A Day Without Gays

http://daywithoutagay.org/

The worldwide media attention surrounding our massive grassweb efforts for gay rights has been tremendous. Join the Impact was a HUGE success and will continue to thrive because of our efforts.

We’ve reacted to anti-gay ballot initiatives in California, Arizona Florida, and Arkansas with anger, with resolve, and with courage. NOW, it’s time to show America and the world how we love.

Gay people and our allies are compassionate, sensitive, caring, mobilized, and programmed for success. A day without gays would be tragic because it would be a day without love.

On December 10, 2008 the gay community will take a historic stance against hatred by donating love to a variety of different causes.

On December 10, you are encouraged not to call in sick to work. You are encouraged to call in “gay”–and donate your time to service!

December 10, 2008 is International Human Rights Day. CLICK HERE to join us, and search or add to the list of human rights organizations that need our help RIGHT NOW.

If you are a non-profit in search of volunteers on December 10, 2008, post your info here, or email us at info@daywithoutagay.org, and we’ll add information about your group.

Bill O’Reilly’s Lynching Party

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyPNDS6TRvw&feature=related

Bill O’Reilly talks about lynching Michelle Obama.

“And I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts that say this is how the woman really feels. If that’s how she really feels– that America is a bad country or a flawed nation, whatever– then that is legit. We’ll track it down.”

bill o’reilly still has the same mentality, the same mindset as we did a hundred years ago.
i feel really bad for him.

America is not a country. the united states, canada, and mexico are countries, but america is not a country.
there’s a big difference between flawed and bad. they both are making mistakes. bad is just intentional and flawed is unintentional. the united states is a flawed nation, but its not a bad nation. i mean, the united states is run by people and people are flawed, they make mistakes. for michelle obama to mention that is a good thing. she’s accepted that there’s room for change. O’Reilly is in denial that the united states is a flawed nation. Get over it, O’Reilly. Get over it.

Racism Unfiltered in France

If the problem of racism in American discourse is typified by the N-word outburst of comedian Michael Richards followed by his abject apology, the French variant is altogether more toxic. The latest outrage came from second-string TV personality and self-appointed social commentator Pascal Sevran, whose recently published book included the obscenely racist idea that the “black [penis] is responsible for famine in Africa.” Elaborating in a newspaper interview, Sevran said, “Africa is dying from all the children born there” to parents supposedly too sexually undisciplined or dumb to realize they could not feed them all. The answer to the problem? “We need sterilize half the planet,” Sevran emphatically replied. Known as an relentless attention-seeker, the defiant Sevran drew only limited fire for his comments, and a public rebuke from his public television employer — though not the cancellation of his Sunday program that many demanded. Appalled at the light punishment, the government of Niger (itself a victim of recent famines) announced it would file libel charges against Sevran in French courts.

Sevran’s prurient opinions are but the latest addition to the growing racist chatter in the French mainstream. A month earlier, a Socialist political kingpin in the Montpellier region sparked fury — and possible expulsion from the party — by lamenting that France’s national soccer team fielded “9 blacks out of 11” starting players. “I’m ashamed of this country,” in which “the whites are lousy,” he groused, and would soon be fielding teams “where all 11 players are black.” That echoed a comment a year earlier by philosopher Alain Finkelkraut, who — seeking to explain the 2005 rioting by youths descended from immigrants in France’s suburbs — made allusion to France’s “white-black-Arab” soccer side that won the 1998 World Cup and became an icon of French social integration. ” Today, [the team is] black-black-black, and it’s the laughingstock of Europe,” Finkelkraut complained.

