Nov
05
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ByEvidently Obama victory gives me a hangover. Â Either that or the beer and corn liquor does. Â I’m not sure which.
Hey, today we can celebrate an amazing day in American history, and an incredible day, too, for Buncombe County. Â We’ve got a Board of Commissioners that will take us in the right direction on land use planning, health care, energy, and the environment while building bridges over the old divides between City and County, between Old Guard and Progressives.
I could say a lot, but I’ll leave it for the comments. Â
Â
35 Comments
November 5th, 2008 at 9:57 am
71% turnout in Buncombe County. I don’t imagine we’ll ever see it again.
Big ups to the volunteers from the Obama campaign, Jones campaign, Buncombe Democratic Party, and others. The BCDP gets gold stars for printing out tens of thousands of those slate cards. All of those judges ought to give Kathy Sinclair a huge hug and a kiss. Carol Peterson and Bill Stanley were lucky enough to have Ds next to their names, and I hope they’ll do some soul-searching about how they’d like to conduct county business from here forward.
Shout out to Kay Hagan, who won me over with her terrific campaign. She absolutely crushed ol’ Liddy, and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.
The end of our long national neocon nightmare is almost here, just a few more days until the inaugural.
On another note – I think everyone who reads this blog ought to apply for the open seat on City Council. I’d love for them to have hundreds of applications from folks like us. Maybe creating a template for that process will be in order, Arratik?
More random thoughts coming soon. More coffee, more food.
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November 5th, 2008 at 9:59 am
WTG for Holly Jones. Any guesses how we’ll see fill her city council seat? How ’bout a little grassroots action for the esteemed Mr. Bothwell?
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November 5th, 2008 at 10:01 am
That was “who,” of course. Hangover does not mix well with not-yet-caffeinated typing.
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November 5th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Can somebody PLEASE tell me whether I did in fact go to sleep in a … mustard-yellow state and wake up in a blue state? Or did we revert back to red on the national map? I really need to know. My next post depends on it …
Anyway: Congratulations America, and congratulations N.C. for doing some pretty amazing things this time around.
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November 5th, 2008 at 10:20 am
I knew I was in trouble when I saw the wine bottles stacking up, the clock said 1am, and my cell phone was missing. Ouch, my head hurts, I can’t stop crying, and my voice sounds like I’ve been yelling. I’m sure I was, right?
Can you believe what we just did??? Okay, I’m going to start crying again. Yeah for a Blue NC.
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November 5th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Sadly we were not able to turn Transylvania County blue
maybe 2010?
and too all Obama heads: now the real work begins! How do we organize throughout the country to make the change happening that we voted for?
What a day to be an American! Thank you President Obama!
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November 5th, 2008 at 10:27 am
We’re grabbing gloves and firing up the F150 to gather campaign signs across the city/county. No rest for the weary.
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November 5th, 2008 at 10:54 am
CNN: “With winners yet to be called for 12 of the House’s 435 seats, Democrats were projected to win 251 seats, with Republicans having 172.
Heading into Election Day, the Democrats had a 235-199 majority. The Democrats’ apparent gains Tuesday come two years after they took control of the House — with a gain of 30 seats — after 12 years in the minority.”
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November 5th, 2008 at 11:07 am
From Atrios:
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November 5th, 2008 at 11:15 am
I was actually more excited to see Liddy go down in flames. I really didn’t care much about that race until Liddy’s nasty ads began running. She really blew that one!!!
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November 5th, 2008 at 11:27 am
I have to give it to Gantt. I did not think he would be able to pull out a win.
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November 5th, 2008 at 11:53 am
BTW in case you are wondering why I call her Liddy – she always looks and talks like she is stoned. She got off her campaign bus the other day and her hair was sticking straight up – it looked like she had smoked a fatty and crashed and forgot to comb her hair when she woke up.
a lid, a baggie, an ounce
The term ‘lid’ of marijuana goes back to the 60′s. Back then you could buy a ‘lid’ or a ‘can’ of pot. The can was aproximatley 1 oz, the lid was1/8 oz. The term came from the practice of breaking up a brick (a kilo or later a key) of tightly packed marjijuana and storing and selling it in Price Albert tobacco cans. A can held aproximatley one ounce. the lid would hold aproximatley1/8 oz. No one weighed it really, it was all done by eye. By the time I was in high school in the early 70′s the term can had gone away and the term lid referred to an ounce. The term nickel or dime bag was still used in the 70s too. But by that time the amount of pot in the nickel ($5) or dime ($10) would vary – though the price was still $5 or $10. But if you bought a ‘baggie’, it would contain an ounce and the price would vary. In the 60′s a bag was a bag was a can was an ounce and the price for the ounce was 5 or 10 depending on quality. I don’t know if there were 7 dollar bags or 8 dollar bags. Yeah so o buy some okay.
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November 5th, 2008 at 11:55 am
I get no points for this, having never mentioned it to anyone, but all along I had a crazy feeling that Bill Stanley was going to get re-elected. I’m going to look forward to getting the turnout stats to see if he owes it to the same folks that Holly and David do.
Probably so, because according to the BOE, 62% of ballots cast were straight-ticket Democratic. That is proof of the the slate cards’ effectiveness. It isn’t just the information, it’s having friendly, sane people meet you outside your polling place and suggest that you think about voting for every Democrat running.
