Friday, January 04, 2008

Barack Obama wins Iowa Caucus (a republican wins too)




Final Results (according to The Cedar Rapids Gazette Jan. 04, 2008):

Democrats
Barack Obama = 37.6%
John Edwards = 29.8%
Hillary Clinton = 29.5%


Republicans
Mike Huckabee = 34%
Mitt Romney = 25%
Fred Thompson = 13%
(John McCain) = 15% -- I'm hearing from other sources that McCain got 15% which would actually put him in 3rd above Thompson.


Here is Obama's victory speech from last night.

A Song for the Iowa Caucuses

The doors will be opening at 6.30 pm for Caucus goers around the state of Iowa to make their choice as first in the nation of whittling down the field. That is roughly 1 and 1/2 hours away as I write this. I have spoken with people back home most of whom plan on caucusing this evening. I apparently have piles of DVDs and pamphlets from John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama sitting at my parents house. I have been inundated with emails from Edwards, Clinton, Obama, Joe Biden and Bill Richardson. I got a Christmas card from Edwards and a birthday message from Clinton...and I'm not even in Iowa anymore! (In the interest of full disclosure, I am still registered there, but as an absentee voter.)

This song is called "Get Outta Our Town" and it was written by Jason Walsmith from The Nadas and Kyle Munson, a writer with The Des Moines Register. As far as I can figure it was meant to be tongue and cheek, sort of a joke, if you will. If you follow the link to the actual YouTube page, you'll find that the comment writers don't seem to get the joke.

Enjoy

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

What the Rest of the World is Laughing At Right Now ***SPOILER ALERT...it happens to be us***

It turns out G.W. is a man of the people after all.

This video was brought to my attention about a month or so ago, but I never got around to watching it. Within the last week I haven't been able to avoid it. The people that showed it to me were Spanish. Initially they were laughing, but by the end everyone one of them was staring at me. One finally asked, "Es una broma? No es serio, no es posible." .

Initially when I watched it, I laughed too. "He doesn't know where the Berlin Wall is, ha ha ha" "She doesn't think a triangle has any sides, ha ha ha." “He thinks Yugoslavia starts with a U, ha ha ha.”
It's what comes towards the end when I stopped laughing and started ducking my head in shame. The moment when the newscaster swings through Texas and asks people ridiculously irrelevant questions about fictitious scenarios, to which they all agree that if the President is behind it, then so are they. The agony increases as one man while looking at a map of the world incorrectly marks Australia as North Korea, while strategically plotting the next country to invade, and then marvels at how much bigger it is than South Korea (Tasmania). It spins into what one hopes is a parody of ignorance. Alas, no such luck.

Enjoy…by the way its about 9 minutes long, so you might want to put the popcorn on first.
Oh yeah, one last thing...to friends and family in Iowa, this is an example of why you need to get out and caucus on January 3rd. These people vote and they have a tendency to put like-minded individuals in positions of power.