“The diatribes are getting McCain plenty of exposure on cable news, but they’re also starting to make observers wonder if the man who rolled his eyes at “that one” during the presidential debates is having trouble moving on from last November’s defeat.” via Salon.
“Prior to leaving the White House for the last time, George Bush left an envelope in the oval office for Barack Obama. Here in the New York bureau, I’ve asked my colleagues to guess what was inside. This is what they’ve come up with so far:
![//www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/A4-300.jpg' cannot be displayed]](http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/A4-300.jpg "watch out")
‘In an “urgent message” to supporters, the Republican National Lawyer Association accuses Franken and his “liberal allies” of “working feverishingly [sic] to steal the Minnesota Senate election.” ‘
via Huffington Post.
Camille Paglia doesn’t have any answers, but she deserves props for raising the question:
“As for Obama’s appointment of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, what sense does that make except within parochial Democratic politics? Awarding such a prize plum to Hillary may be a sop to her aggrieved fan base, but what exactly are her credentials for that position? Aside from being a mediocre senator (who, contrary to press reports, did very little for upstate New York), Hillary has a poor track record as both a negotiator and a manager. And of course both Clintons constantly view the world through the milky lens of their own self-interest. Well, it’s time for Hillary to put up or shut up. If she gets as little traction in world affairs as Condoleezza Rice has, Hillary will be flushed down the rabbit hole with her feckless husband and effectively neutralized as a future presidential contender. If that’s Obama’s clever plan, is it worth the gamble? The secretary of state should be a more reserved, unflappable character — not a drama queen who, even in her acceptance speech, morphed into three different personalities in the space of five minutes.
Given Obama’s elaborate deference to the Clintons, beginning with his over-accommodation of them at the Democratic convention in August, a nagging question has floated around the Web: What do the Clintons have on him? No one doubts that the Clinton opposition research team was turning over every rock in its mission to propel Hillary into the White House. There’s an information vacuum here that conspiracy theorists have been rushing to fill.”
via Salon.
“The U.S. Supreme Court will consider Friday whether to take up a lawsuit challenging President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. citizenship, a continuation of a New Jersey case embraced by some opponents of Obama’s election.
The meeting of justices will coincide with a vigil by the filer’s supporters in Washington on the steps of the nation’s highest court.
The suit originally sought to stay the election, and was filed on behalf of Leo Donofrio against New Jersey Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells.
Legal experts say the appeal has little chance of succeeding, despite appearing on the court’s schedule. Legal records show it is only the tip of an iceberg of nationwide efforts seeking to derail Obama’s election over accusations that he either wasn’t born a U.S. citizen or that he later renounced his citizenship in Indonesia.”
via Chicago Tribune.
“Barack Obama was, without question, born in the U.S., and he is eligible to be president, but experts on conspiracy theories say that won’t ever matter to those who believe otherwise.”
— Alex Koppelman, Salon News.
“…a slick right wing site that claims the liberal media and ignorant voters are the only reason a guy with “limited experience, extreme liberal positions and radical political alliances could be elected President.” Are you serious? African chanting to start a video attacking Obama?! And then interviews with a handful of Obama supporters to “prove” they are ignorant? Why don’t we interview the millions of Americans who think Obama is a Muslim to prove the media has a right wing bias? Ignorance has no party allegiance.”
Sam Smith:
via Undernews
Maureen Dowd:
If she became secretary of state, she would be getting the job despite her husband — and because of her own transformation in the primaries from a legacy applicant to a scrappy one.”
via NY Times op-ed
Berlusconi
Mouse embryonic stem cells
The McCain campaign aides complained about the $150,000 that the Republican National Committee had spent on Ms. Palin’s clothes, the way a Canadian comedian was able to embarrass the campaign by calling her and pretending to be the president of France, and the political ambitions she seemed to harbor beyond 2008.
By the end of the week, their complaints had escalated considerably, with Fox News quoting unnamed McCain campaign officials as saying that Ms. Palin had not known that Africa was a continent, not a country, and claiming that she did not know which countries were covered by the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Ms. Palin told reporters in Alaska that the anonymous criticism was “cowardly,” and that she had discussed the campaign’s position on Nafta at her debate prep sessions.
“I remember having a discussion with a couple of debate preppers,” she said. “So if it came from one of those debate preppers, you know, that’s curious. But having a discussion about Nafta — not, ‘Oh my goodness, I don’t know who is a part of Nafta.’ ”
“So, no, I think that if there are allegations based on questions or comments that I made in debate prep about Nafta, and about the continent versus the country when we talk about Africa there, then those were taken out of context,” Ms. Palin said. “And that’s cruel and it’s mean-spirited, it’s immature, it’s unprofessional, and those guys are jerks, if they came away with it taking things out of context and then tried to spread something on national news. It is not fair and not right.” ‘ (New York Times )
[Thank heavens they were wrong when they predicted that we were not going to have Sarah Palin to kick around anymore after the election. If she did not exist, The Onion would have had to invent her.]
Below, some key excerpts — including:
Voters in Arizona and Florida passed amendments to their states’ constitutions enshrining discrimination against LGBT people and denying marriage, and in some cases civil unions or domestic partnerships as well, to same-sex couples. Proposition 8 in California still remains too close to call. (HRC)
“Electoral Projections Done Right”
channelling the zeitgeist from Brookline, Mass., USA since November, 1999
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