(no subject)

12ish in the AM: It's still bouncing right around 14,000 votes for McCain ahead of Obama in MO, so I'm going to go ahead and call it that we (well, they) were wrong this time around.

This morning's final numbers (because my stomach woke me up at 6:30 because it's a whore)? 1,442,613 to 1,436,745. Wow. McCain by 5668 votes. I wonder how long it's been since Missouri's been that close. I mean, they still can't call that, can they, because of absentee ballots and such. At first I thought the absentees would just automatically push McCain over, because it's probably a lot of military folks, but I just realized that a bunch of them are probably students like me, who generally trend towards Obama.

Less than 6000. You know what that means? Every one of you 17,000 some-odd who voted for Nader? Yeah, thanks. I know we didn't end up mattering or anything, but if we're wrong for the first time since Adlai Stevenson, it's going to make us feel pretty stupid, isn't it?

Oh, Missouri. There are very few times that I love you, but your excitingness during political season is definitely one of them.

(no subject)

Dear Barack Obama.

I'm happy that you won. Please to be repealing the Patriot Act, or my father will not vote for you in four years. And I will be pissed.

Oh, and way to go getting out the vote in California. It's not like you were going to lose there, why'd you have to get all your African-American buddies to go and vote in Prop 8? Thanks a lot.

Alexandria.


Instead of being a good person and actually updating with the stuff I haven't yet talked about, here's an email to my father.

My TV hasn't left CNN in two days. I spent all day yesterday (since one of my classes was canceled and the other was a 10 minute test) working the Obama tables around campus and then tabulating results from the Election Integrity/Warren Poll Comission's exit polls (which I should be getting a check for at home--I wrote that address on the W-9 to keep all my tax stuff going to the same place), And then all night waiting for the precincts to report in in Missouri--seriously, what are these people doing that they can't get results in until the next morning? Get a move on, LOL!

Even though it doesn't matter, I really don't want this to be the second time since 1904 MO was wrong--there's still a chance, as McCain is less than 6000 votes up, and they've got 6-8 thousand provisional ballots left to process (most from STL city) and all the college kids' absentee ballots and such, so I figure Obama might still take it.

I'm not happy about Franken in MN, though--first Jesse Ventura and now Al Franken? Come on. And they've only got one senator, too, so it's not like there's somebody else to temper him. More democrats in the Senate is more democrats in the senate, but blech. And on that note, if things keep going the way they are, I'd wager 2 years from now there will be a filibuster proof majority in there, which would be interesting.

And fat chance on the Patriot act. The best chance there, I think, is that a bunch of SCotUS justices kick it, and Obama gets to appoint some good ones. The ACLU then challenges the Patriot act and the new court boots it out. After Obama voted for FISA, I gave up most hope on him repealing it.

It's crazy, while going through that exit poll data, how many people (reportedly) split ticket--it's pretty clear that it's hugely name recognition, though. And I really wanted to smack some of these people across the head--they declared that they were democrats but voted straight ticket republican (or vice versa); I'm not sure if they're playing with the poll results (which is stupid, as it's anonymous and they could have just declined to take it), or just idiots. Could be either, down here.

Don't know if I mentioned, but saw Obama again over the weekend, which was cool. He was very obviously tired, though--he took stage at like 9:45pm after running around all day, but also it was in general. Idk, but neither that speech on Saturday nor his acceptance had the kind of spark that I felt when we saw him in St. Louis. Michelle was cool to hear, though--how often is it that you get such a smart, articulate first lady? Somebody in authority from Harvard Law mentioned how he figured that Michelle would be the one to run for office when he had them in his classes or whatever. And how he thought they were both republicans back then, LOL.

Oh, and I'm going to some conference of Midwest Residence Hall Associations over the weekend at UM-Rolla. Just FYI, I'll be gone. I expect to be quite miserable the entire weekend--I signed up because it's $15 for a line on the resume and a better shot at an RA gig if I decide to do that (I've heard it's a lot of work, though, so idk, and definitely not if they wouldn't pay me instead of giving me a free room since I already get that), but nobody told me that instead of being an actual conference with programming and learning and such, 3/4 of it is rah-rah crap. There are actual cheers I was told to learn, and spirit points awarded and such. I'm planning on magically contracting a migraine for the entire non-programming time, I think.