Obama Surpasses 66 Million Vote Mark

The latest count of the national popular vote now puts Senator Barack Obama just past the 66 million vote mark. This is far more votes cast for any candidate for president in the history of the United States and only the second time since 1976 that a Democratic candidate for president has garnered more than 50% of the vote.

Most government offices are likely closed in honor of Veteran's Day today, so few more national ballots will be counted by election offices. However, the final vote figures should soon be made official as well as a call on the state of Missouri which John McCain should finally edge out by about 5,000 votes. The senate race in Minnesota still remains too close to call, however it is likely that Republican Senator Norm Coleman has just edged out former Saturday Night Live comic and writer Al Franken by just over 200 votes unless a state required recount or any ballots not previously counted emerge to change that outcome, which seems sort of unlikely.

The latest vote count as of last evening puts Senator Barack Obama well ahead with 66,056,046 votes compared to 57,838,800 for Senator John McCain. And additional 1% of the vote is scattered to minor party candidates such as Independent candidate Ralph Nader and Green Party Candidate Cynthia McKinney and others.

GM Stock Hits A Low Not Seen Since 1946, While Two More Banks Fail

Fresh signs of more problems for the economy make it clear that it will extremely difficult to to rescue the American automobile industry as well as other troubled businesses and some banks. Unfortunately it is only a temporary raise in the insured savings limit to $250,000 from the normal $100,000. And it is still likely that many will continue to remove funds from troubled banks, only helping to advance their slide into collapse.

For General Motors, which is bleeding cash, it is not clear whether any bailout will be enough to help the ailing American auto giant. General Motors needs sales, and the public isn't buying because they are hurting financially and buying a new car isn't at the top of many Americans wish lists right now. GM stock is trading at a little over $3.46 cents today. This low level hasn't been witnessed since 1946, when GM just begun to build new cars and switch back to peacetime production of goods.

The United States needs it's automobile industry to survive. It is a vital to millions of jobs somehow related to this vital industry in some way, including car dealers, parts, service and even loans. Congress will have to do something and very soon.

Another seriously bad sign was the shipping giant DHL is trimming jobs. This proves that business and others are not shipping goods at the level previously witnessed when the economy was stronger. It is a bad omen for the economy for sure. Many of the 9,500 jobs being cut are among both management as well as nonunion drivers not part of the Teamsters Union. It is another sign of the problems with having a nonunion job in this bad economy, where it is harder to lose your job if it is a union job. Another bad sign is that DHL is specifically cutting back on it's American shipping service where it's international services remain more healthy.

In the very short term, congress and the White House need to act quickly. And in the slightly longer term, President Obama will have his hands full of challenges to rescue jobs and the economy. A difficult path lies ahead, where immediate action is required to stop the daily drip-drip of bad news about the economy.

Obama Closing In On 8 Million Vote Win Over McCain

As the counting of votes continues across the nation, President-Elect Barack Obama is closing in on a win by 8 million votes over John McCain. The latest national popular vote count puts Barack Obama well ahead of John McCain by a lopsided 65,431,955 votes to McCain's 57,434,084 with voting trending towards Obama that should continue for a few more days before every state certifies their state vote as official.

While some states such as Oregon and Washington used what was considered to be an advanced mail-in vote system to help prevent election and polling station problems, an extremely long ballot in Oregon with numerous ballot measures has only slowed the counting, where some larger counties such as Washington County may still have as many as 15,000 more ballots yet to be counted. And Washington state allowed any ballot that was postmarked by election day to count, so as late mail shows up at state election offices, new ballots are counted and added to the state totals.

In some other states, a number of other ballots may still remain to be counted as well, and the trend has been for most of these ballots to be trending towards Barack Obama as well, so his total should eventually exceed 8 million more votes than John McCain.

There is also the Senate race in Minnesota still at stake, where there hasn't been any new votes counted in several days, but a recount is looming where Democrat Al Franken narrowly trails incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman by just 221 votes. This senate seat remains too close to call, and it is not clear whether any other votes remain to be counted or whether Al Franken's hopes are pinned on errors in the counting, which is unlikely to change many more than just a handful of votes in most cases.

But Senator Barack Obama, the lopsided vote is of near landslide proportions, and is the biggest vote total for an American candidate for president ever cast. This big vote total is in itself of historic proportions.

