Kids Love Obama

After Ali and Gram got home from their DC adventure, and the kids came home from school, we all made a big Obama inauguration poster and watched the parade on TV. Have you ever seen Sadie look so happy in a photograph?

Here is Jake copying Poppy, who is giving me bunny ears while I take pictures, in an effort to get Sadie to smile.

It was fun couple of days, and nice to see pretty much everybody excited and happy and proud of their country.

My favorite quote of the weekend was when Jake started talking about Obama and what that meant for Bush. Now, we hardly ever talk about Bush to Jake -- following the "if you don't have anything nice to say" rule, but he knew enough about the situation: "And Obama will be President and live in the White House, and Bush has to move out and Bush says, 'Awww, man'. "

Update on Inauguration

Read all about it here. :(

While the police are claiming 4,000, everybody who was there said it had to be closer to 15 or 20,000.

Purple is the new Silver

We drove down to Capitol Hill today to pick up the Inauguration tickets from Congressman Perriello's office. I didn't realize when they said "you can pick them up from 10 to 2" that that's what the other 243,999 ticket holders were also told. We brought the kids, thinking we'd waltz right in and they could finally get to see in person what they're always watching on C-SPAN. As it turns out, there were crazy lines into every House and Senate office building. And there were just a few streets closed and "No Parking" signs up because apparently some kind of event is happening tomorrow. Couldn't they just mail these out? Don't Congressfolks get free use of the postal service??

Anyway, after about an hour wait (the kids were great!), we finally got in and went upstairs to Congressman Perriello's office. I think I've mentioned this here before, but this was a pretty amazing come-from-way-the-heck-behind victory over the incumbent Republican down in southwest Virginia. And these tickets were a big thank you to Mike and Pat (Ali's folks) for all their hard work on the campaign. So we walk into the office, and we've been building this up for Jake to keep him interested and it looked like someone had just moved in after the previous tenant lost their deposit. Ok, it was such a close race that Tom probably had less time than others to get their offices set up, but I almost gave him my GSA business card so he could order some paperclips and pencils.

So Tom wasn't there, but we didn't expect him to be. One of his staff gave us the tickets and Ali and Pat were excited because they were "Purple" tickets and closer in than they expected. So Ali tried to start up a conversation with this girl and says "Wow purple tickets! Where will you be tomorrow?" She barely looked up from her Blackberry to say: "I'll be at the inauguration."

Tom, if you read this blog-- and I can't see why you wouldn't-- you might want to find someone a bit more friendly to sit up at that front desk. Oh, and thanks for the tickets.

If anyone wants to see where Ali and Pat will be tomorrow, here's a link.

Nov. 4

Whew. Yesterday was a long day. We were up at 5:30am to get our early votes in, and didn't get to sleep until 1am, as results from Virginia's fifth congressional district were still trickling in. Ali's parents worked like crazy to help Tom Perriello upset the incumbent repugnant Virgil Goode. It was an uphill battle, and in the end it looks like it's still too close to call this morning and a recount will follow. Whoever wins, they can be proud that turnout was so high in that district, and that Tom did so well against a six-termer who usually gets 65 percent of the vote. Go SML Dems!!

Voter turnout nationwide set a 100 year record, and because I'm sure all Tripdub readers voted, we can all be proud of that. But it's still ridiculous that some people have to wait hours to vote, and that some were turned away for registration issues. Can't they just let everyone vote, wherever they show up, and then stamp their hands or something? Maybe set up voting machines at 7-11s? Or Starbucks -- they're everywhere. Is voter fraud really that big of an issue? Seems like worries about "voter fraud" are really worries about "making it too easy for minorities to vote".

I thought McCain gave a great concession speech. For all his talk of "Country First", it sure seemed like the past year he surrounded himself with people who believed in "Campaign First, Last and Only". But his speech last night sounded genuine, and made me think that maybe he really does believe in his slogan after all.

So, the main event happened around midnight when Obama gave his victory speech. Great speech, as usual. I think one thing that helped him win was that when he talks about moving beyond partisan politics, he actually sounds like he means it. A lot of pundits and even Democratic party officials didn't believe in the 50-state strategy of the campaign, but it paid off, and demonstrated a desire to govern on behalf of the whole country, not just the pockets where the "base" lives. In a country as big and diverse as ours, it's tempting to put people in neat categories and then focus on the differences. And that was the low point of the campaign, when all the McCain surrogates talked about a "real" America. I'm happy that strategy and line of thinking was ultimately rejected by voters.

Jake and Sadie were mostly oblivious to the news last night; their attention focused on making (and eating) Obama cookies with blue icing. But by the end of Obama's first term, Jake will be seven, and Sadie five. They will have seen his face on television countless times. They won't have the same assumption that the President is always an old white man. What effect will that have on this next generation of kids-- and especially the kids who look more like Barack Obama? That's pretty neat. I'm a little bit prouder of my country today.

If the Stock Market Could Vote...

Here's a chart copied out of yesterday's NY Times, showing how the stock market has done under both parties since the 1929 market crash.