Greed. Music. War. Love. And many others. We are swept away by their terrors, transported by their glorious vistas. They are the coin of every culture, they are spoken everywhere from the cave of Lascaux to the farthest reaches of space that we can imagine. They are instinctively relearned every generation born, and compulsively and futilely cataloged as they pass and fade into memory. They permeate our our libraries and video stores, but after earnestly searching the many mirrors we’ve held up to our human experience we know nothing more except that their dialect changes from century to century. They seem so much a part of us that we cannot find their source. Their cycle – from speaking to consequence to recorded history to forgetfulness to speaking – is a circle so complete we cannot find their beginning or end. They are elusive, slipping out of our most ingeniously designed rhetorical and religious frameworks only to reappear fully realized and potent and true in our most mute and primitive centers of intuitive, collective understanding.

They are our most defining human trait, but we seem collectively powerless to act upon them. They act upon us. They ARE us. What would we be without them? What could we be without them?

PS. If you haven’t seen Children of Men (clip 2), go immediately and rent it. I watched it two nights in a row, back to back, astounded.

PPS. In case you’re wondering, this was all brought on by watching this tonight:

For reading, commenting, being my connection to the world, and generally being the salt of the earth. I hope you guys have a great Thanksgiving day and that your holiday season is filled with mirth, joy and spiritual abundance. Drop a note and let me know how it went, when you get a chance.

Oh yeah, and one of these. Must. Have.

Once you’ve browsed through the entire beautifully designed presentation, don’t forget to click the “Release Date” button. So cruel, so cruel.

So says BagNewsNotes in comparing and contrasting images of Obama and Bush today.

Barack and Michelle took the girls to serve in a food line at a local church where the Obamas have served food in years past.

After seeing a “We Love Our Prez” sign in the school next door, they decided to make an unscheduled stop to talk to the kids.

Obama said that if they worked hard and treated their family and community with respect, they too “could become President some day”.

More images of the Obama’s service day here.

How many tens of thousands will be inspired to donate $$ and time this holiday season solely because of this simple gesture?

In a 20/20 interview with Barbara Walters, Obama said he thought it was only decent that the executives forgo their bonuses knowing they are laying off people. Michelle said they asked the White House staff to not do everything for the girls because they wanted them to “do their own chores” like making their beds, etc. Barack said that he was trying to figure out a way to pierce the “Washington bubble” around the President because “one of the worst things I think that could happen to a president is losing touch with what people are going through day to day”.

It’s about setting a tone.

P.S. I don’t know what it is about Obama, but kids love the hell out of him. Amira loves saying his name and always yells it out when she sees it on TV. And it’s not because we talk about him incessantly (this blog not withstanding..).

I guess the meme is in the air. Just after last night’s post about us electing Obama in the hopes that basic decency and personal values, intellectual curiosity and a connection to life here on the American streets will be enough to stem the tide that’s against us, Ta-Nehisi (a fellow Gen-X writer at the Atlantic) puts out a great deja vu post about why he voted for Obama:

I don’t know if George Bush is the worst president ever, but his legacy is appalling. What I saw, from my vantage point, was a government of suited thugs who squelched dissent and were intolerant of debate. Virtually everything about the last eight years, stands in direct contrast to everything I learned growing up in my parents house–work hard, be self-reflective, be intelligent, read until your eyes fall out, be honest etc. I supported Obama because, and this is weird to say, I thought he reflected my family values–I thought he represented in the world, the way I’d want my son to represent. I thought he was thick-skinned, deliberative, self-reflective, confident and an avid consumer of information…

Look, it all comes down to this. I believed Obama was the candidate least likely to fly over an American city in the midst of destruction, and appear days later only to tell his point-man he’d done a great job. The most important thing for me is for the leadership of this country to throw off anti-intellectualism and get down to business. I won’t ever know the most intricate details of government policy, and smite me should I ever write like I do. But as a voter, and I guess as a blogger, I knew I wanted someone in the White House who would be able to process all of those details–I wanted someone who was an intellectual, who had a supple mind, and saw no contrast between being a thinking man, and loving Monday Night Football. It’s small, but it’s what I wanted. And it’s why, so far, I’m not terribly disappointed. When it comes down to it, man, I just wanted shit to work again.

Exactly. I also largely voted for Obama because, after watching his brilliant organizational intelligence and his deliberate strategic style of three-dimensional chess, I knew he’d be the best possible choice to get us out of this mess and restore some kind of stability. And he has not disappointed. Anyone with the innate self-assuredness to pick three of his most formidable rivals for VP and Cabinet with the goal of getting things done is just flat-out someone who’s gonna do big things.