Even some black Frenchmen have joined the bigoted chorus: In November, the black comic known as Dieudonn� made a conspicuous appearance at the annual congress of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front party — much to the pleasure of extreme-rightists looking to lose their racist stigma without changing their xenophobic positions. For the last two years, the self-described leftist Dieudonn� had outdone even Le Pen in Jew-baiting, delivering a series of brazenly anti-Semitic remarks, belittling the Holocaust and depicting Jews as racist persecutors of blacks and Arabs. Though that earned him general condemnation, Dieudonn�’s high-profile fraternizing with a party treated as a pariah by most French minorities and voters indicated that he, too, was looking for a more effective manner to promote his divisive positions. His flirtation with Le Pen found support from Ahmed Moualek, a blogger and influential voice from France’s blighted suburban housing projects who said he’d rather debate with “an intelligent racist than with a stupid anti-racist,” noting that while Le Pen’s “language can at times shock people, he’s an honest man.”

The rising torrent of racist language and publicly expressed racist attitudes may be a sign less that racism is spreading, than that the boundaries of mainstream tolerance are changing. As in the U.S., France has seen an increase in provocative shock content in entertainment and commentary, whether for comic effect or political impact. Interior Minister and presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy drew protests when he used a racially loaded term to denounce young men rioting in the suburbs last year — an outcry that also coincided with his jump in polls. The street patois of those ethnically diverse projects, meanwhile, has also long contained its own racially aggressive “shock” element, with the rejoinder “ta race” (your race) a kind of generic, all-purpose slight. Clearly, the political “filter” in the U.S. public square that prompts a Michael Richards or a Mel Gibson to grovel apologetically following publicly recorded racial insults is considerably less developed in France. Indeed, last year’s riots were a stark reminder of how poorly France has done in integrating its diversity, remaining locked in an officially “color-blind” national ideology that often simply avoids confronting the problems of racial inequality. France counts no blacks or Arabs as members of parliament, and its corporate boardrooms don’t fare much better.

France rejects affirmative action as incompatible with its republican ideals of color-blind equality for all citizens. Nice in theory, but that’s not working in practice: discrimination continues, inequality is rife, and notions of color-blindness don’t square with the rising chorus of racially loaded commentary. Color-blindness may also function to keep France blind to racial discrimination and inequality, but the rising tide of anger in the projects and racist chatter in the mainstream suggests that the French may soon have no choice but to openly confront what color-blindness prefers not to see.

Why is France Burning?

WHY IS FRANCE BURNING?

November 06, 2005 By Doug Ireland

Doug Ireland’s ZSpace Page

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Saturday night was the 10th day of the spreading youth riots that have much of France in flames — and it was the worst night ever since the first riot erupted in a suburban Paris ghetto of low-income housing, with 1295 vehicles — from private cars to public buses — burned last night, a huge jump from the 897 set afire the previous evening. And, for the first time, the violence born in the suburban ghettos last night invaded the center of Paris — some 40 vehicles were set alight in Le Marais (the pricey home to the most famous gay ghetto in Paris, around the Place de la Republique nearby, and in the bourgeois 17th arrondissement, only a stone’s throw from the dilapidated ghetto of the Goutte d’Or in the 18th arrondissement.

 

As someone who lived in France for nearly a decade, and who has visited those suburban ghettos, where the violence started, on reporting trips any number of times, I have not been surprised by this tsunami of inchoate youth rebellion that is engulfing France. It is the result of thirty years of government neglect: of the failure of the French political classes — of both right and left — to make any serious effort to integrate its Muslim and black populations into the larger French economy and culture; and of the deep-seated, searing, soul-destroying racism that the unemployed and profoundly alienated young of the ghettos face every day of their lives, both from the police, and when trying to find a job or decent housing.

 

To understand the origins of this profound crisis for France, it is important to step back and remember that the ghettos where festering resentment has now burst into flames were created as a matter of industrial policy by the French state.

 

If France’s population of immigrant origin — mostly Arab, some black — is today quite large (more than 10% of the total population), it is because there was a government and industrial policy during the post-World War II boom years of reconstruction and economic expansion which the French call “les trentes glorieuses” — the 30 glorious years — to recruit from France’s foreign colonies laborers and factory and menial workers for jobs which there were no Frenchmen to fill. These immigrant workers were desperately needed to allow the French economy to expand due to the shortage of male manpower caused by two World Wars, which killed many Frenchmen, and slashed the native French birth-rates too. Moreover, these immigrant workers were considered passive and unlikely to strike (unlike the highly political French working class and its Communist-led unions.) This government-and-industry-sponsored influx of Arab workers (many of whom saved up to bring their families to France from North Africa) was reinforced following Algerian independence by the Harkis.

