Rick Warren gave the predictable and exclusively Christian invocation at the start of the inauguration. Rev. Joseph Lowery, on the other hand, gave an inclusive benediction, one that included many faiths and a bit of humor. I especially loved the way he finished.

I also think this was the first time I’ve heard a major politician in a speech as important as this acknowledge atheists.

Update: I realize some were offended by the ending. I thought it was humor to show how far we’ve come rather than an admonishment. It was funny and that it was included as a bit of throwback humor to complete the other 60’s bookend he began with.

I’m surprised at the recent spate of OMG, Sarah Palin is popular on Google stories. The fact that she’s on the leaderboard for most searches in 2008 should hardly be surprising. She was a relative unknown. Like most people, I went “who the heck is Sarah Palin” when she was announced. It shouldn’t be surprising (or an indication of her intrinsic popularity or whatever) that her name rose the fastest. In fact, it’s an indication of how ridiculous the selection of Palin was. The world did a collective WTF? and hit Google to find out more about this person.

Yet, Newsweek’s subhead is “Sarah Palin may not have won the election, but she’s a fave of Google users.”

Sigh…

I want to expand a bit on the little blips I’ve been sending out via Twitter tonight. Beyond the issues, the election of Barack Obama as President Elect is very, very important to me personally. It’s actually quite simple why.

For a long time, I’ve believed, through my reading of history and my education that time heals wounds and that some wounds take a very long time to heal. We often skip over the fact that many people who lived and grew up in a time of segregation and racial strife are still alive today. In fact, many are just entering their 50s. So I’ve always believed that we would need to “wait” until that generation passed on to really see past race as a society, and certainly to see past race enough to elect an African-American President.

This election has shown me that it doesn’t have to be that way. We can change the country for the better if enough people stick to their convictions and fight for what is right. We can do this in a short amount of time.

We found a candidate who was capable and talented. We were determined to help push back when people tried to hold him back because of prejudice about his race, his name, or his family history. We found the reason to fight not because he was African-American, but because he was too good a candidate to let the old prejudices hold him back. The army of volunteers and young people led that principled fight. Because of them, we have a very talented President Elect with the potential to be a special President.

Tonight, we elected the best candidate I’ve seen in the last 20 years. As a bonus, we also elected the first minority President in our history.

But tonight we’ve also seen the passage of hateful amendments in California, Florida, Arizona, and Arkansas affecting the lives of gay Americans. Before this election, I might’ve said that in 40 years, we’ll finally protect the rights of gay Americans. Tonight, though, I have hope that we can reverse these measures in much less time.

This is the lesson I take from this election. We need to continue to fight for what is right and educate and convince those who disagree with us today. We can do this sooner than we think, if we just do what’s right and defend our principles.

Yes, we can.

I’ll leave you with the end of Obama’s speech on the eve of the election, a speech meant to fire up his volunteers and his GOTV effort. I think it applies directly to what I talked about above.

PS. One last thing: To the many volunteers and staffers of the Obama campaign, I have been amazed at the time and effort you’ve put into the campaign. I am inspired and awed by the work you’ve done. Thank you.

Get your results here. Key states in alpha order plus Connecticut. The left side of the page has the national results, as usual.

Update: I’ve put the results widgets in the “more” section of this post to keep them from slowing down the loading of the front page. Please click the link below to see them.

(Click here to read the rest of this post)

Today is a huge day and the most important thing you can do is vote. It doesn’t matter who you’re voting for, whether you think your candidate has it in the bag or has no chance. Get out, take the time, and vote.

It’s very hard for me to put into words how important I think this election is. We’re witnessing the single greatest decline in American soft power in the last century. It is most visible in the financial crisis but the signs are there in our national debt and rising income and wealth inequality in this country.

I’ve also talked over this past year about politics becoming too much of a “team” sport, where people put their allegiances to their party over what’s ultimately best for the nation. I know a number of you identify as “Republican” and thus have difficulty pulling the lever for a Democrat. I’d like to take one last chance to change your mind about this. We’re all in this together, after all.

The fact of the matter is that on most Republican issues, those that Barry Ritholtz today described as “low taxes, balanced budget, strong defense, no unnecessary overseas involvement, and no government involvement in personal matters”, Barack Obama is the better choice.

He has proposed a sensible balance of trying to cut taxes for those people that will spend (and thus generate follow on GDP) with keeping his proposals revenue neutral (the much maligned taxes on those making $250K or more). On every policy proposal he has on his web site, he has marked out areas where he will make adjustments in order to get the funding for those programs. He has suggested focusing our military efforts on the people behind 9/11, not some ambitious (and, quite frankly, insane) program of spreading democracy by gunpoint. He has proposed money to invest in our military while cutting programs such as FCS that don’t apply well to our current conflicts.