I’m mystified by the need of conservatives, liberals and the media to try and shoehorn his behavior into some kind of familiar meme – centrist, liberal, moderate, whatever. It’s this dogmatic, shrill, everyone-in-line kind of political fundamentalism that has been so disastrous for us over the last eight years. Even now, in this financial crisis, Republicans are STILL harping on tax cuts and less spending in the face of pretty much every rational economist agreeing we’re going to have to spend our way out of this.

Obama is a thoroughly post-modern leader. He seems impatient with the rigid categories set up during the last 30-40 years of ideological tug-of-war and wants to do what works – not what is ideologically pure. He has a kind of intuitive, humanitarian-focused pragmatism as his guiding governing philosophy, and has what I think is a healthy distrust of the rhetorical and political straitjackets that are created by adhering too closely to one creed or another.

And that is exactly what makes him so recognizably American. Because that’s how we are. There are very few ultra-pure ideologues in our populace, and because of our richly checkered cultural and political melting pot, we are not locked into having to battle through layers and centuries of class and culturals norms like many other countries are. It’s one of our major strengths and a reason the world finds us so attractive. And now we have a President that embodies that inherent, satisfying tension of many diverse stories jostling together, creating friction, creating debate, creating progress.

When Janece and I were first dating, the only model for calling each other “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” were other relationships around us that were co-dependent, manipulative or otherwise just icky. So we came up with our own labels – “boypal” and “girlpal”. We felt obviously more romantically engaged than friends, but we didn’t want to feel or treat each other like what we saw around us. People thought it was kinda strange, but those new labels helped us find balance we wanted together. Same with our name change.

So, I get it. Obama is doing exactly the right thing – following his own impressive instincts and being perfectly comfortable with letting the chattering classes roil and stew. There’s work to be done, and the labels of the last 40 years just aren’t up to the task. It time for something new, it’s time for change.

PS. Barack sez “I can do whatever I like!”

I’ve been trying to draw some mental strands together about this financial collapse, the Citi bailout, and Obama’s economic team announcement today.

First, if profanity makes you go all faint, scroll away, scroll away, because here goes:

In 1998, the formation of Citigroup unilaterally ended the Depression-era Glass-Steagall act. That’s right, this fucking financial monstrosity simply decided a cornerstone of American financial regulation shouldn’t exist, and acted accordingly….

The lawmakers—led by professional Republican asshole Phil Gramm, triangularization expert Rubin and President Clinton—moved out the way.

It took a decade for the repeal of these protections to crater the economy.

And now they want a bailout. The same fucking management team, the same collection of self-important idiots.

Let me tell you something. I could pick 20 random people off the street, hand them a billion dollars each, and I’d be confident they’d create a better bank than these shitheads. And if these random men and women fucked up, I’m absolutely certain their collective mistakes would total less than $300 billion. Starting a bank, particularly an inept and greedy bank isn’t that fucking hard….

I’m heading home to Detroit in a few days for Thanksgiving, where I will witness firsthand the agonal struggles of your countrymen to feed, clothe, and house themselves—people who have done nothing but work hard, design well, and vote to care for one another. They’re, we’re, failing—with no bailout in sight.

You should really read the whole rant - Citigroup Deserves To Die. It describes exactly how I feel, and I thank Jonathan for saying it.

The Citi bailout comes on the heels of several revelations: 1) we’ve spent $350 BILLION dollars with exactly zero to show for it in terms of economic stabilization, 2) Hank Paulson doesn’t know how to do anything but sell financial snake oil and write blank checks to his Wall Street friends, 3) he wants to spend all the rest of the money before Bush leaves office because, well… he does…, and 4) Congress knows, in direct correlation with its spending, exactly zero about where the current money has gone, who’s overseeing its disbursement, who it’s going to and why they deserve it, and other basic information you’d want to know when loaning out $1000 to a friend.

The outgoing Oval Office chump is stammering and stumbling his way into sticking the American people with the biggest set of disasters of any sitting Executive (I still can’t bring myself to call him a President – he hasn’t earned that distinguished title) and trying to foist off last minute outrageous assaults on our environmental protections of the same stripe that ruined our markets. The self-styled mandarins of the arcane world of power and finance are daily revealed to be petty, tone-deaf, weak, and worse – plain inept.

So, we turn to Obama – a guy who has lived closer to us than almost anyone in major positions of power in Washington and who has tried his best to resist the self-congratulatory DC atmosphere. I watched Obama introduce his team, and I listened as he proposed one more massive borrowing spree from China – something that obviously makes everyone sick but that everyone is admitting is necessary. I watched the markets – that cauldron of emotion expressed as financial transactions – jump higher today after his presser. As Charles Mudede says, Wall Street is running on his words. After realizing during his introduction that I trust his team less than I trust his direction of his team, I would say – so are we all.

