Here is link and a comment

1) Link to article about President-Elect promising children a puppy.
2) Random internet photo of "a puppy" palling around with a (hetereosexually suspect?) rainbow hued bear toy.

Conclusion: Nimble political satire.

Ouch! I never thought of it that way!!! What have we done!?!?!

Just enjoy the picture, Maurice, while you revel in your hollow victory. The pwesident might buy you a puppy, too. And lower taxes. And bwing home da twoops. And take us our for ice cweam. And pay our mortgages and fill our gas tanks. And take us on a unicorn ride to to Candy Mountain.

I'm not understanding SmokesQuantity Chimney's vibes. Is is just me?

this is the vibe I am stoked on.... and don't quote won't get fooled again without a VCS3 backing loop

via nytimes - roger cohen

Obama’s idea, put simply, was that America can be better than it has been. It can reach beyond post-9/11 anger and fear to embody once more what the world still craves from the American idea: hope.

America can mean what it says. It can respect its friends and probe its enemies before it tries to shock and awe them. It can listen. It can rediscover the commonwealth beyond the frenzied individualism that took down Wall Street.

I know, these are mere words. They will not right the deficit or disarm an enemy. But words count. That has been a lesson of the Bush years.

You can’t proclaim freedom as you torture. You can’t promote democracy as you disappear people. You can’t stand for the rule of law and strip prisoners of basic rights. You can’t dispense with the transparency and regulation essential to modern capital markets and hope still to be the beacon of free enterprise.

Or rather, you can do all these things, but then you find yourself alone.

Obama will reinvest words with meaning. That is the basis of everything. And an American leader able to improvise a grammatical, even a moving, English sentence is no bad thing. Americans, in the inevitable recession ahead, will have a leader who can summon their better natures rather than speak, as Bush has, to their spite.

Surely, SmokesQuantity, can find far more receptive and appropriate places on the internet to spew forth his bitterness, nut-job conspiracy theories and divisive agenda. Let me guess, 9-11 was an inside job and Obama 'pals around with terrorists' cos he's one of them Muslims right?

Get lost bro.

I don't think anyone REALLY believes Obama is a miracle worker SmokesQ (nor is he perfect), they just hope he can help us figure this out. You can sit on the sidelines and wait until the inevitable failure proves you right, but what's point of that? May as well move somewhere else or start your own country (see this book for various nutbags that have attempted that) if that's all you want to do. Here's to Hope and Hardwork (the only way I've ever achieved anything)!

Don't mean to shit on the parade. It's a great historical moment, but I can no longer separate the actors in this farce. It's my own worldview, tho, so this is the last post. I am worried that after getting defrauded wholesale the past 2 elections, that Americans are gonna forget that and get complacent and think everything is fixed and that politics will once again be the will of the people cuz "our guy" is in there. Love it or not, a political majority like this dangerous and we might learn to love some new form of bondage cuz our handsome new boss says we should, meanwhile if you look behind him, you have CFR globalists like Zbigniew Brzezinski, pro-Israel hawks like Rahm Emanuel, and a host of behind-the-scenes advisors and"grey men" from previous administrations who are actually forming his policy. It may have a new face, but it's the same game. It's easy to get euphoric cuz Bush and Cheney are getting fired, but if this isn't part of a a pre-planned agenda, Obama needs to reverse a ton of executive orders and scrap a shit- ton of bad policy, like secret wiretaps and domestic spying, that were made on the Bush watch. I don't see that happening. I am not easily persuaded by words anymore. Kerry said he was going to fight and he folded faster than Superman on laundry day. Lots of lofty ideals and pretty words were spoken by this guy. He has a lot of proving to do and must not get a free pass. That is all, again sorry, now back to our regular Chimney programming...

It's funny to watch reactions of social approval and disapproval and how it's used to modify people's behavior. All the name-calling comes out, the pre-suppositions of some conservative agenda (with us or against us- "only Sith Lords deal in absolutes"), tin foil conspiracy accusations cuz some of my news is from a non-standard, non-MSM source, all to get a dissident to shut up and fall in line. I enjoy this community a lot, and my participation is mostly light-hearted, but if this is how you wanna deal with me when I express my true self and the things I believe, I'll take a step back. I'm the crazy right wing republican reactionary conspiracy nut job cuz I don't celebrate the president. Back to living in my head. Back to wizards and rainbows and Sesame Street, which I prefer to a staggering degree.

