That's the dumbest thing I've seen this week.

But then, I haven't seen anything else from Glenn Beck this week.

Ah well, you can't fix stupid.

Jonnan

I thought that's what baseball bats were for?

Now I'm all confused.

(Disclaimer: I mean fixing stupid, not necessarily fixing Glenn Beck.)

I kept quiet on this one, as its not my election, I dont live there.  Several things about the photos/comments struck me though.

They were not "staged" in a sinister sense.  The last was staged for sure, but its a natural follow on from the incident, and natural for the photographer to take advantage of what happened.  The photographer, so it turned out after a lot of digging to find out who he was by a lot of people, was just a memebr of the crowd - not a machiavellian CIA plant on a campaign of disinformation  

What really struck me about that night as an outside observer of the events, was the energy in the crowd.  An energy that was evident during the whole campaign.  In 50 years of watching US elections, I have never seen such a collective sense of purpose, on both sides, though especially so on the Democrat's side given the oratory of Obama.  That was a marked change - huge change - from other elections in recent years.

The latter cannot be a bad thing, to re-energise an electorate into participating in voting once more after so many years of apathy about the process is, to my mind anyway, something to celebrate regards of political affliation.  When Regan wiped the Dems face by taking all States except one in a Landslide to beat all Landslides, the Planet did not disolve into a parody of the destruction of Rome and end of civilisation that Dems charactorised it as, nor did we float along the river of true enlightment for evermore that Republicans predicted.  The roles are reversed this time, but the Planet will survive, at the end of the day populations are too savy to let politicians stick in the ultimate knife.

Democracy cannot survive unless its people participate and vote. That aspect got kinda wobbly recently, but back on track now with the self evident turnout. Will Obama deliver?  Who knows - personally I think he will - however, thats not the real winner.  The real winner is seeing a real genuine passion and energy appear outside the standard political supporter/activist once more.

Thats a Very Good Thing.