I, and many Americans, feel unrepresented in this tsunami of bad news. We watch well-paid powerful people give press conferences and argue with each other, knowing this collapse won’t affect their quality of life much at all, and we have no outlet for our rage at the abuse of our trust and anxiety for the shape of our future. I can’t speak for anyone else, but the “expert” is dead to me along with the brainless chattering media baboons that sold them to us. I can only hope that their spectacular and public collapse will be converted by the public into a new level of oversight and demands for accountability and transparency, a sea change in the way we govern ourselves.

What can Obama do? I don’t know, really. We have another agonizingly long 56 days or so until we can find out. (Luckily for us, he’s not waiting around twiddling his thumbs.) What I do know is that we elected, and are counting on, the normal guy, the brilliant guy around the corner with a good heart, a good family and his feet on the ground, the guy who organized us to put him where he is, to work miracles.

It’s all we’ve got. I hope it’s enough.

Working nights is probably the single most productive experience work-wise that I’ve had. There is literally nothing – nothing – to do besides getting your work done. I’ve need to get some sites out the door, so it’s my life for now.

But it is extremely disconnecting – seeing very little daytime (especially in winter) and completely off the track of the world’s schedule. Combined with living out in the sticks, I sometimes feel like nothing exists except four humans, two dogs, and one gimpy cat. It’s made my blog roll essential reading – just to stay connected to life in the outside world, politics, friends I haven’t met (hi, Natalie!), something.

I miss who I imagine I think I used to be…

This seems like it happened a million years ago:

I guess a few people had to be repeatedly taken to the woodshed by Obama’s Level 15 Black Crane Ninja Assassin Master skills before they got the message. (Enjoy that Sec O’ State chair, Hillary!)

What gets me is all of the progressive worry-warts that are still armchair quarterbacking him on everything from his Cabinet appointments to his choice of dog. What part of “he’s a political black-belt that never would have won if he’d taken your advice” do they not understand? Let the guy do his thing, fer crying out loud. If you can’t draw a connection between the facts that he ignored your hand-wringing and still exceeded all reasonable expectations in less than two short years, then you have no real qualification for using the words “what Obama must do” in a sentence. What this guy said:

If Obama listened to the Netroots’ advice all the time he wouldn’t be president-elect…he generally ignored the Netroots’ advice and, for the most part, he was wise to do so. He ran a far smarter and more disciplined campaign than I could have ever dreamed up.

Or, to say it a shorter way…

And in other news, Sky is back blogging again. I love that poem. For old-skool Springchamber fans, see how many old lyrics you can find in it. I count at least four.

To all of you geeks and geek-spouses who posted in response to Pinky And The Brain, I think I’m in love.

With Obama elected, it’s now official: the geeks have ascended. As the stories go, he’s read all the Harry Potter books to his kids, he sports a Pac-Man logo on his MacBook, and he really and truly collects comic books – Spiderman and Conan. He’s not alone in being a powerful geek.

There’s the usual suspects, of course – Jobs and Gates. But our political and cultural crop of geeks is also rich. There’s a great blogger named Ta-Nehisi Coates getting a lot of play at The Atlantic, and he has geek cred for days. According to this post on Salon, Seth Myers at SNL, the low-key genius behind the Sarah Palin rap and other great sketches, super geeked out when he got a sketch of himself as Blue Beetle from Marvel artist Kevin Maguire. We all know about Joss Whedon, the cultural powerhouse behind Buffy, Firefly, Dr. Horrible, and a whole mess of great graphic novels. Rachel Maddow has had a meteoric rise at MSNBC, getting her own highly acclaimed show just a few months ago, she’s smart as a whip with geeky good looks, and she’s also a comic book collector with a down-to-earth introverted geek lifestyle. And must I mention Stephen Colbert, honored with his own Spiderman cover? (Here’s a cool vid of Maddow and Colbert together.)

I find all this comforting, and not just because I grok these guys on a cultural level. It’s because geeks care. They are neither jaded and cynical, and consequently toothless and irrelevant, in that disaffected New York hipster way, nor are they particularly entranced by the power/wealth/fame trifecta that seems to spiritually sicken so many people in the public square. They are comfortable with their place in the world, and are just fine not being the most popular kid in the room. In fact, it’s a point of pride to be contrarian.

Geeks are passionate about the details and care about being right – about winning the argument on the merits. Geeks are creative and imaginative, voraciously consuming all manner of diverse cultural oddities and memes in their quest to create a dazzling fusion. Geeks are irritated by the cultural and political fluff that the mainstream is distracted by, and get impatient with people who have cultural hangups about race or sex. Just go to the San Diego ComicCon to see what I mean about diversity. Geeks are inclusive, and they share. They want everyone to geek out with them.

