I haven’t cried on an election night since 1992. But I’m crying now. Just like my fellow former resident of Hyde Park/Kenwood, Jesse Jackson.

Election Night 1992 was the end of a twelve-year nightmare. Election Night 2008 ended eight years of unimaginable hell. It began that nightmarish day in December 2000 when the Supreme Court caused me to lose my respect for every single legal institution in the United States. Since then, it’s been suffering. Constant, utter suffering.

I still stand by what I said in 2001: there would have been no September 11th had Nobel Peace Prize Winner Al Gore been elected as he should have been. Most of the decade, our brave men and women in the military have been involved in two wars that should never have happened. Thousands of our people killed, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis dead, JJ Botter with a couple of Purple Hearts… I felt a lot of guilt for helping send guys down to Gulf War: The Prequel. If I’d still been in (and I would have; I would have only reached my Twenty earlier this year), a noose might have been an option. Then came the skyrocketing gas prices; I remember almost vomiting seeing the first three-buck-a-gallon gas back in Kansas (well, first time in the US, anyway; I certainly saw it in Europe). Then Katrina and the unimaginable, deadly screw-ups that accompanied it; it shocks me, absolutely shocks me, that Lousyana went for McCain. Then Wall Street going tits-up. Every time you reach the bottom of the barrel, there’s a new bottom to be found.

And I told you that this would happen. I told you back in 2000. I reiterated it in 2004. You didn’t listen. You are a bunch of morons.

But now it’s over.

It really ended at 8:36PM Central Standard Time. That was the minute that CNN called one of my former states of residence, Ohio, for Obama. People bitch and moan about the Kennedys and their power in Brady Fellation Land, not to mention about my home in re the Daleys. Why doesn’t anyone complain about the Tafts in Ohio? Even though Ohio elected Republican presidents before the Tafts came around, the power of that family coalesced the GOP there and has lasted for a century, ever since the Tafts gave us the fattest president in US history on Election Night exactly one hundred years ago. Four generations of stranglehold for the Republicans, culminating in Kenneth Vote-Fraud’s screwing of John Kerry four years ago. And now it’s broken. God bless you, Cuyahoga County. God bless you, Tuscawaras County. When I lived near there eight years ago, I’d never have imagined that you hicks would have ever gone Demo. God bless you, C-Bus, the home of the best Anon chalkers in the business. You did it.

Same with you, Virgins. Without you, Obama couldn’t have claimed at 10:00PM Real American Time when CaliNeptune closed their polls. The last time you voted for a Demo, I was still four weeks from being born. Now, if those idiots in Indiana can follow suit, maybe I can go there Sunday to buy cigarettes with a clear conscience. But I’ll probably submit this before those results come in.

You want a quick translation of McCain’s concession speech? “Blame the n*ggers. It’s their fault.” Blame the spics too. They went 2-1 for Obama, you know. And there are a lot of them here now who are, somehow, eligible to vote. And did you catch Tina Fey’s body language on that stage? Oh, did she not want to be there. She’s going to get her ass back to Juneau tout suite and try to fight the ethics charges that she’ll face until her time to face the voters. Buh-bye, honey. For now, that is.

I went to the polls around 10:30AM. There were about twenty booths made available. Nineteen were filled after I got my ballot. A few minutes later, my vote for Obama was registered. In fact, the parking lot at the church/polling place was so crowded that it took me longer to get inside the polling area than it did for me to vote. I definitely felt better than I did during the last election. Four years ago, I was in Kansas. Voting for Kerry and for the Senate candidate was definitely equivalent to micturition in that backwater. Dubbaya and Brown-Nose were going to take those races no matter what I did short of assassination, and maybe not even then. But this time? You know, twelve years ago, if I was living in the middle of DuPage County like I am now, it would have been another trip to the toidy to whip it out and let loose. Not now. Twelve years ago, it would have been a sea of fat white old faces in that polling area who would rather have had genital piercings than voted for a Democrat. Today, I actually represented the median age of the group inside. Young professionals, mothers and fathers bringing in their children, faces that ran the Pantone Chart all the way from Ivory to Chocolate with no break in between. The demographics are changing. No longer are the Chicago suburbs lily-white conservatives. That diversity makes me more comfortable living here.

