Author: Glenn Hauman

First, to all the people who didn’t make it to see this day. David H. Andrew. The missing from the Lower Ninth. Steve Gilliard. Jim Capozzola. Molly Ivins. All the dead in Iraq and Afghahistan. Martin and Malcolm. Rosa and Medgar. Emmett Till. Cesar and Abbie. Jack and Bobby. Toot. Everyone whose time on this earth ran out before their hope did.

Second… to the new President-elect of these United States. Here’s to you, sir.

This day is called the Feast of Barack:

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

Will stand a-tiptoe when the day is named,

And rouse him at the name Obama.

He that shall see this day and live t’old age,

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,

And say "To-morrow is Obama’s Day":

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars

And say "These wounds I had on Obama’s day."

Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,

But he’ll remember with advantages

What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,

Familiar in his mouth as household words

Indiana, Ohio, Missouri,

West Virginia, Nevada and Georgia,

Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.

This story shall the good man teach his son;

And Obama’s Day shall ne’er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remembered;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he today that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And people in America now abed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Obama’s day.

 

Go vote. And if you have the time, volunteer.

…but I’m a registered Republican in New Jersey, and I haven’t gotten a single robocall since the primaries ended. I guess they just aren’t trying very hard here.

Oh, but wait– I have gotten fundraising letters. Which shows their priorities, I guess.

All right, really simple. As you may know, Sarah Palin, "champion of smaller government and family values", and Republican nominee for vice-president, was just found guilty of ethics violations in pressuring her subordinates to fire her ex-brother-in-law, Mike Wooten… using the resources of the state to punish Wooten.

Now, imagine she gets elected to vice-president.

Is there a single person reading this who doesn’t think that Mike Wooten will be audited by the IRS?

What if he’s put on the no-fly list? In Alaska, that’s crippling– they fly everywhere in the state, plus to get to the continental 48, unless you want to drive for hours through Canada.

How about if Wooten has his passport file flagged? If that happens and he’s on the no-fly list, he’s effectively locked in Alaska permanently.

Is it out of the realm of possibility that his phone would be tapped and his email scrutinized?

Does anybody think that Sarah Palin wouldn’t use the powers of her office to continue going after Wooten? And if so, why would you let her get even close to that level of power?

And if she did get this power– what would stop her from using it on you if you crossed her?

Paul Krugman on the financial crisis:

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Fear and negative equity … The two things we have to fear are fear itself and negative equity, and the depleted capital of financial institutions … Amongst the things we have to fear are fear itself, negative equity, and the depleted capital of financial institutions.

Okay, this is a bad marketing slogan– the latest from Microsoft:

Windows — Life Without Walls

Think about it. Walls are actually important to windows– they keep the window in place. If you don’t have a wall in the first place, you have one of three things:

1. Windows aren’t needed; there’s nothing in the way.

2. Windows are so big and oversized that it becomes a wall in and of itself;

3. Windows falls to the ground hard and crashes.

Maybe they should bring back Seinfeld.

If you had 4:41 in the pool, you won!

Yes, 4:41 PM, not AM the next day.

As always: 110 Stories.

Oh, and we have this via John Cole: Osama Who?

The mother of all goalpost moves happened yesterday:

Q But Osama bin Laden is the one that — you keep talking about his lieutenants, and, yes, they are very important, but Osama bin Laden was the mastermind of 9/11 –

PERINO: No, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind of 9/11, and he’s sitting in jail right now.

 Really. I’ll have more to say about this later, because someone should avoid mean (but accurate) words on this day.

…which means it’s time to close some windows:

 The USSR was better prepared for a collapse than the US is now, says a man who isn’t Jared Diamond.

Porn Saints.

She can borrow millions for a hockey rink for her town, but Sarah Palin wanted rape victims to pay for their own rape kits. A few thoughts: 1. How many rapes weren’t reported because they didn’t want to pay the money? 2. One can assume that the cost included a morning after pill, which one presumes Palin wanted no part of. 3. According to the police chief that was appointed by Palin, they would have had to allocate enough money expect 12 rapes a year… in a town of 6000 people. That means that they expect the odds of being sexually assaulted is 1 in 500. Which is about four times the national per capita average. But hey, we already know Wasilia is the meth capital of Alaska…

Scott McClellan to Barack Obama: Don’t investigate us. “If Obama were to win,” he said last week, “that would be an issue his administration would have to face early … because he’s pledging to be a uniter, not a divider — without saying those exact words we campaigned on in 2000. He’s pledging to change the way Washington works, and if Congress were to pursue that, it would be very divisive.” You know what unites a community? A crackdown on crime. If law and order crackdowns work in neighborhoods, why won’t it work on Wall Street or Pennsylvania Avenue?

Thought control in economics, or the perils of groupthink.

Armstrong WIllams asks: "Who says President Bush is irrelevant and only a burden to anyone who dares invoke his name?" And the answer is: Anyone who takes a quarter of a million dollars in payola to repeat his propaganda, Mr. Williams. So how much did he pay you this time around?

So this is what Ethan Lebovics has been up to…

Oh, and I’ve joined Facebook. All because some meanie started posting photos of someone that kinda looked like me about 20 years ago. Scaaaaaary stuff.