As those of you who know me well know that I’m very much into politics. I follow political news, events and the last year was very fruitful. I just wanted to leave a couple of words about the most memorable of those events in this election cycle.

First there was a circus of a Republican primary. Each candidate would get their 15 minutes which would end in a scandal and the candidate would completely fade and become irrelevant. At the end there were 2 guys standing — one with a huge money advantage who was campaigning for the past 6 years and a guy whose 15 minutes of fame turn came just at the right time. The primary kept dragging on and on and ended up pretty much how everyone expected before it even begun.

Next big thing came when Mitt Romney picked his running mate. There were a lot of safe choices, but he decided to go for a gamble and went with one of the more radical guys in congress who was still mainstream enough not to end up the 2nd Sarah Palin. The gamble didn’t seem to pay off in the long run. There was no usual bounce in the polls and we all now know how the whole thing ended.

After that followed conventions of both parties. The only thing that really stands out in memory is an amazing speech by Bill Clinton. Everyone who I know who listened to it was glued to the TV screen for the whole duration. Big Bill still got it. I donated $100 to Obama’s campaign right after it.

I don’t want to get into politics of things since nobody will ever agree with each other. The worst thing about Mitt Romney’s candidacy for me was not so much his radical views (at least the words coming out of him during the months preceding October were), but the fact is that after all this time I have no idea what the guy really believes. Only one thing was obvious — he will say ANYTHING that will help him achieve his goal. All throughout I had a strong feeling that his sole reason for wanting to be a president was another trophy to put on his wall of achievements.

Nate Silver provided a fascinating resource to read. It was interesting to watch how the guy who was doing math was being accused of being a liberal propagandist. In the end it seems that Nate nailed the election perfectly. The last pre-election map that was published by him had Florida in pale blue and it still is not decided, even though it looks like it will go to Obama. On his chart of most likely outcomes 332 was the highest peak for months and 303 was the second highest. Thank you, Nate, for you great work. Now I have to wean myself of the addiction of checking 538 every 30 minutes.

So polls stayed pretty much in place for the duration of general election cycle. Until October that is. The first debate was devastating. Romney has reversed his views 180 degrees and Obama was completely stunned a speechless as a lot of us. With the help of Biden and 2 further debates Obama seems to have climbed out of the whole he dug for himself. I donated another $100 to his campaign after the last debate.

And then 2 days ago was the culmination of the whole thing. The evening started out slow, but ended with a resounding victory by Democrats. From the presidency to all the senate races that I was watching closely. There is no better sporting event than a presidential election night. I watched it on CNN and MSNBC.

I’m very much relieved as to how it all went down and I’m proud of the fact that majority of people (over 50%) who cared enough to vote agreed. Hopefully now our government will move closer to the center and both parties will be able to find some common ground. I’m also glad that more than a billion dollars of dark money that flooded this election cycle didn’t seem to amount to anything.

Funniest moments from election night — Fox News meltdown. Those guys really had themselves convinced that they will have a huge victory. Funniest moment from the debates — Obama on horses and bayonets. Funniest parody — Mitt Romney Style.

There are a lot more things I can say about this election, but there are a lot of people out there who already said it better: Andrew Sullivan, Rachel Maddow, Ezra Klein, Nate Silver, Sam Wang and multiple others.

Today is an election day again. For me it’s hard to forget since my voting place is right across the street from the entrance to our building. So I went in and cast my vote, in particular for Mike Bloomberg and Marty Markowitz. Did YOU vote today?

Now that the election is over the header of our blog is going back to its original form. I changed it on January 10th, 2008.

What a great day, what a great night. I’ve been following the events of this election cycle for a year extremely closely and today came the culmination that I’ve been waiting and hoping for. Barack Obama will be 44th President of the United States of America with a landslide win.

I woke up at 7:30am and got a call from my parents. They were already at the polling place casting their votes for Obama. There were no lines. Our polling place was right across the street from us. I was there at 7:55am and was out of there in 5 minutes. No lines, no problems. My sister voted soon after.

I drove to work and everyone there voted as well, for Obama, and just couldn’t wait for the resolution. The waiting started. I don’t think anyone was very productive today. The election was on everyone’s mind. We discussed and talked and thought about it from any possible angle. Then everyone ran home.

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At home Maruk and Sag joined Alena and I. We ordered a pizza, I grabbed the laptop and opened up all my news sites and we started watching — NBC, CBS, ABC, start over.

I expected Virginia to set the tone for the rest of the night early on. But it came so close that nobody would call it. PA got called early on and that wasn’t really a big surprise for anyone. Why McCain spent so much time there is unclear. Obama won it easily with 11% margin!

The first real excitement came around when suddenly OH was called for Obama. That pretty much was “game over” for John McCain right there. We all understood it, and started jumping. The rest of the night was just to see how big the win is going to be. More and more states was falling into the blue column.

What a great night after all. The final results are still not ready, but Obama not just won, but won in a landslide victory, at least per Wikipedia definition. We even dug up some beer and did some toasting. Here is some for the great future of our great country.

P.S. Of course only the future will tell how President Obama handled the huge mountain of problems that he will inherit from George Bush. And of course there are still a lot of people out there who are scared because his skin color is different and he didn’t come from the Washington establishment. But hopefully as the time goes on the country will again become the United States of America.

The election was just the beginning and it was the easy part. Now he has a lot of hard work ahead of him and only time will tell how well he fares as a president.

It’s hard to believe that the election day is finally upon us. The votes have been cast and now it’s on to waiting. About 4 more hours before the news start to appear. Keeping the fingers crossed.

There are 2 things that I’m paying attention to that scare me a lot lately. The U.S. presidential election and the stock market.

The election seems to be going in the right direction. There are still 3 weeks to go and a lot can happen, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. However if you haven’t donated anything yet, or can spare something, please be sure to do it. This is too important to ignore. McCain campaign has managed to beat all the records of pathetic and low.

With respect to the stock market — just this Sunday Alena and I were talking and were wondering if Dow Jones is going to go below 10,000 mark. Well, today it hit 8,579. 52 weeks high is at 14,279. That’s a 40% drop in less the a year. I don’t know what this is going to lead to, but whatever it is it’s not going to be good.