 

The Harkis (whose story is movingly told by Dalila Kerchouche in her Destins de Harkis) were the native Algerians who fought for and worked with France during the post-war anti-colonial struggles for independence — and who for their trouble were horribly treated by France. Some 100,000 Harkis were killed by the Algerian FLN (National Liberation Front) after the French shamelessly abandoned them to a lethal fate when the French occupying army evacuated itself and the French colonists from Algeria. Moreover, those Harki families who were saved, often at the initiative of individual military commanders who refused to obey orders not to evacuate them, once in France were parked in unspeakable, filthy, crowded concentration camps for many long years and never benefited from any government aid — a nice reward for their sacrifices for France, of which they were, after all, legally citizens. Their ghettoized children and grandchildren, naturally, harbor certain resentments.

 

France’s other immigrant workers were warehoused in huge, high-rise low-income housing ghettos — known as “cités” (Americans would say “the projects”) — specially built for them, and deliberately placed out of sight in the suburbs around most of France’s major urban agglomerations, so that their darker-skinned inhabitants wouldn’t pollute the center cities of Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, Lille, Nice and the others of white France’s urban centers today encircled by flames. Often there was only just enough public transport provided to take these uneducated working class Arabs and blacks directly to their jobs in the burgeoning factories of the “peripherique” — the suburban peripheries that encircled Paris and its smaller sisters — but little or none linking the ghettos to the urban centers.

 

Now 30, 40, and 50 years old, these high-rise human warehouses in the isolated suburbs are today run-down, dilapidated, sinister places, with broken elevators that remain unrepaired, heating systems left dysfunctional in winter, dirt and dog-shit in the hallways, broken windows, and few commercial amenities — shopping for basic necessities is often quite limited and difficult, while entertainment and recreational facilities for youth are truncated and totally inadequate when they’re not non-existent. Both apartments and schools are over-crowded (birth control is a cultural taboo in the Muslim culture the immigrants brought with them and transmitted to their children, and even for their male grandchildren of today — who’ve adopted hip-hop culture and created their own French-language rap music of extraordinary vitality (which often embodies stinging social and political content) — condoms are a no-no because of Arab machismo, contributing to rising AIDS rates in the ghettos.

 

The first week in December will mark the 22nd anniversary of the Marche des Beurs (Beur means Arab in French slang). I was present to see the cortege of 100,000 arrive in Paris — it was the Franco-Arab equivalent of Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Justice The Marche des Beurs was organized from Lyon’s horrific, enormous suburban high-rise ghetto, Les Minguettes, with the help of a charismatic left-wing French Catholic worker-priest, Father Christian Delorme, and its central theme was the demand to be recognized as French “comme les autres” — like everyone else … a demand, in sum, for complete integration. But for the mass of Franco-Arabs, little has changed since 1983 — and the integrationist movement of “jeunes beurs” created around that march petered out in frustration and despair. In recent years, its place has been taken by Islamist fundamentalists operating through local mosques — the mediatic symbol of this retreat into a separatist, communitarian-religious politics is the slick demagogue Tariq Ramadan, a philosophy professor who uses one cosmetically democratic discourse when he’s speaking on French TV, and a fiery, hard-line fundamentalist discourse in the Arab-language cassettes of his speeches that sell like hotcakes to Franco-Arab ghetto youth. (Ramadan’s double language has been meticulously documented by the Arab-speaking journalist Caroline Fourest in her book published last fall by Editions Grasset, “Frere Tariq: discourse, methode et strategie de Tariq Ramadan,” extracts from which have been published in the weekly l’Express.) But the current rebellion has little to do with Islamic fundamentalism.