This was reflected in one of the few competitive races on the ballot here, US House of Representatives Illinois 13th District (it was quite saddening to see all of those unopposed Republican criminals on my ballot, let me tell you). Judy Biggert, the incumbent, is highly-respected, even by me. She’s a moderate Republican, definitely old-school. No religious pandering from her, just a solid pragmatic conservativism. She’s still a reasonable reflection of the population of her district. She was opposed by a gentleman named Scott Harper, a local product with an MBA from The University Of Chicago, so obviously he had my vote regardless of party affiliation. And, as I’m writing this, it’s a close race, within a couple percentage points. Normally, Biggert would have taken it without breaking a sweat. In fact, Harper would have probably won without those yahoos in Will County. We simply can’t wait until the 2010 census to incorporate Joliet into the Chicago area. It must be done now to turn them into proper Democrats.

And things must be done to the Red States to turn them into proper Democrats. The Oklahomos, for instance. They re-elected that repulsive little troll James Inhofe, who needs to be castrated like a steer, then chained up at the Habana Inn in Oklahoma City and gang-sodomized by truckers. You all know my plan for Kansas. And as for Nebraska…oh, I don’t know. Remember, their new senator Mike Johanns used to be my boss when he was Secretary of Agriculture. I lived in Lincoln when he was governor, and found out that he had a pretty wicked sense of humor. Republican, yes, but possibly worthy of survival in the New World Order, if only as court jester.

And there will be changes. It’s not only Democrats taking over. It’s Chicago Democrats. We don’t tolerate Republicans in our territory. And on January 20th, that territory will be the United States of America. Regrettably, we cannot take over as much as we need to. We couldn’t make the nut on the filibuster-proof Senate, although it looks pretty good right for Al Franken as I write this. If Ann Coulter’s head explodes from that little fact, I want it on YouTube now. It’s going to be a fun four years, watching Fat-Ass Limbaugh and his persuasion flailing impotently, raging against the dying of their night. I want them impotently flailing against the universal health care that will definitely be passed this time around. I want the New Deal-style programs that will be necessary to lift this country out of the recession. I want the Joe The Plumbers taxed to pay for these programs. I want more government regulation of everything, because, hey, I’m a trained government regulator. Socialism? No problem by me. My Marxism does tend toward Groucho, but I can see the benefits. And you’ll get to see them to, shoved in your faces if necessary. Rod the Mod can start the process in Illinois by appointing Rahm Emanuel to Obama’s seat. Oh, do the Republicans hate his guts big-time.

Excuse me while I continue crying while giggling intensely. I just can’t help it.

Okay, now that the partisanship is over, I know you want to know. How do some of the national figures of la belle femme persuasion rate on the Hot For Teacher Scale? For those of you who are new, the Hot For Teacher Scale came about when I was resident in Kansas and saw the true MILF potential of Governor Kathleen Sebelius. She is still the gold standard, rating a 100. How do others rank?

Senator-Elect Jeanne Shaheen: 70
Senator-Elect Kay Hagan: 87
Former Senator Elizabeth Dole: Used to be a 90, now firmly in GMILF territory
Mary Landrieu: 90, going up to 95 during Mardi Gras after the third drink
Hitlary: Dropped from a 60 to a 45 in the midst of this campaign. But Chelsea has really blossomed into a semi-hottie.
Michelle Obama: Not my type, but objectively, let’s face it, high 70s.
House Speaker For Life Nancy Pelosi: 25. She’s a battle-ax, but I’m glad she’s on my side. I think she’ll actually go for my program of denuding Kansas of all life and using it as a concentration camp for registered Republicans.
My Representative Judy Biggert: A very strong 60
The Udall cousins…they’re male? Really?
Sarah Palin: Not with five condoms, seven proxies, and MOPP 4

Just a few other observations:

Hope that you enjoyed seeing a lot of Grant Park. It’s really beautiful, isn’t it? The weather’s been wonderful here the last week. It’s a very warm night for November (around sixty degrees). I hope, I hope, I hope, that members of the International Olympic Committee were watching. This is how truly lovely my city is, and if they recognize that, then we’ll be hosting the 2016 Olympics. And, no, you can’t stay at my place.