I’m a geek. I’m married to a geek. And I want my daughter to grow up to be a geek. And now, my President will be a geek and will hopefully spread some geekiness to the rest of the world, who IMHO desperately needs a geek infusion.

PS. Major geek kudos to you if you can complete the post title with the second memorable phrase from Pinky and the Brain.

Not much to say. I’ve been working my arse off on getting a client project launched and losing $$ hand over fist while doing it. I have a pathological need to put out $40K work, even if it’s a $4K client. I need more $40K clients, man…

Jen came over tonight. She’s a friend we made from our last church who’s stuck with us. I was struck as she ran out the door tonight to catch the ferry back to Seattle how different she is from when we first met her. She found Flickr and her own self-expression and hasn’t looked back. She’s changed dramatically, for the better. Ah, friends. Good to have them.

The President-Elect continues to kick ass. He rope-a-doped Lieberman who will now be his devoted legis-slave or face the consequences, he’s going to neutralize both Clintons in State (potentially), Rahm laid down the law today (“big changes”) for Wall Street execs, Daschle (major healthcare progressive) is taking over HHS, and Napolitano, someone I was immediately impressed by when I heard her on NPR, is going to head up Homeland Security. Adults. In the White House. Working hard for us. No drama. It keeps sinking in. You know how I know it’s working? Because Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant is reduced to trash-talking, calling Obama a “house negro”. Woo-hoo!

And in the spirit of new global reconciliation, here’s robots being robots and cats being cats. Together.

Curly headed monsters!

Our curly-headed monster came back today from her Camp Casey Adventure®. Both Janece and I noticed that she seemed a smidgen more grown up, like something about being away from her parents for a couple of days gave her a new lift of confidence in her own independence. She seemed pleased with herself that she was able to both have fun and miss us at the same time. She was really great for her Nana and Papa, too, and of course we’re proud as punch. And, a little sad, of course. Like I’ve written before, each new step for her out into the world is a little bit of tearing apart for us – all good and supposed to happen, but still melancholy.

Zombies!

I had another zombie dream last night, but with an interesting twist given my interesting realizations of late. I dreamed I was one of them, that I could feel their emotions and residual humanness because I was linked to them, even though I retained my own mind and self-will. The dream was still grotesque and disturbing as are my usual zombie dreams, but I woke up with an odd feeling – concern and protectiveness for the zombies, even though they were dangerous and destructive and I could sympathize with the humans trying to destroy them.

Which brings me to a bit of memorabilia I’d forgotten. When I was young – 6th grade or so – we left our cult-ish, fundamentalist church we’d grown up in all our lives. We were, of course, instantly ostracized and for a while my family drifted looking for a healthier church to replace our religious experience. It was pretty traumatic on us kids to have our insular world turned upside down, and we developed all kinds of coping behaviors.

One thing we did was come up with finger/hand puppets we called Kru’ms – a short derivative of “Christian Faither’s” (the Christian Faith Church was it’s name). The Kru’ms were ridiculously antagonistic and annoying, like Colonel Klink and the Nazis in Hogans Heroes. They could spawn infinite clones of themselves and we battled and bested them to great hilarity for so long as kids that the hand puppets became kind of a family institution – something we even passed on to other families who thought they were hilarious.

Our dear cousins, the Osbournes, were a part of the church that we were estranged from for a while (before they, too, ended up leaving). I had a dream one night that my cousin Nate and some of the other kids from the church were hunting me and wanted to kill me. Nate found and cornered me, and even though I begged him not to do it, he shot me in the belly.

I remember the impact in my dream, remember holding my stomach and looking down at the blood running out between my fingers. I distinctly remember feeling my life draining away. But I didn’t die. All the blood drained out and I felt a new bitter strength flow in. I got up and began chasing the now-horrified Nate who kept shooting me with no effect. I caught him and killed him by breaking his neck. When I was done with him, I went after the other kids. Mercifully, I woke up before I finished them off although I knew that their doom was also sealed. When I woke up, I didn’t feel scared or sad anymore about leaving the church.

OK, obviously I was dealing with a bit of trauma, and I clearly came up with a way emotionally to find closure, however disturbing. I think the most interesting part of the dream is that bitter strength I felt flow into me, that zombie power if you will. It was a force that felt deathly strong and powerful, but not filled with joy or completion or forgiveness – just a single-minded bitter will to avenge the injustice done to me. In the dream I felt no emotion/connection – just a dark delight that I was now powerful, that the tables were turned. I think in retrospect that poor Nate represented all of the kids in my school and neighborhood who had persecuted me/us for being the odd ones out. I think that in the middle of the emotional turbulence of my childhood church world breaking down, my destruction of him in the dream was the advent of one of many emotional gates that have come down between me and other people.