 

In 1990, Francois Mitterrand — the Socialist President then — described what life was like for jobless ghetto youths warehoused in the overcrowded “cités”:

 

“What hope does a young person have who’s been born in a quartier without a soul, who lives in an unspeakably ugly high-rise, surrounded by more ugliness, imprisoned by gray walls in a gray wasteland and condemned to a gray life, with all around a society that prefers to look away until it’s time to get mad, time to FORBID.”

 

Well, Mitterrand’s perceptive and moving words remained just that — words — for his urban policy was an underfunded, unfocussed failure that only put a few band-aids on a metastasizing cancer — and 15 years after Mitterrand’s diagnosis, the hopelessness and alienation of these ghetto youths and their “gray lives” has only become deeper and more rancid still.

 

The response to the last ten days of violent youth rebellion by the conservative government has been inept and tone-deaf. For the first four days of the rebellion, Chirac and his Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin decided to let the hyper-ambitious, megalomaniacal Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, lead the government’s response to the youth’s violence and arson. Chirac and Villepin detest Sarkozy, who has been openly campaigning to replace Chirac as president in 2007 (Villepin was made P.M. in the hopes that he could block Sarkozy for the right’s presidential nomination), The President and his P.M. thought that “Sarko,” as he’s commonly referred to in France — who won his widespread popularity as a hardline, law-and-order demagogue on the issue of domestic insecurity — would be unable to stop the violence, and thus damage his presidential campaign.

 

But Sarkozy only poured verbal kerosene on the flames, dismissing the ghetto youth in the most insulting and racist terms and calling for a policy of repression. “Sarko” made headlines with his declarations that he would “karcherise” the ghettos of “la racaille“– words the U.S. press has utterly inadequately translated to mean “clean” the ghettos of “scum.” But these two words have an infinitely harsher and insulting flavor in French. “Karcher” is the well-known brand name of a system of cleaning surfaces by super-high-pressure sand-blasting or water-blasting that very violently peals away the outer skin of encrusted dirt — like pigeon-shit — even at the risk of damaging what’s underneath. To apply this term to young human beings and proffer it as a strategy is a verbally fascist insult and, as a policy proposed by an Interior Minister, is about as close as one can get to hollering “ethnic cleansing” without actually saying so. It implies raw police power and force used very aggressively, with little regard for human rights. I wonder how many Anglo-American correspondents get the inflammatory, terribly vicious flavor of the word in French? The translation of “karcherise” by “clean” just misses completely the inflammatory violence of what Sarko was really saying. And “racaille” is infinitely more pejorative than “scum” to French-speakers — it has the flavor of characterizing an entire group of people as subhuman, inherently evil and criminal, worthless, and is, in other words, one of the most serious insults one could launch at the rebellious ghetto youth.

 

As the rebellion has spread beyond the Paris suburbs as far south as Marseilles and Nice and as far north as Lille, Sarkozy has been thundering that the spreading violence is centrally “organized.” But on the telephone this morning from Paris, the dean of French investigative reporters — Claude Angeli, editor of Le Canard Enchaine — told me, “That’s not true — this isn’t being organized by the Islamist fundamentalists, as Sarkozy is implying to scare people. Sure, kids in neighborhoods are using their cellphones and text messages to warn each other where the cops are coming so they can move and pick other targets for their arson. But the rebellion is spreading because the youth have a sense of solidarity that comes from watching television — they imitate what they’re seeing, and they sense themselves targeted by Sarkozy’s inflammatory rhetoric. The rebellion is spreading spontaneously — driven especially by racist police conduct that is the daily lot of these youths. It’s incredible the level of police racism — they’re arrested or controlled and have their papers checked because they have dark skins, and the police are verbally brutal, calling them ‘bougnoules’ [a racist insult, something like the American “towel-heads”, only worse] and telling them, ‘Lower your eyes! Lower your eyes!’ as if they had no right to look a policeman in the face. It’s utterly dehumanizing. No wonder these kids feel so divorced from authority.”