Polish Government And Obama May Not Be In Sync On Missile Defense

While Polish President Lech Kaczynski claims on his website that President-Elect Barack Obama has voiced support for continuing the controversial Missile Interceptor program of the Bush Administration that has only prompted Russia to threaten to place battlefield nuclear weapons pointed at Poland near it's borders, an advisor to Obama has disputed the story. Officially the Obama transition team claims that Obama has made "no commitment" on whether to go forward with the controversial joint Bush Administration and Polish government military program which has only angered Russia and has created some of the most frosty foreign relations with Russia since the old Cold war days.

This issue could potentially give the Obama presidency a major area to open up better relations with Russia by refusing to go ahead with the missile defense program in exchange for Russia not moving ahead with any close nuclear threat to Poland. Even some conservatives such as Pat Buchanan feel that this Bush Administration proposal is way too provocative, and if Poland and the Czech Republic would only hold referendum votes on the issue, and the voters would reject the missile defense proposals, then it might present a face saving way out on this issue that only seems to provoke too many old Cold War tensions.

The fact of the matter is that Russia has always been very paranoid about it's border security, and even more so since WWII and the old Cold War. And missiles placed near Russian territory only seem to inspire a dangerous arms race or other tensions.

In 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis was largely triggered in response to the U.S. placing some nuclear missiles in Turkey close to the borders of the old Soviet Union, which inspired then Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to work with Cuba to build nuclear missile silos aimed at the United States coast of Florida just 90 miles away. The situation brought the U.S. and the Soviet Union very close to WWIII, however the Kennedy Administration used Attorney General Robert Kennedy to seek a delinked agreement with the Russians to remove the missiles in Turkey in exchange for their removal of any nuclear threat in Cuba. This history lesson should have guided the Bush Administration into the realization that the placement of any missiles, offensive or defensive near the borders of Russia will only promote a dangerous tension and provoke potential military conflict.

The incoming Obama Administration needs to learn from this important historical lesson of the serious dangers of promoting any border nuclear weapons threats by either the U.S. or Russia, and prevent any such tensions from developing.

Border tensions with Russia are very unproductive and dangerous, and a very bad path to go down. It is simply not worthwhile to provoke such a conflict, and instead concentrate on improving relations, where the overall picture of good relations between Russia and the U.S. needs to be the central concern. And little issues such as a rollback of the Polish missile program could go a long way towards breaking the current foreign policy chill with Russia somewhat. And it is hoped that Russia would also present some positive steps such as less interest in involvement in Georgia or perhaps in Venezuela as well. A continued chill in U.S. and Russia relations could soon create some serious Russian military involvement with the erratic Hugo Chavez, which could only lead to a potential new Cuban Missile Crisis style threat in the future with Venezuela or another leftist South American state acting as a host for Russian military hardware or missiles and a potentially serious border security military threat to the U.S. once again. This is certainly a path to avoid.

Russia Sends Chilly Signals To New Administration

Russia certainly had a golden opportunity to help to cool recent tensions with the U.S. by sending some positive signals to the new incoming administration, but instead used the opportunity to ratchet up tensions with a threat to station short range battlefield nuclear missiles near Poland's border in response to the united effort by Poland and the U.S. to station 10 future Missile Interceptors in Poland.

The new post-election comments of Russian President Medvedev were hardly helpful to improving and cooling recent tensions heightened since the Russian military actions in Georgia during the August Summer Olympics, and hardly sent any olive branch to the new American administration unlike most world governments, and if anything marked yet another example where the Russian government just doesn't appear to be able to judge Western reaction to either their actions or comments.

The cold hard facts are that right now the U.S. only has 10 operational Missile Interceptors that are all stationed in Alaska at this time despite the U.S. spending more than $100 billion on antimissile experiments and projects since the 1980's STAR WARS proposals of President Ronald Reagan. Russia is known to have at least 4,518 nuclear warheads at this time, but could easily deploy upwards of 8,000 if really needed. And since these Russian missiles heavily use solid rocket fuel propulsion systems, they are more difficult to target and shoot down than liquid fuel based missiles, which makes it likely than only 5 of 4,518 Russian missiles could actually be stopped in the event of any such real nuclear military crisis.

