‘Let us become the change we want to see happen’

- Trevor Sargent this morning (full speech here).

And yet another party throws out the Obama-like rallying cries.

Later, a herd of bloggers (what’s the appropriate collective noun?) will be attending the ‘Lessons from Obama’ workshop, which is being given by the Greens’ New Media officer Martin Leathem. See the Live Blog from quarter past five on.

Eoin

FF trying to pull a fast one on bloggers?

I had registered to attend last night’s seminar by the Obama presidential campaign’s New Media director Joe Rospars but, in the end, my gig broadcasting to the masses in UCD prevented me from attending. And I missed quite a storm, it seems.

Can someone pass Chris Jericho a sense of humour?

On the SAG awards red carpet Mickey Rourke made the terrifying mistake of “offending Chris Jericho” by telling him he would be “coming” for him at the upcoming Wrestlemania event. Offending this particular WWE wrestler is apparently the “last thing you want to do”.

The professional wrestler, on top of his very ‘real’ game in the WWE at present was hilariously humourless on Larry King when he got a chance to confront Rourke. Rourke, thankfully, manages to maintain his composure in front of the stone-faced Jericho.

Those crazy wrestlers…

And now, the end is near

A forlorn-looking President George W. Bush in Peru on Sunday, as Asian leaders depart the stage without making eye contact with him. Photo: Lawrence Jackson/Associated Press. (Via Time Magazine/The New York Times)

Unfortunate Christmas ornament

Sorry to be mentioning Christmas already. From the American Family Association:

Looking for an effective way to express your Christian faith this Christmas season to honor our Lord Jesus? Now you can…. with the “Original Christmas Cross” yard decoration.

Those are actually 210 individual ultra bright lights. But it could give the neighbours the wrong impression. (Via The Daily Dish)

Re: What we can learn from the Obama machine

Keith @ Granite Shavings offers a useful Irish perspective on the inner workings of the Obama campaign. He spent two weeks working for the campaign in Virginia.

To my surprise, he says the data collection operation by canvassers cannot be done in Ireland:

Working on the Data Team in the Alexandria Field Office, I got to see just what they had on file for volunteers and voters.  And it was a hell of a lot.  Looking back through old callsheets and canvass packs when we were tidying up the office this week, it was clear that a lot of time and effort was expended earlier in the campaign getting that data in place.  What that meant was that efforts in the final weeks could be focussed very tightly on getting out the voters likely to support Obama, or likely to be winnable.  Rather than trying to call to every house, only confirmed Obama supporters or those who had given an indication (through demographics, registration or otherwise) that they were possible supporters were contacted.  Data is probably the least transferable of their powers to Europe/Ireland.  Data Protection laws limit the amount of information you can collect, and, almost as importantly, how it can be shared between organisational units.

The full post is worth reading for the lessons it offers to party organisers here.

Settling Guantánamo inmates here

I think Amnesty Ireland have been pushing this for sometime but Colm O’Gorman mentioned it again during his speech to the Young Greens on Friday. Not only would we be giving an ex-detainee refuge from torture in his native land, we’d also be gaining leverage with an Obama administration on the closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention centre and the ending of rendition flights through Shannon.

Well it appears the wheels may already be in motion:

A GUANTÁNAMO Bay detainee’s lawyer is in discussions with the Department of Justice and the Department of Foreign Affairs about the possibility of allowing him to settle in Ireland… It is understood there is some resistance to the proposal within the Department of Justice, but some Department of Foreign Affairs officials believe the Government could earn kudos with the Obama administration by agreeing to resettle at least one detainee.

Warp One engage!

I’m with some smelly (I joke!) Greens in Dolphin’s Barn. Needless to say they’re happy with how the presidential contest is going. The house and senate contests remain to be seen.

At this stage, an Obama victory looks almost certain. But CNN plumbs new debts for TV news gimmickry: a reporter in 3D hologram form, a la Star Trek. I shit you not. No doubt the science of this extraordinary development in news journalism will be revealed tomorrow. Until then:

UPDATE: Here’s the science bit. The crucial points:

• 35 HD cameras pointed at the correspondent Jessica Yellin in a ring (like The Matrix)
• 20 computers crunching the data to make it usable
• Wolf Blitzer gets to grips with the technology:

It’s still Jessica Yellin and you look like Jessica Yellin and we know you are Jessica Yellin… I think a lot of people are nervous out there. All right, Jessica. You were a terrific hologram.

Poised

The mood on the internet – it seems like a strange thing to talk about – has been building and building these past 24 hours towards what you might call a plateau of giddiness. I wasn’t on Facebook or any other social networking site in 2004, but I don’t remember the same feeling of anticipation as America went to the polls.

This time round, many people’s statuses on Facebook – OK, Irish people’s – contain references to Obama’s fortunes. “Sarah is very excited about Tuesday (and Wednesday),” and “its gotta be OBAMA OBAMA OBAMA OBAMA!!!!! Liberte et democratie!!” Others are more cautious: “Claire is nervous about the election,” and “John really hopes that America doesn’t make the same mistake again”.

With the events of 2004 fresh in my mind, I’m inclined to be cautious. I still think Obama will win but I’m going to adhere to all the hoary superstitions and touch wood between now and when the polls close.

Of all the statuses, “Kevin is poised” seems the most apt. We’re all poised on this side of the Atlantic. Poised for the result that most of us want. Yet poised for more of the surprises that the last two US presidential elections threw up.

Another instinct I feel is to tell everyone to calm it down. It’s very easy to get caught up in the notion that Obama is “the One”. We’re like moths being drawn  to a flame and we might very well get burned come January. The economy and the situations on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan might see a Democratic president make decisions that repulse us and we need to keep that in mind.

But still, I am surprised to see seasoned commentators – men and women with leather faces who’ve seen it all before – get so excited about today’s outcome. Perhaps Time’s Joe Klein best sums up their feelings:

Some politicians simply are larger than life. Their stories are the stuff of high drama. Over the past few days, I’ve been hearing about the high emotions out in the field, as volunteers flood Obama offices to help canvass–and, in some places, find they have to wait on line for a spot on a phone bank. It is almost banal at this point to say that this has been the most remarkable election I’ve ever seen. It’s been a privilege to be a small part of it, to have had a ringside seat. And now, there is a sense that tomorrow will be the sort of day none of us ever forgets, one way or another–a day of reckoning, in the purest sense, when we will suddenly see ourselves and our country differently, for good or ill.

“For good or ill” – maybe a bit black and white for my tastes but, ultimately, most of us share those sentiments.

What we can learn from the Obama machine

I splashed out this week and bought the Economist (€5.20, comrades!). An article on Obama’s ground operation had this to say:

Some of Mr Obama’s volunteers sign up the old-fashioned way, in person. Others volunteer online. In their local corner of the Obama website, they can meet other Obamaphiles and arrange to knock on specific doors in their neighbourhood. They can download information about who lives in each house, which party they belong to and what they told the last phone canvasser. They can update this information each time they meet a voter. They can also spend hours on the website chatting with like-minded people, watching the candidate’s speeches and uploading their own Barack-related videos.

Religion and politics in the Bronx

This blog is supposed to focus on Irish politics but I witnessed something interesting on the other side of the Atlantic recently that made me wonder about the extent to which religious figures here get involved in politics. I’m just back from a family wedding in New York. A few days after the wedding we attended a mass in the Bronx for the memory of deceased family members. There I observed probably the most political sermon I have ever heard a cleric give.