The funny thing is that when I had that dream, I’d never seen a zombie movie or read a zombie story of any kind. It was all pure id expression by a little 6th grade kid.

And now, after a disturbing romp through my childhood….

Otters!

We watched Emmett Otter’s Jugband Christmas tonight. We didn’t have TV growing up, but Janece said it was apparently a Christmas time favorite. Cute story, fun songs. “Bathing Suit” had Janece and I laughing:

And here’s the all-time H8R theme song (performed by the River Bottom Nightmare Band):

My favorite lyrics:

We know we’re a mess
But I does not like to be clean
We don’t brush our teeth
‘Cause our toothache can help us stay mean
We don’t wish to learn
But we hate what we don’t understand

Heh heh – spot on. Jim Henson rocks. We have The Dark Crystal in from NetFlix – I’m looking forward to seeing it again.

I was very moved tonight by the pictures coming from the rallies all over the nation today in support of gay marriage and against the harsh, vindictive bans passed in California, Florida and Arizona. It wasn’t just big cities like New York or San Fransisco or L.A. We’re talking Missoula, Peoria, Greensville, Grand Forks – hometowns in conservative areas. (Seattle held its own huge rallies, of course.)

What was moving was the spontenaity of the protests (organized within just this past week completely virally online), the diversity of the marchers (all ages, orientations, races), and the spirit of non-violent, optimisic inclusiveness. Even more was the general reports, even in the reddest of states, of good will and support coming from passing drivers and pedestrians. The public, still buzzing with the civic spirited victory of electing Obama last week, has turned its attention to another long-festering injustice in America – gay rights – with a mind to end it.

As Christians, Janece and I’s own awakening to gay rights came as it has for many others – through our friends and family. We could not, in good conscience, avoid reassessing the religion we’d been brought up in against the reality of the lives of those we loved. We couldn’t take refuge in the now obviously false assertions about homosexuality we grew up with. Tropes like “gays don’t have strong father figures” or “gays lead lives of unrestrained debauchery” or “gays are morally perverted” were revealed for the shoddy ignorance they were as we watched our friends struggle to assert their obvious normalcy to their families and church communities, sometimes despairing to the point of feeling suicidal or losing contact with those they loved all together.

This is about truth and freedom – for gays, for Christians, for society. Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”

Gays come to understand that there is something true and unassailable about their sexuality. To deny that truth is to deny their own personhood, their own self-worth, and to start down a path that inflicts the bitter fallout on their own mental health and their personal relationships. There are too many stories of gays who have cut their own bodies, put themselves and others at risk with dangerous sexual behavior, destroyed their most precious relationships and even committed suicide because they could not come out and embrace the truth.

As Christians, I feel it is ungodly to shun that truth that we all can see with our own God-given understanding and rationality in favor of a lie – a lie that not only diminishes our faith but that has inflicted so much needless suffering and loss on gays and their families. There is no difference between a good gay relationship and a good straight relationship, nor is there a difference between bad relationships in either orientation. It is our duty to adjust our religious and moral understanding to the real world. Why build something as precious as our faith on elaborately convoluted and demonstrably false theological contortions when the truth is as obvious and simple as “gay is normal”?

As a society, the long-standing lies about gays have cost us. There are hundreds of thousands of gay couples who would gladly adopt some of our many needy and willing children if only they had the same protections from the state as Janece and I do. There are countless gay couples who have been uprooted or seen their productive personal and civil lives disrupted by needless and punitive laws. Our military currently suffers from having to remove gay translators and service personnel when they are desperately needed in the theater. As with minority civil rights, we have been needlessly wounding our own national body and soul and we merely need to stop the madness to see a surge in contribution and participation in our local communities.

From a purely practical standpoint, gay marriage is no threat to anyone. The civil recognition of married gay couples does not affect a religious person’s theological understanding. Churches, private religious schools and institutions will not have their exclusionary behavior affected as long as they don’t take public monies or support. Our communities will gain, and the only losers will be those in the public square insisting on discrediting themselves by peddling obvious falsehood.

I salute the marchers today, especially the first-time participants, for their raw enthusiasm for change and their unwillingness to tolerate anyone’s lack of civil freedoms. I salute my gay friends and family for their courage and love and hope for all of us.

No more lies, no more division, no more suffering. The time for truth and freedom is now.

Mornin’ all. It’s a lovely night here. The full moon is brilliant behind a ragged sheath of fog and clouds skiffing through the sky, and I can see the occasional star cluster glimmering through the clear patches.

