united states

I’ll let this guy speak for his own self.

Couple other links on the topic…these are largely the symptoms of the above phenomenon.

Here’s some general background reading on the changes happening during the period ranted about.

Remember how Wisconsin was broke and teachers needed to take a pay and rights cut to balance the budget? Yea…turns out that money was just needed by folks more supportive of the Governor.

Remember how people used to take vacations? Yea, me neither. But it turns out they do, in other countries.

Working more makes Americans happier than Europeans, according to a study published recently in the Journal of Happiness Studies. That may be because Americans believe more than Europeans do that hard work is associated with success, wrote Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn, the study’s author and an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Dallas.

“Americans maximize their… [happiness] by working, and Europeans maximize their [happiness] through leisure,” he found.

So despite research documenting the health and productivity benefits of taking time off, a long vacation can be undesirable, scary, unrealistic or just plain impossible for many U.S. workers.

[full story]

BTW, that concept that hard work is what it takes to change your stars and it’s easier to do in the U.S. that anywhere else? Yea…not so much.

The results are quite spectacular. Figure 3 shows that while in the Nordic countries and the UK, men born in the lowest income quintile (the income quintile of the father) have a probability of 25-30% to stay in this lowest quintile; in the US, this probability is more than 40%. Figure 4 shows that the probability of US men born in the lowest quintile to move to the top quintile is less than 8%, while in the Nordic countries and the UK, this percentage is around 12%.

[full paper]

Obama Clinches Nomination, Capping Historic, Bitter Contest – WSJ.com

The Democratic presidential nomination his, Barack Obama reached out Wednesday to mend fences with his defeated rival as Republican opponent John McCain tried to frame the fall campaign on his own terms. “I think he has exercised very bad judgment on national security issues and others,” Sen. McCain said.

Sen. Obama captured enough convention delegates Tuesday to make a historic claim to the Democratic presidential nomination, the first African-American to earn a major party’s nod.

Hillary Clinton was angling to become Sen. Obama’s running mate and her aides ramped up the speculation on that matter Wednesday. “I think a lot of her supporters would like to see her on the ticket,” Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe said. But Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs cautioned “there is no deal in the works.”
A clip from Sen. Obama’s speech after he has secured enough delegates to win the Democratic presidential nomination. (June 3)

It’s official, Obama gets the nod. Very good work, sir. Madam, madam, please…Madam, please! Step back…

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Oh, and I think it’s hillaryious that McCain thinks saying that Obama is dumb on national security while at the same time defending the war in Iraq is going to work for him.

Still, the nomination marked a remarkable accomplishment for the son of a Kenyan immigrant who spent part of his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia.

“Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States of America,” Sen. Obama told an estimated 32,000 people gathered in St. Paul, Minn., late Tuesday.

The venue symbolized his start of the general-election campaign against the likely Republican nominee, Sen. McCain: In September, Republicans hold their presidential convention in the same city. And Sen. Obama’s huge audience, compared with Sen. McCain’s less than 1,000 supporters for his speech Tuesday night in New Orleans, dramatizes the Democrats’ big edge in voter excitement, evident all year in record turnout for the party’s primaries and caucuses.

Sen. McCain, his own nomination locked up months ago, defined the distinction he will draw with the less-experienced 46-year-old Sen. Obama, who is 25 years his junior: “Both Sen. Obama and I promise we will end Washington’s stagnant, unproductive partisanship,” he said. “But one of us has a record of working to do that, and one of us doesn’t.”

Yea…McCain has been working on changing Washington for what…25 years now. How’s that going for ya, buddy? What hasn’t that fixed in 25 years? How many lobbyists do you meet in 25 year in Washington, BTW? Many of the really hot ones weren’t even born when you got there, ifyouknowwhatI’msayin’…

It was the longest nomination race ever. Early returns were in keeping with the closeness of the Obama-Clinton race — a split decision, with Sen. Obama winning in Montana Tuesday and Sen. Clinton in South Dakota.

Once the polls closed Tuesday night, the Obama campaign released the names of 26.5 superdelegates — those from Michigan and Florida get half-votes, in punishment for holding their primaries too early. With others that came in through the day, and Sen. Obama’s share of Montana’s and South Dakota’s 31 pledged delegates, he could claim the 2,118-delegate majority needed for nomination.

Sen. Obama started Tuesday roughly 40 delegates shy of the number needed. But he exceeded that with the night’s final group endorsement from party leaders. In addition, 10 delegates pledged to former candidate and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards switched to him, besides the pledged delegates he’d get from Tuesday’s primaries.

So it looks like this thing was oven when I said it was, which is to say when Edwards said it was. That with the 3/5 votes from Michigan and Florida (haw-haw) and the thing was o.v.e.r.

Oh wait….you mean…Madam, please, please step back.. Madam!!!

And Sen. Clinton brushed aside calls for her to end her campaign last night, telling a crowd of cheering supporters in New York: “I will be making no decisions tonight.” That raised the prospects of days of wrangling and negotiating.

aaargh. And she keeps winning friends like this too. Riiight.

So it ends much the same as it dragged on, with Obama as the presumptive nominee and Clinton nipping at his heels.

It is quite a day for the the U.S. as someone who is the same color as a bunch of people we used for slaves is now, finally, one of the two people with a chance to be The President of the United States of America.

Pretty nifty, these united states (from thirteen original colonies).

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UPDATE: Longer version of the 16-month campaign.