Bochephus should never, ever do an acoustic version of “Born To Boogie”. That song deserves as much electric power as possible behind it. Especially when the other side has all the great beats.

Does Bryan Singer, an out-and-proud gay man, know exactly what Tom Cruise’s cult says about gays? If he had known, he’d never have been involved in Valkyrie. And if you don’t know, Google the phrase “eliminate, quietly and without sorrow”. Of course, knowing some of you, you’ll probably be more attracted to Scientology due to that. Ungrateful bastards. Don’t you know that I’m attending these protests for you? And it’s expected to rain on Saturday here in Chicago. Great. We got saturated during the September protests.

Another ad observation: DividedWeFail.org actually strikes a chord with me. Nine years ago, I was forced to declare bankruptcy because of medical bills after my HMO coverage decided that the three surgeries I had weren’t really necessary. Yeah, right. If I hadn’t had them, someone would have had to pay for in-patient addiction treatment in re Vicodin and Hillbilly Heroin for me. So, support these guys. Besides, I’m less than a dozen years away from AARP myself.

And now, let the 2012 campaign begin. We’ve already seen the preliminaries. Sarah Palin has already positioned herself as Mike Huckabee 1.5. Hopefully, Joe Biden will die within the next four years so someone real can become Veep, or at least send him back to the Senate (he won re-election to his seat). Me, for instance. I’m four years younger than Obama, have a lot of charisma…okay, I’ll accept Governor Hot For Teacher, like I told Obama to do a few months ago. But the campaign never ends. There are evil Republicans in the House and Senate already preparing their mudslinging for 2010. My lord and master Hunter Thompson once said that politics is better than sex. It may or may not be better, but it sure lasts longer.

To prove my point, remember how they were saying 100 million people would watch the debate last week? Only 50 million tuned in. What about the rest of America? Too busy watching UFC?

.:: Dustinland 09.29.08 ::.

I’m not saying ALL of the people who aren’t voting for Obama are racist.

I’m just saying a lot of them are.

You know it and I know it. We all talk about it in the real world, even if nobody talks about it on TV. No matter how much is at stake, no matter what the issues are, many people made up their minds as soon as they saw a black person running for president. Some people will admit it, but most won’t. And those are the people you see on TV, the people who hate Obama, but can’t really say why. You can feel that hatred bubbling to the surface. Look around online on conservative sites like Freerepublic.com and you barely have to read between the lines. After Obama spoke at the DNC, there were plenty of quotes like: “He is an angry black man.” Not just “an angry man.” An “angry BLACK man.” And we all know what that’s really code for.

So here’s the question: How much of a role will racism play in the election? There’s really no way we’ll ever know for sure. Let’s just hope it’s less than some of us fear.

.:: Dustinland 09.08.08 ::.

No, not this column, no matter how much some of you want that. I give up trying to write about the 2008 election.

The reason I didn’t crank out something last week was due to intense stomach pains. They started on Saturday morning the moment I saw the words “Joe Biden”. It’s been over a week, and I’m still shaking my head. Is Obama serious? Joe Biden? The guy who totally flushed his presidential-run momentum down the toilet by plagiarizing a speech from, of all people, Neil Kinnock? Is this how Obama reacted to the criticism about experience, bringing Joe Biden on to the ticket? Now, Hitlary’s statement about who you want answering the phone at three in the morning at the White House has moved into stark clarity. This was a move made from pure panic, nothing more. It silenced one area of criticism, and opened up about a dozen more. Karl Rove calling him a “big blowhard doofus” puts me in a bind: I now actually have to agree with something Rove said.

