After the Election, Rebooting the Right – TIME When a party suffers the kind of beating the Republicans have taken in the past two elections, the public has not rejected one of its factions. It has rejected the party as a whole. Voters have turned on pro-choice as well as pro-life Republicans, on Senators who favored amnesty and ones who fought it. Evidently voters did not believe that Republicans of any stripe offered solutions to the challenges America faces now. You know that former girlfriend or boyfriend you dated for a while, that kind of stalked you after it was…
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President Bush delivered a speech at an international gathering in Peru earlier today, and waxed nostalgic about those warm and wonderful days immediately after 9/11, when the entire world was on our side and was ready to stand with us against a common threat. Excuse me, I need to get rid of a load of bile now. Because this same brush-clearing faux cowboy diplomat worked reeeeal hard to screw up our reputation world wide, totally squandering the goodwill that we had gained, and also totally squandering our short-lived sense of national unity. Thousands of lives were lost before the war…
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A couple of Russian musicians made a rather sweet little music video as a tribute to “Misses Palin.” They’re good musicians – accomplished, even, but their subtitles are the best part. [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/XR9V_aOCga0" width="425" height="344" wmode="transparent" /] They’re cute – like LOLRussians – with a hopeless pash for Palin. You betcha. Doggone it.
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Last Saturday, I happened to catch the repeat of This American Life on WBEZ; the last 30 minutes or so is a Studs Terkel piece that seemed particularly appropriate. Terkel died a few weeks ago, we’re in the midst of an economic downturn that ought to be described as a “freefall,” and we’ve just elected a mixed race, self-identified black man as our President. The Terkel segment is a collection of pieces from his Hard Times radio series, with people talking about life in the Depression. There are some surprising revelations from a woman who realized that as a poor…
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Pretty cool. I had this in my “shared Google News” backlog. Which is pretty much the only way I can “blog” during the workday, via my iPhone, that just takes a few clicks. I really like this image. Via Open Thread | Crooks and Liars
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It’s unclear if this Dilbert comic is about the inevitable arc of optimism-to-disillusionment in project managment, or if it’s about the elections. Or more likely, both. Either way, we’re frelled unless we break the pattern. Original at Dilbert comic strip for 11/09/2008 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive. Via Joey the Accordion Guy.
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The New York Times has a slideshow of various maps showing how the electoral results break down. The first map is notated “Only 22 percent of American counties voted more Republican than they did in 2004.” This one shows that 78 percent of American counties voted more Democratic than they did in 2004. I thought it was hyperbole when I read some pundits saying that the Republican party was on its way to becoming a regional, not a national, force in politics. But in this cycle at least, it seems it’s advantage: Democrats. We’ll see how we’re doing in about…
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Sen. Hatch may become senior Republican in Congress – Salt Lake Tribune WASHINGTON – The Senate’s most senior Republican was recently convicted of a felony corruption and may be forced out. The second most senior Republican could land a Cabinet spot under President Obama. Waiting in the wings of GOP seniority: Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican first elected in 1976.
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On Election Night, or as ***Dave calls it, Obama Night, a small group of strangers gathered for a quiet celebration at the Lincoln Memorial. What a shot. What a magnificent image. Via Daily Kos: Lincoln Memorial – my election night
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Teh awsum way to cross teh finish line: I liked this image a lot; it showed up in my feed back on Monday or Tuesday and was apparently taken at one of the last, or THE last, campaign appearances President-Elect Barack Obama made. And yes, I cherish typing that phrase. But I’m not going to get all triumphalist about the win, the way GOP commentators and bloggers did back in 2000 and 2004. We got a clean, solid win and a number of formerly “Red” states were in the “Blue” column, purely because of a lot of hard work by…