Peace in the middle east.

“I inhaled frequently…That was the point.” - President-Elect Barack Obama.

He's good pals with someone on the Deep House Page too. Now that's house! Not your typical politician if ya ask me.

But I agree, back to the cute animals and shit.

The points that (1) Obama is not a miracle worker, (2) that there has been, historically, a dire lack of transparency on the part of our elected government, and (3) that the democratic system is deeply flawed are well taken, if somewhat obvious. I think all of us here on the Chimney, being reasonably open minded, welcome these conversations as critical to deeper understandings of what it is to be American.

It's more the tone of your recent posts-which alternate between snickering taunts and coded smugness- that are problematic. Chimneys (at least the ones that I know, and I was here on the first day of school) are a well educated, politically engaged bunch, not a naive gaggle of jackasses, as your semi-anonymous/ambiguous posts seem to imply. Your reply to Maurice was uncalled for, and earned you whatever angry replies you got.

Besides, politics aside (despite the fact that, truly, in a conversation about Obama, politics will always be front and center)-- we just elected an African American man for president. I didn't think I'd ever experience that in my lifetime. Doesn't it make you want to weep?

I'm all for alternative news sources, (my fiancee used to run Quimby's in Chicago) so that's not my problem. I agree, two party politics are a sham (see this episdoe of the prisoner). But just because your ideas aren't accepted, doesn't mean you should shut up, just be aware pretty much no one here agrees with you. We can still be friends right? But one thing to always consider with alternative news sources (for me this is everything from neighborhood newsletters to Pacifica Radio) is that it is often more of a document of human perception than an accurate model of reality. To me it is like driving down a road at night, and seeing a shape on the ground, to some drivers it's a corpse and to others it's a dog but to the guy who's on the side of the road it's a tire.

But I'm also unwilling to believe that Obama, regardless of who his advisers are, will continue the Bush policies. His administration will not be perfect, but it will without a doubt be better than Bush/Cheney. It will be much better. So, yes, we're still trapped on an island with a bunch of fools but things have to be made better and Obama will begin this push.

Besides, even if the policies you want were enacted, there would be problems, there would be hints of conspiracy from detractors, someone's rights would be violated and someone would be screwed. That's why it's a "more perfect union" that we're after--the suggestion being there is NO perfect union and it is an endless struggle that we are engaged in--that my friend, is reality--we will always have this struggle no matter what form of government, be it the complete lack of one or the most severe. So here's to hope for humanity (Ha!!!!) and for the endless struggle for freedom and justice!!!!

first of all, even if it's only for the symbolism, i am STOKED that we have an african-american president when you consider where this country was at 40 years ago. of course, race and all the other ones (gender, sexual orientation, blah blah) are still huge factors in people's perceptions of others and we've got a long way to go, but still, this is a huge step.

now, on the other hand, my political tendencies, and probably most chims, falls a shitload further to the left than our president elect. i tend towards democratic socialism and am sad that the best candidate my peace and freedom party can come up with is nader, obv that dude has lost it. so yeah, obama isn't gonna blow my mind. but it has to get better, if he stops the torture, illegal imprisonment, unchecked aggression, and general shitting on the constitution that has taken place over the last 8 years it will be a start.

SmokesQuantity reminds me a lot of my brother, an anarchist who refuses to buy into the "false democracy" of america by voting. i love my brother to death, but he's not busy starting the revolution so all he's busy doing is bitching. and not only do we on the extreme left bitch at the system and the right, we bitch at each other over semantic details (just google how many socialist parties/organizations there are in the u.s.). meanwhile it takes the country going to shit for 8 straight years to get enough people motivated to make a change.

if you get the revolution rolling for the right reasons, i'll pick up arms (well, if i weren't such a wimpy pacifist), but until that point you'd do more good in the polling booth than complaining. obama may not be your ideal, but we are a divided nation in more ways than just party lines, and if you don't think this guy will do a shitload better than the last guy with regards to foreign policy, natural resource dependence, and just generally being a decent fucking human being you're out of your skull.

Wow - don't see this kinda action too often on the Chimney!