Filed under: Uncategorized
It’s election night! And I shall be following it, along with the BBC (which stands for Badly Behaved Cunts, as of recent events), for your delectation. In terms of calling states, the BBC are taking the lead from ABC. All times are in GMT, because I’m a stone cold British fucking patriot.
23.05 In Pittsburgh, two fat fucking idiot DJs called “Bubba” and “The Tank”, complain about how the West Coast are a gang of pinko communists, whilst eating omelette sandwiches. Then a McCain campaigner confuses “abortion” with “infanticide”, whilst working hard to ensure that the US maintains it’s massive murder rate. Pennsylvania is a state that voted hard against Obama in the Democrat primary, thus McCain is somewhat pinning his hopes of an upset on winning it, as Democrats who ain’t down with Barack could potentially switch to a Republican ticket.
23.15 Maureen O’Dowd and a re-animated corpse from the Washington Post point out that let alone being President, barely fifty years ago Barack Obama would have been water-cannoned back down the freeway even for daring to venture below the Mason-Dixon.
23.21 The BBC is one hell of a priapic orgnaisation tonight, as they deploy their vast resources out across America. Jeremy Vine has a digital backdrop, David Dimbleby is commander-in-chief and a pretty Irish reporter is in Times Square with “a team of bloggers”. This is like the future. And, essentially, this is a future that is going to be boring until the results start rolling in… Polls close in 32 minutes.
23.33 Rupert Murdoch is worried that Obama will bring back “protectionist laws that will be very damaging to the whole world”. Yet another reason to vote Democrat, and stick it to the Antipodean misery practitioner. The AP report that officials estimate a 75% turnout. Which is only slightly less than the percentage of UK based dickheads who vote for wailing idiots on The X-Factor. Probably. 32% of the electorate voted early.
23.39 In the national exit poll, 90% of people say that the candidate’s race is not an issue. Which essentially means that 10% of those polled won’t vote for a nigger. Or possibly a honky. John Simpson reckons between a million and half a million people will turn up to the rally in Grant Park, Chicago – “people feel that history will be made this evening, before their eyes”.
23.44 Arnold Schwarzenegger firmly believes that John McCain can win. But then he also firmly believes in robot assassins from the future. And that body-building is good. So fuck him. Polls close in 15 minutes.
23.50 In a coffee shop in Culpeper, Virginia you can have an Obamaccino or a McCainmocha. Problems arise if you’re a Republican but you hate mocha, or a Democrat and hate, um, ccino. This feeble joke has just proved that coffee-based analogies are bullshit. The “Key Battleground” of Virginia is a tough call; none of the Culpeper residents seem either sure or particularly hopeful of either candidate. It’s been a Republican stronghold since that ludicrous civil rights movement nonsense, but it’s been steadily turning into a Washington DC suburb in recent years, so it could go either way. Thanks, Jeremy Vine. Polls close in ten minutes.
00.00 Polls close in Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia. Apart from Vermont (which is only famous for Ben and Jerry), all are “safe” Republican seats. Projections: McCain takes Kentucky. Obama takes Vermont. McCain 8, Obama 3. Business as usual then. The evening’s first thinly-veiled Obama/MLK comparison arrives, from a journalist at Morehouse College in Georgia, MLK’s alma mater.
00.15 Laura Kuenssberg is the pretty Irish reporter in Times Square, looking for all the world like she has stumbled in from a kids TV show. They are having their “very own party”, with special guest Ricky Gervais, who describes Sarah Palin as a “gift to comedy”. And David Brent would vote for Barack Obama, just in case you were wondering.
00.17 Oh, Christopher Hitchens. Why will you not just fuck off? Luckily, footage of people running through Grant Park like they’re headed to a Glastonbury headliner does make him, for a while. In fact, the man does make some salient points, but none of them can detract from the desperation to wrap a shovel around his smug, dangling chops. Even though he is bang on the money for having a go at Sarah Palin for believing in witches. In fact, if he keeps this up, I might be converted. Meanwhile, Grant Park is most certainly the place to be tonight.