I didn’t watch one moment of the DNC. I couldn’t, not after that. Honestly, if I want to see my guys continually shoot themselves in the foot through bad decisions, inability to admit mistakes, and outright mule-headedness, I’ll watch a Bears game.

My candidate, as I said many times on this site, was Hitlary, purely from practical considerations. I know Obama. I knew how much of his idealism would be ditched in the name of pragmatism and party unity. When JJ was going rhapsodic about Obama, I told him that I’ve seen this before. 1972. George McGovern got into the same position that Obama was in by playing to the idealistic primary voters in the Democratic Party, then once he got the nomination, realized that he had to make compromises to appeal to the Powers That Be in the party, both to reestablish a modicum of peace in the party and to try to remove the perceived stigma of being a hard leftist. His veep choice was part of that. Unfortunately, McGoo chose Tom Eagleton, who’d hidden his alcoholism and ECT experiences from the press, and not very well. We all know what happened when that got revealed. That won’t happen to Obama, because Biden already has his stupidity on public record.

So, was there an opening? Could I reach into the darkest recesses of an already-dark soul and consider voting for McCain? I have said before that the only way I could consider voting for a Republican was if the Republican in question was McCain. And I have to admit, a spark flared when I saw the words “McCain chooses Palin”. It then vanished a fraction of a second later when I realized that Michael Palin wasn’t eligible to hold that office. But in an election like this, the only way anything would make any sort of sense would be to place it in a context in which an ex-Python would flourish: the absurd.

Well, if Biden was a sick joke, Palin is Dead Baby Comedy, which is ironic considering her stand on abortion. If McCain wanted to pick a woman in order to attract Hitlary voters, he sure as hell didn’t pick the right one. You see, John, there are these things called “issues”. Hitlary voters didn’t vote for her because she has a vagina. There’s the fact that Hitlary has a well-documented stand on social issues that appeal to these voters, and an equally-well-documented trail of leadership, both in the Senate and in the White House (we all know who was running the country between 1993 and 2001). Sarah Palin’s stand on social issues…well, let’s just say it doesn’t appeal to the average Hitlary voter, of which I am one, despite the lack of vagina. As for leadership, the first-term governor of a minor state does not make a case for that. A first-term senator from a major state has more leadership experience, right?

Appeal to youth? Two things, really: first of all, McCain’s medical history makes it abundantly clear that he’s got about a 20% chance of surviving his first term. Yes, his veep is youthful. But does anyone, including hard-core GOPers, see her as president? She’s as lightweight as British toilet paper. James Carville didn’t even have to try when he ripped her to shreds on Larry King. It’s still nice of him to do it (any appearance of Carville is welcome), but it’s definitely a case of getting rid of your termite problem by burning down the house.

It’s not the female thing, at least with me. As much as I loathe Thatcher, she had four years of experience as leader of the opposition before becoming PM. Ditto with Merkel, who’s proving to be more centrist than I thought she’d be; intelligent pragmatism would be lost on someone like Palin. Benazir Bhutto and Indira Gandhi were capable dynasts in a part of the world that still takes that principle seriously. Ellen Johnson-Shirleaf is an experienced technocrat who’s a bit over her head trying to restore peace and something resembling prosperity to a country that’s so war-ravaged that it’s almost impossible to fix, but she has a moral gravitas and sense of mission. What does Sarah Palin stand for, other than the discredited policies of the Right? This stuff has to be considered given McCain’s health. There’s a far, far greater chance that she’s going to land up in the big chair than Biden. And it scares me.

Of course, I am getting some serious enjoyment over the fact that her seventeen-year-old unmarried daughter is about to make her a rather young grandma. The evangelicals are spazzing around like a kid with ADHD, and that’s always amusing to watch. Some of them are going to vote Obama now that their social values have been oh, so blighted. Some of them are turning total hypocrite, pulling a Chris Crocker and screaming “LEAVE SARAH ALONE!”, not willing to face reality and realize that birth control and/or abortion could have taken care of this issue before it became one. And the rest of them are ticked off because when this happens in their family, it’s usually a relative doing the impregnating and therefore it’s nobody else’s business.

