Even Busted Ballot Can't Burst My Bubble

As I made my way with Mrs. Optimist and our soon-to-be-born baby in tow to the polling place on Monitor and Driggs, I readied myself to pull the lever of history. After two years of waiting, hoping, praying, and screaming for change, the time had come at last.

The line at 7 a.m. this morning in Greenpoint was shorter than we had anticipated, but still sizable enough to augur the massive turnout that is certain to sweep the country today. On line before me stood 30 of my fellow Brooklynites, and by the time we reach the booth another 50 or so huddled behind us anxious to vote.

It took all the self-control I could muster not to cry out "OBAMA!" and give everyone on line a big hug.

I beamed.

And then I wilted.

Just for a second, of course. Nothing can deprive me of the great hope and excitement and pride I feel today to be an American - save for a staggering surprise this evening (knock on every piece of wood in existence). But, I was denied a tiny bit of the catharsis that has been two years in the making.

As I took the final breezy steps to the front of the line, I realized that the voting machine for the 50th AD, 93rd ED (and from what I could tell, also the 92nd ED) was busted.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

A paper ballot!?! What? No level to pull, no curtain to close, no soothing mechanical tick?

You mean I have to fill in ovals!?! For a moment, the euphoria of voting was drowned out by a phantasmagoria of a long ago lifetime of standardized test-taking. I felt drawn by an evil force to vote for McCain, just because choice "A" was never the right answer of the SATs.

Who the hell is "C"? Ralph Nader?

Can't think... Can't breathe...

I channeled all my strength and stared into the ballot. Instinctively, my eyes fell upon the Obama/Biden block and my vision again came into focus. In this rare moment of complete clarity, I remembered why I had come.

I had come to change a nation that has lost its way. I had to come to restore respect to America in the eyes of the world. I had come so that the uninsured, like me, could one day have health care. I had come to save our economy, to preserve our environment, to inspire innovation, to fight for peace, to restore the principles our Founding Fathers enshrined in the Constitution.

And, above all, I had come for my unborn daughter. I had come to vote for Barack Obama, so that she would be born into a country of possibility and optimism - a country many of us have never known, and the rest of us had nearly forgotten.

Before I knew it, the ovals had filled themselves and I had bounded back into the light beside my beloved.

This has already been a great day and as each hour passes it's only going to get better.

For the first time in eight years, I can't wait for tomorrow.

Council Speaker Quinn Picks Quiet Sunday to Sell Out Voters on Term Limits

Anyone paying attention knew how City Council Speaker Christine Quinn stood on the Mayor's scheme to extend term limits long before Bloomberg formally announced his intentions. Today, Quinn used the political cover of a slow Sunday news cycle to make public her embarrassing position.

Surprise, surprise. She's for staying Speaker another four years.

Once upon a time, Quinn would have said "no" to extending term limits. Almost three years ago, she roared into the second most powerful job in the City with all the promise that being both New York City's first female and first LGBT Council Speaker carried with it. She was a darling of the City's progressives - a dynamic figure that would set the City free of the pro-establishment tilt that had long characterized the Council. The day she got into office the buzz that she would be New York's next Mayor began.

Then reality reared its ugly head. Quinn quickly became everything her supporters abhorred. She turned her back on progressives, good government advocates and the LGBT community. Instead, she decided to replace Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum as the Mayor's most obedient ally. As the Times reports, "Jokes about Ms. Quinn being a deputy mayor in the Bloomberg administration abound in the Council."

But that was just the beginning of Quinn's fall from grace. Up until several months ago, Quinn still had illusions (or delusions) of becoming New York City's first female Mayor. Then came the slush fund scandal. Under Quinn's leadership, the Council expanded its longtime illegal practice of "squirreling away millions of dollars in the name of made-up organizations". If you don't understand why that's so bad, check out this article.

Quinn tried to blame the scandal on two of her aides, but no one except the most gullible of reporters was buying. The steady stream of big money contributions Quinn was getting in preparation for a Mayoral run quickly started to dry up. Two of Brooklyn Councilman Kendall Stewart's top aides got indicted for their role in the bogus bonanza. Quinn, herself, hired a criminal defense attorney, using City funds to do so.

In short, Quinn's dreams of Gracie Mansion fell apart. She could never run for Mayor now that a major investigation and the word "scandal" hung heavily over her head. The end of her Council term in 2009 was shaping up to be the end of her political career.

Enter Mayor Bloomberg. The Mayor's proposal to save his own job was a godsend for Quinn. Four more years would mean that Quinn could have a chance at redemption - a chance for people to forget. If she could escape the slush fund scandal unscathed (I wonder if Mayor Mike might help her here?), four years from now she might once again be a viable candidate for mayor. Gosh darn it to heck, it worked good enough for John McCain to win his party's nomination for President twenty years after the Keating Five scandal almost sunk him.

Four years from now expect to hear Mayoral candidate Quinn argue that all is forgotten. Whether it will be is up to government investigators and, of course, you to decide.

John McCain Is Not MY Friend

While Joe Biden and the Clintons have repeatedly subjected us to rapturous proclamations of their love for John McCain, my feelings for the man have evolved from tolerance to begrudging repect, and now, to flat-out disdain. In fact, the more I learn about this guy, the more I don't like him.

The article that really tipped me over the edge was sent to me by my friend, Ellen Enders. This expose in Rolling Stone magazine, entitled Make-Believe Maverick, retells McCain's biography from a (rare) unfiltered persepective, unclouded by the first principle that McCain is an American hero. It casts McCain as an impetuous, angry, and unprincipled brat, who believes that power and, ultimately, the Presidency is his birthright. And it presents a compelling lifelong history of incidents and personal accounts to evidence the point.