“You’re a good teacher, Daddy.” I taught a web design intro class at a local ad agency yesterday morning – a place that could possibly be my future employer. I did well, and they got a lot of value out of it for their in-house print design staff. It’s kinda nice to be paid as a consultant for what I know without having to do any actual work. Anyway, Amira didn’t want me to go. Janece told her that I had to go be a teacher. It must have left a mighty impression on her, because when I connected up with the girls for lunch Amira kept repeating “You’re a good teacher, Daddy” with a tone of awe, I guess at discovering that I have these hidden super power skills that go beyond sitting like a frumpy, cursing toad in the dark corner that houses my work computer.

I suck at business. Speaking of cursing, I spent the previous night working 15hrs on a Flash soundtrack job that I was only getting paid 3 hrs for. I said a lot of bad words during those 15 hrs. I really should have known better that too accept the job, and I should know better each time it happens – which is far too frequently. Sigh. Anyway, here’s the result of my bloodsport:

Go get Adobe Flash Player!

Lots of good Obama news. Elections matter, apparently.

The healing has yet to begin. The agency I taught at yesterday is a Christian firm catering to Christian non-profits. So, you’d be right in assuming there are a decent number of McCain/Palin supporters there. I used Obama’s site as a stellar example of how to effectively design direct action/donation screens (which is what they do frequently for their clients). That got me a few snarky responses from the still-chafing loyalists — mutters of “That ‘Donate Now’ button should really say ‘Socialize My Wealth Now’” and so on. Kinda humorous. I fully expect that Obama’s serious and sober handling of his responsibilities as President will shut down this kinda silly noise over time.

Guantanamo is going to close and we’re going to stop torturing people. The Obama camp is looking at the best approach to investigating the widespread collusions with the Bush torture doctrine throughout the intelligence and govt agency communities. Maybe we’ll get some light shed on this dark period in our history sooner vs. later. Would it be too much to ask for a few war crimes prosecutions? Rumsfeld, Cheney – I’m looking at you.

Reason #478 that I voted for Obama – the White House Office of Urban Policy. In his words, “…strong cities are the building blocks of strong regions, and strong regions are essential for a strong America. That is the new metropolitan reality and we need a new strategy that reflects it…” Finally, a progressive President that gets the power and potential of the urban environment and ends the ridiculous small-town worship American politics has been obsessed with for decades.

Reason #479 that I voted for Obama – the creation of an official Chief Technology Officer of The United States. It’s long overdue, and you can bet that it’s something that never crossed McCain’s mind.

Obama can doodle with the best of them.

According to this article, “The doodle is an informal sketch of a moment in time on the Senate floor. It features Senators Chuck Schumer, Majority Leader Harry Reid, Dianne Feinstein of California and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. While not detailed portraits, the politicians are easily identifiable.” The sketches remind me of a New Yorker cartoon. Not bad for an amateur.

Get your own Obama dingbat font!

Great words of the day- Horripilation (“the act or process of the hair bristling on the skin, as from cold or fear; goose flesh”) and sidereal (“measured or determined by the daily motion of the stars; of or having to do with the stars or constellations”). You can get your own word of the day from Dictionary.com. I love it.

And last but not least, I love this picture and I love this woman.

I’m working an all-nighter, and I was in the kitchen when I heard Amira ask for Mama. I went in and she was sitting up in bed in the dark. She said in her sweet little sleepy girl voice, “I don’t want to go in the water, Daddy. I’m scared of the water monsters.” I gave her a hug and kept whispering that she was safe in her bedroom and safe with me until she quieted down enough to ask for Daphne, her stuffed horse, and to be tucked in again. She asked me for a hug, so I curled up with her on the bed for a while and stroked her back as she snuggled into me until I could feel her getting sleepy again.

I’ve never felt quite so useful, and quite so sure about my contribution to the world, until having nights like these.

From the Washington Post:

Obama Positions Himself to Quickly Reverse Bush Actions on Environmental, Social Issues

By Ceci Connolly and R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 9, 2008

Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse the president on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.

A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition.

….

The list of executive orders targeted by Obama’s team could well get longer in the coming days, as Bush’s appointees are rushing to enact a number of last-minute policies in an effort to extend his legacy.

It’s still kinda hard to believe that we actually elected this guy, and that we might actually get a chance at a saner, more progressive America. I would hope that torture, Guanatanmo, and some of the other more heinous excesses of the Bush executive orders will be immediately on that block.