 

A team report in today’s French daily, Liberation (where I was once a columnist), interviews ghetto youths, and asks them to explain the reasons for their anger. And, the paper reports, “All, or almost all, cite ‘Sarko’….a 22-year old student says, ‘Sarkozy owes us his excuses for what he said. When I see what’s happened, I come back to the same image: Sarkozy when he went to Argenteuil, raising his head and thundering, Madame, we’re going to clean all that up. Result? Sarko sent every body over the top, he showed a total disrespect toward everybody” in the ghetto.” A 13-year-old tells the Liberation reporters: “‘It’s us who are going to put Sarkozy through the Karcher…Will I be out making trouble tonight?’ He smiles and says, ‘that’s classified information.'” Another 28-year-old youth: “Who’s setting the fires? They’re kids between 14 and 22, we don’t really know who they are because they put on masks, don’t talk, and don’t brag about it the next day … but instead of fucking everything up where they live, it would be better if they held a demo, or went and fucked up the people and the stores in Paris. We’ve got minister, Sarko, who says ‘You’re all the same.’ Me, I say non, we all say non — but in reply we still get, ‘You’re all the same.’ That response from the government creates something in common between all of us, a kind of solidarity. These kids want to get attention, to let people know they exist. So, they same to themselves, ‘If we get nasty and create panic, they won’t forget us, they’ll know we’re in a neighborhood where we need help.”

 

Yesterday, when Sarkozy — who is Minister of Religion as well as Interior Minister — wanted to make an appearance at the Catholic Bishops’ conference in Paris, they refused to let him speak — and instead, the Bishops issued a ringing statement denouncing “those who would call for repression and instill fear” instead of responding to the economic, social, and racial causes of the riots. This was an unusually sharp rebuke directed squarely at Sarkozy.

 

Under the headline “Budget Cuts Exasperate Suburban Mayors,” Le Monde reports today on how Chirac and his conservatives have compounded 30 years of neglect of the ghettos by slashing even deeper into social programs: 20% annual cuts in subsidies for neighborhood groups that work with youths since 2003, cuts in youth job-training programs and tax credits for hiring ghetto youth, cuts in education and programs to teach kids how to read and write, cuts in neighborhood police who get to know ghetto kids and work with them (when Sarkozy went to Toulouse, he told the neighborhood police: “You’re job is not to be playing soccer with these kids, your job is to arrest them!”) With fewer and fewer neighborhood cops to do preventive work that defuses youth alienation and violence, the alternative is to wait for more explosions and then send in the CRS (Compagnies Republicaines de Securite, hard-line paramilitary SWAT teams). Budget cuts for social programs plus more repression, is a prescription for more violence.

 

That’s why Le Monde‘s editorial today warned that a continuation of this blind policy creates a big risk of provoking a repeat of 2002, when the neo-fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen made it into the runoff.

 

And a majority of the country, empoisoned even more by racism after the violence of the last ten days, seems willing to accept more and more repression: a poll released last night on France 2 public TV shows that 57% of the French support Nicolas Sarkozy’s hard-line approach to the ghetto youths’ rebellion, now spreading right across France. Sarko’s demagogy seems to be working — at least with the electorate — but it won’t stop the violence, it will only increase it.

 

 

Doug Ireland, a longtime radical journalist and media critic, runs the blog DIRELAND, where this article appeared Nov. 6, 2005.

Prop 8

You are a bigot or ignorant if you vote yes on Prop 8. Here’s why.

First of all, I’d like to say I’m shocked and appalled by this proposition.  To think, in a time after civil rights have been won and equality for everyone is supposed to be, I can turn on my television and see right wing extremists posting commercials that schools by law must teach children about gay marriage, or that telling children that gays exist is somehow a bad thing and these people should be swept under the rug is beyond words.  I’m ashamed of my state, and I’m ashamed of the 48% of California who are about to be defeated by this proposition failing.