Yes, it is a long read and, at times, verges away from conventional journalistic objectivity. But, hey, the truth is often ugly.

Homer Simpson Votes For Obama!

Even the stupidest man in America is smart enough to vote for Obama!

My favorite line is when Homer says, "Must...tell...President...McCain." Hilarious!

Is John McCain Not a REAL American?

Everyone knows that the Constitution bars Arnold Schwarzenegger (thankfully) from ever becoming our President because he was foreign born. But could uber-American war hero John McCain be disqualified for the same reason?

An article in today's International Herald Tribune points out the little known fact that John McCain was born on a U.S. military base in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936. McCain's campaign says that satisfies the Constitutional criteria that only a "natural-born citizen" can become President, but to date, every President of the United States has been born within the 50 States.

It will be interesting to see if McCain's eligibility does provoke a Constitutional debate. I doubt it will, but it could prove a good strategical distraction for Obama to pursue if he wins the Democratic nomination. It could help him diffuse or, at least, counterbalance McCain's inevitable attack strategy of portraying Barack Hussein Obama as un-American.

School Shootings Strike Home Again

As soon as I read yesterday afternoon about the school shooting on Thursday at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, I called my cousin, Malinde Caldwell, who is a senior at Northern. I breathed a sigh of relief the second she picked up the phone. She was shook up, but fine - as were her friends.

Malinde, who has nearly completed her study to become a special education teacher, was off campus at the time doing her student teaching. Since the shooting, though she lives only a few blocks from the University, she hasn't been back on campus. It's not that she wants to avoid the reality of what occurred in the auditorium in which she has had many classes over her time at Northern. That would be impossible. Her apartment is next to DeKalb's sole hospital, which has been overwhelmed since the shooting by a volume of dead and wounded far beyond what the tiny hospital could ever have conceived of having to treat.

For me, the shooting at Northern was a bracing reminder of last semester at St. John's University, where I work as an adjunct professor. Fortunately, the University's alert campus police aided by some courageous students were able to diffuse that incident before anyone was hurt, but what might have been was a horrifying image lost on no one at the school. Since Columbine, we Americans have become all too familiar with how this type of madness looks.

This was no less than the fourth school shooting in the U.S. within a WEEK. Since she was in a position to understand this latest headline on a human level, I asked my cousin why it was she thought these massacres are occurring so frequently in our country. She responded that since the gunman at Northern, unlike the one at Virginia Tech, demonstrated no real sign of being disturbed prior to Thursday, she didn't blame the University at all for failing to stop the senseless slaughter of her classmates.

The preventive measure that she said was "obvious" was stricter gun control laws. I couldn't agree more. If only this conclusion were as "obvious" to our elected officials!

All of the guns used by the perpetrator were purchased legally - two of the four within the past week. No questions asked. For a small wad of cash, a would-be murderer had all he needed to kill six innocent kids and forever mar the lives of many more.

We are far past the point of pushing for background checks and waiting periods to ensure people who might misuse guns won't get their hands on them. At this point, the alleged right to hunt and bear arms is dwarfed by the right of our citizens not to be hunted - the right to life, so to speak.

I was disappointed by the reaction of our presidential candidates to the shooting at Northern. Senator Obama said existing guns laws need to be strengthened and bullets need to be traced as they are in California. Senator Clinton said "we’ve got to figure out how to get guns out of the hands of criminals, terrorists, gang members and people with mental health problems". I couldn't find any comment online from Senator McCain.

It is time that our politicians stop pandering to the nation's gun lobby. I am not sure what Senator Obama means by strengthening our gun laws, but I am certain it is inadequate by my standard. And as for Senator Clinton, there is a simple solution to getting guns "out of the hands of criminals". America must make it illegal once and for all for private citizens to own automatic weapons, semi-automatic weapons, and, yes, even handguns, as is the law in England and many other countries with startlingly fewer incidents of gun violence.

Gun vendors are not psychologists, nor should they be expected to be. And our government has proven far too many times that it is ill-equipped to or incapable of deducing whether an aspiring gun owner will one day turn out to be a murderer.

The only way to rid our society of gun violence is to rid it of guns.

How many more children need to die before this point becomes as "obvious" to our leaders as it is to the victims of these crimes?

Obama's Last Stand

Though the contest was less trumpeted than South Carolina's primary next Saturday, Hillary Clinton's victory in Nevada yesterday virtually secured her the Democratic nomination for President. Not only does Barack Obama now have to score a resounding victory in South Carolina to stay alive, come Tsunami Tuesday on February 5th he has to upset Hillary either in the Clinton-stronghold of California or on her home turf in New York - a distinct unlikelihood given the extent to which Hillary has out-campaigned him in both states.

The Optimist sees only one final move for Barack before the sun sets on his exhilarating effort. Obama's last chance is to offer John Edwards whatever he wants - even the Vice Presidency - to immediately withdraw from the race and throw his unequivocal support behind Obama's candidacy. It is only through combining their coalitions that Obama has a chance to loosen Hillary's grip on the nomination. And even then, it will be an uphill battle.

Edwards would be wise to take such a deal, though he is unlikely to do so. He has obstinately vowed to stay in the race until the convention, despite faring increasingly worse in each successive state he has competed. South Carolina will be the final nail in his coffin.

If Edwards is truly serious about enacting his critical anti-corporate, populist agenda, he must get into a position of substantive power in the Cabinet. He must not squander the last leverage he possesses to do so by sticking it out through Tsunami Tuesday, just for the sake of pride. If he does so, he will end Obama's campaign on the same day he ends his own.

And then, all the sound and fury will have signified nothing, and Clinton and McCain will square off in November just as everyone predicted they would in 2006.