So, want a first glimpse of what people-powered government looks like?

www.change.gov

Note the President-Elect’s list of agenda items (muy progressivo!) in the lower right. Revitalizing The Economy. Ending The War In Iraq! Providing Health Care For All?! Note the email signup, where the President gathers emails for two-way (two-way!) communication. Note the (transparent!) detail on the transition and policy, letting anyone who is interested into the philosophical innards of the new administration. Note the brand vision of the President’s office (the harbinger of working style!) is crisply efficient, sleek, and tasteful design.

Pinch me. I’m dreaming.

The next President Of The United States – Barack Hussein Obama – in pictures. Wonderful shots, especially the one of him against the gathering storm clouds.

We – all of us, a deep cross-section of America, not just any one ethnicity or group – were ready for a change. From Ben Smith:

Obama won on his own terms, strategically and symbolically. He rolled up a series of contested states, from Colorado to Virginia, long out of Democratic reach. And his victory reflected the accuracy of his vision of a reshaped country. Racism, much discussed, turned out to be a footnote, and African-American turnout was not unusually high. Instead, Obama drew his strength from an array of racially mixed, growing areas around cities like Orlando, Washington, Indianapolis, and Columbus on his way to at least 334 electoral votes.

The world-wide celebration: more great photo slideshows. (thanks, Maria!)

The celebration on Capitol Hill in Seattle last night - Don’t Stop Believin’! Crank it up!

The Obama edge is already apparent in undermining the radical Islamist attacks on America. Joe Klein, via Andrew Sullivan, “I received an email from a young friend, an entrepreneur in Kabul, this morning. He said, ‘We are all smiling now,’ and he attached a Pakistani press clipping–the Taliban greeted the new President and said they were ready to commence talks.”

Along those lines, there’s a new opening for dialogue with the world. A round up from the NY Times of reactions from world leaders and citizens, positive and negative.

Did Obama trick McCain into blowing time and money on deep-blue PA? Also, what does the selection of Rahm Emmanuel as Chief of Staff say about Obama’s intentions? Is he out to let loose the enforcer on Congress Chicago-style, or is he just going to be uncompromising in passing his agenda? Read more about Pennsylvania and Rahm via Ezra Klein.

The culture of Washington, DC changes with each new administration that comes to town. The parties, the cultural events, even the food, shift a bit to reflect the personality of President and the staffers that flood in with them. What will “cool cat” Obama, our first urban president, bring to the Capital? The NY Times investigates.

Speaking of cultural impacts, introducing our new First Lady – Michelle Obama.

I hope to post more tomorrow about what the laws and propositions passed throughout the states last night say to about our country regionally and as a nation, since those are often bellwether actions that make their way up to the federal level at some point.

And last, but not least, am I ever glad that Palin is going back to Alaska! I deeply hope that this election has killed her chances for a serious run on the national stage. In a poll taken right after the election, she came in third after Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee with Republicans who were asked about who they wanted to lead the party in 2012.

And now, an inside peek at the Disasta From Alaska – a candidate so bad that even her own ticket was scrambling to minimize the damage:

Note in this video that Shep Smith catches, and kills, the rising meme from conservatives that it was the economic crisis that was solely responsible for raising Obama and killing McCain’s candidacy. Shep points out that Obama’s rise started after the Katie Couric interviews. Good for him for pointing that out. Much more here about Palin’s personal nastiness and complete lack of qualification (with video!).

About that $150K shopping spree… It was worse than the McCain camp let let on:

NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin’s shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain’s top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent “tens of thousands” more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,” and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

A Palin aide said: “Governor Palin was not directing staffers to put anything on their personal credit cards, and anything that staffers put on their credit cards has been reimbursed, like an expense. Nasty and false accusations following a defeat say more about the person who made them than they do about Governor Palin.”

McCain himself rarely spoke to Palin during the campaign, and aides kept him in the dark about the details of her spending on clothes because they were sure he would be offended. Palin asked to speak along with McCain at his Arizona concession speech Tuesday night, but campaign strategist Steve Schmidt vetoed the request.

(Note: The first part of that article is interesting as well, touching on the electronic security challenges we face. I hope Obama makes good on his mention during the campaign of creating some kind of an Internet czar position. It’s not a cabinet-level post, probably, but encouraging the spread of broadband, internet security, and training/access will be a crucial foundational piece of America’s new economy.)

Israelis in Jerusalem celebrate Obama’s win. More here.

I’m exhausted. I’ve gotten very little sleep for various reasons, and I’ve been cruising my political blogs for 3+ hours now, doing my online version of the street parties that are swirling through Seattle and other cities. What a wondrous, wondrous end to one of the most dramatic, human interest political sagas to come along in a long time.