00.30 Polls close in North Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia. Dimbleby looks a little crestfallen as they can’t call any of the three as of yet. West Virginia is a surprise – everyone assumes a quick call for the Republicans, but it’s not forthcoming. Jeremy Vine tells us that Ohio is a “microcosm” of America, and it’s certainly very important, holding as it does a healthy 20 Electoral College votes. A lot of Ohio voters went for Clinton in the primary. Fox and CBS call West Virginia for McCain, but the BBC ain’t down with that shit. They only take their orders from ABC. Take THAT, Murdoch. So we wait…
00.40 McCain, backed by his cadaverous pornstar wife, gives an interview on his plane that seems to suggest he knows he’s beaten. But this could very easily be because he is a 72 year old man who has been on an incredibly hard campaign trail for almost two years, and might understandably feel a touch jaded. You can’t help but feel sorry for him (unless he wins, of course. Then he can fuck off). Senator Joe Lieberman stands behind him – a senator that the pundits think could have spun the election dramatically had he been installed as VP. Actually, they seem to think virtually anyone (including me, and you, and your mum) would have been a better choice than the snarling hockey mom. Dimbleby is concerned about the lack of results coming through. The pundits tell him that the networks are being careful, and to get back in his box.
00.47 In New York, we get to speak to the “expert bloggers”. This seems to mean “two overly made-up middle-aged women who know how to use a search engine”. They tell us some dull statistics that anyone could have found in about a second on Google, and one of them uses the term “blogosphere”. Tells you all you need to know about that, perhaps. Fidel Castro is backing Obama.
00.50 Eight to ten dollars per head has been spent on getting people out to vote. In Virginia, 51% of people were contacted personally by the Obama campaign. This is “unprecedented”.
00.52 A projected McCain win in South Carolina. McCain 16, Obama 3. Everyone’s cards are buried firmly in their chests, including the inexplicably sinister Justin Webb’s.
00.58 Sixteen states close the polls in two minutes, and Pennsylvania is where it’s at. The journalist is obsessed with two cardboard cuttouts of McCain and Palin. Florida and Missouri are also big dogs.
01.00 Projected wins for Obama in: Connecticut, District of Columbia, Delaware, New Jersey, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and, significantly, Pennsylvania. McCain takes Tennesse, South Carolina and Oklahoma. McCain 34, Obama 103. I can’t keep up. But it’s beginning to look like Barack’s got this by the nuts. If McCain loses Indiana or Virginia, we might start to make assumptions… Florida’s up next, and Jeremy Vine’s projections are thoroughly banishing any memories of the 2000 debacle. Democrats up four in the Senate.
01.17 Senator Elizabeth Dole, fucknut wife of scumbag Bob, in North Carolina is gone, despite her marvellous eleventh hour strategy of claiming her opponent wasn’t a Christian. She is “toast”. Fuck her. In Phoenix, Arizona, a boy’s choir thoroughly fails to cheer up a despondent Republican gathering. Which probably would have still happened, even if they’d won. Dimbleby is “assuming” that Obama is the new president, which is starting to look fair. There are some smart Republicans out there though – they point out that as an executive, Obama is a thoroughly unknown quantity. Fuck that though. He was great on “The Daily Show”…
01.28 A replay of the airborne McCain interview is even more depressing – this really looks like a man off to the political gallows. Footage of probable Vice-President Joe Biden casting his vote in Delaware, in his first appearance of the evening. Shockingly, no-one gives a shit. Arkansas and Alabama projected for McCain. McCain 49. Obama 103. Grant Park looks steadily more ace. John Simpson does a line of coke off the camera lens, unable to contain his excitement.
01.42 In the Culpeper coffee shop, things “aren’t looking so good” for McCain. Republicans blame it on the fact that Obama has “a lot more money”. Which is a touch ironic, him being a communist and all. Fox and NBC call Georgia for McCain. Again, the BBC pull down their pants and slap their arse in the face of such Mickey-Mouse networks. Jesse Jackson has six-inch grey sideburns and points out that if Obama wins, then there’s nothing an African-American or Latino man or woman can’t achieve worldwide. The man makes a good point, even if he did recently say he wanted to cut Obama’s “nuts out”. Sexy.