1. This proposition was made by religious extremists.  They are religious extremists, this proposition was put forward by ADF an extremist Christian group of lawyers that purports that the U.S. government is against the church and demands religion be taught in schools, and posting in every government building.  Before this league of hate was formed, they didn’t classify as a group and were known as the LDS, or the layman would know them as the “Mormon Church”.  This same group had to be sanctioned in 1978 by the U.S. supreme court to stop their discrimination against blacks.  Now they’ve returned to discriminate against gays and lesbians by hiding behind their newly formed goon squad of lawyers, the ADF.

2. They claim that children -will- be taught in schools about gay marriage and this is a fact because its “already happened in Massachusetts.”  There is extremely limited information about whether this is actually being taught at length to any students in Massachusetts aside from a few isolated incidents sensationalized by the ADF.  Moreover, the California education system is run completely differently than Massachusetts.  Teaching in the classroom is determined by the California Education Code, Teachers Association, and Parent involvement.  If our students are taught gay marriage its because our educators, legislators and overall parents believe it needs to be taught.  This means 66% of the power comes from you as a voter.  You vote the legislators in, and the PTA has a voice in what’s taught.  End of story.

3.  Another argument made by the ADF is that children can’t “opt out” of this instruction.  I’ve already established that this instruction doesn’t exist unless teachers, legislators and parents want it, but I’ll address this anyway.  This has already been disproven by a press release by the school who hosted the field trip found here.  This footage is shocking, be warned but please note that TWO students did opt out of this education, contrary to what the ADF would have you believe.  In every educator I know, every student I know and my experience, marriage was taught very little, if at all.  It was so minor neither I nor any student I’m familiar with has any recollection of any marital education.  Its a sidebar and mentioning that gay marriage exists and happens isn’t something students should get opted out of.  Students aren’t taught anything more than it exists.  Similar arguments like this have been used by religious nuts whenever something new and scary comes around, like interracial marriage.  Its not different, its the same.

4. The scary argument by the ADF is that churches might lose their tax exemptions if this proposition fails.  The document they cite to support this says that if a Church is to become overly involved in governmental politics they can lose their tax exemptions.  This is true whether gays can or can’t marry, it has nothing to do with the argument.

5.  The ADF claims that the 4 extremist judges were wrong for overturning the voters decision and “ignored” their wishes.  This is blatantly false as anyone who has remotely read the transcripts from this case can tell you.  It was at the heart of the debate.  The simple fact is if the people want something that is unconstitutional, the justice system has an obligation to fix it, regardless of the people’s wishes.  Remember at one point we wanted slaves, then we wanted separate by equal.  Other extremist judges?  Brown v. The Board of Education, Roe v. Wade.  These are taught to children as the pinnacle of our accomplishments as a fair and just society.  I salute these judges for doing the right thing and making one more page in history against oppression.

6. Lastly, the ADF purports that according to the law churches can be sued for bigotry against certain groups.  In the court case that overturned the 2000 anti-gay legislation, it was specifically stated that there would be no sanctions to churches or any other religious groups for beliefs that conflicted with the right to gay marriage.  Forget the countless court cases that have ruled for churches under the protection of the first amendment rights.  As a matter of fact these laws protecting churches are so extreme and overprotective that churches like the Westboro Baptist Church can tell grieving mothers of killed soldiers that their sons are burning in hell at their son’s funerals.  Churches are in no danger from prop 8 failing.

Do the right thing.  Stop being a dumbass and see this legislation for what it is.  Vote no, and be a part of the group that 30 years from now people will look back and say “they had the right idea”, not the group of racists and bigots that fought against fundamental human rights.

Clarksburg women charged for hate crime

CLARKSBURG, W.Va. — Clarksburg police say a white woman wearing a sheet with “KKK” written on it came out of an apartment building and attacked a 15-year-old black girl on Sunday. The woman is expected to be charged with a hate crime, said Clarksburg Police Chief Marshall Goff. Names were not yet being released, he said.