GOP insiders are pissed about this. They’ve just had one of their old reliable fangs removed. You’re not going to get any more hypothetical questions about abortion and birth control during this campaign, not after this. The fang was almost out after that moron Rick Warren got finessed by Obama in regard to when life begins; now the dentition is complete. The GOP can’t do a repeat of 2004 and swing the election on social conservativism.

This puts an interesting question on the table: McCain said he knew about the pregnancy before selecting Palin. Could this have been a positive factor in that choice? Is McCain using this situation to de-ball the Religious Reich once and for all? He’s had a mad-on for them since 2000, when Dubbaya and Rove used them to destroy McCain in South Carolina. I’ve always believed that McCain had a well-hidden fragment of Nixon in him, and now it’s coming out. This could be the only interesting thing about the next two months: how far will McCain go?

But it isn’t interesting enough for me to keep writing about it. The 2008 campaign has turned into a sick joke, and I can’t laugh about it anymore. Nor can I entertain. My idol Hunter Thompson faced the same dilemma in 1976. He was able to use the rage of 1968 and the apocalyptic portents of 1972 to his advantage, but 1976 gave him nothing to work with, especially after he fell in love with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jimmy Carter (I love saying that to piss people off). The sense of mission I had in 2000 and the need for justice of 2004 aren’t there this time for me. The events of the last week and a half have turned the next two months from mere ennui into a death march. US Politics has turned into something that Feydeau would consider too absurd to use.

I’m going to walk into the booth on November 4th and vote for Obama. But I’m going to walk out of there with the same feeling I had in 1984 voting for Mondale and 1988 voting for Dukakis. I never wanted to feel that way again in my life.

The 44-year old governor of the 49th state, Palin is relatively unknown, but being painted as a very traditionally-conservative VP choice, with a McCain-esque maverick bent, and was apparently called Sarah Barracuda when she led her Wasilla high school basketball team to a championship.

So it’s set: Joe-Bama vs. … Jon-Rah (pronounced genre)? Looks liks business is about to pick up.

Joe Biden, the Democratic Senator from Delaware, will be campaigning side-by-side with Obama leading into the November 4 election.

Next up: this week’s Democratic National Convention in Denver, CO.

From JibJab, the folks behind 2004′s awesome “This Land” political satire video, comes a customizable e-card – “Time For Some Campaignin’” – which I’ve already forwarded around to everyone I know:

Oh, and here’s a trailer for the unrelated but very promising, upcoming battle between Obama Girl and McCain Girl:

Have a good weekend!

Obama: Barack Obama understands that abortion is a divisive issue, and respects those who disagree with him. However, he has been a consistent champion of reproductive choice and will make preserving women’s rights under Roe v. Wade a priority as President. He opposes any constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision in that case.

McCain believes that Roe vs. Wade was incorrectly decided. I agree with him on that. Individual states should have the right to decide their own course in regards to abortion. It is not mentioned in the Constitution and, therefore, should fall to the Tenth Amendment and be decided by state.

That said, the idea of “amending the constitution” to protect the unborn is one of the more retarded things I’ve ever heard. And, frankly, no… the government should have no say in what is, at the end of the day, a personal and moral decision that’s none of their business. I don’t like abortion. I think it’s tremendously sad. I also think it’s tremendously personal and shouldn’t be legislated by people so far out of touch with reality that they do things like rename French fries into Freedom fries.

But yes, it’s an excellent idea to force people to have unwanted children. It really helps to end the cycle of poverty. At some point, it would be nice if Republicans would pull their head out of the sand in this issue. The idea of teaching abstinence in school is great. On the other hand, it’s pretty much putting your hands over your ears and yelling “NOTHING’S WRONG NOTHING’S WRONG NOTHING’S WRONG”.

That said, I can’t agree with McCain on this because he wants Roe vs. Wade overturned as a path to ending abortions nationwide. This is stupid and will never happen. It’s also one of the more brilliant “single-issue voters” things they have at their disposal. Next up: the other one.

Point: Obama (1-0, Barack)