02.00 Polls close in Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Nebraska, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Obama projected to take Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Rhode Island and New York (Dimbleby reckons Times Square looks like “downtown Tokyo”. Mainly because he can’t stop thinking about vending machines selling the soiled underwear of Japanese schoolgirls). McCain takes North Dakota. McCain 52, Obama 175. The Republicans fucked up by leaving Michigan early, according to the pundits. Fox projects Obama to win Ohio. Dimbleby gives Fox the BBC finger.
02.05 Georgia projected for McCain. McCain 76, Obama 175. 97% of black voters in Georgia turn out. Dimbleby finally comes out and says “Fox News is not good enough.” High five for that shit.
02.11 Randomly, Jay McInerney turns up at Laura Kuenssberg’s Times Square party. He doesn’t bring any class As, but unsurprinsgly plumps for Obama, whilst looking like a child’s drawing of an ageing spaceman. It’s a “new era” for America. The “expert bloggers” tell us that Elizabeth Dole has lost her Senate seat. Which we knew an hour ago. Nice one, the blogosphere.
02.22 Shazam. Obama takes Ohio; the next key state to fall to the Democrats after Pennsylvania. Essentially the only way for McCain to win now is if he takes California. Sorry, old chap, but It’s beginning to look wrapped up. McCain 76, Obama 195. Oprah Winfrey has been “pulsating all day” and she’s now “in full vibrational mode”. I’ve got an erection. For several reasons.
02.31 West Virginia and Louisiana projected for McCain. McCain 90, Obama 195. In the studio, Simon Schama and various journalists argue with a child’s toy version of a station master from the 1940s called John Bolton. The Republicans now seem to be desperate to pretend that Obama is not a centrist.
02.38 New Mexico projected for Obama. McCain 90, Obama 200. Schama turns up his “smug twat” dial to eleven and calls Dimbleby a “wuss” for not calling the election for Obama. He might have a point though… McCain takes Texas. McCain 124, Obama 200. The Texans clearly remembered that not only was both a Muslim and Satan (which doesn’t make sense, by the way. Or maybe it does), but that he also hates families. But it’s starting not to matter.
02.49 A stockbroker form Sarasota would rather have a better country and a better world than vote for John McCain. There’s hope for us all. With 60% of precincts declared, Obama stands at 51%, McCain at 48% and wankers at 1%.
02.51 Polls in Iowa, Montana, Nevada and Utah close in nine minutes. Iowa has eight pigs for every resident. Draw your own conclusions.
02.57 Mississippi projected for McCain. McCain 130, Obama 200.
03.00 Obama takes Iowa (including all those pigs), McCain takes Utah (including all those Mormons). McCain 135, Obama 207. Mormons… oh, do grow up.
03.04 Laura Kuenssberg ‘s Times Square party, which is rapidly becoming the Heat magazine of the BBC’s election coverage, has grabbed hold of Eddie Izzard. Staggeringly, he’s an Obama fan. “Slavery just disappears,” Izzard claims, possibly going over the top, which isn’t like him at all, before leaving to pretend to improvise some uber-successful comedy about butterflies. Probably.
03.11 Things are getting nasty. Rajesh Mirchandani has a stupid verbal cage-fight with a fat Republican in Colorado, and John Bolton, the toy station master, demands his immediate sacking. In an related incident, Rajesh Mirchandani phones up John Bolton and tells him that he fucked his granddaughter. The Republicans are fundamentally involved in duck-and-cover right now, as the vultures circle. They know it’s lost, but they don’t want to hear it. Schama says the Republicans have “shrivelled back”, and he is bang on the money. John Bolton refuses to hear it, and throws his toys out of the pram so hard they go through a wall and into space. It is a wonderful thing to see.