I realize that there are concerns among moderate Republicans about Obama’s emphasis on healthcare and social nets, but there are good business reasons for doing this. I can’t really lay out the arguments in favor of this completely, but the bottom line is that we’re a nation of consumers, and more people consuming means more work for everyone else. Wages, financial security, and growing real median wages are pretty critical for our nation to grow. I’ve posted links recently about the impact of various forms of stimulus on GDP. His policies are pro-growth.

In fact, that’s why I think he’s such a good choice. He’s been very pragmatic with his policy positions, backed by good economics and good science. That’s the biggest pro for Obama. Beyond that, Barack Obama has run a singularly consistent, coherent campaign. I hope you pull the Obama lever, fill in the Obama circle, or touch the Obama button when you vote.

(as an aside, it’s amazing how much scrutiny people are giving to Obama’s policies. McCain has given so little detail and yet no one gives it a second thought or questions how he’s going to pay for anything. Third party candidates usually don’t lay out budget details at all and yet they’re “better” than Obama… no idea how this makes sense…)

Oh, and one other thing: FatMixx will have a new post automatically up at noon today containing MSNBC’s results for several key battleground states and CT. The national tracker will stay up at left until at least tomorrow. Feel free to hang out in the comments of that post today. I’m hosting a small gathering here to watch the results come in. I’ll still be on Twitter and FM during the evening. Have fun, everyone, and GET OUT AND VOTE!

This one will be brief: people interested in technology issues, startups, entrepreneurship, and the Internet should go read Tim O’Reilly’s post on why he’s voting for Obama. I also want to link to my own “Why I’m Voting for Obama” post which links to both Lawrence Lessig (expert on the law and technology) and Marc Andreessen’s (co-founder of Netscape) posts on why they’re voting for Obama.

All three of these guys get the technology world and what it takes to build good startups. They, along with other Silicon Valley leaders, including Google’s Eric Schmidt, are all supporting Obama. On these issues, he’s simply the far better candidate.

As we get closer to the election, I’ll try to single out a few posts here and there that lay out the affirmative case for voting for Obama and Biden.

Today’s installment is this post from Amanda Marcotte where she lays out the feminist perspective on voting for Obama/Biden. While the word feminist is an anathema for hard-right-wing Republicans, feminism is simply about women’s health, equal pay for equal work, and for the basic equality that all people deserve. From that perspective, Amanda summarizes how Obama and Biden have furthered womens’ rights with sound policies and principled votes. I agree with her, and with Josh’s recent post on the matter.

I also read the Elaine Lafferty piece Marcotte mentions a few days ago (the day I panned the Daily Beast on Twitter) and thought it exhibited an amazing sense of snobbery and condescension. I really don’t understand the Daily Beast. So far, I think it sucks, and it sucks in large part because of that snobbery. I mean, hell, watch the interview with Tina Brown, The Daily Beast founder, to see what I mean:

pretentious, much?

MSNBC widget will have election results live right here. Hopefully that map is mostly blue on November 5th.

Remember to vote, and vote early if that’s available to you in your state.

My fundamental problem with the choice of Sarah Palin, and really what the McCain campaign has become over the last few weeks, is embodied in this clip. Their speeches are all derisiveness and snark, very little substance. No explanation of why this fruit fly research wasn’t worth it or why the earmarks process shouldn’t make sense. This was a prepared speech, by the way, so it was written into the speech that way. I doubt she even knew what the study was about.

By the way, if you’re not watching Maddow, you should. She’s funny and actually lets her guests, not all of whom agree with her, talk rather than shouting over or at them.

(last note: to be fair, the earmark Palin is criticizing is an agricultural study, not a genetic one, to ward off damage to olive crops, but I suspect that she didn’t know that as she was reading off the teleprompter… I realize I’m hypothesizing here, but based on her previous record, I’m feeling good about it)

Update: it occurs to me that perhaps the title is in the opposite order it should be… but whatever.

Neat little story from fivethirtyeight.com:

Last week, Julie Hensley made one of her thousands of phone calls on behalf of Barack Obama. A woman answered. As Hensley ran through her short script, the husband suddenly broke in impatiently.

“Ma’am, we’re voting for the n***er.” And hung up.

Hensley wasn’t having it. “I went and made a couple other calls but chafed over this absurdity,” she told us, “so I called them back, as I still had a couple questions for the wife.” This time the man answered, asked pointedly who she was, and when she replied he hung up again.