And then it’s sitting down in front of the optical-scan sheet and having to decide whether or not to pick and choose and fill in all those bubbles or just throw in the towel and vote straight ticket. I talked to a couple of people who had been planning not to vote for Bill Stanley who changed their mind because it meant they’d have to mark their votes for all the other Democrats. Making that extra effort not to vote for someone just seemed needlessly vindictive.
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November 5th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
so, who’s running for city council in ’09?
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November 5th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Thanks for the history lesson there,
Chonggreenasheville!Rate this comment:
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November 5th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Color me vindictive then. I voted straight Democratic except for Stanley (it took some serious nose holding, difficult to do when you need one hand on the pin and the other to keep the ballot from sliding, but I did vote for Carol Peterson). I just couldn’t vote for him even with my nose being firmly clamped. Writer’s cramp be damned!
But your point is well taken. I know three people who intended to do what, but when they were in that booth it seemed a little too much trouble to make that extra effort to not vote for him.
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November 5th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
A question for those of you into the history of Pres. electtion results….
What one state gave its electoral votes to –
Dukakis in 88
Clinton in 92
Clinton in 96
GW Bush in 00
GW Bush in 04
and
McCain in 08
any takers?
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November 5th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
I’ll guess Arizona.
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November 5th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
North Carolina is still counting provisional ballots. Obama’s advantage is about 12,000 votes out of 4 million. Over the past hour, they have added almost 20,000 votes to the total, evenly split between O & M. Obama’s edge has gone up slightly. How likely is it that McCain can pull it out? Not very.
I’m still bugged that NC contracts with a Republican-leaning company in Florida to post the election returns. Not sure how high up in the tabulation process they are involved, but still…
Anybody know anything about Clarity Elections?
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November 5th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
I’m just giddy over Liddy! I figured unless the GOP had some very big bag of dirty tricks to pull out that Obama would win. But I thought the Hagan/Dole race would be much more like the Franken race. Looks like Liddy shot herself in the foot!
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November 5th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Oh dear God no:
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/washington-whispers/2008/11/4/obama-eyes-rahm-emanuel-john-kerry-for-cabinet-positions.html?s_cid=rss:washington-whispers:obama-eyes-rahm-emanuel-john-kerry-for-cabinet-positions
Do any of the regulars here think Kerry would be a good Sec of State? Good Christ almighty.
I’m not terribly pleased about Emanuel either, but I’m more “meh” than anything.
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November 5th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Hi kids! Congratulations to America and thanks to all of you who volunteered and all of you that even wrote about the race right here. Don’t ever let anyone discount your involvement in the process even if you are simply a a processor of ideas on this blog or others.
Listened to Terry Gross interviewing Bill Moyers on the road this afternoon. Brilliant.
As of this post, 3:53, NC is still undecided with Barack leading by about a hundred thousand votes. I predict we get NC but lose Illinois.
It will be interesting to watch the far right slime try to get their shit together. They are freaking. Rush sounded so drugged today it was silly.
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November 5th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Who would be a better choice for Sec’y of State? And who gives a damn who Obama’s chief of staff is?
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November 5th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
edit, sorry
I didn’t mean to call the far right slime, though many might wonder why not. I just left out the word machine after slime and then changed the ending or something. Just didn’t want you to think I was calling people slime. They may be slimy but they’re not actually slime.
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November 5th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
The thought of Kerry in any cabinet position has the same physical effect on me as eating three whole heads of broccoli and a couple of whole jalapeno peppers, washed down with a bottle of milk of magnesia and followed by a red-hot poker shoved up my ass.
Rahm Emmanuel as Chief of Staff? Sure, he may be good at pushing through tough legislation and everything, but judging from his past performance he may be a little too willing to pull to the center or even cowtow to Republicans even when it’s not necessary. He may be a better choice to replace Obama in the Senate, especially without the filibuster-proof majority that the Dems were pushing for.
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November 5th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Bill Richardson comes to mind…
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November 5th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
+1 on Richardson (and Arratik’s reaction towards Kerry. It’s like you read my mind).
I’m not a big fan of most of the the democratic Congressional leadership, to tell you the truth, but Kerry is not the guy I want out there representing America. He’s a milquetoast.
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November 5th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Bill Richards for SoS
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November 5th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
late night
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November 5th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
West Virginia.
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November 5th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Headline at the Onion: “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job”
http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/black_man_given_nations
“It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can’t catch a break.”
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November 5th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Just a note on straight-ticket voting: going back to the BOE website, I see that I was wrong in claiming that 62% of ballots cast were straight-ticket Democratic. 64% of straight-ticket choices were Democratic, which makes it a little under a third of all ballots cast.
And about 1% of straight-ticket choices were Libertarian. Kudos to them for fielding candidates for more offices than just President and Governor. Judging by the state BOE website, it looks like Munger received enough votes to qualify the Libertarians as a party without having to go through the petition process again.
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November 6th, 2008 at 5:41 am
Good finally meeting you in person, Doug.
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November 6th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
RHS is correct.
It looks like West Virginia used to be one of the more liberal states, at least when it came to voting for President. WV went for Dukakis. Only ten states went for Dukakis.
WV went for Clinton, twice.
WV went for Dubya, twice.
This week, WV went for McCain.
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November 6th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Michael,
Gosh, it’s good to hear someone say that. Pleasure meeting you, too.
But that reminds me. On Monday you said this:
You’ve been about as gracious in defeat as anyone could be, so please understand I’m just curious. So what did you mean by “systemic anomaly”?
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