03.21 A clearly inebriated Nick Robinson stumbles up outside of No. 10 to hurl eggs at the door. He sways around quite impressively, whilst drawing fatuous and entirely impartial comparisons between Obama and David Cameron, because they are both “novices”. Fuck off, you ant-faced twat. Dimbleby says “the moment of victory is near”. Grant Park is still where it’s at.
03.28 John and Cindy McCain are watching the results flood in, in Phoenix, Arizona. If ever a man needed a cuddle, it would be the Republican candidate right now. Unfortunately, his wife is fashioned entirely out of bone, so it’s out of the question. Although it hasn’t officially happened yet, there’s no way not to feel sorry for a man losing such a huge election. He takes Nebraska, albeit only 3 out of the 5 Electoral College votes, with the rest to be decided, but it’s probably scant consolation. McCain 138, Obama 207.
03.40 The Democrats retain control of the Senate. McCain takes North Dakota. Or possibly South Dakota. By this stage it really means nothing. I’m losing track… McCain 141, Obama 207.
03.59 This is it.
04.00 Polls close in California, Hawaii, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. Obama takes: California and Washington. That’s enough. Welcome to the Presidency.
I don’t want to write anymore. I just want to see Barack Obama step up.
Good job, USA.
Filed under: Uncategorized
There’s something quite important going on tonight. Not quite as important as tomorrow, obviously, because that’s Bonfire Night and some fireworks are more interesting than changing the world and shattering the old epoch. But anyway, America (almost 70% of them if certain polls are correct) if off to the voting booth to elect someone that isn’t George W Bush. Although it’s not as simple as that, of course, as, again, if the polls are accurate, the USA is on the verge of electing its first black President, and a Democrat candidate promising genuine “change”. Either that or its first woman Vice-President and some old bloke, and it’ll be the same bullshit for another term. If that happens, at least we’ll probably get global warming and the end of the world over and done with a bit quicker.
But let’s not be pessimistic. After all, the last time there was this kind of political anticipation – albeit over here in the UK – Tony Blair got elected. And that worked out really well.
I jest. This is far more exciting and important than the 1997 election. This is America. This is the country of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Bill Clinton’s cock. This is the country of the Constitution. This is the country of the red, the white and the blue (that’s France as well, but shut up). And these colours don’t run…
IN THE RED CORNER…
JOHN SIDNEY McCAIN III. Ageing war hero and former incumbent of a Vietnamese prison camp, McCain was rescued by John Rambo in a daring solo assault directed by George P Cosmatos in 1985. After that, he spent one Christmas killing terrorists atop the Nakatomi Tower, before deciding to run for a Republican presidency, an idea very possibly hamstrung from the start by the antics of the previous administration. However, this is not to say that a McCain victory is out of the question – there shall be no complacency on MY watch – and it has certainly not always looked like such a shoe-in for the Democrat ticket, especially with the arrival of:
SARAH LOUISE HEATH PALIN. Be-lipsticked, vaguely corrupt pitbull woodswoman from the bleak wilds of the Alaskan tundra, Palin’s sickening “hockey-mom” bullshit momentarily seemed to have thrown a pro-life shaped spanner into the Democrat works, before everyone grew up. But while she may currently be slightly less popular than the SNL Tina Fey version, we all still definitely would.
IN THE BLUE CORNER…
BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA II. Based on Matthew Santos from “The West Wing”, the senator from Illinois is both a Muslim and a terrorist sympathizer. Oh, and also the walking embodiment of Lucifer on Earth. If you believe Revelations 19. Which you don’t. Obviously. And even if you did, you’d probably vote for him. Especially when his back is so thoroughly got by:
JOSEPH ROBINETTE “JOE” BIDEN, Jr. “Hi. I’m from Delaware.”
AND IN THE POINTLESS CORNER…
RAPLH NADER. Perennial time-waster, who should really be spending his money on building an ivory space-station or something. Or at least on crack and whores.
And that’s about the size of it.
Real Cruelty in Imaginary Gardens 