During his win, I was beyond excited but I didn’t really shed any tears (except for some misting seeing the crowd shots during Obama’s speech and reactions to his win across the country) until I sat down at home after the party was over and went through the HuffPost’s slideshow of worldwide reaction. For some reason, seeing those cheering faces – people that don’t even live in this country – celebrating our victory with us broke the dam open, and I sobbed.

I think I cried because of why I always cry – when human beings not only realize their God-breathed potential, but they reach out and take hold of it, firmly and joyously. Heaven and earth ignite in that moment and it always makes me weep, catching that glimpse of the Divine. Tonight, Americans reached out and made from their own sweat and commitment a brand new future, and the world cheered for us. Tonight, we were part of a world community, caught up together in a new story of our shared dreams. And it was overwhelming.

This new space also feels vast and unknown to me. It’s our time now, my generation’s time. We turned out in record numbers, provoked and prodded into action by a man who speaks our cultural language, who is almost our peer, to reach out and take our destiny in our hands in our own way, in all the new ways that we know work even if those who’ve come before us don’t immediately get it. We’ve now seen that we are capable and can be trusted to deliver a pragmatically optimistic future, one where dreams and idealism are powerfully fused with the steely-eyed tools and means of those who used them to keep us apathetic and cynical.

Obama’s speech was a call to arms. It was a call designed to infuse our collective emotional relief with the urgency and resolve that it will take us, and him, to tackle our very real, very present challenges. His work is just beginning and so is ours.

What began twenty-one months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek – it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other.

Thank you, Mr. President-Elect. We won’t let you, or ourselves, down.

Time to stand up.

This was a year ago. SurveyUSA did a poll of all of the presidential hopefuls – pairing them up against each other. Against McCain, Obama only took 28 electoral votes from his home states of IL and HI.

The prediction from the polls today?

That is the work of a man who is committed, an army of volunteers who are committed, a nation committed for the first time in its history to vote for the better, most hardworking, most able candidate despite their skin color.

If I ever needed proof of what commitment strong enough to change history looks like, the evidence of these last two years is overwhelming. Si Se Puede!

I, for one, welcome our new Socialist Overlords!

Think we progressives are nervous about Tuesday? Imagine going through this (from the NY Times today):

His world is awash in powerful, conflicting emotions: the realization, presumably, that he may be about to become president; the huge optimism that he has unleashed, evident in the crowds he is drawing (and something he has told aides worries him a bit, given the expectations set for him); the weighty thinking he is gradually giving to how he would staff a government and deal with a transition in such a difficult time. All of this is taking place as a woman who played a large role in raising him, his grandmother, is approaching death.

“ ‘What if I disappoint people?’ ” Valerie Jarrett, a close friend and adviser, recalled Mr. Obama asking at several points throughout the campaign. “That’s what gives him the energy to keep getting up every day.”

Sometimes I think Obama should get the Presidency just for staying sane while being away from his family for so long. I look at Amira and Janece and I can totally feel this in my gut:

Mr. Obama also spoke about how his life had changed, a point that was driven home on Friday night when he went to Chicago to see his daughters for Halloween and grew agitated when he felt that a group of reporters and photographers had crowded him.

“He said he likes to go out trick-or-treating, but he can’t anymore,” Mr. Reid said in an interview, recalling the conversation he had with Mr. Obama. “He said he guessed he could have worn a Barack Obama mask.”

One of the greatest frustrations of his candidacy — being away from his wife, Michelle, and his two daughters, Malia and Sasha — will come to an end, win or lose. When his plane touched down on Saturday afternoon in Pueblo, Colo., his step carried an extra lilt. It was not because of the place that he finds himself in the closing moments of his campaign, but because his two daughters were standing on the breezy tarmac waiting to be scooped up by their father.

My prayers, best wishes and thanks for all of Obama’s get out the vote teams. Your commitment is extraordinary and your efforts have been smart and tireless. Our nation rests in your hands today. Thank you, and GIT ‘ER DONE!

Happy Halloween! This scared the ever-loving shit out of me when I was 12 yrs old at the roller rink:

Speaking of Thriller, I had a revelation a week or two ago after musing on my core mistrust of people. I find it pretty humorous that my all-time scariest movie monster/scenario is the Zombie Horde. I’ve had countless dreams about being a zombie survivalist and watching zombie movies always has a special thrill. Let’s see – mindless hordes of dead, rotting, relentless creatures that only look human swallowing up the earth and trying to get me while I barely stay one step ahead…. Hmm. Nope! No connection! No connection at all!

Side note: If you like zombie movies, I heartily recommend Fido, pretty much the world’s only rom-zom-com. (That’s “romantic zombie comedy”.)

On the other hand, this Curly Haired Monsterâ„¢ fills my daddy heart with MAJOR love:

Seriously, how did I get so lucky?