Bam! Obama!

[Jenamarie]

I was so amazed watching the news stories about the HUGE voter turn out in many areas! There's a passion in this nation that hasn't been there the past two elections I've voted in. So many people FINALLY realized just how much their vote REALLY counts, and they made their voices HEARD!!

[pam]

Though I didn't vote for Obama...I am proud of the fact that the American people were able to look past any prejudices regarding color of skin to make a decision. That to me is a great step in the right direction. Might be the only right thing...but still a good step. lol

[evilwetnoodle]

NOBAMA! but I am glad that the barriers were broken and we actually have a colored president. he may not be my choice but i am happy we at least got to that point in history.

[Dr T]

Hey

[Elphaba]

Originally Posted by deseretgov

What do you mean? Nobody could conceive of a presidential candidate winning the presidency?

No.

I grew up in a time when a black president was not only unthinkable, it would have ended in a lynching.

I grew up watching white officers break the heads of black men open with their batons, simply because these black men peacefully demonstrated for an end to discrimination. These authorities would turn water hoses on them, throwing them off their feet and slamming them onto the ground.

The hate talk form George Wallace, and hope, then despondency when this hope was dashed with the assassinations of Kennedy, King, and Bobby.

There is the story of the civil rights activists, black and white, who sat down in a diner for lunch. Imemdiately men in the diner physically threw the black men into the street.

The white men looked at the placemat, which had "We apologize for our country," printed on them.

They were apologizing because they were such bigots there was no way they were going to ever give the coloreds anything but separate, and filthy bathrooms, and certainly never, ever, any service.

And then, the horrible tragedy of the four little angels, four little girls attending the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963, murdered by a Ku Klux Klan terrorist attack who bombed the Church.

I also remember watching the Watts' riots with my family, and the dreadful hatred and contempt spewing out of my parents' mouths for people they knew nothing about. I KNEW, even as a young child, that this bigotry was evil. It affected me profoundly, and continues to do so today.

To see how far we as Americans have come from those tragic pictures of the '50s and '60s, to a presidential campaign where it was obvious Obama was black, and no one thought twice about it, is almost too much for me to wrap my head around. One of the pundits called it the post-racism era, and that struck me as true tonight.

To try and illustrate, think about this: Obama was not the n***** of the 1880s. Obama was not the colored man of the 1950s. Obama was not the black man of the 1970s. Obama was not the African-American man of the 2000s.

Obama was the Democratic candidate for president. Period.

Of course, it is a different experience for everyday black Americans. For example, I watched a woman tell how her young nephews had called her tonight and told her they want to president too. Tears streamed down her face, knowing that we were now a country where that could happen.

And then there’s the 106-year-old black woman, whose parents were slaves, who lived in bone-crushing poverty, who watched young members of her family lynched and brutally murdered. A black woman who lived through a depression where her family ate dirt to try to survive.

A black woman who sent two grandsons to WWII, one of whom would not return, and the other who, while dressed in his military uniform, tried to hail a cab, only to have the driver yell “Not my cab nigger!”

There’s much more, but the fact that this 106-year-old black woman felt, for the first time in her life, that her vote finally counted, is a woman who will go into the history books.

I wish more people comprehended how momentous this is.

Elphaba

[AnthonyB]

Let those who believed him rejoice, for it was an historic victory.

A recent PM of Oz said, "when you change a government, you change a nation.." Here are quotes from parts of a great speech that few Americans will have ever heard of that express some of my fears as to where Obama will take you from and where he will take the US too...

"The great vice of democracy - a vice which is exacting a bitter retribution from it at this moment - is that for a generation we have been busy getting ourselves on to the list of beneficiaries and removing ourselves from the list of contributors, as if somewhere there was somebody else's wealth and somebody else's effort on which we could thrive.

If the motto is to be "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you will die, and if it chances you don't die, the State will look after you; but if you don't eat, drink and be merry and save, we shall take your savings from you", then the whole business of life would become foundationless."

I fear Obama will take you into an"…overlordship of an all-powerful State on whose benevolence we shall live, spineless and effortless - a State which will dole out bread and ideas with neatly regulated accuracy; where we shall all have our dividend without subscribing our capital; where the Government, that almost deity, will nurse us and rear us and maintain us and pension us and bury us; where we shall all be civil servants, and all presumably, since we are equal, heads of departments.