…

As for Hensley, her story ended with a twist. A couple hours later during a pause in her dials, her phone rang. She recognized the number. “This is going to be good,” she remembers thinking, getting ready to scrap.

It was the husband. He was calling for the woman on whom he’d hung up. She then got something she didn’t expect — an apology. Calmly, Hensley told the man she’d accept his apology on one condition — he had to tell her who he was voting for.

“Oh, I don’t normally talk about it but I feel like I owe you,” the man said. “I am voting for Senator Obama.” He asked if Hensley would like to speak to his wife, as he’d interrupted the original call. Hensley mentioned that she had been surprised when he’d called to apologize. Apparently the husband and wife had been talking the entire couple hours since the original call. “Did she get upset with you?” Hensley asked.

“What do you think?” the man replied.

Eleven days.

Awesome that he and his wife talked it out. Best thing you can do is talk to your loved ones when they display this sort of ignorance. Call this stuff out, but talk it through.

The bulk of the linked post is a bunch of anecdotes about volunteers of both campaigns working around Virginia. It’s worth reading.

I’ve refrained from blogging about the election because, well, I’ve got nothing to say that you all haven’t heard before or can find anywhere else. I’ve tried to pass on articles that provided more than the typical horse race coverage. (No polls on FM except the final election results!)

I’m going to take a slight break on this policy to tie some links together because, quite frankly, they’re really important and the sign of things to come.

The first theme is that the Republicans are setting up a bogus voter fraud conspiracy in the mind of their supporters in order to challenge the legitimacy of what looks to be a pretty solidly Democratic year. This is dangerous stuff because it creates anger and fear about the election over unfounded allegations. Let’s review the facts here:

1. Josh Marshall summarizes the issues with the ACORN fraud allegations here. Steve Benen does the honors here.
2. There hasn’t been any vote fraud. How can I say that? Because no votes have been cast yet. Oops. Forgot about early voting, which has started. I’m still pretty confident no fraud has happened yet, because of the safeguards that exist.
3. What the right wing is going nuts about is potential registration fraud. It’s not even clear how often that has happened because many of these reports are about cards flagged by ACORN’s own internal checks, but still have to be turned in by law:
   

   Kettenring said ACORN can’t destroy cards, even suspicious ones — which it flags with a sheet labeling it ”problematic.” He said that happened in this case when the forms were submitted to Orange County, where the registrations were collected.

4. Remember the U.S. Attorney scandal

Keep in mind that this has been a focus of the DOJ for the last 8 years and they have yet to prosecute a single successful voter fraud case. That’s because the idea of widespread voter fraud is stupid on it’s face. Voter suppression and disenfranchisement is a key strategy for Republicans. Keep in mind that they’re looking for “veterans, policeman, security personnel and firefighters to work as poll watchers on election day at inner city polling places” in several states now. This isn’t about fair elections but about intimidation.

The other major issue I want to mention is how nasty this race has become over the last few weeks. It’s going to get much, much worse if current reports are to be believed. People at Palin rallies are screaming “terrorist” and “kill him” while there are several videos of McCain/Palin supporters at events saying ridiculously ignorant things.

This is what they’re down to.

They’re now paying for robo-calls repeating the same lies that McCain has tried to spread at campaign rallies and during the last debate. He’s running these calls all over the country even though he disavowed this tactic in the 2000 elections. Of course, he hired the guys who did this to him in 2000, so perhaps it’s not surprising.

The point is that blatant racism is coming out of the woodwork while unhinged surrogates go on TV calling Obama un-American. They are trying to get you, your friends, and your fellow Americans to be afraid of Obama and Biden. They’ve got nothing else to run on, and it’s turning into a hate fest of racism and bigotry. They know they’re going to lose and are setting this election up to be won on hate or, if that doesn’t work, are getting ready to set up the next witch hunt against a Democratic President.

Luckily, the Obama campaign is fighting back.

It’s up to the rest of us, though. This isn’t what our country is about, and it’s not how people should win elections. If you’re a conservative, you should still vote for Obama. Donate what you can, and keep in mind that your time might be more valuable than your money at this point. Volunteer if you have time, and call friends and family in key swing states. If you’re an iPhone user, download the Obama iPhone app. It’ll help you prioritize those calls. If you have family in a swing state, make the great schlep.

This is a critical election, and the choice is stark. You’re seeing one campaign operating on the same playbook since the beginning, with the same issue priorities and the same principles. He’s been able to do this because he and his campaign have been on the right side of these issues from the beginning. McCain has lurched from arch-conservative to populist to confused over the last few months. He’s only thinking about the campaign, which won’t help when he finally gets into office. They talk about us needing to know who the real Barack Obama is. I think it would help if we knew who the real John McCain is this week.