President Barack Obama.

From the latest artist’s statement over at The Pain:

With less than a month now to go before election Day and the country in a shambles, Obama is ahead in all the polls and even I am cautiously, against my better judgment, starting to hope that maybe, just this once, the shitheads will not win. Of course I’ve hoped this several times before, only to be sucker-punched and laughed at by the Shithead Nation. Which could well happen again if enough people secretly turn out to be racists behind the electoral booth curtain. Even if Obama does win, it still feels like a depressing confirmation of one’s most cynical and misanthropic suspicions that things finally had to get this bad—the country in ruin, mired in two losing wars and on the brink of a global Great Depression—before people would grudgingly consent to vote for someone intelligent for a change. It’s hard to believe we might actually have someone smart running the country again; as my friend Megan said, “It seems almost bizarre.” No doubt as soon as we’re at peace and running a surplus again the shitheads will vote for another hawkish, tax-cutting demagogue, like an alcoholic with a few months’ sobriety under his belt who decides that things are going so well that a coupla beers aren’t going to hurt anything.

After a delay due to sheer incompetence on the part of the courier driver, my new 32gb iPod touch is here. Woo. Needless to say I am posting this message from it right now and I must say that typing two-handed and using the auto correcting feature makes for some fairly simple typing. The complete lack of tactile response will certainly take some getting used to though.

The New Yorker’s endorsement of Barack Obama contains a succinct description of the reason for my now-dislike for McCain:

Since the 2004 election, however, McCain has moved remorselessly rightward in his quest for the Republican nomination. He paid obeisance to Jerry Falwell and preachers of his ilk. He abandoned immigration reform, eventually coming out against his own bill. Most shocking, McCain, who had repeatedly denounced torture under all circumstances, voted in February against a ban on the very techniques of “enhanced interrogation” that he himself once endured in Vietnam—as long as the torturers were civilians employed by the C.I.A.

Sarah Palin misquotes former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright:

Now she said it, I didn’t. She said, ‘There’s a place in Hell reserved for women who don’t support other women.’

Albright’s quote was “help other women”, not support. Perhaps it’s not worth explaining the difference to the vacuous veep nominee. Words are complicated. At least candidates are now free to openly declare that people who don’t vote for them are going to hell. Combined with recent efforts to further entwine religion and politics, clearly America is headed to a fun place.