Rather..."If the new world is to be a world of men, we must be not pallid and bloodless ghosts, but a community of people whose motto shall be, "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." Individual enterprise must drive us forward. That does not mean we are to return to the old and selfish notions of laissez-faire. The functions of the State will be much more than merely keeping the ring within which the competitors will fight. Our social and industrial laws will be increased. There will be more law, not less; more control, not less.

But what really happens to us will depend on how many people we have who are of the great and sober and dynamic middle-class - the strivers, the planners, the ambitious ones. We shall destroy them at our peril."

"The Forgotten People", Robert Menzies Radio address 1942

[JohnBirchSociety]

Originally Posted by deseretgov

What do you mean? Nobody could conceive of a presidential candidate winning the presidency?

Especially a half-white one.

African American my foot!

[JohnBirchSociety]

Originally Posted by Elphaba

No.

I grew up in a time when a black president was not only unthinkable, it would have ended in a lynching.

I grew up watching white officers break the heads of black men open with their batons, simply because these black men peacefully demonstrated for an end to discrimination. These authorities would turn water hoses on them, throwing them off their feet and slamming them onto the ground.

The hate talk form George Wallace, and hope, then despondency when this hope was dashed with the assassinations of Kennedy, King, and Bobby.

There is the story of the civil rights activists, black and white, who sat down in a diner for lunch. Imemdiately men in the diner physically threw the black men into the street.

The white men looked at the placemat, which had "We apologize for our country," printed on them.

They were apologizing because they were such bigots there was no way they were going to ever give the coloreds anything but separate, and filthy bathrooms, and certainly never, ever, any service.

And then, the horrible tragedy of the four little angels, four little girls attending the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963, murdered by a Ku Klux Klan terrorist attack who bombed the Church.

I also remember watching the Watts' riots with my family, and the dreadful hatred and contempt spewing out of my parents' mouths for people they knew nothing about. I KNEW, even as a young child, that this bigotry was evil. It affected me profoundly, and continues to do so today.

To see how far we as Americans have come from those tragic pictures of the '50s and '60s, to a presidential campaign where it was obvious Obama was black, and no one thought twice about it, is almost too much for me to wrap my head around. One of the pundits called it the post-racism era, and that struck me as true tonight.

To try and illustrate, think about this: Obama was not the n***** of the 1880s. Obama was not the colored man of the 1950s. Obama was not the black man of the 1970s. Obama was not the African-American man of the 2000s.

Obama was the Democratic candidate for president. Period.

Of course, it is a different experience for everyday black Americans. For example, I watched a woman tell how her young nephews had called her tonight and told her they want to president too. Tears streamed down her face, knowing that we were now a country where that could happen.

And then there’s the 106-year-old black woman, whose parents were slaves, who lived in bone-crushing poverty, who watched young members of her family lynched and brutally murdered. A black woman who lived through a depression where her family ate dirt to try to survive.

A black woman who sent two grandsons to WWII, one of whom would not return, and the other who, while dressed in his military uniform, tried to hail a cab, only to have the driver yell “Not my cab nigger!”

There’s much more, but the fact that this 106-year-old black woman felt, for the first time in her life, that her vote finally counted, is a woman who will go into the history books.

I wish more people comprehended how momentous this is.

Elphaba

Hey, if this means I won't ever have to hear Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton spew their manure about how racist we all are, then I give a hearty amen!

I'm left to think, knowing that those two can only continue in their nonsense about racism, how are they going to be effective at all?

How do you say there is racism in America when 52million voted for the half-white / half-black man?

Hopefully Jackson / Sharpton / Young, etc., are now out of a job!

[Palerider]

I woke up this morning and my wallet was gone.....there was a note left that said.....spreading the wealth and the tax man took your wallet.....

[MarginOfError]

Originally Posted by JohnBirchSociety

Hey, if this means I won't ever have to hear Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton spew their manure about how racist we all are, then I give a hearty amen!

I'm left to think, knowing that those two can only continue in their nonsense about racism, how are they going to be effective at all?

How do you say there is racism in America when 52million voted for the half-white / half-black man?

Hopefully Jackson / Sharpton / Young, etc., are now out of a job!

I too would love to see these men disappear. I don't believe that America has an overwhelming racism issue. I do believe that we have socioeconomic problems and an educational gap that is a disproportionately affecting minorities, but I do not believe these problems are driven by race. It seems to me that these issues are a relic of the racism of the past.

So, it seems to me we've tackled the racism problem (for the most part). Let's start working on some of these other problems.