“She came out of the building and was yelling obscenities and racial stuff at the juvenile,” Goff said. “Charges are pending; she could be served as early as tomorrow.”

Goff said police haven’t ruled out the possibility that the woman has mental problems.

The woman slapped the girl and kicked her in the stomach, he said.

The incident happened outside an apartment building on West Pike Street in downtown Clarksburg, he said.

“The girl was visiting a friend with her mother at the apartment building,” Goff said. “It is a very unusual occurrence in this area. It’s something we are not going to tolerate and will prosecute to the full extent of the law.”

Clarksburg Woman Arrested After Racial Incident
Posted Tuesday, October 7, 2008 ; 06:06 PM

Rebecca Lowe is facing a felony charge. CLARKSBURG — The police have arrested a Clarksburg woman for allegedly yelling racial slurs at a fourteen-year-old black girl. Officers say the girl was walking past an apartment building on West Pike Street, when Rebecca Lowe, 32, came outside wearing a white sheet over her head. The sheet had the initials K-K-K written on it in black marker. They say Lowe slapped and kicked the girl, while yelling the slurs. Police have charged her with prohibiting the girl’s civil rights. It is a felony charge. Lowe was arraigned Tuesday morning and released on $20,000 bond.

Did Obama buy the election?

I saw this in an ad…

As everyone knows, Barack Obama has spent excessive amounts of money on his presidential campaign, with a total at least doubling that of John McCain’s. Barack Obama took out ads in video games, and even had a special 30 minute infomercial broadcasted just for this 2008 presidential election. Obama is trying desperately to reach out to young voters and minority voters, but there gets to a point when you’ve gone too far. If you have to spend hundreds or billions of dollars to get elected, is it really about politics, or does it just come down to popularity and riches? Barack Obama was spending at a rate close to $91 million in just two weeks, where John McCain was only spending a mere $22 million in a two week period. 
Why did Barack Obama spend so much money during this election, when John McCain spent bushels less? Did Obama buy the election?

are people really that nit picky about the details or are the just being stupid?
no, obama did NOT buy the election and so what if he spent twice as many dollars as mccain?

“Change has come to America.” Obama Victory Speech

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

Its the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.

Its the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled – Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.

Its the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

Its been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.

I just received a very gracious call from Senator McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and hes fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Governor Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nations promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on that train home to Delaware, the Vice President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last sixteen years, the rock of our family and the love of my life, our nations next First Lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy thats coming with us to the White House. And while shes no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight, and know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my campaign manager David Plouffe, my chief strategist David Axelrod, and the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics – you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what youve sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to – it belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didnt start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington – it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generations apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth. This is your victory.

I know you didnt do this just to win an election and I know you didnt do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime – two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how theyll make the mortgage, or pay their doctors bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America – I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you – we as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who wont agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government cant solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way its been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years – block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began twenty-one months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek – it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, its that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers – in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.

Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House – a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, We are not enemies, but friends…though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn – I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world – our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down – we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security – we support you. And to all those who have wondered if Americas beacon still burns as bright – tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

For that is the true genius of America – that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one thats on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. Shes a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing – Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldnt vote for two reasons – because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that shes seen throughout her century in America – the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we cant, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when womens voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that We Shall Overcome. Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves – if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time – to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth – that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we cant, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people:

Yes We Can. Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

Obama’s victory!

PARIS – Barack Obama‘s election as America’s first black president unleashed a renewed love for the United States after years of dwindling goodwill, and many said Wednesday that U.S. voters had blazed a trail that minorities elsewhere could follow.

People across Africa stayed up all night or woke before dawn to watch U.S. history being made, while the president of Kenya — where Obama’s father was born — declared a public holiday.

In Indonesia, where Obama lived as child, hundreds of students at his former elementary school erupted in cheers when he was declared winner and poured into the courtyard where they hugged each other, danced in the rain and chanted “Obama! Obama!”

“Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place,” South Africa’s first black president, Nelson Mandela, said in a letter of congratulations to Obama.

Many expressed amazement and satisfaction that the United States could overcome centuries of racial strife and elect an African-American as president.

“This is the fall of the Berlin Wall times ten,” Rama Yade, France‘s black junior minister for human rights, told French radio. “America is rebecoming a New World.

“On this morning, we all want to be American so we can take a bite of this dream unfolding before our eyes,” she said.

In Britain, The Sun newspaper borrowed from Neil Armstrong‘s 1969 moon landing in describing Obama’s election as “one giant leap for mankind.”

Yet celebrations were often tempered by sobering concerns that Obama faces global challenges as momentous as the hopes his campaign inspired — wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the nuclear ambitions of Iran, the elusive hunt for peace in the Middle East and a global economy in turmoil.

The huge weight of responsibilities on Obama’s shoulders was also a concern for some. French former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said Obama’s biggest challenge would be managing a punishing agenda of various crises in the United States and the world. “He will need to fight on every front,” he said.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said he hoped the incoming administration will take steps to improve badly damaged U.S. ties with Russia. Tensions have been driven to a post-Cold War high by Moscow’s war with U.S. ally Georgia.

“I stress that we have no problem with the American people, no inborn anti-Americanism. And we hope that our partners, the U.S. administration, will make a choice in favor of full-fledged relations with Russia,” Medvedev said.

Europe, where Obama is overwhelmingly popular, is one region that looked eagerly to an Obama administration for a revival in warm relations after the Bush government’s chilly rift with the continent over the Iraq war.

“At a time when we have to confront immense challenges together, your election raises great hopes in France, in Europe and in the rest of the world,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a congratulations letter to Obama.

Poland’s Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski spoke of “a new America with a new credit of trust in the world.”

Skepticism, however, was high in the Muslim world. The Bush administration alienated those in the Middle East by mistreating prisoners at its detention center for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and inmates at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison — human rights violations also condemned worldwide.

Some Iraqis, who have suffered through five years of a war ignited by the United States and its allies, said they would believe positive change when they saw it.

“Obama’s victory will do nothing for the Iraqi issue nor for the Palestinian issue,” said Muneer Jamal, a Baghdad resident. “I think all the promises Obama made during the campaign will remain mere promises.”

In Pakistan, a country vital to the U.S.-led war on the al-Qaida terrorist network and neighbor to Afghanistan, many hoped Obama would bring some respite from rising militant violence that many blame on Bush.

Still, Mohammed Arshad, a 28-year-old schoolteacher in the capital, Islamabad, doubted Obama’s ability to change U.S. foreign policy dramatically.

“It is true that Bush gave America a very bad name. He has become a symbol of hate. But I don’t think the change of face will suddenly make any big difference,” he said.

Obama’s victory was greeted with cheers across Latin America, a region that has shifted sharply to the left during the Bush years. From Mexico to Chile, leaders expressed hope for warmer relations based on mutual respect — a quality many felt has been missing from U.S. foreign policy.

Venezuela and Bolivia, which booted out the U.S. ambassadors after accusing the Bush administration of meddling in their internal politics, said they were ready to reestablish diplomatic relations, and Brazil’s president was among several leaders urging Obama to be more flexible toward Cuba.

On the streets of Rio de Janeiro, people expressed a mixture of joy, disbelief, and hope for the future.

“It’s the beginning of a different era,” police officer Emmanuel Miranda said. “The United States is a country to dream about, and for us black Brazilians, it is even easier to do so now.”

Many around the world found Obama’s international roots — his father was Kenyan, and he lived four years in Indonesia as a child — compelling and attractive.

“What an inspiration. He is the first truly global U.S. president the world has ever had,” said Pracha Kanjananont, a 29-year-old Thai sitting at a Starbuck’s in Bangkok. “He had an Asian childhood, African parentage and has a Middle Eastern name. He is a truly global president.”