Jynnan Tonnyx

I’m giddy with excitement over our new President-Elect, but some of my friends on Facebook are really bumming me out. I’m sure some of them actually think we’re in the End Times now that Obama was won. I truly do sympathize - I am Pro-Life, and I do care about ending abortion. But a political party has to be about more than just paying lip service to an important issue to command my allegiance - and it should be obvious by now that I am not alone. The Democratic majority in the House of Representatives was already larger than that of the so-called “Republican Revolution” in 1994, and it grew by 25 or more seats tonight. In the Senate, Democrats are going to be just 2 votes shy of a filibuster-proof majority. U.S. voters have thoroughly repudiated the Republican way of governing, and the GOP is going to have to adjust if they want to have any chance of a comeback in 2 or 4 years.

So, in the spirit of bipartisanship, I am going to offer my genuine assessment of what the Republican Party needs to do to become relevant in the center of American politics again.

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I’m sick and tired of being accused by every knee-jerk “conservative” that we Obama supporters are only voting for him because he’s black, or because we like socialism, or because we just want “change,” but we don’t care what that change entails. Get this straight: we know exactly what kind of change we are voting for, and it is nothing more or less than the same progressive principles that have served our country well for over a century.

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You know, I don’t care if the President is the smartest guy in the room. I don’t even care if he (or she) is in the top 5. But he damn sure needs to be smart enough to hire smart people, and he sure as hell needs to be smart enough to understand what they tell him!

We’ve already had 8 years of a President who doesn’t give a shit about hiring smart, qualified people, or about paying attention to their advice when he accidentally does hire one. When John McCain says that he doesn’t really know very much about economics, that scares the bejezus out of me. And the thought of having a person a heartbeat away from the presidency whose grasp of the English language is tenuous at best actually causes me to lose sleep.

Say what you will about Obama, but there is no denying that he is a smart, smart man. What’s so bad about that?

I’m a liberal and proud of it.

I usually try to not get to worked up by The Daily Show. I watch it to laugh. But sometimes they do too good a job of pointing out what bald-faced liars Republican operatives are, that it makes my blood boil. Watch September 3’s episode, and watch what how completely full of shit Karl Rove, Bill O’Reilly^*, Sean Hannity^* and Dick Morris are. I can’t even list the bullshit they spout. Just watch the show. If that doesn’t convince you that these fuckers need to be thrown out of Washington with all possible haste, I don’t know what else to say.

^*Yes, I meant to imply that Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity are Republican operatives. When they abandon any pretense of journalistic detachment, they deserve to be called what they are: craven party hacks.

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Wow.

I don’t know if you watched Barack Obama’s speech accepting the Democratic nomination for President last night. I watched every minute of it, and it made me prouder than ever to be one of his supporters. It was a very unique combination of inspiring rhetoric, stinging rebukes, witty one-liners, and specific, concrete policy. I think most Democrats would agree with me, that it was a masterful speech by a masterful speaker.

Clearly, though, Republicans don’t want to admit that anything Obama says or does has any substance, because then they would have to admit that there are genuine problems facing America. That’s why David Brooks, for example, lampoons the speech as though it were nothing but flowery words, because he can’t face the fact that it forces McCain’s campaign to stop the ad hominem attacks and campaign on the issues, or else admit that they don’t think there are any issues at all, thank you very much.

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Bianca was playing at the mall earlier this evening, and she was climbing on this big caterpillar thing like she usually does. I wasn’t there yet, and Jennie doesn’t know exactly what happened, since she was keeping track of two kids at once, but all of a sudden Bianca face-planted and started screaming. By the time I met them at the mall, she was starting to calm down, but she didn’t want to move her right arm. We were concerned, and thought about taking her straight to urgent care, but she had calmed down and was somewhat able to move it without freaking out. We let her choose what to do (I know, bad idea, right?) and she chose dinner first. Then, after dinner, we tried to go to the urgent care nearest to us, but they were closed. We had promised the girls ice cream, so we went there, and decided to let it go until tomorrow and see how she was doing then. Not long after we got home, though, she was just in agony, and so Jennie took her to an urgent care further from home while I stayed home with Sabrina.

Jennie called a little but ago to give me an update, and I’m very upset. Bianca broke her collarbone and a growth plate in her shoulder. They’re at Children’s Hospital right now, where hopefully there’s an orthopedist on call. Not that there’s much to be done for a broken clavicle. That should be an interesting trick, getting her to wear a sling for 6-8 weeks. Who knows what they’re going to do about the growth plate. I worry that we messed up by not taking her in straight away - what if we made it worse?