In fact, military experts are convinced that about 16,000 space based Missile Interceptors, not ground based systems, are really needed to stop any serious military threat. However with serious American space vehicle problems such as the very troubled and cash strapped NASA Space Shuttle program, the U.S. hardly has the technology or ability to deploy even one space based Missile Interceptor, let alone 16,000 of these systems. And once the U.S. would start the weaponization of space, then other nations such as Russia, China, India, Pakistan or many others may follow suit as well. Eventually thousands of space based weapons could fill the heavens. It is a bad road to travel down.

The big task of President Obama will be to prevent these difficult relations with Russia only from worsening and to send signals to the Russians that a new arms race is not a constructive path to follow, and that neither the U.S. or Russian economy should spend hundreds of billions of dollars on such an expensive and dangerous military path such as the weaponization of space or more deployments of missile, either offensive or defensive near the borders of either important Western and Eastern states. The U.S. major recession is perhaps the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression, and the recent huge drop in world oil prices will only spell problems from the Russian economy which was so buoyed by the high oil prices in more recent years. Neither economy can really afford the high cost and uncertainly and fear created by a new arms races and some nation needs to step forth with a olive branch to return relations to a more constructive and cooperative point.

Civil Rights Move Both Ahead And Backward With Election

While the election of Barack Obama certainly moved ahead the needle barometer of civil rights in the United States very significantly, there were also some shocking substantial civil rights setbacks as well in the election. The most notable was the passage of the constitutional amendment in the state of California that bans Gay marriage.

While Barack Obama swept through California with a landslide win of historic proportions, defeating John McCain by an incredible 61% to 37% margin, a socially backward constitutional amendment to ban Gay marriage in the state passed by a narrow 52% to 48% margin, even though some top Republicans such as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger even opposed the ballot measure. Some civil rights such as full equality for Gay Americans likely lags due to some deep set socially conservative sentiments among many in both the African-American as well as Hispanic communities who still do not equate the full equality of those in the Gay community as comparable to their own social struggles for full equality in American society. And despite the seeming acceptance by the public of some notable Gay American personalities such as Ellen DeGeneres, who was publicly wed to her lover Portia de Rossi in an elaborate California Gay wedding ceremony, cities such as Los Angeles immediately stopped issuing marriage licenses for same sex weddings in the wake of the vote in favor of the California ballot measure.

Arizona and Florida also passed constitutional bans on Gay marriage as well, while Arkansas passed a ballot measure aimed at banning adoptions by Gay citizens. And while Barack Obama was able to win in Colorado by a small but healthy margin, a ballot measure ending affirmative action in the state was just barely losing with a hair over 50% of the voters saying no, but could still pass when any absentee ballots are finally counted that might include some more conservative leaning voters. In Nebraska, a similar ballot measure ending affirmative action did pass by a big margin while John McCain also carried the state by a big margin as well.

The Tuesday election indeed had some very uneven results for the advancement of full civil rights for all citizens in the United States. Barack Obama broke the huge barrier of race by winning the presidency with a big win and more votes cast for a candidate for president in the United States ever. More than 64 million voters voted for Senator Obama. And that was a wonderful achievement and an excellent sign of social advancement. Even civil rights leader Jesse Jackson who was caught with a mean spirited attack on Obama earlier in the campaign season was visibly in tears in Grant Park with the big Obama win on Tuesday evening, fully realizing the huge social significance of this historic event, while at the same time some voters around the nation were still maintaining social barriers to other Americans based on their race or their sexual orientation.

Big Obama Victory Due To Masterful Campaign And Exceptional Candidate

The big win by Barack Obama and huge celebrations nationwide were the result of an exceptional candidate and the best organized political campaign in American history. In just four short years, this incredible young man went from state senator to American president with a huge win in both popular and electoral votes.

It seemed incredible how Hillary Clinton, who was an excellent strong candidate was upset in the primaries by the superior Obama organization that only improved through the general election, and was able to fight off every unfair attack from Republican organizations and the McCain Campaign itself, but Barack Obama was a like a candidate never witnessed before in American history.

Not only did the Obama Campaign win all the states that John Kerry won in 2004, but it took 8 states away from the Bush win, putting together a big electoral win. It was an incredible big win.

soon the hard part will be to deliver on all the promises. But with such a masterful campaign and the ability to delegate responsibility to the right persons, Obama seemed like the only candidate up to the job. And that's why the voters decided, and overwhelmingly , to hire him yesterday.