we’ve selected a new leader and we’ve done it peacefully.

Name me another country that has, over more than two centuries, moved from one leader to the next every 5.3 years on average without a shot being fired? No matter what happens tomorrow, we can sleep safely Tuesday knowing we’ll wake up Wednesday with the same government we had the day before.

We’ll have a new leader of the executive branch, and several new members of Congress, but the same government. A government that could use a few tweaks here and there, but overall one I’d choose over any other.

And, finally, for those of you thinking this has been a nasty election, I direct you to the 1824 contest between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. Jackson won the popular vote and, unlike a certain candidate in 2000, he also won in the Electoral College. But, because there were four candidates, he didn’t have a majority.

So the vote went to the House where Henry Clay, who came in fourth place in the election, was the Speaker. The House voted for JQA on the first ballot… and Clay became Secretary of State.

Jackson was, history tells us, more than a little annoyed at the outcome. But don’t worry, he came back to easily beat JQA four years later.

Whoever wins tomorrow should remember what JQA’s dad told him after his defeat of Jackson. John Adams, our second president, said this to his son: No man who’d ever been president would ever congratulate another on winning the office.

Vote early. Vote often (kidding about the second part, I grew up in Chicago).